Capetown, Sunday, March 23d.
IT has been a _real_ hot day, and threatened an earthquake and a
thunderstorm; but nothing has come of it beyond sheet lightning to-night,
which is splendid over the bay, and looks as if repeated in a grand
bush-fire on the hills opposite. The sunset was glorious. That rarest
of insects, the praying mantis, has just dropped upon my paper. I am
thankful that, not being an entomologist, I am dispensed from the sacred
duty of impaling the lovely green creature who sits there, looking quite
wise and human. Fussy little brown beetles, as big as two lady-birds,
keep flying into my eyes, and the musquitoes are rejoicing loudly in the
prospect of a feast. You will understand by this that both windows are
wide open into the great verandah,—very unusual in this land of cold
nights.
_April_ 4_th_.—I have been trying in vain to get a passage home. The
_Camperdown_ has not come. In short, I am waiting for a chance vessel,
and shall pack up now and be ready to go on board at a day’s notice.
I went on the last evening of Ramadan to the Mosque, having heard there
was a grand ‘function’; but there were only little boys lying about on
the floor, some on their stomachs, some on their backs, higgledy-piggledy
(if it be not profane to apply the phrase to young Islam), all shouting
their prayers _à tue tête_. Priests, men, women, and English crowded in
and out in the exterior division. The English behaved _à
l’Anglaise_—pushed each other, laughed, sneered, and made a disgusting
display of themselves. I asked a stately priest, in a red turban, to
explain the affair to me, and in a few minutes found myself supplied by
one Mollah with a chair, and by another with a cup of tea—was, in short,
in the midst of a Malay _soirée_. They spoke English very little, but
made up for it by their usual good breeding and intelligence. On Monday,
I am going to see the school which the priest keeps at his house, and to
‘honour his house by my presence’. The delight they show at any friendly
interest taken in them is wonderful. Of course, I am supposed to be
poisoned. A clergyman’s widow here gravely asserts that her husband went
mad _three years_ after drinking a cup of coffee handed to him by a
Malay!—and in consequence of drinking it! It is exactly like the
mediæval feeling about the Jews. I saw that it was quite a
_demonstration_ that I drank up the tea unhesitatingly. Considering that
the Malays drank it themselves, my courage deserves less admiration. But
it was a quaint sensation to sit in a Mosque, behaving as if at an
evening party, in a little circle of poor Moslim priests.
I am going to have a photograph of my cart done. I was to have gone to
the place to-day, but when Choslullah (whom I sent for to complete the
picture) found out what I wanted, he implored me to put it off till
Monday, that he might be better dressed, and was so unhappy at the notion
of being immortalized in an old jacket, that I agreed to the delay. Such
a handsome fellow may be allowed a little vanity.
The colony is torn with dissensions as to Sunday trains. Some of the
Dutch clergy are even more absurd than our own on that point. A certain
Van der Lingen, at Stellenbosch, calls Europe ‘one vast Sodom’, and so
forth. There is altogether a nice kettle of religious hatred brewing
here. The English Bishop of Capetown appoints all the English clergy,
and is absolute monarch of all he surveys; and he and his clergy are
carrying matters with a high hand. The Bishop’s chaplain told Mrs. J—
that she could not hope for salvation in the Dutch Church, since her
clergy were not ordained by any bishop, and therefore they could only
administer the sacrament ‘_unto damnation_’. All the physicians in a
body, English as well as Dutch, have withdrawn from the Dispensary,
because it was used as a means of pressure to draw the coloured people
from the Dutch to the English Church.
This High-Church tyranny cannot go on long. Catholics there are few, but
their bishop plays the same game; and it is a losing one. The Irish maid
at the Caledon inn was driven by her bishop to be married at the Lutheran
church, just as a young Englishman I know (though a fervent Puseyite) was
driven to be married at the Scotch kirk. The colonial bishops are
despots in their own churches, and there is no escape from their tyranny
but by dissent. The Admiral and his family have been anathematized for
going to a fancy bazaar given by the Wesleyans for their chapel.
