Caribbean (93 page)

On the last day of October 1865, Governor Eyre, a humane man at heart and unaware of the terrible havoc Hobbs and Ramsay had been creating, ended martial law except for those already under arrest, and what was more important, granted a general amnesty. Then, to demonstrate what a perceptive political leader he was, on 8 November he persuaded the inept Legislative Assembly, which had proved itself powerless to halt the rebellion, to abolish itself, thus terminating self-rule in Jamaica and reinstituting it as a Crown Colony to be governed by edict from London.

This move was enthusiastically approved throughout the island. Laudatory editorials appeared in the press extolling both his heroism and sagacity, and testimonials were offered by the score. As the year
ended with Jamaica under rule by the crown, the killings were forgotten and an honorable peace settled over the island, so that Eyre could reasonably claim, as he did, that his bold and forthright action, his prompt termination of military rule, and his attention to the welfare of all classes in Jamaica had brought the island a tranquillity it had not known for years. With the troublemaker Gordon disposed of, he could, with confidence, look forward to a rule of twenty more productive years, secure in the love of his people, who regarded him as a true hero. But even as he voiced this hope when alone, for he thought of himself as a modest man, a storm was brewing in Great Britain which would toss him about in its violent eddies, making him for three years one of the most noted men in the realm.

It was remarkable that grisly events in a remote corner of an island in the Caribbean should have disrupted the headquarters of empire, but Jamaica was no ordinary colony. For two centuries it had been a source not only of sugar fortunes but also of political power. Selfish laws bulled through by its members of Parliament had been a prime cause of the American Revolution, so that what happened on its great plantations had always been a matter of concern in London.

Now the most ugly rumors were flashing through Great Britain. “Nigger uprising in the colonies!” screamed some, while others muttered: “An English governor has been behaving as if it were 1766 on some savage island!” And before the year was out, the battle lines in Britain had formed dramatically. In sturdy, unwavering support of Eyre were five of the nation’s greatest writers: Thomas Carlyle, the moralist who scorned niggers; John Ruskin, the popular aesthete; Charles Dickens, read by everyone; Charles Kingsley, who preached “manly Christianity” and wrote enormously popular novels; and above all, Alfred Tennyson, the wildly acclaimed poet laureate. These five formed a kind of patriotic-sentimental battalion around Eyre’s heroic name, winning the publicity battles and defending to the bitter end Eyre’s right to shoot down niggers if for any reason they took arms against whites. They had been terrified by the implications of the Indian Mutiny and deemed Eyre’s actions to prevent a recurrence in Jamaica not only proper but also rather restrained. They saw him not as a chance hero but as a protector of the white race against a possibly resurgent black, and it was intolerable to them to hear others
charge that he had been imprudent in declaring martial law or administering it. All five of these great authors agreed that the blacks had got only what they deserved.

But there was another group of British leaders, more sober and less sentimental, who deplored Eyre’s behavior on a distant island far from the scrutiny of Parliament, and again some of the greatest names rallied to this version of the cause: Charles Darwin, the geneticist; Herbert Spencer, the moral philosopher; Thomas Huxley, the scientist; John Bright, the powerful Quaker reformer; and again above all, John Stuart Mill, perhaps the wisest and most brilliant man in the world at that time. These men, always brooding about the problems of right and wrong, believed that for Great Britain to condone Governor Eyre’s frenzied behavior in the remote parish of St. Thomas-in-the-East was to imperil the security of the empire, and they were determined that he be brought before the bar of justice to give an account of himself. They interpreted his cruelty against blacks as a frightening throwback to the days of slavery, a last-gasp attempt of wealthy landowners to protect their interests, and an affront to all decent Christians and lovers of liberty.

Neither side was noted for restraint or its willingness to accept compromise.

