Savage (22 page)

At the same time the Society was able to announce that, after a series of temporary and none too successful appointments, they had, on the recommendation of the incumbent of St Paul's, Whitechapel, employed a capable and religious captain to replace William Parker Snow and take command of the missionary schooner. Robert Fell had already left for the Falklands. This was the sort of good news the Society needed to boast about and, in early 1858, Despard felt ready to give them more. On 20 April he boarded the missionary ship, with catechists Turpin and Gardiner, and set a course for Wulaia Cove. It was time to reel in Jemmy Button.

*   *   *

A harsh wind cut across the
Allen Gardiner
's bow: winter was beginning to draw in. When they arrived at Wulaia Cove, on the night of 9 June, snow covered the decks and drifted into the sails and rigging; the moon lit the islands like ‘spectres rising out of the water…' Two canoes welcomed them and a Fuegian screeched, ‘Hillo! Hoy, hoy, hoy.' When Despard shouted down for Jemmy Button the man stood up and pointed across the water to Button Island.

Next day as the missionary walked around the cove, identifying the scene from sketches in FitzRoy's
Narratives,
five more canoes pulled in, one carrying Jemmy's eighteen-year-old daughter. Despard asked her if she would fetch her father, but he was not here, he understood her to say. ‘I gave them all a few things; but kept shewing them far better ones, and saying “Jemmy Button”. At last it had the desired effect, for the daughter started back for the island again, saying, “Jemmy Button.”'

Nothing more occurred that day, and Despard began to wonder whether he had understood the young woman or whether she had tricked him. The next morning broke with a glorious sun skimming off the frosty ground. At just after nine, four canoes paddled around the northern tip of Button Island. As they approached a man shouted. The people in the canoes on the cove looked across at Despard: it was Jemmy Button, they said.

The Fuegian climbed on board the
Allen Gardiner
and was given clothes, a box of carpenter's tools sent by Benjamin Bynoe, and coffee, bread and butter in the captain's cabin. His daughter, Jemmy explained, had been rowing for a long time to find him and they had set off early this morning to be here. He asked Despard if he would like to see the locations of the old wigwams built by FitzRoy and the crew of the
Beagle.

The missionary expressed great enthusiasm and climbed down with Jemmy into one of the native canoes. Together they strolled the shoreline. ‘Here his canvas houses were placed,' Despard later wrote. ‘There he made a garden, and its earth fence and surrounding trench still remained. Across the brook, in a nook of the thicket, was the missionary's wigwam; here, near by, was Jem's; there, York's…' As they walked, the Fuegians built their own wigwams for the night and Jemmy pulled out an old axe that he said FitzRoy had given him; it was worn to a sliver. He, too, began to build a small hut: ‘Tomorrow make very big wigwam,' he promised, as if the occasion demanded that he impress his visitor.

In June the days pass quickly in Tierra del Fuego, and the sun sets shortly after three. As light leaked away, Despard asked to be returned to the ship and Jemmy called to his children, who were sitting out to sea in his canoe, ‘Come way, wigwam-sleep.' They paddled ashore, unloaded their baskets of mussels and limpets and carried them to their home. Jemmy's wife took over the canoe and rowed it to a promontory, where Despard and the others boarded without getting wet. She then delivered them all back to the
Allen Gardiner,
manoeuvring the craft skilfully through a flotilla of canoes that clogged the cove's entrance.

As Despard sat in the boat he could feel pleased at having made contact with FitzRoy's Fuegian, but there was one frustration. Having established friendly relations he had asked Jemmy to go back with him to Cranmer – he could bring his family, he could bring his canoe, he could leave whenever he wanted. The missionary cajoled, bribed, spoke of Jemmy's duty to God, calling on old ‘obligations', but he got nowhere. He decided to set Turpin and Gardiner to work on him.

*   *   *

Not long after breakfast on 24 June 1858, a shout echoed through Mission House and across the Cranmer settlement: ‘The
Allen Gardiner,
the
Allen Gardiner
is coming in.' Mrs Despard, her children, Ellis and the Bartletts ran down to Committee Bay and waved the ship in. Very soon the news reached them that it carried five Fuegians and a shout of joy rippled through the welcoming party.

