At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies

‘I hope—but I express only my own personal wish, not that of the Council, which, as yet, has pronounced no opinion—that some of the changes introduced in most states of modern education will be made here, and that especial attention will be given to the teaching of some of the Eastern languages.

‘It is almost impossible to overrate the importance of this both to the Government and the community;—to the Government, as enabling it to avail itself of the services of honest, competent, and trustworthy interpreters; and to the general community, as relieving both employer and employed from the necessity of depending on the interpretation of men not always very competent, nor always very scrupulous, whose mistakes or errors, whether wilful or accidental, may often effect much injustice, and on whose fidelity life may not unfrequently depend.

‘I thank the members of the College Council for having accepted a task which will, at first, involve much delicate tact, forbearance, caution, and firmness, and the exercise of talents I know them to possess, and which I am confident will be freely bestowed in working out the success of the institution committed to their care.

‘I thank the Principal and his staff for their past exertions, and I count with confidence on their future labours.

‘I thank the parents who, by their presence, have manifested their interest in our undertaking, and their wishes for its success, and I especially thank the ladies who have been drawn within these walls by graver attractions than those which generally bring us together at this building.

‘I rejoice to see here the Superior of St. Mary’s College, and the goodly array of those under his charge, and I do so for many reasons.

‘I rejoice, because being not as yet affiliated or in any way officially connected with the Royal College, their presence is a spontaneous evidence of their goodwill and kindly feeling, and of the spirit in which they have been disposed to meet the efforts made to consult their feelings in the arrangements of this institution; a spirit yet further evinced by the fact that the Superior has informed me that he is about voluntarily to alter the course of study pursued in St. Mary’s College, so as more nearly to assimilate it to that pursued here.

‘I rejoice, because in their presence I hail a sign that the affiliation which is, I believe, desired by the great body of the Roman Catholic community in this island, and to which it has been shown no insuperable religious obstacle exists, will take place at no more distant day than is necessary to secure the approval, the naturally requisite approval, of ecclesiastical authority elsewhere.

‘I rejoice at their presence, because it enables me before this company to express my high sense of the courage and liberality which have maintained their College for years past without any aid whatever from the State, and, in spite of manifold obstacles and discouragements, have caused it to increase in numbers and efficiency.

‘I rejoice at their presence, because I desire to see the youth of Trinidad of every race, without indifference to their respective creeds, brought together on all possible occasions, whether for recreation or for work; because I wish to see them engaged in friendly rivalry in their studies now, as they will hereafter be in the world, which I desire to see them enter, not as strangers to each other, but as friends and fellow-citizens.

‘I rejoice, because their presence enables me to take a personal farewell of so many of those who will in the next generation be the planters, the merchants, the official and professional men of Trinidad.  By the time that you are men all the petty jealousies, all the mean resentments of this our day, will have faded into the oblivion which is their proper bourn.  But the work now accomplished will not, I trust, so fade.  They will melt and perish as the snow of the north would before our tropical sun: but the College will, I trust, remain as the rock on which the snow rests, and which remains uninjured by the heat, unmoved by the passing storm.  May it endure and strengthen as it passes from the first feeble beginnings of this its infancy to a vigorous youth and maturity.  You will sometimes in days to come recall the inauguration of your College, and perhaps not forget that its founder prayed you to bear in mind the truth that you will find, even now, the truest satisfaction in the strict discharge of duty; that he urged you to form high and unselfish aims—to seek noble and worthy objects; and as you enter on the world and all its tossing sea of jealousies, strife, division and distrust, to heed the lesson which an Apostle, whose words we all alike revere, has taught us, “If ye bite and devour one another, take ye heed that ye be not consumed one of another.”

‘Here, we hope, a point of union has been found which may last through life, and that whilst every man cherishes a love for his own peculiar School, all alike will have an interest in their common College, all alike be proud of a national institution, jealous of its honour, and eager to advance its welfare.

