[Antigua]. Raymond, Robert

[A Dialogue Between Robert Raymond and a Black Man, and Other Manuscript Essays and Poems]

[Greenwich, England: ca. 1824]. [4],67,126pp. Quarto. Original stiff vellum over boards. Boards worn and slightly bowed, hinges cracked. Several leaves and sections disbound or becoming so. Moderate staining and wear to contents. Good. Item #6511

A fascinating manuscript volume that contains the reminiscences and ruminations of an 18th-century British seaman, in prose and in verse. Robert Raymond, the author of this work, is best known through a manuscript diary of his experiences in the British Navy during the American Revolution. From that volume, we know that he served from at least 1767 to 1783, reaching the rank of warrant officer. From the present text, we can glean that he was apprenticed to a South Carolina sea captain at age fifteen, joined the navy, spent his final years as a resident of the Greenwich Naval Hospital, and that he was approximately seventy-three years old circa 1824.

Of overarching interest here is, "A Dialogue between Robert Raymond and a Black Man by the Name of Sambo, a Native of the Island of Antigua," which fills the first sixty-seven pages of the text. At the commencement of the account, Raymond was a sailor just arrived to Antigua on the HMS Chatham. The text proceeds to recount a series of conversations in 1774 with a formerly enslaved man named Sambo in the Antigua village of Falmouth. Sambo had previously labored on the plantation of John Horsford, "Till a good bokra gentleman come to my massa & tell him he will bye my freedom." He now sold produce at the market, made straw hats, and performed as a musician: "I make bangy too with callabash & put string & make he play music, so when we leave off work we get some our Black people & make dance." The encouragement of Sambo's Christian faith is a recurring theme, as well as Sambo's own religious conversations with his friend Toney and others. Despite the crude imitation of Black Caribbean English, Raymond does seem to be writing this dialogue in some serious hope of proselytizing the Black population of the Wet Indies. Following the conclusion of his prose, Raymond appends a poem or song in verse, which begins, "Black people all attention give / & Hear what now I say / I with your souls with Christ to live / in everlasting day."

Interspersed among these extended conversations are biographical sections recounting Raymond's life and travels. Raymond's service aboard a slave ship seems to be described on p.36: "I been on board a coast of Guinea ship, after her men been press'd on board a man of war, & she have passenger on board, one of the King of Bona's sons. He very rich man...he come over to England to get learning; he love gambling too much." He also recounts leaving his parents at age fifteen and going as an apprentice to South Carolina, where he was bound to a sadistic ship captain named Thomas Turner, then absconding to join the navy aboard the HMS Lively. There are also three full-page illustrations, which include an ink and watercolor frontispiece of a three-masted sailing vessel flying the Union Jack and Blue Ensign flags; a watercolor of a one-legged man reading under a tree, titled "A Greenwich Pensioner Meditating"; and an ink and wash titled "A Curious Piece of Antiquity."

The other main section of the volume is "A Short and Simple Description of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich," which in fact is quite a long account of the home for retired British sailors, with lengthy digressions based on conversations with the pensioners such as "A Few Observations & Reflections on the Ocean," and "A Short Description of the Milky Way." Near the end of the narrative, he notes, "Would I not begin life again, nor do I regret that at the age of seventy three I do find it is almost gone." Numerous poems are also included, some of them apparently original works by Raymond such as "The Sailor's Prayer," which opens the volume. The volume closes with the poem "The Orphan Boy's Tale," by Amelia Opie, first published in 1801; Raymond's own poem "The Mariner Looking Upward in a Storm," and his metaphorical "Letter Written by a Sailor to his Friend." A very interesting concatenation of literature, poetry, personal history, and religious conviction, by a long-serving member of the British Navy who saw action throughout the American Revolution. Raymond's diary of the Revolution and the years just preceding it brought $245,000 at Christie's in 2016.

Price: $12,500.00