Birth, Education Etc.
Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, President of the Transvaal—the other side of the Vaal River, is the name of the country—was born in the Cape Colony, October 10th, 1825. It is the commendation of the naturalist Mr. Distant, that Mr. Kruger has a "very large amount of natural wisdom," which is the softer way of saying that he is not an educated man, but one of the statesmen of Nature. He is, on the authority already quoted, "undistinguished in appearance," but has "a prodigious memory;" and "a weakness in resisting flattery and adulation which is not good for him," because, as his will is so pronounced and his authority so absolute, he is perpetually surrounded by the representatives of the rascalities in a strange variety of "concessions." The flattering description of this historical personage is that he is "very pious and self-reliant, which is provocative of bigotry and hot temper," and he is also "a rough diplomat of no mean rank."
A Story Picture of President Kruger
In Fitzpatrick's "The Transvaal from Within" we find this strongly drawn picture of Mr. Kruger:
"To an English nobleman, who in the course of an interview remarked, 'My father was a Minister of England, and twice Viceroy of Ireland,' the old Dutchman answered, 'And my father was a shepherd!' It was not pride rebuking pride; it was the ever-present fact which would not have been worth mentioning but for the suggestion of the antithesis. He, too, was a shepherd, and is—a peasant. It may be that he knows what would be right and good for his people, and it may not; but it is sure that he realizes that to educate would be to emancipate, to broaden their views would be to break down the defences of their prejudices, to let in the new leaven would be to spoil the old bread, to give unto all men the rights of men would be to swamp forever the party which is to him greater than the State. When one thinks on the one-century history of this people, much is seen that accounts for their extraordinary love of isolation, and their ingrained and passionate aversion to control; much, too, that draws to them a world of sympathy. And when one realizes the old Dopper President hemmed in once more by the hurrying tide of civilization, from which his people have fled for generations—trying to fight both Fate and Nature—standing up to stem a tide as resistless as the eternal sea—one sees the pathos of the picture. But this is as another generation may see it. To-day we are too close—so close that the meaner details, the blots and flaws, are all most plainly visible; the corruption, the insincerity, the injustice, the barbarity—all the unlovely touches that will by and by be forgotten, sponged away by the gentle hand of Time, when only the picturesque will remain."
Paul Kruger at ten Years
In 1836 a company of trekkers about 300 strong, the second that crossed the Orange River, was under the command of Hendrick Potgeiter and attacked by native warriors, twenty-five trekkers were killed, but the main body were warned and forming a laager of wagons with barricades of thorn bushes. They were able to beat off the assailants. Paul Kruger, a boy of ten years, was one of the defenders.
Henry M. Stanley, M.P., the famous African explorer, writing at Pretoria in November, 1897, gives a graphic sketch of President Kruger, "fully dressed in the usual black suit and little old-fashioned top hat, smoking on the veranda of his house." This was the first glimpse Mr. Stanley had of the great ruler upon whom he was calling, and the historical correspondent was shown into the spacious saloon, finding opposite to him "a large and coarse oil painting" of Kruger. Stanley says in his striking and unreserved way:
Not a Bad Likeness of President Kruger
"The history of the painting I do not know, but as it is permitted to be hung so prominently in the reception room, it is to be presumed that the President and his friends regard it as a faithful likeness, and are consequently proud of it. This small fact proved to be the ABC of my study of the man of destiny of South Africa. It was clear that neither Kruger nor his friends knew anything of art, for the picture was an exaggerated reproduction of every defect in the President's homely features, the low, narrow, unintellectual brow, over small eyes, and heavy, massive expanse of face beneath. The man himself was almost beautiful in comparison with the monster on the canvas, and I really could not help pitying him for his innocent admiration of a thing that ought to be cast into the fire. But presently the President spoke—a mouthful of strange guttural sounds—in a voice that was like a loud gurgle, and as the great jaws and cheeks and mouth heaved and opened, I stole a glance at the picture, and it did not seem to me then as if the painter had libeled the man. At any rate, the explosive dialect so expanded the cheeks and widened the mouth, that I perceived some resemblance to the brutal picture."