Respectable Trade Read online

  The other great success story of this year is at the remote village of Njawarra, in the far north of the country. It took us nearly all day to drive to it, going almost cross-country on roads that are nothing more than sandy tracks. The farmers were aware that their lands were getting drier and their yields poorer. On their own initiative, they agreed that they should form an agricultural college and try to improve their farming. A few years ago, they asked us for a well. That was just the start of it. With our well at the center of their fields, they applied to the Canadian and European governments for aid. They now have a residential building for visiting trainees, a seed bank, a center for alternative technology, tutors, a restaurant, an orchard, a vegetable plot, an explosion of projects, and enthusiasm that is rolling out across the country—all based on our first little well.

  Since my last visit to The Gambia, just before Christmas 2004, we have started a whole program of new wells, and I am determined that this project will go on. It has directly fed thousands of schoolchildren and taught them methods of farming that will make them and their own children safer from hunger in the future. I have seen how the benefits of one well can transform adult farming projects, too—the women’s rice field and the Njawarra agricultural college are major sources of change in this poor country. I foresee that we will continue to invest in schools and well-organized groups.

  I do ask you to contribute anything that you can readily afford to Gardens for The Gambia. The country is the poorest in Africa (excluding those damaged by war), and the people work tremendously hard and effectively with the little help they get. The climate is getting drier, and the Sahara Desert is encroaching. Any sum of money you wish to donate will go direct to The Gambia; I take no administration fees in this country. Your donation will make a tremendous amount of difference to people who really deserve a chance. If you can help at all, I thank you very, very much.

  Philippa Gregory

  Checks or postal money orders should be sent to:

  Gardens for The Gambia

  P.O. Box 165

  Carlton in Cleveland

  Middlesbrough TS9 7WX

  England

  Gardens for The Gambia is applying for charitable status in the UK and is a registered charity and nongovernmental organization in The Gambia. In an official survey, it is the biggest donor of wells for primary schools in the country.

  All donations will be acknowledged. Please look at my Web site, www.PhilippaGregory.com, for future news. There is a special section about Gardens for The Gambia.

  A TOUCHSTONE READING GROUP GUIDE

  A Respectable Trade

  INTRODUCTION

  The devastating consequences of the slave trade in eighteenth-century Bristol, England, are explored through the powerful but forbidden attraction of well-born Frances Scott and her Yoruban slave Mehuru. Bristol in 1787 is booming, from its shipping docks to its elegant new houses. Josiah Cole, a small dockside trader, is prepared to gamble everything to join the big players of the city. But he needs ready cash and a well-connected wife.

  A marriage to Frances Scott is a mutually convenient solution. Trading her social contacts for Josiah’s protection, Frances enters the world of Bristol merchants and finds her life and fortune depend on the respectable trade of sugar, rum, and slaves.

  Into her new world comes Mehuru, once a priest in the ancient African kingdom of Yoruba. From the opposite ends of the earth, despite the enmity of slavery, Mehuru and Frances confront each other and their needs for love and liberty.

  QUESTIONS & TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. What is Mehuru’s role in his African tribe? To what extent do his gift of prophecy and his linguistic abilities enable him to endure the hardships of the middle passage and his enslavement in England?

  2. “We can never leave the trade. It is the only thing we know.” How do Sarah Cole’s attitudes about the trade and the risk involved in her family’s shipping business compare with those of her brother, Josiah? To what extent do Sarah’s views prevent her from welcoming her sister-in-law, Frances, into the family?

  3. Before Frances meets the slaves she is to instruct in English, she says: “I have taught children, but they were human children. I wouldn’t know how to teach niggers.” Based on the statements made by slaves, their owners, and abolitionists, describe the range of racial views held by the inhabitants of eighteenth-century Bristol.

  4. Why do Frances and Josiah allow Sir Charles Fairley to rape one of the female slaves? What do they have to lose by refusing his request? What do they have to gain by looking the other way while he commits his sexual assault?

  5. Why does Josiah wish to ally himself with the Scott family through his marriage to Frances? What does such an alliance represent to the society figures of Bristol? To what extent are Josiah’s naïveté and unchecked ambition responsible for his being cheated by fellow members of the Merchant Venturers?

  6. Why does Mehuru’s involvement in the abolitionist movement threaten Frances? To what extent does Mehuru qualify as a radical in his efforts to gain his freedom from his owners? Why didn’t he try to escape during one of his nighttime expeditions to the coffeehouse?

  7. “Only a free man can give his friendship. If you wish us to be friends I have to be free. Anything else is slavish devotion—it means nothing.” Why does Frances wait until her death to set Mehuru free? What would his freedom represent to her in her lifetime?

  8. “Maybe one day there will be a world where a man and a woman like us might love each other, d’you think?” Is the romance that develops between Mehuru and Frances challenged more by their different social stations as slave and owner or their different racial backgrounds? To what extent is the “forbidden fruit” aspect of their love responsible for the undeniable intensity?

  9. Why does Frances Cole conceal her pregnancy from Mehuru and choose to reveal the baby’s paternity to her physician and her slave Elizabeth? Why do you think Philippa Gregory chose to end the novel at such a dramatic moment?

  10. To what extent do you see the end of A Respectable Trade as a tragedy? In what ways does it represent a victory for Mehuru? How did this ending affect your appreciation of the story as a whole, and what kind of future do you envision for the interracial son born to Frances and Mehuru?

  A CONVERSATION WITH PHILIPPA GREGORY

  In A Respectable Trade, you convey the horrific conditions endured by Mehuru and others on slave ships voyaging from Africa. What kind of research did you do to write so authoritatively about the eighteenth-century slave trade?

  I started with the very many powerful histories of the slave trade, reading most of the key works, then I went to the public library at Bristol and read accounts and even saw the financial books of the slave traders. I became very interested in the development and prosperity of Bristol and Clifton—the story of the Hot Well is based on history.

  Many of your historical novels have examined the kind of status anxiety Frances and Josiah Cole experience as newcomers to Bristol society. What attracts you to this theme?

  The eighteenth century (and the Tudor period) is one of great change and opportunity. Status, and the representation of status, becomes absolutely key to people who are living (and trying to rise) in a rapidly changing world. The opportunities are tremendous for them, but the dangers loom very great.

  What do you think accounts for the inability of English traders like Sarah and Josiah to recognize the inherent evil of slavery?

  To start with it was something which just was not questioned; the role of working people in society in Elizabethan England was so poor that the status of the slave was not very different. As the slave trade developed there were all sorts of justifications made for the business, from a claim that Africans were not human, to the “Christian” argument that it was better that they should be enslaved and converted than left in paganism. Finally there was the last-ditch argument that slavery was justified by the wealth it would bring to Christians who would make good use of it. By the time th