Ian Fleming on Jamaica (and race relations)...
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This is the last article by Ian Fleming that I was able to find in The Spectator, though I hope to locate more in other sources. My commentary can be found below...
There are several notable things about this article, starting with the date. Fleming wrote this shortly after completing the draft of Casino Royale. Perhaps it's true that "after forty it is difficult to start a new life," but Fleming had obviously just begun a new life as a writer.
When Fleming wrote this, the Caribbean was a far more exotic and remote place. At first Fleming seems to have taken his own advice about laying off booze in the tropics, though by the early 60s he'd descended into alcoholism. Was he complimenting himself when he praised the Scots for being naturally patient and sober, wonderful colonisers, and possessing hardy and absorbing inner lives?
Though non-Bondian, this article carries several characteristic themes familiar from the novels: German-bashing, accidie (Fleming's favorite sin), and the eccentric wonders of flora and fauna (the "zing of crickets" is a phrase reused five years later in Dr. No).
Lastly, we come to what might grab modern readers' attention most--the racial attitudes. On one hand, Fleming preaches a message of embracing racial/cultural differences and tries to calm his white readers' fears about black sexuality. But his praise of blacks ("they are loyal to good employers and sober and honest") is also somewhat backhanded ("unless sorely tempted, but when they fall they fall heavily and far").
And then we get sentences like "without patience you cannot live and work with coloured people," followed by undeniably racist observations such as "most black races have more fears than the whites" and "their physical strength is often undermined by weak nerves, and this makes them an easy prey to sickness or fear." The praise about blacks having better sight, hearing, and sixth-sense will likely not please modern readers either.
In discussing these racial attitudes, we should take in mind that Fleming's statements were deemed perfectly acceptable and publishable in a sophisticated mainstream magazine in 1952. His attitudes are thus of his time and class. For readers in the monocultural Britain of 1952, blacks were an exotic species, to be observed in the mock-anthropological manner Fleming used here and in Live and Let Die. In retrospect, it seems ludicrous to make observations about an entire race of people based on the observations of lower class inhabitants of a small island, but Fleming and his audience had a view of the world that now seems as remote from our own as Jamaica did to Fleming's readers.
Pleasure Islands?
(The Spectator, July 4, 1952)
By Ian Fleming
It seems that a middle-aged couple who received a lot of publicity in a recent court case have just sailed for Jamaica “to start a new life.” When I read this I felt sorry for them, because I had a sudden vision of that splendid tear jerker, The Last of England, by Ford Madox Brown, and continued to feel sorry for them after the picture had faded from my mind. I thought of the other seekers after a new life that have crossed my path, and particularly of those I have met in Jamaica, where I built a small house after the war and where I spend all my holidays.
Each year there are new arrivals and new departures. Three years ago an extra bathroom was installed in “Bonaventure,” and Major Jones and his nice wife (But will she stand the heat? What’s he going to do all day?) gave a house-warming. Loving dusky fingers had moulded the sausage-meat canapes and decorated each with a little squirt of Heinz mayonnaise (My dear, she only costs me sixteen shillings a week!), and everyone was given a paper doily for the warmish rum cocktails so as not to spoil the new furniture. Two years later the MacNaughts were installed, and “Dunlookin” was inscribed on the gate. The Joneses had gone back to an aunt at Cheltenham £5,000 the poorer.
The trouble is that after forty it is difficult to start a new life without a new psyche, and perhaps a new envelope for it. If one can't settle down at home, one is unlikely to settle down abroad. The only true geographical misfits are people with asthma or tuberculosis who have to seek a new climate in order to exist. For the rest of us, however difficult life may be “at home,” the roots are too many and too deep. Emigration is for the under-thirties, and for them there are wonderful and promising futures in the young continents and islands of the Commonwealth. Even in the West Indies, which I know fairly well, you have only to study the merchant adventuring of the Dominions Colonial and Overseas branch of Barclays Bank to see how, much exciting development is going on in all the various islands of this young “dominion” — Citrus, bananas, coconut-products, essential oils, fisheries, minerals (Jamaica has the largest bauxite deposits in the world; being exploited by Americans, of course), diamonds, hardwoods, tourism, oil, tobacco and so forth, all with openings for men who are patient and sober.
