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 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 A MEMOIR
 
 
 IiONUONi EDWARD ARWOLI) IflOSI
 
 EDMUND GAEEETT 
 
 A MEMOIR 
 
 BY 
 
 E. T. COOK 
 
 ADTHOR OF " RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF THE 
 TRANSVAAL WAR," ETC. 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 LONDON 
 EDWARD ARNOLD 
 
 1909 
 
 [AU rights reserved]
 
 PKEFATORY NOTE 
 
 Edmund Garrett kept no diary, and he was a wanderer, 
 so that the collection of his papers is not extensive. I 
 have drawn in my Memoir principally on his letters, on 
 the files of the newspapers in which he wrote, and on the 
 recollections of myself and other of his friends. I am 
 indebted to many of these friends, both in this country 
 and in South Africa, for letters which they have placed at 
 my disposal, and more especially to his cousin. Miss Agnes 
 Garrett. He seldom allowed a mail to go without its 
 letter to her, and at times this collection of daily or weekly 
 correspondence almost takes the place of a diary. To 
 his Cambridge friends Mr. J. H. Badley and Mr. J. J. 
 Withers, and to his colleague upon the Cape Times, Mr. 
 G. H. Wilson, I am indebted for personal recollections 
 which are embodied in the Memoir. 
 
 The larger portion of a daily journalist's writings is 
 necessarily fugitive. They are written " on the running 
 stream," and the law of evanescence applies to them, 
 irrespective of their quality. Indeed it may be said that 
 the more effective a journalistic piece is for the immediate 
 purpose of the day, the less chance it has of permanent
 
 vi PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 interest. Many of Garrett's daily articles are noticed, or 
 quoted, in the Memoir — though my endeavour there has 
 been not to entangle the reader in details of political events, 
 but to make a picture of the man stand out against them 
 as a background. But much of what Garrett contributed 
 to the newspapers and magazines seems to me, as to many 
 others, to possess permanent value — either for its literary 
 form or for its historical interest or for both ; and it is 
 to be hoped that some collection of his writings may yet 
 be made. Meanwhile, in an Appendix to the present 
 volume, I have printed a few pieces which are referred to 
 in the Memoir and a small selection from Garrett's political 
 and memorial verses. To the editors and proprietors of 
 the several publications from which these articles and verses 
 are taken I return thanks for permission, in each case 
 cordially granted, to reprint the pieces. To the pro- 
 prietors, editor and management of the Cape Times I am 
 further indebted for the kindness which placed files of the 
 paper at my disposal. To Mrs. Edmund Garrett I am 
 indebted, not only for information and advice, but also for 
 much laborious searching and transcribing of newspaper- 
 files. 
 
 I was asked to write this Memoir immediately after 
 Garrett's death in May 1907, and was further encouraged 
 to undertake it, as stated in the first chapter, by the 
 desire of several of his friends. Pressure of other work 
 made it necessary for me to postpone this labour of
 
 PREFATORY NOTE vii 
 
 love for a while, but I am not altogether sorry for the 
 delay. The Memoir of Edmund Garrett now chances to 
 appear at a time when the Union of South Africa is 
 on the eve of accomplishment. This was the object 
 to which, as my pages will show, he devoted the best 
 years of his life. 
 
 E. T. C. 
 
 August 1909 
 
 The frontispiece is from a pholograph taken in 1895 by 
 Mr. Caswall Smith
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PACE 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE v 
 
 MEMOIR OF EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. School and College (1865-1886) 3 
 
 II. The "Pall Mall Gazette" (1887-1889) 15 
 
 III. " In Afrikanderland " (1889-1890) 22 
 
 IV. Assistant-Editor of the " Pall Mall " (1890, 1891) 37 
 V. Egypt and Nordrach (1892-3) 56 
 
 VI. "The Westminster Gazette" (1893-5) 68 
 
 VII. Editor of the " Cape Times " (1895) 82 
 
 VIII. "The Story of an African Crisis" (1896) 113 
 
 IX. Member of the Cape Assembly (1897-9) 132 
 
 X. Broken Threads (1899-1903) 157 
 
 XI, Vita Nuova (1903-1907) 177 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 SELECTIONS FKOM GAREETT'S OCCASIONAL WRITINGS 
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN PERSONS AND POLITICS: 
 
