The Conqueror

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 planters of the Lee­ward Caribbees to im­mi­grate, tempt­ing many who were dis­sat­is­fied with the British Gov­ern­ment or wished for larg­er es­tates than they could ac­quire on their own pop­ulous is­lands. Mem­bers of the Lyt­ton, Mitchell, and Stevens fam­ilies of St. Christo­pher were among the first to re­spond to the lib­er­al of­fer of the Dan­ish Gov­ern­ment. The two sons of James Lyt­ton, Pe­ter and James, grew up on St. Croix, Dan­ish by law, British in habit and speech; and both mar­ried wom­en of Nevis. Pe­ter was the first to wed, and his mar­riage to young Mary Fawcett was the last to be cel­ebrat­ed in the Great House at Gin­ger­land.

When Pe­ter Lyt­ton and his wife sailed away, as oth­er sons and oth­er daugh­ters had sailed be­fore, to re­turn to Nevis rarely,--for those were the days of trav­el un­ve­neered,--John and Mary Fawcett were left alone: their youngest daugh­ter, she who af­ter­ward be­came the wife of Thomas Mitchell of St. Croix, was at school in Eng­land.

By this time Dr. Fawcett had giv­en up his prac­tice and was liv­ing on his in­come. He took great in­ter­est in his cane-​fields and mills, and in the cul­ture of limes and pine-​ap­ples; but in spite of his out­door life his tem­per soured and he be­came ir­ri­ta­ble and ex­act­ing. Gout set­tled in him as a per­ma­nent re­minder of the high for­tunes of his mid­dle years, and when the Gal­lic ex­citabil­ity of his tem­per­ament, ag­gra­vat­ed by a half-​cen­tu­ry of hot weath­er, was stung to fiercer ex­pres­sion by the twinges of his dis­ease, he was an abom­inable com­pan­ion for a wom­an twen­ty years clos­er to youth.

In the soli­tudes of the large house Mary Fawcett found life un­en­durable. Still hand­some, nat­ural­ly gay of tem­per, and a bril­liant fig­ure in so­ci­ety, she fre­quent­ly de­sert­ed her el­der­ly hus­band for weeks at a time. The day came when he peremp­to­ri­ly for­bade her to leave the place with­out him. For a time she sub­mit­ted, for al­though a wom­an of un­com­mon in­de­pen­dence of spir­it, it was not un­til 1740 that she broke free of tra­di­tions and as­ton­ished the is­land of Nevis. She shut her­self up with her books and needle­work, at­tend­ed to her house and do­mes­tic ne­groes with the pre­ci­sion of long habit, saw her friends when she could, and en­dured the ex­ac­tions of her hus­band with on­ly an oc­ca­sion­al but mighty out­burst.

It was in these un­hap­py con­di­tions that Rachael Fawcett was born.