‘Rejoice with me, and again, I say, rejoice,' Mrs Despard wrote in a letter. ‘For the Lord hath seen fit to give an answer to the daily prayers addressed to Him, the Sovereign Disposer of all hearts, that He would be pleased to put it into the mind of some of those poor benighted Fuegians, to trust themselves to our hands, and come over to us here…'

Jemmy had agreed to come. After eight days of browbeating and gentle encouragement from Turpin and Gardiner Jemmy had said he would confer with his people, and finally he had succumbed once more to British pressure. With him he brought his stout elder wife Lassaweea, whom the mission party would call Jamesina, his inquisitive twelve-year-old son Wammestriggins (henceforth known as Threeboys), his daughter Passawullacuds, a lively eight-year-old now designated Fuegia, and the fifteen-month-old baby Annasplonis, who quickly became Anthony Button.

There was general delight, both on ship and on shore, but as yet no place had been prepared for long-term visitors. In the two years that Despard had been in the Falklands the settlement had grown into something more deserving of the title. A new central meeting-house, the Cenobium, had been built, the Bartletts had constructed their own home, and sixteen months after arriving in Port Stanley Mrs Despard and children had moved into Sulivan House. Jemmy had agreed to come for ‘five moons' and was kept on the
Allen Gardiner
while the settlement's brick store was converted into a residence. It would be a small home, barely ten foot square, and its location near the sea would help the Buttons feel at home and grant them easy access to plentiful supplies of mussels, limpets and fish. It had a well-boarded floor, a watertight roof and a calico window. A bed was brought in, with a pile of clean blankets, and a fireplace and chimney were built. The family would be warm and able to cook.

As they waited to disembark, Despard engaged the Buttons in conversation, instructing his two catechists to listen out for, and make lists of, Fuegian words. He found Jemmy's English comprehensible, though lacking in vocabulary, and long sentences were nearly impossible. Still, his memory was good: he talked of meeting King William and could name most of the important characters from his days on the
Beagle,
including FitzRoy, Bennet, Bynoe and Sulivan, and said of his first trip to England, ‘He look much Monte Video – Boat Memory die – he not cry, York cry much.'

Two days after the ship pulled into Committee Bay, the house was ready and the Buttons were taken ashore. Despard remembered that Jemmy's ‘appearance in sou'-wester, red comforter, p-jacket and heavy boots, was that very much of the skipper of a Dutch lugger; and his wife, in colour, features, and dress, looked like a middle-aged gypsy woman…'. Mrs Despard had a more vivid recollection:

Yesterday, when Mrs Button came on shore, I walked down to receive her; she appeared pleased to see me, and smiled kindly when I patted her on the shoulder, and noticed her children; she repeated all my words, but of course without understanding their meaning; she had on the clothes I gave Mr Turpin to take to her, while on board and before she landed, and the overcoat that fitted her best was one, among many others, sent me by kind Miss Harvey, from York. Jemmy is sometimes very funny in his manner of expressing himself. When Mr Despard introduced me to him, he bowed in a most orthodox manner, at the same time pulling off his cap, a red flannel one, given him by Mr Gardiner, and much admired by its present owner. He said, pointing to me, ‘Dat your wife? vary good gal; vary fine gal.' The same expressions of admiration were bestowed on the children; he seemed quite astonished to see such a party, and so did his wife! I sent for little baby Bartlett, to show her to the squaw, who looked at and viewed the dear little thing, with eyes which did manage to express some wonderment at the sight of Annie's rosy cheeks and fair skin!

The Buttons were introduced to the whole mission party and taken to what was to be their home for the next five months.

Accounts of the Fuegians' stay on Keppel Island are slender. The only real source of information on the Button family's months there are the reports, journals and letters sent home to the Patagonian Missionary Society and reprinted in the
Voice of Pity.

William Parker Snow was to complain that this publication was little more than a publicity sheet, with the Reverend Despard as its arch-propagandist. Communications from abroad, he alleged, were rewritten, successes emphasised and problems omitted. In fairness, it was unlikely that the Society would admit in its journal to any difficulties or setback and the arrival of Jemmy at Cranmer was a huge boost to its credibility, an indication that its intents were serious and achievable. In its reports on the Buttons' progress the
Voice of Pity
placed particular emphasis on those stories that its publishers knew would impress the readers at home. There was a focus on Button's manners: the number of times he said please and thank you, how he wiped his boots before entering a house, the way he passed a knife, handle first.

