Part 35
When he was nineteen, his father’s influence procured him an attachéship to the British Embassy at the Hague. He stayed but a few months in the Dutch capital, but in that time, in the short space of ten weeks, he wrote a work by the publication of which in 1795 he at once sprang into fame—“Ambrosio, or The Monk.”
The discrepancy to be noticed between the character of Lewis as a man and the opinions expressed in the book are most curious. Mrs. Baron-Wilson, evidently a close friend, says of him: “There is nothing else in English literature so wild, so extravagant, so utterly at variance with all the ordinary and received rules of art and of criticism (not to mention the recognised codes of morals), as the chief writings of ‘Monk’ Lewis. Yet we may tax the whole circle of our biographical literature to show us a man whose personal character and conduct—from his earliest youth to the close of his worldly career—were more strictly and emphatically those which we are accustomed to look for from a plain, right-thinking, commonsense view of human affairs.” Before he had passed his majority by many months, Lewis was elected Member of Parliament for Hindon in Wiltshire, in which borough he succeeded William Beckford, of Fonthill Abbey, another Jamaica proprietor. But his parliamentary career was singularly prosaic; he never addressed the House. Henceforth he devoted himself to literature. From his facile pen flowed contributions to every branch, from _vers de société_ to funeral odes—novels, dramas, lyric poems, Scotch ballads, nautical songs, imitations of classic writers, translations and adaptations from the German, Italian, Spanish and Danish.
As a reviver of old ballads he paved the way for Hogg and for Scott, the latter of whom collaborated with him in his “Tales of Terror” and “Tales of Wonder,” which however were never popular.
The acquisition of wealth and the inheritance of his father’s West Indian estates enabled him to enter on a larger sphere of philanthropic work than he had hitherto been able to undertake. His action in this respect was not a momentary impulse, but a practical outcome of firm conviction, and he took steps to ensure that its effects should endure after his death. His object was the amelioration of the condition of the slaves on his Jamaica properties.
He arrived at Black River on New Year’s Day, 1816, where he found “John Canoe” and all the rest of negro Christmastide festivities in full swing. In his first letter home to his mother he told her he was keeping a regular journal, and this was afterwards published posthumously in 1834, under the title of “The Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, kept during a residence in the Island of Jamaica,” which Coleridge in his “Table-Talk” denotes “delightful. It is almost the only unaffected book of travels I have read of late years. You have the man himself. It is by far his best work, and will live to be popular.” A new edition appeared in 1861 under the title of “Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies.”
Lewis spent four months in Jamaica, and so much of his time did he give to the amelioration of the condition of his slaves on his estate of Cornwall, within a few miles of Savanna-la-Mar, that he left the island without having visited Hordley, an estate in the Plantain Garden River division of St. Thomas-in-the-East, in which estate he had a share. On Cornwall there were 307 slaves and 287 head of stock, and on Hordley 283 slaves and 130 stock. His friend Lord Holland, it may be mentioned, then owned Friendship and Greenwich, neighbouring estates in Westmoreland.
Lewis’s principal acts were the abolition of the lash, the acceptance of negro evidence at enquiries into offences, &c., and an endeavour to supplement manual labour by mechanical implements and improved stock. He built better hospitals for the sick, granted extra holidays to his negroes, and generally did his best to spoil them—not without success, for he writes: “The negroes certainly are perverse beings. They had been praying for a sight of their master year after year; they were in raptures at my arrival; I have suffered no one to be punished, and shown them every possible indulgence during my residence amongst them, and one and all they declare themselves perfectly happy and well treated. Yet previous to my arrival they made thirty-three hogsheads a week; in a fortnight after my landing their product dwindled to twenty-three; during this last week they have managed to make but thirteen.”
It is curious to read of the author of “The Monk,” a little lion in London society, throwing himself heart and soul into the most minute questions of domestic economy and policy at Cornwall, and adjusting differences between Cubina and Phyllis.
