Read Ebook: The Cape Peninsula: Pen and Colour Sketches by Hansard R N Westhofen W Wilhelm Illustrator

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Ebook has 3495 lines and 121101 words, and 70 pages

CHARACTERS

MARINUS and THE WRITER, two slightly sentimental travellers, in modern dress, generally riding-clothes.

And some others.

Hottentots, Bushmen, Saldanhas, Dutch Soldiers and Sailors, English Soldiers and Sailors, Burghers, Slaves, Market-Gardeners, Wine-Makers, Fishermen, and ordinary people from 1651 to 1910.

THE CAPE PENINSULA

THE CASTLE

Under three purple-flowered trees standing in the Castle courtyard, one blazing hot morning, we, more sentimentally than travellingly inclined, sat and rested while a khaki-clothed Tommy wandered round to find a guide to show us over the old Dutch fort. We thanked Heaven for his half-heartedness and for some shade. Marinus, fortunately for us both, smoked his pipe of peace and of Transvaal tobacco, and I opened the Brass Bottle, which, indeed, is no bottle at all, but, as everyone not vulgarly inclined knows, a fairy-tale metaphor for one's imagination. The barometer registered 97? F. in the shade, which is a perfect state of atmosphere for the fumes of the Brass Bottle, in which, all mingling with the smoke from Marinus' pipe, the building of the Castle began.

The walls dissolved into blue air: the brasswork of the 'Kat,' the block of buildings dividing the Castle into two courtyards, melted into one small spot of liquid, leaving a dry, dusty, levelled yellow plain, with an earthwork wall embodying the spirit of the dykes of the Netherlands in its composition--for the green waves of Table Bay lapped at its base. It was the second day of January, 1666; under the blazing sun three hundred discontented-looking men were digging and levelling the hard earth. At the westerly land-points were the foundations of two bastions. Suddenly a group of men appeared, looking like Rembrandt's 'Night-Watch' come to life, carrying sealed parchments and plans, followed by many Madagascar slaves in clean white linen tunics not to be renewed for six whole months, this being the New Year. The slaves carried bags of food and a long tray made of wood, on which were about one hundred small moneybags. One of the Night-Watch, who was the Commander Wagenaar, walked up to a long table whereon was a white stone; the guns of the old fort, crumbling to pieces across the parade-ground, fired. It was noon, and the foundation-stone of the Castle was laid. The three hundred weary, sweating men raised a feeble cheer, the masons, carpenters, and smiths, advancing separately, received from the hands of the 'Fiscal,' Chief Magistrate and Attorney-General of the Colony, the gift of the General Netherlands East India Company of thirty Rds., or rix-dollars, tied up in the small black bags. Then the Company moved across to another part of the ground, and the Predikant, the Rev. Joan van Arckel, proceeded to lay another stone, followed by the Fiscal, Sieur Hendrick Lucas, to whose honour fell the laying of the third great corner-stone. Then were the entire three hundred malcontents, as well as the soldiers who had also laboured, presented with two oxen, six sheep, one hundred fresh-baked wheaten loaves, and eight casks of Cape-brewed beer, 'which food and drink, well cooked and well prepared,' whispered the Chief Surgeon, Sieur Pieter van Clinckenberg, to Lieutenant Abraham Schut, 'let us hope may induce these sluggish fellows to be better encouraged and made more willing to work.'

Lieutenant Abraham Schut, to whose duties of supervising the Company's stables and the Mounted Guards in the country, and the watch-houses, and the supervising of the workings and workers of the vineyards, the orchards, and the granary, were also added those of 'keeping an eye' on the 'lazy fellows at work in the brick and tile fields,' very solemnly stared before him at the 'encouraged' diggers, and wondered what reward the General Netherlands East India Company had laid up for him.

But the Fiscal was addressing the crowd gathered round the Commander. I had missed some of his speech because of these two babbling Night-Watchers next me, but I now listened: 'And that it may also somewhat be evident that by this continual digging and delving in and under the ground, poets have also been found and thrown up, a certain amateur this day presents to the Commander the following eight verses.' The crowd drew closer to the Fiscal, who continued with the amateur's verses:

DEN EERSTEN STEEN VAN 'T NIEUWE CASTEEL GOEDE HOOP HEEFT WAGENAAR GELECHT MET HOOP VAN GOEDE HOOP.

