Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica by Matthew Parker Page B
Authors: Matthew Parker
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settle. Here I would salvage myself.’ Within a year he had purchased land near Port Antonio and built a house. Whenever he ‘drew a big pay cheque’, he invested it in land and livestock in Jamaica and soon had over 2,000 acres.
Errol Flynn, ‘discoverer’ of the attractions of Jamaica, aboard his latest yacht, 1941.
‘I cut an imperial figure along the north shore of Jamaica,’ he later wrote (an interesting choice of adjective), describing how each day he would ride over his land on horseback. ‘Then perhaps a trip in my motor boat around Navy Island or down the coast. At night, a stroll in the market place of Port Antonio. You get the feeling you have gone back 150 years … Everywhere there is rum and calypso music.’ Flynn was loud in his praise of Jamaica, and following in his wake came other Hollywood stars, including Bette Davis, Grace Kelly, Ginger Rogers and Claudette Colbert.
Soon after Flynn’s arrival in Jamaica, he received a letter from Joseph Blackwell, an ex-Irish Guards officer who in 1936 had married Blanche Lindo. Flynn and Blackwell had a mutual friend in Ireland. ‘Joe took me to his house to meet his wife,’ said Flynn. ‘She hadn’t wanted to see me, for she was ill. But when I arrived and met this palefaced girl with dark, intense eyes and beautiful teeth, and a laugh like the sound of water tinkling over a waterfall, we fell into the most animated conversation.’ Blanche and Flynn quickly became so close that he thought about proposing, even though they were both still married, Flynn to his second wife Nora Eddington. But he feared rejection and that he would spoil their friendship. Instead, he writes,‘Blanche and I formed an enduring friendship amazingly platonic.’ Blanche would later describe Flynn as a ‘gorgeous god … he was the most handsome man I’ve ever seen in my entire life. He had a wonderful physique.’
Blanche Blackwell, to whom Ann Fleming would later refer as ‘Ian’s Jamaican wife’, had been born in 1912. Her family, the Lindos, were originally Sephardic Jews, forced to flee Spain during the time of the Inquisition. After Venice, Amsterdam and Bordeaux, the family ended up in Jamaica in the mid eighteenth century. There they made and lost fortunes as traders, including in slaves. At the end of the nineteenth century, Blanche’s branch of the family decamped to Costa Rica, where they pioneered growing bananas and coffee, developing highly profitable plantations. In 1915, the banana lands were sold to United Fruit for $5 million, and the family returned to Jamaica, where they invested the huge sum in sugar and acquired Jamaica’s leading rum producer, J. Wray and Nephew. Blanche’s father Percy also bought a lot of the old sugar estates near Oracabessa. These were by now planted with bananas and coconuts.
The Lindos were probably the richest family in Jamaica. This meant that no one was quite good enough to be friends with Blanche, and she remembers a solitary, lonely childhood. She was tutored at home by a seventy-year-old Englishman and had little opportunity to make friends. ‘I just wasn’t allowed to know any black people,’ she remembers. ‘Which was a pity.’
Her mother did not bother to conceal her preference for her sons; Blanche’s favourite childhood memories are of her father, and riding with him to inspect the plantations. She would remain a keen horsewoman, energetic and down-to-earth – very different from Ann Fleming.
When she was sixteen, Blanche was sent to school in England, then to finishing school in Paris. She was presented at the British court in 1933 and met Joseph Blackwell on one of her family’s frequenttrips to England. Shortly afterwards, he appeared in Jamaica as part of the entourage of the visiting Duke of Kent. On Blanche’s next trip to London, the pair were married. According to their son Chris, Joe was ‘a very handsome man. He loved women and women loved him.’ Chris was born in 1937, a year after his
Errol Flynn, ‘discoverer’ of the attractions of Jamaica, aboard his latest yacht, 1941.
‘I cut an imperial figure along the north shore of Jamaica,’ he later wrote (an interesting choice of adjective), describing how each day he would ride over his land on horseback. ‘Then perhaps a trip in my motor boat around Navy Island or down the coast. At night, a stroll in the market place of Port Antonio. You get the feeling you have gone back 150 years … Everywhere there is rum and calypso music.’ Flynn was loud in his praise of Jamaica, and following in his wake came other Hollywood stars, including Bette Davis, Grace Kelly, Ginger Rogers and Claudette Colbert.
Soon after Flynn’s arrival in Jamaica, he received a letter from Joseph Blackwell, an ex-Irish Guards officer who in 1936 had married Blanche Lindo. Flynn and Blackwell had a mutual friend in Ireland. ‘Joe took me to his house to meet his wife,’ said Flynn. ‘She hadn’t wanted to see me, for she was ill. But when I arrived and met this palefaced girl with dark, intense eyes and beautiful teeth, and a laugh like the sound of water tinkling over a waterfall, we fell into the most animated conversation.’ Blanche and Flynn quickly became so close that he thought about proposing, even though they were both still married, Flynn to his second wife Nora Eddington. But he feared rejection and that he would spoil their friendship. Instead, he writes,‘Blanche and I formed an enduring friendship amazingly platonic.’ Blanche would later describe Flynn as a ‘gorgeous god … he was the most handsome man I’ve ever seen in my entire life. He had a wonderful physique.’
Blanche Blackwell, to whom Ann Fleming would later refer as ‘Ian’s Jamaican wife’, had been born in 1912. Her family, the Lindos, were originally Sephardic Jews, forced to flee Spain during the time of the Inquisition. After Venice, Amsterdam and Bordeaux, the family ended up in Jamaica in the mid eighteenth century. There they made and lost fortunes as traders, including in slaves. At the end of the nineteenth century, Blanche’s branch of the family decamped to Costa Rica, where they pioneered growing bananas and coffee, developing highly profitable plantations. In 1915, the banana lands were sold to United Fruit for $5 million, and the family returned to Jamaica, where they invested the huge sum in sugar and acquired Jamaica’s leading rum producer, J. Wray and Nephew. Blanche’s father Percy also bought a lot of the old sugar estates near Oracabessa. These were by now planted with bananas and coconuts.
The Lindos were probably the richest family in Jamaica. This meant that no one was quite good enough to be friends with Blanche, and she remembers a solitary, lonely childhood. She was tutored at home by a seventy-year-old Englishman and had little opportunity to make friends. ‘I just wasn’t allowed to know any black people,’ she remembers. ‘Which was a pity.’
Her mother did not bother to conceal her preference for her sons; Blanche’s favourite childhood memories are of her father, and riding with him to inspect the plantations. She would remain a keen horsewoman, energetic and down-to-earth – very different from Ann Fleming.
When she was sixteen, Blanche was sent to school in England, then to finishing school in Paris. She was presented at the British court in 1933 and met Joseph Blackwell on one of her family’s frequenttrips to England. Shortly afterwards, he appeared in Jamaica as part of the entourage of the visiting Duke of Kent. On Blanche’s next trip to London, the pair were married. According to their son Chris, Joe was ‘a very handsome man. He loved women and women loved him.’ Chris was born in 1937, a year after his
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