Caribbean (57 page)

Sir Hugh’s third son was something of a problem. A young man of twenty-two, John Pembroke was as fine a fellow as Jamaica produced and had he been firstborn, he would have been a worthy inheritor of his father’s title and his seat in Parliament. Had he been the
second son, he might well have filled Greville’s place as manager of the plantation, but there was no opening in that direction, and John himself told his father one night: “I doubt I could ever do the job that Greville does.” So the question kept arising: “What are we going to do about John?” and no one had an answer. He had done well at Rugby, and traditionally third sons either went into the army or clergy, but John showed no disposition for either. John assured his father nevertheless: “I’m all right. I’ll find something.”

In the meantime, he was engaged in a battle which his two brothers had waged successfully. Pentheny Croome’s daughter Hester was a big, brassy young woman with prospects of inheriting an income of not less than twenty thousand pounds a year, a prodigious sum in the England of those days and certainly enough to ensure her a choice of husbands. But early in life she had set her cap for a Pembroke and had jammed it down so securely on her red head that only one of the famous island hurricanes would have been able to dislodge it. At sixteen she had made strong overtures to the future Sir Roger, but he had eluded her by marrying a planter’s daughter from Barbados. At eighteen, bereft at her loss of Roger, she had settled on Greville, and would have brought him to the altar had not a lively lass from a plantation near Spanish Town ensnared him.

She was now, at age twenty, much attracted to John Pembroke, whom she described to her father as “probably the best of the Golden Hall lot.” Brazen in her attempts to allure him, she rode her gray mare to his home to invite him to dances, and insisted that he attend the play the local young people were putting on for the officers of the British warship stationed at Kingston: “It’s a French farce, John. Very naughty. And I’m the leading lady, you might say, in the role of the maid.”

Reluctantly, he agreed, and found that he enjoyed himself immensely. The young officers were such fun to talk with that he wondered briefly whether he might not try to join the navy; and during the play his attention was fixed on Hester, who was more than satisfactory as the rowdy maid. She displayed a robust sense of humor, a capacity for laughing at herself, and a surprising tenderness in the love scenes.

In that two-and-a-half-hour period she promoted herself from rather objectionable to almost acceptable, and when he drove her home, the plaudits of her audience still ringing in his ears, he came close to expressing his interest, for he had seen that several of the
navy men had been attracted to her lively ways. But the next day he participated in a strategy meeting attended by Hester’s fat father, a crude and overbearing man, and John, seeing the daughter in the father, shied away.

The meeting was attended by Sir Hugh Pembroke and his two sons, Roger and John, Pentheny Croome and a big planter from Spanish Town who was almost as gross as Hester’s father. The topic for debate was crucial to the welfare of the Sugar Interest, as Sir Hugh explained: “Already they’re calling it the Molasses Act, as if it were already passed. It’s bound to determine our profits for the next twenty years, so firm action is obligatory. If we let them have their way, our income plummets. If we force them to write it our way, unlimited profits.”

He explained that the West Indies planters faced three determined enemies: “Those pitiful rascals in Boston and New York who will want to buy our molasses at bottom price so they can earn fortunes with the sorry rum they make.” Here the meeting diverted for a frosty assault on the British colonies on the North American mainland, with special opprobrium for Boston and Philadelphia, two trading centers whose rapacious Puritans and Quakers sought to steal their trading partners blind. All present agreed that in the long run, the natural enemy of the West Indian planters was that collection of ill-mannered American colonies, but the Jamaican members of Parliament knew tricks with which to frustrate them.

“Our second enemy is closer at hand,” Sir Hugh warned. “I mean the French Islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. The problem’s this. Our sugar plantations of Jamaica are blessed with reliable winds. The French islands have none. And since they’re denied windmills, they must use horses and mules. And where do they get them? From Massachusetts and New York. Hundreds of little ships a year load up with animals in Boston and run down to Martinique and sell at a fantastic profit.”

“How does that hurt us?” the planter from Spanish Town asked, and Croome growled: “Because when they unload at Martinique, they fill their ship with French molasses and run it as contraband back to Boston. Totally illegal both ways, but very profitable.”

