Difficulties of an Argentine railway engineer--Why Argentina has the
Irish gauge--A sudden contrast--A more violent contrast--Names and
their obligations--Capetown--The thoroughness of the Dutch pioneers--A
dry and thirsty land--The beautiful Dutch Colonial houses--The
Huguenot refugees--The Rhodes Fruit Farms--Surf-riding--Groote
Schuur--General Botha--The Rhodes Memorial--The episode of the Sick
Boy--A visit from Father Neptune--What pluck will do.
A railway engineer in the Argentine Republic is confronted with
peculiar difficulties. In the first place, in a treeless country there
is obviously no wood for sleepers. A thousand miles up the giant
Parana there are vast tracts of forest, but either the wood is
unsuited for railway-sleepers, or the means of transport are lacking,
so the engineer is forced to use iron pot-sleepers for supporting his
rails. These again require abundant ballast, and there is no ballast
in a country devoid of stone and with a soil innocent of the smallest
pebble. The engineer can only use burnt clay to ballast his road, and
as a result the dust on an Argentine railway defies description. In my
time, when carriages of the English type were in use, the atmosphere
after an hour's run was as thick as a dense London November fog, and
after five or six hours' travelling the passengers alighted with faces
as black as niggers'. Whilst waiting for a train, its approach would
be announced by a vast pillar of dust appearing in the distance. This
pillar of dust seemed almost to reach the sky, and any passengers of
Hebraic origin must really have imagined themselves back in the Sinai
peninsula, and must have wondered why the dusky pillar was approaching
them instead of leading them on.
The difficulties connected with the working of railways did not end
here. Most people know that a swarm of locusts can stop a train, for
the bodies of these pests are full of grease, and after the
engine-wheels have crushed countless thousands of locusts, the wheels
become so coated with oil that they merely revolve, and refuse to grip
the rails. Let the driver open his sand-box never so widely, the
wheels cannot bite, and so the train comes to a standstill. Oddly
enough, a bird, too, causes a great deal of trouble. The "oven-bird"
makes a large domed nest of clay, the size of a cocoa-nut. In that
treeless land the oven-birds look on telegraph-posts as specially
provided by a benign Providence to afford them eligible nesting-sites,
and from some perversity of instinct, or perhaps attracted by the
gleam of the white earthenware, they invariably select one of the
porcelain insulators as the site of their future home, and proceed to
coat it laboriously with clay, thus effectually destroying the
insulation. Now the working of a single-line is entirely dependent on
the telegraph, and the oven-birds, with their misplaced zeal, were
continually interrupting telegraphic communication, so on the Great
Southern Railway of Buenos Ayres every single telegraph-post was
surmounted with a wooden box, mutely proclaiming itself the most
desirable building-site that heart of bird could wish for, and
silently offering whatever equivalents to a gravel soil and a southern
aspect could suggest themselves to the avian intelligence. In spite of
this these misguided fowls retained their affection for the
insulators, and the Great Southern had during the nesting season to
employ a gang of men to tear the nests down.
Unlike the majority of railways, both in North and South America,
which have adopted the 4 ft. 8-1/2 ins. gauge, the standard gauge of
the Argentine Republic is the Irish one of 5 ft. 3 ins., and the
reason of this is rather singular. In 1855, during the Crimean War, a
short railway was laid down from Balaclava to the British lines. The
firm of contractors who built this railway for the British Government
had constructed some three years previously a small railway in
Ireland, for which they had never been paid. They accordingly seized
the engines and rolling-stock, which, owing to the difference in
gauge, were useless in England. It occurred to the contractors that
they might utilise this material by building the Crimean Railway to
the Irish gauge of 5 ft. 3 ins., and they accordingly proceeded to do
so. Two years after the Crimean War the same firm secured the contract
for building the first railway in the Argentine, a short line,
twenty-one miles long, from Buenos Ayres to the River Tigre. As they
considered that their Crimean rolling-stock was still in good order,
they obtained permission to build the Tigre Railway to the Irish
gauge, and these much-travelled coaches and engines which had started
their railway career in Ireland, were shipped from the Crimea to the
Plate, and eventually found themselves, to their vast surprise,
rolling between Buenos Ayres and Tigre. The first time that I was in
Buenos Ayres, in 1883, two of the original Crimean engines were still
running on this little railway, the "Balaclava" and the "Eupatoria,"
the latter re-christened "Presidente Mitre." The newer railways
followed the lead of the pioneer, and so it comes about that Ireland
and the Argentine Republic have the same standard gauge.
The vast solitudes of Espartillar were within eight hours of Buenos
Ayres, three by wagon and five by rail, so it was possible to wander
out one night to the star-lit camp, where the silence was only broken
by the screech of an occasional night-bird, or the beat of the wings
of myriads of flighting ducks, without the slightest trace of man or
his works perceptible in the great, grey, still, unpeopled world, and
to be sitting the next night in evening clothes in a garish,
over-gilt, over-decorated restaurant, humming with the clatter of
plates and the chatter of high-pitched Argentine voices, as a noisy
string-band played selections from the latest Paris operette. It was
difficult to realise that this ostentatiously modern town, with its
meretricious glitter, and its population of pale-faced town-breds, was
only a hundred miles from the place where, amongst brown, sunburnt
folk, we had been living a primitive life tempered by quiet
transplanted English comfort.
