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THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
and if from the Cape why not from Ireland or Canada or
anywhere else?
I am glad to hear that your farm is going well. I hope
you will make hay while the sun shines, for I suspect that
the troops or the greater portion of them will soon be with-
drawn.... Believe me, my dear Haggard,
Yours always sincerely,
T. Shepstone.
The following extract from a letter written by my late
brother John to my father, which has come into my hands with
the others, shows the date of the departure of the Royal Commission, and what we thought of that body individually. It is
headed Hilldrop, Newcastle, June 3, 1881:
My dear Father, – You will have heard from Rider ere
you receive this of the birth of his boy, so I will not enlarge
on that subject.
The Royal Commission left this house for the Transvaal
yesterday, so we left the tents in the garden and took repossession of the building. I think most of them were sorry
to go, and for many things we were sorry to lose them;
they were a remarkably nice set of men, from Sir Hercules
Robinson downwards.... I next tackled Sir Hercules Robin-
1
, and was asked to dinner at Hilldrop with Rider and
son
Louisa. The latter did not attend. Among the guests at the
table were Sir Henry de Villiers and President Brand of the
Free State.
1
as to an appointment he desired at the time. – H. R. H.
231
H. RIDER HAGGARD
Enclosed in this letter is one from Sir Evelyn Wood to
my brother, in which he states that “I do not myself anticipate remaining Governor of Natal.” His dissent from the
report of the Royal Commission will suggest a reason why.
I do not remember much of President Brand; for some reason he made no great impression on my mind, but Sir Henry
de Villiers I recall very well indeed, for we rode together and
talked a good deal. He was a quiet man, pleasant and able, but
of course Dutch by blood, and therefore, although he may not
have known it himself, naturally in sympathy with Dutch aims
and ambitions. In him the Boers had an advocate of the best
class. Sir Hercules Robinson was a most agreeable Irish gentleman. Also he was an offi cial, and not of the strongest sort. As a
Royal Commissioner theoretically he was in an independent
position, but he had a notable example before his eyes in the
instance of Sir Bartle Frere of what happened to Colonial Governors who dared to take a line of their own. Of this Commission Sir Evelyn Wood was the only really independent member, and he dissented from its most important fi ndings.
Never shall I forget the scene on the market square of Newcastle – it must have been about the 21st or 22nd of March –
when it became known that peace had been declared as a corollary of our defeats, and that the restoration of the Transvaal
was practically guaranteed within six months. Some thousands
of people were gathered there, many of them refugees, among
whom were a number of loyal Boers, and with these soldiers,
townsfolk, and natives. I saw strong men weeping like children, and heard English-born people crying aloud that they
232
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
were “b – y Englishmen” no more. Soldiers were raging and
cursing, and no one tried to stop them; natives stood stupefi ed,
staring before them, their arms folded on their breasts; women
wrung their hands.
Then an idea struck the crowd; they made a rude effi gy of
Mr. Gladstone and, as was done in most of the other loyal parts
of South Africa, burnt it with contempt and curses. It was a
futile and perhaps a foolish act, but excuses must be made for
the ruined and the shamed. They could not believe their ears,
in which still echoed the vehement declaration of Sir Garnet
Wolseley that no Government would dare under any circumstances to give back the Transvaal, and the statements, in the
House of Lords, by telegram, and in other ways of various
members of the Administration to the same effect.
And now I have done and am glad to have done with the
matter of this great betrayal, the bitterness of which no lapse
of time ever can solace or even alleviate, and will return to its
results upon my own life.
On July 30, 1881, I sent to my father what I suppose was
the last letter that I wrote to him from South Africa. It was in
answer to one from him enclosing a communication from the
late Mr. Blake, who was at that time my lawyer, in which for
various reasons, both personal and connected with our property, they recommended our return to England.
My dear Father, – I have delayed replying to your kind
letter of June 22nd in order that I might have time to give
it full consideration, and also to enable me to try to arrive at
some satisfactory conclusion as regards the probable course of
events in this country. I must now tell you that after thorough-
233
H. RIDER HAGGARD
ly thinking the matter over I have made up my mind to return
to England next month. This will probably seem a somewhat
eccentric announcement, but my reasons are briefl y as follows.
First I have given due weight to what you and Mr. Blake write
to me, and admit that there is a great deal in what you say.
What brings me back in such a hurry however is the state of
the country.
I can only trust that I have arrived at a wise decision. Of
course you will understand that, under the circumstances, if
we are to go, the sooner we go the better.
Cochrane is coming home with us on a trip. I am sorry to
say that he is suffering from a prolonged attack of dysentery,
and I think that a rest and a change of air is the only thing that
will pull him together again. The farm will be left in charge of
George and Mr. North (our engineer), a very respectable man
who has the advantage of experience of the country....
