lindacostain

The Hurricane 1898

by Cynthia Costain

Life in the family went on quietly through the years as Carol grew up from a baby to a little girl of four years old. There were occasional excitements when Father went to England taking an older brother to school, or one of the big sisters went to Barbados to visit friends. During most of the year the climate was perfect; nearly always warm and sunny with cool sea breezes and sudden short showers which kept the gardens blooming, the trees flowering and bearing fruit, and the crops growing. Cocoa was being cultivated in St. Vincent as an alternate crop to sugar and was doing well with a promise of prosperity in the island.

It was the year 1898, and during August the weather began to get very hot. The breeze dropped and the air felt heavy and still. The heat pressed down on the island and people became tired and irritable, fanning themselves and complaining about “hurricane weather”. The heat continued and during the night of the eleventh of September the wind began to blow in sharp hard gusts and the barometer fell rapidly. (25.35 and falling). The shutters were closed and the children put to bed, but they found it hard to sleep and tossed and sweated in the darkness. The storm increased: the wind became strong with sounds of thunder in the distance and loud crashes as branches broke and rocks fell.

Carol woke up to find her nurse shaking her and shouting “Come on Miss Baba, wake up! wake up!” Pulling her out of bed, she bundled her into a little shawl and carried her downstairs, ignoring her sleepy whimper, “Whatsamatter?”

In the big hallway all the family was gathered with maids and servants. It was hard to see as the only light was a small oil lamp, but it was the incredible noise which was the most frightening. The whole house shuddered and creaked, the rain lashed against the walls and roof and there was the occasional breaking of glass or crash as something heavy fell nearby. Above all the wind screamed and howled as it swept across the island with terrific force. The children were crying and the adults looked scared but Carol saw Dad standing by the cellar stairs, fully dressed and calmly calling “Come on now, all of you- down to the cellar. You’ll be all right there, Mother is waiting for you”.

Gradually nurses with children, sisters, servants, brothers and all filtered down the steep steps. The house had a strong stone cellar built against the rocky hillside. Lit by the dim lamp carried by Father it looked very strange and eerie. One or two chairs had been brought down and Mother in her usual daytime dress was sitting at one end with the big sisters. The children ran and clustered on the floor at her feet. Carol shouted in Fred’s ear “What makes the big noise, Freddy?” and he shouted back, “It’s the hurricane, silly”.

The cellar door which gave onto the hillside at the back of the house was open, as it was sheltered from the fiercest blasts, and through it came a stream of terrified people; stumbling and limping, families with old women and babies, beaten by the wind, soaked by the drenching rain and scarred by blowing branches and debris. Carol sat against her Mother’s knee and as the cellar was lit by the sudden violent flashes of lightening saw more and more people crowding through the door and heard the great crashes of the wind. Near her was a family settling down on the floor and a man was carrying a little girl about her own age. She had a big gash on her head and there was blood on her curly hair and trickling down her face.

“Papa! Papa!” she sobbed, and her father soothed her, saying, “Hush now chile – doctor will fix yor haid later on,” but still the little girl cried.

“Poor little girl,” thought Carol and leant over and patted her hand. One of her sisters had a box of bandages and came to help, but so many people were hurt with broken bones as well as cuts that there was little that they could do. Dad helped the more seriously hurt to places against the walls and everyone did what they could without panic. At last Dad called to shut the outside door as a deluge of water began to pour over the lintel and the cellar was full, but as it was shutting there was a sudden wild banging at the door and they eased it open to a family drenched and covered with mud who had escaped from the remnants of their house and crawled up the hillside for shelter.

Carol was too young to realise that the small wooden houses and shacks of the people had been literally blown away in pieces. Some families had feared the worst when the storm began and had gathered together what they could and made their way to bigger stronger houses with hurricane cellars like ‘Windsor’, but others had cowered in their tiny homes which were no protection, until it was too late. In spite of the noise the children slept. They had no idea how long it was before they suddenly woke up in the dim breathless darkness of the crowded cellar with the stifling heat and overpowering smell of frightened people. Everything was silent. Only the occasional moan or snore, but otherwise nothing.

“What’s happening?”‘ asked Fred in a scared voice. “It’s called the eye of the hurricane,” Mother said.”It will be quiet for a while and then get noisy again, but it won’t be for so long”.

Reassured, the children dozed once more, huddled together on the hard floor.

Hours later, they became aware of a general movement, as people stood and listened and murmured to each other and on the top of the stairs stood Willie silhouetted against the grey light from the open hall door.