To me there is always something rather attractive in sudden contrasts
in surroundings. My memory goes back forty years to Russia, when I was
on a bear-shooting expedition with Sir Robert Kennedy. Kennedy had
killed two bears, and we were making our way back to Petrograd that
night, for next evening there was to be one of the famous "Bals des
Palmiers" at the Winter Palace which we neither of us wished to miss.
So it came about that one evening we were sitting in a two-roomed
peasant's house, thigh-booted and flannel-shirted, in the roughest of
clothes, devouring sustenance for our night's sledge journey out of
pieces of newspaper by the light of a little smoky oil-lamp, whilst
around us stood half the village, whispering endless comments, and
gaping open-eyed on those mysterious strangers from the unknown world
outside Russia. The room was lined with rough unpainted boards nailed
over the log walls; one quarter of it was occupied by a huge stove, on
the top of which the children were sleeping; it was very dirty, and
the heat in combination with the fetid atmosphere was almost
unendurable. A dimly lit picture, all in sombre browns, relieved by
the scarlet shirts of the men, and the gaudy printed calicoes of the
women, just visible in the uncertain light of the flickering lamp, and
of the red glow from the stove. Then came an all-night drive in
sledges through the interminable forest of pines, the piercing cold
lashing our faces like a whip, and the stars blazing in the great
expanse of dull-polished steel above us with that hard diamond-like
radiance they only assume when the thermometer is down below zero.
Twenty-four hours later we were both in the vast halls of the Winter
Palace in full uniform, as bedizened with gold as a _nouveau riche's_
drawing-room. Though the world outside may have been frost-bound,
Winter's domain stopped at the threshold of the Palace, for once
inside, banks of growing hyacinths and tulips bloomed bravely, and the
big palms, from which the balls derived their name, stood aligned down
the great halls, as though they were in their native South Sea Isles,
with a supper-table for twelve persons arranged under each of them.
Those "Bals des Palmiers" were really like a scene from the Arabian
Nights, what with the varied uniforms of the men, the impressive
Russian Court dresses of the women, the jewels, the lights, and the
masses of flowers. The immense scale of everything in the Winter Palace
added to the effect, and the innumerable rooms, some of them of
gigantic size, rather gained in dignity by being sparsely tenanted, for
only 1,500 people were asked to the "Palmiers." There was nothing like
it anywhere else in Europe, and no one now living will ever look on so
brilliant a scene, set in so vast a _cadre_. There was really a marked
contrast between the two consecutive evenings Kennedy and I had spent
together.
One of the ladies of the British Embassy in Petrograd inquired of a
Court official what the cost of a "Bal des Palmiers" amounted to. The
chamberlain replied that for 1,500 people the cost would be about
9,000 pounds, working out at 6 pounds per head. This included a special
train all the way from Nice with growing and cut flowers, and another
special train from the Crimea with fruit. A very expensive item was the
carriage by road from Tsarskoe Selo of one hundred specially grown
large palm trees in specially constructed frost-proof vans; there was
also the heavy cost of the supper and wine, which for the "Bals des
Palmiers" was provided on a far more sumptuous scale than at the
ordinary Court entertainments and balls.
Ichabod! Ichabod!
Certain names carry their own responsibilities; for instance, when a
town proudly proclaimed itself the "City of Good Airs" it should live
up to its title. The Buenos Ayres of the early "eighties" was a
notoriously insanitary place without any system of proper drainage.
Some of the "Good Airs" fairly knocked one down when one encountered
them. That has all now been rectified; Buenos Ayres is at present
admirably drained, and is one of the healthiest cities of South
America.
Certain names, again, have their drawbacks. Helen Lady Dufferin, the
mother of my old Chief and godfather, was the grand-daughter of
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and in common with her two sisters, the
Duchess of Somerset and Mrs. Norton, she had inherited her full share
of the Sheridan wit. As I have pointed out elsewhere, people of a
certain class in London maintained in those days far closer relations
with persons of a corresponding class in Paris than is the custom now.
Lady Dufferin had innumerable friends in Paris, and amongst the oldest
of these friends was Comte Joseph de Noailles. Whenever the Comte de
Noailles came to London, Lady Dufferin was the first person he went to
see. When they were both in their old age, the Comte de Noailles
arrived in London, and, as usual, went to dine with his friend of many
years. As it was a warm evening in July, he walked to Lady Dufferin's
house from his hotel, carrying his overcoat on his arm. On leaving the
house, the old gentleman forgot his cloak, and Lady Dufferin received
a note the next morning asking her to be good enough to send back the
cloak by the bearer. The note was signed "Joseph de Noailles." Lady
Dufferin returned the cloak with this message, "Monsieur, lorsqu' on a
le malheur de s'appeler Joseph, on ne laisse pas son manteau chez une
dame."
