Great Awakening Meta Davis Cumberbatch, 'Mother of the Arts'

Acknowledgments

I have drawn on quite a few sources while trying to connect the dots of the story you are about to read. I sifted through Meta Davis Cumberbatch’s personal papers, and documents of the Ba- hamas Archives. I interviewed some of her former students and collaborators and others who knew her. I visited San Fernando and Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Royal Acade- my of Music, London. Susan O’Neill‘s impressive research on the O’Neill family helped to regalvanize my quest to understand the Davis family tree. Then, Christian Holder and Flavia Wade start- ed a useful web site for the Davis descendants. Along the way, Christian’s journey to understand more of the life of his grand- mother, Kathleen Davis Warner, Meta’s sister, complemented the work I had done and opened some new doors onto Meta’s life.  I thank Gloria Lockhart, Lady Zoë Maynard, Sir Clement May- nard, Calvin Lockhart, Inga Kemp, Jonas Åhlund, Stefanie Dorn- burg, Frances Fawkes, Ian Fernander, Tameika Thompson, my nephew Jonathan and his fiancée, Ariel, my sons Gerard, Jason and Desmond, my wife Dianne , my staff and so many others too numerous to mention but whose help I shall not forget.

Meta touched the lives of very many people. So, the material about her has been truly abundant. In this regard, I particularly thank Nicki Kelly for her outstanding Foreword; I asked her to write it because of her moving letter of condolences, but only lat- er realized how well she understood Meta. I thank all concerned for offering material so freely. The errors are entirely my own.

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GREAT AWAKENING: Meta Davis Cumberbatch

Foreword

I first came into Meta’s orbit at the age of 11, when my Greek mother, frustrated by my lack of progress with another piano teacher, insisted she take me on as a student.

As I soon learned, a lesson with Meta Davis Cumberbatch was not just about playing the piano, because her classes always ex- panded to embrace the entire range of artistic endeavour. And al- though I never mastered the keyboard to her satisfaction or mine, she opened a door into a world that was to remain a constant source of enrichment in my life.

To her students, Meta was a force of nature in perpetual mo- tion. She never did anything by halves. An imposing figure, she did not simply walk. She planted each foot firmly on the ground— a trait that was to characterise her many achievements. And when she taught, her entire body became engaged in the process, as she described the composers whose works we were learning to play, showed us how to interpret the music, or beat a drum to teach us tempo. Through it all there was that joyous laugh that seemed to come from the very bottom of her soul.

I stayed with Meta until I entered the University of Pennsyl- vania in 1949. But we never lost touch. She was pleased when I wrote that I had auditioned and been accepted as a member of the university choir. And she shared my excitement when I told her we would be performing with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra in New York and Washington. In October 1957, as a graduate student at New York University, I was among the audi- ence at Meta’s Carnegie Hall recital, which showcased her versa- tility as musician, poet and dancer.

Reading Great Awakening brought a rush of memories, espe- cially of the William Street cottage that Meta had christened Cot- tabunga, and where I and her beloved Blüthner piano had locked in battle for so many years. The Blüthner was to be Meta’s faith- ful companion, as she and husband Roland, who came to The Bahamas in the 1920s as a doctor in the colonial medical service, moved from island to island.

When I interviewed her for The Nassau Tribune in February 1957, she told me: "That piano followed me all through those

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Peter D. Maynard

years. It has a history and story all its own to tell. I am seriously thinking of writing a book about it and allowing it to relate its own adventures."

Meta never wrote that book, but her grandson Peter Maynard has recounted their story in this loving tribute to a woman who planted a seed that grew, flourished and multiplied in the face of hardship, disappointment and illness.

All that has been achieved in the arts in this country over the last 60 years is rooted in soil tilled and watered by Meta Davis Cumberbatch. Born in Trinidad, Meta had envisioned a career for herself as a concert artist in the halls of Europe. Instead, fate brought her to The Bahamas and to some of the most primitive islands in the archipelago. How she got here was a saga in itself, as I discovered in that 1957 interview.

The Bahamas in the 1920s, and especially the Out Islands, was a far cry from what it is today. Dr. Cumberbatch had the good sense to come alone, the idea being to size up the situation before asking his wife to join him. When he saw what conditions were like in Andros, where he had been posted as its first doctor, he immediately wrote Meta not to come.

But the emotional, impulsive temperament which was so much a part of Meta Cumberbatch’s appeal, would not permit her to be separated from her husband. Together with her baby Zoë, she decided to join the doctor without prior warning. The cost of the passage she defrayed by a series of recitals along the way from Trinidad to New York and south again.

The telegram she sent her husband from New York inform- ing him of the time of her arrival almost missed him. Luckily, it arrived in sufficient time for him to ask his good friends Dr. and Mrs. G. S. Worrell to meet his wife in Nassau.