“Dad,” he called, “I think the wind has dropped.” Some of the men went to try to open the outside door but it would not move. Eventually they were able to force it open a bit and push aside the rocks and rubbish which had been piled against it by the storm. A faint light came in and people began to move and pick up children and bundles and try to peer outside. Mother was helped upstairs, stiff after her long ordeal, and the family followed her up into the hall. Dad went to open the front door and everyone pressed forward onto the verandah.

Carol was very frightened because no one seemed happy that the dreadful noise had stopped and she could see nothing until one of her big brothers picked her up. Nobody spoke; it was as if they all held their breaths. “Where has everything gone’?” she asked.

They looked at a scene of devastation. Down the hillside what had been the garden and the drive to the small houses and streets leading to the harbour was now a sea of mud and debris. There were no houses, no trees, retaining walls had collapsed and muddy water was pouring down the hill, carving deep clefts between rocks and fallen trees carrying stones, roof tiles and the bodies of dead animals towards the town. There were huge waves pounding the buildings still standing on Bay Street carrying broken remains of boats, the wreckage at sloops and battered steamers along the harbour. All the small houses and shelters in the town were gone as were the wooden warehouses. Those buildings still standing were roofless and they could see the Cathedral had missing tiles and broken windows. Along what had been the main street of the town the Library and most of the stores were crumbling ruins.

At last Dad said, “Mother, see that everyone has something to eat. We all have a lot to do.”

There was indeed a lot to do. The hurricane had lasted six hours with an interval of fifty-five minutes. In that time between two hundred and three hundred people had been killed, went missing, or were lost at sea. Nearly all the small boats of the island had been destroyed with their crews, ten sloops had been lost or had capsized, and three large steamers had been driven ashore and broken up.

People were homeless and helpless, hungry and hurt. From the countryside wandered scores of lost people to add to the crowds already in the town: their homes were gone, their goats and chickens lost or killed, their crops beaten into the ground.

The Government had the police set up big tents in the grounds of the hospital, which was roofless, and in open spaces nearby where the wounded could be cared for. The dead were brought to the Police Station. All the men were set to clearing the roads of debris -trees, bricks and stone from fallen houses and walls, dead animals such as, pigs, goals, sheep and chickens which had been swept down in the water and mud. In all the big houses the women prepared food for everyone and all who came were fed.

Before the day ended messages were received by telegraph from Queen Victoria and the Royal Family, and from all over the world came offers of help. Within days, ships arrived with food and supplies from other islands. The Hurricane Relief Fund sent food and medical aid while many volunteer workers came to help dig graves and clear away the remains of the ships and buildings. The children were eager to help and the boys cleared branches, rocks and stones and the girls swept and washed the verandah. Mother and the servants cooked and served big pots of cooked rice and soup with the stores they had in the house, feeding all who came but the straggle of sad hungry people seemed never ending. Finally the relief foods arrived and Fred whispered to Carol, “Thank goodness, I’m getting awfully sick of rice.”

As the immediate difficulties were being looked after, the government tried to assess the overall disaster to the island. The sugar estates were ruined, the new cocoa trees were levelled, most of the trees including fruit trees, palm trees, breadfruit and spice trees were down, or if they had survived were stripped bare and would not produce for many months. There was not a green leaf or blade of grass to be seen and all the vegetables, fruits and livestock which the people needed to survive had vanished.

St. Vincent faced a bleak future.

Long long ago

Although this site exists to cover years of letters, I am going to start with stories that fill in the background, by posting documents that were written by my mother, Cynthia, about the early life of her mother, Carol. These were written in her 70s when she took a writing class, and are fictionalized versions of the family stories that she had been told, and that she passed on to us- the fact that my grandmother had survived a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, and an earthquake seemed impossibly exotic to me, a Canadian child. Some of these are finished products, some have marks indicating editing is intended, but they all are typed and, I hope, legible, and I think she’s a good storyteller!

LONG, LONG AGO

by Cynthia Costain

Over a hundred years ago, at the end of the nineteenth century, a little girl called Carol was born on a small island, St. Vincent, in the West Indies. It was part of the British Empire, proud to be a colony under the rule of Queen Victoria. St. Vincent is one of a chain of beautiful, tropical, volcanic islands arcing through the Caribbean from North to South America. The island had one main town, Kingstown, enclosed in a great harbour. Above the town arose the mountains, dotted here and there with large sprawling houses, the red roofs showing through the palms and flowering trees. One of these houses was called `Windsor’ and was the home of the Hazell family, which had originated with two brothers who left England in 1748. They were ship-builders by trade and, having built their own ship, embarked with their wives, families, and all their goods and sailed west and south to begin a new life.