‘It is a common thing to hear the bitterness of religious discord here deplored.  I for one, looking back on the history of past years, cannot think, as some seem to do, that it has increased.  On the contrary, it seems to me that it has greatly diminished in violence when displayed, and that its displays are far less frequent.  Such, I believe, will be more and more the case; and that whilst religious distinctions will remain the same, and conscientious convictions unaltered, social and party differences consequent on those distinctions and convictions will daily diminish; that all alike will more and more feel in how many things they can think and act together for the benefit of their common country, and of the community of which they all are members; how they can be glad together in her prosperity, and be sad together in the day of her distress; and work together at all times to promote her good.  That this College is calculated to aid in a great degree in effecting this happy result, I for one cannot entertain the shadow of a doubt.  “Esto perpetua!”’

‘Esto perpetua.’  But there remains, I believe, more yet to be done for education in the West Indies; and that is to carry out Mr. Keenan’s scheme for a Central University for the whole of the West Indian Colonies, ²²⁵ as a focus of higher education; and a focus, also, of cultivated public opinion, round which all that is shrewdest and noblest in the islands shall rally, and find strength in moral and intellectual union.  I earnestly recommend all West Indians to ponder Mr. Keenan’s weighty words on this matter; believing that, as they do so, even stronger reasons than he has given for establishing such an institution will suggest themselves to West Indian minds.

I am not aware, nor would the reader care much to know, what schools there may be in Port of Spain for Protestant young ladies.  I can only say that, to judge from the young ladies themselves, the schools must be excellent.  But one school in Port of Spain I am bound in honour, as a clergyman of the Church of England, not to pass by without earnest approval, namely, ‘The Convent,’ as it is usually called.  It was established in 1836, under the patronage of the Roman Catholic Bishop, the Right Rev. Dr. Macdonnel, and was founded by the ladies of St. Joseph, a religious Sisterhood which originated in France a few years since, for the special purpose of diffusing instruction through the colonies. ²²⁶  This institution, which Dr. De Verteuil says is ‘unique in the West Indies,’ besides keeping up two large girls’ schools for poor children, gave in 1857 a higher education to 120 girls of the middle and upper classes, and the number has much increased since then.  It is impossible to doubt that this Convent has been ‘a blessing to the colony.’  At the very time when, just after slavery was abolished, society throughout the island was in the greatest peril, these good ladies came to supply a want which, under the peculiar circumstances of Trinidad, could only have been supplied by the self-sacrifice of devoted women.  The Convent has not only spread instruction and religion among the wealthier coloured class: but it has done more; it has been a centre of true civilisation, purity, virtue, where one was but too much needed; and has preserved, doubtless, hundreds of young creatures from serious harm; and that without interfering in any wise, I should think, with their duty to their parents.  On the contrary, many a mother in Port of Spain must have found in the Convent a protection for her daughters, better than she herself could give, against influences to which she herself had been but too much exposed during the evil days of slavery; influences which are not yet, alas! extinct in Port of Spain.  Creoles will understand my words; and will understand, too, why I, Protestant though I am, bid heartily God speed to the good ladies of St. Joseph.

To the Anglican clergy, meanwhile, whom I met in the West Indies, I am bound to offer my thanks, not for courtesies shown to me—that is a slight matter—but for the worthy fashion in which they seem to be upholding the honour of the good old Church in the colonies.  In Port of Spain I heard and saw enough of their work to believe that they are in nowise less active—more active they cannot be—than if they were seaport clergymen in England.  The services were performed thoroughly well; with a certain stateliness, which is not only allowable but necessary, in a colony where the majority of the congregation are coloured; but without the least foppery or extravagance.  The very best sermon, perhaps, for matter and manner, which I ever heard preached to unlettered folk, was preached by a young clergyman—a West Indian born—in the Great Church of Port of Spain; and he had no lack of hearers, and those attentive ones.  The Great Church was always a pleasant sight, with its crowded congregation of every hue, all well dressed, and with the universal West Indian look of comfort; and its noble span of roof overhead, all cut from island timber—another proof of what the wood-carver may effect in the island hereafter.  Certainly distractions were frequent and troublesome, at least to a newcomer.  A large centipede would come out and take a hurried turn round the Governor’s seat; or a bat would settle in broad daylight in the curate’s hood; or one had to turn away one’s eyes lest they should behold—not vanity, but—the magnificent head of a Cabbage-palm just outside the opposite window, with the black vultures trying to sit on the footstalks in a high wind, and slipping down, and flopping up again, half the service through.  But one soon got accustomed to the strange sights; though it was, to say the least, somewhat startling to find, on Christmas Day, the altar and pulpit decked with exquisite tropic flowers; and each doorway arched over with a single pair of coconut leaves, fifteen feet high.

