THE OPENING OF THE NEW CENTURY
Such were the preoccupations, the intrigues and the emotions which, all
through that monotonous winter of 1900-1901, agitated the inhabitants of
and the visitors to Groote Schuur. Rhodes himself seemed to be the one man
who thought the least about them. It is certain that he felt hurt in his
pride and in his consciousness that the good which he had wanted to do
failed to be appreciated by those whom he had intended to benefit. But
outwardly he made no sign that the matter interested him otherwise than
from a purely objective point of view, that of the statesman who thinks
that it is part of his duty to put his services at the disposal of his
country whenever required to do so. He felt also slightly surprised to
find, once he had expressed his willingness to use the experience of South
African affairs which he had acquired and which no one in the Cape
possessed with such thoroughness, that the people who had appealed to him,
and whom he had consented to meet half-way, would not give him the whole
of their confidence; indeed, they showed some apprehension that he would
use his knowledge to their detriment.
When one reviews all the circumstances that cast such a tragic shade over
the history of these eventful months, one cannot help coming to the
conclusion that there was a good deal of misunderstanding on both sides
and a deplorable lack of confidence everywhere. Rhodes had entirely lost
ground among his former friends, and would not understand that it was more
difficult, even on the part of those who believed in his good intentions,
to efface the impression that he had been playing a double game ever since
the Raid had deprived him of the confidence and support which previously
were his all over Cape Colony.
The whole situation, as the new century opened, was a game of cross
purposes. Sir Alfred Milner might have unravelled the skein, but he was
the one man whom no one interested in the business wished to ask for help.
And what added to the tragedy was the curious but undisputable fact that
even those who reviled Rhodes hoped he would return to power and assume
the Premiership in place of Sir Gordon Sprigg.
In spite of the respect which Sir Gordon Sprigg inspired, and of the
esteem in which he was held by all parties, it was generally felt that if
Rhodes were once more at the helm he might return to a more reasonable
view of the whole situation. In such an office, too, it was believed that
Rhodes would give the Colony the benefit of his remarkable gifts of
statecraft, as well as wield the authority which he liked so much to
exercise, for the greater good of the country in general and of the
British Government in particular. I believe that if at that moment Cecil
Rhodes had become the head of the Cabinet not one voice, even among the
most fanatic of the Afrikander Bond, would have objected. Those most
averse to such a possibility were Rhodes' own supporters, a small group of
men whose names I shall refrain from mentioning.
All true friends of Rhodes, however, must surely have felt a keen regret
that he wasted his talents and his energy on those entangled and, after
all, despicable Cape politics. The man was created for something better
and healthier than that. He was an Empire Maker by nature, one who might
have won for himself everlasting renown had he remained "King of
Rhodesia," as he liked to call himself. There, in the vast solitudes which
by his enterprise and foresight had become a part of the British Empire,
he ought to have gone on uninterruptedly in the glorious task of bringing
civilisation to that hitherto unknown land. For such work his big nature
and strange character were well fitted, and his wide-ranging mind
appreciated the extent of the task. As he used to say himself sometimes,
he was never so happy and never felt so free and so much at peace with the
world and with mankind as among the Matoppo Hills.
The statesmanlike qualities which Cecil Rhodes undoubtedly possessed were
weakened by contact with inferior people. It is impossible to create real
politicians and sound ones at the same rapid pace as financial magnates
sprang up at the Cape as well as in the Transvaal. The class who entered
politics had as little real solidity about them as the houses and
dwellings which were built at a moment's notice from corrugated iron and a
few logs. They thought that they understood how to govern a nation because
they had thoroughly mastered the mysteries of bookkeeping in problematical
financial undertakings.
I remember one afternoon when, talking with Rhodes in the grounds of
Groote Schuur, he took me to the summer-house which he had built for
himself, whence one had a beautiful view over the country toward Table
Mountain. He leaned on the parapet of the little observatory which
surmounted the summer-house and lost himself in a day dream which, though
long, I felt I had better not interrupt. I can see his face and expression
still as, with his arms crossed over his chest, he gazed into space,
thinking, thinking, and forgetting all else but the vision which he was
creating in that extraordinary brain of his. I am sure that he remained so
for over twenty minutes. Then he slowly turned round to me and said, with
an accent indescribable in its intensity and poignancy:
"I have been looking at the North, at my own country--"
"Why do you not always remain there?" I exclaimed almost involuntarily, so
painfully did the words strike me.
"Because they will not let me," he replied.
"They? Who?" I asked again. "Surely you can do what you like?"
"You think so," he said, "but you do not know; there are so many things;
so many things. And they want me here too, and there is this place ..."
He stopped, then relapsed once more into his deep meditation, leaving me
wondering what was holding back this man who was reputed to do only what
he chose. Surely there would have been a far better, far nobler work for
him to do there in that distant North which, after all, in spite of the
beauties of Groote Schuur, was the only place for which he really cared.
There he could lead that absolutely free and untrammelled life which he
loved; there his marvellous gifts could expand with the freedom necessary
for them to shine in their best light for the good of others as well as
for his own advantage. In Rhodesia he was at least free, to a certain
extent, from the parasites.
How could one help pitying him and regretting that his indomitable will
did not extend to the courage of breaking from his past associations; that
he did not carry his determination far enough to make up his mind to
consecrate what was left of his life to the one task for which he was best
fitted, that of making Rhodesia one of the most glorious possessions of
the British crown. Rhodes had done so much, achieved so much, had
conceived such great things--as, for instance, the daring inception of the
Cape to Cairo Railway--that it surely could have been possible for him to
rise above the shackling weaknesses of his environment.
