Caribbean (96 page)

Mill had his way, for in response to the pressures he exerted, a London court charged Eyre with murder—and a shudder passed through the population. Threats against Mill’s own life tripled, but before the case could come to trial, court officials decided in private consultation that since a somewhat similar case involving the military officers who had conducted the Jamaican courts-martial had been thrown out for lack of merit, the charges against Eyre were also invalid. He was set free, with all charges permanently dropped, to the delight of
the cheering mobs who had rallied to his defense. Twice Mill had tried to send Eyre to jail and twice he had failed.

When Jason hurried to Mill’s quarters to report the news, he saw the great leader at his best and worst. When Mill learned that he had lost again, he showed neither rage nor passive disappointment: “The courts have spoken and all must abide.” But then, his brow darkening and his fists clenching: “
Those
courts have spoken. But there are other courts, and to them we shall drag him.”

“Oh, sir! You’re not going to go through this again?”

“I have determined that Eyre shall be punished, humiliated in public for the great wrong he did to the concept of just colonial government,” and like a dog gnawing at a bone, he immediately started proceedings to have Eyre hauled into another court, in another jurisdiction to face a completely new set of charges. Reluctantly, the court ordered Eyre to stand trial once again, this time for high crimes and misdemeanors. A date was set to begin, 2 June 1868, almost three years after the riots and the courts-martial, but an impassioned defense lawyer asked members of the preliminary grand jury to “put yourselves in Eyre’s place,” and consider what steps a man facing a wild rebellion might do to save his island, his empire and the honor of his queen. Public observers in the courtroom cheered, and early next morning the jury announced that all charges were dismissed. At long last Eyre was really a free man, and at the next election John Stuart Mill would be thrown out of Parliament.

He did not brood about his defeat. When he learned that his young supporter Jason Pembroke and his wife were heading back to Jamaica, he stopped by their mansion to say farewell. Seated in the reception room in which the Pembrokes of 1760 had helped frame the good laws that determined the future of Great Britain, he looked with quiet amusement at Hester Pembroke’s massive statues, and said: “Jason, we’ve lost every battle, you and I. We’ve allowed a great scoundrel to slip through our net unpunished. I’m about to lose my seat in Parliament, while Carlyle and Tennyson and Cardigan reign triumphant. And you slink back to Jamaica having accomplished nothing, so far as your public can see. But in reality, my young friend, you and I have achieved a tremendous victory. In the future, tin-soldier colonial governors will think twice before throwing their islands into martial law or allowing their underlings to terrorize people of a darker skin. Reform of Parliament has passed. Britain will be a better place for our efforts.” Poking with his stick at the contorted
figure of Mars wrestling with Venus, he confessed: “Had the jury found Eyre guilty of murder, as it should have, I would have been first in line to plead for clemency and a full pardon. It was the idea of the thing that mattered, the establishing of a principle.”

Jason, confused by what he had witnessed in the past three years, asked: “Professor Mill, about that interesting word you used. Do you think your hounding of Governor Eyre was an example of monomania?”

Mill, appreciating the acuity of the question, allowed a smile to touch his icy countenance and said: “When the other fellow does it, we call it monomania. When I do it, we describe it as unwavering adherence to principle.”

As he rose to go, he brought his stick down on one of the huge statues and said gruffly: “Get that monstrosity out of your home, Jason. Leave such outmoded images to Tennyson and Carlyle.”

Jason took his advice. On his last day in London he arranged for stone-cutters to segment the statues, haul them out of the mansion, and reassemble them in a park attached to a zoo.

The final word on these hectic events was one which, had it been anticipated, might have saved Jamaica its travail and Great Britain the bitterness of its inflamed debate. Not long after the turbulence at St. Thomas-in-the-East, both Colonel Hobbs, the laughing monster with whom Pembroke had served, and Police Inspector Ramsay, whose savage behavior Croome approved, committed suicide, the first by shooting himself, the second by leaping off a steamship in midocean. Competent medical experts judged that the men had already been insane when performing their atrocities but that no one had noticed, because when martial law rages, insanity becomes the norm.

O
N
8 J
ANUARY
1938, D
AN
G
ROSS
,
EDITOR IN CHIEF OF THE
Detroit Chronicle
, saw on the Associated Press ticker a throwaway color item which could have been of interest to only a few American editors but which excited him enormously, for it fit like a searched-for piece in one of his jigsaw puzzles.

The
Chronicle
faced a unique problem. Because of the meandering way in which the international border separating Canada from the United States twisted and turned as it picked its path through the Great Lakes system, at this point Canada lay well south of the United States. This made Detroiters refer to the important Canadian city of Windsor as “our southern suburb,” and Detroit newspapers which circulated widely there were forever trying to develop stories attractive to their Canadian readers.

The item which excited Gross read:

Tearing the item from the long roll of paper coming from the teletype, Gross hurried to a small bookcase in which he kept those reference books which enabled him to command much of the world’s knowledge: a thesaurus, two big atlases, a French dictionary for use with Canadian material, and a most valuable book with a grease-marked, tattered jacket, Ploetz’s
A Manual of Universal History
. Turning to the index, which he had learned to use with precision, he found that a suspicion awakened by the teletype item was confirmed. In 1763, at the Treaty of Paris, which ended what was known in Europe as the “Seven Years’ War” and in North America as the “French and Indian War,” an unbelievable set of options was seriously debated among the major powers: Should Great Britain receive all of Canada or the tiny Caribbean island of All Saints? Yes, there was the astonishing fact, but what to do about it?

