massa’s troubled face had breached her hiding place, ‘Marguerite, get up from there,’ he said, pulling at the cloth of July’s flimsy skirt. ‘Come and look to your mistress. She needs you with her.’ His feet then strode to the door in five long strides.
As July crawled out from around and under the sideboard she heard her missus sighing. July, moving to stand at her side said, ‘No be feared, missus, no be feared. Me here, missus.’
But her missus began quietly to weep. Then, through a halting pause, as she wiped her snivelling nose upon the back of her hand—which still gripped the pistol—she said, ‘Marguerite, that is a bed sheet on the table, not the Irish linen. My God, Elizabeth Wyndham will soon testify to everyone that a soiled bed sheet was on my table through this whole beastly dinner.’
CHAPTER 9
S OMETIMES MY SON DOES confuse me with all his education and learning until I do not know if I be in the right or in the wrong.
‘But this is the time of the Baptist War, Mama,’ he tell me. ‘The night of Caroline Mortimer’s unfinished dinner in your story is the time of the Christmas rebellion, when all the trouble began.’ He then commenced to blast me with fierce commands.
I should tell, he said, whether the firing of plantations started in Salt Spring when the negro driver refused to flog his own wife. Or, whether it began at Kensington Pen, up near Maroon Town. I must write all I know of Sam Sharpe, the leader of this rebellion—of his character and looks. I should make it clear how every negro believed themselves to have been freed by the King of England; how they had promised to do no more work until that freedom was felt; and how the negroes swore to wrest their freedom from the planters’ thieving grasp if it was not given willingly. And I must be sure to add how the noise of the shells and horns being blown at Old Montpelier and Shettlewood Pen did manage to frighten off the militia.
Plenty, plenty commands did trip lightly from my son’s mouth—too many to lavish my black ink upon here—until I told him, ‘Hush up,’ for my head did ache with his requirements.
Now, reader, it is not that your storyteller is indolent and idles about when there is work that must be done. No. The reason I have little to advise upon these truths is within the nature of those olden times; for news did not travel as it does today. Most was carried upon the breath of ragged little boys who once having run far with the tale then struggled to recall it while you fed them some yam. Or it was passed upon the gossips-breeze—the chat-chat that blew from ear to ear across the island.
Yet in these more modern times, I may write a letter at my table and someone too-far-to-run-to will read its contents within the week. And, imagine this, an instrument called a telephone can carry talk to ears within some other household in the time it takes to whisper it from your own lips. My son says that this telephone can even allow you to chat with someone in another district—that you may be in Falmouth, yet your talk may be raising the eyebrows of someone in Kingston. But this is obviously fanciful, and no calling for Lillian to tell me that it is indeed so does make it true. But, if there were such an invention at the time of this Baptist War (as my son does name it), then I am sure I would have known what was going on everywhere at one time. But there was not.
So, should you desire a fuller account of what happened during this time, then perhaps you could peruse the pamphlet that my son of late brought to me. It is written by a Baptist minister named George Dovaston with the title, Facts and documents connected with the Great Slave Rebellion of Jamaica (1832) .
Although nothing that appears within this minister’s pages was witnessed by my eye, and what my eye did see at the time does not appear in this man’s report, my son assures me that this account is very good. Try that if you so
As July crawled out from around and under the sideboard she heard her missus sighing. July, moving to stand at her side said, ‘No be feared, missus, no be feared. Me here, missus.’
But her missus began quietly to weep. Then, through a halting pause, as she wiped her snivelling nose upon the back of her hand—which still gripped the pistol—she said, ‘Marguerite, that is a bed sheet on the table, not the Irish linen. My God, Elizabeth Wyndham will soon testify to everyone that a soiled bed sheet was on my table through this whole beastly dinner.’
CHAPTER 9
S OMETIMES MY SON DOES confuse me with all his education and learning until I do not know if I be in the right or in the wrong.
‘But this is the time of the Baptist War, Mama,’ he tell me. ‘The night of Caroline Mortimer’s unfinished dinner in your story is the time of the Christmas rebellion, when all the trouble began.’ He then commenced to blast me with fierce commands.
I should tell, he said, whether the firing of plantations started in Salt Spring when the negro driver refused to flog his own wife. Or, whether it began at Kensington Pen, up near Maroon Town. I must write all I know of Sam Sharpe, the leader of this rebellion—of his character and looks. I should make it clear how every negro believed themselves to have been freed by the King of England; how they had promised to do no more work until that freedom was felt; and how the negroes swore to wrest their freedom from the planters’ thieving grasp if it was not given willingly. And I must be sure to add how the noise of the shells and horns being blown at Old Montpelier and Shettlewood Pen did manage to frighten off the militia.
Plenty, plenty commands did trip lightly from my son’s mouth—too many to lavish my black ink upon here—until I told him, ‘Hush up,’ for my head did ache with his requirements.
Now, reader, it is not that your storyteller is indolent and idles about when there is work that must be done. No. The reason I have little to advise upon these truths is within the nature of those olden times; for news did not travel as it does today. Most was carried upon the breath of ragged little boys who once having run far with the tale then struggled to recall it while you fed them some yam. Or it was passed upon the gossips-breeze—the chat-chat that blew from ear to ear across the island.
Yet in these more modern times, I may write a letter at my table and someone too-far-to-run-to will read its contents within the week. And, imagine this, an instrument called a telephone can carry talk to ears within some other household in the time it takes to whisper it from your own lips. My son says that this telephone can even allow you to chat with someone in another district—that you may be in Falmouth, yet your talk may be raising the eyebrows of someone in Kingston. But this is obviously fanciful, and no calling for Lillian to tell me that it is indeed so does make it true. But, if there were such an invention at the time of this Baptist War (as my son does name it), then I am sure I would have known what was going on everywhere at one time. But there was not.
So, should you desire a fuller account of what happened during this time, then perhaps you could peruse the pamphlet that my son of late brought to me. It is written by a Baptist minister named George Dovaston with the title, Facts and documents connected with the Great Slave Rebellion of Jamaica (1832) .
Although nothing that appears within this minister’s pages was witnessed by my eye, and what my eye did see at the time does not appear in this man’s report, my son assures me that this account is very good. Try that if you so
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