Caribbean (58 page)

After the vote was tallied, Sir Hugh left the Houses of Parliament with Roger, rode home to their square, and bade him goodnight:
“There’s not another father and son who have done as much for England this day as you and I.” He then repaired to that little private room which not many were allowed to enter, and chuckled as he surveyed the walls. The paintings had been done by the English artist William Hogarth, whose popularity was rising after his sardonic series
A Harlot’s Progress
had been engraved and widely sold.

Sir Hugh was amused as he affectionately studied the paintings: Good God! To think I paid him to do them! Even suggested the subjects … that is, the Jamaica part.

The set of paintings, which was already receiving attention from the engraver, was entitled:
The Sugar Planter, at Home and Abroad
. The central figure, a planter whom everyone in Parliament would have to recognize as Pentheny Croome, was shown in Jamaica in the first three scenes: a brute whipping a slave, a miser hoarding his gains, a father surrounded by his black concubines and their four mulattoes. In the three London scenes Croome was dressed in lavish city finery: entertaining in a huge mansion, manipulating a vote in Parliament, nodding approvingly as lines of impoverished housewives paid exorbitant prices for his sugar. It was Hogarth at his most savage, and Sir Hugh trembled to think of how his friend Pentheny might react.

No need to worry. When the engravings appeared in the shops in late 1733, Pentheny Croome proudly buttonholed his fellow members of Parliament: “I say, old chap! D’ja happen to see them engravings by this fellow Hogarth? That’s me in the pictures.” He became the rage of London, with everyone wanting to meet him: “Tell us, Croome? You really have four pickaninny bastards in the islands?” And many, awakened by the engravings to the fact that Pentheny Croome was very rich, clustered about in hopes of catching a share of that wealth. At the height of his notoriety he gave a thousand pounds to a school for poor boys and a subscription of five hundred to a hospital in a poor section of London. He appeared in full and majestic dress at a concert by two Italian singers, man and woman, and helped open three country fairs.

He also purchased six sets of Hogarth’s engravings for his friends in the islands, but when he returned to Jamaica he found that his brother Marcus with his two small ships was engaged in a most nefarious business. Loading the
Carthaginian
at Kingston with the maximum number of choice empty Jamaican barrels intended for the shipping of island molasses to Boston, Marcus had forged his papers to show that the barrels had been filled with Jamaican molasses.
Then, weighing anchor, he had sneaked over to Martinique and filled his casks with a cheap French product. Running it quickly to Boston, he had papers to prove to customs that he was bringing in choice Jamaica stuff, and his profits were enormous.

When Pentheny heard of this deception, he laid a trap for Marcus, and satisfied on all points, rode over to Golden Hall to show Pembroke proof of this criminal behavior. Sir Hugh made only one response: “He’s stealing from us. It’s money out of your pocket and mine, Croome, and he’s got to be stopped.”

Pentheny, outraged by his brother’s behavior, swore to put an end to it. Along the waterfront where the sunken Port Royal had once flourished with its hordes of pirates, he chartered a small, swift vessel crewed by an unruly lot of characters who assured him they were ready for anything, and after he was certain that his brother in the
Carthaginian
had set sail for Boston, he swept in, overtook her and joined his sailors as they forcibly boarded the smuggler.

The confrontation was terse. “What’s this?” Marcus cried, and Pentheny roared: “You’re defrauding honest men!”

“I’m not,” his brother shouted—and there would be much debate as to what happened next, but those who stood close to the two men agreed that having said this in an ugly mood, Marcus Croome reached for a pistol. Pentheny, who had come aboard anticipating such an act, had his pistol out seconds before Marcus, and he fired point-blank at his brother, blowing a hole in his chest.

When word reached London that Pentheny Croome had frustrated an act of piracy in this dramatic fashion, with the dead pirate being his own brother, his fame increased, and several patrons of Hogarth suggested that the artist add a seventh panel to his famous series on the sugar planters, and when he protested—“A set’s a set”—a hack artist, copying the frame of Hogarth’s series, rushed to the streets with Panel Seven, “The Pirate Trapped by His Own Brother,” which sold famously.