Soo worden voort en voort de rijcken uijtgespreijt, Soo worden al de swart en geluwen gespreijt, Soo doet men uijt den aerd' een steen wall oprechten, Daer't donderend metael seer weijnigh Voor Hottentoosen waren 't altijts eerde wallen. Nu komt men hier met steen van anderen oock brallen, Dus maeckt men dan een schrik soowel d'Europiaen, Als vor den Aes! Ame! en wilden Africaen, Dus wort beroemt gemaeckt 't geheijligst Christendom, Die zetels stellen in het woeste heijdendom, Wij loven 't Groot Bestier, en zeggen met malcander, Augustus heerschappij, noch winnend' Alexander, Noch Caesars groot beleijd zijn noijt daermee geswaerd, Met 't leggen van een steen op 't eijnde van de Aerd!

THE FIRST STONE OF THE NEW CASTLE GOOD HOPE HAS WAGENAAR LAID WITH HOPE OF GOOD HOPE.

Thus more and more the kingdoms are extended; Thus more and more are black and yellow spread; Thus from the ground a wall of stone is raised, On which the thundering brass can no impression make. For Hottentoos the walls were always earthen, But now we come with stone to boast before all men, And terrify not only Europeans, but also Asians, Americans, and savage Africans. Thus holy Christendom is glorified; Establishing its seats amidst the savage heathen. We praise the Great Director, and say with one another: 'Augustus's dominion, nor conquering Alexander, Nor Caesar's mighty genius, has ever had the glory To lay a corner-stone at earth's extremest end!'

Lieutenant Abraham Schut came towards me; no, it was not this wonderful Abraham, though he wore a uniform--the cheering of the crowd still rung in my ears. 'Who wrote it?' I said. 'Wrote what?' The subaltern stared at me. 'Built it, I suppose you mean,' he smiled. 'Oh yes, built, of course, of course,' I muttered, hotter than ever. Marinus' pipe had burnt out, and the officer who stood before us wore khaki.

With the last words of the quaint Dutch poem ringing in my ears, we followed our guide across the courtyard into an arched white doorway. The old entrance, the sea entrance to the Castle, was blocked up, because on the other side runs the Cape Government Railway, with all its paraphernalia of tin walls, engine-rooms, dirty, ugly workshops, gasometers, coal-heaps, all making up the foreshore scenery of Table Bay, and delighting the eyes of the workers and drones who are daily hurried along like 'animated packages in a rabbit hutch.'

We rambled through the quarters of the old Governors. Everything is groaning under heavy military paint--teak doors, beautiful brass fittings and beamed ceilings--and about a mile away, shut up in a small ugly museum room, are the Rightful Inhabitants--the proper belongings of these long rooms: the oak tables, the big chairs, which once held the old Dutch Governors, the glass they used, the huge silver spittoons, their swords, the flowered panniers of their wives' dresses, fire-irons, brasses, china, the old flags, someone's sedan-chair--all bundled together in grotesque array. The teak-beamed rooms in the Castle would make a better setting than the little room in the museum.

I laughed quite loudly, and the party looked up, but I had flown back into Anne's room, which is haunted, so perhaps they thought it was the ghost--same old ghost! a good lusty ghost--what?

I met Marinus in the inner court with a man carrying a lantern and some huge keys--our guide to the magazine and armoury, which might have been the crypt of some old European monastery, with what seemed to be miles of white arches, arches with broad brass shutters over the windows, covered with red or grey army paint.

The garden of this second courtyard exists no longer, though the man with the lantern and the keys told us he remembered it--a pond with bamboos and trees. Beyond the moat on the mountain side, on a low level, is a disused Tennis court, a real court for the 'Jeu de Paume' of the seventeenth century, with hard cement walls and cement floor.

Although Governor Borghorst, with his entire family, amused themselves by carrying the earth in baskets from the ditch which was to form the moat, the real work of the Castle was carried out from old plans of Vauban by Isbrand Goski, in a great hurry, with the shadows of French cannon and French flags disturbing his dreams. The shadows proved worthless phantoms, for peace was declared before the fort was ready. Later on, Sir James Craig, filled with zeal for the defence of this ultra-important outpost, which had come, with some slight misunderstanding, into the hands of England, caused more blockhouses to be built along the slopes of the Devil's Peak, realizing the ridiculous position of the Castle for defence purposes. Fort Knokke was connected with the Castle by a long, low, fortified wall, called the 'Sea Lines.' Beyond the Castle stood the 'Rogge Bay,' the 'Amsterdam,' and the 'Chavonnes' batteries, while at the water edge of the old Downs--now called Green Point Common--stood the little 'Mouille' battery. The land on which, unfortunately, the Amsterdam battery was built has become a valuable adjunct of the docks, and it now stands a scarred, maimed thing with its sea-wall lying in d?bris. A sad spectacle, like a deserted beehive, with all its cells and secrets exposed to the dock world--half solid rock, half small, yellow Dutch brick.

