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The Review - BOOKS
 

A portrait always thought to be of Equiano now no longer attribute to Sir Joshua Reynolds


Prof Vincent Caretta


Gene Adams


Frontispiece from the first edition volume 1 of Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative (London 1789)
The mystery of Equiano

This masterly book about the 18th-century anti-slavery hero Olaudah Equiano attempts to solve the puzzle of his birthplace, writes Gene Adams

Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-made Man by Professor Vincent Caretta
University of Georgia Press, £17.20

EVERYBODY who is familiar with the brilliant 18th-century memoir: The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, published 1789, will enjoy Professor Vincent Carretta’s marvellous exposition of this 18th-century ‘autobiography.’

His masterly description of Equiano’s campaign against the slave trade of the 18th century, will undoubtedly be a classic in its own right. It is immensely scholarly, based on scrupulous research from both English and American archives. It is also very readable with that provocative twist of an unsolved mystery which lifts it out of the realm of a purely academic study.
The mystery is of Equiano’s birthplace. Was it Africa, somewhere in modern Nigeria as stated on his baptismal certificate?
Unfortunately, from my personal point of view, this discussion tends to detract from the meat of the story. This is a pity because it is a true story which needs to be known, and to be studied deeply as this biography does, without the distraction of too much academic speculation.
Being born in Africa myself, though not that part of the continent, I do not find his Igbo childhood story difficult to believe. To me Equiano is a precursor of thousands of Africans struggling to find new cultural identity in a fast changing world.
The late Professor Paul Edwards of Sierra Leone College and then Edinburgh University, who published the first facsimile of Equiano’s book in 1967 said: “Equiano remembered and was deeply influenced throughout his life by his stable African childhood and his respect for his ‘titled’ Igbo father…
“For all his literary skill and persuasive oratory” his success owed much to “the flexibility with which he adapted himself whilst holding to the principles implanted in him during his African childhood.”
Paul Edwards in the same paper (1992) also remarked that the “innocence” of the original reception of Equiano’s story in 1789 had been replaced since the 1960s by “the more artful hands of literary critics, mostly from the United States”.
The mystery arises from the exciting discovery by Carretta of written records of Equiano’s birthplace – in our terms ‘irrefutable new evidence’ – from two sources: a baptismal certificate dated February 9 1759, from St Margaret’s Westminster, which states “Gustavus Vassa a Black born in Carolina 12-years-old.”
And there is a similar comment from a 1773 Muster Roll of one of the ships Equiano worked on serving his English owner and master, Captain Michael Pascal. But this new evidence raises many questions. The exact date of birth of the boy is not provable or agreed among experts today.
Possibly the age given of “12-years” was wrong as well as the place of birth. Who would have given that information to the clergy carrying out the baptism?
As Equiano was but a child and also a servant, this information must surely have come from Pascal the master, whose word no one would have dared question, certainly not a small black slave boy.
But Pascal, as Carretta has also discovered, had reasons for concealing the slave status of the child, as slavery was frowned on by the Royal Navy. Furthermore, Equiano’s godmother and patron, Miss Guerin, was later a subscriber to the 1789 memoir with its description of an African childhood – not “Carolina” – and also his famous eye witness account of the journey in the slave ship to the West Indies.
Either Miss Guerin did not see the baptismal certificate, or did not read the book later. Or she went along with an enormous lie over eight years.
Pascal died in 1787 – two years before publication. Certainly new ‘evidence’ is fascinating and must be discussed, not ignored. But it must also be questioned, like any other puzzling information. It would be naïve to think all written records are ‘the truth’ – then or now.
There is one other mystery attached to the study of Equiano and that is the beautiful oil portrait in the Art Gallery at Exeter which is reproduced on Carretta’s book cover.
As Carretta states, it is now thought not to be a portrait of Equiano – apart from anything else, the style of the clothes do not fit with his approximately
known dates. It is also no longer attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds. The question urgently to be researched by today’s students is, who was the obviously highly intelligent black man in an elegant scarlet coat?
And who painted him and on what occasion?

• Gene Adams was Inner London Education Authority museum adviser until 1989 and later voluntary curator at Hampstead Museum, Burgh House from 1995-97. She is the chairwoman of Belsize Conservation Area Advisory Committee.
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