Joseph naturally suggests Egypt, and Egypt recalls Africa, and on the
whole African continent there is surely no more delectable spot than
the Cape peninsula. Capetown with its suburbs is dominated everywhere
by the gigantic flat-topped rock of Table Mountain. Go where you will
amongst the most splendid woodland, coast and mountain scenery in the
world, that ever-changing rampart of rock is still the central
feature. Jan Van Riebeck, the original Dutch pioneer of 1652, must
have yielded to the irresistible claims of Table Bay as a harbour with
a very bad grace, before founding his new settlement on the slopes of
Table Mountain. Every racial and inherited instinct in him must have
positively itched to select in preference some nice low swampy site,
for choice in the Cape Flats, if not actually below sea-level, at all
events at sea-level, where substantial brick dams could be erected
against the encroaching waters, where he could construct an elaborate
system of canals, and where windmills would have to pump day and night
to prevent the place becoming submerged. The Dutch, both in Java and
in Demerara, had yielded to this misplaced affection for a sea-level
site, and had constructed Batavia and Georgetown strictly according to
their racial ideals, with a prodigal abundance of canals. Though this
doubtless gave the settlers a home-like feeling, the canal-intersected
town of Batavia is so unhealthy under a broiling tropical sun that it
has been virtually abandoned as a place of residence.
Capetown has none of the raw, unfinished aspect so many Colonial towns
wear, but has a solid, grave dignity of its own, and its suburbs are
unquestionably charming. The settled, permanent look of the town is
perhaps due to the fact that there is not a single wooden house or
fence in Capetown, everything is of substantial brick, stone and iron.
The Dutch were admirable town-planners; since the country has been in
British hands our national haphazard carelessness has asserted itself,
and the city has been extended without any apparent design whatever. I
was certainly not prepared for the magnificent groves of oaks which
are such a feature of Capetown and its vicinity. These oaks, far
larger than any to which we are accustomed, bear witness to the
painstaking thoroughness of the Dutch. Before an oak capable of
withstanding the arid climate and burning sun of South Africa could be
produced, it had to be crossed and re-crossed many times. The existing
stately tree is the fruit of this patient labour; it grows at twice
the pace of our oaks, and attains far larger dimensions; it is quite
useless as a timber tree, but produces enormous acorns which, in windy
weather, descend in showers from the trees and batter the corrugated
iron roofs of the houses with a noise like an air-raid.
The Union of South Africa is unfortunate in having the great range of
the Drakensberg running parallel to the coastline for hundreds of
miles, for until the Zambesi is reached there are practically no
navigable rivers at all. This barrier mountain range, and the
recklessness of the early settlers in cutting down the forests, are
together responsible for the aridity of South Africa. She is, indeed,
as Ezekiel said of old, "planted in the wilderness, in a dry and
thirsty ground." The Cape peninsula is comparatively well-watered;
between the giant rocky buttresses of Table Mountain little clear
streams gush down, and there are several brooks, proudly termed
"rivers" locally, quite visible to the naked eye. Everything in this
world is relative. I remember at Alkmaar in North Holland ascending an
artificial mound perhaps seventy feet high, planted with trees. In the
dead-flat expanse of the Low Countries, this hillock is looked on by
the natives of Alkmaar much as Mont Blanc is regarded by the
inhabitants of Geneva, with feelings of profound veneration; so in
South Africa the tiniest brooklet is the source of immense pride to
the dwellers on its banks, and rightly so, for it is the very
life-blood of the district, and literally Isaiah's "rivers of water in
a dry place." I always carefully avoided any allusion to the sixteen
different burns running through the park at Baron's Court, for it
might have looked like arrogance to boast of this super-abundance of
water in my old home, where, between ourselves, a wholly dry day was
rather a notable rarity. Where the aridity is most noticeable is in
the great oak and fir woods at Groote Schuur, the lordly
pleasure-house which Cecil Rhodes built for himself at Rondebosch,
under the slopes of the Devil's Peak. Here, under the trees, the
ground is absolutely bare; not even the faintest sign of grass, not
the smallest scrap of vegetation. Rondebosch Parish Church might have
been lifted bodily from England; it is an exceedingly handsome
building of a very familiar type, yet in the churchyard there was not
one blade of green; nothing but naked earth between the graves.
Fortunately the Australian myrtle has been introduced, a shrub that
can apparently dispense with moisture, so thanks to it every garden in
the Capetown suburbs is surrounded by a hedge of vivid perennial
green. These suburbs have a wonderfully home-like look, embowered as
they are in oak trees, and the buildings are all of the solid familiar
type; even the very railway stations, except for their nameboards,
might be at Wandsworth Common, Balham, or Barnes, instead of at
Rosebank, Rondebosch, and Claremont, though Balham and Barnes are not
fortunate enough to have the purple ramparts of Table Mountain or the
Devil's Peak towering over them, whilst, on the other hand, they
fortunately escape the all-pervading South African dust.
