It was clear that my father intended for me to build on the business he had founded and to prove myself an insightful and canny businessman. There were three ships in total: The Badger Guinea, on which I had arrived; the Mary Rose Guinea, apparently another former slave ship; and the Calypso. Ofttimes they carried cargo to and from the United States or the Canadas, but mostly it was between Jamaica and England, and while the outbound cargo was invariably rum and sugar, the inbound could be anything from cloth goods to fine china to salt cod. In fact, a bill of lading came to my attention concerning the transport of seven hundred yards of osnaburg to a plantation east of Kingston, and I was reminded of a letter I had copied once for Mr. Wilson at Maysbeck. A plantation attorney somewhere in the West Indies had written complaining of the quality of the fabric that had been sent, that it was too good for the use of negroes and in future more shoddy should go into the manufacture of such materials. It seemed a strange and loathsome request, since the price remained the same, but it was not my place to comment. I copied with diligence Mr. Wilson’s reply: a gentle admonition that Maysbeck Mill was not in the habit of using shoddy in the manufacture of worsteds meant to be used for clothing but would, in future, try to keep his preferences in mind. It dawned on me, sitting in my office in Spanish Town, that that must have been how my father had known Mr. Wilson—that Mr. Wilson had used my father’s ships to export his worsteds to Jamaica.
As those first days slipped by, Sukey kept herself out of my way for the most part, but I became used to her ability to foresee my needs and even my wishes. It seemed there was always a tray of grog and sugar and limes close to hand. Each morning when she brought in breakfast, I made a point of exchanging pleasantries with her, and she came to understand how much I loved pork pies and seemed able to know my mind enough to produce one or two whenever I had a yearning. We did not converse much, but her quiet presence alleviated some of my loneliness in those early days, when I knew almost no one.
In addition to Sukey, there was the young man—Alexander—who hovered around the house, though at first I could not imagine what his function might be. Surely he was not a butler, or even a footman, but he seemed determined to follow me wherever I went. Richard at last explained that Alexander’s responsibility was to be my “walking boy,” the person who accompanied me in case I had need of his services, whatever those services might entail. And he did follow behind as I went to my office, or to a tavern when I had lunch, sitting down outside the door, waiting patiently.
Richard stopped by most days, for breakfast sometimes, but more often in the evening, when the sun was going down and the heat started to dissipate, and we would sit on the veranda with our grog on the railing and talk about nothing in particular. Nearly everyone in Jamaica retired by eight o’clock and rose accordingly early in the morning.
From the start, Richard urged me to go with him to see my plantation, which was under the care of his father’s overseer, and, of course, to see Valley View as well, which he described as one of the most fertile plantations in Middlesex County. Anxious as I was to see my own property, I was still busy learning my way around importing and exporting routines and regulations and taxes. As well, I was mining Richard for as much as he could tell me about plantation operations, for I was determined that my first meeting with Jonas Mason would not reveal complete ignorance and inexperience.
To that end, I quietly but persistently pushed Richard to speak about plantation life, especially about how the places were run and their annual routines. He might not have been interested in such a life for himself, but he knew more than I, and he enjoyed his position of superior knowledge on the subject. He also made sure I knew that I, like all white men on the island, was expected to join the militia, for the purpose of defense against invasion or insurrection. After those years at Black Hill, the idea of being in a militia was intriguing, but from Richard’s description it sounded more like grown men playing at the kind of war games I had grown out of by the time I left Black Hill.
Eventually, Richard won out in his push to get me to Valley View. A ball was to be held at Monteith, a plantation nearby, and the whole neighborhood was invited. The invitation seemed to me an ideal way for me to slip gracefully into the local scene, and Richard assured me that his sister would be in attendance and that she was “dying to meet” me, an assurance that convinced me that it was time to make my appearance. Richard was to leave the next day for Valley View, but I had a few things to attend to, so I planned to go separately and meet him there.
The sky was a clear and crystalline blue that morning when I started out, Alexander trotting behind, and I was looking forward to being in the countryside and viewing for the first time my own cane fields. It was late morning when I approached Valley View, and the moment a little pickaninny saw me, she darted toward the plantation great house to announce me. And what a house it was! Perched on a hill to catch the breezes coming down from the mountains behind it or the southeasterlies from the sea some ten miles away, it was a large, square white house of two stories, with a tiled roof and galleries on all four sides. Sheep grazed languidly on the lawn in front, and nearer to the road were the buildings of the sugar works. Some distance to the west of the house, far enough away from it that any sounds or odors would be dispersed, were the cane-and-daub huts of the negroes, and beside them the little gardens that they maintained for their own use.
I was still thirty yards from the house when Richard came running down the steps and across the lawn to greet me. At the same time, I thought I caught a movement in a window of the house behind him, and I realized I was no doubt being observed. I dismounted, and Richard greeted me profusely, as if we had not just seen each other two days before. “Rochester!” he exclaimed. “At last!”
“What a charming place you have,” I said.
“Charming?” he replied. “Beyond charming, I would say. Turn around, Rochester; look.”
He had told me that the view down the river valley was lovely, but I had had no idea how spectacular it was. Over time the river had found a path toward the sea, carving its way as it went through thick stands of ancient trees and tumbling over boulders, its water frothy with the effort. The quicksilver water, the deep green of the woodlands, the brighter green of the pastureland and the cane fields against the blue sky and sea, made a landscape that both rested the eye and enlivened the mind.
“Beautiful,” I said. “And where is mine?”
“Over there,” he said, pointing to the west. “But come along. You must be starved.”
Alexander was already leading my horse toward the stables: beauty, pleasure, a carefree life—these were my first impressions of Valley View, and it turned out that they were truly emblematic of plantation life, at least for the planters. As I mounted the steps to the great house, it crossed my mind that I had been wasting my time in Spanish Town.
While we were seating ourselves into wickerwork chairs on the veranda, a negress was at my side with a tray containing a pitcher of rum and a glass, a bowl of sugar, and another bowl of cut limes. I had already gotten used to this manner of living, to appreciating grog, whenever or however it was served, and the delicacies that had at first been so unfamiliar to me: the turtle steaks and soup, the plantains, the shellfish. Gentlemen in Jamaica spend a great deal of their time visiting one another and talking around plates of food and mugs of drink. A visitor to a plantation may come for a few hours and end up staying three days. The women of the household—the wife and the daughters, if there are any—are more often than not out of sight. But when they appear—at dinner, for example, or at a ball—they are costumed as if for a coronation.