SD1482. George Goodin Barrett (1792-1854) to Edward Moulton-Barrett (father)
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 267 (in part).
St Ann’s Bay.
10 June 1851
My dear Edward.
I have during the last six or seven months been very ill– I came down here nearly four months ago for medical advice and sea bathing, and at last I am getting better. A fortnight ago I began to mend, and within the last 3 or 4 days, I have made still greater progress. Nothing during my illness annoyed me so much as not being able to write to you and thank you for all your kindnesses to Lizzy and myself. Although I cannot in any way repay you these, I can at last repay the money obligations which I am under on her account. Messrs Bravo will remit you a Bill for £80, out of which I wish you to repay yourself, and if there is any thing over to give her £5 as a Xmas box. Not expecting to stay here more than 2 weeks, I did not bring your letter down, which named the times of payment for the schooling, but will consult it when I get back to The Ramble in a week or two. In the mean time should anything be due, pray let me again tax your kindness.
The cholera has been most terrible, not a soul throughout the length and breadth of the island escaped the premonitory symptoms. It has destroyed 1/10th of the population. In England the deaths were one in 300. In this town & neighbourhood it swept away nearly 2 in 3, and if you take only those which remained, for many fled away, the deaths must have amounted to 4 in 5. In Pedros we had 6 deaths only, and these were cases which found their way there from Clarendon & this district. So anticholera in its fatalities is our Pedro climate, that notwithstanding these cases were attended promiscuously by the people, and no provision was or would be made to keep the disease out, yet it never could propagate itself these. Not one indigenous death occurred. By the bye, I think that the severe motling which I wrote to you about as having been got by me in coming up from the Bay was the cause of my long & severe illness. It brought on influenza, which prevented my lying down for a fortnight.
Although the cholera has committed such painful havock amongst the people, it has done me a great deal of good pecuniarily. In fact, I believe, it has been the best friend I have found in Jamaica. It appears to me to have paid off all the claims against my properties, amounting to upwards of £3000. It killed Miss Gaynor or rather Mrs Livingston, and also killed Mr Vidal, leaving me to settle with the H of Assembly for £1800, which, now that his salary as clerk to the House is extinct, they have no means of obtaining but by a long visit in chancery which they will never undertake. Vidal had a good defense, but as the House could have stopped his salary, he preferred paying the money, or rather making me do so; now this defence falls to me without the salary–
We are having the most beautiful season possible for planters. Rains every day & night more or less gentle, with fine warm suns. Edward has been several times at The Retreat, from whence he only returned to Albion last week or so. He says Storm is quite well, but that his cotton speculation was very sick; I believe in the last agonies. I never could imagine, that failing as we do to compete with slave labor in sugar successfully, we could compete successfully with slave labor in cotton. The idea always appeared to me a hobby of ignorant but designing Spanish Town lawyers, taken up by Mr W. W. Anderson, as great a rogue & humbug as any in Jamaica, and persons of his kidney. He grew some cotton in a flower pot or something of that sort, in his window, and then wrote volumes to prove that it could be grown in Jamaica. Why every body knew centuries ago, that the climate & soil here were peculiarly favourable to it, and not a negro garden in “old time” was without it: but the question in reality was, could it be grown to a profit—and he, who never travelled further than from Dan to Bathsheba, undertook to tell us the precise spot where Capt Carey & his unfortunate crew are now lying. He is a regular hypocrite & humbug. The H of Assembly I see have voted him £100 to enable him to take his family to America, and talk over the brown & black population there. Well! he is a good one for “talkee,” but I would not have given him the £100.
Your friend Sir Joshua behaved like a poltroon during the cholera. When the disease first broke out in Spanish Town, he sneaked upon into the mountains; when the disease had left Spanish Town, and was gradually crawling up the mountains, he sneaked back into Spanish Town. But I have always remarked that a man who would lie, could do anything else that is disgraceful and unmanly. How different from Stooke, who stood his ground like a “brick,” and would not move from the neighbourhood of Stewart Town, although I begged him to come to Pedros. We were in great alarm about him notwithstanding his hogsheads of salt, and should have been glad to have had him at Albion in safety.
I am staying here with one of the most skilful planters in the Island, Mr. Royes, and one who is not run away with by every new contrivance to make a planter’s fortune. He lately went to Lord Howard de Walden’s Estate near Spanish Town to see the working of a Centrifugal machine for making sugar. He speaks highly of it, and thinks that it is the most important contrivance in aid of planters, which has appeared for a considerable time. He proposes having one as soon as he can find the ‘the means.’ I would recommend you to direct your attention to the subject, also to another invention, although hitherto it has had no trial here, and that is Bessamer’s cane crusher. We had the drawings of the machine at Windsor, but Mr Royes gives no opinion upon it, not having seen it in operation. He is now busy in putting up a new iron water wheel and iron mill, in place of wooden ones, and they will pay well by the inceased power which the water will have, and the greater facility with which the grinding process will go on. They will cost when up, about £700: they are from a Glasgow house.
Edward desires to be kindly remembered to all your party, and with my love to them & Treppy,
My dear Edward,
Very Affectionately Yours
G. Goodin Barrett
Docket: Captn Barrett / June 10th 1851 / Recd July 7th / Ansd July 16th / Jamaica.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Eton College Library.
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