I like the name "The Tavern of the Ocean," formerly given to Capetown;
and what a welcome break it must have afforded in the wearisome voyage
from Europe to the Dutch East Indies, or to India proper! The
Netherlands Dutch seem only to have regarded it as a half-way house, a
sort of unimportant railway "halt" between Europe and the East, where
the necessary fresh water and green vegetables could be supplied to
passing vessels. It was not until Simon Van der Stel was appointed
Governor in 1678 that any idea of developing the Cape as a colony was
ever entertained. Van der Stel has left his impress deep on the
country. Though the vine had been already introduced by Van Riebeck,
it is to Van der Stel that the special features of Cape scenery are
due, for we owe to him the splendid groves of oak of to-day, and he
originated the Dutch Colonial type of building, of which so many fine
specimens still remain. These old Dutch houses are a constant puzzle
to me. In most new countries the original white settlers content
themselves with the most primitive kind of dwelling, for where there
is so much work to be done the ornamental yields place to the
necessary; but here, at the very extremity of the African continent,
the Dutch pioneers created for themselves elaborate houses with
admirable architectural details, houses recalling in some ways the
_chateaux_ of the Low Countries. Where did they get the architects to
design these buildings? Where did they find the trained craftsmen to
execute the architects' designs? Why did the settlers, struggling with
the difficulties of an untamed wilderness, require such large and
ornate dwellings? I have never heard any satisfactory answers to these
questions. Groot Constantia, originally the home of Simon Van der Stel,
now the government wine-farm, and Morgenster, the home of Mrs. Van der
Byl, would be beautiful buildings anywhere, but considering that they
were both erected in the seventeenth century, in a land just emerging
from barbarism seven thousand miles away from Europe, a land, too,
where trained workmen must have been impossible to find, the very fact
of their ever having come into existence at all leaves me in
bewilderment.
These Colonial houses, most admirably adapted to a warm climate,
correspond to nothing in Holland, or even in Java. They are nearly all
built in the shape of an H, either standing upright or lying on its
side, the connecting bar of the H being occupied by the dining-room.
They all stand on stoeps or raised terraces; they are always
one-storied and thatched, and owe much of their effect to their
gables, their many-paned, teak-framed windows, and their solid teak
outside shutters. Their white-washed, gabled fronts are ornamented
with pilasters and decorative plaster-work, and these dignified,
perfectly proportioned buildings seem in absolute harmony with their
surroundings. Still I cannot understand how they got erected, or why
the original Dutch pioneers chose to house themselves in such lordly
fashion. At Groot Constantia, which still retains its original
furniture, the rooms are paved with black and white marble, and
contain a wealth of great cabinets of the familiar Dutch type, of
ebony mounted with silver, of stinkwood and brass, of oak and steel;
one might be gazing at a Dutch interior by Jan Van de Meer, or by
Peter de Hoogh, instead of at a room looking on to the Indian Ocean,
and only eight miles distant from the Cape of Good Hope. How did these
elaborate works of art come there? The local legend is that they were
copied by slave labour from imported Dutch models, but I cannot
believe that untrained Hottentots can ever have developed the
craftsmanship and skill necessary to produce these fine pieces of
furniture. I think it far more likely to be due to the influx of
French Huguenot refugees in 1689, the Edict of Nantes having been
revoked in 1685, the same year in which Simon Van der Stel began to
build Groot Constantia. Wherever these French Huguenots settled they
brought civilisation in their train, and proved a blessing to the
country of their adoption. In England they taught us silk-weaving and
clock-making, starting the one in Spitalfields, the other in
Clerkenwell. In Dublin, where a strong colony of them settled, they
introduced the making of tabinet, or "Irish poplin," and I am told
that the much-sought-after "Irish" silver was almost entirely the work
of French Huguenot refugees. Here, at the far-off Cape, the Huguenots
settled in the valleys of the Drakenstein, of the Hottentot's Holland,
and at French Hoek; and they made the wilderness blossom, and
transformed its barren spaces into smiling wheatfields and oak-shaded
vineyards. They incidentally introduced the dialect of Dutch known as
"The Taal," for when the speaking of Dutch was made compulsory for
them, they evolved a simplified form of the language more adapted to
their French tongues. I suspect, too, that the artistic impulse which
produced the dignified Colonial houses, and built so beautiful a town
as Stellenbosch (a name with most painful associations for many
military officers whose memories go back twenty years) must have come
from the French. Stellenbosch, with its two-hundred-year-old houses,
their fronts rich with elaborate plaster scroll-work, all its streets
shaded with avenues of giant oaks and watered by two clear streams, is
such an inexplicable town to find in a new country, for it might have
hundreds of years of tradition behind it! Wherever they may have got
it from, the artistic instinct of the old Cape Dutch is undeniable,
for a hundred years after Van der Stel's time they imported the French
architect Thibault and the Dutch sculptor Anton Anreith. To Anreith is
due the splendid sculptured pediment over the Constantia wine-house
illustrating the story of Ganymede, and all Thibault's buildings have
great distinction; but still, being where they are, they are a
perpetual surprise, for in a new country one does not expect such a
high level of artistic achievement.