I must add a few words about our farming life. Our estate,
Rooipoint, covered something over three thousand acres. At
any rate it was a large property lying between the Newcastle
town lands and the Ingagaan River, in the centre of which rose
a great fl at-topped hill, the Rooi or Red Point, that gave it its
name. From the very crest of this hill fl owed, and doubtless still
fl ows, a strong and beautiful spring of water, though why water
should appear at the top of a mountain instead of the bottom
is more than I can say. At the foot of this mount we erected the
steam-driven grinding mill which I had bought in England, our
idea being that we should make our fortunes or at any rate do
very well as millers. Whether this anticipation would or would
not have been realised is more than I can tell, as we did not keep
234
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
the farm long enough to learn. As a matter of fact, however,
it was a risky business to import expensive machinery into a
place that was not accustomed to machinery, since it involved
the employment of an engineer and long and costly delays if
anything went wrong with the parts of the apparatus.
Still our efforts were by no means confi ned to this mill.
Thus we started the making of bricks, for which there was a
good market in Newcastle. I used to labour at this business,
and very hard work it was. Our energy, I remember, astonished
the neighbourhood so much that Natal Boers used to ride from
quite a distance to see two white farmers actually working with
their own hands. One of the curses of South Africa is, or used
to be, the universal habit of relegating all manual toil, or as
much of it as possible, to Kaffi rs, with the result that it came
to be looked upon as a more or less degrading occupation only
1
fi t for black men.
Such, however, was the Dutch habit. The
Boer’s idea was to sit on the stoep of his house and grow rich
by the natural increase of his fl ocks and herds, only cultivating suffi cient land to provide his family with mealies and the
other fruits of the earth. This system, it must be admitted, had
its merits in a country where time was of no object and where
land was so plentiful that every son could in due course be accommodated with a farm of 3000 morgen.
Besides our milling and brick-making we were the fi rst to
farm ostriches in that part of Natal. In my experience the ostrich is an extremely troublesome bird. To begin with he hunts
1
From Mr. Dawson’s work on South Africa (pp. 269 and 343),
published in 1925, it seems this trouble still exists. – Ed.
235
H. RIDER HAGGARD
you and knocks you down. One of ours gave Cochrane a frightful drubbing, and through a pair of opera glasses I saw an unfortunate Kaffi r barely escape with his life from its attentions
by going to earth in an ant-bear hole like a hunted jackal. Of
course the ostrich could not follow him into the hole, but it
stood sentry at its mouth waiting for him to come out again.
When attacked by an ostrich the only thing to do is to lie
down quite fl at. In this position it cannot strike you with its
bludgeon-like foot, nor is its beak adapted to pecking, though
it can and does dance and roll upon you and sit upon your
head as though it were an egg which it wished to hatch.
These birds, so ferocious with human beings, are terribly
afraid of dogs. I think that we lost two of ours through the
visitation of wandering hounds at night that set them running
furiously till they broke their necks in the wire fences. Its own
voracity brought another to its end: for they will pick up pocket-knives or anything that attracts them. This fowl managed to
swallow a huge sharp-pointed bone which fi xed itself across
the gullet in such a position that it would go neither up nor
down. There was only one thing to be done – operate. So we
operated, with a razor and without an anaesthetic. I only hope
that such another job may never fall to my lot, for that ostrich
was uncommonly strong and resented our surgical aid. However, we got the bone out and the creature recovered. Imagine
our horror when, a few weeks later, it appeared with another
bone immovably planted in exactly the same place! This time
we left it to fate, by which it was speedily overtaken.
Besides the ostriches we had a number of draught oxen and
some waggons. Out of these we did very well, as we hired them
236
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
to Government for transport purposes, though from these
trips they returned dreadfully footsore and poor. But cattle also
had their risks. Thus I remember our investing several hardly
earned hundreds of pounds in a bunch of trek oxen, which
we sent down to the bush-veld to recover. A month or two
later came a message from the man who had taken them in, to
the effect that they were all dead of eating a poisonous herb
called “tulip.” We often wondered if “tulip” really accounted
for their disappearance from our ken.
Also we made hay, rather a new departure in that district
in our time, where the cattle were left to get through the winter as best they could. This hay-making was a profi table business, as the product was in eager demand at a high price. I
remember selling the result of about a month of my own work
for 250 pounds, and never in all my life have I been prouder
of anything than I was of earning that money, literally with my
hands and by the sweat of my brow.