There is no record of their voyage, though it must have felt perilous to two men whose past experience had probably been confined to coastal waters, but eventually they landed in Saba in the Virgin Islands. This was not the lush tropical land they had hoped for, as it was bare and infertile, with rocky shores and little shelter, but they anchored and there they remained until a baby boy named Hercules was born in 1749. Soon afterwards they sailed south and finally settled in the island of Bequia in the Windward Islands. There they found a friendly climate and friendly people where they made their homes and founded a ship building business.

Eventually Hercules grew up and married, moving with his family after some time to the bigger island of St. Vincent where he began a trading company. Within his lifetime his grandson, John Gregg Windsor Hazell, had become one of the leading businessmen of the island. This grandson John was the father of the tiny baby at the beginning of this story.

There was not much excitement when the twelfth baby, Carol, arrived in the family and the busy but leisured life of most of the members hardly suffered a hiccup. The older daughters helped the nurse look after Mother and their new little sister, took over the housekeeping and saw that things in the house continued smoothly; the older brothers took little interest in babies. The only members of the family who were excited about Carol were `the little ones’. With Mother’s permission the nurses brought them to see the baby the next day and as they stood around the cradle looking down at the baby with the big brown eyes, Doris said, “She’s very small.” “She’s no use to play with,” said two year old Fred, who was disappointed, but Willie, aged six, looked at the baby seriously and announced, “She looks just like a monkey!” and from that time on, Carol was known as `Monks’ in the family.

The young children all had nurses and Carol called her nurse `Dada’. Dada bathed, dressed, and fed the baby; washed and ironed her clothes, and, most important, kept her quiet and amused. At teatime the children were washed and dressed in clean clothes (if company was expected the boys wore sailor suits and the girls white starched dresses) and brought to the verandah to be petted and join in the conversation with Mother, sisters and friends. At the sign of tears, spills, or noise, a nurse would appear and hastily remove the offender.

Carol grew up in a busy household. Mother was the firm disciplinarian, ruling her family and the household, while Father was the good-natured benevolent Papa. With numerous servants, nurses, cooks, grooms, and gardeners working in a slow noisy West Indian way there was plenty for Mother to do: she was a severe woman, feared by some, but there was much love and affection and the family was a closely knit, safe world. Much of the time older members of the family would be at school in Barbados, England, or Canada, or working in the U.S.A. but the young ladies and gentlemen at home all had their ‘work’ each day. The men went to the family business on the harbour with Father, or rode out to one of the estates. If it was time for the sugar crop all the estates would be busy with the cutting of the cane and the sugar mill would work day and night crushing, processing, and finally bagging the sugar to send to England. Later the molasses would go to the rum factory to be distilled into raw alcohol and then aged in barrels before it too was sent overseas.

The young ladies of the family had various jobs: they cut and arranged the flowers, such as hibiscus, lilies, ixora, and bougainvillea; shopped in town for small items not trusted to the maid who went every morning to the market; and sometimes visited the dressmaker. This was very important as the only chance of a `ready-made’ dress was to ask a friend who was visiting some larger place to bring one back for you. The girls also did a little cooking- cakes for tea or a special dessert if guests were expected for dinner. They used the woodstove and oven, but the cook preferred the charcoal `coal pot’ outside.

The whole family were expected back at noon for the main meal of the day. Having risen at six or earlier and begun work while it was still cool, everyone was hungry and sat down to what was considered in Victorian households to be a simple family meal (albeit with a West Indian twist): roast pork with crackling, or a large dish of chicken pilau, or sometimes a whole baked redfish. With this would be served rice, sweet potatoes, fried plantain, tania cakes crisp and brown, or perhaps breadfruit or pigeon peas. Beforehand would be hot pumpkin or callalou soup, and the main course would be followed by a sweet coconut pudding with stewed guavas. Business did not resume much before three o’clock.

Until they became teenagers, the children went to school in the town. The boys’ schools were run by clergy or teachers from England, while the girls attended schools run by maiden ladies in their own homes. The older daughters helped the young children but actually their social lives were fully occupied. Making calls took up many afternoons and the horse and a carriage would take two or three of the ladies to sign the Book at Government House or make other calls. They were all devoted churchwomen and much time was spent at the Cathedral doing the flowers, seeing to the vestments, or attending meetings. In the evening between five and seven when the air became cool and the sun set, friends and relatives would drop in for a cool drink and a chat. Riding parties and picnics were planned, or arrangements made to play tennis or watch a cricket match.

