Vol 3 Section 0709

Pedlers, with cheap cigars, guava jelly, etc. When all had made a harvest & gone, a gray-headed Negro who had sold nothing, recognized Mr. Rogers, with a joyful shout—

“Members you, suh, puffeckly!—seed you a hund’d times when you uz captain o’ de battleship Galena!” Ths gross & bald-headed flattery pulled a Spanish dollar out of the late Captain of the Galena [MTP].

Hélène Elisabeth Picard wrote to Sam. She’d just received photos of Joan and the little house in Domremy and they were “sent by the same mail”—if he wanted “more he only had to say the word….The

photos are taken from frescoes in the Pantheon, and it is always the same woman that stood for Joan of Arc. Lenepveu painted them, and you have some of his, at least two, in the Recollections” She was anxious to receive the rules of the Juggernaut Club [MTP]. Note: Jules Eugene Lenepveu (1819-1898), born Jules Eugène Lenepveu Boussaroque de Lafont, French Neoclassical painter who became famous for his vast canvasses and the ceilings of the Opera de Paris.

March 28 Friday – Sam’s Mar. 29 to Livy related this days’ activities in Kingston, Jamaica.

We found Kingston rather uninteresting, & full of the dulnesses & serenities of Good Friday. We sailed for Santiago, but got no further than this place [Boden, Jamaica ] (40 miles) when the barometer presaged a storm & we came in & anchored. It is a deep & sheltered bay, & the water is a delicate green in color & limpid & brilliant. The shores & hills & mountain sides are solid with cocoa-nut groves. We spent the whole afternoon until after dark, in a drive behind fast mules, through the great hills, the most prodigal & marvelous exhibition of tropical vegetation imaginable. It realized the most frantic dreams of the travel-books. The mere multitudinous names of the rare plants & trees was enough to bewilder the mind. The land is just a tangled jungle of strange & beautiful foliage—just a storm of it! But seldom a bird, seldom an animal, never a monkey. What it needs is monkeys. Forests veiled & draped in vines & explosions of bloom to the mountain-tops—& no monkeys. This is all wrong. It was a grand day, & makes all other days of the trip poor & commonplace by comparison [MTP].

Sam’s notebook: “Capt. of the Galena—cost $1. [see Mar. 27 entry] / Good Friday. Sailed 5 a.m. at 8 barometer went up & we took refuge in a lovely little bay. ‘Where’er thy holy islands life their fronded palms in air.’ Pilot $22 to bring us in & out: 3 boys $5 a month & fruits & cocoanut water They go 50 mi from home

      40 out to sea—are out a week. 8,000 acres of dense cocoa-palms planted 8 years ago. Golden Grove RR trip—hot spring—Bath garden—jungle. Brutal drivesr. / LEAN DOGS / NO CATS [NB 45 TS 7-8;]. Gribben writes that Sam was trying to recall lines from John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem, “The Eternal Goodness” [766].

Sam’s ship log:

BOWDEN’S.

Good-Friday, March 28. Sailed at 5 a.m. At 8, barometer went flying up, the sea grew wild & tumbly, & we took refuge in a deep & smooth little blue-water bay whose hilly shores were densely clothed in cocoa-palms. These were all planted 8 years ago, & are the property of the great fruit company that has its headquarters in Boston. It owns miles of cocoanut groves & banana plantations, & has fleet of 78 ships. It is shipping a million bunches of bananas a month.

Visited the Company’s hotel on the hill-top. Some Bostonians there, for health, not excitement.

As guests of the Company, made a railway trip to Golden Grove, 8 miles—all the way through the Company’s plantations.

Sugar mill in ruins at Golden Grove. The sugar business is dead in Jamaica.

We took to carriages & were driven up into the mountains, over admirable roads, & through a marvelous tropical vegetation, prodigal beyond imagination in variety & richness. Apparently every nut & fruit & fibre & timber produced in tropical lands & known to commerce is in the island’s list of outputs.

On the return, visited the remains of the fine botanical garden at the village of Bath. Lunched.

Resumed the drive. Reached the dock well after dark, dog-tired [MTP].

Livy’s diary: “Clara Stanchfield came for a few days” [MTP: DV161].

SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.