I mentioned in part 33 of this series, published on May 1, that a Canadian bookshop stocked a copy of the out-of-print memoir upon which this series is based: Mabel Wagner’s Lest I Forget (2012), which recounts her husband Wladek Wagner’s development of Trellis Bay on Beef Island. This was probably one of the few autographed copies to have survived in good condition, and it has since been sold.
Ms. Wagner’s account of the incident in which her son Michael was lost and found (as recounted in part 34 on May 21) invites closer attention. She complains that the pressure of work at the cay was making her get up earlier and earlier, yet by her own admission Mr. Wagner and the children were up before her.
They must have noticed how tired she was and done their best not to disturb her. She says that the work involved in hosting the film company was too demanding for her to be able to enjoy the experience, but her account suggests that she herself was partly to blame for being so stressed: She listened attentively to Mr. Wagner’s account of a day on a shoot, but she didn’t tell him about the troublesome outboard motor that overshadowed the start of her day. Fixing it would have been a routine operation for him.
Moviemaking
Her husband had mounted the filmmakers’ equipment on the pontoon he had built to his own design, and he towed it behind their yacht Rubicon until the director had found the right tree in the right place for exactly the right shots. Meanwhile, Mr. Wagner delegated repetitive routines like building cottages on the beach or maintaining the boatyard to men he had trained to do them. Ms. Wagner could have made her own life much easier if she had studied his way of overcoming unwanted situations and asked his advice on everyday issues rather than pushing herself so hard.
From her description of Mr. Wagner’s discomfort when surrounded by the filmmakers, one wonders what he did when they shared all those meals on board Rubicon. Did he sit down under a tree by himself while they snacked and chatted?
Ms. Wagner’s precise recollection of painful events so many years after her husband’s death might have been clouded by the stress she had been under, but that should not reduce our respect for the remarkable way in which she combined her memories with her use of his documents to record his vision, resourcefulness and resilience.
Airfield proposal
In part 23 of this series on Oct. 10, I wrote that Ms. Wagner knew that Leeward Islands Governor Sir Kenneth Blackburne visited Tortola on July 1, 1956, but she was unaware of the actions he took to resolve some outstanding issues regarding the Beef Island airfield proposal before he finalised his report. Howard Reynold Penn — who was often known as “H.R.” and was a cousin of my future father-in-law Carris Penn — writes on page 34 of his 1990 memoirs, “Governor Blackburne agreed to having an airfield and took some of us to the proposed site. He had arranged for it to be laid out by a Mr. Wagner, a Pole with an English wife, who was knowledgeable in such matters.”
Mr. Blackburne’s actions must raise questions as to why he had misled the legislators and then, according to Ms. Wagner, set up a meeting with then-administrator Geoffrey Allsebrook and the governor’s police chief from Antigua on Nov. 23, 1956. At that meeting, Mr. Wagner readily agreed to extend credit to the government to build a police station with housing for a married corporal in order to get the airstrip started, Ms. Wagner wrote.
Close friends
Mr. Allsebrook and the Wagners soon became close friends, but although the VI was granted the status of a British colony instead of joining the West Indies Federation, there seemed to be some ambivalence regarding the status of the newly styled administrator vis-à-vis that of the governor of the Leeward Islands, through whom he reported to London.
H.R. Penn mentions in his memoirs that after the collapse of the West Indies Federation in 1956, the governor of the Leeward Islands became the governor of the individual presidencies separately, with the VI attaining the status of a colony. But it was agreed only a little later that the territory should have its own governor with direct access to the Colonial Office in London.
Mr. Penn comments that the tenure of the legislature that followed the VI’s third general election, in 1957, was marked by struggles between the elected members of the Executive Council and Mr. Allsebrook, culminating in “an investigation into the affairs of the Wagner Company, which held a concession on Beef Island.” But, frustratingly, he says no more about that.
Dedication
I dedicate part 35 of this series to the memory of my late cousin Marlene Penn, Howard Penn’s daughter. In a commentary published on April 30, 2014, I reported that family and friends had celebrated Ms. Penn’s 75th birthday after fears for her health. She spread her mantle of love and good works for a further 11 years.
