In Live and Let Die, Fleming describes Jamaica as having ‘some of the most beautiful scenery in the world’. Elsewhere he calls it ‘the most beautiful large island in the world’. Best of all was the variety of landscape. On the cooler uplands lay meadows that reminded Fleming of Ireland or the Tyrol; then, he continues in his Horizon article, ‘you drop down, often through a cathedral of bamboo or a deep-cut gully of ferns’, into the tropical jungle, rich in palms, cotton trees and hardwood; after valleys of sugar cane and bananas, there is the sea, ‘breaking in silver on the reef’ – a description that Fleming would reuse in Live and Let Die, when Bond and Quarrel are driving across the island.
Other Jamaican attractions outlined in the 1947 article are the Great Houses, including ‘Prospect, belonging to Sir Harold Mitchell’ and ‘Bellevue Plantation, belongs to the Bryces’, and the hot springs at Bath and Milk River, the latter boasting ‘the highest radio-activity of any mineral bath in the world’, useful for ‘curing your rheumatism or sciatica (or just having an aphrodisiac binge)’.
The food was plentiful and exciting. Fleming details a mouthwatering menu that includes black crab, roast stuffed suckling pig, and guavas (as Quarrel would make for Bond and Solitaire in Live and Let Die). Here in Jamaica you could gorge yourself on treats unavailable at home, just as Bond would do. There were ‘Unbounded drinks of all sorts’. He also recommends the local weather, the Daily Gleaner - ‘my favourite newspaper above all others in the world’ – the ‘electric rhythms’ of the music, and swimming in a bay after dark, shining ‘like an Oscar, because of the phosphorus’. He was a man clearly passionate about his Jamaica.
The only real shortcomings of the island for Fleming were ‘the mosquitoes, sandflies, grass-ticks and politics. None of these are virulent hazards.’ Having dismissed it as a mere irritation, however, he then goes on to describe his views of the politics of the island in some detail.
Like other incomers, Fleming initially knew little about the political undercurrents on the island, although he does refer in his article to ‘recent disturbances’. Jamaica had been a Crown colony, ruled directly from London, since the 1860s, although twenty years later a very limited form of representative government was introduced. Nevertheless, by the 1930s, only a twelfth of the population was entitled to vote, and real power was still in the hands of the British Governor and the Colonial Office. One Caribbean historian has recently described the politics of this period as a ‘dictatorship of white supremacy’.
The first real challenge to this came from New York. Then, as now, the city played host to a large Jamaican community. New York, with its ‘Harlem Renaissance’, gave West Indians an opportunity that they did not enjoy at home to engage in political activity, and a context in which to assert themselves. In 1936, W Adolphe Roberts, Wilfred Domingo and the Reverend Ethelred Brown launched the Jamaica Progressive League, committed to ‘work for the attainment of self-government for Jamaica’. Soon the organisation was sending activists from New York to Jamaica.
What they found there was atrocious poverty, squalor and governmental neglect. Where tourists and visiting expatriates saw picturesque scenes of time stood still or romantic decline, they saw urgent social and economic problems. Disease and malnourishment were everywhere, and few places off the beaten track had electricity or piped water. A book about Jamaica published in 1938 described the hill dwellers as a ‘lost people’: ‘the children have yaws on their legs, or are blown with midget elephantiasis … there is no doctor here but the Obeah man’. Roads, hospitals and poorhouses were in a disgraceful condition. Education provision was amongst the worst in the Empire, with most children only attending school three times a week, and then in classes of seventy or more. Only 3 per cent of the population was educated beyond the age of ten, and as much as half the black population was illiterate.
Unemployment was rife and the global depression had pushed down wages in the key sugar business to levels not much higher than in 1830. There was growing protest about poor pay and working conditions, including, in 1935, strikes and riots among the banana workers at Oracabessa. This came to a climax in May 1938, when Kirkwood’s new Tate & Lyle sugar factory at Frome advertised for workers. Thousands turned up, and when there was not nearly enough work to go round, riots broke out that claimed the lives of eight men and led to a declaration of martial law. Strikes and rioting spread across the island.