For Meta, the Out Islands, or Family Islands as they are now known, provided a new learning experience, but not without cost. The rigors and hardships of island life eventually told on her. Before the birth of her second daughter Gloria, she devel- oped problems with her legs that left her confined to bed. She spent her time teaching needlecraft to the children of the settle- ment, she told me.

Then came the family’s transfer to Inagua. Still unwell, she eventually returned to Trinidad to seek a cure. With proper care

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GREAT AWAKENING: Meta Davis Cumberbatch

for the first time in many months, she began to recover. She swore, however, she would never return to The Bahamas, but fate and her doctors decreed otherwise. Only in a Bahamian cli- mate with its healing sun and sea could she achieve a permanent cure, they told her.

On their return, Dr. Cumberbatch was posted to Cat Island, where the family was provided with a home near the water’s edge. Day by day Meta grew stronger, until the day came when she abandoned her crutches entirely.

As her body mended, so did her spirit. She grew to love the natural life and her island surroundings, which was to be later reflected in her poetry. I was very happy here, she told me. I made peace with myself.

She shared with me what she had written to express her thoughts and feelings at this particular time in her life. There is much within us that we must shed, she said, if we would bare ourselves in the fullness of our being, to the light that we must seek and proclaim as truth.

That was Meta’s Great Awakening. All of her creative im-pulses, which she had dammed up for so long, burst forth. Nearly every waking moment was spent at the piano. When she and her family returned to England some years later on a year’s sabbati- cal, she was in prime condition to resume her musical career.

Then came a second fateful choice—career or family. She de- cided that her first duty was to her two young children. There- fore, the family returned to The Bahamas to make their perma- nent home in Nassau.

Whatever disappointment Meta may have felt was quickly re- placed by the recognition that here perhaps, there was greater need for her talents. And so began a new journey—one fraught with setbacks that might have crushed a much stronger person. But, this extraordinary woman, whose character was honed in the fire of hardship and tragedy, retained an optimism and exu- berance that never spoke of failure.

Meta Davis Cumberbatch never stopped seeking the light and proclaiming the truth of her artistic commitment. And we in The Bahamas are the richer for it.

—Nicki Kelly

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Peter D. Maynard

Preface

It is indeed a privilege after years of labour to witness the great awakening of people of The Bahamas in the cause of the arts...

Meta Davis, ‘Mother of the Arts,’ in the foreword of the programme of the Brotherhood of Man Exhibition on Mahatma Gandhi, held by the Festival of Arts and Crafts, in Nassau, Bahamas, in 1971

This book tells a real story about a very remarkable woman. It is also about liberation, self-expression, self-determination, the growth of a national identity and culture. The story is designed for the general reader, but also for those interested in women’s studies, world culture, the development of the arts and crafts, third world literature, music, theatre, dance, and sociology, eth- nicity, anthropology, history and just an insightful and unique perspective of life and culture. If that latter sentence is a mouth- ful, it is gives the reader just a little inkling of the breadth of her contribution. She was a tireless visionary, a one-woman cultural explosion.

This book fills a void. The setting is The Bahamas. But, the lessons are universal. They show how a people’s culture grows from the inside out, and how the art and crafts of a people de- mand legitimacy and appreciation as culture, in spite of colonial conditioning. The people of the diaspora regarded neither them- selves nor their way of life as beautiful. That was how they were conditioned. The story chronicles the acceptance of their way of life and art forms as culture and art, the growing cultural matu- rity of a nation, and the increasing humanity of those classified as the colonised, and colonisers. It portrays one woman’s dedicated and single-minded toil in the fields over a period of more than 50 years, and the successful harvest which continues today.

Meta Davis Cumberbatch was an outspoken activist for the arts and crafts and for social causes. Therefore, this book presents developments of a profound cultural and political significance, what she called a great awakening. The definition of culture is all encompassing; it includes the totality of socially  transmit-

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GREAT AWAKENING: Meta Davis Cumberbatch

ted behaviour patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought characteristic of a com- munity or population. She awakened the artistic expression of a culture, and the reverberations were felt through every facet of community life. She awakened the consciousness and defined the identity of a new generation. While critical political and socio-economic events were occurring such as the great depression, labour riots, and the post war end of colonialism, she forged on a parallel path a new departure in the arts and crafts, a new self- esteem and a revolution in the Bahamian identity. Remarkably, this great awakening also parallels cultural and political developments throughout the colonial and post-colonial world, Europe and the Americas.

