FRB, November 1804, written on the merchantman Marguerite.
An Account of my Birth and Childhood
My father, Edmund Rawlins, was born at Stoney Grove, on the island of Nevis, but considering himself an Englishman, he returned to that country upon his majority to find an English wife. This he did in the year 1757. The pair lived in the county of Essex, in the village of Thaxted, at Hundley Hall, the home of my father’s progenitors. I have not seen the house, being unwelcome there, but I recall my father’s descriptions of it, and am glad that I was fortunate enough to have been his daughter at Stoney Grove instead.
After he had been married some years, he grew impatient to return to the Caribbees. His wife refused the trip, and so he went out alone, spending the years 1762 and 1765 on Nevis, and returning to live out his days there after his wife’s death in 1770. His three English sons he surrendered to the care of his brother, my uncle, fearing that life in the Indies would not prove agreeable to ones so young.
I was born on the 14th of November, 1763, at Barrows’s Estate, on the windward side of Nevis. My mother named me for her mother, Fanny, who was brought to the island from Africa as a young woman. Though my grandmother remained a slave to the end of her days, her owner, my grandfather, freed my mother when she reached adulthood.
She went to work for Benjamin Barrows as a maidservant at his mansion, and it was there that my father met and bedded her. I never knew my mother well, for she died at the birth of my brother, Ned, when I was but an infant of three years. Mr. Barrows, though a great friend of the sire, was no friend of the progeny, and said he would be rid of us before my mother’s body was cold in the grave. And so we were taken to live at Stoney Grove, the estate of my father, a short distance from Charlestown.
By the time that I was born, Stoney Grove was already an old estate, having stood in the shadow of Nevis Peak for nearly 50 years. The first house, like most built by men of the 17th century, was of wood, and stood only a storey and a half high. In 1710, my grandfather Rawlins replaced this rude structure with one constructed of rubble walls faced with hewn stone, and roofed with slate brought from England by ship. The thick walls kept it cool within, whilst the windows above and below admitted a steady breeze at all but the stillest season of the year.
He furnished the house with polished mahogany tables, gilt looking glasses and leather campeachy chairs, and although it was neither fashionable nor well appointed, I still recall it as tasteful and elegant in its simplicity. It slumbered beneath the shade of an ancient silk tree, on a small hill surrounded by pleasant grounds filled with fragrant bushes and fruit trees.
A short distance from the house sat a number of buildings: kitchen, laundry, stables and further still, the mill and sugarworks where the cane was broken and boiled and the sugar formed in great earthen jars. These I was forbidden to visit during the harvest, for many slaves lost their limbs, and indeed their lives, to the great grinding wheels that crushed the cane, or to the scalding cauldrons of boiling juice from which the sweet sugar was derived.
As a child I was often alone, for my mother was dead and my father gone to England. At his insistence, I lived in the great house with Miss Craighill, an antique lady who had been nurse to him, and Sawney, my infant brother’s wetnurse. Three other women shared the habitation with us, Juba the cook, and Maria and Latitia, the washerwoman and maid. Like my grandmother, Sawney was an African, Guinea born, with country marks on her face and arms. In the heat of the afternoon, when Miss Craighill lay abed and my brother slumbered too, we often sat beside the cool stucco walls of the cistern and she told me tales of Annancy, the spider, and of jumbies, and of crossroads on moonlit nights. Each morning, Sawney took us bathing in the warm sea near Pinney's Estate, and under her tutelage, I quickly learned to swim. Indeed, so pleasant was the water and so gentle the current that Ned joined the play of the fishes long before his skills on land surpassed those of the crab. Following our bath, we would dry ourselves on the warm sand of the beach, and then make our way home, rambling along the roadside in search of a mango or papaya to ease our hunger until the noonday meal.These morning walks proved among the most valuable lessons of my childhood, for Sawney taught us about the world around us. She cautioned us to avoid the manchineel tree, whose fruits were poisoned and whose very shade was fraught with danger for, if wetted by a passing shower, the leaves dripped a caustic solution that blistered and burned the skin. She showed us the aloe plant that God had made to defeat the malice of the manchineel, and taught us to spread its gel on our faces and limbs if we had lingered too long in the sun. We learned how to cut cane and suck the sweet juices from it, how to break open a ripe coconut and scoop out its crunchy core, and how to avoid the centipede and the great spider that scurried through the wilderness.