The Christmas Day Communion, too, was one not easily to be forgotten.  At least 250 persons, mostly coloured, many as black as jet, attended; and were, I must say for them, most devout in manner.  Pleasant it was to see the large proportion of men among them, many young white men of the middle and upper class; and still more pleasant, too, to see that all hues and ranks knelt side by side without the least distinction.  One trio touched me deeply.  An old lady—I know not who she was—with the unmistakable long, delicate, once beautiful features of a high-bred West Indian of the ‘Ancien Régime,’ came and knelt reverently, feebly, sadly, between two old Negro women.  One of them seemed her maid.  Both of them might have been once her slaves.  Here at least they were equals.  True Equality—the consecration of humility, not the consecration of envy—first appeared on earth in the house of God, and at the altar of Christ: and I question much whether it will linger long in any spot on earth where that house and that altar are despised.  It is easy to propose an equality without Christianity; as easy as to propose to kick down the ladder by which you have climbed, or to saw off the bough on which you sit.  As easy; and as safe.

But I must not forget, while speaking of education in Trinidad, one truly ‘educational’ establishment which I visited at Tacarigua; namely, a Coolie Orphan Home, assisted by the State, but set up and kept up almost entirely by the zeal of one man—the Rev. – Richards, brother of the excellent Rector of Trinity Church, Port of Spain.  This good man, having no children of his own, has taken for his children the little brown immigrants, who, losing father and mother, are but too apt to be neglected by their own folk.  At the foot of the mountains, beside a clear swift stream, amid scenery and vegetation which an European millionaire might envy, he has built a smart little quadrangle, with a long low house, on one side for the girls, on the other for the boys; a schoolroom, which was as well supplied with books, maps, and pictures as any average National School in England; and, adjoining the buildings, a garden where the boys are taught to work.  A matron—who seemed thoroughly worthy of her post—conducts the whole; and comfort, cleanliness, and order were visible everywhere.  A pleasant sight; but the pleasantest sight of all was to see the little bright-eyed brown darlings clustering round him who was indeed their father in God; who had delivered them from misery and loneliness, and—in the case of the girls—too probably vice likewise; and drawn them, by love, to civilisation and Christianity.  The children, as fast as they grow up, are put out to domestic service, and the great majority of the boys at least turn out well.  The girls, I was told, are curiously inferior to the boys in intellect and force of character; an inferiority which is certainly not to be found in Negroes, among whom the two sexes are more on a par, not only intellectually, but physically also, than among any race which I have seen.  One instance, indeed, we saw of the success of the school.  A young creature, brought up there, and well married near by, came in during our visit to show off her first baby to the matron and the children; as pretty a mother and babe as one could well see.  Only we regretted that, in obedience to the supposed demands of civilisation, and of a rise in life, she had discarded the graceful and modest Hindoo dress of her ancestresses, for a French bonnet and all that accompanies it.  The transfiguration added, one must charitably suppose, to her self-respect; if so, it must be condoned on moral grounds: but in an æsthetic view, she had made a great mistake.

In remembrance of our visit, a little brown child, some three or four years old, who had been christened that day, was named after me; and I was glad to have my name connected, even in so minute an item, with an institution which at all events delivers children from the fancy that they can, without being good or doing good, conciliate the upper powers by hanging garlands on a trident inside a hut, or putting red dust on a stump of wood outside it, while they stare in and mumble prayers to they know not what of gilded wood.