He drew up rules for the better security of justice for his slaves after he had left, and by his kindness he so won their hearts that when he threatened to leave them, they professed to be filled with despair.
So strongly was he impressed with the evil arising from absent landlordism that in a codicil to his will he made it a condition of inheritance that the owner, whoever he or she might be, of his estates should pass three clear calendar months in Jamaica every third year.
He made enemies for himself amongst the local magistrates, by taking upon himself the part of intercessor with their masters for slaves on neighbouring properties.
He made one more visit to Jamaica. In October 1817 accompanied by Tita, an Italian valet, he set out for Jamaica in the same ship and with the same captain as in 1815. He reached Black River in February 1818, and this time he visited Hordley, but, as we have seen in the account of St. Thomas, had hardly sufficient time to effect such drastic changes as he had done at Cornwall.
On his way he stopped at Kingston, where he saw performed at the theatre his own tragedy “Adelgitha,” whom the author meant only to be killed in the last act, but whom the actors murdered in all five.
On May 4, 1818, he left Black River for England, and ten days later he was committed to a watery grave, having succumbed to yellow fever, which had broken out on board the _Sir Godfrey Webster_. He died in the arms of the faithful Tita who was afterwards present at Byron’s death.
The following is Lewis’s description of Cornwall great house as it then was:
The houses here are generally built and arranged to one and the same model. My own is of wood, partly raised upon pillars; it consists of a single floor: a long gallery, called a piazza, terminated at each end by a square room, runs the whole length of the house. On each side of the piazza is a range of bedrooms, and the porticoes of the two fronts form two more rooms, with balustrades, and flights of steps descending to the lawn. The whole house is virandoed with shifting Venetian blinds to admit air; except that one of the end rooms has sash-windows on account of the rains, which, when they arrive, are so heavy, and shift with the wind so suddenly from the one side to the other, that all the blinds are obliged to be kept closed; consequently the whole house is in total darkness during their continuance, except the single sash-windowed room. There is nothing underneath except a few store-rooms and a kind of waiting-hall; but none of the domestic negroes sleep in the house, all going home at night to their respective cottages and families.
Cornwall House itself stands on a dead flat, and the works are built in its immediate neighbourhood, for the convenience of their being the more under the agent’s personal inspection (a point of material consequence with them all, but more particularly for the hospital). This dead flat is only ornamented with a few scattered bread-fruit and cotton trees, a grove of mangoes, and the branch of a small river, which turns the mill. Several of these buildings are ugly enough; but the shops of the cooper, carpenter and blacksmith, some of the trees in their vicinity, and the negro huts, embowered in shrubberies and groves of oranges, plantains, cocoas and pepper-trees, would be reckoned picturesque in the most ornamented grounds. A large spreading tamarind fronts me at this moment and overshadows the stables, which are formed of open wickerwork; and an orange tree, loaded with fruit, grows against the window at which I am writing.
On three sides of the landscape the prospect is bounded by lofty, purple mountains; and the variety of occupations going on all around me, and at the same time, give an inconceivable air of life and animation to the whole scene, especially as all those occupations look clean—even those which in England look dirty. All the tradespeople are dressed in jackets and trousers, either white or of red and sky-blue stripe. One band of negroes are carrying the ripe canes on their heads to the mill; another set are conveying away the “trash,” after the juice has been extracted; flocks of turkeys are sheltering from the heat under the trees; the river is filled with ducks and geese; the coopers and carpenters are employed about the puncheons; carts drawn some by six, others by eight, oxen, are bringing loads of Indian corn from the fields; the black children are employed in gathering it into the granary, and in quarrelling with pigs as black as themselves, who are equally busy in stealing the corn whenever the children are looking another way: in short, a plantation possesses all the movement and interest of a farm, without its dung and its stench and its dirty accompaniments.