 Paul Kruger: I. An Interview, 1890 201 
 
 II. An Interview, 1895 209 
 
 Cecil Rhodes : I. An Interview, March 1898 222 
 
 II. A Character-Sketch, June 1902 228 
 
 The True Romance of " King Solomon's Mines" 251 
 
 Natives and the New Constitution : A Proposal 260
 
 X CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 POLITICAL VERSE: 
 
 Facts and the Boss 263 
 
 The Lost Leader 265 
 
 MR. BLOGG ON MAXIM GORKY: 267 
 
 MEMORIAL VERSE: 
 
 Inscriptions for Stones in South Africa 269 
 
 The Last Trek : Paul Kruger 270 
 
 In Memoriam: F. W. Rhodes 272 
 
 A Millionaire's Epitaph 273 
 
 " Where shall England Find her Own ? '* 274 
 
 LIST OF EDMUND GARRETT'S BOOKS 275 
 
 INDEX 277
 
 MEMOIR
 
 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 A MEMOIR 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 8CH00L AND COLLEGE 
 
 Old friend, recall the open road 
 
 That you and I took, young together, 
 No matter if it shone or snowed. 
 
 To you and me 'twas friendly weather. 
 
 What steep ascents you've topped since then, 
 
 What comrades by the way befriended, 
 And cities I have seen, and men. 
 
 Nor yet can wish the journey ended. 
 
 Yet though with good stout heart we trode 
 Street, forum, mart, snow-slope or heather. 
 
 Youth's youth, no road is quite the road 
 That you and I took young together. 
 
 F. E. G. to J. J. W. 
 
 Edmund Garrett, the subject of this Memoir, was one 
 of the most gifted journalists of his day. He also made 
 considerable mark, during stirring times, in the politics 
 of South Africa. It will be a principal object of the 
 following pages to give some picture of the activities, 
 methods and ideals of the higher journalism as Garrett 
 understood and practised it ; and to recall some of those 
 passages of South African history in which he played a 
 not inconspicuous part. But what he did was small 
 compared with what, had health served, he might have 
 done. This will be the Memoir, therefore, in the second 
 place, of a contrast between aspiration and achievement, 
 between gifts and opportunity ; but I shall have failed
 
 4 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 in my task if I leave any strong impression of sadness. 
 Deprived, during his later years, of power for the full 
 expression of himself in journalism, literature or public 
 action, he had opportunity all the larger for developing 
 his character in the supreme and most difficult of all the 
 arts — the art of life. It was a favourite phrase of his 
 that " any fool can play a winning game " ; and the spirit 
 he admired was that of Browning's " Rabbi Ben Ezra " : 
 
 Be our joy three parts pain ! 
 
 Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
 
 Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe. 
 
 It is for what Garrett was, rather than for what he did 
 (though this was much), that his friends most dearly 
 cherish his memory. 
 
 He lived for many years the life of an invalid. Of his 
 mature years on this planet, no small portion was spent 
 in the sanatorium or the sick-room. But the years of 
 a brave man's life are counted otherwise than by the 
 calendar of circumstance, and the impression which 
 Garrett made upon his friends was not of sickness, but 
 of overflowing vitality and of joy in all that life has to give. 
 He had times of depression and of retrospect ; and, having 
 a happy knack in epitaphs, was moved to write his own. 
 In the form which he ultimately gave to it, the epitaph 
 is engraved, as we shall hear, in the Cathedral of the 
 British Colony in which were spent the best years of his 
 life and endeavour. Another epitaph was this : 
 
 To the memory of F. E. G., Member of the House of Assembly 
 of Cape Colony, 1898-1902, Editor of the Cape Times, 1895- 
 1899, who in the brief opportunity given him eagerly endeavoured 
 to serve England and South Africa. He looked forward and 
 made some beginnings. 
 
 And here is another, in a different vein : 
 
 As I have lain here, I have got to see more than ever that 
 friends are half life ; the other half being the sense of active
 
 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 5 
 
 efficiency of some sort, but this is savourless without friends. 
 And you know how lucky I have been. It humbles me and 
 makes me proud. When I sum up (as one does, lying useless), 
 and feel inclined to write myself gloomily down a failure and 
 a fraud, I remember and say yet Edmund was beloved — you recall 
 the bit in Lear. 
 