Like all young girls, I was attracted to the beauty of the flowers that surrounded our house and grew wild along the roadside. Sawney taught me that these plants were put on earth not only to share their beauty, but to cure a variety of ills. We would gather leaves and flowers in great bunches, and she would carry them to the quarters to share this pharmacopoeia with mothers of ailing infants or adults crippled with years of hard labour. I learned to respect the mysteries of the earth, for like the aloe and the manchineel, she provided many things that a person adept in her lore could use to cure or to kill.
On Sundays, my grandmother came to visit me on her way home from the market in Charlestown. She kept grounds in the hills above Watkins’s Estate, and sold bananas and tamarinds, mangoes and shaddocks, cassava and yams in town. From time to time she would take me to visit the grave of my mother, and we would carry small presents to leave for her there. One day I asked her if she were to be buried beside her daughter.
"When my breath leaves me, daughter, I will fly across the sea to be with my people," she replied.
"Is that where my mother is now?" I asked.
Her face filled with sadness and she told me nay, my mother was Nevis born, and had the blood of an Englishman in her. "Just as I bear my country marks, you and your mother bear yours," she sighed. It was not until years later that I understood what she meant, for my skin was smooth and no one had yet scarred me.
Fanny Blake Manuscript, Part 2 When I was a girl of seven, my father came to stay at Stoney Grove. Though I did not remember him, for I had been an infant when last he had seen me, I heard of his coming, and solemnly prepared to meet him. The overseer, Mr. Grindle, took me and Ned to the harbour to greet his ship, and we rode back home together in a wagon piled high with goods from England.Upon surveying us, he cautioned Ned that he must work hard in life so that he should not be a source of disgrace to his brothers, and then laughing, lifted him into the air and perched him on his shoulder. He told me that I was to grow up to be an English lady, and that I must learn to read and write, to dance and play the harpsichord. I told him I could read and write, and penned my name for him. With this he was well pleased.
He engaged a tutor for Ned and me, a young Glaswegian lady from Wilkerton’s estate by the name of Stewart. She instructed us for many years, and I came to master French, Latin and Greek, history, literature, mathematics and the domestic arts. When I grew older, the dance master, Mr. Pierson, visited weekly, and taught Ned and I the steps fashionable in London.
At my father’s return, we were introduced to the Anglican faith. I had not known the English God before, as Miss Craighill was an indifferent church-goer, and Sawney and my grandmother kept their own ways. Each Sunday Ned and I would ride with my father to Fig Tree Church and pass the day within its walls. The first time we entered the church, I was afraid, as I had never witnessed such a congregation of pale countenances. It seemed as though all the jumbies on the island had gathered together, but as I looked more closely, I recognized Mr. Watkins, Mr. Barrows, and some other acquaintances of my father’s who had come to call at Stoney Grove. They greeted me courteously, and I soon grew accustomed to this new society.
My father wished us to be instructed in the ways of the church, and added theology to our school-room regimen. As a child I did not understand how the English God could promise everlasting life, and take my mother, or preach goodness to our fellow man, and countenance the cruelty of the sugar works on Nevis.
Sundays being Church days precluded the accustomed visits of my grandmother, who, like others of her station, spent the day on the streets of Charlestown with her countrymen. As it was customary for slaves to conclude their labour each week at Saturday noon, she asked my father if she might be permitted to visit Ned and me on Saturday evenings. He agreed, and ever after we passed the appointed time in each other’s company.
At my father's return, the solitude of my childhood lessened, and I began to take the first of many small steps into society. In earnest he set about reviving the acquaintances of his youth, adding to them the business associates he had contracted during his years in trade, so that most evenings our little circle welcomed a new member. After a brief courtesy I withdrew to my small chair in the corner of the veranda, and sat exploring the unknown territory of some new face as he engaged the visitor in lively conversation and shared a glass or two of rum.
For the most part, these evenings were masculine affairs, for, in lacking a wife, and the inclination to procure a new one, my father lacked that which society required of him to draw the company of ladies to our estate. He and his guests never tired of remarking on the latest price of sugar, the growing unrest between the colonies and Britain, and the state of the island's defenses.
On the occasions when our visitors had lately arrived from England, I was welcomed into their circle, for my father admonished that I would soon enough be a lady living in that country, and I must become familiar with its customs and fashions.
One evening, when I was a girl of ten, I asked him if I should live at Hundley Hall with my English brothers. "I think not," he answered. "Will I live with Ned in England?" I pressed, to which I received the same response. I urged him to tell me how I should be a lady if I had no home, but he would not, or could not, give me an answer. My tutor chanced to overhear the conversation, and later that night told me to pay no heed to my father's words. "I'm afraid you'll never be a lady, whether 'tis here or in England," she sighed. As she had not only contradicted my father, but urged that I should be disloyal to him, I resolved that I would prove her wrong.