It is Wednesday morning in present Cape Town, we have left the Castle, wept over the Amsterdam battery, and marched up Adderley Street.

At the top of Adderley Street is the old Slave Lodge, now used for Government Offices and the Supreme Court, low and white, with cobbled courtyard and thick walls. About here, in the old days, began the Government Gardens or 'Company's' Gardens, a long oak avenue running through them. At the time of the Cession of the Cape to the English, the Gardens had been very much neglected. Lord Macartney appropriated a large slice for the rearing of curious and rare plants .

Government House, on the left, was originally built as a pleasure pavilion or overflow guesthouse during the 'Company's' r?gime. One or two of the later Dutch Governors used it as their residence, and during the short English rule in 1797 Lord Macartney and his successor, Sir George Younge, ceased to use the large suite of rooms in the old Castle. Poor Lord Macartney, because of his gout, found the narrow, steep stairs in the Gardens House a great trial. He hopped up the stairs like a parrot to its perch, says one of his staff in a private letter; but Sir George Younge, fresh from Holyrood, rebuilt the stairs and kitchens and the high wall round a part of the garden. For the occasion the avenue was shut to the public, which nearly caused a revolution. It has seen much, this low, yellow 'Pavilion in the Gardens.' It has sheltered French, English, and Dutch: famous for its ancient hospitality, its big white ball-room saw our great-grandmothers, in white muslin and cashmere shawls, dancing under the tallow candles: every tree in the garden hung with lights: Van Rheenen and Mostaert ladies dancing away, while their husbands and fathers and mothers stood outside and cursed their partners: but one must dance, no matter what one's politics may be.

Hanging on the walls of the present day Government House are portraits of the Past-Governors--Milner with the thinking eyes, dignified Lord Loch, Rosmead, Grey, Bartle Frere benignly gazing. Skip some history, and you have Somerset, stern and disliked; 'Davie' Baird, full of good round oaths, in 'Raeburn' red; Sir Harry Smith of the perfect profile, too short for the greatness of his spirit. Marinus grows sentimental before this portrait, because of Juanita, Lady Smith, her beauty, and her bravery. 'But she was fat'--this from me. Marinus looks compassionately on such doubtful tactics. 'She was not fat when he found her in that sacked Spanish town; she was not fat when he sent her that long ride to return the looted silver candlesticks; she was not fat when she rode with him into danger during the Kaffir wars--wonderful energetic woman!' 'Sir Harry was very short,' continued Marinus, whose methods are quite unoriginal. 'But his dignity, and his beautiful nose!' I said; 'it reminds me of that story told of Napoleon, who tried and failed, through being too short, to reach a certain book from a shelf. A tall Marshal came to his aid, and, looking down at the little Emperor, said: "Ah, sire, je suis plus grand que vous." "Pas du tout, vous ?tes plus long," said the Emperor.'

Then there is the portrait of Macartney, looking straight across the room at old Dutch Rhenius in wig and satins, whose shrewd, amused eyes follow one about the room. I think Rhenius' dinner-parties were probably amusing.

There are no other portraits of Dutch Governors; none of those who followed in such quick succession just before the first British occupation.

A very dignified finale! Smaller things than elephants have unbalanced the scales of peace.

FOOTNOTE:

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SOCIETY AND SLAVERY

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' .

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,' 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.

Dancing was the great form of exercise. 'The ladies of the Cape are pretty and well dressed,' says the French traveller Le Vaillant, visiting the Cape about this time--1772. He expressed great surprise at the way they dressed: 'With as much attention to the minutiae of dress as the ladies of France, with neither their manners nor their graces.' How could they have manners and graces? With the adaptability which amounts to genius, which the women of newly-arisen cosmopolitan nations possess as Fate's compensation for depriving them of the birthright of history, tradition, and ancient habitation, they imitated the manners and fashions of the passing passengers resting a few days at the Cape on their way to India. Those belonging to the better class all played on the harpsichord and sang; they had generally a good knowledge of French, and often of English; were experts with the needle, making all kinds of lace, 'knotting' and tambour work; and they usually made up their own dresses.

