The Sugar Islands (36 page)

Perhaps the legend grew because there was so little other scope for legend. The people is happy that has no history, and St. Thomas has been a happy island. While the others—St. Lucia, Grenada, Haiti, Martinique—were the scenes of war and massacre, St. Thomas followed its pacific way, sheltering, succouring, and gathering the fruits of its immunity; becoming, as soon as the brief Napoleonic interregnum, when the Union Jack flew from Christian's Fort, was over, once again an open port and the exchange centre of Caribbean trade. Only by slow stages did it lose that fortunate position, as the other islands—in particular
Puerto Rico—came gradually to realize that through the power of steam-driven vessels it was not only possible but profitable to deal direct with Europe; one by one the main steamship lines began to move their headquarters—the R.M.S.P. to Barbados, the C.G.T. to Martinique. In time, so far as Denmark was concerned, an asset became a liability. But the slump came slowly. For Thomasians themselves there was always a modicum of prosperity.

Charlotte Amalie is St. Thomas. A fact which might sound a condemnation. It is a safe rule in the tropics to get out of town as soon as possible. In essence no matter how superficially dissimilar, tropical cities are the same—hot and noisy, with honking car-horns, the air stale and fetid, juke-boxes playing, a restless vibration in the atmosphere; you feel that something is going to happen, but it never does; your head aches, you sleep too little and you drink too much. A much-travelled friend wrote to me from New York, ‘St. Thomas doesn't sound like the ideal place for you to re-establish your communication and respect for islands. From all I've heard, St. Croix will be more like it. I've always imagined that St. Thomas would have a pathetic honkeytonk atmosphere about it, which is bearable when it's a place like Marseilles or Christobal that has a waterfront culture to go with it all, but I prefer my islands straight and hot, without blues notes. . . .'

And she was right: dead right, or rather she would have been right nine times in ten. St. Thomas is an exception. What Juan-les-Pins is to the Riviera, Charlotte Amalie is to the Caribbean. It has admittedly a restless, gaudy, night-club atmosphere; and it has, in addition, the exacerbation of its divorce mill. Not so many people come down ‘to take the cure' as is generally supposed, four hundred a year is a rough average. But each of those appeals involves a six weeks' visit. Each appeal involves a personal problem. Each applicant is in her own particular way worried, lonely, at a loose end, uncertain of her immediate future; not sure, now that it has come to the final point, whether she has done the wise thing, after all. The presence of those four hundred plaintiffs is a highly flavoured ingredient in the general atmosphere. Yes, Charlotte Amalie is a restless place, just as Juan is, but it has also, just as Juan has, an air of elegance.

John Vandercook in
Caribbee Cruise
, the outcome of a trip in the late ‘thirties, described the shops in Charlotte Amalie as being ‘more useful than alluring'. That would not be true today. The
old wharves running down from the main street to the sea, that mouldered and crumbled during the depression, have been converted into art galleries and stores by experts in the art of showmanship. Most shops have bars attached to them. You sit at Elverhoj's over a cool Rum Collins and look down a large, high-arched, stone-built warehouse supported by red pillars, its walls painted light pink and green. At the far end of the room there is a constant movement of bright fabrics, wide-sashed belts, wide-swinging skirts, blouses low-cut over sun-tanned shoulders. I can think of no more acute inducement to extravagance.

Everywhere in Charlotte Amalie the eye is caressed and charmed. Built as it is over and between three rounded hills that run as spurs into a harbour studded with islands, it is the ideal setting for a town. From the veranda of every villa you get a new and charming view. Years ago Sir Frederick Treves described it as the most picturesque town in the whole sweep of the Windward Islands, and that was before modern skill had developed its possibilities; before the two forts, Blackbeard's and Bluebeard's Castles, had been made hotels; before Ira Smith had converted a ruined street of steps into a guest-house studio and bar.

This, indeed, is how I should sum it up. It is a question of the mood you are in. St. Croix, St. Thomas, St. John, they have each something very special to give you, provided you are in the right mood for it.