The delivery of Jemmy Button to Keppel Island was a feather in Despard's cap. It heightened the morale of the mission in the Falklands and raised his stock with a British public desperate for news of progress. Even with Despard's reinvigorated mission it had been over two years since the
Hydaspes
had left British shores. With the prospect of William Parker Snow's potentially damaging court case due any day, the success with Jemmy must have seemed long overdue to the committee of the Patagonian Missionary Society. Now that the Fuegian family was actually at Cranmer, work had to begin in earnest. Language was a priority, and while it was important that Jemmy's English improved, Despard was desperate to learn as much Yamana as possible. At the same time it was crucial that Jemmy was reinculcated with Christian values and reintroduced to the rituals and beliefs of the Church of England. Finally Despard held high hopes of using him as a conduit for the future success of their project.

Whenever possible Despard or Turpin talked with Jemmy (Allen Gardiner had gone back to England shortly after the Button family arrived). They found him a sensitive, always courteous man, affectionate but rather slow of comprehension. Conversations would often be about the Bible and Creation. ‘Jemmy Button came to visit me in the storehouse,' the missionary wrote on 16 July.

– Who made sun Jem?

– God.

– Moon?

– God.

– World?

– God.

– You?

– English God.

– God?

– God.

When asked what happened after death, Jemmy replied, ‘Good man go to Ever, bad men to the ground.' He could name the days of the week and recalled his time in Walthamstow: in the village, he said, there had been a ‘great church-house, two churchmen, one white gown, one black…' and music from an ‘organ; much noise'. One day the missionary tried without success to teach him to read. Instead they fell into conversation about his former colleagues: ‘York go home to his country – his brother come and cheek away very much – say, where my son? [Boat Memory] York say, your son dead. Brother say, very sarry.' If it was true, then this was the first, and only, suggestion that York and Boat had been uncle and nephew. He recalled many other things: on seeing a portrait of Queen Victoria he said he had met the King's wife. He spoke of conversations with the Reverend Wilson about dying, and when Despard pushed him, he added, ‘Yes, me die in my country; you die in England; your wife die in England. Me old, die; you old, die. Me got benty children, all same as you; bye and bye die … Me go to heaven; no eat there, no drink, no sleep, but sing; Ellis (English) sing.' Despard pressed Jemmy about cannibalism too, but the Fuegian used this as an opportunity to attack York Minster's people who, he said, decapitated the marooned crews of shipwrecks. York's land was, he said, ‘Man eat country; eat head; eat arm; eat foot; eat all. Cut throat and eat.'

From the start the Buttons attended the daily religious services at four o'clock in the afternoon, Jemmy trying to keep up with hymns by moving his lips to the words, and gradually progressing to the point where he was confident enough to give short talks at the ceremonies. One Sunday he missed a service because he said his son had eaten too much. He was cautioned by Despard, who reminded him that Christ had suffered on the cross for the sinners. ‘Yes, sir, I know Son of God came down to die,' replied the Fuegian.

Jemmy, it seems, settled quickly into his old, well-mannered self. The missionary's reports on him were full of knowing winks to Victorian etiquette, the benchmark against which were measured the possibilities that the Fuegians represented. When offered cake Jemmy took the smallest piece on the plate; he never wanted to eat too much, for fear of being thought greedy, but liked a second cup of tea. He always knocked on doors before entering, held gates open for the missionary, and touched his forelock when addressing Mr or Mrs Despard saying, ‘Yes, sar' or ‘Yes, mam'.

He appears to have been as conceited as ever too. He washed every day and insisted that his wife washed the children. He brushed his clothes incessantly, and washed his red cap so often that its black border turned brown and it shrank beyond a point where it would fit on his head. One Saturday afternoon while he watched the governess, Louise Hanlon, making a pudding, a sprinkling of flour spilled onto his jacket. He was mortified and, having vigorously brushed it off, departed the kitchen immediately in case the accident recurred.