It required no less than considerable turbulence in Europe for John Pembroke to escape the entangling toils of Hester Croome. In these years, that continent seemed to be in constant turmoil, and, fortunately for John, an appropriate event presented itself when needed.

This was the sequence. The King of Poland died. Tradition required that the Polish nobles, a headstrong lot, elect some European
prince, not a Pole, to rule the country. France and Spain backed one contestant, Russia and Austria another, and before long most of Europe was embroiled in the famous War of the Polish Succession.

Lorenz Poggenberg, a minor nobleman of the Danish court, left Copenhagen on a secret mission to London, hoping to enroll Great Britain in some naval schemes that Denmark fancied in this time of trouble, and in London he was advised to present his appeal to Sir Hugh Pembroke, leader of a major faction in Parliament.

The Danish tactic accomplished nothing, but during the protracted discussions, Poggenberg learned that Sir Hugh controlled large sugar estates in Jamaica, and this awakened such considerable interest that joint British-Danish naval adventures in the Caribbean were forgotten: “Did you say sugar, Sir Hugh?”

“I did, and a tricky business it is.”

“I know. Slaves, muscovado, rum, finding the right markets.”

Sir Hugh’s interest was piqued: “Now how would you know about such things, Baron?”

“My family has a large plantation on St. John. We simply cannot find a manager to run it properly. I can’t go out, business at court, and I have no sons to handle the messy task.”

Later Sir Hugh told his wife: “When Poggenberg said that, I did not reply for at least five minutes, for my mind was whirling like a top. But then everything cleared, like sunlight after a storm. And I thought: John is just the man they’re seeking.”

He made the proposal cautiously: “Baron, I may have the answer to your problem.” When Poggenberg leaned forward, Pembroke said: “My son John. Twenty-four years old. Wonderfully skilled in sugar. Looking for a plantation he can whip into shape.” He paused, then added a clause that any European head of family would appreciate: “Third son, you know. Prospects in Jamaica not too bright.” And before that day ended in London, it was agreed that John Pembroke of Trevelyan, Jamaica, would sail to St. John in the Danish islands to bring some order to the sugar plantation of the Poggenbergs.

When word of his new assignment reached Jamaica in the summer of 1732, it brought both relief and joy to John Pembroke, for he saw in his removal to St. John a heaven-sent device for avoiding the entrapment of Hester Croome, and he was able to assume a mask of near-sadness when he informed her that reluctant though he might be, he must leave Jamaica to take up the duties his family had arranged for him in the Danish isles.

Hester said promptly: “I’ll sail with you. Running a sugar plantation requires a mistress of the big house, you know,” but John’s older brother assured her that St. John was so primitive, et cetera, et cetera, that she tearfully withdrew her offer. But at the sailing of the cargo ship she promised to wait for him, and he called from the deck: “It may be ten years before I get back to Jamaica,” at which she uttered a barely repeatable oath.

When he arrived at the Poggenberg plantation on the Danish Virgin Islands in late December, John found it much more beautiful than any he had known in Jamaica, for it shared a fine rise at the north end of St. John with two other plantations. From the big house in which he would live he could see far vistas of the Atlantic to the north and the Caribbean to the west, and each body of water was festooned with crowds of little tree-lined islets. Lunaberg Plantation it was called, and when the first full moon rose over the peaceful scene, with the waves drifting silently below, he had to agree that it had been aptly named.

It was much smaller, of course, than Trevelyan—only four hundred acres—but the land looked promising, and John was thoroughly pleased when he found that in addition to its beauties, Lunaberg had fine neighbors on its western boundary, a Danish chap, Magnus Lemvig, and his most beautiful wife, Elzabet. “We’ll help you get started,” Lemvig said in good English, and his wife, her blond hair neatly plaited in two strands bound about her head, volunteered to send her personal slaves to bring some order to the plantation house. She warned: “Since you’ve brought no wife, you must be attentive to which slaves serve in your house. You can be kind to them, but don’t let them dominate you.”