_April_ 8_th_.—Yesterday, I failed about my cart photograph. First, the
owner had sent away the cart, and when Choslullah came dressed in all his
best clothes, with a lovely blue handkerchief setting off his beautiful
orange-tawny face, he had to rush off to try to borrow another cart. As
ill luck would have it, he met a ‘serious young man’, with no front
teeth, and a hideous wen on his eyebrow, who informed the priest of
Choslullah’s impious purpose, and came with him to see that he did _not_
sit for his portrait. I believe it was half envy; for my handsome driver
was as pleased, and then as disappointed, as a young lady about her first
ball, and obviously had no religious scruples of his own on the subject.
The weather is very delightful now—hot, but beautiful; and the
south-easters, though violent, are short, and not cold. As in all other
countries, autumn is the best time of year.
_April_ 15_th_.—Your letters arrived yesterday, to my great delight. I
have been worrying about a ship, and was very near sailing to-day by the
_Queen of the South_ at twenty-four hours’ notice, but I have resolved to
wait for the _Camperdown_. The _Queen of the South_ is a steamer,—which
is odious, for they pitch the coal all over the lower deck, so that you
breathe coal-dust for the first ten days; then she was crammed—only one
cabin vacant, and that small, and on the lower deck—and fifty-two
children on board. Moreover, she will probably get to England too soon,
so I resign myself to wait. The _Camperdown_ has only upper-deck cabins,
and I shall have fresh air. I am not as well as I was at Caledon, so I
am all the more anxious to have a voyage likely to do me good instead of
harm.
I got my cart and Choslullah photographed after all. Choslullah came
next day (having got rid of his pious friend), quite resolved that ‘the
Missis’ should take his portrait, so I will send or bring a few copies of
my beloved cart. After the photograph was done, we drove round the
Kloof, between Table and Lion Mountain. The road is cut on the side of
Lion Mountain, and overhangs the sea at a great height. Camp Bay, which
lies on the further side of the ‘Lion’s Head’, is most lovely; never was
sea so deeply blue, rocks so warmly brown, or sand and foam so glittering
white; and down at the mountain-foot the bright green of the orange and
pomegranate trees throws it all out in greater relief. But the
atmosphere here won’t do after that of the ‘Ruggings’, as the Caledon
line of country is called. I shall never lose the impression of the view
I had when Dr. Morkel drove me out on a hill-side, where the view seemed
endless and without a vestige of life; and yet in every valley there were
farms; but it looked a vast, utter solitude, and without the least haze.
You don’t know what that utter clearness means—the distinctness is quite
awful. Here it is always slightly hazy; very pretty and warm, but it
takes off from the grandeur. It is the difference between a pretty
Pompadour beauty and a Greek statue. Those pale opal mountains, as
distinct in every detail as the map on your table, are so cheerful and
serene; no melodramatic effects of clouds and gloom. I suppose it is not
really so beautiful as it seemed to me, for other people say it is bare
and desolate, and certainly it is; but it seemed to me anything but
dreary.
I am persuaded that Capetown is not healthy; indeed, the town can’t be,
from its stench and dirt; but I believe the whole seashore is more or
less bad, compared to the upper plateaux, of which I know only the first.
