Extravagant strangers, p.1
Extravagant Strangers, page 1
Caryl Phillips
EXTRAVAGANT STRANGERS
Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts, West Indies. Brought up in England, he has written for television, radio, theater, and cinema. He is the author of one book of nonfiction, The European Tribe, and six novels, The Final Passsage, A State of Independence, Higher Ground, Cambridge, Crossing the River, and The Nature of Blood. His awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He divides his time between London and New York.
ALSO BY CARYL PHILLLIPS
Fiction
The Final Passage
A State of Independence
Higher Ground
Cambridge
Crossing the River
The Nature of Blood
Nonfiction
The European Tribe
Plays
Strange Fruit
Where There Is Darkness
The Shelter
Screenplay
Flaying Away
For Aziza and Radhiyyah
Your daughter, if you have not given her leave
I say again, hath made a gross revolt;
Tying her duty, beauty, wit and fortunes
In an extravagant and wheeling stranger
Of here and everywhere.
Othello, Act I, scene 1
Contents
Editor’s Note
Preface
UKAWSAW GRONNIOSAW, The Shortcomings of Christian England [1770]
IGNATIUS SANCHO, Letter to Mr Sterne [1776]
OLAUDAH EQUIANO, Voyage to England [1789]
WILLIAM THACKERAY, A Word about Dinners [1846]
JOSEPH CONRAD, From The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ [1897]
RUDYARD KIPLING, The English Flag [1891]
WYNDHAM LEWIS, Letter to David Kahma [1947]; Letter to Geoffrey Stone [1948]; Letter to Edgar Preston Richardson [1948]
T. S. ELIOT, Letter to Henry Eliot [1914]; Letter to Eleanor Hinkley [1914]
KATHERINE MANSFIELD, The Tiredness of Rosabel [1924]
JEAN RHYS, First Steps [1979]
C L. R. JAMES, Bloomsbury: An Encounter with Edith Sitwell [1932]
GEORGE ORWELL, Confessions of a Down and Out [1933]
E. R. BRAITHWAITE, From Choice of Straws [1965]
LAWRENCE DURRELL, London at Night [1969]
DORIS LESSING, In Defence of the Underground [1987]
WILSON HARRIS, From The Angel at the Gate [1982]
SAMUEL SELVON, From The Lonely Londoners [1956]
JAMES BERRY, ‘From Lucy: Englan’ Lady’ [1982]; ‘From Lucy: Carnival Wedd’n’, 1981’ [1982]
RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA, From Three Continents [1987]
GEORGE LAMMING, A Voyage [1954]
PETER PORTER, An Ingrate’s England [1989]
J. G. BALLARD, First Impressions of London [1993]
EVA FIGES, From Little Eden: A Child at War [1978]
V. S. NAIPAUL, The Journey [1987]
PENELOPE LIVELY, From Oleander, Jacaranda [1994]
ANITA DESAI, From Bye-Bye, Blackbird [1971]
CHRISTOPHER HOPE, From Darkest England [1996]
SHIVA NAIPAUL, Living in Earl’s Court [1984]
SALMAN RUSHDIE, A General Election [1983]
ABDULRAZAK GURNAH, From Pilgrim’s Way [1988]
GEORGE SZIRTES, The Child I Never Was [1986]; Assassins [1983]
TIMOTHY MO, From Sour Sweet [1982]
WILLIAM BOYD, Fly Away Home [1997]
LINTON KWESI JOHNSON, Inglan is a Bitch [1980]
ROMESH GUNESEKERA, From Reef [1994]
KAZUO ISHIGURO, From The Remains of the Day [1989]
DAVID DABYDEEN, London Taxi Driver [1988]
MICHAEL HOFMANN, The Machine That Cried [1986]
BEN OKRI, Disparities [1986]
Acknowledgements
Editor’s Note
This anthology would have been impossible for me to complete without the help of two remarkable people, Ming Nagel and Nalini Jones, who worked tirelessly on this project, searching libraries, following my often badly expressed hunches, deciphering my always impossible handwriting and dealing with many publishers, agents and authors. I am fortunate to have had the experience of working with two such assistants and I thank them wholeheartedly.