So many years have passed since the death of Rhodes that, now, one can
judge him objectively. To me, knowing him so well as I did, it seem that
as his figure recedes into the background of history, it acquires more
greatness. He was a mystery to so many because few had been able to guess
what it was that he really meant, or believed in, or hoped for. Not a
religious man by any means, he yet possessed that religion of nature which
pervades the soul of anyone who has ever lived for long face to face with
grandeurs and solitudes where human passions have no entrance. It is the
adoration of the Greatness Who created the beauty which no touch can
defile, no tongue slander, and nobody destroy. Under the stars, to which
he confided so much of the thoughts which he had kept for himself in his
youth and early manhood, Rhodes became a different man. There in the
silence of the night or the dawn of early morning, when he started for
those long rides of which he was so fond, he became affectionate, kind,
thoughtful and tender. There he thought, he dreamt, he planned, and the
result of these wanderings of his mind into regions far beyond those where
the people around him could stray was that he revealed himself as God had
made him and such as man hardly ever saw him.
Rhodes had always been a great reader; books, indeed, had a great
influence over his mind, his actions and opinions. He used to read slowly,
and what he had once assimilated he never forgot. Years after he would
remember a passage treating of some historical fact, or of some social
interest, and apply it to his own work. For instance, the idea of the Glen
Grey Act was suggested to him by the famous book of Mackenzie Wallace
dealing with Russia,[B] in which he described the conditions under which
Russian peasants then held their land. When Rhodes met the author of the
aforementioned volume at Sandringham, where both were staying with the
then Prince and Princess of Wales, he told him at once, with evident
pleasure at being able to do so, that it was his book which had suggested
that particular bit of legislation.
[B] "Russia" (Cassell).
Another occasion I remember when Rhodes spoke of the great impression
produced upon his opinions by a book called "The Martyrdom of Man,"[C] the
work of Winwood Reade, an author not very well known to the general
public. The essay was an unusually powerful negation of the Divinity.
Rhodes had, unfortunately for him, chanced across it just after he had
left the University, and during the first months following upon his
arrival in South Africa he read it in his moments of leisure between
looking for diamonds in the sandy plains of Kimberley. It completely upset
all the traditions in which he had been nurtured--it must be remembered
that he was the son of a clergyman--and caused a revolt against the
teachings of his former masters.
[C] Published in the U.S.A., 1875.
The adventurous young man who had left his native country well stocked
with principles which he was already beginning to find embarrassing, found
in this volume an excuse for becoming the personage with whom the world
was to become familiar later on, when he appeared on the horizon as an
Empire Maker. He always kept this momentous book beside him, and used to
read it when he wanted to strengthen himself in some hard resolution or
when he was expected to steel his mind to the performance of some task
against which his finest instincts revolted even whilst his sense of
necessity urged him onward.
Talking with me on the occasion I have referred to above, in respect to
this volume which had left such weeds in his mind, he expressed to me his
great enthusiasm about the ideas it contained, and spoke with unmeasured
approval of its strong and powerful arguments against the existence of a
Deity, and then exclaimed, "You can imagine the impression which it
produced on me when I read it amid all the excitement of life at Kimberley
not long after leaving Oxford University." And he added in a solemn tone,
"That book has made me what I am."
I think, however, that Rhodes exaggerated in attaching such influence to
Reade's essay. He was very interested in the supernatural, a feature which
more than once I have had occasion to observe in people who pretend that
they believe in nothing. I suspect that, had he been able to air the
doubts which must have assailed him sometimes when alone in the solitudes
of Rhodesia, one would have discovered that a great deal of carelessness,
of which he used to boast in regard to morality and to religion, was
nothing but affectation. He treated God in the same offhand way he handled
men, when, in order to terrify them, he exposed before their horrified
eyes abominable theories, to which his whole life gave the lie. But in his
inmost heart he knew very well that God existed. He would have felt quite
content to render homage to the Almighty if only this could have been done
incognito. In fact, he was quite ready to believe in God, but would have
felt extremely sorry had anyone suspected that such could be the case. The
ethical side of Cecil Rhodes' character remained all through his life in
an unfinished state. It might perhaps have been the most beautiful side of
his many-sided life had he not allowed too much of what was material, base
and common to rule him. Unwillingly, perhaps, but nevertheless certainly,
he gave the impression that his life was entirely dedicated to ignoble
purposes. Perhaps the punishment of his existence lay precisely in the
rapidity with which the words "Rhodesian finance" and "Rhodesian politics"
came to signify corruption and bribery. Even though he may not have been
actually guilty of either, he most certainly profited by both. He
instituted in South Africa an utter want of respect for one's neighbour's
property, which in time was a prime cause of the Transvaal War. Hated as
he was by some, distrusted as he remained by almost everybody, yet there
was nothing mean about Cecil Rhodes. Though one felt inclined to detest
him at times, yet one could not help liking and even loving him when he
allowed one to see the real man behind the veil of cynicism and irony
which he constantly assumed.
With Rhodes' death the whole system of Rhodesian politics perished. It
then became relatively easy for Sir Alfred Milner to introduce the
necessary reforms into the government of South Africa. The financial
magnates who had ruled at Johannesburg and Kimberley ceased to interest
themselves politically in the management of the affairs of the Government.
They disappeared one after the other, bidding good-bye to a country which
they had always hated, most of them sinking into an obscurity where they
enjoy good dinners and forget the nightmare of the past.
The Dutch and the English elements have become reconciled, and loyalty to
England, which seemed at the time of the Boer War, and during the years
that had preceded it, to have been confined to a small number of the
English, has become the rule. British Imperialism is no mere phantom: the
Union of South Africa has proved it to have a very virile body, and, what
is more important, a lofty and clear-visioned soul.