The coolie temples are curious places to those who have never before been face to face with real heathendom.  Their mark is, generally, a long bamboo with a pennon atop, outside a low dark hut, with a broad flat verandah, or rather shed, outside the door.  Under the latter, opposite each door, if I recollect rightly, is a stone or small stump, on which offerings are made of red dust and flowers.  From it the worshippers can see the images within.  The white man, stooping, enters the temple.  The attendant priest, so far from forbidding him, seems highly honoured, especially if the visitor give him a shilling; and points out, in the darkness—for there is no light save through the low doors—three or four squatting abominations, usually gilded.  Sometimes these have been carved in the island.  Sometimes the poor folk have taken the trouble to bring them all the way from India on board ship.  Hung beside them on the walls are little pictures, often very well executed in the miniature-like Hindoo style by native artists in the island.  Large brass pots, which have some sacred meaning, stand about, and with them a curious trident-shaped stand, about four feet high, on the horns of which garlands of flowers are hung as offerings.  The visitor is told that the male figures are Mahadeva, and the female Kali: we could hear of no other deities.  I leave it to those who know Indian mythology better than I do, to interpret the meaning—or rather the past meaning, for I suspect it means very little now—of all this trumpery and nonsense, on which the poor folk seem to spend much money.  It was impossible, of course, even if one had understood their language, to find out what notions they attached to it all; and all I could do, on looking at these heathen idol chapels, in the midst of a Christian and civilised land, was to ponder, in sadness and astonishment, over a puzzle as yet to me inexplicable; namely, how human beings first got into their heads the vagary of worshipping images.  I fully allow the cleverness and apparent reasonableness of M. Comte’s now famous theory of the development of religions.  I blame no one for holding it.  But I cannot agree with it.  The more of a ‘saine appréciation,’ as M. Comte calls it, I bring to bear on the known facts; the more I ‘let my thought play freely around them,’ the more it is inconceivable to me, according to any laws of the human intellect which I have seen at work, that savage or half-savage folk should have invented idolatries.  I do not believe that Fetishism is the parent of idolatry; but rather—as I have said elsewhere—that it is the dregs and remnants of idolatry.  The idolatrous nations now, as always, are not the savage nations; but those who profess a very ancient and decaying civilisation.  The Hebrew Scriptures uniformly represent the non-idolatrous and monotheistic peoples, from Abraham to Cyrus, as lower in what we now call the scale of civilisation, than the idolatrous and polytheistic peoples about them.  May not the contrast between the Patriarchs and the Pharaohs, David and the Philistines, the Persians and the Babylonians, mark a law of history of wider application than we are wont to suspect?  But if so, what was the parent of idolatry?  For a natural genesis it must have had, whether it be a healthy and necessary development of the human mind—as some hold, not without weighty arguments on their side; or whether it be a diseased and merely fungoid growth, as I believe it to be.  I cannot hold that it originated in Nature-worship, simply because I can find no evidence of such an origin.  There is rather evidence, if the statements of the idolaters themselves are to be taken, that it originated in the worship of superior races by inferior races; possibly also in the worship of works of art which those races, dying out, had left behind them, and which the lower race, while unable to copy them, believed to be possessed of magical powers derived from a civilisation which they had lost.  After a while the priesthood, which has usually, in all ages and countries, proclaimed itself the depository of a knowledge and a civilisation lost to the mass of the people, may have gained courage to imitate these old works of art, with proper improvements for the worse, and have persuaded the people that the new idols would do as well as the old ones.  Would that some truly learned man would ‘let his thoughts play freely’ round this view of the mystery, and see what can be made out of it.  But whatever is made out, on either view, it will still remain a mystery—to me at least, as much as to Isaiah of old—how this utterly abnormal and astonishing animal called man first got into his foolish head that he could cut a thing out of wood or stone which would listen to him and answer his prayers.  Yet so it is; so it has been for unnumbered ages.  Man may be defined as a speaking animal, or a cooking animal.  He is best, I fear, defined as an idolatrous animal; and so much the worse for him.  But what if that very fact, diseased as it is, should be a sure proof that he is more than an animal?