The field was set for a fierce battle between two groups of men who evaluated the future in drastically different ways. The writers wanted to recapture the glories of the past or at least hold on to what remnants still existed throughout the empire; the scientists hoped to get on with building a new and better world. The writers put loyalty to the crown above everything; the scientists, loyalty to reason and inevitable development. The writers were committed to the defense of the white man in his benevolent rule over others; the scientists, to that fraternity of peoples which alone, they believed, could build the future. And in a curious way, each group was ardently loyal to the concept of British Empire, the writers holding that it could be preserved only by the bold actions of governors like Eyre, the scientists arguing that a few more governors like him would destroy any chance of keeping it together.

It was an honorable debate focused on the dishonorable behavior of men like Hobbs and Ramsay, a gigantic intellectual and moral confrontation centered upon a relatively minor historical figure like Eyre. Eventually it involved newspapers, orations in Parliament, the
bold intercession of Britain’s greatest jurists, and even the columns of
Punch
, which chimed in early with clever rhymes proving that they, like most of the establishment, were solidly behind Eyre:

People in all corners of the British Isles found themselves either supporting Eyre or condemning him, but there was also another topic of singular importance agitating the public. Britain in these years was struggling to pass a Reform Bill which would, at long last, award the smaller cities their proper share of the vote, which meant taking parliamentary seats from Conservative rural areas and turning them over to Liberal urban ones. Leaders of the anti-Eyre group, Mill and Bright in particular, were vigorous advocates of this reform, while pro-Eyre men were against it. However, attention at the moment focused not on Parliament but on what had happened in St. Thomasin-the-East, and as in the 1760s when Jamaican planters dominated British politics, the descendants of those men now played an important role in British history.

On a sunny day in early 1866, a ruddy-faced Oliver Croome left the mansion in London’s Cavendish Square which his sugar-rich ancestors had erected when they bought their seats in Parliament, and he was astonished to see coming from the Pembroke mansion on the opposite side of the square his cousin, the bearded, able Jason. Rushing over to him, Oliver cried with delight: “Jason! What brings you here?” and under the trees the two men who had worked so long and so well together revealed the surprising developments that had brought them by different paths to London.

Oliver spoke first: “When the committee of the world’s best writers was put together to defend Governor Eyre against his enemies, and they’re a nasty lot, the members asked him: ‘Who can we bring
up from Jamaica to counter the lies the others are telling?’ and Eyre said I knew the facts better than most, and here I am, all expenses paid, though I’d have been proud to come on me own … to save the man’s reputation.”

Jason bowed his head, looked at his knuckles, and said quietly: “Sorry to tell you, Oliver, but the men who’re determined to drag Eyre into court asked me to come help them. Miserable business.”

To hide his shock, Oliver asked: “Didja bring your wife with you from Jamaica?”

“No, Beth said she’d heard enough of Eyre and his problems.”

“Nell didn’t want to come for the same reason,” and Jason consoled his fellow bachelor: “We won’t be here long.”

Oliver generously proposed that his cousin stay with him: “Save time and trouble.” But Jason had a good excuse for not accepting: “Mill has cramped rooms and likes to hold the meetings of our committee in my quarters. There is ample space,” and the two parted, vowing not to let the Eyre business affect their personal relationship. Croome, from his side of the square, watched as the moral giants opposed to Eyre assembled in the Pembroke mansion, and thought: What an ugly group of self-righteous men, not a smile in the lot.

In any group of which John Stuart Mill was a member, he was the automatic chairman to whom others deferred, an icy intellect, a man carved from marble. On this day he was tardy, and in his absence John Bright sat with Jason between the two mammoth statues which had graced this room since the 1760s:
Venus Resisting the Advances of Mars
and
Victory Rewarding Heroism
. At first Bright sat facing the
Venus
, but her voluptuous curves so disturbed his Quaker austerity that he said: “Better, I think, if I exchange chairs with thee, Jason,” but now he faced a blatant glorification of heroism, and this too he found intolerable: “Reminds one of Carlyle’s nonsense, heroes and all that. Let us sit over here,” and having found escape from the oppressive statues, he asked: “I suppose thee knows, Pembroke, that our Mill is a prodigious man?”

“I’ve seen he commands attention.”

“But has thee heard of his schooling?” When Jason shook his head, Bright said with obvious enthusiasm and envy: “Never was he allowed to attend a day of school or university.”