The men and youths, who never mixed with the English or foreign visitors, were entirely different: phlegmatic and dull, badly dressed and badly mannered. Anne Barnard, writing Cape gossip to London, has many stories to tell of pretty Cape ladies running off with Englishmen or Frenchmen. The thanksgiving sigh of one worthy 'Koopman' is conclusive: 'Grace ? Dieu, ma femme est bien laide!'

'Marion pleurt, Marion rit, Marion veut, qu'on la marie. 'MARION.'

Cook smiled and bowed. 'Me dear, you have the most adorable foot in the world, but I dare say little for your hand.' Very witty of him, but of course she wrote badly; there were no schools, only ill-paid writing masters. The parsons, all well paid by the Government, would not condescend to such a worthless occupation.

'Marions ci, Marions ?a, Mais jamais, jamais marions l?.'

Cook writes:

'The Cape of Good Hope, in Caffraria, or the Country of the Hottentots, is the most southern promontory of Africa.

'It is very mountainous.

'The Table Mountain is of a great height , and the top of it is always covered with a cap of clouds before a storm. There are no harbours, though there is a sea-coast of a thousand miles. When Commodore Byron touched at the Cape he was obliged to work into Table Bay with his top sails close reefed. Indeed, the Cape is scarce ever free from storms a week together; the winds blow hard and on every side from the vast southern ocean, and the waves of the sea rise to a height never seen or experienced in any part of Europe. The Bay of Biscay, turbulent as it is, has no billows that mount like those on this extensive ocean; the stoutest vessels are tossed and almost lifted to the skies. A number of rich ships have perished on this coast; the Dutch have lost whole fleets even at anchor before the Town.

'The climate is very healthy, the country is fine, and it abounds with refreshments of every kind. The Company's garden is the most ravishing spot.'

The Captain went on with his diary:

'The garden produces all the most delicious fruits of Asia and Europe. It is guarded from the winds and storms by hedges of bay, very thick and high, affording a most refreshing shade in the hottest season. It abounds with peaches, pomegranates, pineapple, bananas, citrons, lemons, oranges, the pears and apples of Europe, all excellent in their kind, and the crimson apple of Japan, appearing through the green leaves, of all the most beautiful. The Dutch have large plantations of almond-trees, and many sorts of camphor-trees, and there is scarce a cottage without a vineyard to it. Their cabbages and cauliflowers weigh from thirty to forty pounds, their potatoes from six to ten, raised from seed brought from Cyprus and Savoy. Their corn is ripe in December, and our Christmas is the time of their harvest. In January they tread out their corn, and in February the farmers carry it to the Company's magazines.

'They sow every kind of grain but oats. Lions, tigers, leopards, elephants, and the rhinoceros are to be found here; the elephants are very large; their teeth weigh from sixty to one hundred and twenty pounds. The Dutch keep up a body of regular forces, and have a strong garrison at the Cape; they have also a militia, a corps of men in all nations formidable in themselves, most dreadful to an enemy, and, when called out for service, spreading destruction all around them in the heights of their ungovernable fury. They are of so robust a disposition, and so naturally inclined for war, that, like the Devonshire and Northamptonshire champions in England, they are ever ready to solicit employment, even against the principles of their own institution.'

There is a charming poem by Ian Colvin which Marinus thinks might be inspired by Marion and her Lieutenant.

In the Museum at the top of the old Company's gardens lies a little English shoe of surprising smallness--surprising, for not only Anne Barnard remarked on the size of the Cape ladies' feet: there is that nice story of the enterprising merchant who chartered a large shipload of out-sizes in ladies' shoes, and the ladies sent their slaves in the dark to buy them!

The poem goes:

'Many a story, quaint and sweet, Of the lady fair, whose feet Twinkled with a charm divine Beneath her ample crinoline, Making her tortured lovers dream That heaven itself was blue and cream.'

The story tells of how this dainty creature walked down the 'Heerengracht,' followed by the tortured lovers:

'Van der Merwe, Jacques Theron, The Captain of the garrison, Petrus de Witt, or Van Breda, Or Cloete of Constantia. And then the Fiscal--fat and old-- What matters? he had power and gold, Coffers of dollars, and doubloons, Gold mohurs, pagodas, ducatoons, And in his cupboards stored away The priceless treasures of Cathay.'

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