Many of the fine old Colonial homesteads are grouped together in what
are now the Rhodes Fruit Farms in the Drakenstein. So attractive are
they that I do not wonder that a very near relative of mine has bought
one of them for his son; and I envy my great-nephew who will one day
sit under the shadow of his own vines and fig trees at Lormarins,
amongst groves of peaches, apricots and plums. I cherish pleasant
recollections of a visit to Boschendaal, also in the Fruit Farm
district, a delightful old house, standing over a jungle of a garden
where a brook babbles through thickets of orange and lemon trees, and
amongst great tangles of bougainvillaa and pink oleanders, and in
whose shady dining-hall I was hospitably entertained by a Dutch farmer
on an omelette of ostrich's egg (one egg is enough for six people), on
"most-bolajie" (bread made with sweet new wine instead of with water),
and other local delicacies, including "mabos," or alternate slices of
dry salted peaches and dry sweetened apricots. This condiment is
cynically known as married life. In the _voorhuis_ of Boschendaal
lay nineteen fine leopard skins, and Mr. Louw, the courtly mannered
old farmer, who would be described by his countrymen as an "oprechter
Burger," explained to me in slow and laborious English that he had
killed every one of these leopards with his own hand within one mile
of his own house.
A most attractive land were it not for the aridity. Should I settle
there I should be forever regretfully recalling the lush greenery of
English meadows in June, or of English woods in spring-time.
Just conceive of Van der Stel's astonishment when he first reached the
Cape! He must have been used to a small, dead-flat, water-logged land,
with odoriferous canals at every turn, and thousands of windmills
pumping day and night for all they were worth to keep the country
afloat at all; after a voyage of seven thousand miles he found himself
in a land of mighty mountain ranges, of vast, illimitable distances,
parched by a fierce sun, and nearly waterless. It must have needed
immense courage to start the founding of a New Holland in such (to
him) uncongenial surroundings. As a tribute to the adaptable South
African climate, I may say that I have myself seen, on Sir Thomas
Smartt's well-watered farm, apple trees and orange trees fruiting and
ripening in the same field.
When I was invited to go surf-bathing at Muizenberg, I rubbed my
eyes, for I had vague ideas that this pastime was confined to South
Sea Islanders. Recollections of Ballantyne's books crowded in on me;
of apparently harmless sandal-wood traders, who unblushingly doubled
the part of bloodthirsty pirates with their peaceful avocations; of
bevies of swarthy but merry maidens rolling in on their planks on the
top of vast surges; of possibly some hideous banquet of taro roots and
"long pig" (baked over hot stones under a cover of plantain leaves) to
follow on these primitive pastimes; even perhaps of some coloured
captive maiden, wreathed in hibiscus flowers, loudly proclaiming her
distaste at the idea of being compulsorily converted into "long pig."
I should, of course, have had to rescue her after exhibiting prodigies
of valour, to find this dumb but devoted damsel clinging to me like a
leech, remaining a most embarrassing appendage until she had learned
sufficient English to answer "I will," when I could have united her to
a suitable mate, a copper-coloured yet contented bride.
When Capetown swelters in heat, Muizenberg is generally ten degrees
cooler, though, most obligingly, the water of the Indian Ocean at
Muizenberg is ten degrees warmer than that of the Atlantic at
Capetown, owing to the Antarctic current setting in to the latter.
At Muizenberg we found half the population of South Africa in the
water in front of the biggest bathing-house I have ever seen. The
handling of the surf-plank requires some care, for it is a short,
heavy board, and in the back-wash is apt to fly back on the unwary,
hitting them on their food-receptacle, and effectually (to use a
schoolboy term) "bagging their wind." You walk out in the shoal water
up to your shoulders, and as a big sea comes in, you throw yourself
chest foremost on to your plank, and are then carried along on the top
of the roller at the pace of a leisurely train (an Isle of Wight
train), to be deposited with a bang on the sandy beach. It is really
capital fun, but alas for my flower-wreathed South Sea Island maidens!
Excluding our own party I only saw many amply waisted ladies
disporting themselves staidly in the water, and the surrounding
cinemas and tea-shops might have been at Brighton, except that they
were far smarter and much better kept. Owing to the strongly marked
facial characteristics of some of the customers in these places, who
were mostly from Johannesburg, I at first imagined that I must have
wandered inadvertently into Jerusalem, or that I had perhaps drifted
to some fashionable health resort on the shores of the Dead Sea.
Groote Schuur, the stately house built by Cecil Rhodes for himself,
and by his will bequeathed as the official home of the Premier of
South Africa, became very familiar to me. These modern adaptations of
the Dutch Colonial style have one marked advantage over their
originals. In the old houses the stoep is merely an uncovered terrace
on which the house stands. In the modern houses the stoep is a shady,
pillared, covered gallery, which in hot weather becomes the general
living-room of the family. Having built his house, Cecil Rhodes
employed agents to hunt up in Holland fine specimens of genuine old
Dutch furniture with which to plenish it. Some of these agents surely
exceeded their instructions in the matter of grandfather clocks. They
must have absolutely denuded the Low Countries of these useful
timepieces, for at every step at Groote Schuur a fresh solemn-faced
Dutch clock ticks gravely away, to remind one how time is passing.
Rhodes collected a very fine library, but he had a curious fad for
typewritten copies of his favourite books, which fill an entire
bookcase in the library. Rhodes paid an immense price for the splendid
set of seventeenth-century Brussels tapestries in the dining-room,
illustrating the "Discovery of Africa," and the magnificent Cordova
leather in the drawing-room must also have been a costly acquisition.