 It is for his friends in England and South Africa, and 
 at the request of his wife, that this Memoir is written ; 
 but, perchance, in its record of eager endeavour and 
 brave beginnings it may here and there enlist the sym- 
 pathy of kindred souls, to whom Garrett's vivid personality 
 and brightly glancing gifts were unknown. 
 
 Edmund Garrett — Fydell Edmund, baptismally, but 
 always " Edmund " or " F. E. G." to his friends — was 
 the son of the Rev. J. Fydell Garrett, for more than 40 years 
 Incumbent, or Rector, of Elton, Derbyshire. He was born 
 on July 20, 1865, being the third child of his father's second 
 marriage. From his father he derived a love of poetry ; and 
 from his mother, some talent in drawing. The surroundings 
 of his home, situated in the heart of the Peak District, 
 and within walking distance of Haddon Hall, were con- 
 genial to the development of a poetic nature. Of the 
 children of his father's first marriage, the daughter, 
 Rhoda, was a girl of remarkable character and artistic 
 gift. She made a career for herself, in partnership with 
 her cousin. Miss Agnes Garrett, and many of Edmund's 
 early letters are addressed collectively to " Rhodagnes." 
 His mother, a woman of energy and spirit, died, of con- 
 sumption, when he was a child of seven ; his father, six 
 years later. The father — hitherto the companion of his 
 young children — was much broken by the loss of his wife. 
 Edmund returned from school one Christmas Eve, and 
 found his brother and sisters by no means merry. No 
 Christmas treats were in prospect. He was on this occasion 
 the moneyed man, being the proud possessor of sixpence.
 
 6 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 "The children shall all have Christmas presents," said 
 he, and they sallied forth to the village shop. It was 
 closed and would not be reopened till after bed-time hour 
 at the Rectory. " I will stand the racket," said Edmund, 
 as he sent the others home, staying out himself to expend 
 the sixpence on such little presents for them as it would 
 purchase. His sister preserves hers to this day, as a 
 symbol of the fearlessness and generosity which always 
 distinguished Edmund. His childhood, after his mother's 
 death, was not sunny, and his parents were, I think, 
 somewhat shadowy memories to him. His " people " 
 in the eifective sense were his half-sister, Rhoda, and his 
 cousins Mrs. Fawcett and her sister. Miss Agnes Garrett. 
 Miss Rhoda Garrett, who had dearly loved Edmund, 
 and was as dearly loved, died while he was still at a public 
 school. " The poor boys ! " were among the last words 
 she uttered, for she had made Edmund and a younger 
 brother her special care. Primarily for her sake, but 
 with an equal love on her own part. Miss Agnes Garrett 
 assumed the charge. To her and to Mrs. Fawcett (who 
 after Professor Fawcett's death lived with her sister), 
 Edmund was indebted, not only for the generous solicitude 
 which sent him to school and college and launched him 
 upon a promising career, but for the influence of a cultured 
 home. To Mrs. Fawcett he always said that he owed 
 much intellectual stimulus and many of the ideas which 
 he held most earnestly. He was an ardent advocate of 
 the woman's movement, on the side alike of political 
 enfranchisement and of the moral code ; and when in 
 after years he was able, as a member of the Cape Assembly, 
 to strike an effective blow for the better protection of 
 young girls, he sent home in grateful pride to his cousin 
 a copy of " your Bill." Mrs. Fawcett had home-ties of 
 her own, and Edmund was in special measure the charge 
 of Miss Agnes Garrett. He had been " her boy," and she 
 to him, throughout his life, was mother, sister, friend.
 
