Your week­end ar­ti­cle about the pro­gres­sive 19th cen­tu­ry Gov­er­nor whose name is com­mem­o­rat­ed in Port-of-Spain's Lord Har­ris Square un­der­stand­ably fo­cussed on his achieve­ments dur­ing his term of of­fice in this is­land, of which not the least was his pa­tron­age of Mar­tini­quan painter Jean Michel Caz­abon.

At a time when the lifes­pan of many a Eu­ro­pean vis­i­tor was cut short by the dis­eases en­dem­ic to the Caribbean, Lord Har­ris' de­par­ture did not sig­nal an end to his Colo­nial ser­vice, as, af­ter an ar­du­ous sea voy­age to yet an­oth­er hot cli­mate, he took up the po­si­tion of Gov­er­nor of Bom­bay where his ad­min­is­tra­tive zeal re­sult­ed in in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment in­clud­ing the cre­ation of a rail­way in that province.

He again sur­vived to re­turn home to Eng­land, where he named his fam­i­ly home Bel­mont, and up to to­day un­der man­age­ment by a pri­vate trust, it is open to the pub­lic at week­ends from April through Oc­to­ber­Locat­ed near Faver­sham in Kent, at the junc­tion of the mo­tor­ways lead­ing to the ports of Dover and Rams­gate, Bel­mont hous­es a fab­u­lous col­lec­tion of Caz­abon art, de­pict­ed by Ge­of­frey McLean in his cof­fee ta­ble book on the sub­ject. In­clud­ed in the trea­sures housed there is a sol­id sil­ver rail­way porter's bar­row, pre­sent­ed when Har­ris demit­ted of­fice as Gov­er­nor and rail­way di­rec­tor and the price­less col­lec­tion of time­pieces gath­ered by the last Lord Har­ris, the eighth in di­rect de­scent.

Housed in an air-con­di­tioned gallery next to the Caz­abon col­lec­tion, it com­pris­es Thomas Tom­pi­on man­tel and grand­fa­ther clocks, car­riage clocks and Breguet watch­es, dat­ing back to the Napoleon­ic era, with Russ­ian, Turk­ish and Chi­nese faces. The eighth Lord had no son to in­her­it the ti­tle, so the po­si­tion, but not the man­sion and its con­tents, passed to a cousin.

When the writer vis­it­ed Bel­mont some years ago, en route to his fa­ther's apart­ment in Broad­stairs, the guest book list­ed the pre­vi­ous week­end's vis­i­tors as Tri­nis Ge­of­fey McLean and the late He­len Hutchin­son.Tru­ly a vis­it not to be missed by any­one who has the time to trav­el two or three hours out of Lon­don, or an hour and a half or so from Gatwick.

Antony Ed­wards,

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