The following inscriptions occur at Cornwall:
Here lieth the Body of Mrs. Jane Lewis Late wife of the Honourable William Lewis Esq. and elder daughter of Matthew Gregory Esq. who departed this life on the 19th day of February 1765. Aged 39 years and 10 months. She was married 22 years and 5 Days During which time She devoted herself entirely to her God and her Family. She lived the inimitable Pattern of Conjugal Affection and Goodness, of Filial Love and Duty, And of Maternal Care and Tenderness.
Oh Death Thou hast Shewn thy Sting Oh Death Thou hast Obtained thy Victory.
Also the Body of William Lewis who died the 27th of April 1774 Aged 53 years His Remains were brought from England according to His own request and Deposited in this Place near those of his Affectionate and beloved Wife.
For Beckford Town, now little more than a name, the land was given by Richard Beckford, one of the family of that name, which numbered in it some of Jamaica’s most wealthy planters.
Under date January 5, 1660–61, Pepys wrote: “The great Tom Fuller come to me to desire a kindness for a friend of his who hath a mind to go to Jamaica with these two ships that are going, which I promised to do.” The friend, Peter Beckford, quitted England in search of adventures, and settled in Jamaica, where he rose to considerable wealth as a planter. He did not, as Bridges suggests, fly from Cromwell’s tyranny, for the Restoration had taken place before he left England. In 1663 the name of Beckford appears amongst the planters of St.-Thomas-in-the-Vale. Colonel Peter Beckford, a son of the immigrant, was elected member of the Assembly under Lord Carlisle, who must have been—if we are to believe Nichols in his “Herald and Genealogist” and Burke in his “History of the Commoners”—a man of somewhat humble estate in spite of his high ancestry, for they tell us that Sir Thomas Beckford, sheriff of London, and Colonel Peter Beckford, governor of Jamaica, were brothers—both sons of a tailor of Maidenhead. Lord Braybrooke, in his notes to Pepy’s Diary, says that Sir Thomas and Colonel Peter were uncle and nephew, the former being a son of the tailor. Colonel Beckford was elected member for St. Catherine in the Assembly which met on April 26, 1675. He afterwards served in several Assemblies for the parishes of St. James, Clarendon and St. Dorothy. He was then called to the Council and became its president. On the death of the Governor, Major-General Selwyn, on April 5, 1702, when the Legislature was sitting, Colonel Beckford, who had a dormant commission of old date, caused himself to be proclaimed lieutenant-governor. In his speech to the Assembly he said, “I have gone through most of the offices of this Island, though with no great applause, yet without complaint.” The manner of his death has been already narrated in the account of St. Catherine. His personal wealth, which was said to have amounted to £478,000, and his real estate to as much more, gained for him great influence with the planters. This wealth was inherited by his son Peter, the speaker of the Assembly above mentioned. His second son, Thomas, married “en secondes noces” Mary Ballard (apparently a cousin) and had three sons; the eldest, Ballard Beckford, who married a daughter of John Clark, Governor of New York, was expelled from the House “during the continuance of this Assembly” in 1739, for adultery with the wife of another member, Manning, the member for Kingston. At his death his estate was in debt, and an Act was passed to enable certain properties to be sold. The second, Thomas, married a daughter of Robert Byndloss, the brother-in-law of Sir Henry Morgan, of buccaneering fame, and their daughter and sole heiress married firstly John Palmer, and secondly Edward Long, the historian. Thomas Beckford himself, who sat in the Assembly for St. Catherine, and was elected speaker in 1727 and 1728, died in 1731, “slain, it is believed, in an encounter with one Cargill,” probably Captain Richard Cargill, member for Vere.