They must be patient, because without patience you cannot live and work with coloured people, and they must be sober because alcohol ruins your health in the tropics. It goes straight to your liver and stays there. The Scots are naturally patient and sober, and that is why they make such wonderful colonisers. And they have another virtue which is important in the tropics; they have a hardy and absorbing inner life which they take with them wherever they go and which makes them very undemanding of their surroundings. The provincialism and intellectual apathy of the tropics do not irk them. They get all the mental exercise they need from the constant battle to maintain sanity and symmetry in their immediate neighborhood and to keep tropical chaos at bay. Other peoples also have these virtues, but in the case of the Germans, for instance, they are part of a disciplined way of life, a self-imposed carapace, which is all too apt in the hot sun to become nothing but a pressure-cooker for the neuroses it conceals.
Melancholia, bile and accidie, or noonday sloth, are man's deadly enemies in the tropics, and they can only be cured by the obvious remedies, creative work, physical exercise, mental stimulation, and by such spiritual resources as may be present in the afflicted. But, above all, if the settler or visitor is to be happy, he must really embrace the tropics. It is easy to enjoy the orchids and the humming birds. They are exotic extensions of things we know; but there is much that is very strange in the tropical flora and fauna, and to many people “strange” means “inimical.” The sixth sense of. the vultures and their hideous heads, the blood-thirst of shark and barracuda, the huge hawk moths, the praying mantis (Nature's “mobile”), the fruits which are sometimes deadly poison until ripe and thereafter delicious, the obscene banana flower, the zany riot of the cannonball tree, the ants’ nests like brown goitres on the trees, the sharp and poisonous coral, the forest of blank needles on the sea-eggs—all these can become bogeys if they are not seen with something of the naturalist’s marvelling eye.
One must, of course, also like the sun and take pleasure in the sudden thrashing rain. One’s senses must not be offended by a world of very strong primary colours, blues, reds, yellows and greens, nor by the deep texture of the night with its piercing zing of crickets and plaintive tinkle of tree-frogs. One must get used to the deep hush which underlines these insect noises, and to the knowledge that there will be few people abroad after dark for fear, in Jamaica, of the rolling calf, that terrible phantom, its legs bound with chains and its nostrils flaming, which comes rolling towards you in the glare of the moon. Because of him and of other fearful “duppies” you need also not pay too much heed to the tales of naked black men, their bodies glistening with coconut oil, who roam abroad at night to thieve and rape. In fact, I believe that most black races have more fears than the whites. They are timid experimenters and inept or unwilling rationalisers of their fears and superstitions. For instance, in Jamaica they insist on believing that the common lizard will bite, and a popular maxim of the country is: “When you see old lady run, no axe wha’ du matter, run too.”
They have other characteristics which are strange to us, but again not necessarily inimical, and they and their peculiarities must also be “embraced” if you decide to live among them. I find that their organs of sight and hearing are keener than ours, and that their extra-sensory perception, their sixth sense, is more highly developed. On the other hand, I think their physical strength is often undermined by weak nerves, and this makes them an easy prey to sickness or fear. Their tempo is their own and cannot be altered, but they are full of goodwill and cheerfulness and humour. They are loyal to good employers and sober and honest unless sorely tempted, but when they fall they fall heavily and far.
These miscellaneous thoughts on life in the Caribbean may seem rather flimsy, but the major pros and cons are so obvious that they will have been already weighed by prospective visitors and settlers or can be gleaned from the West Indies Handbook. The Caribbean is very beautiful, very healthy, very “safe”; and the cost of living is medium to very low. But it is expensive to get there, and the territory is remote from the stream of history, and, for many reasons besides those I have mentioned, to settle there is more of a gamble than in territories less tropical or nearer home.
I can only hope that the couple whose departure brought all this to my mind were quite clear that “no ebery ting wha’ got sugar a sweet” when they chose the pleasure islands of the West Indies in their search for a new life.
There are several notable things about this article, starting with the date. Fleming wrote this shortly after completing the draft of Casino Royale. Perhaps it's true that "after forty it is difficult to start a new life," but Fleming had obviously just begun a new life as a writer.
When Fleming wrote this, the Caribbean was a far more exotic and remote place. At first Fleming seems to have taken his own advice about laying off booze in the tropics, though by the early 60s he'd descended into alcoholism. Was he complimenting himself when he praised the Scots for being naturally patient and sober, wonderful colonisers, and possessing hardy and absorbing inner lives?
Though non-Bondian, this article carries several characteristic themes familiar from the novels: German-bashing, accidie (Fleming's favorite sin), and the eccentric wonders of flora and fauna (the "zing of crickets" is a phrase reused five years later in Dr. No).
Lastly, we come to what might grab modern readers' attention most--the racial attitudes. On one hand, Fleming preaches a message of embracing racial/cultural differences and tries to calm his white readers' fears about black sexuality. But his praise of blacks ("they are loyal to good employers and sober and honest") is also somewhat backhanded ("unless sorely tempted, but when they fall they fall heavily and far").