It may seem strange to state that I made every effort not to be the writer of this book. But, it is true. While Meta Davis Cumber- batch was still alive, I encouraged her at every opportunity — as did others — to write the story of her life. But, for example, in 1973, her focus then was on cultural events for The Bahamas’ in- dependence. I even prepared an outline for her autobiography: piano forte, Bahama Out Islands, students and collaborators, her vision for the arts and crafts, life in the pine barren, poetry, and her continuing legacy. All in vain, as her outlook was full speed ahead, because there was so much, so much still to be done. Meta seemed to think that to write her autobiography was a form of vanity, which she could hardly spare the time to indulge. She was constantly busy with a number of projects, all at the same time, for the advancement of the arts and crafts in The Bahamas. The arts and crafts were her life.

While encouraging her to write her story, I suppose I eventu- ally came to know deep down that she would never do so. She lived intensely in the present, and was more concerned about making history than about writing it. As a part of her activism in the arts and crafts, there was a certain proud confidence that she had made her mark, and that something would be left for all time in any event.

The concession she made was to ask me to seek to publish  a collection of her poems. She had mimeographed, in a limited number and at Roland’s expense, a little green booklet of her po- ems which was sold at her regular piano recitals. Those who at-

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tended her recitals, for example, at the auditorium of the Gov- ernment High School, then on Poinciana Drive in Nassau, could obtain, during the intermission or at the end, one of the booklets, from which she always performed at least one of the poems, of- ten in dialect, in the course of the recitals.

In the early 1970s, I approached many international publish- ers to publish the poems. But, the results were disappointing. It was a risky business to publish poetry, they said. They exception- ally took prose, much less poetry, from the developing world. Much as they enjoyed reading the poetry, they could not be sure of adequate sales and a good return on their investment. Perhaps, this temporary setback, temporary indeed, bore a little on her mind. It is my good fortune to signpost this biography with cer- tain poems, some from her little green mimeographed book, and others not previously published. The poems have an autobio- graphical aspect to them. They portray brief, concentrated mo- ments of her life.

The death of her husband, Dr. Roland Cumberbatch, in 1976 was a heart wrenching blow from which she never fully recov- ered. Oddly, his death terminated any hope of her writing about her life. She would not look back on her life the way her husband used to. If she stopped to reflect, perhaps that would give Father Time the chance he needed to catch up with her. She found solace only in making new plans for the arts and crafts. She kept herself busy, as she tried — and tragically failed — to undergo a pain- ful readjustment to life without Daddy Cumberbatch. Every art- ist needs a patron. Roland Cumberbatch was her patron, and so much more. She survived him by only two years.

Hence, I took up the task of writing this biography. It is a task I assumed gladly, but by default and in the realization that she would have recounted the events so much more accurately, with the vivid colour and quick silver changes of nuance, mood and temperament that came from her own experience. Yet, in a sense, this biography does come from experience. But, that experience is the attentive observation of a grandson, combined with every- thing else that I have been able to discover about her since her death.

I also completely changed my approach to, and the outline of,

the book. With the passage of time, I realized more and more the

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GREAT AWAKENING: Meta Davis Cumberbatch

significance of the fact that this is a story seen through my eyes, not hers. I apologize in advance that her story may suffer for that. I have tried to keep it well documented but interesting, objective but personal. Therefore, I begin with what was most familiar to me, and then develop what I have been able to find only by word of mouth and research.

That arrangement of the book is quite appropriate from an- other perspective, as the book is intended to read like a never- ending circle. Her death occurs in the middle of the cycle of the book, then the narrative flashes back to her beginnings and early life in Trinidad and Tobago, England and The Bahamas, and the cycle repeats itself, as does her continuing legacy.

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1

Cottabunga

When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

Lao Tzu (c 600 – 200 BC)

God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.

Marcus Garvey (1887 – 1940)

You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!

Eckhart Tolle (1948 – )

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16GREAT AWAKENING: Meta Davis Cumberbatch

This is a story I know I need to tell. God blessed me with an ex- cellent mind and memory serving me well over the years – from kindergarten and primary school where I was always first or sec- ond in the class, to my final doctoral written exam in interna- tional law and organization, for which I was awarded not just a pass but a Distinction in that field for the first time in the history of the university, and through practical matters and my profes- sional career as a lawyer to the present. My mind and memory are things I shall keep. I do not intend ever to lose them. God gave me extra, and I use them.

It is recorded that I was born in 1951, at Cottabunga, Meta Da- vis Cumberbatch’s home on William Street, just east of the city of Nassau, Bahamas. I spent most of my first few years there in that house (or at the house of my paternal grandmother, Georgiana Symonette, on Wulff Road near Claridge Road, in what was then the south of the city). My parents lived at Cottabunga. Indeed, all of Meta’s and Roland’s offspring, including their two daughters, a son in law, and three grandsons, were under their roof until the mid 1950s. It was a close family.

