Your letter from Magara of last December reached me in London just as I
was leaving with Landolphia Birchall (she kept her former name when she
married the Booky ... and _quite right, too_--you _never_ know how a
second or third marriage is going to turn out, and at any moment may
want your old name back). We came out here to see something of the war
at close quarters and to set up a hospital and a convalescent home for
the sick and wounded officers and men.
I cannot tell you how _proud_ and _pleased_ I was you had _done the
right thing_. People--especially that horror, Willowby Patterne ... my
dear, he is going _bald as an egg_, with a _terribly_ pink neck, all due
to some mistake in a hair-restorer, he says, but I say it is a vicious
life--people were saying odious things about you the last year or two
for developing German East Africa instead of one of our own colonies.
But I knew--and always said--your heart was in the right place and that
_once_ you saw old England was in a tight place you would come to her
assistance. There is nothing like one's own country, after all, is
there?--"_My_ country, right or wrong!"--one of the few ex-cabinet
ministers who is running straight said last December at a meeting I got
up at Reading. Some rude man in the audience called out, "But why don't
you set it _right_? _Then_ we should know where we are." But you must
expect such retorts from people who know nothing of foreign policy.
I wonder how you got away? Lucy and Maud, I suppose, you have left
behind. The Kaiser seems rather friendly to us, they all say, and is
going to be pacified with Samoa and more pieces of West Africa. So I
suppose your concession will be all right, whilst you are away, and the
Germans won't do anything unkind to poor Lucy and Maud. Or have they
returned to England? It is France who is showing her teeth, not
Germany! Chocho has very rightly told her "to mend her manners." She
is a _pig_ ... she can't forgive our taking Egypt and turning back
Marchand at Fashoda.
Even Spain has seized the opportunity to get her own back. It seems
Lord Wiltshire called her a decaying nation during the war with the
United States, and she has been saying through her press after each
British defeat: "Who's the decaying nation _now_?" I must say she had
some cause! Never were we more bitterly disappointed in our
Generals--before Lord Roberts came out: They started off--some of the
dear old trots, with Crimean whiskers, if you'll believe me--as pleased
as Punch; and their silly young A.D.C.'s got the porters at Waterloo
station to stick labels on their luggage "To Pretoria," "To
Bloomfontain" (Is that how it's spelt?). And, of course, the only
result of this boastfulness was that as soon as the old footlers got out
there they fell into ambushes and lost their way and their men, and were
deceived by guides, and the soldiers quite lost heart and got taken
prisoners.
England in December! I shall _never_ forget it! I couldn't sleep for
_nights_ and _nights_, and Vicky Masham told me the Queen's health
received such a shock that she will never be quite the same again....
Of course, now we can breathe once more. As you are on the spot and I
dare say in the thick of it all, I need not tell you how things have
gone since Bobs and K. of K. came out.
Well, of course, with all this going on in South Africa you couldn't
expect any loyal Englishwoman who wasn't positively tied down by home
duties to remain at home. So I sent Clithy to Eton--he's nearly
thirteen now--and kept on his governess to mother him when he comes from
school, and also confided him to the general care of Maurice, whom he
likes. By the bye, I've pensioned off old Flower now, or at least got
rid of him with a premium, and Maurice is full Agent, and I've advised
Maurice to take on as an assistant Harden, the County cricketer, your
wife's brother-in-law! Well. Having done all this and girded up my
loins, so to speak, I made interest with old General de Gobyns at the
War Office--such an old darling--he served with Wellington, I
believe--and came out here with Landolphia Birchall, to supervise
hospitals and give a general eye to the sick and wounded, read to them,
write letters home for them, change their bandages, if it isn't too
complicated--and so on. It was partly the thought that you were out
here that decided me to come. Don't forget if you are wounded or ill to
let me know and I will try to come to you or get you put into one of my
hospitals. That _would_ be jolly!
Landolphia is a funny old party! She must be quite fifty. She was so
ill crossing the Bay of Biscay. Owing to the disgraceful amount of room
the staff officers took up on the steamer she and I were jammed together
into one cabin. Where our maids were put, _I_ don't know--in the
stoke-hole I think. But we scarcely saw them all the voyage and when we
landed Sophie gave me notice at once, only she can't get a passage home
so she has had to let it stand over till I choose to return. Of course,
under the circumstances, Landolphia could keep nothing back from me--she
was _so_ sea-sick; as she said, that she felt herself naked, face to
face with her Maker. So everything had to be explained--her secrets of
make-up, her sachets of peau d'espagne, her dress improvers and peculiar
stays and adjusted shoes. I suppose (though I laughed inwardly till I
_ached_, she looked so droll when she was taken to pieces) I must have
been good to her in her dire affliction, for she's clung to me ever
since, and says we are sisters without a secret between us. After all,
with all these infirmities and "adjustments" she was a plucky old thing
ever to come out. Now she thinks it an awful lark--
By the bye, she protests with tears in her eyes that her third husband
is _not_ a booky, he's a _trainer_, which, it appears, is a vastly
superior calling. She also says she oughtn't to be judged so harshly
over her marriages. The second husband, Captain Birchall, only lived
with her for three months and then broke his neck in a point-to-point
steeplechase. She lived twenty years with Augustus Gellibrand, and she
really only married her present old man--Dawkins--because she got into
such a tangle over her racing debts and he put them straight....