The arrival of one of H. M. Ships of War was a great occasion, and any ship from England or America or even the small vessels from other islands brought visitors or old friends as well as business and everything from buttons to furniture, horses, carriages and machinery. The ship’s officers were always entertained at the big houses as well as visitors, and return invitations, particularly on board ship, were looked forward to eagerly.

Carol’s childhood was a happy one. The white people were the wealthy people on the island and she accepted all the St. Vincentians of every colour and any other heritage as being `natives’. Some she loved like her old nurse Dada, and she realized that any who worked for the family had to be `looked after’ when they were ill or became old, but it was a paternalistic society that she did not question.

When Carol was very young she remembered that one of her older sisters taught her to count on her fingers. She was told, “Look, you have ten fingers and you have ten brothers and sisters.”

This seemed to her to be the most astonishing piece of news she had ever heard! She began counting: “Georgina, Arthur, Blanche, Ethel, John Louis, Muriel, Beatrice, Willie, Doris, Fred makes ten. Oh, and there was baby Cyprian, but he’s dead. And Me.”

Hazell/Laborde/Melville Genealogy

Hazell Family Genealogy

(as written by my mother in a scrappy notebook and interpreted by me. I include (nasty) little details that were part of oral family history that she noted in the list in square brackets.)

Two Hazell brothers came from Liverpool to Saba with their wives. Went from Saba to Bequia where they settled.

Hercules Hazell b. 1749 in Saba d. 1833

Elizabeth Simmons 1785-1848 (I’m inclined to think these are the dates of her marriage and death)

Hercules Hazell

m. 1809

Eliza Gregg, his cousin, daughter of Mary Hazell

John Hercules (seven children in total, the rest apparently not relevant)

m. July 25 1840 Married in Bequia.

Jane Anne Arrindel [Her father had slaves and when they did something he didn’t like he stamped on their feet.]

John was drowned in Mustique 1886.

John Gregg Windsor Hazell 1848-1915 (again, one of 7 children)

m. 1872

Marion Laborde

Alfred Gregg Hazell (Uncle Fred) (one of 12 children, dates to follow)

m. 1914

Mildred Ince

4 daughters, Jean, Brenda, Peggy, Patsy- my mother’s cousins. (Not sure why my mother’s list had Fred, the youngest son, in the line of succession, but he was the one who inherited the business, having stayed in St. Vincent.)

The 12 Hazell children of JGWH and Marion Laborde:

Georgina 1873 (Auntie Gee)

Arthur 1875 (Uncle Artie?)

Blanche 1877 (Auntie Bee)

Ethel 1878 (Aunt Ettie)

Cyprian 1880 Died in infancy?

John Louis 1882 Died as a young man?

Muriel 1884 (Auntie Moo)

Trixie 1886

Willie 1888 Died 1918 in WW1, Loos I think

Doris 1890 Is she the one who died in 3 days of a stye?

Fred 1892 (Uncle Fred)

Carol 1894 My Grandmother

Laborde Family

Jean Dupin Dauphiné Laborde came to St Vincent in 1751.

Marie

William Danger Philipe

m. 1770

Marie François Guilleampré La Croix

Maxime (3 children)

m. 1787

Marie Francois La Croix

Horatio William (5 children)

Georgina Melville

Marion Laborde (6 children)

m. 1872

John G.W. Hazell

Note: When Marion married Jack, her sister, Wilhelmina Maria, came with her and lived with the Hazells all her life, never calling her brother-in-law anything but Mr. Hazell. She was known as Aunt Min.

Melville Family

John Melville

m. 1715

Margaret Ochterloney?

Alexander

m. 1747

Anna Duff (1st wife)

Alexander b. 1758 (one of 7 children). Graduated from U. of Edinburgh 1778/80 in Medicine. Joined British Army and during the Revolution served in America then he

Lady Elizabeth Spencer in Virginia and came to St. Vincent and settled.

Dr. Alexander Melville (one of 8 children)

Margaret Jane Cox

Thomas b. 1797 (0ne of 8 children)

Sarah Rebecca Lyte

Georgina 1821-1868 (one of 4 children)

Horatio William Laborde 1821-1891

Marion (one of 6 children)

John Gregg Windsor Hazell

12 children

Now, here are the family tree diagrams Cynthia and her Hutchinson cousins Basil and Ina, maybe Monica too, put together in Ottawa toward the end of the century. Cyn was clear about her own generation, but the third generation is scrappy, and their children mostly missing. As we get into the 1950s, maybe the letters will help fill in the blanks.

