Richard Price and Sally Price, Eds., John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam
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REVIEW Richard Price and Sally Price, eds., John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam G. E. Bentley, Jr. Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, Volume 24, Issue 1, Summer 1990, pp. 253- 259 Summer 1990 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y 253 character: tender as a child yet killing Joseph Johnson's investment in it REVIEWS beasts to see what they taste like; fero- must have been heavy; according to ciously challenging his comrades to Stedman's diary, Johnson promised duels, thrice in one day on one occa- £500 to Stedman for the first edition sion (197), yet, the only time when he with the prospect of £500 more from saw the enemy, closing his eyes so the profits (XXXVII), and he must have John Gabriel Stedman. that, if he should chance to kill one of had to pay at least £10 apiece for the Narrative of a Five Years these abused, noble savages, it would 80 plates (or £800), plus the cost of Expedition against the Re be by accident; expecting the sexual paper, composition, printing, etc. services of slaves, yet creating a love James Edwards, who appears with volted Negroes of Surinam. story which tore the heartstrings of Transcribed for the First Joseph Johnson as publisher on the Europe for a century. It is one of the titlepage, was probably "a largely Time from the Original most vivid and detailed pictures ever silent partner" (XXXVIII), and perhaps 1790 Manuscript. Edited, made of plantation life with its savage his role was chiefly the provision of and with an Introduction slave economy and its squalor and lux- capital. What the Prices have pre- and Notes, by Richard Price ury, and it is a mine of firsthand obser- sented is the 1790 manuscript version and Sally Price. Baltimore vation of flora and fauna which may which recently turned up in the still be seen in Surinam, and of cus- University of Minnesota Library and & London: Johns Hopkins toms and expectations which have, on University Press, 1988. which differs considerably from the the whole fortunately, long been dead. version published in 1796. xcviii + 708 pp. 94 plates. The verbal and visual pictures of The differences between the 1790 $95.00. European barbarity, systematically MS and the 1796publication may be breaking the bones of a Negro with an seen in the accounts of Stedman's re- iron bar as he is chained to the ground, action when he found out that Joanna walling an ancient slave in his hut to is to be transferred to a new plantation Reviewed by die because he was too old to work— (see box on following page). G. E. Bentleyjr. these aroused the passionate sympathy and indignation of readers and fanned the flames of abolitionist sentiment, though Stedman himself was a slave- I had a Je ne say qwoy about me, of the owner, and he believed in the slave fasquinating kind, which attracted the girls as the eys of the Rattlesnake attrakts trade and the slave system. It is a work, Squids, and unaccountably persuades full of wonderfully vivid scenes and them to submission. [XVIII] wonderfully vivid contradictions. The history of the text is intricate. his is a fascinating and wonderful- Stedman recorded at the time the events Tly enjoyable book. It is a tale of in Surinam of 1772-1777, wrote them martial and amatory adventure in the up in 1790, and sent the manuscript to tropics, with fierce rebels hiding in the Joseph Johnson the publisher in Lon- jungle, nubile maidens bathing in pel- don in February 1791. The engravings lucid streams, "tygers" and "vampiers" were begun that year, but the text was attacking the camp at night, and white probably scarcely looked at for some soldiers dying of disease in droves time. Perhaps about 1794 Johnson with never a sight of their black ene- asked the medical midwife William mies. It is a romantic and tragic tale, Thomson to revise or in fact to ghost- with the hero falling passionately in write it, which he did very thoroughly love with a 15-year-old slave girl, Joan- and high-handedly. This version was na, whom he cannot free. It is a tale of printed and shown to Stedman, who the decadence and barbarity of Europe- was furious and required that all 2,000 ans, torturing their slaves for pleasure, copies should be destroyed (L), and a and of the simple nobility of the compromise text was evolved and African and Indian slaves whom the published in 1796. hero learns to love. It is a self-portrait of a fascinatingly self-contradictory 254 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Summer 1990 1796 publication I lost all decorum, indeed grew perfectly 1790 MS distracted . [and] damming the cause of 3 at the mercy of some rascally Overseer—Good God; I Good God!