South Africa; vol I.

by Anthony Trollope

I liked Pieter Maritzburg very much,—perhaps the best of all South African towns. But whenever I would express such an opinion to a Pieter Maritzburger he would never quite agree with me. It is difficult to get a Colonist to assent to any opinion as to his own Colony. If you find fault, he is injured and almost insulted. The traveller soon learns that he had better abstain from all spoken criticism, even when that often repeated, that dreadful question is put to him,—which I was called upon to answer sometimes four or five times a day,—“Well, Mr. Trollope, what do you think of——,”—let us say for the moment, “South Africa?” But even praise is not accepted without contradiction, and the peculiar hardships of a Colonist’s life are insisted upon almost with indignation when colonial blessings are spoken of with admiration. The Government at home is doing everything that is cruel, and the Government in the Colony is doing everything that is foolish. With whatever interest the gentleman himself is concerned, that peculiar interest is peculiarly ill-managed by the existing powers. But for some fatuous maddening law he himself could make his own fortune and almost that of the Colony. In Pieter Maritzburg everybody seemed to me very comfortable, but everybody was ill-used. There was no labour,—though the streets were full of Zulus, who would do anything for a shilling and half anything for sixpence. There was no emigration from England provided for by the country. There were not half soldiers enough in Natal,—though Natal has luckily had no real use for soldiers since the Dutch went away. But perhaps the most popular source of complaint was that everything was so dear that nobody could afford to live. Nevertheless I did not hear that any great number of the inhabitants of the town were encumbered by debt, and everybody seemed to live comfortably enough.

“You must begin,” said one lady to me, “by computing that £400 a year in England means £200 a year here.” To this I demurred before the lady,—with very little effect, as of course she had the better of me in the argument. But I demur again here, with better chance of success, as I have not the lady by to contradict me.

The point is one on which it is very difficult to come to a direct and positive conclusion. The lady began by appealing to wages, rent, the price of tea and all such articles as must be imported, the price of clothes, the material of which must at least be imported, the price of butter and vegetables, the price of schooling, of medical assistance and of law, which must be regulated in accordance with the price of the articles which the schoolmaster, doctors, and lawyers consume,—and the price of washing. In all such arguments the price of washing is brought forward as a matter in which the Colonist suffers great hardships. It must be acknowledged that the washing is dear,—and bad, atrociously bad;—so bad that the coming home of one’s linen is a season for tears and wailing. Bread and meat she gave up to me. Bread might be about the same as in Europe, and meat no doubt in Pieter Maritzburg was to be had at about half the London prices. She defied me to name another article of consumption which was not cheaper at home than in the Colony.

I did not care to go through the list with her, though I think that a London butler costs more than a Zulu boy. I found the matter of wages paid to native servants to be so inexplicable as to defy my enquiries. A boy,—that is a Zulu man—would run almost anywhere for a shilling with a portmanteau on his head. I often heard of 7s. a month as the amount of wages paid by a farmer,—with a diet exclusively of mealies or of Kafir corn. And yet housekeepers have told me that they paid £5 and £6 a month wages for a man, and that they considered his diet to cost them 15s. a week. In the heat of argument exceptional circumstances are often taken to prove general statements. You will be assured that the Swiss are the tallest people in Europe because a Swiss has been found seven feet high. A man will teach himself to think that he pays a shilling each for the apples he eats, because he once gave a shilling for an apple in Covent Garden. The abnormally dear Zulu servants of whom I have heard have been I think like the giant Swiss and the shilling apple. Taking it all round I feel sure that Zulu service in Natal is very much cheaper than English service in England,—that it does not cost the half. I have no doubt that it is less regular,—but then it is more good humoured, and what it lacks in comfort is made up in freedom.

