Islands, Many Races, a Legacy Too Often of Sorrow, May Slowly Be Moving to a Larger Synthesis, and the Fulfilment of All Life, a Higher Self-Consciousness
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218 HENRY SWANZY islands, many races, a legacy too often of sorrow, may slowly be moving to a larger synthesis, and the fulfilment of all life, a higher self-consciousness. The story of writing in English in the Caribbean must be de- scriptive and historical, rather than analytical, for it is too early yet to speak of a recognisable style common to all writers, conscious of a national or a regional heritage. If there is any central theme, I would suggest that it is the inevitable, and ulti- mately fruitful, tension, between the Science that unites, directly through communications, indirectly by the Cartesian frame of mind; and the natural assertion of the local and the concrete that divides. Of this second spirit, the supreme expression is a living literature. IMPERIAL The story starts, inevitably, with writing that comes from outside, the literature of the aristocracy, the planters who drew their wealth from sugar. It is not my purpose to do more than indicate the sources of these early comments, which may be found mainly in histories, like the CAro«o/ogj'ca/ J/ïstory 0/ Me /n^tes by Captain SOUTHEY, the //ïsfory 0/ Me Br/hsA re tn NorM /Iwertca, by JOHN OLDMIXON, above all by the //Vs/ory 0/ Me Wes< /«rfies, by BRYAN EDWARDS. Such records of action, of hairbreadth scapes by flood and field, answered the main demand of the only audience at that time, otherwise ex- pressed, e.g. in the/owrwaZ of MONK LEWIS. This was written of the "year of Waterloo; but, what is more to our purpose, it was fol- lowed sixteen years later by Emancipation. Then come, at an inter- val of fifty years, a series of three books by leading British men of letters, the novelist ANTHONY TROLLOPE in 1859 (77te Wes/ /ni/es a«rf Me S^>amsA Mam), the novelist CHARLES KINGSLEY in 1871 (/l£ Las£) and the historian JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE in 1888 (77ie £«g/;'sA m Me Wes/ /«ii'es, or Me Sow 0/ [7/ysses). These three men, the man of the world, the lover of nature, the Imperial controversialist, express the reality of the Indies of their day: the reality of neglect. They were British, looking from the outside. Their West Indies was the "nursery of the British Navy", the scene of Homeric encounters with the French, for the strategic centre of St. Lucia, where ships could lie in Castries beyond the raging of the wind. "These cliffs had echoed the roar of Rodney's guns, on that day which saved the British Empire, and the Downloaded from Brill.com10/09/2021 10:08:51PM via free access WRITING IN THE BRITISH CARIBBEAN 219 island I was gazing at was England's Salamis". It is Froude speaking of Rodney's great action of the Saints, off Dominica, in 1782. When they turn to the inhabitants, they look incuriously, as historians. "No people ever praised themselves so constantly as the Barbadians: no set of men were ever so assured that they and their occupations are the main pegs on which the world hangs." (Trollope) Within this world, however, the slow processes of culture were maturing, in the slow growth of schools, and the development of a middle class. Indeed, Froude came at the end of a period: for the next forty years, we are to see the slow emergence of a native "school" of writers, mostly poets, in particular in Jamaica. They are frankly derivative of the English pre-Raphaelites and writers of the 1890s, when they are not emulating the greater Romantic poets, Keats and Wordsworth, above all, found in the text-books of the schools. They are small bourgeois circles, writing for themselves. One must face the fact that their achievements were not profound. Their pioneer, indeed, was an English civil servant, THOMAS HENRY MACDERMOT (Tom Redcam), whose muse gave birth to lines like these: Between the walls now rough with age Men talked of Benbow's fight. And Rodney's fame the courier told Who crossed Diablo's height. And at the tavern quaffed a glass And hard by Huntley spurred, Till far Trelawney from his lips The news of victory heard. The ghost of Macaulay might have smiled to hear these lines. But this same Redcam wrote patriotic Jamaican songs that were sung in the schools; and in October 1933 shortly after his death in England, where he had retired in 1922, he was crowned as Poet Laureate by the island's Poetry League. Others of the school include the poet C.M.G., who wrote the Jamaican National Anthem: God shield our island home From all the storms that roam Darkening the West. Another has a name which is in itself a poetic echo: ARABEL MOULTON-BARRETT. More personal writers were the kindergarten