Gross had on his staff an earnest young reporter named Millard McKay who had done graduate work at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, and who showed solid, if somewhat unimaginative, talent but improved each month he was with the paper. He would in time, thought Gross, become a mainstay of the
Chronicle
, a man who could be relied upon to cover acceptably whatever topic he was assigned.

After watching him during his first year, Gross learned that McKay shared a weakness common to young men educated at East Coast universities and with a love of books: he wished ardently that he had been born an Englishman, with access to London theaters and a summer home in the Thomas Hardy countryside or perhaps the Lake District made famous by poets. Although he had not yet been able to visit England, he had picked up from his professors a touch of an Oxford accent, and was appalled when anyone suggested he might be Irish. “No,” he would say firmly. “Actually, I’m English. Mother’s name was Cottsfield.” On starting a new life in Detroit, he had considered changing his name to Malcolm Cottsfield, which he
thought more genteel and English, but he found the legal requirements so complicated and expensive that he backed off.

Mr. Gross had once asked him: “How did you generate this great love for things English?” and he told an unlikely story: “I grew up in a village of three hundred in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey, and they can be very barren. Got a scholarship to Rutgers University in northern Jersey and fell under the spell of a professor who’d been a Rhodes scholar. He lived and died for England, and I took three courses with him. He made us write long papers on various aspects of English life, and he threw the topics at us arbitrarily. I got ‘How the English Parliament Functions’ one term, ‘Six English Novelists from Thomas Hardy to Greene’ the next, and believe it or not, for the third course I wrote on ‘English County Cricket.’ When you study that way, you learn something.”

When the copyboy called “Mr. Gross wants to see you,” McKay immediately thought: What have I done wrong? But a rapid inventory of his recent stories produced none that were vulnerable, so he assumed he was about to receive a new assignment, and with restrained confidence he entered the editor’s office, where the teletype fragment was thrust into his hands.

“You’re an English-history buff,” Gross said. “Any idea about the significance of this?”

Millard studied the elements in the story and found nothing that related to his rather wide knowledge of English history and custom. Wrentham was not a name that had played any significant role in English history, and although he knew how cricket was played, he could see no special significance in that brief reference. “I’m afraid it escapes me,” he had to say.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand my next question. But does the date when Wrentham is supposed to arrive in All Saints, February tenth, ring any bell?”

“No.”

“How about the Treaty of Paris?”

“Mr. Gross, you’re throwing puzzles at me.”

“I sure am,” and with a chuckle Gross passed across his desk the Ploetz manual. “Look up the Treaty of Paris, 1763.”

And when Millard did, he saw that astonishing entry regarding the complex treaty that ended the long wars in Europe and the lesser
skirmishes in the Caribbean. France confirmed that it already had plans for ceding the Louisiana Territory to Spain, England gave Guadeloupe and Martinique to France, Spain gave Florida to England, and then came the provision that stirred Gross’s imagination: “France and England both wanted the strategic island of All Saints in the Caribbean, but neither wanted Canada. English admirals argued that their fleets simply must have the vital island, key to the Caribbean and South America, and they saw no loss in throwing a bleak northern wilderness like Canada to the French, but they did not get their way. Britain got Canada, France got All Saints, which Britain would grab back at the first opportunity, so that poor France was cheated of everything.”

“I never knew that!” Millard cried. “All of Canada in exchange for one little island!”

“And note the date: ten February 1763. Lord what’s-his-name assumes command in All Saints on that anniversary.”

“You want me to draft an article about this, for our Canadian readers?”

“Much more. I want to do this right. You get yourself down to All Saints, look the place over, and give us a long, thoughtful article or maybe a series, comparing All Saints today with Canada. Give our Canadian friends a good laugh.”

From his bookcase he took an almanac. “Yes, here is it. Canada, 3,851,790 square miles; All Saints, 303. Population: Canada, 11,120,000; All Saints, 29,779. Keep those figures in mind and give us a rattling good yarn.” He stopped, leaned across his desk, and asked: “You know Canada, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir. I visited Calgary for the Stampede. From Winnipeg to Nova Scotia, I know rather well.”

“Good. Bone up. Catch a train for Miami tonight, and you have maybe a week and a half before His Lordship reaches the island. Stay as long as needed, but this is a work trip, not a paid vacation.”

As soon as McKay left Mr. Gross’s office he headed for the
Chronicle
library, where he took down
Burke’s Peerage
, to learn that the Wrenthams had started their climb to noble status in the mid-1600s, when a member of their family in Barbados was knighted as Sir Geoffrey because he defended the royal prerogatives of King Charles against the radical partisans of Oliver Cromwell. Some years later he was elevated to the peerage as Lord Wrentham for his daring sail westward from Barbados in a frail ship with sixty-one Englishmen,
to land on the bleak eastern shore of All Saints Island, held by the French. In heroic fashion Sir Geoffrey led his men across the mountains and down to the bay, where the French had established a town. Falling upon the settlement by surprise, Wrentham drove the French into western headlands, from which they evacuated the island.