Like a beehive for industry when Rudyard Kipling went to lunch with the Field-Marshal.
Rudyard Kipling was paying visits and getting acquainted with the local situation. He had left his wife and family at the far-famed Mount Nelson Hotel—the "Helot's Rest," as a statesman had called it—with its strange assembly of Rand and Kimberley millionaires, and other refugees from the two republics, its army officers, both of the invalid and the idle class, its censors, war correspondents, sight-seers, and ladies longing to get to the more exciting front.
I first saw Mr. Kipling there, and now found him tenanting a bedroom across the passage from my own in the Free State Hotel at Bloemfontein. When I went to shake his hand he was in the room of W. B. Wollen, the artist, and one of those men who having nothing good to say, are never content to stop there, was exclaiming, "Is it possible that I have the honour to meet the author of 'The Absent-Minded Beggar'?"
Field-Marshal Earl Roberts,
V.C., K.G., K.P., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E.,
Commander-in-Chief.
"Yes," said Kipling, "I have heard that piece played on a barrel-organ, and I would shoot the man who wrote it if it would not be suicide."
A man of such broad build and short neck that you do not realise him to be of the average stature, wearing a broad-brimmed, flat brown hat of Boer pattern, and below that a brown short coat and very full trousers to match; a vigorous figure, quick in movement as a panther, quicker still in speech; a swinging and rolling figure with head up and hat well back out of the way of his sight which is ever thrown upward as if he searched the sky while he walked. His face is quite a match for his body, being round and broad as well as wide-eyed and alert. His eyes are its most notable features, for they are very large and open, and each one is arched by the bushiest of black eyebrows. They are habitually reflective and sober eyes, but, like a flash, they kindle with fun, and can equally quickly turn dull and stony when good occasion arises. It is not the typical poet's or scholar's face so much as it is the face of the man among men, the out-of-door man, the earnest, shrewd observer and the irrepressible hard worker.
It happened that both of us were to pay our respects to the Field-Marshal at the Residency on the same day, and both were invited to lunch. Of course, Mr. Kipling knew Lord Roberts very well—had seen much of him in India, where they had been both friends and mutual admirers. We went to the Residency together. There we met a very kindly and hospitable young gentleman who asked us who we were and offered us a visitors' book in which to record our signatures. To him we were presently introduced and found him to be none other than the Duke of Westminster, who, as Lord Belgrave had at an earlier stage, been with Sir Alfred Milner at the Cape. The Duke proffered us refreshment of the coveted sort, which, as we have seen, was quoted at 11s. a bottle "on a rising market," and then he conducted us to the great drawing-room with its strong suggestion of the grandeur of a ruler's residence, despite its garish wall-paper and its puckered-up carpet.
The whole Residency was like a beehive for industry. In the dining-room privates were hammering away upon typewriters, and officers were supplying them with copy. We peeped into the large ball-room, and lo! it was appointed with many desks at which members of the illustrious and aristocratic staff of the Field-Marshal were hard at work with pens and ink. Even in the drawing-room, the merely ornamental desks and tables were strewn with documents at which far from merely ornamental lords were writing.