 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 7 
 
 He repaid her care by unfailing confidence, comradeship, 
 and affection.* 
 
 Garrett had been sent to a private school at Spondon, 
 in Derbyshire, and thence, at the age of fourteen, he 
 obtained a scholarship at Rossall. His letters of this 
 period are those of a bright-witted and high-spirited boy. 
 Then, as ever, he had a pleasant facility in rhyme — a 
 real gift, too, for seizing points of character in sketches 
 of face and figure. His talent for drawing was never 
 cultivated by any practice in art-schools, but he often 
 used to illustrate his familiar letters with thumb-nail 
 sketches. These show a pungency and a sense of humour, 
 which suggest that he might have attained some distinction 
 as a caricaturist. No one had a keener sense of the 
 point, but the pen of the writer was to be his chosen in- 
 strument. Though bright and sharp, Garrett was not 
 an examination boy. " A singularly able boy," wrote his 
 head-master, Dr. James, who entertained for him a strong 
 personal liking ; but his work had a way of spoiling itself 
 by some crudity here, or curious blunder there. Likewise 
 he had " an absolute incapacity for mathematics," and 
 vexed his masters by " slowness in examinations." He 
 had not the art, which often belongs to less gifted boys, 
 of reaching easily to examination-pitch. The art consists, 
 for one thing, in the exact apportionment of effort to 
 time, and in knowing how to give to each task just enough 
 and not too much to make the most effect. Garrett was 
 never, I think, a very rapid writer, and I have seen editors, 
 printers and " readers " — whose desire to be " up to 
 time " was impatient of the niceties of literary conscience — 
 teased by his corrections, refinements, repentirs — much, 
 
 * The dedication of Garrett's version of Ibsen's Brand may be cited : " To 
 Agnes. For thousands of readers the Agnes of Ibsen's Brand, like the Agnes 
 of Dickens in ' David Copperfield,' must have idealised a name which surely 
 no author could well bestow save on a pure and beautiful creation. For me, 
 not even namesakes such as these can add to your name one new ray of conse- 
 cration or of loveliness."
 
 8 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 I suppose, as were his masters and tutors at the aforesaid 
 " slowness in examinations." 
 
 His hoUdays, both now and later, were often spent at 
 a cottage which Miss Rhoda and Miss Agnes Garrett 
 occupied at Rustington, near Worthing, in Sussex. It 
 touched him deeply, when in later years, after many 
 wanderings, he was to have a little house of his own, that 
 his cousin sent him many familiar pieces of furniture and 
 ornaments from the favourite home of his childhood. 
 " I live," he wrote, " with many memories of old Rusting- 
 ton days — the old cottage ; you ; Rhoda ; my boyish 
 tiresomeness and worshippings ; the corner in the church- 
 yard ; the seat just the other side of the kitchen-garden 
 wall ; the picnic breakwater ; the moonlight walks ; a 
 hundred old pages." One great delight of the holidays 
 was the sea-bathing, under tutelage at first by Sir 
 Hubert Parry ; another was the decoration of a railway- 
 carriage, which had been bought as a play-room for him 
 and his cousin. Miss Philippa Fawcett. " The ark," they 
 called it, and it was decorated by them with famous frescoes 
 of the deluge. It was to be Edmund's lot to live much 
 abroad and in an English colony, and he became a devoted 
 lover of the Greater Britain. But no roses were ever so 
 sweet to him as those that bloomed at Rustington, and 
 even the delight of the sea at Muizenburg owed something 
 of its pleasure to memories of the surf in which he had 
 bathed during long summer days at home. 
 
 Edmund's school and holiday letters show keen zest 
 in the lighter side of life, and a love of the country and its 
 pursuits ; but I gather that his boyishness and light- 
 hearted ways did not entirely satisfy some of his mentors. 
 One of the masters records as a welcome stage in his 
 development that he "is now conscientiously putting 
 away childish habits " and " has quite waked up to a 
 sense of his dignity as monitor." Garrett had about him 
 a natural distinction, but upon his dignity, in any self-
 
 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 9 
 
 conscious way, I never saw him stand. As a leading 
 spirit in the school Essay Society and Debating Society, 
 Garrett was entirely in his element. He was a strong 
 Gladstonian, and during holidays in London he visited 
 the gallery of the House of Commons. There he was 
 " under the wand of the great magician," on the occasion, 
 among others, of one of Mr. Gladstone's finest speeches — 
 that on the Affirmation Bill (April 26, 1883). The 
 impression made upon the young listener was recorded 
 fifteen years later : 
 
 The theme was religious toleration, even of the irreligious. 
 None could have made the pleading so impressive Avho lacked 
 Gladstone's intense impress of religiousness ; just as none could 
 have made so touching an appeal as he did for the disestablish- 
 ment of the Irish Church. Oratorically, the tone of a convinced 
 reluctance, of affectionate prejudice, yielding to impervious 
 sense of right, is one of the most effective in the moral gamut. 
 In a speech on the Irish Church, admitting that it went against 
 the grain to lay hands upon any sacred fabric once set up, he 
 quoted those words about Hamlet's ghost : 
 
 We do it wrong, being so majestical 
 To offer it the show of violence. 
 
