In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the
moralities.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
FROM DIARY:
Royal Hotel. Comfortable, good table, good service of natives and
Madrasis. Curious jumble of modern and ancient city and village,
primitiveness and the other thing. Electric bells, but they don't ring.
Asked why they didn't, the watchman in the office said he thought they
must be out of order; he thought so because some of them rang, but most
of them didn't. Wouldn't it be a good idea to put them in order? He
hesitated--like one who isn't quite sure--then conceded the point.
May 7. A bang on the door at 6. Did I want my boots cleaned? Fifteen
minutes later another bang. Did we want coffee? Fifteen later, bang
again, my wife's bath ready; 15 later, my bath ready. Two other bangs;
I forget what they were about. Then lots of shouting back and forth,
among the servants just as in an Indian hotel.
Evening. At 4 P.M. it was unpleasantly warm. Half-hour after sunset
one needed a spring overcoat; by 8 a winter one.
Durban is a neat and clean town. One notices that without having his
attention called to it.
Rickshaws drawn by splendidly built black Zulus, so overflowing with
strength, seemingly, that it is a pleasure, not a pain, to see them
snatch a rickshaw along. They smile and laugh and show their teeth--a
good-natured lot. Not allowed to drink; 2s per hour for one person; 3s
for two; 3d for a course--one person.
The chameleon in the hotel court. He is fat and indolent and
contemplative; but is business-like and capable when a fly comes about
--reaches out a tongue like a teaspoon and takes him in. He gums his
tongue first. He is always pious, in his looks. And pious and thankful
both, when Providence or one of us sends him a fly. He has a froggy
head, and a back like a new grave--for shape; and hands like a bird's
toes that have been frostbitten. But his eyes are his exhibition
feature. A couple of skinny cones project from the sides of his head,
with a wee shiny bead of an eye set in the apex of each; and these cones
turn bodily like pivot-guns and point every-which-way, and they are
independent of each other; each has its own exclusive machinery. When I
am behind him and C. in front of him, he whirls one eye rearwards and the
other forwards--which gives him a most Congressional expression (one eye
on the constituency and one on the swag); and then if something happens
above and below him he shoots out one eye upward like a telescope and the
other downward--and this changes his expression, but does not improve it.
Natives must not be out after the curfew bell without a pass. In Natal
there are ten blacks to one white.
Sturdy plump creatures are the women. They comb their wool up to a peak
and keep it in position by stiffening it with brown-red clay--half of
this tower colored, denotes engagement; the whole of it colored denotes
marriage.
None but heathen Zulus on the police; Christian ones not allowed.
May 9. A drive yesterday with friends over the Berea. Very fine roads
and lofty, overlooking the whole town, the harbor, and the sea-beautiful
views. Residences all along, set in the midst of green lawns with shrubs
and generally one or two intensely red outbursts of poinsettia--the
flaming splotch of blinding red a stunning contrast with the world of
surrounding green. The cactus tree--candelabrum-like; and one twisted
like gray writhing serpents. The "flat-crown" (should be flat-roof)
--half a dozen naked branches full of elbows, slant upward like artificial
supports, and fling a roof of delicate foliage out in a horizontal
platform as flat as a floor; and you look up through this thin floor as
through a green cobweb or veil. The branches are japanesich. All about
you is a bewildering variety of unfamiliar and beautiful trees; one sort
wonderfully dense foliage and very dark green--so dark that you notice it
at once, notwithstanding there are so many orange trees. The
"flamboyant"--not in flower, now, but when in flower lives up to its
name, we are told. Another tree with a lovely upright tassel scattered
among its rich greenery, red and glowing as a firecoal. Here and there a
gum-tree; half a dozen lofty Norfolk Island pines lifting their fronded
arms skyward. Groups of tall bamboo.
Saw one bird. Not many birds here, and they have no music--and the
flowers not much smell, they grow so fast.
Everything neat and trim and clean like the town. The loveliest trees
and the greatest variety I have ever seen anywhere, except approaching
Darjeeling. Have not heard anyone call Natal the garden of South Africa,
but that is what it probably is.
It was when Bishop of Natal that Colenso raised such a storm in the
religious world. The concerns of religion are a vital matter here yet.
A vigilant eye is kept upon Sunday. Museums and other dangerous resorts
are not allowed to be open. You may sail on the Bay, but it is wicked to
play cricket. For a while a Sunday concert was tolerated, upon condition
that it must be admission free and the money taken by collection. But
the collection was alarmingly large and that stopped the matter. They
are particular about babies. A clergyman would not bury a child
according to the sacred rites because it had not been baptized. The
Hindoo is more liberal. He burns no child under three, holding that it
does not need purifying.
The King of the Zulus, a fine fellow of 30, was banished six years ago
for a term of seven years. He is occupying Napoleon's old stand--St.
Helena. The people are a little nervous about having him come back, and
they may well be, for Zulu kings have been terrible people sometimes
--like Tchaka, Dingaan, and Cetewayo.
There is a large Trappist monastery two hours from Durban, over the
country roads, and in company with Mr. Milligan and Mr. Hunter, general
manager of the Natal government railways, who knew the heads of it, we
went out to see it.
