John Wickham’s “Letter from Ferney”, “Notes from New York”, “Dutch Excursion”, and “Letter from Geneva” form an epistolary “mailbox” of work from a Caribbean man of letters writing from abroad on places, faces and things from a way of seeing whose narrative “mode” can best be described as looking askance. They represent both Wickham’s expression of the self abroad and his “reading” or writing about these public places. Wickham had already published his early short stories in the Bim of the early 1950s: “Blood Brothers”, “The Blue Dress”, “Christmas is for Children”, and “Call It a Long Farewell”, all in 1952; “Theresa”, 1953; “Galvan and Calliana”, 1954; and “All of Which Past”, 1958, after the first of the letters examined here, “Dutch Excursion”, 1957. The four letters under discussion were published in the collection Casuarina Row (1974), and all references are taken from this edition.
In this essay, I am reading Wickham as the modern artist; his modes of observation, and the spaces/places he portrays are reminiscent of CLR James’ “essays” in Letters from London. Both James and Wickham write with a certain detachment from the place; something that can be termed “isolated marginality”, which seems a necessity for this type of writing. James’ two Bloomsbury essays, “The Bloomsbury Atmosphere” and “Bloomsbury Again”, “The Houses” and “The Nucleus of a Great Civilisation” portray what Wickham elsewhere calls a “cynical sophistication”. I am less interested in why Wickham is in these places than I am in the position he adopts in writing about them, as a West Indian writer/spectator/commentator with the discerning “I” of a Caribbean man of letters. Here the essayist meets the touristic observer; the general philosopher meets the short story writer; the pragmatist, the idealist. The small-island observer encounters the “bigness” and wealth of New York, Holland and Switzerland. I am interested in how he sees them as one “passing through” especially as one informed not only by a colonial education but also by the streets of Bridgetown and Port of Spain. He refers to both Barbados and Trinidad often in these letters. How does this direct his way of seeing? I am “reading” here the use of address and anecdote; of the rhetorical question; of allusions to “back home” and an admiration for the “new” and foreign. My approach in this commentary is simple: a “reading” of each letter individually (in chronological order) identifying the tropes and form that demonstrate the “look-askance” in Wickham’s modes of observation of place, time and people.
“Dutch Excursion”, published in Bim, Vol. 7, No. 25 (July–December 1957), shows events narrated during the summer of 1956 in a journey across parts of Europe. Here we have Wickham as travel writer; observer; commentator and spectator. So much of travel writing is about border crossings both literally and literarily; the excursion across the countryside with the stopover at various places; and the movements through language, word choice and registers of address that show the reader what the writer, as travel writer, sees. In a sense, the whole article is a narrative excursion in what the writer sees, experiences and “reports”. Setting out from Charing Cross Station, London, on “a search for something I should more easily have found at home” (95). In Bruges, Belgium, the excursion took in a “braderie”, which Wickham describes as “much like Carnival in Port-of-Spain without the costumes and dancing in the streets” (99–100). Wickham, the spectator, becomes the spectacle: the curiosity of the people of Bruges at seeing a Black man walking along their streets is met with the wonderful understatement “but I could have wished they were more tactful and less obtrusive in their curiosity” (101). This is the “look-askance” in the title of the commentary; the use of understatement; that rueful look at the lookers as they gaze on the Black man.
The border crossing into Holland and the excursion through the towns of the country: Bergen-op-Zoom; Amsterdam, Rotterdam: journeying by bicycle and then by train: “We were no sooner in Rotterdam than out, and there was nothing there to fix the memory except that it was raining and a bowler hatted man with an umbrella showed us the way to the bicycle entrance of the railway station” (103). Travel, destination and memory all rolled into this pithy declarative statement. As John moves on, so, too, does the narrative flow: “Rotterdam-Leyden-Hague-Haarlem, then Amsterdam in the rain…. Next morning as we went out of Amsterdam a long queue was waiting to enter the Rijks-museum for the Rembrandt exhibition, but time was so precious that we had to forgo that pleasure” (103–104). Again, the reader is caught up in travel and time; time and narrative; this is both clock time and narrative time; the telling of a sequence of events in a journey that takes Wickham and the reader back to London, through the Belgium border and on to the English Channel. And in many ways Wickham has been working (writing) the literary channel in this piece as in his other travel journals. This is an excursion, as the writer titles the piece, and not a peregrination or wandering journey across this part of Europe, and the narrative accommodates or facilitates the manner of the journey. In other words, this is not a long, rambling discourse but a studied commentary by an astute author.