Family Letters

When I first thought of reading my mother’s old letters to my grandmother, it was because I had been listening to CBC radio talking about the polio scares of the 1950s. My husband Pat is five years older than I and can remember the public swimming pools in Windsor being closed because of fear of polio. Had my mother worried about her children being affected, I wondered? I should read her letters and find out. But of course, reading one meant reading them all, for who knew where such information might be buried?

I knew I had letters from my past in boxes somewhere and that some of the boxes from my mother had letters that my grandmother had preserved from their past. I must have considered these of some value, since I had lugged them through our many moves (an average of every three-and-a-half years all our married life). We have made our second-last move (back to our house in Haida Gwaii- the last one will be the one forced on us by old age and infirmities); have as much space as we’ll ever have; Pat and I are retired and thus I had lots of time to consider A Project. So I dug out the boxes, sorted the letters and other documents into binders, and then left them alone for ten years.

My Family Letters Project involves 80 years of letters saved by and written by the women in my nuclear family to their mothers.

The youngest child of twelve, Carol Enid Hazell, was born in St.Vincent, West Indies into the British colonial empire of Queen Victoria. She went to school in England, returned and married Dr. J.M.G. Ewing (Gordon) in St. Vincent, and after World War 1, went to live in Newcastle-upon-Tyne with her husband and daughter. It is hard to imagine how many letters they all wrote over the years: she kept in touch with her mother, brothers, and sisters in the West Indies, Britain, Canada, and the USA; but the only letters she saved were those from her daughter, Cynthia Ewing, written to her mother in Newcastle from boarding school in York, then as an adult, from Cambridge, Toledo, Ann Arbor, and Ottawa. When, in old age, she joined her daughter in Ottawa, she brought those letters with her. Between us, Cyn and I kept my memorabilia and those letters that friends wrote to me, although the letters I wrote home to Ottawa from England and Nigeria sadly seem to have disappeared.

This chain of personal letters to our mothers, of course, involves all our friends and the extended families, personal comments that I hope those living will excuse me publishing, and a lot of little details of life gone by, such as the information that my mother at boarding school as a teenager would have her hair washed every three weeks. [Letter dated May 8^th, 1929] To the 21^st century reader, this results in several thoughts, including ‘ick’, but also: at 14, someone else washes her hair? also, what did they all look like? and, oh that explains a few puzzling incidents in that Chalet School series (written in the 30s).

Adding to the vicarious enjoyment of these letters is the fact that nothing very distressing ever happens because no one wants to upset her mother: so agonizing experiences (if any) are kept private and don’t enter into the flow of weekly letters; and major events happen off stage since the family tends to get together in a crisis and so no letters are written, and the accident or crisis is only referred to afterwards.

As well, it should be admitted, I come from a very fortunate family: on both sides generally, there was health and enough wealth, in spite of the Depression and World War Two, no great tragedies happened, and if all marriages were not successful, most were, families were loving, and children were treasured. For me, reading these was like enjoying a familiar novel, or maybe a prequel: you know the main characters and the ending, but you are getting all sorts of new and entertaining information. As the boxes reached my memorabilia, 40 years ago rather than 80, there were notes and cards from my past, and that walk down memory lane was fun too. Those notes and artifacts add variety, since they are from friends to me- the odd letter in the collection from someone else added interest to my mother’s letters, but in 1951 she tells her mother how much she and my father enjoy the letters they get, but also says she is going to burn them since the collection was getting so bulky. How glad I am that my grandmother kept Cyn’s letters, one-sided though the conversation is.

So I read the letters, put them in chronological order in plastic sleeves and binders, annotated them with stickies when I recognized the names, and supplemented the narrative with the oral stories I’d heard all my life. My grandmother had a box of loose photos too, so I have slipped them in the sleeve too if relevant. My mother took a writing class in her 70s, and wrote short stories about her mother’s life: the eruption, the earthquake, fictionalized versions of family sagas. I include similar tales we loved as kids: our mother being naughty with a midnight feast at boarding school. And long term? As I wrote to my 97-year-old godmother in England, I can’t help thinking there is a thesis in here somewhere. Now we have the Internet, I think publishing these may be a contribution to the domestic history of the 20^th century. My grandmother kept the letters from her daughter, and enjoyed reading them and putting them in order in her old age, and there are indications that my mother looked them over as well before her sight went. Now we have the technology I feel they should serve a wider purpose than bringing a smile to my face as I enter old age. The collection may lack drama for an outside reader, but the small details of life in the last century are strangely compelling. So I am posting these online and sharing the love with the world- because what these years of letters do show is a century of caring and long families and teasing, friends and connections and love.