I have sought the advice and enlisted the help of various other people during the editing of this volume. My thanks to Helen Anglos, Fiona Carpenter, Fredéric Constant, Maura Dooley, Margaret Drabble, Georgia Garrett, Michael Gorra, Antony Harwood, Maya Jaggi, Suzannah Lucas, the librarians of Amherst College, Julian Loose, Frank Pike, Bill Pritchard, Jo Shapcott and Marina Warner.
Preface
I conceived of this anthology during a period as writer-in-residence at a university in Singapore. The head of my department asked me to give a lecture, and among the suggested topics was a familiar one. Would I be interested in addressing the phenomenon of the recent wave of writing by ‘outsiders’ to Britain which is ‘reinvigorating’ the canon? I bristled at the implication that before this ‘recent wave’ there was a ‘pure’ English literature, untainted by the influence of outsiders. To my way of thinking, English literature has, for at least 200 years, been shaped and influenced by outsiders.
As I thought more about this subject, it occurred to me that to compile and edit an anthology of writing by British writers who are outsiders in the most clear-cut way – those not born in Britain – might illustrate my point. I left Singapore and returned to Britain, whereupon I began to collect and read works by authors who fitted my brief. An organizing theme soon began to emerge around the vexing question of ‘belonging’. The once great colonial power that is Britain has always sought to define her people, and by extension the nation itself, by identifying those who don’t belong. As a result, Britain has developed a vision of herself as a nation that is both culturally and ethnically homogeneous, and this vision has made it difficult for some Britons to feel that they have the right to participate fully in the main narrative of British life.
The truth is, of course, that Britain has been forged in the crucible of fusion – of hybridity. Over the centuries, British life at all levels – its royal family, the nation’s musical heritage, Parliament, military, sport, entertainment and the City – has been invigorated and to some extent defined by the heterogeneous nature that is the national condition. However, in the face of overwhelming evidence, the mythology of homogeneity not only exists but endures. Daniel Defoe’s late-seventeenth-century poem ‘The True-born Englishman’ defines the mongrelized ‘mixtures’ that underpin the heterogeneous British tradition.
The Scot, Pict, Briton, Roman, Dane, submit,
And with the English-Saxon all unite;
And these the mixtures have so close pursued,
The very name and memory’s subdued.
No Roman now, no Briton does remain …
Fate jumbled them together, God knows how;
Whate’er they were, they’re true-born English now.
Defoe’s satirical work was levelled against the English for their mistreatment of the Dutch who arrived in Britain with William III. In the 300 years since it was written, one can add to Defoe’s ‘mixtures’ the Pole, American, Nigerian, Jamaican, Hungarian, Indian, Trinidadian, German and so on. In many ways, this anthology is an attempt to illustrate what Defoe perceived all those years ago: that British society has always been a melting pot of diverse cultural influences, and her heterogeneous condition runs very deep.
For British writers not born in Britain, the question of ‘belonging’ surfaces in their work in a variety of ways. Depending upon race, class and gender, the degree to which they feel alienated from British society will differ, and these variables will, of course, be further complicated by factors of time and historical circumstances. However, out of the tension between the individual and his or her society – in this case, British – the finest writing is often produced, and this would certainly seem to have been the case with reference to the work collected in this anthology. In their many different ways, all of the writers here are seeking to understand how they ‘belong’ to Britain.