An informed man of letters, a man of the world, Wickham concludes his “report” of the excursion with two events which had occurred during his travels, on his return to London: the newspapers were “referring to something called Laker’s Feat” (110) and, Wickham noted, “while I had been away Nasser had been busy” (110). Two historical events of the year 1956: Jim Laker’s feat of all 10 wickets in a test match innings in the Ashes match against Australia at Manchester in July (with a match haul of 19 wickets, having taken 9 in the first innings); and the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser as President of Egypt after having served as Prime Minister from 1954. These events, as he said, were part of “another story”.
We see admiration and scrutiny, a detached scrutiny, in his “Notes from New York” published in Bim, Vol. 9, No. 34 (1962)—a piece that seems to be guided by what he calls “one’s eavesdropping search for the elusive paradigm of the country” (93). James also engages in such in his Bloomsbury essays in the “notable” writers he meets; listening in to the “asides” and whispers while participating in literary “conversation”.
The writing in this “letter” captures the styles and idiom of what the writer caught of the New York that he experienced as city-walker, observer. Some of the writing here is seen in the Suttle Street scenes in his Bim 1967 short story “Meeting in Milkmarket”, which was later collected in Discoveries: the young narrator describes the sights, sounds and smells of the street and reaches a crescendo with “the girls of the town, their mouths filled with gold and curses, slutted and strutted along the narrow wet street” (125). Here, in his New York perambulations, we have Wickham as the urban observer with his linguistic “camera” capturing the many angles, turns, corners of the vibrant New York scenes. Yet he stops to question if this is the “authentic” city or the one made up for the travellers, the passersby. In this essay, we see him as the modern artist, his modes of observation, and the spaces/places he portrays. All the while playfully querying about finding “the authentic America”, knowing that it cannot be found in the variations of dialects and speech patterns, the music, the people, the club, or the cultural performance of the city. He cites a “friend”, a “cynical young man” for whom New York is not a city but an “arrangement of contiguous villages” (91). And, of course, there is the rhetorical: “But whatever it is, one is constantly being reminded that if it is not the United States, what then is?” (91–92) And writing this, as I am in 2026, it seems to address so much of what is the United States today!
In his own musings, Wickham (or his persona) is aware that “neither the effusions of Hollywood nor the brought-back-home tale of the American Wonderland had proven an adequate preparation” (88–89). And despite the many displays along the streets, even in the parts of Harlem he visited, he understands that “beneath all this surface smoulders a massive antagonism hardly concealed by the hymn-singing contralto coming from a first floor window. Everything, from the remarkable singleness of expression on the faces (a mixture of fright and petulance) to the scribblings on the advertisement posters contributes to the impression of latent antagonism” (89). Why the “latent antagonism”? It is the early 1960s, and the civil rights discussion and rhetorics are ongoing; so, too, are the responses by the anti-civil rights officials. Wickham is aware that, amid much of the Black performance he sees, the music, the role-playing, there is the pain and anger of the American people. He recognises what he terms “the snarl” of some of those he meets in his journeys: a snarl “masked sometimes by the merest veneer of politeness but often blatant on street corner or in supermarket, strident and aggressive on the television commercials, as part of the vernacular” (90). And it is the variety and variegated nature of this “vernacular”—of language, style, sound and gesture—that Wickham’s hermeneutics “captures” so effectively in his “notes”. This is John Wickham’s interpretation of what he sees of New York.