The deep ravine running beside the house he had planted with blue
hydrangeas throughout its length; when these are in flower,
interspersed with scarlet and orange cannas, they form the most
glorious mass of colour imaginable, as do the hedges of pink and white
oleanders in the garden, each one with its smaller, attendant clipped
hedge of pale-blue plumbago.
To me, I confess, the most interesting thing in the house was General
Botha himself. When he talked of the future of South Africa in slow,
rather laboured English (for this medium was always a little difficult
for him), one felt that one was in the presence of a really great man.
His transparent honesty, and his obvious sincerity of purpose, stood
out as clearly as his strong common sense. On looking at his powerful,
almost stern, face, one realised that here was a man who would allow
nothing to turn him from his purpose once he was convinced that he was
right; a man, too, to whom anything in the way of underhand intrigue,
or backstairs negotiations, would be temperamentally repugnant. The
chivalrous foeman had become the most loyal ally, and an ally of whom
the entire British Empire should be proud. There was nothing tortuous
about the farmer turned soldier, and the soldier turned statesman.
Of Mrs. Botha I should not like to say too much, lest I might be
accused of flattery. As I shall presently relate, she was wonderfully
kind to a very sick lad whom I brought out to Africa with me.
There is a curious custom in South Africa of drinking tea at eleven
o'clock in the morning. So engrained is the habit that the streets of
Capetown at eleven o'clock are black with business men rushing from
their offices to the nearest tea-shop in search of this reviving
draught; in fact, I believe that in offices there is a rigid line of
demarcation between the seniors who go out for this indispensable cup
of tea and the juniors who have to have it brought them.
At Groote Schuur at eleven o'clock there was always a great gathering
for this important ceremony, and naturally the Dutch element usually
predominated. I could never find any trace of racial bitterness
amongst the men; with some of the women it was rather different.
Onlookers are apt to be more bitterly partisan than those who have
taken actual part in the conflict.
A mile or so from Groote Schuur House stands the beautiful Rhodes
Memorial, on the slopes of the Devil's Peak. This austere temple of
milk-white granite, with the great flight of steps flanked by bronze
lions leading up to it, and its backing of pine trees, is in absolute
harmony with its surroundings, and its very severity seems typical of
the rugged energy of the man whose memory it commemorates. I cannot
help wishing, though, that Mr. Herbert Baker, its architect, had built
it on rather a larger scale, for its gigantic environment appears to
dwarf the monument when seen from a few miles off. Watts's figure of
"Physical Energy," to be appreciated, must be seen here in the
position for which it was designed. Standing at the foot of the great
flight of stairs, with its background of purple mountain, and Africa
stretching away endlessly below it, it is really magnificent. The
replica erected in Kensington Gardens, and placed with singular
infelicity on grass between an avenue of elm trees, gives but little
idea of the effect of the original, towering high over what Rhodes
maintained was the finest view in the world, a view extending over the
immense expanse of the Cape Flats, and embracing two oceans, with the
splendid mountains of Hottentot's Holland in the background. If the
bronze rider, gazing with shaded eyes over the Africa that Rhodes
loved, is typical of his life, the calm white austerity of the temple
in the background seems symbolical of the peace which that restless
soul has now found.
The vineyards, oaks and wheatfields of the comparatively well-watered
Cape peninsula are not representative of the rest of the Union. Once
the train has laboriously clambered 3,000 feet up the Hex River Pass,
real Africa commences. Endless tracts of rolling arid veld, with an
atmosphere so clear that it is impossible for a newcomer to determine
whether the kopje seen in the distance is five miles, ten miles, or
twenty miles away. I quite understand the fascination of these bare
stretches of veld and the irresistible attraction which Africa
exercises over her children, for it is unlike anything else in the
world.
I have a theory that when Moses "removed the swarms of flies from
Pharaoh," he banished them to the southern extremity of the continent,
where the flies, imagining that their services might some day be
required again to plague the Egyptians, have kept themselves in a
constant state of mobilisation ever since. In no other way can the
plague of flies in South Africa be accounted for.
The wonderful effect of the dry air of the Cape peninsula, and of the
drier air of the High Veld in cases of tuberculosis is a matter of
common knowledge, for was not Cecil Rhodes himself a standing example
of an almost miraculous recovery? All of which brings me to the
episode of the Sick Boy, and if I dwell on it at some length I do so
intentionally for the comfort and better encouragement of those
battling with the same disease. I first met the Sick Boy (hereinafter
for the sake of brevity termed the "S.B.") at the house of one of my
oldest friends, who had an annual cricket-party for the benefit of his
son. Amongst the schoolboy eleven staying in the house was a tall and
very thin lad of sixteen, who showed great promise as a bowler. My
hostess told me that this boy was suffering from tuberculosis, that he
had had to leave Eton at fifteen to undergo a very severe internal
operation from which he had only just recovered, and that when the
party broke up, he was going straight into a nursing-home to prepare
for another equally severe operation. Every time he played cricket he
had to be put to bed at once after the match, and to be fed on warm
milk. The lad had tremendous pluck; in spite of his weakness he
insisted on taking part in the games and amusements of the other boys,
and proved very good at all of them.