[Illustration:
FORT WILLIAM—AQUEDUCT ]
Peter Beckford, the speaker, married Bathshua, daughter and co-heiress of Colonel Julines Herring, of Jamaica. He was elected member of Assembly for Port Royal in 1704, and in the next Assembly of 1705 was chosen for three parishes, St. James, Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth, but elected to sit for the last named. He continued to serve as a member in every Assembly of the island until his death—in the early part of the time generally for St. Elizabeth, in the later for St. Catherine. As member for the former parish he was five times chosen speaker—in 1707, 1708–9, 1711, 1713, 1716. At this time he applied to be deputy secretary of the island, under a deputation from William Congreve, but the Governor (Lord Archibald Hamilton) refused to accept him on the ground that he was “the chief actor in all the unhappy differences in the country.” He was comptroller of her Majesty’s customs. He died in 1735, aged 61. From the votes of the Assembly we learn that he bequeathed the sum of £1000 to the poor of the parish of St. Catherine. This sum was used in the formation of a school: it is now merged with the Smith bequest in the Beckford and Smith School at Spanish Town. In the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for December 1735 he is said to have left nearly £300,000. Besides mortgages and similar investments, he had no less than twenty-four plantations and twelve hundred slaves of his own in the island.
[Illustration:
PORT WILLIAM ESTATE ]
He had thirteen children. The eldest, Peter, was member of the Assembly for Westmoreland in 1728, while his father was sitting for St. Catherine, and his uncle for Port Royal. He died unmarried in 1737, aged 31. On his death his fortune went to his brother William, afterwards Lord Mayor of London, whose son was the celebrated William Beckford, of “Vathek” and Fonthill fame.
A younger brother of the Lord Mayor, Richard Beckford, who was M.P. for Bristol, had a natural son, William Beckford, who visited his father’s Jamaica estates. His mother was Elizabeth Hay. He married his cousin, Charlotte Hay, daughter of Thomas Hay, formerly Island Secretary of Jamaica; and he impaled with his father’s arms those of the Hays—on a field argent, three escutcheons gules: but in preference to the bend sinister, the usual mark of illegitimacy, he added the less-known badge, the fimbria or border. Richard Beckford by his will trusted to the justice of his brother Julines to convey—to trustees in trust for his reputed son William—Roaring River and such other estates in Jamaica as had come into Julines’ possession by virtue of an agreement between them, and accordingly he bequeathed these properties to his reputed son William, who, on his coming of age, executed a deed in 1765, which was registered at Spanish Town in 1766, a deed to bar the entail in favour of another, who, however, subsequently re-conveyed it to him. He is therein described as “of Balls, in the County of Hartford (_sic_), Esq.” In a later deed, recorded in 1773, he is described as late of Balls, but now of Summerley (_sic_) Hall.
One of his earliest works was “Remarks on the Situation of Negroes in Jamaica,” 1788; and he published in 1794 a “History of France from the most early records to the death of Louis XVI,” the early part of which is by Beckford, and the more modern by an anonymous Englishman who had been some time resident in Paris. But the work by which he is best known is “A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica; with remarks upon the cultivation of the Sugar-cane, throughout the different seasons of the year, and chiefly considered in a picturesque point of view; also observations and reflections upon what would probably be the consequences of an abolition of the slave-trade and of the emancipation of the Slaves,” published in two volumes in London in 1790. The title fully describes the contents. It is a work of no considerable merit, and displaying none of the genius which might have been expected of a near relative of the author of “Vathek.” From the dedication we learn that the author enjoyed the friendship of the Duke of Dorset, to whom it is addressed, and from the preface that the work was written in the Fleet prison—a strange residence for one who would claim kinship with the owner of Fonthill. His position was, he says, the consequence of “imprudences which I might have prevented, and of misfortunes which I could not foresee”—a subject which is constantly referred to throughout the book. Besides suffering from the great hurricane of 1780, he was evidently deceived by some friend for whom he had become security.
He intended to illustrate his work with engravings from “some particular views of the island that were taken on the spot” by George Robertson, but pecuniary reasons obliged him to desist. He devotes several pages to the praises of this artist’s work, comparing him—with an enthusiasm which does more credit to his kindness of heart than to his faculties as an art critic—to Claude Lorrain, Gaspard Poussin and Salvator Rosa, and he concludes: “It is a pity that more of his drawings are not engraved; of the numerous and interesting views he took in Jamaica, only six have met the public eye, although there are many that richly deserve to be removed from dust and oblivion. The names of Robertson and Earlom, to the same plate, could not fail to render them immortal.”