In his ambulatory narrative through 49th Street, near Broadway: the actors rehearsing their lines, making their gestures; all the variety, the disjointed variety: “One can’t help thinking that all these disjointed scraps and scenes, these snatches of sentences, caught…in mid-air outside their frames of reference, are all part of a phenomenon that is substantially more than the arithmetical sum of its parts, all part of the idiom of this city” (91). The latter phrase is used in the 1967 short story “The Old Man and the City” in which John the narrator speaks of the idiom of Port of Spain. The observing writer/narrator and the language of the place. And there is a language of place here; it is what one might call a Wickhamesque idiom that seems specifically crafted to describe or even inscribe the images of the place represented. This appears a distinctive feature of his writing in these letters and in his short fiction as well. Then there are the allusions to back home as in the lady who wanted to hear his Bajan accent, to which he replied “not in this cold blood!” (93)
How to “read” New York and its racial politics? Wickham does not avoid the question which comes up in the essay’s conclusion, in his attendance at a performance of Much Ado About Nothing and Claudio’s response to Leonata when she asks if he is determined to marry her brother’s daughter. Claudio replies: “I’ll hold my mind were she an Ethiope.” To this Wickham critically avers: “At which it seemed as if a great hush descended upon the audience. Did one read too much in what might merely be a missing of the words or was there quietly at work a troubled tribal conscience whispering of integration and freedom riders and peace corps?” (94). The sarcasm here is conveyed with a level of cynical sophistication and should perhaps take the reader back to the essay’s opening paragraph in concluding this section: “...America and, thus, the individual American now find themselves, for better or for worse, caught in the full glare of a world scrutiny in which no gesture goes unnoticed and no word unanalysed” (85). Published over sixty years ago, this is still so vital today.
“Letter from Geneva”, Bim, Vol. 10. Number 39 (1964)
In this letter we have the Caribbean man of letters looking ruefully at what he sees of this wealthy European city. From the early ironic gesture on the emerging sun in the afternoon city to the decorated Genevois shop-windows and strolls along the neat pavements, the writer portrays a people, not without some sarcasm, in “an active act of possession” of what is theirs to have and enjoy. The opening lines of the letter says much about the writer’s “look” and attitude here:
Last Sunday the sun emerged and shone for an afternoon upon the city. In the distance the peaks of the Jura glistened, and those Genevois who did not take their skis to the mountains came out to inspect the shop-windows and stroll along their pavements. Their pavements, because
they walk along as if in fact they possess every square centimetre of them,
their striding or their sauntering an active act of possession (111, emphases mine).
He observes the “composed etiquette” of the people, in their various faces and guises—for example, the interface between the “Professor” and the “Legionnaire” as required by the etiquette of the day; there is the “old” Mademoiselle and her younger Italian boyfriend as part of the urban spectacle.
A note of admiration at the high standard of living of the city; but he wonders at a feeling of depression on seeing this wealth on display. Perhaps a look back at his West Indian social conditions: “I had not expected the tidiness, the cleanliness, and modern high-standard-of-living efficiency to strike so depressing and dreary a note” (112). He writes with wit and sarcasm about this wealthy place and its people, aware of its history at the heart of Europe and its current role as “facilitator” of the migrant rich:
In the newer section of the town blocks of flats and offices are going up against the skyline as the international bodies proliferate, and the conference and permanent delegates cry you hungrily for lebensraum. The hotels go up, the bankers pull down their barns and build greater, until the Swiss economy cries out “Surchauffé!” and the government attempts to cry halt before havoc overtakes the whole fabric (112).
Wickham’s use of the German word lebensraum here is “interesting” and perhaps doubly intended. On the one hand it denotes making more room for living and working space, but on the other it was a term used by Nazi Germany for more space for the German-speaking people. In addition, there’s the idea of the Swiss economy overheating. He employs the term “surchauffé” in emphasising the point. Here again, we have the rueful irony of the “glancing” eye! But Wickham continues:
All this growth has increased the transient and immigrant population until in the city crowds it is not an easy thing to find the Swiss who, one is told are somewhere quietly in their counting-houses counting up their money. And so the streets of the new town swarm with a well-fed and clearly prosperous but essentially faceless population who wear an undeniable look of not belonging. They indicate by virtue of a palpable, rather coarse curiosity, that they are not of this place and will, in time, when they have secured what they are seeking, go back to where they really come from, as the small islanders in the famous calypso were defined some years ago. They do not yet know that that time of return will never come, and perhaps it is as well that they don’t (112–113).
There is so much to focus on in the above statement, not least of which is the caustic yet brutal truth it offers; the tone of mockery continues but this time with a deeper politicophilosophical look. The immigrants have “descended” on this “neutral” domain in the aftermath of postwar wealth and accommodation, like vultures seeking what they can find of leftover European largesse. They have brought their wealth with them to deposit in this safe haven. This is not the writer’s chic but rather the open-eyed pragmatist as observer/commentator.
