The Conqueror | Page 3

drought which
visited Nevis in 1737. Then there were William Leslie Hamilton, who
practised at the bar in London for several years, but returned to hold
official position on Nevis, and his brother Andrew, both sons of Dr.
William Hamilton, who spent the greater part of his life on St.
Christopher. There were also Hugh Hamilton, Charles, Gustavus, and
William Vaughn Hamilton, all planters, most of them Members of
Council or of the Assembly.
And even in those remote and isolated days, Hamiltons and
Washingtons were associated. The most popular name in our annals
appears frequently in the Common Records of Nevis, and there is no

doubt that when our first President's American ancestor fled before
Cromwell to Virginia, a brother took ship for the English Caribbees.
From a distance Nevis looks like a solitary peak in mid-ocean, her base
sweeping out on either side. But behind the great central cone--rising
three thousand two hundred feet--are five or six lesser peaks, between
which are dense tropical gorges and mountain streams. In the old days,
where the slopes were not vivid with the light green of the cane-field,
there were the cool and sombre groves of the cocoanut tree, mango,
orange, and guava.
Even when Nevis is wholly visible there is always a white cloud above
her head. As night falls it becomes evident that this soft aggravation of
her beauty is but a night robe hung on high. It is at about seven in the
evening that she begins to draw down her garment of mist, but she is
long in perfecting that nocturnal toilette. Lonely and neglected, she still
is a beauty, exacting and fastidious. The cloud is tortured into many
shapes before it meets her taste. She snatches it off, redisposes it, dons
and takes it off again, wraps it about her with yet more enchanting folds,
until by nine o'clock it sweeps the sea; and Nevis, the proudest island of
the Caribbees, has secluded herself from those cynical old neighbours
who no longer bend the knee.

BOOK I
RACHAEL LEVINE
I
Nevis gave of her bounty to none more generously than to John and
Mary Fawcett. In 1685 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had sent
the Huguenots swarming to America and the West Indies. Faucette was
but a boy when the Tropics gave him shelter, and learning was hard to
get; except in the matter of carving Caribs. But he acquired the science
of medicine somehow, and settled on Nevis, remodelled his name, and
became a British subject. Brilliant and able, he was not long

accumulating a fortune; there were swamps near Charles Town that
bred fever, and the planters lived as high and suffered as acutely as the
English squires of the same period. His wife brought him money, and
in 1714 they received a joint legacy from Captain Frank Keynall;
whether a relative of hers or a patient of his, the Records do not tell.
Mary Fawcett was some twenty years younger than her husband, a
high-spirited creature, with much intelligence, and a will which in later
years John Fawcett found himself unable to control. But before that
period, when to the disparity in time were added the irritabilities of age
in the man and the imperiousness of maturity in the woman, they were
happy in their children, in their rising fortunes, and, for a while, in one
another.
For twenty-eight years they lived the life of the Island. They built a
Great House on their estate at Gingerland, a slope of the Island which
faces Antigua, and they had their mansion in town for use when the
Captain-General was abiding on Nevis. While Mary Fawcett was
bringing up and marrying her children, managing the household affairs
of a large estate, and receiving and returning the visits of the other
grandees of the Island, to say nothing of playing her important part in
all social functions, life went well enough. Her children, far away from
the swamps of Charles Town, throve in the trade winds which temper
the sun of Nevis and make it an isle of delight. When they were not
studying with their governesses, there were groves and gorges to play
in, ponies to ride, and monkeys and land crabs to hunt. Later came the
gay life of the Capital, the routs at Government House, frequent even
when the Chief was elsewhere, the balls at neighbouring estates, the
picnics in the cool high forests, or where more tropical trees and tree
ferns grew thick, the constant meeting with distinguished strangers, and
the visits to other islands.
The young Fawcetts married early. One went with her husband, Peter
Lytton, to the island of St. Croix. The Danish Government, upon
obtaining possession of this fertile island, in 1733, immediately issued
an invitation to the