Sancta Simplicitas
The Diary of the Rev. William Jones. Edited by 0. F. Christie. (Brentano, 21s.)
Ix the year 1777, William Jones, the writer of this intimate diary, so full of sidelights upon eighteenth-century society and the dateless human heart, was a poor student at Oxford, " alone within the dismal college walls and very discontented." Brought up in a narrow evangelical home and educated at a Welsh Grammar School, he had been encouraged to dwell upon his own outstanding sinfulness, while not over- looking that of his " fellow worms." The poor boy found the atmosphere of Jesus College wholly uncongenial. The Principal, however, seems to have been favourably impressed by the shy and scholarly young man, while perhaps realizing that lie was out of his element ; anyhow, he recommended him as tutor to the sons of the Attorney-General of Jamaica, and in 1778 we find him setting out for the West Indies, delighted with the adventure and " flushed with the pleasing expectation of being thus raised above the frowns of the world."
The young tutor's impressions of Jamaica are somewhat contradictory. He was extraordinarily lucky in his employer and in his pupils. Mr. Thomas Harrison, as the diarist introduces us to him, is a delightful man of the world, easy of access, tolerant, and sympathetic. He sees what a good fellow Jones is and, while not sharing his evangelical views, respects them. Jones on his side is quickly led to wonder if so much goodness must necessarily be regarded as unregenerate."
At first he is pleased with all he sees and looks favourably even upon the institution of slavery. The negroes strike him as care-free, happy, and well treated. Mr. Harrison is a philanthropist who acts upon his own convictions and does not speak against his neighbours, his wife is an amiable lady, his sons have their father's charm. They accept their tutor as their friend.
" My happiness with regard to my little boys is very great. The eldest is rather opinionative yet I can easily manage him. The two middlemost are possessed of an amazing sensibility. Whatever home reproof I may give either, or all, of them upon occasion, it never causes any variance which lasts many moments. They never seem to bear the least resentment, nor can I, we always sit down to dinner together upon most loving terms."
This pleasant family he soon finds out to be far from typical. Ile realizes that he is in the midst of a dissolute society, living in fear. Never free of the menace of slave rebellions, they sanction "the unequalled savage cruelty of barbarous overseers," at the same time overworking and underfeeding their slaves who suffer in physique and worth and " never multiply." " 'Twould make the heart of any man of sensibility bleed to hear the groans and cries of negroes tortured to please the wantonness of devils incarnate." Not that Jones is sentimental about the negro. He regrets deeply that his persecutors imitate him, and that in a sense. he influences his masters. Even his " gibberish " becomes the slang of the white man, whose children are " conversant " with their slaves to their moral detriment. He sees, too, that even the " devils incarnate " may be pitied. They work some of them as hard as the negroes under circumstances which they are less able to stand. The air of the island is productive of melancholy, " blue devils " prey upon the white man, who becomes reckless in the effort to drown thought. The young Welshman gets a horror of the place, " a place," as Dr. Johnson called it, " of .great wealth and dreadful wickedness, a den of tyrants and a dungeon of slaves."
When, after two years he sets sail for England, he notes the moment at which he " lost sight of the island," hoping never
to see it again. All the same he made in Jamaica friendships which lasted his lifetime ; two of his " little boys " returned with him to England, and in his later diaries his visit to the West Indies is described as the happiest two years of his life.
William Jones never again left England, indeed he passed nearly all the rest of his life at Broxbourne in Hertfordshire, as a curate and then as vicar. Always a poor man he earned food for himself and his family, first by taking pupils, and later on by taking " foreign boarders," who seem to have been grown-up people, chiefly Swiss, desirous of learning
English. His life was quite uneventful, but in the telling it becomes amusing and touching. His editor, who is also his great grandson, has left no dull page.
The parson married, for love, Theodosia Jessop, a lady coming from the same legal family which later produced the famous divine, wit, and historian, Dr. Jessop, of Victorian fame. Her husband dwells much upon the lady's capacity for getting both the best of an argument and her own way. Did she inherit it or acquire it "in the management of me " ? he asks rather ruefully. Before he saw her, his ideas about matrimony were, he tells us, " very airy and novelish." He finds " something bewitching in the character and composi- tion of woman," but his admiration is very general.. As soon as he sees "Dosy " Jessop he falls in love in good earnest, and it is some little while before he realizes that she is and must always be the senior partner, the better horse. When he finds it out he ceases to be in love. All the same he is not unfair to Dosy. " Though wanting in mildness and gentleness to me," and having " a most un- pleasant harsh way of being right," she is, nevertheless, a good housewife and " a pattern mother." Indeed, she seems to have been as tenderly devoted to her numerous offspring as was William himself, and truly no more could be said. The whole attitude of this good natured man towards his pupils and his children is a startling comment upon the harshness and severity supposed to be universal in his day. When his little daughter dies, he writes in deep distress, " I was her Father, she has been my dear little Monitress." Clearly he was not born to rule.
Mrs. Jones very soon became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and we find her husband suffering agonies of mind from fear lest she should find out that he has lent £30 without much hope of repayment. Without her good management, however, they would all have been in the workhouse. The fact that they were " somewhat before-hand with the world," was, as he says, owing entirely to " the blessing of Heaven, Mrs. J.'s economy." Personally he hated economy as much as he hated boarders, to whom he must teach English, but " let me submit since you will not" had to be his attitude on pain of seeing the children hungry
His income, in fact, was not what it appeared upon paper. He had to collect the tithes himself, and he simply could not get them out of the farmers ; some insulted him and gave too little, others refused point-blank to pay at all. But boarders paid, they created " bustle " which Mrs. Jones loved, and they made an excuse for " post-chaise jaunts," and card-playing which she loved better still. Both husband and wife went occasionally to London, but the parson disliked " the variety of stench," and preferred to take his pleasure dining out with country neighbours. At these dinners, which did not occur often, he seems to have been a little inclined to misbehave himself. The wine gives him " broken and unquiet slumbers " and loosens his tongue. " I meet men and women of the world, who see, hear and laugh at my folly," he groans, " not witnessing my painful after feelings." The wise man's advice to " Know Thyself " was not wasted on this simple soul. " Nothing," he writes, " but the grace of God can make me cease to be a fool." " Not all his rage of wishing " could give him any success in the conduct of life. All the same he was a very lovable fool, though his wife could not see it. Besides his diary he kept a sort of journal called " The Book of Domestic Lamentations." More than once he proposed to destroy it, but could not make his mind up to the sacrifice. The book has never been found. " Dosy " survived him and doubtless she burnt it. Is it ill-natured to hope that she read it first ?
Previous page
