John Henderson

Foremost in the list of a negro’s recreations should be placed the game of love. The black man makes love with the persistency of a Don Juan and with the fervour of a Mexican. He learns his first lessons in courtship long before the school-day age is over. Every boy of twelve has his honey girl, just as every coloured man of sixteen has his wife. There is an Arcadian touch in their love meetings—a fascinating rhythm of sensuous art in their songs of passion. The concert platforms and music halls of London have reflected, not incorrectly, many negro love stories; and the large straw hats and white pants and extravagant phraseology may be counted as roughly typical of the costume and poetry of Jamaica. The negro makes love with the natural freedom of a savage, but the Jamaican negro tempers his love-making with poetic entreaty. I can imagine that the Jamaican loves to hear the sonorous doggerel of his own ecstatic wooing—that he pleads with his mistress as much for his own pleasure as for hers. The black lady listens, and loves to listen, because his extravagant praise appeals to her vanity, and the black lady is as vain as any white daughter of a rich “buccra.” It may come as a shock and surprise to most of my readers to learn that the love-sick black man sometimes declares his love by letter. Whether this is always due to bashfulness or to the accident of geographical distance, I know not. But I have been privileged to read one or two impassioned missives duly authenticated as being the love letters of coloured men to dusky belles. They are interesting enough for reproduction here. I obtained them from a copy of a Christmas number of a Jamaican paper—the Gleaner of Kingston.

The first is written by a love-sick native to a Creole widow. It is addressed in full to

“Mrs. Agostiss R—— .

“I hope you know Valintine is now in season. I will take the pleasure to write you this; my hearth is yours and you are mine, but do you know it. I love you as the bee love the flower. The flower may fade, but true love shall never. My love for you is a love that cannot be fade. You shall be my love here as in heaven for ever. The Rose in June is not so sweet as when two lovers’ kisses meet. Kiss me quick and be my honey. I still remain true lover,

“James.”

James is an honest and prosperous black man in the mountains of Jamaica. It is pleasant to know that “Mrs. Agostiss” listened to his simple appeal and became “his honey.”

The second epistle has a religious flavour. King Solomon is artfully brought forward as a sort of “backer” of the ardent writer’s suit:—

“My dear Love—At present my love for you is so strong that I cannot express. So I even write that you may see it. It is every man deauty to write a formil letter.

“My pen is bad and my ink is pale, but my love will never fail. King Solomon say that Love is strong as death, and Jealousy is cruel than the grave. Love me little, bear me longer; hasty love is not love at all. This is the first time I sat down to write you about it.

“I love my Dove. Your love is black and ruby—the chefer of ten thousand. You head is much fine gold. You lock are bushy and black as a raven. Your eyes was the eyes in the river, by the rivers of water. Your cheeks as a bead (i.e. bed) of spices as sweet flowers. Your lips is like lilies. You hand as gold wring. Your legs as a pillar of marble set upon sockets of fine gold. Your countenance as a Lebanon. Your mouth look to be more sweet. Your sweet altogether.

“I have no more time to write as I am so tired and full time to go to bead. I will now close my letter with love.”

Poor “Garg Plummer” is in a desperate plight indeed. It is to be hoped that his “dear lov” listened to his strong entreaty. But it could not be otherwise. What human woman could resist the following:—

“Dear Lov—I is wrote you a letter to beg of you to make me your lover, but you is not wrote me again. I is dead of love every day wen you look so hansom I cane (i.e. cannot) sleep, cane eat. I dun no how I feel. I beg you to accep af me as your lover. The rose is not sweet as a kiss from you, my lov.

“Do meet me to-night at the bottom gate an give me you love. Miss Lucy toots (i.e. teeth) so green I is like one ear of earn, an her eye dem is so pretty. Lard! I wish I never been born. Poor me, Garg (i.e. George), I lov Miss Lucy to distraction. Yours truly,

“Garg Plummer.

“Answer me sone lov.”

The fourth letter I reprint simply to show how a little greed may kill all the romance of a negro’s love. We trace an artificiality in his love passages. It is hoped that his note produced nothing but a silent contempt:—

“I writ to hear from you wether you intend to make me a fool. I is not a puppy show that you think you find any better than me. i witch (wish) to send the yam bed for plantin in your garden, but i do not know wether i will reap the benefit of it.”

Number five is honest but unhappy. He is filled with forebodings of evil. The green-eyed monster has claimed him as his very own:—

The sixth, and last, is a jumble of incomprehensible passion. No doubt the writer knew what he meant, and perhaps the lady was able to interpret the author’s meaning. But I do not know whether the average reader will gain much by reading:—

So much for the black man’s love letters.