—I flew to the spot in my Misfortune [i.e., his Colonel ]... I stept flew to the Spot in Search of poor Joanna and found her search of poor Joanna: I found her half a dozen of Pases back, and to forget bathing with her Companions in the Garden. bathed in tears.—She gave me such a my distress I all at once ran my head against look—ah! such a look!—From that a large eta tree till I fell in a Swoon covered But lo! with graceful Motion there she Swims moment I determined to be her over with blood. (223) Gently removing each Ambitious Wave protector against every insult. [LXI] The crowded waves transported Clasp her Limbs It is little wonder that "at last it was When, When, oh when shall I such freedoms have agreed on that I was certainly insane, In vain ye envious Streams So fast ye flow [he was arrested] and a boat ordered to To hide her from a lovers ardant Gaze From every touch you more transparent grow row me emediately down to Para• And all revealed the beautious Wanton plays maribo" (160). The wonder is that his Colonel, whom he openly despised But perceiving me She darted from my presence like a and defied, did not ship him home at Shot, when I returned to [her owner] Mrs. Demelly and declared without the least hesitation . that it was my the first opportunity. intention (if such could be) to Purchase to Educate & to Stedman seems to have been not so make even my lawfull Wife in Europe, the individual much willing as eager to smell a fault, Mulatto Maid Joanna. ... and he showed an extraordinary eager• ness to wipe out a slight in blood. does he mean "incontinence"? The Next getting tipsy with some of my Com• The contrasts between Joanna bathing panions my irrascible temper involved me in lascivious waves and bathing in tears colonel's servant accidentally freed in Another Despute—Out I & one of Them of sensibility and between Stedman one of his pet parrots, at which "The marched again to the Savannah where nearly buying her and protecting her are symp• Poor Valet Stood perfectly Putrified" under the Gallows we drew our Swords & tomatic of the genteel alterations made (342). When the Surinam rattlesnake fought in our Shirts, when I was Deserved• shakes his tail, he makes a sound ly run through the Right Arm & which between the 1790 manuscript and the Ended the fracas. (600) 1796 publication. "much Like a Rattle from which it One of the inadvertent delights of Derides its name" (470). There is as Even on the voyage home, he quar• the book is the grammar. Stedman is much innocent pleasure to be derided reled with a shipmate and agreed to the Mr. Malaprop of Martial Sensibility, from Stedman's talents as a wordsmith fight him with pistols across a table, and the text illustrates some of the as from any other aspect of the book. but their friends discovered the plot wilder shores of diction. Even though Stedman is a heady, impetuous writ• and separated them, and they became Stedman's text was transcribed by two er, but to call him merely an impetuous bosom buddies. And in a final flourish, young amanuenses, his own gift for character would be tampering with the he offers to fight all comers: "while I the telling travesty shines through.1 truth. He cultivated an eccentricity have the Severity to unmask vice & When Stedman learned, erroneous• which his superior officers often called folly I at the Same time possess the ly as it turns out, that his sergeant had madness, and they were not always Generosity to give ev'ry Gentleman "offered violence to this virtuous wrong. Stedman went barefoot in the that Satisfaction to which I reasonably woman," i.e., to Joanna, "Heaven and jungle rather than wear regulation think he stands intitled" (617). He was Earth, I Swore imediate destruction to boots; when the "military rot" set in, clearly a dangerous man to have about the villain, and having ordered a Ne• Stedman's feet did not putrefy, but the house. gro to Cut 12 bamboe Canes, I retired those of his men and his fellow officers But at the same time he was a man like one enraged Swearing to assassin did. (In the frontispiece he is shown of extraordinary sensibility. He was as him, inch by inch" (158). In the tropics, barefoot with a slain black rebel.) easily moved to tears as to rage, and when he finally had to leave Joanna he wounds rapidly became infected, so I have been . cald mad in Scotland, that "some lost their limbs and others mased in England, fou by the namurois was prostrate with grief, but "in a few might have lost even their Lives, [i.e., Belgians], gek or dol [crazy or mad] by days Reason so far Prevail'd again as without a temporary amputation did the Dutch, and law [insane in Sranan, the almost to make me Ashamed of my too 4 take place" (222).