In 1778 John Boydell published a series of six engravings from paintings by George Robertson, by Thomas Vivares, James Mason and David Lerpiniere. They are all dedicated to William Beckford, Esq. They represent: (1) Part of the Rio Cobre, near Spanish Town; (ii) Roaring River Estate; (iii) Fort William Estate, with part of Roaring River belonging to William Beckford, Esq., near Savanna-la-Mar; (iv) Bridge crossing Cabarita River; (v) The Spring Head of Roaring River on the Estate of William Beckford, Esq.; (vi) The Bridge crossing the Rio Cobre, near Spanish Town.
Two of the original paintings are in the possession of Mrs. C. E. de Mercado, of Kingston.
As, with the exception of Hakewill and John Bartholomew Kidd, R.S.A., George Robertson is the only artist of any importance who has devoted his pencil to portraying the beauties of Jamaica, a few notes about him may prove of interest. The facts recorded about him by Redgrave are somewhat scanty. Born in London, he was the son of a wine merchant, and was brought up to that business. He studied in Shipley’s school, and in 1761 he gained a Society of Arts premium for his drawings of horses. This brought him to the notice of William Beckford, with whom he travelled in Italy, and studied, chiefly at Rome, during several years. He returned to London about 1770, and although Beckford tried to push his fortunes for him, he was not very successful, and he was induced to accompany his patron to Jamaica. He painted views in the island, and, returning to England, exhibited pictures of Jamaica scenes, twenty-six in all, with the Incorporated Society of Artists (of which body he was for some time vice-president) from 1775 to 1778. Most of them appeared as “A View in Jamaica.” The names given are =Roaring River=, =Fort William= and =Williamsfield=. These views were admired, and when engraved created some interest; but he received no better encouragement than before, and he had to have recourse to teaching and making drawings for the dealers, to support his wife and children, till a bequest from an uncle happily relieved him from anxiety. Never of robust health, a fall from a horse increased his infirmity. He died in 1788, before he reached his fortieth year. He occasionally painted subject pieces, aiming at the “grand style,” and his “St. Martin dividing his cloak” is in Vintners’ Hall, London. But his principal talents lay in the direction of landscape. “His compositions,” Redgrave says, “were too scenic, his trees, though spirited, were fanciful and exuberant in their forms, yet his works are by no means without merit.”
[Illustration:
ROARING RIVER ESTATE IN 1774
From an engraving by Thomas Vivares after a painting by George Robertson ]
William Beckford also employed in Jamaica the talents of Philip Wickstead, a portrait painter, a pupil of Zoffany, and distinguished by his small whole-length portraits, whose acquaintance he had made in Rome in 1773. He accompanied his patron to Jamaica, and practised his art for a considerable time in the island. He speculated as a planter, but was unsuccessful. Losses led to drink, and his life was thereby shortened. He died before 1790. Beckford said of him, his “powers of painting were considerably weakened by his natural indolence, and more than all, by a wonderful eccentricity of character. His colouring was almost equal to that of any artist of his time, and the freedom and execution of his pencil were particularly apparent in his representation of negroes of every character, expression and age.” Unfortunately many of Wickstead’s drawings perished in the hurricane of 1780.
In biographical dictionaries William Beckford is styled an historian, and, as we have seen, he wrote part of a History of France, but in his work on Jamaica he was content to reprint his historical facts from the “Jamaica Almanack” of the day, and apparently he did not know the year of the discovery of the island by Columbus, for he twice gives a wrong date, and his date for the Port Royal earthquake is also wrong. Much may be excused, however, in an historian who wrote in the Fleet prison.
One trait he had in common with his kinsman and namesake—a true love of nature and the picturesque. But his description of the natural beauties of the island is couched in the somewhat high-flown style of the eighteenth century.