The disturbances saw the emergence of new unions under the leadership of the flamboyant and energetic Alexander Bustamante, and, more widely, a new Jamaican nationalism spearheaded by Norman Manley, a Rhodes scholar and the island’s leading barrister. Manley had fought for the Empire during the First World War as an artilleryman, experiencing violent racial prejudice from his comrades. (His brother Roy was killed near Ypres in 1917, aged twenty-one). His sculptress wife Edna Manley had already started a movement of anti-colonial Jamaican art.
In the same year as these disturbances, Manley launched the socialist People’s National Party (PNP), pledging to ‘raise the standard of living and security of the masses of the people’ and to ‘develop national spirit’. While empire nostalgists like Fleming looked back fondly on the old Jamaica of the Great House, Manley saw the island’s ‘ugly’ past as a ruinous curse that had created a ‘culture of dependency’, making people ‘turgid and lethargic’. ‘We are still a colonial people. The values of the plantation still prevail,’ he lamented. Manley was fond of quoting a British colonial official who had admitted: ‘The Empire and British rule rest on a carefully nurtured sense of inferiority in the governed.’
Norman Manley addressing a crowd during the 1962 election campaign. Intellectually brilliant, hardworking and both tough and sensitive when required, Manley should have led Jamaica to independence. Although he was a fine public speaker, critics say he was too erudite for the ‘ordinary’ Jamaican.
Public Opinion newspaper, founded in 1937 to take on the establishment views of the Daily Gleaner, saw neglect of education in Jamaica as the result of a ‘social oligarchy’ deliberately aiming to ‘nurture a sense of inferiority in the masses’, who as a result ‘are embittered with a feeling of frustration’. ‘Each Jamaican is a smoldering little volcano of resentment,’ warned one magazine writer. Another predicted a ‘revolution because of class resentment’, which ‘would be suppressed by British bayonets and boycotted by Yankee capital’.
During the Second World War, the British Governor of the time, Sir Arthur Richards, used the cover of imperial security to enhance his own powers and harass and arrest his opponents, earning himself the nickname ‘the Repressor’.
But the authorities in London conceded that change had to come. At the Foreign Office, Anthony Eden, who would later, famously, stay at Goldeneye, urged that due to their proximity to the United States, it was essential to ‘make our Colonies in the Caribbean good examples of our Imperial work’. Richards was replaced by Huggins, and in February 1943 a new constitution was proposed that allowed for a House of Representatives on the island, elected by universal adult suffrage. In July 1943, Bustamante, who had been imprisoned for seventeen months for sedition, formed his own political party, the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP), to rival his cousin Norman Manley’s PNP. The election was to be held in December of the following year.
Bustamante, for now, was unsure about self-government, not just because he thought it unaffordable, but because he saw the inevitable outcome as the control of the black masses by the ‘brown’ middle class; what he called ‘a new slavery’. Bustamante was inherently conservative but also a shrewd and opportunistic populist and a stunning orator. To one cheering crowd he declared: ‘We want bread! B-R-E-D bread!’ When the election came, he managed to secure far greater funding than the PNP and to garner the votes of both the elite whites and the poorest blacks, winning twenty-two of the thirty-two seats in the House of Representatives. A disappointed Edna Manley wrote in her diary that ‘I shall never forget the rich people rolling in in their hundreds to vote Labour�
� so as ‘to keep Manley out’. This victory made Bustamante the unofficial government leader, under the title of Minister of Communication. But real power and responsibility resided with the Executive Council, made up of five elected members, or ministers, and five men appointed by the Governor, who himself sat in the chair and therefore kept control.
Alexander Bustamante, with St. William Grant, being freed from prison after arrest for inciting unlawful assembly during the unrest of May 1938. Along with other Jamaican nationalists and trade unionists, he would be arrested again during the first year of World War Two.
Nonetheless, the chance to vote for the first time had given ordinary Jamaicans new confidence that their interests and opinions mattered. As a consequence, support for self-government and involvement in politics grew. From 1945 onwards, this sometimes manifested itself in political violence, with the victims more often innocent bystanders, rival trade-union or party groups rather than the colonial authorities.