But I would not compare items with my friend; nor do I think that any true result can be reached by such comparison. Comfort in living depends not so much on the amount of good things which a man can afford to consume, but on the amount of good things which those with whom he lives will think that he ought to consume. It may be true,—nay, it certainly is true,—that for every square foot of house room which a householder enjoys he pays more in Pieter Maritzburg than a householder of the same rank and standing pays in London for the same space. But a professional man, a lawyer let us say, can afford to live, without being supposed to derogate from his position, in a much smaller house in Natal than he can in England. It may cost sixpence to wash a shirt in Natal, and only threepence in England; but if an Englishman be required by the exacting fastidiousness of his neighbours to put on a clean white shirt every day, whereas the Natalian can wear a flannel shirt for three days running, it will be found, I think, that the Natalian will wash his shirts a penny a day cheaper than the Englishman. A man with a family, living on £400 a year, cannot entertain his friends very often either in London or in Pieter Maritzburg;—but, of the two, hospitality is more within the reach of the latter because the Colonist who dines out expects much less than the Englishman. We clothe ourselves in broadcloth instead of fustian because we are afraid of our neighbours, but the obligation on us is imperative. In a country where it is less so, money spent in clothing will of course go further. I do not hesitate to say that a gentleman living with a wife and children on any income between £400 and £1,000 would feel less of the inconveniences of poverty in Natal than in England. That he would experience many drawbacks,—especially in regard to the education of his children,—is incidental to all colonial life.

I find the following given in a list of prices prevailing at Pieter Maritzburg in March 1876, and I quote from it as I have seen no list so general of later date. Meat 6d. per pound. Wheat 13s. per cwt. Turkeys from 8s. upwards. Fowls 2s. 4d. each. Ham Is. 1d. per lb. Bacon 8d. Butter, fresh, 1s. 2d. to 1s. 6d. This is an article which often becomes very much dearer, and is always too bad to be eaten. Coals £3 6s. 8d. per ton. Good coal could not be bought for this; but coal is never used in houses. Little fuel is needed except for cooking, and for that wood is used—quoted at 1s. 4d. per cwt. Potatoes 4s. to 6s. per cwt. Onions 16s. per cwt. A horse can be kept at livery at 17s. 6d. a week. The same clothes would be dearer in Pieter Maritzburg than in London, but the same clothes are not worn. I pay £2 2s. for a pair of trowsers in London. Before I left South Africa I found myself wearing garments that a liberal tradesman in the Orange Free State, six hundred miles away from the sea, had sold me for 16s.—although they had been brought ready made all the way from England. This purchase had not taken place when I was discussing the matter with the lady, or perhaps I might have been able to convince her. I bought a hat at the Diamond Fields cheaper than my friend Scott would sell it me at the corner of Bond Street.

While in Pieter Maritzburg a public dinner was given to which I had the honour of receiving an invitation. After dinner, as is usual on such occasions, a great many speeches were made,—which differed very much from such speeches as are usually spoken at public dinners in England, by being all worth hearing. I do not know that I ever heard so many good speeches made before on a so-called festive occasion. I think I may say that at home the two or three hours after the health of Her Majesty has been drunk are generally two or three hours of misery,—sometimes intensified to such a degree as to induce the unfortunate one to fly for support to the wine which is set before him. I have sometimes fancied that this has come, not so much from the inability of the speakers to make good speeches,—because as a rule able men are called upon on such occasions,—as from a feeling of shame on the part of the orators. They do not like to seem to wish to shine on an occasion so trivial. The “Nil admirari” school of sentiment prevails. To be in earnest about anything, except on a very rare occasion, would almost be to be ridiculous. Consequently man after man gets up and in a voice almost inaudible mumbles out a set of platitudes, which simply has the effect of preventing conversation. Here, at Pieter Maritzburg, I will not say that every speaker spoke his best. I do not know to what pitch of excellence they might have risen. But they spoke so that it was a pleasure to hear them. The health of the Chief Justice was given, and it is a pity that every word which he used in describing the manner in which he had endeavoured to do his duty to the public and the bar, and the pleasure which had pervaded his life because the public had been law-abiding, and the bar amenable, should not have been repeated in print. Judges at home have not so much to say about their offices. There was a tradesman called to his legs with reference to the commerce of Natal who poured forth such a flood of words about the trade of the Colony as to make me feel that he ought not to be a tradesman at all. Probably, however, he has made his fortune, which he might not have done had he become a member of Parliament. It was here that the gentleman protested against drinking the health of The Bar at Durban, to the infinite delight of his hearers. Napier Broome, who was known to many of us in London, is now Colonial Secretary at Natal. I don’t remember that he ever startled us by his eloquence at home; but on this occasion he made a speech which if made after a London public dinner would be a great relief. Everybody had something to say, and nobody was ashamed to say it.