Meta had a vivid imagination and a flair for names. Cotta- bunga, a name of her own invention, combined cottage and bun- galow in one word. That name was appropriate indeed, as the wood and stucco house was surrounded by a wide white tiled veranda, which was used more frequently than any room in the house. I never thought I would find another house with the same unique name1. I have never found one since with quite that same unique look.

Perhaps, when she named the house, she was thinking of her father’s house Hollybank, which was a neat cottage also with an attractive tiled entrance and veranda like a bungalow. Like Cot- tabunga, Hollybank also had a double-barrelled name, evoking the cheerful holly of Christmas and the bank of a peaceful river. Her vivid imagination is why I concluded that she dreamt up the name Cottabunga.

Cottabunga was elevated from the ground on what must have been filled-in cement blocks. Therefore, beneath the house were tantalising, dark crawl spaces that little boys of my age either en- joyed or feared, because of the little spiders, insects and rodents that sometimes lurked there. I mostly feared them, but occasion-

Cottabunga17

ally would overcome those fears in order to win a game of hide and seek.

Guests, of whom there were many, were greeted on the front or western veranda. They entered from William Street through the gate of the tall picket fence, which towered over the hedge, then walked up six concrete steps to the veranda and the front door. The cool northern veranda facing in the direction of the ocean was where Roland napped or read the rest of his Miami Herald newspaper after lunch in the early afternoon before re- turning to see patients at his doctor’s office on Elizabeth Avenue. The sea breeze swept up the slight hill from the William Street dock.

Generally easygoing, Dr. Roland Cumberbatch, Meta’s hus- band, made no bones about what he liked and did not like. He would have a view on everything from the major events of world affairs to what the children were doing with their lives. He kept his portable transistor radio nearby, which he switched on only for the news. Occasionally, he also tuned in the shortwave fea- ture of the radio to the BBC and other faraway stations for more details.

His bald pate, shiny from regular exposure to the sun, was fringed by greying dark hair. His flexible, clean-shaven face broadcast how he felt about any proposal. A good listener, con- cise with his words, his comments struck directly at the essence of the problem, usually in a wry humorous way. A quick smile would extend all the way to the little dimples in his cheeks. That smile and a twinkle in his eye were a good sign, and indeed he tended to be easy going. But, a slight grimace foreshadowed his considered and immovable opposition.

Because of the constant, light breeze, it was seldom necessary to use an electric fan on the veranda, even in the summer heat. Roland would be roused from his sleep, when anyone entered the gate. He could not see the gate, nor could a visitor see him, because of the white latticework above the balustrade of the front veranda that created a sense of privacy from the nearby street. But, he was close enough to hear the noise of the bolt and the squeak of the gate of every new arrival, and also to enjoy Meta’s beautiful music.

18GREAT AWAKENING: Meta Davis Cumberbatch

His metal chaise lounge squeaked against the tile veranda floor, when he shifted position on the thin outdoor mattress, just outside a screen window of the living room. Her black Blüthner grand piano was right next to that screen window so that she could look out onto the northern veranda while playing during her regular morning and afternoon practice. But, she was always too intensely focused on the ivories to look out the window, ex- cept when she was giving lessons to others.

A part of the southern veranda was enclosed with latticework to create a storage area for her easels, canvases, brushes, paint supplies, clay, costumes and show props. The rest of the southern veranda was also closed in to make more interior living space, in- cluding a small bathroom, Grannie’s bedroom where I was born, another small bedroom, and at the back of the house, a corner li- brary. The interior of the house consisted of two more bedrooms, another bathroom, the kitchen and a pantry at the back or eastern side with many windows, which let, in lots of sunlight at break- fast. Because the kitchen was so full of light, it was a fun place to meet and to eat.

How the house accommodated Roland, Meta their two daugh- ters, my father, and three grandsons (my brother Julian, my first cousin Gregory, and myself, all of whom were born there) is something that amazes me to this day. But, we all lived there quite happily for a time.

Three boys kept the adults very busy. Cuts and scrapes were painted regularly with mercurochrome or, for the more serious bruises, stinging iodine. My brother Julian was also big enough to hang out with the other boys of the neighbourhood. Although forbidden to do so, he would steal away on hot summer days to go swimming and diving off the William Street dock with the other boys, without our parents’ or anybody else’s knowledge or consent. He would repeatedly return to this mischief or disap- pear with his friends to the playground a mile away, called the eastern parade, even though the most severe punishment from my father would rain down upon him when he returned.

The other member of the family was the grand piano, which dominated the living room, which was lined with a comfortable sofa and chairs, full bookshelves, a brass tray coffee table, side tables with lamps and figurines, a small wall-mounted shelf with

Cottabunga19

figurines (in photos of Meta at the piano, seen behind her), and an electric fireplace. The dark stained wooden floor of the living room extended without any partition into