Letters from the Cape

by Lady Lucie Duff Gordon

An old ‘bastaard’ woman, married to the Malay tailor here, explained to me my popularity with the coloured people, as set forth by ‘dat Malay boy’, my driver. He told them he was sure I was a ‘very great Missis’, because of my ‘plenty good behaviour’; that I spoke to him just as to a white gentleman, and did not ‘laugh and talk nonsense talk’. ‘Never say “Here, you black fellow”, dat Misses.’ The English, when they mean to be good-natured, are generally offensively familiar, and ‘talk nonsense talk’, i.e. imitate the Dutch English of the Malays and blacks; the latter feel it the greatest compliment to be treated au sérieux, and spoken to in good English. Choslullah’s theory was that I must be related to the Queen, in consequence of my not ‘knowing bad behaviour’. The Malays, who are intelligent and proud, of course feel the annoyance of vulgar familiarity more than the blacks, who are rather awe-struck by civility, though they like and admire it.

Mrs. D— tells me that the coloured servant-girls, with all their faults, are immaculately honest in these parts; and, indeed, as every door and window is always left open, even when every soul is out, and nothing locked up, there must be no thieves. Captain D— told me he had been in remote Dutch farmhouses, where rouleaux of gold were ranged under the thatch on the top of the low wall, the doors being always left open; and everywhere the Dutch boers keep their money by them, in coin.

Jan. 3d.—We have had tremendous festivities here—a ball on New Year’s-eve, and another on the 1st of January—and the shooting for Prince Alfred’s rifle yesterday. The difficulty of music for the ball was solved by the arrival of two Malay bricklayers to build the new parsonage, and I heard with my own ears the proof of what I had been told as to their extraordinary musical gifts. When I went into the hall, a Dutchman was screeching a concertina hideously. Presently in walked a yellow Malay, with a blue cotton handkerchief on his head, and a half-bred of negro blood (very dark brown), with a red handkerchief, and holding a rough tambourine. The handsome yellow man took the concertina which seemed so discordant, and the touch of his dainty fingers transformed it to harmony. He played dances with a precision and feeling quite unequalled, except by Strauss’s band, and a variety which seemed endless. I asked him if he could read music, at which he laughed heartily, and said, music came into the ears, not the eyes. He had picked it all up from the bands in Capetown, or elsewhere.

It was a strange sight,—the picturesque group, and the contrast between the quiet manners of the true Malay and the grotesque fun of the half-negro. The latter made his tambourine do duty as a drum, rattled the bits of brass so as to produce an indescribable effect, nodded and grinned in wild excitement, and drank beer while his comrade took water. The dancing was uninteresting enough. The Dutchmen danced badly, and said not a word, but plodded on so as to get all the dancing they could for their money. I went to bed at half-past eleven, but the ball went on till four.

Next night there was genteeler company, and I did not go in, but lay in bed listening to the Malay’s playing. He had quite a fresh set of tunes, of which several were from the ‘Traviata’!

Yesterday was a real African summer’s day. The D—s had a tent and an awning, one for food and the other for drink, on the ground where the shooting took place. At twelve o’clock Mrs. D— went down to sell cold chickens, &c., and I went with her, and sat under a tree in the bed of the little stream, now nearly dry. The sun was such as in any other climate would strike you down, but here coup de soleil is unknown. It broils you till your shoulders ache and your lips crack, but it does not make you feel the least languid, and you perspire very little; nor does it tan the skin as you would expect. The light of the sun is by no means ‘golden’—it is pure white—and the slightest shade of a tree or bush affords a delicious temperature, so light and fresh is the air. They said the thermometer was at about 130° where I was walking yesterday, but (barring the scorch) I could not have believed it.

It was a very amusing day. The great tall Dutchmen came in to shoot, and did but moderately, I thought. The longest range was five hundred yards, and at that they shot well; at shorter ranges, poorly enough. The best man made ten points. But oh! what figures were there of negroes and coloured people! I longed for a photographer. Some coloured lads were exquisitely graceful, and composed beautiful tableaux vivants, after Murillo’s beggar-boys.