Three years later I met the S.B. again. He had spent the interval
entirely in sanatoria and nursing-homes, except for a few months at
St. Moritz in the Engadine, and had undergone six major operations,
the last one entailing the removal of his left ear, though the
external ear had been left. The unfortunate lad, who seemed to have
had most of the working "spare parts" of his anatomy removed, was a
walking triumph of modern operative surgery, but his disease had
clearly made advances. He was then living in an open-air hut at his
father's place, and his condition was obviously critical. As I was
myself going to South Africa, I proposed to his father (he had lost
his mother as a child) that the boy should accompany me, pointing out
the wonders the dry South African climate had effected in similar
cases, and the advantages of a long sea-voyage. So it was settled. As
I was fully alive to the responsibilities I was incurring I took my
valet with me, in case additional help should be required. Billy, the
S.B., came on board, long, lanky, and pitiably emaciated. His
abnormally brilliant colour, and his unnaturally bright eyes betrayed
the progress the disease had made with him. He revived at once in the
warmth, and I had considerable difficulty in restraining his
super-abundant vitality, for he played deck-cricket all day, and
entered himself for every single event in the ship's sports,
regardless of his very narrow available margin of strength. After
arriving in Africa, as the S.B. could not have stood the noise and
racket of a big hotel, we found most comfortable quarters in a quiet
little place in the delightful suburb of Rondebosch. I wished to go
up-country, and as it was obvious that the S.B. could never have stood
the heat, fatigue, and dust of long railway journeys during the height
of the South African summer, I found myself in a difficult position. I
had the most stringent directions from the doctors as to what the S.B.
might or might not do. He was on no account to ride, either a horse or
a bicycle; bathing might prove instantly fatal to him; he was only to
play cricket, golf, or lawn-tennis in strict moderation, followed each
time by a compulsory rest. I knew the S.B. well enough by now to
realise that, the moment my back was turned, he would want to do all
these things, if merely to show that he could do them as well as
anybody else, quite regardless of consequences. Mrs. Botha came to the
rescue, and with extraordinary kindness, told me to send the S.B. to
Groote Schuur, where she would undertake to look after him. As I have
hinted earlier, I have seldom come across so delightful a family as
the Bothas, father, mother, sons and daughters alike; so fortunate
Billy the S.B. was transferred with his belongings to Groote Schuur,
where he was immensely elated at being allowed to use Cecil Rhodes'
sumptuous private bathroom. This bathroom was entirely lined with
Oriental alabaster; the bath itself was carved out of a solid block of
green marble, and the very bath-taps were exquisitely chiselled bronze
Tritons, riding on dolphins. When I returned to Capetown I found the
S.B. quite one of the Botha family, being addressed by everybody by
his Christian name. He played lawn-tennis and billiards daily with the
General, and should he prove refractory (a not infrequent occurrence)
the General had only to threaten, "I shall have to make you smoke
another of my black cigars, Billy," for the S.B. to capitulate
instantly with a shudder, for he had gruesome recollections of the
effects one of these powerful home-grown cigars had produced on him
upon a previous occasion.
When we sailed from South Africa, Mrs. Botha came down herself to the
liner to see that Billy's cabin was comfortable, and that he had all
the appliances he required, such as hot-water bottles, etc., and she
presented him with a large parcel of home-made delicacies for his
exclusive use on the voyage home. Nothing could have exceeded her
kindness to this afflicted lad, of whose very existence she had been
unaware three months earlier.
Before we had been at sea a week, the S.B. managed to get a sunstroke.
He grew alarmingly ill, and the ship's doctor told me that he had
developed tubercular meningitis, and that his recovery was impossible.
I gave the S.B. a hint as to the gravity of his case, but the boy's
pluck was indomitable. "I am going to sell that doctor," he said, "for
I don't mean to die now. I have sold the doctors twice already when
they told me I was dying, and I am going to make this chap look silly,
too, for I don't intend to go out." Soon after he relapsed into
unconsciousness. Meningitis affects the eyes, and the poor S.B. could
not bear one ray of light, so the cabin was carefully darkened, and
the electrician replaced the white bulbs in the cabin and alley-way
with green ones. As we were approaching the equator the heat in that
closed-up cabin was absolutely suffocating, the thermometer standing
at over 100 degrees. Still the sick lad felt chilly, and had to be
surrounded with hot-water bottles, whilst an ice-pack was placed on his
head. I and my valet took it in turns to sit up at nights with him, as
every quarter of an hour we had to trickle a teaspoonful of iced milk
and brandy into his mouth. As each morning came round, the doctor's
astonishment at finding his patient still alive was obvious, and he
assured me again and again that it could only be a question of hours.
One morning my valet, whose turn as night-nurse it was, awoke me at 4
a.m. with the news that "Mr. William has come to again, and is
screaming for beef-tea." I went into the cabin, where I found the S.B.
quite conscious, and insistently demanding beef-tea. By sheer grit and
force of will the lad had pulled himself out of the very Valley of the
Shadow. We got him the best substitute for beef-tea to be obtained on
a liner at 4.30 a.m., and two hours later he was clamouring for more.