They say that the British colonies are more British than Britain is. In a way they are. An American would learn as much about England by dividing three months between Grenada, Barbados, and St. Lucia as he would by spending a year in London. He would see a microcosm of English society. He would observe its formalities, the dressing in the evening, the punctuality, the parade atmosphere of dinner. The leaving of cards with the left hand top corner of the pasteboard turned over has now been in the main abandoned, as it has in London. But in Siam in 1926 I should have committed a grave solecism if I had not hired a car and driven out four miles into the bush, at quite considerable cost when I was short of money, to leave a card upon my host of the previous evening whom I knew I should be seeing at the club three hours later.

That is over now. But there remains the concentration upon
clubs, the ritual of Government House, the signing of the book on arrival and departure, the signing of it after you have been entertained there. ‘The sun never sets on Government House.' So ran Noel Coward's satire, and though in a large island like Jamaica or Ceylon a foreign visitor might not be aware of the extent to which the social life of the colony takes its tone and colour from the personality of the King's representative, in Grenada or St. Lucia he could not fail to realize how every activity is concentrated upon Government House, how integrated is the social life and how he himself must, if he is to have any fun at all, become a part of it. English colonial life is a direct corollary to the old pattern of feudal life, with the various concentric circles radiating outward from the court to the far circumference of the artisan and peasant.

In the U.S. Virgin Islands there is no such concentration. It may be that it is an impertinence for an Englishman to dogmatize about a country that he can necessarily only know at second-hand, but, just as I learnt a lot about France from a two months' stay in Martinique—the extreme conventionality of French family life, the almost purdah-like imprisonment of its womenfolk, coupled with the freedom of its menfolk to mix without embarrassment with the native population—so by spending five weeks in the Virgin Islands I feel that I am now better able to understand certain aspects of American life and history.

The Continentals, as I see it, came to the Virgin Islands in the same spirit that their ancestors came to the United States. The nineteenth-century emigrants escaping from conditions that had grown irksome, in search of a new and fuller way of life, arriving as strangers, looked about them for friends who would think as they did, with whom they could share their tastes, their interests, their ambitions; with whom they could form a group, self-contained and self-sufficient, whose strength and preservation would depend upon the existence of other groups whose rights would be maintained by a central authority acknowledging not only the privileges but the obligations of each separate group. The direction of the individual emigrant, that is to say, was a search first for the group, then through the group towards a central authority. While English life based on its feudal system represents a growth outwards from a centre, American life represents a growth inwards towards a centre. I think history would
show that this principle was at work in the whole ‘manifest destiny' operation of the nineteenth century, and I think it is in operation in the boom that has struck the Virgin Islands in the last few years.

There is no centralized social life here in the sense that there is in a British island. There is instead a succession of different groups. Tourists to St. Thomas and St. Croix need not arrive with letters of introduction to enjoy themselves. They do not feel out of things if they do not belong to clubs. In the strict sense of the word, there are no clubs; though The Constant at St. Thomas tries through its Thursday buffet suppers and Sunday beach parties to provide for resident Continentals a common meeting ground for one another, a recent anti-discrimination law has practically, though, I suspect, unconstitutionally, made the forming of a private club illegal. The tourist who has letters of introduction will have a better time, but there is no need for him to have them. The majority of hotels are run on the American plan; it is a system that has some disadvantages, but it has the advantage of making each hotel a kind of club, and indeed each hotel in St. Thomas has its own particular
cachet
, its own clientele, so that it is wise for the tourist to find out in advance the hotel that suits his tastes.

Nor will the tourist feel out of things if he is not invited to parties at G.H. G.H. is not in any sense a social centre. I was surprised to find when I went to sign the book there that a column headed remarks was filled with testimonials like ‘Had a wonderful time', ‘Everything splendid', ‘Hope to come again', as though His Excellency was less the President's representative than a public-spirited
hôtelier.