A poor little, very old Bosjesman crept up, and was jeered and bullied. I scolded the lad who abused him for being rude to an old man, whereupon the poor little old creature squatted on the ground close by (for which he would have been kicked but for me), took off his ragged hat, and sat staring and nodding his small grey woolly head at me, and jabbering some little soliloquy very sotto voce. There was something shocking in the timidity with which he took the plate of food I gave him, and in the way in which he ate it, with the wrong side of his little yellow hand, like a monkey. A black, who had helped to fetch the hamper, suggested to me to give him wine instead of meat and bread, and make him drunk for fun (the blacks and Hottentots copy the white man’s manners to them, when they get hold of a Bosjesman to practise upon); but upon this a handsome West Indian black, who had been cooking pies, fired up, and told him he was a ‘nasty black rascal, and a Dutchman to boot’, to insult a lady and an old man at once. If you could see the difference between one negro and another, you would be quite convinced that education (i.e. circumstances) makes the race. It was hardly conceivable that the hideous, dirty, bandy-legged, ragged creature, who looked down on the Bosjesman, and the well-made, smart fellow, with his fine eyes, jaunty red cap, and snow-white shirt and trousers, alert as the best German Kellner, were of the same blood; nothing but the colour was alike.

Then came a Dutchman, and asked for six penn’orth of ‘brood en kaas’, and haggled for beer; and Englishmen, who bought chickens and champagne without asking the price. One rich old boer got three lunches, and then ‘trekked’ (made off) without paying at all. Then came a Hottentot, stupidly drunk, with a fiddle, and was beaten by a little red-haired Scotchman, and his fiddle smashed. The Hottentot hit at his aggressor, who then declared he had been a policeman, and insisted on taking him into custody and to the ‘Tronk’ (prison) on his own authority, but was in turn sent flying by a gigantic Irishman, who ‘wouldn’t see the poor baste abused’. The Irishman was a farmer; I never saw such a Hercules—and beaming with fun and good nature. He was very civil, and answered my questions, and talked like an intelligent man; but when Captain D— asked him with an air of some anxiety, if he was coming to the hotel, he replied, ‘No, sir, no; I wouldn’t be guilty of such a misdemeanour. I am aware that I was a disgrace and opprobrium to your house, sir, last time I was there, sir. No, sir, I shall sleep in my cart, and not come into the presence of ladies.’ Hereupon he departed, and I was informed that he had been drunk for seventeen days, sans désemparer, on his last visit to Caledon. However, he kept quite sober on this occasion, and amused himself by making the little blackies scramble for halfpence in the pools left in the bed of the river. Among our customers was a very handsome black man, with high straight nose, deep-set eyes, and a small mouth, smartly dressed in a white felt hat, paletot, and trousers. He is the shoemaker, and is making a pair of ‘Veldschoen’ for you, which you will delight in. They are what the rough boers and Hottentots wear, buff-hide barbarously tanned and shaped, and as soft as woollen socks. The Othello-looking shoemaker’s name is Moor, and his father told him he came of a ‘good breed’; that was all he knew.

A very pleasing English farmer, who had been educated in Belgium, came and ordered a bottle of champagne, and shyly begged me to drink a glass, whereupon we talked of crops and the like; and an excellent specimen of a colonist he appeared: very gentle and unaffected, with homely good sense, and real good breeding—such a contrast to the pert airs and vulgarity of Capetown and of the people in (colonial) high places. Finding we had no carriage, he posted off and borrowed a cart of one man and harness of another, and put his and his son’s riding horses to it, to take Mrs. D— and me home. As it was still early, he took us a ‘little drive’; and oh, ye gods! what a terrific and dislocating pleasure was that! At a hard gallop, Mr. M— (with the mildest and steadiest air and with perfect safety) took us right across country. It is true there were no fences; but over bushes, ditches, lumps of rock, watercourses, we jumped, flew, and bounded, and up every hill we went racing pace. I arrived at home much bewildered, and feeling more like Bürger’s Lenore than anything else, till I saw Mr. M—’s steady, pleasant face quite undisturbed, and was informed that such was the way of driving of Cape farmers.