And then we get sentences like "without patience you cannot live and work with coloured people," followed by undeniably racist observations such as "most black races have more fears than the whites" and "their physical strength is often undermined by weak nerves, and this makes them an easy prey to sickness or fear." The praise about blacks having better sight, hearing, and sixth-sense will likely not please modern readers either.
In discussing these racial attitudes, we should take in mind that Fleming's statements were deemed perfectly acceptable and publishable in a sophisticated mainstream magazine in 1952. His attitudes are thus of his time and class. For readers in the monocultural Britain of 1952, blacks were an exotic species, to be observed in the mock-anthropological manner Fleming used here and in Live and Let Die. In retrospect, it seems ludicrous to make observations about an entire race of people based on the observations of lower class inhabitants of a small island, but Fleming and his audience had a view of the world that now seems as remote from our own as Jamaica did to Fleming's readers.
Comments
Bond’s Beretta
The Handguns of Ian Fleming's James Bond
I think that Fleming also wrote about race in his only published review in the Times Literary Supplement in 1952. I believe that it can be found online - the TLS republished it for the Fleming Centenary in May 2008.
I agree that Fleming's upper class, white English attitudes are of his time and of his up bringing , but no matter how distasteful it is for most of civilized societies today (I stress most, as there are still large swaths who think this way), we must keep this in mind when reading his work. Also, I always seemed to think his attitudes softened somewhat and he may have become a bit more enlightened after he began is yearly stays in Jamaica, where he spent so much time exploring it and the culture, not to mention that he also had a staff of locals that he would have interacted with daily.
I get the impression from his line about blacks having keener senses was due to his background and that he and people from his urban culture (who never interacted with a native black culture on a regular basis if they did not travel or live and work abroad) were ignorant of the the idea that a culture that lives so closely with nature (as they do in the West Indes) would naturally have their senses better attuned to their surroundings. Even farmers in the English countryside would have better senses than their fellow urban dwellers - who are assaulted day and night by the amazing amount of urban noise. Sure he was making a pretty broad statement, but he must have arrived at that idea because of his annual visit to Goldeneye and his interaction with the locals. He even gave this keener sense to Honey in Dr. No because she - like the locals, grew up nearer to nature than he did. It's obvious when you read his many descriptions of the people and the island that he envied their culture because they live on such a beautiful island on an azure sea and get to eat the amazing fresh food - such a stark difference from people living in England at the time who had just come off of wartime rationing.
Isn't that a compliment?
Bond’s Beretta
The Handguns of Ian Fleming's James Bond
Yes, it is in my book and I think that that's what CmdrAtticus is saying towards the end there.
This is the part that I am referring to here, by the way.
Yes, but on a literal level still racist. It does not express hate or ill-will toward another race, but says one race is superior to another in some way. It's like saying that blacks are naturally better at sports than whites (or that whites can't jump!). Still, there is a difference between a comment that is negatively racist and one that is racist in a complimentary way.
I agree with CmdrAtticus's astute explanation for why Fleming might have thought these things. Fleming essentially confused cultural/environmental factors for racial ones.
Yes, and a large part of it is, as a modern audience, that, as the comedian Stewart Lee says, we don't want to agree with something racist out of politeness.
Whenever generalisations are made regarding any attribute based on cultural, national or religious bases - whether complimentary or negative - it always opens that Pandora's box of racism allegations. I'm not sure that I want to go there, but I have to mention an experience I had some years ago. I was picked up by a black taxi driver in a dodgy neighbourhood very late at night. Without prompting he said "I wouldn't have stopped if you were black" and went to explain how many problems he'd had in that neighbourhood. I told a white friend who said the driver was racist. But was he? Yes, he'd made a sweeping generalisation based on colour (his own colour, as it happened)...but also based entirely on his own experiences. If a white taxi driver said he'd never pick up a white guy in a Burberry baseball cap in certain neighborhoods late at night, would he be accused of being racist or of being discerning?
Now, back on topic...for his time, I don't think Fleming was racist. As Cmdr Atticus said (I think), he had some peculiar opinions and said things that are positively cringe-worthy today and would have the white hoods whipped out quicker than you can say Cosmo Kramer, but he was quite liberal (and therefore progressive) for the time. Ultimately I think the test for racism is often discrimination and we really don't know whether Fleming discriminated.
Yes, I'd agree Fleming held liberal and progressive views and was not your average true-blue Tory, but rather ahead of his time with his championing of electric cars and ecology - years before either was a popular sujbect area.