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What’s in a name? Petronella Wyatt goes in search of her tale in darkly …

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By
Petronella Wyatt


PUBLISHED:

08:25 EST, 6 October 2013


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UPDATED:

08:30 EST, 6 October 2013

I am ringing the huge bell at the barred gates of Greenwood Great House in Jamaica, which once belonged to the family of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. No one answers.

It is 96F in the shade and I am cursing my mother. I got my name because of Greenwood, or rather Jean Rhys, author of The Wild Sargasso Sea, the tragic story of the first Mrs Rochester, a beautiful white Jamaican driven to madness by the cruelty of her English husband.

Greenwood Great House

Ghosts of the past: Petronella’s name was inspired by goings-on at Greenwood Great House

When my mother was pregnant, a friend brought Rhys to see her. She was wearing a large hat and was a little drunk. ‘Have you got a name yet, if it’s a girl?’ she asked my mother, who shook her head. ‘I knew a white Creole woman who lived on a Jamaican plantation called Greenwood.

‘Have you been to Jamaica? It’s like the garden in the Bible. And the snake is the scandal of those houses.’

So I became Petronella, and all my life I wanted to see the garden in the Bible and its great houses and hear their scandals. I am finally here.

I am staying at the Sandals Royal Plantation in Ocho Rios. In plantation style, I have a butler, Audley, who has run me a bath sprinkled with hibiscus flowers and is uncorking champagne on my veranda.

The Royal Plantation is on the site of a former fruit plantation. The mango trees still provide for the guests. Peter Fraser, the elegant manager, tells me that before Sandals, The Royal Plantation was managed by an eccentric Englishman called Sydney Attwood whose hobbies were illicit sex and buying grand pianos. ‘After a rather nasty indiscretion, he had to leave Jamaica altogether,’ he says.

Now the hotel is run with the precision and hedonistic bounty of the old planters, with breakfasts of home-made jams, croissants and white-hatted chefs flipping eggs and spiced sausage; afternoon tea on the colonnaded terrace, with perfectly cut cucumber sandwiches and fresh scones; and silver trays of mimosas, champagne and rum punches on the private beach before noon.

People have always started drinking early in Jamaica. Errol Flynn drank himself to death at his house near Frenchman’s Cove. There is a darkness in the shadows beneath the bright palm fronds.

Petronella Wyatt

Jean Rhys

A personal tale: Petronella Wyatt (left) and (right) the author Jean Rhys, who played a part in inspiring her name

Slavery was abolished here in 1833, but as the young Mr Rochester finds when he meets Jamaican heiress Antoinette Cosway in Jean Rhys’s book, emancipation aired secrets of terrible consequence.

The Spanish were the first to come here, in the 16th century, but English and Scots took over by 1655 and began to build houses and lives of unimaginable opulence. The fortunes of the plantation owners rested on sugar cane, rum, coffee and slavery.

It was, and is, an island of voices speaking different languages, speaking of things that tell of cruelty, humiliation and fear.

Marina Delfos, of the Jamaican Georgian Society, tells me: ‘In Falmouth, which was founded by the Cornish, there were once more Jews than in New York. People escaped here. They all lived side my side: whites, free blacks who kept slaves themselves, Jews, Anglicans. They got together sexually, too, but racial intermarriage didn’t always work.’

Racial mixing is supposed to be the dark secret of the Barrett family, who built Greenwood plantation.

In 1655, Colonel Hershey Barrett was sent by Oliver Cromwell to capture Hispaniola from the Spanish. He failed, but captured Jamaica instead. Cromwell granted him large tracts of land, and by the end of the 18th century the Barretts owned more than 84,000 acres and 3,000 slaves and had built Greenwood, the finest house on the island.

Like similarly enriched English families, the Barretts also bought a grand house in London’s Wimpole Street. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s father Edward went to live there in 1795, accompanied by his beautiful sister Sarah, known as ‘Pinkie’, who was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Sandals Royal Plantation

A slice of Caribbean luxury: Petronella stayed at the Sandals Royal Plantation in Ocho Rios

Greenwood is on a hill overlooking Montego Bay.

It is a paradise, but a mortal one, both fecund and rotting.

The road to the house in almost impassable. It is now owned by Bob and Ann Betton. He is a black Jamaican, she a white American. As the tour guide lets me in, Ann stares at me with bloodshot eyes. The tour guide waves her arm: ‘That is a croquet lawn. I mean that is the remains of a croquet lawn.’

The gardens at Greenwood are wild and the paths overgrown. There is a smell of dead flowers with the fresh scent of hibiscus and orchids richer than I have ever seen. The house itself is in good repair, but many things rot in the Jamaican climate.