His progress to recovery was uninterrupted as soon as we were able to
carry him into the open air, his eyes protected by some most ingenious
light-proof goggles, cleverly fashioned on board by the second
engineer. The S.B. had learnt from the doctor of some strictly private
arrangements which I had made with the captain of the ship should his
disease unfortunately take a fatal turn. I found him one morning
rolling about in his bunk with laughter. "It is really the most
comical idea I ever heard of in my life," he spluttered, shaking with
merriment. "Fancy carrying me home in the meat-safe! Just imagine
father's face when you told him that you had got me down in the
refrigerator! I never heard anything so d----d funny," and as fresh
humorous possibilities of this novel form of home-coming occurred to
him, he grew quite hysterical with laughter. He was immensely amused,
too, at learning that during the most critical period of his illness I
had got the captain to stop the ship's band, and to rope-off the deck
under his cabin window. I will not deny that the S.B. required a good
deal of supervision; for instance, when at length allowed a little
solid food, I found that he had selected as a suitable invalid repast,
some game-pie and a strawberry ice, which had, of course, to be
sternly vetoed; he had entered, too, for every event in the ship's
sports, and though he was so weak that he could barely stand, he had
every intention of competing. I have seldom met any one with such
wonderful personal courage as that boy, and he would never yield one
inch to his enemy; the strong will was for ever dominating the frail
body.
On this voyage we had a number of young people on board who were
crossing the equator for the first time, so Neptune kindly offered to
leave his ocean depths and to board the ship in the good old-fashioned
orthodox style to further these young folks' education. Just as we
crossed the Line, the ship was hailed from the sea, her name and
destination were ascertained, and she was peremptorily ordered to
heave to, Neptune naturally imagining that he was still dealing with
sailing ships. The engines were at once stopped, and Neptune, with his
Queen, his Doctor, his Barber, his Sea Bears and the rest of his
Court, all in their traditional get-up, made their appearance on the
upper deck, to the abject terror of some of the little children, who
howled dismally at this alarming irruption of half-naked savages with
painted faces. I myself enacted Neptune in an airy costume of
fish-scales, a crown, and a flowing beard and wig of bright sea-green.
Of course my Trident had not been forgotten. Amphitrite, my queen, was
the star-comedian of the South African music-hall stage, and the
little man was really extraordinarily funny, keeping up one incessant
flow of rather pungent gag, and making the spectators roar with
laughter. All the traditional ceremonies and good-natured horseplay
were scrupulously adhered to, and some twenty schoolboys and five
adults were duly dosed, lathered, shaved, hosed, and then toppled
backwards into a huge canvas tank of sea-water, where the boys
persisted in swimming about in all their clothes. The proceedings were
terminated by Neptune and his entire Court following the neophytes
into the tank, and I am afraid that we induced some half-dozen male
spectators to accompany us into the tank rather against their will,
one old German absolutely fuming with rage at the unprecedented
liberty that was being taken with him. During these revels the S.B.,
though only just convalescent, and still in his bunk, had to be locked
into his cabin, or he would have insisted on taking part in them, and
would have certainly died an hour afterwards.
Upon the outbreak of war in August, 1914, the S.B. made three attempts
to obtain a commission, only to be promptly rejected by the medical
officers when they examined him. He then tried to enlist as a private,
under a false name, but no doctor would pass him, so he went as a
workman into a Small Arms' Factory, and made rifle-stocks for a year.
The indoor life and the lack of fresh air aggravating his disease, he
was forced to abandon this work, when, by some means which I have
never yet fathomed, he managed to get a commission in the Royal Air
Force. The doctors, being much overworked, let him through without a
medical examination, and in due time the S.B. qualified as a pilot,
when, owing to engine trouble, he promptly crashed in his seaplane
into the North Sea, in January, and was an hour in the water before
being rescued. This icy bath somehow arrested the progress of his
disease, and he was subsequently sent to the Dardanelles. Here, whilst
attempting to bomb Constantinople, the S.B. got shot down and captured
by the Turks. During his eighteen months of captivity he underwent the
greatest privations from cold and hunger, being insufficiently clad
and most insufficiently fed. Upon his release after the Armistice, he
was examined by a British doctor, who told him, to his amazement, that
every trace of his dire disease had vanished, nor were the most
eminent specialists of Harley Street subsequently able to distinguish
the faintest lingering signs of tuberculosis. He was completely cured,
or rather by his strong willpower he had completely cured himself.
Billy (the term of S.B. being clearly no longer applicable) is now
married to a pretty and charming wife; he is the proud father of a
sturdy son, and is putting on weight at an alarming rate, his
waistcoat already exhibiting a convexity of outline that would be
justifiable only in the case of an alderman. He is a partner in a
prosperous West End business, and will be most happy to book any
orders you may give him for wine.
I have purposely dwelt at length on the case of the S.B. in order to
encourage other sufferers from this disease to realise how strong the
personal factor is in their cases, and how much they can help
themselves. Here was an apparently hopeless case of tuberculosis, and
yet a lad by his indomitable grit and personal courage fought his
enemy, continued to fight him, and finally conquered him, all by sheer
determination never to give in. Let others in his position take heart
of grace and continue the struggle, and may they, too, rout their
enemy as the S.B. did. Nil desperandum! I may add that an ice-cold
bath of an hour in the North Sea in January, and eighteen months'
incarceration in a Turkish prison, are not absolutely essential items
in the cure.