Even the wife of the Governor was no longer immune from criticism. Molly’s mass marriages ‘had caused more harm than good. A number of happy homes have come to grief,’ Adolphe Roberts would complain. ‘Lady Huggins,’ wrote Public Opinion, ‘must have been sent out by the Colonial Office to sell British Imperialism. The salesmanship was good but the article for sale was shoddy.’ According to leaders of the PNP, her Women’s Federation constituted ‘political activities’. The Governor, they argued, should ‘put a restraining hand upon her’. There were also hints that her personal conduct was bringing the Governor’s office into disrepute; that he should not ‘let his attractive wife roam at large and, from all appearances, do very much as she liked’.
Molly’s lover, Kirkwood, was furious, and at a party given at King’s House defended her from attacks by the PNP leaders. Edna Manley, who was at the party, noted in her diary that night that ‘Kirkwood had “too many” and went all over the crowd saying “the PNP” is a pack of crooks, bastards and anti-British. He and Lady Huggins are pretty matey. It’s funny because when she came to see me she said she didn’t like him, he was all “I – I – I.” So is she, poor darling.’
In his 1947 Horizon article, Fleming summed up local politics as ‘the usual picture – education bringing a desire for self-government, for riches, for blacker coats and whiter collars, for a greater share (or all) of the prizes which England gets from the colony’. He saw the independence movement as materialistic – an urge to own ‘all the desirable claptrap of the whites’ such as cars and racehorses. ‘Two men are fighting each other to take over the chaperonage of Jamaica,’ he reported, before describing Bustamante as ‘a gorgeous flamboyant rabble-rouser’ and Manley as ‘the local Cripps and white hope of the Harlem communists’. The latter, he declared, has ‘the right wife to help him’. Of the two leaders, Fleming wrote, ‘you would like both of these citizens although they would both say that they want to kick you out’. Fortunately, he concluded, ‘holding wise and successful sway is the Governor, Sir John Huggins’, assisted by Hugh Foot as Colonial Secretary and Lady Molly Huggins, ‘a blonde and muchloved bombshell’. ‘Heaven knows what the island would do without her,’ he added.
Local politics for Fleming, reporting in 1947, was picturesque, populated by ‘zany’ characters, reassuringly old-fashioned rather than a ‘grave danger’. He was confident that the ‘edge’ would be kept off the rising political ‘passions’ by ‘the liberality and wisdom of our present policy’. Pax Britannica, it seemed, still ruled in Jamaica.
1948 Lady Rothermere
Bond knew that he was very close to being in love with her.
Diamonds are Forever
Fleming had written frequently to Ann Rothermere during his 1947 stay at Goldeneye, extolling the wonders of his Jamaica. Later that spring, back in England, their relationship became much more passionate and intense. Fleming stayed close to the Rothermere circle, taking advantage of any absence of Ann’s husband to steal some time with her. Often this was spent in furious argument. On one occasion they were surprised by Ann’s sister-in-law Virginia, who reported: ‘They’d just had the mother and father of all rows. Clearly they thrived on it. They liked hurting each other.’
In late August, the pair met up for a secret rendezvous in Dublin. Afterwards Ann wrote to Ian, ‘I loved being whipped by you and I don’t think I have ever loved like this before … I love being hurt by you and kissed afterwards.’ If they could not be alone, Fleming tagged along with the Rothermere party. They all saw New Year in together at the Chelsea Arts Club, but in January came what Ian and Ann had been most looking forward to: Ann’s first visit to Jamaica.
Considering that she was married to a newspaperman, Ann was incredibly indiscreet when she arrived at Kingston. On page 12 of the Gleaner from 13 January 1948 is a photograph of Ian and Ann standing next to one another, just off the aeroplane from Miami, saying how pleased they were to be there – Ian ‘happy to be home’ – and that they would be staying together at Goldeneye. (The same page carries a large notice of a public meeting with a photograph of Bustamante in full oratorical flow and the appeal: ‘Come in your Thousands!’) With them, as a sort of chaperone, was mutual friend (and a previous lover of Fleming) Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, whose marriage to the Duke had been dissolved the year before after many years of separation. The party was met by the Bryces and conveyed to Bellevue above Kingston, now much refurbished. After a couple of days there, which included lunch with the Governor and Lady Huggins at King’s House, the three headed for Oracabessa.