I found 1,200 British soldiers in Pieter Maritzburg, for the due ordering of whom there was assembled there the rather large number of eight or nine Field Officers. But in Natal military matters have had a stir given to them by the necessity of marching troops up to Pretoria,—at a terrible cost, and now an additional stir by Zulu ambition. An Englishman in these parts, when he remembers the almost insuperable difficulty of getting a sufficient number of men in England to act as soldiers, when he tells himself what these soldiers cost by the time they reach their distant billets, and reminds himself that they are supported by taxes levied on a people who, man for man, are very much poorer than the Colonists themselves, that they are maintained in great part out of the beer and tobacco of rural labourers who cannot earn near as much as many a Kafir,—the Englishman as he thinks of all this is apt to question the propriety of their being there. He will say to himself that at any rate the Colony should pay for them. A part of the cost is paid for by the Colony, but only a small part. In 1876 £4,596 9s. 11d. was so expended, and in 1877 £2,318 2s. 7d.

Other countries, Spain most notoriously and Holland also, have held the idea that they should use their Colonies as a source of direct wealth to themselves,—that a portion of the Colonists’ earnings, or findings, should periodically be sent home to enrich the mother country. England has disavowed that idea and has thought that the Colonies should be for the Colonists. She has been contented with the advantage to her own trade which might come from the creating of new markets for her goods, and from the increase which accrued to her honour from the spreading of her language, her laws and her customs about the world. Up to a certain point she has had to manage the Colonies herself as a mother manages her child; and while this was going on she had imposed on her the necessary task of spending Colonial funds, and might spend them on soldiers or what not as seemed best to her. But when the Colonies have declared themselves able to manage themselves and have demanded the privilege of spending their own moneys, then she has withdrawn her soldiers. It has seemed monstrous to her to have to send those luxuries,—which of all luxuries are in England the most difficult to be had,—to Colonies which assume to be able to take care of themselves with their own funds. But the act of withdrawing them has been very unpopular. New South Wales has not yet quite forgiven it, nor Tasmania. For a time there was a question whether it might not drive New Zealand into rebellion. But the soldiers have been withdrawn,—from all parliamentary Colonies, I think, except the Cape. Natal is not a parliamentary Colony in the proper sense, and cannot therefore in this matter be put on quite the same footing as the Cape Colony. But she spends her own revenues and according to the theory which prevails on the subject, she should provide for her own defence.

Australia wants no soldiers, nor does New Zealand in spite of the unsubdued Maoris who are still resident within her borders. They fear no evil from aboriginal races against which their own strength will not suffice for them. At the Cape and in Natal it is very different. It has to be acknowledged, at any rate as to Natal, that an armed European force in addition to any that the Colony can supply for itself, has to be maintained for its protection against the black races. But who should pay the bill? I will not say that assuredly the Colony should do so,—or else not have the soldiers. What is absolutely necessary in the way of soldiers must be supplied, whoever pays for them. England will not let her Colonies be overcome by enemies, black or white, even though she herself must pay the bill. But it seems to me that a Colony should either pay its bill or else be ruled from home. I cannot admit that a Colony is in a position to levy, collect, and spend its own taxes, till it is in a position to pay for whatever it wants with those taxes. Were there many Colonies situated as are those of South Africa it would be impossible for England to continue to send her soldiers for their protection. In the mean time it is right to say that the Colony keeps a colonial force of 150 mounted police who are stationed at three different places in the Colony,—the Capital, Eastcourt, and Greyton. In these places there are barracks and stables, and the force as far as it goes is very serviceable.