Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
some of the white West Indians, in that she and her whole family are from England, or rather Scotland,
and were thus burdened at the outset with none of the prejudices of colonials of island stock; though,
indeed, many English people living in the islands adopt the local prejudices with pathetic docility.
In Dominica, fortunately, there is little of the colour feeling for which islands like Barbados and An-
tigua have such a bad reputation, as, apart from Government officials, bank employees and tradesmen,
the static white population amounts to hardly more than fifty. The island, under the ægis of the Admin-
istration in Government House, is almost entirely run by Dominicans. 'So that,' Mrs. Napier said, 'if
anything like a colour bar existed in this place, none of us would ever see anybody.' She is a member of
the House of Representatives—that is, the island equivalent of an M.P.—for the area through which we
were proposing to travel.
It was a great delight to be, for once, surrounded by such quantities of books: the Encyclopædia Brit-
annica, which I had been longing to get at for weeks, books of reference about island history and politics,
and, otherwise, exactly the sort of library one sighs for anywhere. It was equally pleasant to be in a lived-
in house once again, with something more than the temporary patina of a holiday retreat so usual in the
houses of English people in the West Indies.
Drinking equipment of almost Babylonian splendour and a pile of illustrated papers are, all too often,
the only symbols of relaxation in Anglo-Caribbean houses. But this house, in its remote and forested
mountains, was the result of half a lifetime of active pursuits—literature, politics, family, distant journeys
and of a compendious and exhaustive range of interests. Here and there, among the accumulations of
travel, appeared a print of a Scottish country house lying among misty hills, or of a member of the family
in an obsolete and Ouida-esque uniform, bringing to this brilliant tropical world the faint memory of the
Prince of Wales's court in Victorian times.
At last, after nearly a week of idleness and painting and reading and writing, we prepared to move
south.
'It's terrible here, absolutely terrible,' the Polish doctor said, as, early next morning, he drove us through
the rolling woodland. 'Nothing but malaria, congenital syphilis, and yaws.'
He was very civilized and urbane. He had lived in Paris for many years, had been in concentration
camps in Russia and Germany during the war and subsequently escaped to England through France.
Afterwards he had volunteered to take up a practice in the West Indies, expecting something very differ-
ent from these remote fastnesses. We asked him exactly what he had expected. His white buckskin shoe
trod on the brake as three cows strayed into the road from behind a thicket. Then, with a rather dismal
laugh, he shrugged his shoulders and raised both hands from the wheel in an expansive gesture, and said,
'Tr-r-ropical l-life …'
We saw at once what he meant, and that he had, indeed, grounds for complaint. These damp, sad
forests and volcanoes, the quick-falling night and the lack of company, for somebody who does not par-
ticularly care for reading and who finds solitude irksome, must be an appalling contrast to the bridge, the
flirtations, the country clubs, the dozens of parked cars at drink-time, that the words 'tropical life' evoke
in most people in Europe. There were, indeed, at this end of the island only a few isolated miles of road,
leading from nowhere to nowhere, along which to drive the stupendous motor-car brought from Europe
at great cost; which, at that very moment, was reaching the end of its beat. There is no doubt that, without
the adjuncts of a Lady Hester Stanhope-like hermitage such as Pointe Baptiste, life might at times seem
mournful and lost. We pulled up at a Syrian grocery in a little collection of huts called Marigot, to buy
Search WWH ::




Custom Search