* * * * *
Do let me know if and when this gigantic letter reaches you!
Your devoted
SIBYL.
As will be seen later, this frank outpouring did not come into Roger's
hands for five or six months. Fortunately Sibyl had also sent him
several picture postcards with photos of herself and Lady Landolphia
dressed in nurses' costume, or a kind of hybrid costume between a nurse
and a nun. These reached him at his Agents' in Durban. So he wrote to
her from that place and was rather pleased to think she was in the same
sub-continent as himself. It diminished slightly the acute form of
home-sickness from which he suffered after first landing in Natal.
Once more he asked himself if he had done the right thing in
volunteering for the South African War. His Agents at Durban, being
German and Dutch, were at most coldly polite and there seemed to be no
rush on the part of the authorities to enlist his services. In order to
have two trusty servants who would take care of his baggage and perhaps
follow him in campaigning--they would make most admirable scouts--he had
brought with him to Durban two of his Somali gun-carriers. After
landing with them at Durban and reporting himself to the military
head-quarters as a former captain in the Indian Army, he had the
deuce-and-all of a bother to get food and lodging for these wretched
Somalis, who were at once classed by we ignorant Natalians as "just
ordinary niggers" ... though why "just ordinary niggers" should be so
ill-treated, he could not understand. No hotel would lodge or feed them
except in a kind of pigsty with hog-wash for food, where the kitchen
Kafirs abode. They might not go into a shop and buy food, or rather they
might go in but no one would serve them. After dark they must have a
"pass." They very narrowly escaped jail and the whip and disappearance
for ever from his ken by defending themselves with all a Muslim's pride
when cuffed and pushed and flouted.
Roger very nearly--for that reason and for the mosquito-preserves of
Durban then called "hotels"--turned tail and re-embarked for German East
Africa; but fortunately there came along a Colonel who had not served
under Wellington or even seen the Crimea, but was no older than
Roger--42--and had known him in London.
"You're just the type of man we want, with your knowledge of the bush
and of niggers...."
"No, don't call them that; it--it--riles me after the years I have
worked with them...."
"Well, Negroes, the bonny Bantu, the blameless Ethiopians, if you
will.... And you ought to be a master-hand at bush-fighting. We're
going to get up a sort of mounted infantry, don't you know. You're just
the man to be given a small command. You need not tell me you can't
ride, can't get every ounce out of your mount, 'cos I know better; or
that you can't manage horses so that those entrusted to your men don't
die in three weeks. Didn't you once tell me you bred Basuto ponies in
G.E.A.? Well, I'm here, there, and elsewhere, buying Basuto ponies.
Just stay here and get your uniform and equipment--here, give this card
to our Supply department--and then report to General Buller. I'm
writing him fully about you.... Oh yes.... And as to your nigs. I mean
your two high-bred Fuzzie-wuzzies. Of course, we don't employ Negro
soldiers ... 'gainst the rules. But we engage thousands as batmen,
transport-riders, grooms, and everything else. I'll fix it up somehow
that you take your two darkies with you. They seem to know what I'm
sayin'. What jolly teeth. They look hefty men and a dam' sight
handsomer than some of the Johnnies you'll see on the Rand, when we've
got Oom Paul on the run..."
So in course of time, Roger, first brevet-Major for gallantry in action,
then a full Major--if there is such a simple rank no longer qualified
with adjectives (but I know after his campaigns in the Transvaal he was
always styled "Major" Brentham, till he was made a Colonel)--found his
way (always attended by Yusuf Ali and Anshuro, his Somali batmen) into
the eastern Transvaal at the period when President Kruger and the other
members of his Government were leaving Pretoria for the Portuguese
frontier.
In the month of August he took part in a concentration of British forces
against two Boer commandos in the north-east Transvaal. This resulted
in a technical victory for the British, but whilst the tide of battle
rolled away northwards to seize Pietersburg, the Boers were left in
possession of the site of the first skirmish. And in a sudden hush
after great clamour Roger realized that he was lying in the shade of
some bushes near a little _spruit_ of water, shot through the thigh and
quite incapable of sitting up. The bullet or bullets had gone clean
through the fleshy part of the right thigh and grazed the knee of the
left leg. Happily they had not broken the thigh bone or cut the great
artery. The Somalis, who had a magical faculty of turning up when most
wanted, had come in handy as renderers of first aid, had stopped the
haemorrhage. They now squatted on the ground beside their fainting
master, fanned his sweating face, gave him water to drink and
occasionally sprinkled his chest and forehead with water to ward off the
deadly faintness....
A Boer Colonel came riding by, scanning closely the scene of the
struggle. He claimed the unconscious Roger as his prisoner--out of
pity--and whistled up carriers and a stretcher to bear him to the
nearest dressing-station.
Here he was attended to by one of the numerous German doctors who had
volunteered for service with the Boer armies.
_From Major Roger Brentham, D.S.O., to Lady Silchester._
British Hospital,
Unguja,
_Novr._ 27, 1900.