by Simon Schama
Along with the pestilence came other kinds of plagues and torments. Watching the ominous towers of clouds mass over the forested peaks towards the end of March, Luke Jordan, one of the black captains, anxiously wrote to Clarkson, “I would Not Write to You because I know You are not As well as Aught to be but It is because we are in a Strange Country and we are not well aquinted [sic] with the Rainey Season…but If it Should Come and we have know house what Should we do with Our Selvs?”16 It was a good question. The colony was still a fragile huddle of tents and primitive huts. When, in the early hours of the 2nd of April, the first thunderstorm, with violent gusts of wind, unloaded its deluge, the black settlers discovered just how porous their thatched roofs and wattled walls could be. The rains brought out sudden infestations of ravening insects: swarms of cockroaches, colonies of a red and black striped beetle six inches long and half an inch thick, whose colouring Clarkson likened to Pontypool pottery, and, most terrifyingly, ferocious swarms of ants, black, white and, worst of all, red. Anna Maria wrote feelingly that it might seem strange “that such an insignificant insect is in England should be able, in another country, to storm the habitations of people and drive out the inhabitants,” but she had seen twelve or fourteen families dislodged from their houses and forced to use either fire or scalding water to protect themselves. Sometimes houses caught fire in the attempt to halt the relentless march of the red ants, which would pick a way clean through anything in their path, living or dead, sometimes as big as a chicken or goat. Even some of the deadlier snakes would take avoiding action once the ants were on the march, dropping from hidden nesting places in the roof thatch on to the floor of the huts. The venomous mambas, cobras and kraits were bad enough, but there were also large constrictors (Anna Maria claimed to have seen a nine-foot “serpent”) lying in wait for the domestic animals.
Pythons were not the only opportunists. Leopards sometimes padded into the village for goats, chickens and the settlers’ dogs. After a big cat had been seen at the very doorway of a hut, Clarkson was terrified others might come for the small children, especially when he was told that not so long ago a leopard had taken a sleeping man by the neck and had dropped him only when the man had defended himself by punching the creature in the face! There were other stealthy creatures foiled at the last moment from kidnapping. On the 27th of March a large baboon, foraging at night, seized a twelve-year-old girl and attempted to drag her out of a tent. Her screams woke a man sleeping in the same tent, who caught hold of one of the girl’s arms just as the baboon was leaving with her. “A trial of strength now took place,” Clarkson wrote, “the baboon endeavouring all in its power to carry off the girl and the man equally determined to prevent him.”17 Only when their cries brought more help did the animal give up and run off into the forest.
Clarkson surveyed the desolation with increasing despondency, although not hopelessness. Just when he felt on the brink of despair and resignation, something wonderful would happen. One day at the end of March, between heavy storms, one of the local natives brought him a chameleon in return for rum. Clarkson took the reptile and watched it closely, feeding it sugar from a basket, marvelling at the flickering six-inch tongue, the protuberant eyes swivelling their orbits, the leathery skin going through its rainbow alterations from dark grey to deep blue, then to bottle green, then brighter leaf green, and golden yellow; it made him feel curious, and thus happy. He also knew that, as feeble as his body often felt, he could command his energies and his dignity enough to be respected by the local chiefs who had given the Granville Town settlers so much trouble. King Jimmy had refused invitations to come to Freetown but, dressed to the nines in his old naval uniform complete with cocked hat, had welcomed Clarkson to his village and had offered him wine and water, lifting the calabash to his own lips first to demonstrate its safety—a great gesture of brotherly friendship. Clarkson had sat in the shade beneath the rushes extending out from the circular roofs, surveyed the palms, plantains, papaya and citrus trees flourishing between the round houses, and imagined a kind of tropical plenty that his own people might yet enjoy.