 In a similar spirit, in this speech on the Affirmation Bill, he 
 quoted the solemn words of Lucretius about the nature of the 
 Divine, which is too high and too far to be either lifted or degraded 
 by the verbal homage of an oath ; the well-known passage 
 beginning : otnnis enim divom natura necessest. . . . Never 
 shall I forget the old man's eloquent delivery of those lines. 
 He paused, drew himself up, and throwing back his head and 
 extending his right arm gave forth the deep-mouthed thunder 
 of the hexameters with indescribable majesty.* 
 
 As editor of the school magazine, the Rossallian, Garrett 
 also found much scope for his bent. His cousin's attention 
 was specially called by his tutor to " a very clever version 
 from Martial." " The Rossallian,''' he had written home, 
 " has got into a very feeble state, and we are going to 
 put it on its legs again — such a Rossallian as never was 
 
 * " Gladstoniana," in the Cape Times, May 23, 1898.
 
 10 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 before, with perhaps an illustration." Drawing was at this 
 time a favourite diversion with him. " My study," he said, 
 " is an endless source of occupation and amusement ; 
 what I paint or draw, when not given to anybody else, 
 goes to brighten its walls." A pleasanter occupation 
 than Euchd or the gerunds, but not so conducive, 
 it is to be feared, to success in " certificate " and other 
 examinations. 
 
 So passed Garrett's school-days ; unfruitfully, he used 
 in after life reproachfully to consider. He did not, he 
 said, " find himself " at Rossall ; he was desultory ; and 
 he did not get on conspicuously well with other boys. 
 But in the school of character he learnt one lesson which 
 he never forgot. " The most valuable thing I learnt at 
 Rossall," he said, in retrospect, " was sticking to my guns. 
 Public opinion is nowhere more tyrannical than at a public 
 school. If you can stay it out there, you can stay it out 
 anywhere. I think I did so at Rossall (being probably 
 most times in the wrong, but that does not matter much) ; 
 and I have found it easy ever since." A Balliol scholar- 
 ship, which his head-master had in view for him, was 
 not, I think, competed for. He gained a sizarship at 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, and in that famous foundation 
 he took up his residence in the October term of 1884. 
 
 Edmund Garrett and I [writes the Cambridge friend* 
 whose reminiscences now follow] must have been up at Trinity 
 together for a year or so before we met. My first recollection 
 of him is, I think seeing him at the chapel services, and wonder- 
 ing who he was. There was something in his face, open, boyish, 
 full of life, yet with the unmistakable stamp of thought and 
 decision and purpose, that attracted to him at once. Inquiry 
 showed that he was of my own year, a keen speaker at debates, 
 and the life and soul of a freshman's literary society. Of this 
 I happened to know a member, in whose rooms we met ; and a 
 " Long," in which a common love of the river threw us together, 
 laid the foundations of a friendship that gradually grew to be 
 
 * Mr. J. H. Badley, who afterwards married Garrett's elder sister.
 
 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 11 
 
 the thing of most value in my college life. But it was only 
 towards the end of his time at Trinity that I came to see a great 
 deal of him. He was not what his dons would have called with 
 approval " a reading man" ; for though he had a deep and real 
 love of the Classics, and especially of the Greek poets, to whom 
 he brought the quick intuition of a kindred spirit, he read for 
 his own satisfaction, and as his interest led him, rather than for 
 success in the Tripos ; and, wisely following his instinct, devoted 
 the greater part of his energies to the debates and business of 
 the " Union." There he soon came to the front, thanks to the 
 fearlessness of his convictions no less than to his readiness as 
 a speaker. The most vivid picture of him in those days that 
 remains with his friends is probably that of a light supple figure 
 standing in the crowded debating hall, with boyish face and 
 wealth of light hair often tossed back as he developed his argu- 
 ment, now sweeping his hearers along with an outburst of poetic 
 fervour, and now delighting even his opponents with the quick 
 flashes of his wit. 
 
