THE CONSTANTIA VALLEY
Lady Anne Barnard writes amusingly of a visit she paid to this green
valley from her home on the other side of the hill, to the house of
Mynheer Cloete, who once had to pay one thousand dollars for a large
piece of Druip[5] stone. In a cave beyond Sir Lowry's Pass this
gentleman saw the mass of petrifaction, and thinking it a safe thing,
he made a bet with a Boer standing near that, though no one could
possibly get such a fragile mass over the pass, he would give one
thousand dollars to have it at Constantia. The fragile mass, and the
Boer, turned up one day at Constantia, to the disgust of Mynheer.
Lady Anne took Lord Mornington, stopping at the Cape on his way to
India, to lunch with this Cloete, who showed her a new blend of wine
which he had himself invented. 'I was astonished,' she remarks, 'to
hear a Dutchman say he did anything his father had not done before
him, for when I asked him why such and such a thing was not done, he
shrugged his shoulders and said 'it was not the custom.' A
characteristic episode, I fancy, and one which has taken too long to
change, independence of mind and imagination not being smiled upon by
cautious contentment.
As Governors-General did not often pass the Cape, Mynheer brought out
his best and oldest port, sherry, and claret, and 'the gentlemen's
prejudices got the better of their manners'; Mynheer Cloete copiously
drinking foreign claret, remarking, 'My wines are valuable; and I am
glad when others like them, but I do not; whoever prizes what is made
at home?'
A few years before Mynheer did without his after-dinner (luncheon)
'slaap' to entertain Lord Mornington and the Barnards, Monsieur Le
Vaillant, turning his unappreciated French back on the town 'where
only the English are loved,' wandered into the quince and
myrtle-hedged vineyard of Cloete's Constantia, where his host, a
Jacobin to his finger-tips, gave him a 'sopje'[6] of his best
Constantia, and Le Vaillant bewailed his prejudiced Cape Town audience
aloud:
'Mynheer, here in your Kaapstad, it is the English who are adored;
when they arrive, everyone is eager to offer them a lodging. In less
than eight days everything becomes English in the house upon which
they have fixed their choice; and the master and the mistress, and
even the children (with his fine laces ballet-dancing round his waving
and gesticulating hands), _et même des enfants!_ soon assume their
manners.' Then came the currant in this suet. 'At table, for instance,
the knife never fails to discharge the office of the fork! Would you
credit this, Mynheer? I have even heard some of the inhabitants say
that they would rather be taken by the English than owe their safety
to the French.' Mynheer, deep in his 'sopje,' grunts a Dutch grunt of
uncompromising depth.
This garrulous French explorer found this rich old Cloete less
sympathetic than his Jacobin friend Broers, for whose services at a
critical time a grateful French Government was not unwilling to shower
rewards, and Le Vaillant left Constantia to write of it: 'That this
celebrated vineyard does not produce a tenth part of the wine which is
sold under its name. Some say the first plants were brought here from
Burgundy, others from Madeira, and some from Persia. However this may
be, it is certain (in 1782) that this wine is delicious when drunk at
the Cape; that it loses much by being transported; and that after five
years it is worth nothing. Close to Constantia is another vineyard,
called the Lesser Constantia (Klein Constantia), but it is only within
these later years that it has begun to be held in the same esteem as
the former. It has even sometimes happened that the produce of it has
been sold for a larger sum than that of the other at the Company's
sales! As it is separated from the other only by a plain hedge, it is
probable that there was formerly no difference between the wines, but
in the manner of preparing them. Only the rich use the wine of other
countries.'
A not too flourishing 'koopman' (merchant), a lover of the English and
a well-known despiser of the popinjay little Frenchman, hearing this
remark in a coffee-house, and not counting on the irrepressible
Broers, sat one evening on the stoep of his long, flat-roofed house in
the Wale Street. Up from the Heerengracht, across the canal bridge,
came Monsieur le Français with friend Fiscal Broers. This was an
opportunity to be seized. 'Dantje!' echoed in loud tones down the Wale
Street. Dantje the slave came running up from the kitchens. 'Fetch
some red wine immediately.' 'The vanity of this man,' says the
triumphant Le Vaillant, 'is ridiculous. Mr. Broers assures me that he
has not a single drop in his possession, and that he had perhaps drunk
of it ten times in his life.' On this account, having reached the top
of the street, they turned round and beheld the knowing Dantje pouring
out beer! Slimmer Kerl! There seems justifiable reason for belief that
Dantje scored heaviest in this particular case.
By now we have passed the gates of High Constantia and Klein
Constantia, and very soon have reached the Government wine-farm,
Groote Constantia, Simon Van der Stel's home, of which so much has
been written, and which we passed rather hurriedly; for it does not
please me to know that its best furniture has disappeared, that the
new wine cellars have iron roofs, that the old bath is overgrown with
brambles and weeds, and that convicts in a plague of arrow-marked
garments frighten the birds who come to 'steal in the vineyards.' We
cut across country into the Tokai road, through a violet farm, whose
charm dies when the flowers fade in early summer. There are acres and
acres of violets, hedged by poplars, and deep streams which water them
and overflow into potato lands lying lower down in 'Retreat' country,
and help to feed the 'vleis' at Lakeside. We raced along a mile of
sandy lane lined with firs and protea and heath, called, by reason of
some virtue, 'The Ladies' Mile.' This road led us to the farm 'Berg
Vliet,' behind whose white walls we passed into a sandy vineyard
track, and soon we reached the Tokai convict station and the oak woods
of the Manor House.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Druip stone--_i.e._, stalactite.
[6] A 'sopje' or 'sooppie,' a glass of rack or gin, or, rather, a
French brandy. Before sitting down to dinner it was etiquette to offer
a 'soppe' or a little white wine, into which wormwood or aloes had
been infused in order to excite the appetite.