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changed into corduroy and tweed, indistinguishable from English country people. The darker colour of
the children—almost non-existent among the older villagers—indicated that mixed marriages are becom-
ing more frequent. One old woman we met said that her family was Scottish, or so she thought; probably
one of the 'unruly Scots' deported to the Indies by Cromwell. In the village school I had a look through
the list of the children's names. Several of them were Scotch—Alexander, Campbell, Kerr—and the oth-
ers looked completely English, not at once noticeably deriving, I should have thought, from any specific
region—Dowden, Edwards, Greaves, Medford, Searles, Winbush—but as likely to have originated in the
south-western counties as anywhere. Two of the boys had the Christian names of Aubrey and Taflin, and
a little girl, I noticed with interest, was called Lilith.
The Government House of Grenada is a building suitable to the dignity of the Governor and
Commander-in-Chief of the Windward Islands. For Sir Arthur Grimble's hegemony embraced not only
Grenada, but Carriacou and the Grenadine islands, St. Vincent and St. Lucia, and, since 1940, it has flung
out a long loop to the north to include Dominica, which until then belonged to the administrative unit of
the Leeward Islands. The Government Houses of Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent are the bases of
three Administrators who, in the absence of the Governor in Grenada, preside over the affairs of the three
colonies.
We spent pleasant, unhurried hours there, looking at Rosemary Grimble's beautiful drawings of Carib-
bean life, or talking with the Governor about Island life and, among other things, I remember, of religion
and politics, and books and poetry and sonnet-forms; and listening to our host's accounts of Pacific Is-
lands: hours of singular charm that always came to an end too soon. The Governor was about to retire
and settle in England after half a lifetime spent in helping to administer and, later, in governing different
parts of the Empire. A note of valediction pervaded those large and beautifully proportioned rooms; and
we also felt sadder at the prospect of leaving Grenada than we had felt anywhere else.
Half-way down the hill on our last night, we stopped to gaze at the Seventh Day Adventist chapel,
a lovely classical building, built entirely of wood, with a pediment sustained by fine Doric columns; as
cool and serene among the moonlit trees as though it had been built out of Parian marble on a headland
in Attica. There must be something in the atmosphere of Grenada that prevents an architect from going
wrong.
All the lights were out in the rectory, and the quayside was silent. The sea here is not relegated to a
slum as though it were a magnified drain. It is right in the town, and the houses begin at the quay. The
air in some of the back lanes is heavy with the smell of stored spices, and the shops on the waterfront are
deep, cool caves of shade reaching back from a colonnade of rounded vaults. Grocers and ships' chand-
lers mostly.
As we strolled along the quay, hardly a ripple moved the reflections of the sloops and the street lamps
and the moon. They hung drowned and immobile in the middle of the sleeping town. The stars shone like
blue pendant balls, so close, in appearance, that an outstretched hand might almost pluck them down.
But the capital was not quite asleep, for the sound of singing came floating down the lanes. We pursued
it to its source, and, climbing a flight of stairs, looked into a kind of parish hall. About a hundred Grenadi-
ans were lustily singing, and a white clergyman, with his mouth also manfully distended in song, played
a harmonium. He accentuated the beat by swinging his head, in a semi-jocular fashion, from side to
side. They were practising carols—a fact that made us suddenly realize how close we were to Christmas.
'Through de rude wind's wild lament,' they roared, 'and de bitter wedder.' The mixture of familiarity and
unfamiliarity was pleasing and strange. At first I could not understand why it should seem so odd. ' …
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