“Why not?”

“His father, an extraordinary man of forceful character, considered the boy too promising to be directed by ordinary teaching. ‘I
will educate him,’ he said, and at three John had mastered Greek. At six he had read most of the easy works of the Greek authors like Herodotus and Xenophon and had launched into Plato. At eight he began his study of Latin and mastered Euclid. At eleven he started writing his own history of Rome, an excellent, mature work which he completed at twelve. From there on, it was the solid filling in of empty spots, all known knowledge of humankind, especially mathematics, science, French, German, everything.”

“And it didn’t turn him sour?”

“The contrary. His father wouldn’t allow that. Took him on holiday journeys, gave him joyous books to read, introduced him to men of substance, anything to forge him into a man of learning and judgment. In my efforts for others, I’ve known many of the fine men of this world, and the best rate four to his ten. I myself rate three.”

“What impressed me,” Jason said, “was that when he learned I was from Jamaica, he hurried forward, sat me down beside him, and said, staring at me: ‘What we desperately need is the truth. They tell me you were there, in all parts. What happened? Not what you heard, only what you saw.’ ”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said that the official report said that four hundred and thirty-nine people had been murdered, six hundred had been whipped, and a thousand homes had been burnt. He asked: ‘But what really happened?’ and I said: ‘I saw at least six hundred dead, many killed in far corners by Maroons, bodies that could never be counted. I myself saw more than three hundred whipped, about half of them women. And since I passed at least a thousand destroyed houses, the real number must be twice that.’ ”

“And what did he say?”

“He put his hands to his head for some moments, then looked at me and said in that grave voice: ‘Terrible carnage. Terrible wrong.’ ”

Now Mill came into the room like a cold, clear moon rising suddenly in autumn. Seeing Bright, he hastened to him: “Good friend, we’ve taken one step forward in the Eyre matter. We’ve forced the courts to issue warrants of murder against two of the officers who conducted those infamous courts-martial.” This brought cheers from the others, except Bright, who pointed out the nagging fact: “But Eyre himself still escapes us, does he not?”

“He does,” Mill said with distaste. “Fled to Market Drayton, a rural town northwest of Birmingham, where the London courts can’t
reach.” Then he added, with obvious determination: “But we shall smoke him out. Governor Eyre will pay for his crimes, for we shall never rest.”

Cries of
Hear! Hear!
greeted this reaffirmation of war, and Jason thought: How much he sounds like Eyre hounding Gordon. But then Mill began to speak in a more gentle voice, and for the first time Pembroke had a chance to hear this sixty-year-old oracle expound the wisdom for which he was famous. Totally bald and clean-shaven except for sideburns that framed his chiseled Roman face, he spoke deliberately as if calculating the precise weight of each word: “I have been much impressed by the reflections of a German scientist versed in the workings of the human mind, and he has led me to speculate on the error which trapped Eyre into persecuting Gordon, ignoring law and propriety and the tenets of military justice. The professor coined a new word for this affliction,
monomania
, built of two fine Greek words:
mono
, meaning
alone
or
one
, and
mania
, which of course is madness. Eyre is a classic example of the aberration. He was driven by one compulsion: vengeance on Gordon, and when we prove that in court, he … is … doomed.”

“Can we lure him out of Market Drayton?” Bright asked, and Mill said: “If not, we shall carry our fight to him there, in his courtyard,” to which Bright, a veteran brawler in the rugged alleyways of public opinion, warned: “The rustic justices of Market Drayton will not be much concerned about what happened in Jamaica, but they’ll be most concerned about our hectoring a decent man who was trying only to do his duty.”

In some perplexity Jason listened as these bulldogs of justice ended the meeting. He, like Mill, was determined to see Eyre chastised publicly lest this man of flawed character become a national hero, but he wanted to go only so far. He was willing to throw words at the man but not legal sanctions, and this confusion led him to reflect: When Oliver and I came to London, it was for five or six months at most. The other day I heard a lawyer say that if a trial is held, it might take three years. I must have Beth by my side.”