The plantation owner to the east was a much different sort, Jorgen Rostgaard, a disillusioned Dane in his forties with a grumpy wife: “Watch the niggers! They’ll steal your socks while you sleep!” He had a dozen suggestions for keeping slaves obedient, all of them brutal: “You have two choices, Pembroke. You can baby your slaves the way Lemvig does or keep them in line the way I do. You’ll learn my way’s best.” Then he said, almost insultingly: “We don’t spoil our niggers the way you English do in Jamaica. The important thing, get started right. Let your niggers know who’s boss.”

John Pembroke took up his position as director of the Lunaberg Plantation on St. John on the first day of January 1733, and spent that month acquainting himself with both the land and the slaves he
would be supervising, and the more he saw of each, the more satisfied he was that with the proper mix of kindness and firmness, he could whip both into shape and ensure his employers in Copenhagen a gratifying profit.

The land was first class and its situation atop a rise assured drainage so that the canefields did not sour because of swampiness. And since the slaves seemed as strong and healthy as those he had known on his family estates in Jamaica, he assumed he would be able to weld them into a responsible team. By the end of the month he had shown that he meant for them to work hard, but that when they did they would receive such valued concessions as larger rations of food and extra supplies of cane juice for their midday meals. As February began he judged that he had got things off to a solid start. But on the fourth, a tall sergeant in the Danish armed forces rode into Lunaberg accompanied by a drummer, and when all the whites from the hilltop establishments were assembled, the sergeant nodded to the drummer, who beat a long tattoo, whereupon a scroll was unrolled displaying an official seal, and the eighteen new rules for treatment of slaves were proclaimed:

When Pembroke listened to the last of these draconian measures and heard the concluding drum roll, he told himself: If the blacks on St. John are as strong-minded as those we have on Jamaica, the consequences of this day will be hideous. And that night he began to hide away in his big house supplies of powder and balls. When the slaves learned of the new rules as they stood at attention on the various plantations, they too began to bring together such guns and ammunition, and long knives from the cane fields, as they had been able to steal over the years. And a careful observer could detect anxiety in the conversations of whites and a growing surliness in the behavior of blacks.

John, eager to keep abreast of developments during his first months on the island, sought advice from both Lemvig on his west and Rostgaard on his east. The former frankly admitted: “Trouble threatens, but I do believe the new laws can be enforced in a Christian way.” Elzabet, daughter of a clergyman in rural Denmark and a devout Lutheran, fortified her husband’s hopes: “I see no possibility that we, or you, would ever enforce the cruelest provisions of the new code. Breaking one of our men on the wheel? I would almost give my own life to prevent that.”

But John heard quite a different story from Rostgaard. “Pembroke,” he said in his heavy accent, “we have two niggers on this hill that bear watchin’, one on your place, one on mine. Before long each of them will be hanged … or worse.”

“On my plantation?”

“Yes. Mine’s the worst of the pair. Cudjoe, a bad one from the Guinea coast. Very bold. Yours is more sly. That big fellow, Vavak.”

John knew the man, a leader among the blacks but restrained in the presence of whites: “Where’d he find such a name?”

“Jungle drums. They’re all heathens, you know. His former owner told me a crazy story.”

“I’d like to hear it … since he’s one of my men.”

“On the Dutch slaver that brought him here he was chained belowdecks where something clacked incessantly against the ship’s side—right at his head: ‘Vavak! Vavak!’ To keep from going mad, he took the sound into himself. Day and night,
he
repeated Vavak, Vavak, as if he was in charge, not the ship. So when he staggered off the ship muttering ‘Vavak, Vavak,’ they thought that was his name.”