The first group in the anthology comprises the black writers who emerged in the wake of the slave trade. Best exemplified by Olaudah Equiano, they grappled not only with the ethnic difficulties of belonging but also with linguistic problems. They were succeeded by a group of writers who were born in British colonies and were keen, if not altogether contented, observers of Britain. William Thackeray stands at the head of this nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century tradition, and to his name can be added those of Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell. The colonial subjects among whom these writers were born eventually began to express themselves in literature. These ‘subject’ writers, who betray a deep desire to ‘belong’ to the mother country, are primarily represented here by Caribbean migrants to Britain, C. L. R. James being the pre-eminent figure, along with writers such as Samuel Selvon and V. S. Naipaul.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the legacy of empire has produced writing by both descendants of the colonizers and descendants of the colonized. The former are represented by writers such as Jean Rhys, Doris Lessing, Penelope Lively and William Boyd, and the latter by Salman Rushdie, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Ben Okri among others. All of these, whether colonizers or colonized, seem to be carrying a freight of expectation with regard to Britain, and their various anxieties are reflected in the extracts here.
Standing somewhat apart fr om these groupings is a category that includes writers such as T. S. Eliot, George Szirtes and Kazuo Ishiguro, whose work exhibits an often microscopic concern with the nature of Britishness. Although these writers’ lives are unencumbered by the trappings of empire, it is clear that the powerful traditions of Britain exert a strong hold over their imaginations. Finally, there are the writers who, armed with the English language, appear to have moved to the literary centre in order to take part in a cosmopolitan world that is free from the difficulties of either geographical marginalization or political turbulence. Katherine Mansfield, Peter Porter and Christopher Hope would seem to fall into this group.
For many British people, to accept the idea that their country has a long and complex history of immigration would be to undermine their basic understanding of what it means to be British. One of my hopes in compiling and editing this anthology is that by engaging with the following writers and their work, readers will come to accept that as soon as one defines oneself as ‘British’ one is participating in a centuries-old tradition of cultural exchange, of ethnic and linguistic plurality, as one might expect from a proud nation that could once boast she ruled most of the known world. The evidence collected here confirms that one of the fortuitous byproducts of this heterogeneous history has been a vigorous and dynamic literature.
Caryl Phillips,
September 1996
Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
[1710-death unknown]
Ukawsaw Gronniosaw was born in Bornu, in the north-eastern tip of modern Nigeria. No biographical information exists on him apart from what is provided in his own Narrative, which was published in 1770. There we learn that he was born into an affluent family, his mother being the oldest daughter of the reigning king of Bornu; Gronniosaw was the youngest of six children. Due to his naturally inquisitive mind and his increasing dissatisfaction with family life in Bornu, Gronniosaw had decided to leave home by the time he was a teenager. He travelled with an ivory merchant to the coast of Africa but, on arrival, was betrayed. Sold into slavery, he passed into the hands of the captain of a Dutch ship bound for Barbados. In Barbados, Gronniosaw was sold on to a man from New England named Vanhorn who took him back to his home in New York as his servant. Among the visitors to his house was a minister called Mr Freelandhouse, who, taking a particular interest in Gronniosaw’s growing sense of God, bought him and set about teaching him the ways of Christianity.
Upon Freelandhouse’s death, Gronniosaw was granted his freedom. Inspired by an English minister, Mr Whitfield, whom he had heard preach in New York, Gronniosaw looked to England as his future home. Within days of arriving in Portsmouth, he was the victim of thieves. A disillusioned Gronniosaw headed for London, where he sought out his associate Mr Whitfield, who in turn helped him to find and pay for lodgings in Petticoat Lane, east London. Soon after, he left and spent a year in Amsterdam, but by 1763 or so Gronniosaw had returned to England to marry Betty, a weaver he had met in London. Before the wedding he was baptized by the eminent Baptist theologian Dr Andrew Gifford. Gronniosaw and Betty had three children.
The final section of Gronniosaw’s Narrative paints a graphic picture of the family’s decline into poverty in England. They were frequently near to starvation and eventually one of the children died. When a clergyman refused to bury his dead child, Gronniosaw’s otherwise cautious tone of humility in the Narrative becomes empowered by an underlying rage.
Gronniosaw’s account, although related by himself, was ‘committed to paper by the elegant pen of a young lady of the town of Leominster’. The reader cannot be certain whether the tone of humility that pervades the piece comes from the writer or from Gronniosaw himself. Nevertheless, the account marks an important beginning in the genre of slave narrative, and it is likely that those who went on to develop this form-principally Olaudah Equiano – would have read Gronniosaw’s story.