A few days later the Lapwing brought the Naimbana down to King Jimmy’s village for a palaver. He was older, greyer, thinner and sorely missing his London-domiciled son John Frederic. Slightly agog at the chief’s appearance, Clarkson took in the sky blue silk jacket embroidered with silver lace, the striped trousers and green Morocco slippers and the gold-braided cocked hat. Presently the Naimbana removed this bizarre headgear to make way for an old-fashioned hanging judge’s wig (rather past its prime), next to the tail of which swung a necklace carrying as pendant an incongruously Christian resurrection votive, the flag-bearing Lamb, the significance of which Clarkson doubted the Naimbana was fully aware. He was glad to have taken pains himself, dressed in full Windsor scarlet with a brilliant military order pinned to his breast, so that he could assure the Naimbana, on his polite enquiry (after the embrace), that yes, his good friend King George was very well. It worried Clarkson slightly that during this first encounter the Naimbana could not keep from smiling and laughing at him; finally he let it be known that he had never seen so young a king before (among the Temne, advanced age was a sine qua non of highest authority). In the evening they went ashore and Clarkson, now aware of the Naimbana’s respect for the venerable, introduced him to the blind old woman who had congratulated him on his recovery, and who now insisted that she was entering her hundred and eighth year, having aged another four years in as many weeks.
The palaver was attended by the other local chiefs, the Bullom queen Yamacouba and the Afro-Portuguese chief “Signor Domingo,” as well as the Naimbana’s other, French-educated son, who seemed to want to pick a fight; it was a tricky moment. The old grievance of Captain Savage’s raid, which had resulted in the burning down of King Jimmy’s village and the “insulting” conduct of the Andersons’ slave agents on Bance Island, were raised all over again. Clarkson protested that he had had nothing to do with either, and that “as our intentions were peaceable we would endeavour all in our power never to give them cause for offence and would be equally slow in feeling anger towards them…as they knew we had ample means to defend ourselves from any unjust attack, so they would find us resolute and determined in doing ourselves justice upon every occasion.” (Every so often, Clarkson would order the firing of the howitzers to make his point.) Anticipating—correctly—that he would be asked to pay again for the use of the land whose lease had been negotiated by both Thompson and Falconbridge, Clarkson produced a record of what had already been paid and agreed, and asserted that any idea of him paying again was just “fool palaver.”18 As usual, nothing much was agreed, but the edge was taken off the tension—especially when, much against his conscience, Clarkson handed over the hard liquor all the chiefs were demanding. “It was in vain for me to moralize at such a time when the whole population at King Jimmy’s town might be said to be in a state of intoxication.” He was already becoming something of an African pragmatist. And he knew he had, in one important respect, dissembled the intentions of the company directors. For Thornton, Hardcastle and Thomas were full of grandiose plans to expand the colony up and down the coast and up-river, whilst John had been at pains to reassure the chiefs that he had no designs at all on more land. He could not shake out of his head the vision of a young African woman “of a very pleasing countenance” who had come to the settlement one afternoon and argued angrily that the whites meant to take her country and make the people their dependants. When Clarkson had again strenuously denied any such ambition, the handsome woman had pointed to a gun lying on the beach and said, “Those great guns…you white men bring here to take my poor country.” Clarkson records no retort.19
He had known the rains would come. But John could not have expected the tornadoes to be quite so savage, crushing the flimsy huts, sending canvas whirling and flying. First, at sea, a storm the like of which no mariners could recall; now a rainy season that the natives said was the worst in memory. There wer
e certainly days when he felt overcome with revulsion and impotent fury—the days when the torrid humidity built up unbearably and Clarkson would look despondently at unloaded crates, some of them left to wash in the surf, spilling their contents among the salty weed. Or he would consider how everything sharp and precise—scissors, knives, nails—turned rusty and dull in the film of damp that settled over everything. What time was it? How could he know except by the arc of the sun, since his watch and those of the rest of his company had also surrendered to the wetness. Sometimes, mistrusting everyone else, he would go over and over the inventory of dwindling supplies, sure that the councillors, marines, sailors and white workmen were helping themselves to anything that was not actually putrid with mould, especially rum and brandy. In the meantime, his blacks, so abused by the whites, laboured amidst the beasts of the forest, doing what they could to master their terror of the crashing storms and secure the huts before they were swept away in the flood.