Lady Rothermere with Lady Huggins in the dining room at King’s House. Ann’s aristocratic background added to Ian’s cachet in Jamaica.
They arrived at Goldeneye ‘at typical tropical sunset hour’. Violet, Holmes the gardener and two other maids were lined up outside to ‘welcome “Commander” with much grinning’. Ian was ‘ecstatically excited’ to be back, Ann reported.
It was very quickly dark, and the night full of the noise of frogs and crickets. Ann suddenly felt a bit depressed, although she hid it from Ian. The house seemed to her to be extremely rudimentary. In fact, Ian’s mother and half-sister Amaryllis had visited the previous month and been so put off that they had moved out to stay in a hotel. ‘The house is scarcely furnished …’ Ann complained. There was a dining alcove with hard wooden benches but nowhere to sit in comfort. At dinner Ian made it clear that his position was ‘facing the window and staring at the night’.
The next morning, Ann woke early. Ian and Loelia were still asleep. She wandered round the outside of the property, noting sea grapes and orange, lemon and grapefruit trees, along with much miscellaneous bush. Then she ventured down the steep stone steps to the small white sand beach directly below the house and plunged in, finding the water ‘warm transparent shallow’. It was dreamy. ‘Depression totally gone,’ she noted. ‘Only Ian could devise this manner of life.’ Climbing back up the steps, she came across him awake, and furious that she had not waited for him to show her everything. ‘Too full of wellbeing to be troubled by this,’ Ann noted. ‘Breakfast of paw paw, black [st’c] mountain coffee, scrambled eggs and bacon.’
Ann’s first visit, gamely posing for Loelia’s camera. Fleming’s girlfriends in Jamaica who didn’t love the reef were given short shrift. But Ann loved snorkelling.
After breakfast, Ian ceased sulking and the two spent ‘a wonderful day of birds, flowers and above all fish’. Masks and snorkels were employed and Ann found the ‘tropical underwater more beautiful than land, strange alarming canyons of coral rock’.
Ann noted that Ian now ‘devised a halcyon way of life’: a swim at sunrise, then Violet brought his shaving water and received instruction on how his eggs should be cooked for breakfast. Fleming was as meticulous about breakfast as Bond would be. After eating, he liked to read in the sunken garden, then go for a potter in his rubber dinghy or march around with Holmes the gardener making plans. The idea was to plant more flowers to attract hummingbirds. In England, Ian always complained that
flowers gave him headaches, but not here. Ann noted dramatically that ‘Each rose has a large black beetle eating its heart out.’ There was also a plan to plant an avenue of palms from the house to the gate on the road. ‘Little will come of this,’ Ann predicted, ‘as it is clear no work will be done in Ian’s absence.’
There was then a martini before lunch, which would be resolutely local fare, such as silk fish or snapper ‘grilled in butter and served with a great deal of rice’. They also had curried goat, or steak. Ann’s favourite was kidneys or liver grilled over charcoal. Any leftovers were taken away by the staff to share with their large families.
Ian was rapidly accumulating reference books on Jamaican shells, birds, fish, flora and the stars to be seen from Goldeneye. Among these was the 1947 edition of Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies by ornithologist James Bond. Loelia was uninterested, but Ann, who had inherited from her father Guy Charteris a keen interest in birds, started using the book as a guide to the specimens found around Goldeneye, which included beautiful rarities such as the tiny vervain hummingbird, or ‘little doctor bird’, and the unique Jamaican woodpecker.
For now, though, the fish were the biggest draw. There was much to admire – butterfly-, angel- and parrotfish, rock beauties and fairy basslets – and there were delicious lobsters to be hunted with trident forks.
Loelia, who described Ian as ‘a curious and complex person, and immensely attractive to women … both clever and conceited’, would usually be left behind as Fleming and Ann went adventuring together. ‘I cannot say I enjoyed my Goldeneye days,’ she later complained. ‘I soon discovered that the reason I had been asked was to spread a thin aura of respectability as chaperone for Ann.’ She and Ian ‘were madly in love’, Loelia wrote, and ‘used to leave in a small boat to fish or study the reef and not return until dusk. I was left on this stick of coral to wander about among the blackamores in the village.’
Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica Page 6