LUCY'S SECOND MARRIAGE
From Sir Godfrey Dewburn, K.C.I.E., to Mr. Bennet
Molyneux, African Department, Foreign Office.
H.M. Agency and Consulate-General,
Unguja,
March 15, 1889.
DEAR MOLYNEUX,—
In the matter of Brentham, I think a private letter to you might meet the case better than an exchange of cables or an official dispatch.
I quite understand your Department is annoyed at the questions put in Parliament last month after the news about the deaths at the Mission station at Hangodi. But I cannot help thinking the Department is disposed to be too hard on Brentham, as though it were prejudiced from some other quarter than me. I admit when I first came out here I jibbed a little at his cocksureness, his assumption that no one knew anything about Ungujan affairs to compare with his own knowledge; and it seemed to me he made rather a parade about the number of languages he had acquired, which contrasted unfavourably with my acquaintance—then—with only three (I have tried since to learn Swahili). And so on and so on. I moved easier and got my bearings better when I had sent him over to his proper sphere, the mainland. I also thought his contempt for the Bazzards a little too marked, though I must admit subsequently my wife and I have found that a little of Mrs. B. goes a long way. But I hate writing disagreeable things about anybody—a climate like this excuses hair-dye, face-powder, irritability and even a moderate degree of illicit love (don't treat this as official!) ... But about Brentham: if his mission to the missionaries—telling them to clear out before the Arab danger—was a failure, in that in most places there was no danger, your apprehensions and my instructions were to blame for starting Brentham off on his wild-goose chase. The missionaries in Usagara seem to cut up rough because they weren't attacked, were "quittes pour la peur." But that was hardly Brentham's fault.
The Hangodi business is a different matter. There is little doubt in my mind that B. was a little spoony on Mrs. Baines—They had travelled out together, and it seems she comes from near his part of the world in Berkshire-Hampshire—Jolly district, near the Carnarvons and the Silchesters.—Ever go there to shoot? But Mrs. Baines had been ill from one of these confinements that Missionary ladies—married, of course—have so regularly, and her husband seems really to have wished his wife to go away with Brentham. To make it all right and proper he packed off at the same time the other woman at their station, a strong-minded female named Jamblin. (She figures very much in the dispatches I sent home last mail.) Well: according to Brentham, this Jamblin woman, when they had done a few marches and stopped at another Mission station, insisted, positively insisted on going back to Hangodi, and equally insisted on his taking Mrs. Baines to the coast. He oughtn't to have agreed. That's where he was weak. He ought to have returned to Hangodi and helped to beat off the attack—if it came, as it did—and then have refused to take the ladies away unless the men came too. Instead of that, Brentham, having found some missionaries of whom he was in search, hung about their place until the news of the attack on Hangodi and the death of Mrs. Baines's husband reached him. After that he made for the coast by the northern route, the only one open to him at that time without fighting. Even on this route they had some most extraordinary adventures and spent a devil of a time before they got back to civilization—as we call ourselves by contrast.
The general opinion among the missionaries, I know, is unfavourable to Mrs. Baines, and in consequence to Brentham. But Brentham swears to me on his honour—and I believe him—there was nothing "wrong" between them. Jennie—my wife—says he's as straight as a die; though never having seen a "die," I can't say. At any rate, Jennie, on whose judgment I always rely, has taken a great liking to Brentham. So she has also to the young party with whom he has become involved, this Mrs. John Baines. The poor girl—she doesn't look her age—26—was stranded here at their Mission Depôt, and Jennie, after hearing about her, went over in her impulsive way and brought her to the Agency. This has put a stopper on local gossip, which has thus been deprived of a rare morsel that would otherwise have acted as a real tonic on a fever-stricken community. Now Jennie says that although there's never been anything between them but what was right and proper, they ought to marry as soon as six months is up from the death of the first husband—which we presume took place on October 29th, from the accounts of that masterful person who now calls herself Ann Anderson. Jennie had but to make the suggestion and they both consented, so the civil marriage—the only legal one here—is fixed for March 31. Whether Archdeacon Gravening will consent to marry them at the Cathedral in addition, I cannot say. He is thinking it over. The matter has been speeded up by your intimation that the F.O. intends to recall Brentham. If he went back and didn't marry her, things would go hardly with Mrs. Baines. (I really have taken a liking to her, and I could imagine when she gets to a good climate she might be quite pretty. She is very quiet, and in a quiet way is rather entertaining in her accounts of what they went through in their wild journey to the coast.)