This was the process – one that would make my English
steward and labourers stare. Indeed, when I tell the former of
it, he listens politely but, I am quite sure, in his heart believes
that for his benefi t I have wandered into the familiar fi elds
of fi ction. We had imported a hay-cutting machine, I believe
one of the fi rst seen in those parts. Having selected a patch of
level veld on which to operate, and harnessed, I think, three
horses to the machine, I would start out in the dewy morning,
at sunrise, with a Kaffi r leader. Then we commenced operations. I sat on that dreadful apparatus and managed the levers
and knives; the Kaffi r led the horses. The grass was thick and
plentiful, so thick indeed that it was diffi cult to see stones and
237
H. RIDER HAGGARD
ant-bear holes. The former must be avoided by sudden and
Herculean efforts, or the knives would be shattered. As for the
latter, occasionally we went into them to the depth of two feet
or so, and then the trouble was to prevent myself from being
thrown on to the knives.
Altogether grass-cutting had its dangers, though, as it happened, I never came to any serious harm. After the hay was
once mown the rest was comparatively simple. We invented a
gigantic rake, to which we attached two mules or horses, and
by this means, after it had lain for a day or so in the sun to
dry – for we never attempted to turn it – dragged the hay
into enormous cocks, since the building of a regular stack was
beyond our resources. These cocks we covered with cloths, or
anything we could get, and when they had settled and sweetened by the generated heat, we sold them to the purchasers,
usually commissariat offi cers who carted them away. I suppose
they were satisfi ed with the stuff, as they always came back for
more. Or perhaps they could get nothing else.
Further, we grew mealies or Indian corn, but here the trouble was that stray cattle and horses would break in at night
and eat them.
Such is a rough outline of our various agricultural and
other operations on the Rooipoint farm. Personally they form
my pleasantest recollections of the place, though, were I to
start again, I would not have so many irons in the fi re. On the
whole we made a good deal of money, though our outgoings
and losses were also heavy. To farm successfully in Natal requires, or required, much capital and, owing to the poor quality of the Kaffi r labour, incessant personal supervision. These
Kaffi rs, however, who were most of them our tenants, were in
238
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
many ways our best friends; moreover they afforded us constant amusement when they were not engaged in driving us
mad by their carelessness.
I remember one of them breaking the best dinner dish and
calmly bringing the pieces to my wife. “I have collected and
carried these fragments to the Inkosikaas (head lady),” he explained with a sweet smile, “that the Inkosikaas, being clever
like all the white people, may cause them to join themselves
together again.”
The Inkosikaas surveyed him and them with speechless indignation. When, however, some of the family silver – I think
it was spoons – was missed and ultimately found in the stable
dust-heap, and when the best new table knives were discovered being used by Mazooku and his friends to dissect a decaying ox that had died of lung sickness, her indignation was no
longer speechless. Indeed the offenders fl ed before her.
Of course these Zulus gave everybody a native name. My
wife they called by a word which meant “a pretty white bead
with a pink eye,” while Gibbs was designated by a descriptive
title, anglice “a worn-out old cow who would have no more
calves.” I cannot recollect whether anyone, even Stephen,
dared to give to her an unBowdlerised rendering of this not
too complimentary appellation. Certainly I avoided doing so.
Poor Gibbs! Her trials in that strange land were many. Still
we brought her safe home to England, where she remained in
our service for a year or two, then left and vanished away as
modern domestics do. I wonder whether she still lives, and if
so, where she is spending her old age!
239
H. RIDER HAGGARD
Before we left Hilldrop we had a great sale of our imported
furniture, of which the catalogue survives to this day. It was
a highly successful sale, since such articles were then rare at
Newcastle. Thus I think a grand piano, which I had bought second-hand for 40 pounds in England, fetched 200 pounds, and
the other things went at proportionately good prices. Only the
“company” got hold of all the stock of wine which was exposed
upon the verandah and therein drank our healths, whereon
the watchful auctioneers knocked it down to the drinkers at a
high price per dozen.
So at last we bade farewell to Hilldrop, which neither of us
ever has, nor I suppose ever will, see again except in dreams. I
remember feeling quite sad as we drove down the dusty track
to Newcastle, and the familiar house, surrounded by its orange
trees, grew dim and vanished from our sight.
There my son had been born; there I had undergone many
emotions of a kind that help to make a man; there I had suffered the highest sort of shame, shame for my country; there,
as I felt, one chapter in my eventful life had opened and had
closed. It was sad to part with the place, and also to bid goodbye to my Zulu servant Mazooku. The poor fellow was moved
at this parting, and gave me what probably he valued more
than anything he possessed, the kerry that he had carried ever
since he was a man – that same heavy, redwood instrument
with which more than once I have seen him battering the
head of some foe. It hangs in the hall of this house, but where,
I wonder, is Mazooku, who saved my life when I was lost upon
the veld? Living, perhaps, in some kraal, and thinking from
time to time of his old master Indanda, of whose subsequent
240
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