If anything, Clarkson felt even more strongly about the free blacks here than he had in Nova Scotia and on the ocean odyssey. He had been proud to line them up in their companies before the old Naimbana, who had gone round shaking hands. “The Nova Scotians, if left to themselves, would fully come up to the Character I have invariably given them, but they have not had fair play.” The wretched system he had been stuck with had given the whites the chance to lord it, unscrupulously, over the blacks, thus undoing all the trust for which Clarkson had laboured so hard through the Nova Scotian winter and that he had preserved on board the fleet. Now they were subjected to the worst of colonial contempt: whites who would abuse and insult them; sometimes be caught raising a hand to them, snigger at them when they complained of not having received, as promised, their plots of land and town lots. These were whites who had pushed the blacks out from waterfront properties; worse, who were so plainly un-Christian—drunken, promiscuous, syphilitic—and who never went near their assemblies of worship to ask forgiveness from the Almighty for all those sins. Clarkson, indeed, feared they were “atheist.” In the meantime, he would get pathetic notes of heartbreaking poignancy from some of the most afflicted blacks:
Sir, I your hum bel Servent begs the faver of your Excelence to See if you will Pleas to Let me hav Som Sope for I am in great want of Som I hav not had aney Since I hav bin to this plais I hav bin Sick and I want to git Som Sope verry much to wash my family Clos for we ar not fit to be Sean for dirt
your hum Susana Smith
bel Servet20
Worst of all was the steady corrosion of trust this misconduct inflicted on the relationship between Clarkson himself and the free blacks, his “children,” who for so long, whatever their questions and querulousness, had always been calmed and reassured by the transparent honesty and authority of the “Honoured Sir.” Gradually he began to sense a welling of grievance and disaffection among people, who were beginning to feel (and perhaps speak their minds) that the promises made in the chapel at Birchtown—for self-government, self-judgement and tax-free land—had been betrayed. Since their stormy dispute before the departure from Halifax, Clarkson was acutely aware that the disaffected had someone of their own to turn to, someone he began to think might now be growing dangerous: Thomas Peters. On the 22nd of March any doubts on this score were removed.
Thomas Peters called upon me this evening and made many complaints; he was extremely violent and indiscreet in his conversation and seemed as if he were desirous of alarming and disheartening the people; his conduct brings to my recollection a passage in a letter I received from my friend and co-adjutor, Mr Hartshorne, who put it into my hands when I took my leave of him, requesting me not to read it until I had been at sea some time; he says in a part of this letter “I would not have you to be too much mortified if Peters should prove a different man than you have a right to respect. I am much afraid that the great attention paid to him in England has raised his idea of his own importance to too great a pitch for either his good or your comfort.” His behaviour this evening would fully impress any stranger with the truth of these observations and he has vexed me extremely.21
Even so, given the list of grievances that Peters had set before Clarkson in so shockingly discordant a manner, he felt duty bound to assemble the people at the “Canvas Room” (now multi-purpose, for dining, praying, palavering and, for the white officers, sleeping). After patiently going through the sources of their discontent, Clarkson thought he had “completely quieted their fears and satisfied them generally of the folly of his [Peters’s] arguments.” Nonetheless, the tension set off the terrible jangling within him once more. After his address in the tent Clarkson went back to his bed just as the crickets and bullfrogs began their chorus, making “the Town and Woods Ring,” and then abandoned himself yet again to “violent hysterics for two or three hours.”22
PETERS observed all this with growing anger and disgust. As soon as he understood that nothing remotely resembling Granville Sharp’s vision of a free black community, or even a colony which could at least police and judge its own people, was going to be realized, he felt that he and his fellow emigrants had been sold to a gang of idle, insolent, bigoted whites who were doing everything they could to rob the free blacks of their due. Was it to be the Nova Scotian story yet again under the tropical sun? Not if Peters was to have anything to do with it. It was, after all, supremely his responsibility, since it had been his appearance in London in November 1790 and his story, told to Sharp and Wilberforce and Thornton, that had led to the great exodus in the first place. And was he now to be implicated in the betrayal? Doubtless Mr Clarkson meant well enough, but he was a sick man with no strength to stand up to the villainy of the councillors and the haughtiness of the whites.