In another respect, too, I found a considerable difference between the American and the British islands—in respect of the colour problem. As the United States have a domestic colour problem whereas Britain has not, I had expected that I should find this issue more acute in St. Thomas than in St. Lucia. I found the contrary.

On my last evening but one, Jeanne Perkins Harman gave a party for me. It was an unusual party, as any party that she gave would be. Young, handsome, Amazonian, she had gone down to the Islands a year before as a
Time-Life
reporter to write up the
Divorce Mill. Within a few hours of her arrival a proportionately outsize Lieutenant-Commander in the U.S. Navy fell in love with her. He pursued her across four islands, and on the twenty-fifth day of their acquaintance persuaded her to marry him. He retired from the Navy, she resigned from
Time
, and they acquired a yacht-type launch that they christened the
Love Junk
and anchored on the edge of French Town, beside a glass-bottomed boat in which he takes tourists round the harbour at two dollars a trip. Rarely can a more expansive and extensive couple have set up their
ménage
within narrower confines.

One would not expect an ordinary cocktail party from the Harmans, and I did not get it. It was staged in the grounds of a partially disused hotel. It began at half past seven. The large courtyard was dimly lit with torches. A couple of largish tables were covered with small dishes. It was not light enough to see what you were eating; it was mainly shellfish, excellent and nourishing. The Commander moved among his thirty guests, carrying a pitcher of rum punch. It was powerful and fragrant, and cold enough to kill its sweetness. On a terrace behind the courtyard a vast cauldron was steaming above an open fire, against which long-skirted natives with broad-brimmed floppy hats moved in silhouette like the witches in
Macbeth
. The cauldron contained a thick fish soup. It was not in the least like
bouillabaisse;
it had no saffron and no garlic and it was more substantial, but was in its own way as pungent. We sat down when it was ready. Three tables were laid and there was no fixed seating. The soup was followed by a dessert and cheese. Liqueurs accompanied the coffee.

Before the war, the Wine and Food Society issued in its quarterly journal a record of memorable meals. This party was certainly my most memorable meal in the Virgin Islands. But it was not so much the actual food, the rum punch, and the setting that made it memorable, as the guests themselves. Half of them were of African descent.

I am very sure that such a party could not have taken place in a British island, except at Government House. G.H. does not recognize racial distinctions, but socially, at informal parties, a Governor has to respect the prejudices of his guests. The Administrator of an island once said to me when I was the guest of a planter, ‘I'm afraid that I can't ask you to meet the most
interesting people in the island, because they are coloured. I can't ask you without asking the—‘s too, and except on official occasions I can only invite members of the club to meet them.'

‘I see,' I said. ‘But suppose I was staying in the hotel and got to know the local politicians, would the plantocracy want to meet me?'

‘No,' he said, ‘they wouldn't.'

It is a vicious circle. I remember a tennis party at G.H. on one of the smaller islands, at which the Administrator was at pains to arrange his doubles with partnerships of Africans and Europeans. As soon as each set was over, the partners regrouped themselves according to their colour. Late in the afternoon a heavy thunderstorm broke over the court and we scampered for shelter to the veranda. As a recently arrived visitor, it was easy for me to find in this change of plan an opportunity to gather round me over cocktails a mixed group of the younger people. We were some eight of us and had a pleasantly animated talk, the Europeans and Africans mixing naturally. When the party had broken up I asked the Administrator if he thought that those young people who had seemed so friendly together were likely to meet again. ‘Not till they come here next. Their parents will see to that,' he said.

‘The parents on both sides?' I asked.

‘The parents on both sides,' he answered.
¹

Even when they meet at official parties, the Whites and the Africans try to keep apart; they are reserved and cautious, unnatural with each other. It was only because a thunderstorm had broken the pattern of that particular party, because the guests were young, and because I as a stranger had acted as a catalyst, that that easy talk took place.

And that is why the Harmans' party was for me so memorable. Though there was no fixed seating and no stage-management beyond general introductions on the part of the host and hostess, the guests of European and African descent mixed easily, grouping themselves at tables irrespective of colour. The conversation was spontaneous and general.