Downloaded from Brill.com10/09/2021 10:08:51PM via free access 220 HENRY SWANZY • teacher CONSTANCE HOLLAR, whose titles (Fos sa/wfo) repeat the English patterns, and English rhythms: My heart, a flame of lustre high Shall leap beneath the blazon'd sky.... Another name of the period, WALTER ADOLPHE ROBERTS, a skilful writer, who is still living, writes a F?7/a«e#e o/ /Ae Lw/ng Pa«. Another, J. E. CLARE MCFARLANE, is dominated by Wordsworth. Others still more personal, were the brother and sister, ARTHUR and EVE NICHOLAS. TWO ladies, again still living, both contributed to an Empire anthology, FVow Overseas, publish- ed in London in 1924. They are LENA KENT and ALBINIA HUTTON, and they are not unfairly represented with offerings like Mrs. Hutton's 77te Empire's I fly where'er the birds fly, where'er the sun doth shine, I've sons of every colour, in every land and clime, I witch them all with beauty and make them forever mine.... These poets, who often write melodiously, are by no means still silent, although their main effort was twenty years ago. They are represented among the youngest generation by VIVIAN VIRTUE * who published a volume of verse called Wings 0/ //»<? Morwmg shortly before the war, with sensuous, craftsmanlike verse in traditional rhythms, the most successful perhaps a villanelle of "King Solomon and Queen Balkis". REVOLT Although such writing, isolated, self-conscious, formal, represents the main current of the period, there were one or two writers who do not, to this degree, locate themselves in a tradition outside the islands. Such a one, as we might expect, was a prose writer, the journalist, H. G. DE LISSER, who wrote several novels, that were published in London, including £/«ier iAc Sww, and, his best-known work, S«sa« Pro«i/«'gA, the story of a gallant Jamaican woman of the people, who follows her man to the digging of the Panama Canal. Even De Lisser, however, is writing very largely for English readers, in an English tradition, that seems to owe much to novelists like Dickens. A much more significant figure is the Negro, CLAUDE MCKAY, who left Jamaica for Harlem in 1912, after writing Songs 0/ /aw«tc«, and CoHsta&M/ary fia//arfs. "McKay", says an exponent Downloaded from Brill.com10/09/2021 10:08:51PM via free access WRITING IN THE BRITISH CARIBBEAN 221 of the European tradition, "possesses no roots in the great world of European and American civilisation". In fact, his best work belongs to the tradition of the "Negro protest" writers of America, to whom he contributed one of the most famous lines: Like men, we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack. Pressed to the wall, dying but fighting back. In a sense, McKay is the precursor of the next most significant school, which appropriately enough, arose in the island of Trini- dad around the year 1930 — an industrialised island at a time of slump. The main names are those of the novelist ALFRED MENDES, the writer C. R. L. JAMES, the journalist GEORGE PADMORE (Malcolm Nurse). The first two have written novels of considerable merit, of a realist kind: novels (James' Afm^y /l//ey, for example) to which a definition of the M«/ay«/aw school of writers in English in India might well apply: "mental patients, scoundrels, fallen women, destitutes — mainly destitutes". It is perhaps, significant that James is best known by a polemical historical study on the period of Toussaint L'Ouverture, 7"Ae J3/ac& /acoit'tts; while Padmore is almost entirely a political journalist, who was even (1936) for a short time a member of the Moscow Soviet. For his part, Mendes went to America, from which he has recently returned; James went to England. Such an exodus is perhaps typical of the school. For it will be seen that they, no less than the "Imperialists" in Jamaica, were reacting to world-wide tides. The social struggles of the 1930s, also evoked many responses in other islands, notably Jamaica. Here we have the rather sad and personal talent of UNA MARSON, who has written several volumes of verse, the last in London, Towards ^Ae Stars. She expresses poignantly the spirit of her race; but also the attitude of all those "children of the slump" — who succeeded in the 'thirties to a heritage of apparently eroded values and found a hope in the race, or the proletariat. We will not be among the happy heirs Of this grand heritage — but unto us Will come their gratitude and praise And children yet unborn will reap in joy What we have sown in tears. The most violent and uncomprising exponent of the new "Nationalist", "Racialist", "Socialist" spirit of revolt was undoubtedly GEORGE CAMPBELL, a relative of the Jamaican Downloaded from Brill.com10/09/2021 10:08:51PM via free access 222 HENRY SWANZY ' " " ' Socialist leader, Norman Manley.