Fanny Blake Manuscript, Part 3
During the summer of my eighth year, Nevis was visited by a series of dreadful storms. I had already learned to associate such events with death, as the only other hurricane in my brief existence had closely followed the loss of my mother. The word conjured up dim memories of screaming wind, of darkness, and of the infant-howls of Ned.
The storms of 1772, I can recall, even now, with crystal clarity. The first was presaged by a clear, bright, cloudless day. Waves, ever increasing in size, began to beat against the beach, and sailors reported seeing schools of fish darting just beneath the surface of the sea. The wind that began as a gentle breeze grew to a steady gust. By nightfall it had begun to carry the shingles off of rooftops and palm fronds across the yard. As darkness fell, the rain set in, pattering, then drumming, then beating down in great stinging sheets that blinded and choked us when we ventured outside to rescue a toy, forgotten in the stillness of the afternoon. Soon the wind began to shriek like the wails of the undead, and the air was filled with sounds like gunshots as tree limbs broke beneath the strain.
Though our house had weathered eleven such onslaughts since its cornerstone was laid, we feared for our lives, and took refuge in the wine cellar, with Miss Craighill, Mr. Grindle and his wife and children, Sawney and the remainder of the domestic staff. My father’s slaves were left to seek refuge from the storm in the windmill tower, the boiling house, the distillery or the ruins of the lime kiln. A few lingered in their quarters, rude huts made of woven sticks and palm thatch. Not one of these withstood the elements, and when the morning light dawned, the wretched inhabitants were left homeless, exhausted, and without a shred of dry clothing or a morsel of food. All had been consumed by the wind.
We had barely begun to address the wrongs that this storm had inflicted when, just three days later, a second hurricane, nearly as fierce as the first, vented its fury upon us. No lives were lost at Stoney Grove, but the roof was ripped from its mooring, the garden was flattened, and the misery of the slaves was, at last, shared by us all. Indeed, such misery engulfed the island, for scarcely a house was left standing, nor a ship left afloat in the harbour. Those that had not run aground, pushed relentlessly against the shore by the pounding waves and violent wind, sank at their moorings under the sheer volume of water amassed from the rain.
When later that season a third storm struck, we despaired. Our rude repairs could not hold the wind, the sea, and the sky at bay. Mercifully, the last storm did not equal the strength of her sisters, and we survived once more.
In the wake of the second storm, the antique custom of fasting on Sundays was reintroduced. As there was little food in its aftermath, the Sunday fast extended, without the sanction of the Church, to the rest of the week as well. The livestock had all perished in the hurricane, and though hundreds of fish lay washed up on the shore, the hot sun of late summer quickly rotted their flesh, and the stench could be smelled for miles. Our fruits littered the ground, battered and smashed, and the cane lay flattened in a dense mat across the fields. We lived on sailor’s fare: salt cod, biscuits, Madiera and rum, sharing with our neighbors when their stores ran out. During this time, my grandmother ceased to visit, needing the time to forage for food and begin to rebuild her home and replant her garden. Finally, by early November, the season ended, and ships began to return to the harbour, laden with supplies.
We were to experience three more hurricanes that decade, each bringing their share of misery to the island. The first two, in 1775 and 1776, left minimal damage to our estate in their wake. By then I had begun to leave the irrational fears of childhood behind, and was able to provide some solace to my brother and to Mr. Grindle's children who gathered around us as we took shelter in the cellar. In the aftermath of each, I helped my father to organize the clean-up and repair of the estate and the distribution of new provisions to the labourers who had lost their homes. In this way, and many others under less trying circumstances, I began to exercise the skills of domestic management requisite in a West Indian housewife.
Though far graver in its impact, the last great storm of the decade was providential, for in coming as it did on the 4th of September, 1779, it freed us from the grip of the French. Great Britain, our protector, being at war with the rebellious colonies to our north, had removed her fleet to northern waters, leaving Nevis and her neighbors vulnerable to attack from enemy nations. Seizing this opportunity, the French, under the leadership of Admiral Count d'Estaing, gathered a fleet of warships and laid seige. The hurricane broke the blockade, smashing her ships and sinking them without a trace. While we suffered greatly in the wake of the storm, our suffering was eased by our knowledge that our enemies had suffered more.
In that year I was a young woman, two months shy of my sixteenth birthday. My childhood had ended, and the storm clouds of adulthood gathered around me.