“Croome should know,” Sir Hugh said caustically, “because there’s rumor that his brother Marcus is engaged in the trade,” and the big man replied harshly: “He better not be.”

“And if we discipline Boston and Martinique,” Sir Hugh continued,
“we then face our permanent enemy, the housewife in England who screams constantly for a lower price on sugar.” He made a distasteful grimace as he visualized the unfair pressures brought by these women who were so eager to buy sugar at a slightly reduced price that they would imperil the wealth of the Sugar Interest.

His son Roger introduced the ugly fact they had to face: “Word circulates. In France the best grade of clayed white sugar is eight pence a pound. In England the housewife has to pay ten a pound. The outcry is becoming stentorian.”

“What’s that mean?” Pentheny asked, and Roger explained: “Very loud. Named after the loud-voiced herald in the
Iliad
.”

“And what’s that?”

“The poem by Homer. Greece at war with Troy.”

“I’ve heard of them. But Greece and Troy have nothing to do with the price of sugar in England.” It was his opinion that the controlled monopoly price should be raised, not lowered, and as for the complaints of English homemakers who knew nothing of the problems of a plantation—“the niggers and the Maroons up the hills and French competition”—the women could go to hell.

Sir Hugh advised his friend not to make that speech in public, at least not in England, and the conspirators planned to meet six weeks hence in London with a rigid plan, to which all planters would be bound, to attain three ends as Sir Hugh summarized them: “Make Boston buy her molasses from us at our price. Halt the shipment of mules and horses into Martinique. And raise the sale price of West Indian sugar in England while rigorously keeping out foreign supplies which would sell at half our price if allowed entry.” The men felt hopeful that if they could get the island members of Parliament to stick together, they could attain those desirable ends.

As the meeting broke up, Pentheny asked where John Pembroke, who had left the room, went, and his brother, who could guess what was coming, said: “I don’t really know,” but Sir Hugh, wanting always to have Pentheny on his side, said: “I think he’s in the library,” and when Pentheny found John, he said: “Hester wondered if you’d be free for dinner tonight,” and John was about to say “No,” when his father broke in: “He’d be delighted.”

An observer who was acquainted with the powerful sugar planters of the Caribbean only in their rather rude country homes on Jamaica or
Antigua or St. Kitts might catch an occasional hint as to how the planters spent their huge fortunes, but to appreciate how they used their wealth to achieve their political and social power, the onlooker would have had to visit England, and see how members of the Sugar Interest lived. Each maintained year-round a luxurious mansion in one of the popular London squares, plus a beautifully appointed country place in some rural village not too far from the capital. If a planter controlled three seats in Parliament, as several did, that family would probably have six English homes, three in London, three outside. As one witty observer remarked: “In Jamaica these men are insufferable boors; in London, polished gentlemen who invite the Prince of Wales to tea.”

In London, Sir Hugh and his son Roger had houses on opposite sides of Cavendish Square, the father’s being somewhat larger but not more ostentatious than the son’s. It was four stories high, with a handsome entryway and sets of three carefully matched windows on each floor. Protected by a modest iron railing low enough to be stepped over by a gentleman, it showed no outward display of wealth except for the heavily carved door. Inside, the rooms were spacious and handsomely furnished with an abundance of paintings in heavy gilt frames. If one looked at them casually, one had the impression that the owner displayed good taste and a nice sense of which painting went well on what wall, but upon closer inspection, one was startled by the artists represented, each name being displayed on a small, neatly engraved brass plate.

The landscape that one saw first was a Rembrandt, selected by Sir Hugh himself in Dresden. The mother and child in beautiful red and gold and green was a Raphael, the personal purchase of Lady Beth just before she died. The man on horseback was a Van Dyck and the scene with wood nymphs a Rubens. But the canvas that Sir Hugh loved above all others was a landscape, not overly large, by the Dutch painter Meindert Hobbema. It showed a country scene in Holland, with a bridge much like the one at Trevelyan, and whenever Sir Hugh chanced to come upon it by accident, as it were, he felt the presence of his plantation in Jamaica.