For an accurate picture of the love scenes you must visit the island of rivers and take your place in one of those quiet corners of the banana field, and wait for George and Jemima, or James and Mrs. Agostiss R——. I cannot describe the scene. Go to Jamaica and see it for yourself. It is enough that I have made public the love letters of six men I have never seen; I will not attempt to deal with the meeting and courting of a black man and his sweetheart, lest, unconsciously, I should travesty a fine poem.

The scenes of the love meetings of the natives of Jamaica are always framed in a rich setting of tropical moonlight, or waving palm trees and flashing fire-flies.

If a negro lover could not be eloquent in the midst of such rare beauty he would be unworthy of the name of man.

Next to love-making, eating and drinking, and then dancing may be counted the recreations of the Jamaican coloured gentleman. Though it cannot with justice be stated that the negro is an excessively large eater, the manner in which he takes his food evidences the keen enjoyment he gets from every meal. There is no question of lack of appetite in a negro when feeding time arrives. Whether the dish before him be fruit or salt fish, or mashed vegetables cooked with fat, the diner attacks his food with the utmost relish. There is great licking of lips, rolling of eyes and heavy munching by strong jaws. Give a negro a meat bone, and when he has done with it the fragments that remain would not be of the slightest service to the hungriest dog. When the native has finished his dish of vegetables he cleans the plate with his fingers and tongue. There is no food wasted in the land of eternal sunshine. Give a black child a dozen mangoes and then watch from a safe distance. Before you have seen the child’s manner of eating, you have not realised how juicy a mango really is. With the negro, eating is not an art, but a sensation of concentrated joy. It is very much the same with drinking. He can go an extraordinary length of time without needing any liquid, but when a negro gets the bottle to his lips, quarts disappear at every gulp. No matter whether the drink be water or cokernut juice or rum, the true black man cannot sip. He drinks as much as he can swallow without stopping to take breath, and then he has finished.

A social gathering is never a success in any Jamaican hut or drawing-room unless the assembled guests are given leave to indulge in the pastime of the dance. Dancing is to the black lady what small talk is to her white sister. Indeed, it is infinitely more even than that. Dancing is everything. They dance when they are merry and full of joy, and they dance when they mourn their dead; they dance when they are hungry and when they have feasted. They dance when they are carrying their fruits to the market-place, and they dance as they return with the spoils of their trading. In moments of religious ecstasy their limbs twitch for the relief found in treading the graceful measure, and when great sorrow has fallen on a household, the members dance slowly to express their woe.

Curiously enough their dancing lacks precision; they have not set pieces; no master teaches them “left foot forward, right foot up, twist”; there is no “one two three, hop, one two three, hop” about the coloured dance, yet it is always perfectly graceful. If there is music so much the better, but if there is no music the dancing goes on just the same. The Jamaicans dance with their legs and bodies and heads; all their limbs are brought into play. The arms wave in sympathy with the active legs, the body bends, the head is thrust forwards and backwards. The whole business is snake-like and fascinating.

Sometimes when a large party is collected, a dance will be arranged to represent some story or history. Biblical pictures are the most popular, and the unrehearsed effect of fifty perspiring negroes, seeking to represent in a ballet the story of Jonah and the Whale,

is not without a certain weird and extravagant humour. When the story is of a more bellicose kind—when, for instance, the tableau is that of David and Goliath, the David sometimes overdoes the punishment of the vanquished giant, and there is a little riot caused by the indignation of a too severely-handled artist, who had been persuaded with difficulty to enact the unpopular part. To the black people acting ceases to be make-believe as soon as the dancing begins; David is David, and Goliath is in fact the unhappy giant. So it can be imagined that difficulties frequently arise though there has been no malicious intent, and though the violence may have been born of pure unconscious art.

Sometimes the coloured dancers break into song, and then the bizarre effect is heightened and intensified. The soft, melodious chants of the happy darkies are in perfect keeping with the languorous climate and romantic scenery of the tropical island. The songs are of love and passion. “Ma honey and ma little bird, ma sweet lips and true love” are the usual descriptions of the black man for his mistress. Most of these songs can be heard in the High Street of Kingston, in the early hours of market days when the villagers come down from the country to sell their garden-produce. But the real recreation of the negro is love-making; and all these things, with the exception of the eating and drinking, are simply parts of the game.