I was fortunate enough to have an early morning (5:30 a.m.) interview
with President Kruger before he departed on what may probably be his
last electioneering tour. As he was fully dressed in the usual black
suit and little old-fashioned top hat, and smoking on the verandah of
his house, the old President must have risen from bed an hour earlier at
least, and though all the clocks in this region are fully thirty minutes
behind time, 5 a.m. is a remarkably early hour to begin business. Two
armed guards in the uniform of London police inspectors stood in the
street barring the way to the house; but a mere look from the President
sufficed to give us admission. His "Good-morning" in English slipped
from him unconsciously, and after a shake hands he led the way to a
spacious saloon, wherein the first thing that attracted my attention was
a large and coarse oil painting of him. It happened that the seat shown
to me placed Mr Kruger and his picture directly in a line, in front of
me, and I was thus forced to compare the original with the copy. The
history of the painting I do not know, but as it is permitted to be hung
so prominently in the reception room, it is to be presumed that the
President and his friends regard it as a faithful likeness, and are
consequently proud of it. This small fact proved to be the A B C of my
study of the man of destiny of South Africa. It was clear that neither
Kruger nor his friends knew anything of art, for the picture was an
exaggerated reproduction of every defect in the President's homely
features, the low, narrow, unintellectual brow, over-small eyes, and
heavy, massive expanse of face beneath. The man himself was almost
beautiful in comparison with the monster on the canvas, and I really
could not help pitying him for his innocent admiration of a thing that
ought to be cast into the fire. But presently the President spoke--a
mouthful of strange guttural words--in a voice that was like a loud
gurgle, and as the great jaws and checks and mouth heaved and opened, I
stole a glance at the picture, and it did not seem to me then as if the
painter had libelled the man. At any rate, the explosive dialect so
expanded the cheeks and widened the mouth that I perceived some
resemblance to the brutal picture.