Even before he grasped the situation his people had been placed in, Peters acted as if he had at least a share of Clarkson’s authority. On landing in Sierra Leone, he bypassed both Clarkson and the directors and wrote instead, directly and almost ambassadorially, to Henry Dundas, the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Thanking “Your Lordship” for the favours that had led to the emigration, Peters wrote that “we are intirely Satisfied with the Place and the Climate; and hope that our Fellow-sufferers [back in Nova Scotia] whose circumstances did not permit them to join us, may soon enjoy the same Blessing.” Their treatment on the passage, he reported, had been “very good” even though the provisions were “ordinary”: salt fish four days a week, half of it spoiled, as were most of the turnips. The Sierra Leone natives “are very agreeable with us and we have a Gratefull Sense of His Majesty’s goodness in removing us. We shall always endeavour to form ourselves, according to His Religion and Law’s and endeavour to instruct our Children in the Same.” And Thomas Peters, the first African-American leader, ended with a ringing declaration of his true allegiance: “Long May His Majesty and Royal Family live Blest with Peace and Prosperity here and Eternal Glory hereafter.”23 Peters’s loyalty, then, was to George III and his ministers, to Britain and the promise of British freedom—not to those whom he increasingly thought had suborned it, among whom he was beginning to include Lieutenant Clarkson.
On Easter Sunday four children were baptized by David George, whom Clarkson still counted among his best friends. On leaving the Canvas Room, he was as usual besieged by black settlers who gave him letters and petitions to read. At dinner aboard the Amy later that day he read one from Tobias Humes, warning him of “divisions and fictions” [sic] determined to “elect Mr Peters as their Governor and to petition the Honourable Company at home for that purpose.” If this news, they wrote, had
…reached your honour’s knoledge, you are already armed against their efforts, and excuse your humble servant, if that you are not, I hope that these few lines will put you on your Guard although I write with a trembling hand for I know not how to conduct myself at present and if that my name should come to their ears and denies your protection [sic] my situation is bad—the Preeston People have no hand in the affair at all but they mean to stand fast by yo
ur honour and abide by the consequences so that we subscribe ourselves Your Excellency’s humble servants and faithful friends.
PS We rely on your Honour that our names may be a secret as we know not but our lives are depending.24
Any thought of post-prandial quiet fled. Electrified by the letter, convinced that some sort of rebellion, if not outright revolution, was at hand and must be nipped in the bud, Clarkson summoned a boat and had himself rowed ashore at speed. Having confided in Richard Pepys, the surveyor, he then strode, like a man possessed, all weakness forgotten, up the hill behind the Canvas Room to a wooden, open-frame tower where a great bell hung, the tocsin of the colony. The peals rang out over the shore to the fishing boats, to the men labouring in the forest, and up into the hills. Startled, the population rushed from whatever they were doing to the huge cotton-silk tree that had become the outdoor place for serious palaver. Peters was there, impenitent and impassive. From beneath the shade of the tree’s branches Clarkson addressed himself, in the first instance, to Peters, but loudly and clearly enough for all to hear. He did not mince words.
I said it was probable either one or other of us would be hanged upon that Tree before the Palaver was settled, and holding up the letter I stated the purport of it at the same time observing that I should always consider those who had sent it to me as the best men in the place and I hoped to be able, before I had done, to satisfy the whole Colony that they ought to feel the greatest Obligation to them for having put me on my guard that I might face the Business manfully and recue them and their posterity from the inevitable ruin which must take place if they suffered themselves to be inflamed by such pernicious Councils.25