There are no other portraits of Dutch Governors; none of those who followed in such quick succession just before the first British occupation.
One of these, De Chavonnes, ruled with pomp and circumstance. There is an amusing story set down in the 1720 Journal wherein the Governor maintained his dignity in the face of a humorous situation.
De Chavonnes was at the Castle, and into Table Bay sailed the English ship, the Marlborough. She failed to salute the Castle on arrival. Much bustle and fuss—such an insult cannot be passed over. The Wharf-master, Cornelius Volk, is ordered to proceed on board and inform the captain that no one will be allowed to land before the usual salute is fired. With more haste arrives an English midshipman, very pink and well-mannered: 'We have on board an elephant, your Excellency, and are afraid the firing might frighten him.' His Excellency and the Wharf-master and the chief merchant, Jan de la Fontaine, together with the members of the Council and officers of the garrison, stared at the pink-faced middy. De Chavonnes hesitated only one minute, which is a long period of time for the middy, who I am quite sure had compromising dimples; then came His Excellency's answer: 'The excuse is allowed.'
A very dignified finale! Smaller things than elephants have unbalanced the scales of peace.
CHAPTER II
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SOCIETY AND SLAVERY
We walked across the parade-ground, and past the spot where, in my dream, I had seen the old Van Riebeek fort crumbling to pieces, with its canal and little bridges: now, there is a building called the Post Office, and instead of the canal, with its tree-bordered pathways, a street called Adderley Street, with shop-windows where the trees stood. Even the old Exchange is gone, with its stiff row of trees and its chained posts and kiosque, before which, in the turbulent days of Sir Harry Smith's régime, all Cape Town, English, Dutch, Malay, in stock, and crinoline, and turban, with one united voice roared against the Imperial Government's decree, which was to turn the Peninsula into a dumping-ground for convicts. Crinoline, stock, and turban kept the half-starved convict ships with their unwelcome freight for five months at anchor in Simon's Bay. Sir Harry, with an eye of sympathy on the mob, and the other eye of duty on the starving convict ships, ordered food to be sent, offered famine prices: no one moved. A few judicious civil servants, with both eyes on the main chance, smuggled a small supply on board. But the crowd in front of the old Exchange won the day, and Australia profited instead.
At the end of the eighteenth century a young lady described the Cape and its inhabitants in a few words: 'Di menschen zyn moei dik en vet, di huizen moei wit en groen' (The people are very fat and plump; the houses are pretty white and green).
Up Strand Street, which was the 'Beach Street,' lived all the high in the land, the Koopmans, or merchants—'a title,' says an old writer, 'that conferred rank at the Cape to which the military even aspired.' There they lived, in flat-roofed, high-stoeped houses with teak doors and small-paned glass windows, facing the sea; the men smoking, drinking and selling; the women eating, dressing and dancing. Not a decent school in the town, not a sign of a library, only a theatre whose productions bored them intolerably: 'Ach, foei toch, Mijnheer Cook,' says the lady with the smallest feet in all Kaapstad to the famous sailor Cook, who was the guest of her father, Mijnheer Le Roux, 'go to the theatre? to listen for three hours to a conversation?' Cook gave in, and, instead, was carried off in a big 'carosse,'[2] with a Malay coachman in large reed hat over his turban, pointed and with flowing ribbons at the side, to the Avenue in the Company's Gardens, a modest Vauxhall, and then on to one of the monthly dances given in the Castle by the Governor Van Plettenberg.