There it all was, just as one reads about it in books and cannot believe
that it is so--I mean the rough, hard work, the impossible hours, the
scanty food, the coarse raiment, the Maryborough beds, the tabu of human
speech, of social intercourse, of relaxation, of amusement, of
entertainment, of the presence of woman in the men's establishment.
There it all was. It was not a dream, it was not a lie. And yet with
the fact before one's face it was still incredible. It is such a
sweeping suppression of human instincts, such an extinction of the man as
an individual.
La Trappe must have known the human race well. The scheme which he
invented hunts out everything that a man wants and values--and withholds
it from him. Apparently there is no detail that can help make life worth
living that has not been carefully ascertained and placed out of the
Trappist's reach. La Trappe must have known that there were men who
would enjoy this kind of misery, but how did he find it out?
If he had consulted you or me he would have been told that his scheme
lacked too many attractions; that it was impossible; that it could never
be floated. But there in the monastery was proof that he knew the human
race better than it knew itself. He set his foot upon every desire that
a man has--yet he floated his project, and it has prospered for two
hundred years, and will go on prospering forever, no doubt.
Man likes personal distinction--there in the monastery it is obliterated.
He likes delicious food--there he gets beans and bread and tea, and not
enough of it. He likes to lie softly--there he lies on a sand mattress,
and has a pillow and a blanket, but no sheet. When he is dining, in a
great company of friends, he likes to laugh and chat--there a monk reads
a holy book aloud during meals, and nobody speaks or laughs. When a man
has a hundred friends about him, evenings, be likes to have a good time
and run late--there he and the rest go silently to bed at 8; and in the
dark, too; there is but a loose brown robe to discard, there are no
night-clothes to put on, a light is not needed. Man likes to lie abed
late there he gets up once or twice in the night to perform some
religious office, and gets up finally for the day at two in the morning.
Man likes light work or none at all--there he labors all day in the
field, or in the blacksmith shop or the other shops devoted to the
mechanical trades, such as shoemaking, saddlery, carpentry, and so on.
Man likes the society of girls and women--there he never has it. He
likes to have his children about him, and pet them and play with them
--there he has none. He likes billiards--there is no table there. He
likes outdoor sports and indoor dramatic and musical and social
entertainments--there are none there. He likes to bet on things--I was
told that betting is forbidden there. When a man's temper is up he likes
to pour it out upon somebody there this is not allowed. A man likes
animals--pets; there are none there. He likes to smoke--there he cannot
do it. He likes to read the news--no papers or magazines come there. A
man likes to know how his parents and brothers and sisters are getting
along when he is away, and if they miss him--there he cannot know. A man
likes a pretty house, and pretty furniture, and pretty things, and pretty
colors--there he has nothing but naked aridity and sombre colors. A man
likes--name it yourself: whatever it is, it is absent from that place.
From what I could learn, all that a man gets for this is merely the
saving of his soul.
It all seems strange, incredible, impossible. But La Trappe knew the
race. He knew the powerful attraction of unattractiveness; he knew that
no life could be imagined, howsoever comfortless and forbidding, but
somebody would want to try it.
This parent establishment of Germans began its work fifteen years ago,
strangers, poor, and unencouraged; it owns 15,000 acres of land now, and
raises grain and fruit, and makes wines, and manufactures all manner of
things, and has native apprentices in its shops, and sends them forth
able to read and write, and also well equipped to earn their living by
their trades. And this young establishment has set up eleven branches in
South Africa, and in them they are christianizing and educating and
teaching wage-yielding mechanical trades to 1,200 boys and girls.
Protestant Missionary work is coldly regarded by the commercial white
colonist all over the heathen world, as a rule, and its product is
nicknamed "rice-Christians" (occupationless incapables who join the
church for revenue only), but I think it would be difficult to pick a
flaw in the work of these Catholic monks, and I believe that the
disposition to attempt it has not shown itself.
Tuesday, May 12. Transvaal politics in a confused condition. First the
sentencing of the Johannesburg Reformers startled England by its
severity; on the top of this came Kruger's exposure of the cipher
correspondence, which showed that the invasion of the Transvaal, with the
design of seizing that country and adding it to the British Empire, was
planned by Cecil Rhodes and Beit--which made a revulsion in English
feeling, and brought out a storm against Rhodes and the Chartered Company
for degrading British honor. For a good while I couldn't seem to get at
a clear comprehension of it, it was so tangled. But at last by patient
study I have managed it, I believe. As I understand it, the Uitlanders
and other Dutchmen were dissatisfied because the English would not allow
them to take any part in the government except to pay taxes. Next, as I
understand it, Dr. Kruger and Dr. Jameson, not having been able to make
the medical business pay, made a raid into Matabeleland with the
intention of capturing the capital, Johannesburg, and holding the women
and children to ransom until the Uitlanders and the other Boers should
grant to them and the Chartered Company the political rights which had
been withheld from them. They would have succeeded in this great scheme,
as I understand it, but for the interference of Cecil Rhodes and Mr.
Beit, and other Chiefs of the Matabele, who persuaded their countrymen to
revolt and throw off their allegiance to Germany. This, in turn, as I
understand it, provoked the King of Abyssinia to destroy the Italian army
and fall back upon Johannesburg; this at the instigation of Rhodes, to
bull the stock market.