Greenwood has the finest library in the Caribbean, with signed first editions of Dickens, who was a family friend. There’s a desk that belonged to Edward VII, a Wedgwood dinner set and Ming porcelain. The bedrooms have four-posters.

The planters lived extravagantly. They gave formal balls as if they were in London. Musicians were scarce, so the Barretts imported the largest collection of polyphon music boxes in the West Indies. They still tinkle out waltzes when someone works the pedals and arms.

The English despised the white Creoles like Antoinette Cosway, with their ‘un-European ways’; the freed blacks despised the slaves and the slaves practised voodoo, or Obeah.

Their masters, too, lived in fear.

Sandals Royal Plantation

Classic chic: The Sandals Royal Plantation offers a sophisticated style of accommodation

During Christmas 1831, there was a slave uprising and many plantation houses were burned down. The Barretts were lucky; their slaves were well-treated and educated. Out of gratitude, their house was spared. But there were complications that blighted the lives of Elizabeth Barrett and her siblings. Brought up in London, they were kept virtual prisoners by the tyrannical Edward, until Elizabeth ran away with her poet lover Robert Browning.

‘Hollywood made films about it, but they didn’t tell the truth. Outside Jamaica it was thought the father was just nasty and possessive,’ I am told by the woman who runs the neighbouring fish restaurant. ‘But the father didn’t want them to marry because they had coloured blood and he was afraid one of their children might be black.’

The Palmer family of Rose Hall were nearly finished by the slave revolt. It is one of the most grandiose plantations, built in 1770. An imposing Georgian edifice, the white facade flanked by marble stairways, it was the home of the infamous Annie Palmer, known as ‘the white witch of Rose Hall.’ Born in Haiti of English descent and allegedly reared by an Obeah priestess, she married John Rose Palmer in 1820, but murdered him after he objected to her having sex with the slaves.

LaToya, my guide, says: ‘Annie was very hot-tempered.’ Her bedroom is upholstered in red, ‘because she liked the colour of blood’. Here she practised Obeah and poisoned and stabbed her next two husbands while placing a deadly curse on a free coloured girl who had taken the eye of her handsome English overseer, who was also her lover. Annie was allegedly killed in the uprising, by the girl’s grandfather. ‘Many people who sleep here have seen her ghost,’ says LaToya.

Sandals Royal Plantation

Fountains and foliage: Sandals Royal Plantation brings a touch of grandeur to Jamaica’s north coast

Annie’s history may be a little exaggerated but plantation houses are full of spectral presences. Hampden Great House, the oldest sugar plantation in Jamaica, was built in 1733 by the Scot Archibald Sterling. A house like two salt cellars, it is set in the lush Spanish Valley two hours from Falmouth. The estate is still the largest producer of expensive dark Jamaican rum.

After the abolition of slavery, the Sterlings descended into alcoholism, penury and scandal, like many white Jamaican planters. There are tales of suicides and a tragic affair between one of the Sterlings and a former slave whose dead body was found one night sprawled across a sugar cane press.

There are other such estates; Bellefield Great House, Croydon Plantation and Roaring River Great House, the ruins of which were bought by singer Johnny Cash.

But as Jean Rhys wrote: ‘The landscape is haunted by long, dark, alien eyes.’

I ask at Greenwood if they know about a Creole girl called Petronella who once lived on there.

‘There were so many girls here,’ they say. ‘They were quickly forgotten.’

Travel Facts

Virgin Atlantic (www.virginatlantic.com, 0844 2092 770) offers return flights from Gatwick to Montego Bay from £723.

Sandals (www.sandals.co.uk, 0800 597 0002) offers seven nights at the Sandals Royal Plantation on a Luxury Included® basis from £1,899 staying in a Butler Suite. It includes return flights and transfers.

Excursions on the island are bookable through Island Routes Caribbean Adventure Tours (www.islandroutestours.co.uk).


Comments (3)

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Churchill,

Beaconsfield, England,

7 hours ago

Jamaica isn’t a safe holiday destination so why promote it?

tryingtobenormal,

citybythesea, United Kingdom,

10 hours ago

you cannot explore jamaica at your own leisure…..do not hire a car…..hotels do not allow you to leave on your own without an escort……its a lovely place but you will be mugged for the shoes you are wearing…..oh and the first jamaican you speak to when you get outside the airport will undoubtedly try to sell you drugs…..and when you are on the coach on your way to and from the airport the driver will not stop for anything, even red lights!

tryingtobenormal,

citybythesea, United Kingdom,

10 hours ago

thought this petronella woman was skint…..sandals resorts are not cheap!

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