I should have gone back to Paarl, only that ships come and go within
twenty-four hours, so one has the pleasure of living in constant
expectation, with packed trunks, wondering when one shall get away. A
clever Mr. M—, who has lived _all over_ India, and is going back to
Singapore, with his wife and child, are now in the house; and some very
pleasant Jews, bound for British Caffraria—one of them has a lovely
little wife and three children. She is very full of Prince Albert’s
death, and says there was not a dry eye in the synagogues in London,
which were all hung with black on the day of his funeral, and prayer went
on the whole day. ‘_The people_ mourned for him as much as for Hezekiah;
and, indeed, he deserved it a great deal better,’ was her rather
unorthodox conclusion. These colonial Jews are a new ‘Erscheinung’ to
me. They have the features of their race, but many of their
peculiarities are gone. Mr. L—, who is very handsome and gentlemanly,
eats ham and patronises a good breed of pigs on the ‘model farm’ on which
he spends his money. He is (he says) a thorough Jew in faith, and
evidently in charitable works; but he wants to say his prayers in English
and not to ‘dress himself up’ in a veil and phylacteries for the purpose;
and he and his wife talk of England as ‘home’, and care as much for
Jerusalem as their neighbours. They have not forgotten the old
persecutions, and are civil to the coloured people, and speak of them in
quite a different tone from other English colonists. Moreover, they are
far better mannered, and more ‘_human_’, in the German sense of the word,
in all respects;—in short, less ‘colonial’.
I have bought some Cape ‘confeyt’; apricots, salted and then sugared,
called ‘mebos’—delicious! Also pickled peaches, ‘chistnee’, and quince
jelly. I have a notion of some Cherupiga wine for ourselves. I will
inquire the cost of bottling, packing, &c.; it is about one shilling and
fourpence a bottle here, sweet red wine, unlike any other I ever drank,
and I think very good. It is very tempting to bring a few things so
unknown in England. I have a glorious ‘Velcombers’ for you, a blanket of
nine Damara sheepskins, sewn by the Damaras, and dressed so that moths
and fleas won’t stay near them. It will make a grand railway rug and
‘outside car’ covering. The hunters use them for sleeping out of doors.
I have bought three, and a springbok caross for somebody.
_April_ 17_th_.—The winter has set in to-day. It rains steadily, at the
rate of the heaviest bit of the heaviest shower in England, and is as
cold as a bad day early in September. One can just sit without a fire.
Presently, all will be green and gay; for winter is here the season of
flowers, and the heaths will cover the country with a vast Turkey carpet.
Already the green is appearing where all was brown yesterday. To-day is
Good Friday; and if Christmas seemed odd at Midsummer, Easter in autumn
seems positively unnatural. Our Jewish party made their exodus to-day,
by the little coasting steamer, to Algoa Bay. I rather condoled with the
pretty little woman about her long rough journey, with three babies; but
she laughed, and said they had had time to get used to it ever since the
days of Moses. All she grieved over was not being able to keep Passover,
and she described their domestic ceremonies quite poetically. We heard
from our former housemaid, Annie, the other day, announcing her marriage
and her sister’s. She wrote such a pretty, merry letter to S—, saying
‘the more she tried not to like him, the better she loved him, and had to
say, “Aha, Annie, you’re caught at last.”’ A year and a half is a long
time to remain single in this country.
_Monday_, _April_ 21_st_, _Easter Monday_.—The mail goes out in an hour,
so I will just add, good-bye. The winter is now fairly set in, and I
long to be off. I fear I shall have a desperately cold week or so at
first sailing, till we catch the south-east trades. This weather is
beautiful in itself, but I feel it from the suddenness of the change. We
passed in one night from hot summer to winter, which is like _fine_
English April, or October, only brighter than anything in Europe. There
is properly, no autumn or spring here; only hot, dry, brown summer, with
its cold wind at times, and fresh green winter, all fragrance and
flowers, and much less wind. Mr. M—, of whom I told you, has been in
every corner of the far East—Java, Sumatra, everywhere—and is extremely
amusing. He has brought his wife here for her health, and is as glad to
talk as I am. The conversation of an educated, clever person, is quite a
new and delightful sensation to me now. He appears to have held high
posts under the East India Company, is learned in Oriental languages, and
was last resident at Singapore. He says that no doubt Java is Paradise,
it is so lovely, and such a climate; but he does not look as if it had
agreed with him. I feel quite heart-sick at seeing these letters go off
before me, instead of leaving them behind, as I had hoped.
Well, I must say good-bye—or rather, ‘_auf Wiedersehn_’—and God knows how
glad I shall be when that day comes!