There were nine other paintings, including a Bellini Madonna and an attractive portrait of Lady Beth Pembroke by a fashionable court painter. In a back room there was a matched set of six English paintings, but they were of such scandalous character that Sir Hugh
displayed them only to close friends who were known to have a ribald sense of humor.

The upper floors were decorated in a restrained style reflecting the taste of Lady Beth Pembroke, née Trevelyan. One knowledgeable visitor, seeking to flatter Sir Hugh, said: “I can see that whereas your wife had good judgment in art, it must have been you who encouraged her to make the purchases.”

“Not so,” snapped Sir Hugh. “It was her money. Her good taste.” And if pressed, he would confess that on his own he had bought only the two landscapes, the Rembrandt and the Hobbema.

Many strategy meetings, formal and informal, of the Sugar Interest had been held in this house, but leaders like the elder Pitt and Robert Walpole also came here to beg the West Indies contingent to support bills that were to the benefit of the nation at large. They usually got the votes they sought, provided they promised to allow passage of other bills of interest to the sugar men.

But Pembroke House in Cavendish Square was not the London headquarters of the Sugar Interest. That function was filled by Pentheny Croome’s grand mansion in Grosvenor Square. It was really two fine Palladian houses erected originally side by side, but Mrs. Croome, brash daughter of a Jamaican sugar man, had knocked out the dividing walls, so that the interior became a vast exhibition hall for the curios she had acquired on her three rambles with her daughter Hester through Germany, France and Italy. The two women were bedazzled by German carvings in translucent limestone, paintings whipped up by Italian artists depicting Lake Como or the French ship which had brought them to Italy. And although they were stout Church of England members, they had been captivated by a painting of one of the popes, whose stern portrait, the dealer vowed, was among the world’s most remarkable works of art.

The big double room was really a museum of travelers’ art, with seven statues on plinths, depicting near-nude women with marble silks draped miraculously about them to satisfy any prudes who might enter the room. Here the members of the Sugar Interest convened most often, for the Croomes were generous hosts. Their income from their huge plantation and other interests totaled nearly £70,000 a year, and after Pentheny allowed funds for the management of his plantations, for allowances to his illegitimate mulatto children in the islands, for the expensive tastes of his wife and daughter,
he still had more than enough left over to entertain handsomely during the London season.

His parties were lavish, with six or seven kinds of meat, three kinds of fowl and desserts of intricate imagination. Much drink was supplied, but out of deference to his colleagues, he always served a light rum made on his plantation and the heavy, dark rum of his neighboring plantation, Trevelyan.

In 1732, Pentheny Croome spent upward of £20,000 to ensure the passage of the proper Molasses Act, but he was clever enough to allow his friend Sir Hugh to deal with the real leaders of Parliament, for as he told his wife after one of his own grandiose parties which the leadership had ignored: “Sometimes mere money ain’t enough. But you and I can get votes that Sir Hugh could never muster. We’re a strong pair.”

He had touched upon a salient factor in the way the Sugar Interest controlled so many critical votes in Parliament. Pembroke and Croome had once been humorously described in the volatile English press as “the Two Peas in a Pod,” and the name was picked up by the furious pamphleteers who conducted the wars that raged regarding the sugar question. But the two men were not at all that, though they were two clever manipulators. Sir Hugh used his inherent taste, with his Raphael Madonna and his Rembrandt, to lure one kind of voter, while Pentheny Croome wooed the others, his burlesque display of wealth proving that hard currency backed his claims.

When the vote came on the Molasses Act of 1733, the “Two Peas in a Pod” won a smashing victory. The pusillanimous American colonies, with no voice in Parliament, got nothing but a slap in the face. The rum distillers in Boston would be forced to buy their molasses from Jamaica and her sister islands at ridiculously high prices; the lucrative trade in horses and mules to Martinique was halted, and no more cheap French molasses would be carried on the return trips. In fact, the American colonies were treated with such blatant inconsideration that hitherto loyal citizens in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia began to mutter: “Each decision made in London favors the West Indies and damages us.” And of greatest importance to the Sugar Interest, every household in Great Britain would pay a yearly tribute to planters like Pembroke and Croome, who would grow constantly richer.