We see Geneva through the roving eye of the “narrator”, much like the Baudelarian flâneur—we encounter the faces, the I’s and idioms of the place. However, having said this, I think Baudelaire’s flâneur too inadequate a figure, in his ambulatory leisure and indifference, to effectively portray what Wickham is doing in this letter—as also in “Notes from New York”, and in “Ferney” and “Dutch Excursion”. This is probably the most “complete” of the letters “read” here and deserves a more comprehensive treatment/analysis than the brief and rather hurried one given here. Its sheer rhetorical force alone warrants a full essay.
In “Letter from Ferney” published in Bim, Vol. 11. Number 43 (1966), Wickham’s observing “I” turns on the small town (village) of Ferney, in rural France. He writes not only of its small shops and exciting festivals but also of its sometimes quirky people. Whoever the addressee, he writes in the opening sentence: “This morning as I waited for the bus I noticed that they were cutting down some of the trees lining the Avenue de la Mairie which runs past Voltaire’s statue and the post office” (78, emphasis mine). A simple, declarative sentence conveying casual observation, but also signalling the mode of observation that will dominate this letter. He goes on, “Saturday is market day in Ferney and the little square is transformed early in the morning into a scene which makes me think of Maupassant’s story ‘A Piece of String’” (82). Perhaps unavoidably, as a writer/reader, Wickham turns to literature and Maupassant’s astute observer. Wickham’s observing “I” sees the various “actors” on the social stage: “the butchers put[ting] up their horse meat stalls”, “the flower seller…next to the Café de la Mairie”, “butter, eggs, poultry come from the outlying farms. The tiny street rings with ‘Ca va, monsieur?’ ‘Bonjour, madame’” (82). The scene, a tableau vivant, captured with the painter’s brush or the cinematic eye of the roving camera.
“Sunday morning is not much different. Then the cafes are full and the shops are full” (83).
“Ferney has its characters …” (83). Again as readers we are drawn to his depiction of the tableaux created in stories like “Meeting in Milkmarket,” “The Old Man and the City,” “Lunch Hour”, and the early scenes in “Christmas is for Children”. In all of these, Wickham’s use of language creates a vivid visual conveyance of the scene (seen), whether it be Suttle Street, Bridgetown or Port of Spain, or, in this case, Ferney.
But Ferney is also about history, France’s cultural history and its celebration thereof. Wickham had obviously been staying there for a while and recalls: “One Sunday afternoon last September, Ferney and its little square, dominated by the statue of Voltaire, ‘le patriarche de Ferney’, were the centre of a gathering of brass bands [that] came from all the villages around—Thoiry, Gex, St Genis, Prevessin and there was even one from Divonne—fifteen or twenty of them” (79). One reads in this letter little of the at times biting sarcasm that there is in the New York “Notes” or “Letter from Geneva”. There is an almost endearing feeling for Ferney conveyed in these lines, and this is perhaps best done in the closing paragraph:
The name of the village is really Ferney-Voltaire to commemorate its connection with the philosopher who lived here and loved the place…. It is not hard to understand the attraction Ferney had for the philosopher: it was near to the safety of Geneva, it was France and it was far from the turbulence and hazards of the Paris court. Something of this ambivalent attraction clings to the village still” (84).
The four letters ‘“read” in this essay, each deserving separate and full-length treatment, show the Caribbean writer/observer/commentator at the height of his powers as travel writer, keen observer and intellectual (whatever this fraught term means today). Ultimately, it is about representation: to see a foreign society not as strange but as part of human society, while not being so naive as to ignore the economic and sociocultural differences between affluent Euro-America and the West Indies. Wickham’s epistolary performance here shows that the way we represent ourselves in the world, the way we read the world, is crucial to the way we live in it.
Works Cited
De Maupassant, Guy. “The Piece of String” in The Best Short Stories. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1997.
James, CLR. Letters from London. Maraval: Prospect Press, 2003.
Wickham, John. “Dutch Excursion” in Casuarina Row. Belfast: Christian Journals, 1974.
Wickham, John. “Notes from New York” in Casuarina Row. Belfast: Christian Journals, 1974.
Wickham, John. “Letter from Geneva” in Casuarina Row. Belfast: Christian Journals, 1974.
Wickham, John. “Letter from Ferney” in Casuarina Row. Belfast: Christian Journals, 1974.
Wickham, John. “Meeting in Milkmarket” in Discoveries. Harlow: Longman, 1993.
Wickham, John. “The Old Man and the City” in Discoveries. Harlow: Longman, 1993.