Gronniosaw is typical of early black writers in Britain in his somewhat naive faith that the country will redeem him from the miseries of servitude and slavery. In the following extract from his autobiographical Narrative (1770), we witness him passing through the uncomfortable stage in which his faith in the English is shattered, before beginning the difficult process of reconciling himself to a more realistic view of his new countrymen as individuals tainted by all the vices that are common to humanity.
The Shortcomings of Christian England
I never knew how to set a proper value on money. If I had but a little meat and drink to supply the present necessities of life, I never wished for more; and when I had any, I always gave it where I saw an object in distress. If it was not for my dear wife and children, I should pay as little regard to money now as I did at that time. I continued some time with Mr Dunscum as his servant, and he was very kind to me. But I had a vast inclination to visit England, and wished continually that it would please Providence to make a clear way for me to see this island. I entertained a notion that if I could get to England, I should never more experience either cruelty or ingratitude; so that I was very desirous to get among Christians. I knew Mr Whitfield very well. I had often heard him preach at New York. In this disposition I enlisted in the 28th regiment of foot, who were designed for Martinico, in the late war. We went in Admiral Pocock’s fleet from New York to Barbados, and from thence to Martinico. When that was taken, we proceeded to the Havannah, and took that place likewise. There I got discharged. I was at that time worth about thirty pounds, but I never regarded money in the least. I would not tarry for my prize-money, lest I should lose my chance of going to England. I went with the Spanish prisoners to Spain, and came to Old England with the English prisoners. I cannot describe my joy when we arrived within sight of Portsmouth. But I was astonished, when we landed, to hear the inhabitants of that place curse and swear, and be otherwise profane. I expected to find nothing but goodness, gentleness, and meekness in this Christian land, and I suffered great perplexity of mind at seeing so much wickedness.
I inquired if any serious Christian people resided there, and the woman I made the inquiry of answered me in the affirmative, and added that she was one of them. I was heartily glad to hear her say so. I thought I could give her my whole heart. She kept a public house. I deposited with her all the money that I had not an immediate occasion for, as I thought it would be safer with her. I gave her twenty-five guineas, six of which I desired her to lay out to the best advantage, in buying me some shirts, a hat, and some other necessaries. I made her a present of a very handsome large looking-glass that I brought with me from Martinico, in order to recompense her for the trouble I had given her. I must do this woman the justice to acknowledge that she did lay out some little for my use, but the nineteen guineas, and part of the six guineas, with my watch, she would not return, but denied that I ever gave them to her.
I soon perceived that I had got amongst bad people, who defrauded me of money and watch, and that all my promised happiness was blasted. I had no friend but God, and I prayed to him earnestly. I could scarcely believe it possible that the place where so many eminent Christians had lived and preached could abound with so much wickedness and deceit. I thought it worse than Sodom, considering the great advantage they possessed. I cried like a child, and that almost continually. At length God heard my prayers, and raised me up a friend indeed.
This publican had a brother who lived on Portsmouth Common, whose wife was a very serious, good woman. When she heard of the treatment I had met with, she came and inquired into my real situation, and was greatly troubled at the ill-usage I had received, and she took me home to her own house. I now began to rejoice, and my prayer was turned into praise. She made use of all the arguments in her power to prevail upon her who had wronged me to return my watch and money, but it was to no purpose, as she had given me no receipt, and I had nothing to show for it; so that I could not demand it. My good friend was excessively angry with her, and obliged her to give me back four guineas, which she said she gave me out of charity, though, in fact, it was my own, and a great deal more. She would have employed other means to oblige her to give up my money, but I would not suffer her. ‘Let it go,’ said I; ‘my God is in heaven.’ I did not mind my loss in the least. All that grieved me was that I had been disappointed in finding some Christian friends, with whom I hoped to enjoy a little sweet and comfortable society.
