Governor Grey Quotes

ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

GENERAL STANLEY WAS still blinking in astonishment at Grey’s brief description of the events that had culminated in his own appointment as military governor—Grey judiciously suppressing the facts that Azeel had commissioned an Obeah man to drive the previous governor mad and that Rodrigo had gone one step further and arranged to have the late Governor Warren killed and partially devoured—

Grey didn’t know whether the girl had been Warren’s personal property, and he didn’t ask her. He’d taken advantage of his own doubt to tell Mr. Dawes, the governor’s erstwhile secretary, that as there was no record of her provenance, they should assume that she was technically the property of His Majesty and should thus be omitted from the list of Governor Warren’s belongings. Mr. Dawes, an excellent secretary, had made a noise like a mildly consumptive sheep and lowered his eyes in acquiescence. Grey had then dictated a brief letter of manumission, signed this as acting military governor of Jamaica (and thus His Majesty’s agent), and had Mr. Dawes affix the most imposing seal in his collection—Grey thought it was the seal of the department of weights and measures, but it was done in red wax and looked very impressive.

You can take the Governor’s pinnace; that’s small, but it’s seaworthy.” Grey fumbled through the drawer of his desk. “I’ll write an order for the dockers to hand it over to you.” “Aye, we’ll need the boat—I canna risk the Artemis; as she’s Jared’s—but I think we’d best steal it, John.” Jamie’s brows were drawn together in a frown. “I wouldna have ye be involved wi’ me in any visible way, aye? You’ll be having trouble enough with things, without that.” Grey smiled unhappily. “Trouble? Yes, you might call it trouble, with four plantation houses burnt, and over two hundred slaves gone—God knows where! But I vastly doubt that anyone will take notice of my social acquaintance, under the circumstances. Between fear of the Maroons and fear of the Chinaman, the whole island is in such a panic that a mere smuggler is the most negligible of trivialities.” “It’s a great relief to me to be thought trivial,” Jamie said, very dryly. “Still, we’ll steal the boat. And if we’re taken, ye’ve never heard my name or seen my face, aye?” Grey stared at him, a welter of emotions fighting for mastery of his features, amusement, fear, and anger among them. “Is that right?” he said at last. “Let you be taken, watch them hang you, and keep quiet about it—for fear of smirching my reputation? For God’s sake, Jamie, what do you take me for?

God made this country for us,” he wrote to Governor Grey. “If it were a whale, we might slice it in half. But it cannot be sliced. We will have to fight for the land that lies between us.” Governor

The Republic was extremely pious. She spoke of her Christianity at all times, and in her Golden Book there is a prayer for the magistrates of the Republic which runs: ‘0 Lord, Father Almighty, who hast chosen this Republic to serve Thee, choose, we beseech Thee, our governors, according to Thy Will and our necessity: that so, fearing Thee and keeping Thy Holy Commandments, they may cherish and direct us in true charity. Amen.’ Never was there a city so full of churches and chapels, never was there a people who submitted more loyally to the discipline of the Church. But there was a certain incongruity with this in their foreign policy.