 It was my custom to spend most of my afternoons on the 
 upper river ; and as he had a rooted dislike of games as a means 
 of exercise — the natural reaction of a rebel against the tyranny 
 of games in a public school — he sometimes joined me. We 
 would scull up to Byron's Pool, enjoying the difficulties, especially 
 in flood-time, of the windings of the narrow stream ; then land 
 to wander about the Grantchester woods and flats, and finally 
 drift back in the dusk of a winter sunset. He was always 
 a delightful companion, but never more than at such times, 
 discussing our common interests in literature, alive to every 
 kind of beauty in nature, and always ready to let his fun bubble 
 over. When pen and ink were handy he would add humorous 
 illustration to his wit, for he was an adept at swift caricature. 
 There was one opponent at the Union in particular who was 
 portrayed, for the delight of his inner circle of friends, under 
 every guise and in every preposterous situation. 
 
 In any social gathering he took by natural right a leading 
 part in the talk. Those who did not know him were apt to 
 think him too ready to dominate it, and by some such he was 
 dubbed the " Public Orator " of the college. In the same way 
 there were some who were offended by his frankness of speech 
 and a Rabelaisian turn of humour that was the outcome of a 
 nature the cleanest and most wholesome that I have known. 
 Fearlessness both in conviction and speech was always a marked 
 characteristic and one of the main sources of his power with all
 
 12 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 sorts and conditions of men with whom he came in contact. 
 He used to say that there was absolutely no subject that could 
 not be treated of in words without offence by a writer who knew 
 his business. In his own case, when this power, constantly 
 practised, was combined with a high chivalry and purity of heart, 
 it was assuredly true. 
 
 The main impression of him in his college days that remains 
 with me is of an irrepressible vitality " that ever with a frolic 
 welcome took the sunshine," and did not let the disappointments 
 dim his delight in the present or his confidence in the future. 
 On the morning that the Tripos list came out he came round 
 at once to wake me with the news, without a thought to spare 
 for his own place (the price, as we all knew, of his brilliance in 
 other directions, and not in the least the measure of his ability) 
 in his delight in any success of his friends. That evening three 
 of us in sheer lightness of heart let the magic of a June night 
 draw us further and further from college and all thought of time 
 and " gates." I remember a midnight visit to the bathing-sheds, 
 and the plunge in the river, so still a mirror of the stars that one 
 seemed to be diving into the abyss of space, and then floating 
 down in the warm silence broken only by a nightingale in the 
 woods near by. I remember also a visit to the Fellows' Garden, 
 and, as we were climbing out, being confronted by a policeman's 
 bull's-eye. A parley on either side of the iron gate explained 
 the situation, and the majesty of the law, knowing that we were 
 safe from its reach, decided we were harmless. Towards morning 
 the other two went back (by ways that did not need to arouse 
 the porter at the lodge) into their respective colleges. Either 
 I lacked their agility or still found the call of the open too strong, 
 for I remember watching the sunrise from Madingley Hill, and 
 after another bathe coming back to college, when gates were 
 open, and writing a note to my tutor to tell him of my night's 
 doings ; which brought from him, good soul, a reply that show^ed 
 he had not altogether forgotten what it was like to be young, 
 and I never heard any more about it. 
 
 Then came Degree-Day, for which Edmund's sister came 
 up — the beginning of what later came to be a bond to draw our 
 friendship still closer. The round of river-parties and other 
 entertainments came to an end ; and my last recollection of 
 him as undergraduate (for the recent ceremony had not made 
 us think of ourselves as anything else) is another piece of irre- 
 sponsible boyishness. As we came dowoi his staircase in the 
 Old Court for the last time, we found outside one of the doors
 
 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 13 
 
 a bath, neatly packed in canvas, waiting to be taken away. In 
 a moment that bath was tumbling down the stairs like a hoop, 
 and we realised, from the sounds that came from it, that its 
 owner's crockery must have been packed inside ! 
 
 Garrett's oratorical gifts found occasion for exercise 
 during the Long Vacation of 1886. At the General Election 
 of that year Mr. Oscar Browning was Liberal candidate 
 for Norwood, and he tells me that Garrett was his right- 
 hand man — ^writing skits and placards and making 
 daily speeches. Garrett, during his year at Cambridge 
 read, as his friend has told us, more for his own satisfaction, 
 than for the Tripos. He read poetry especially, and he 
 also wrote it. A little volume of " Rhymes and Render- 
 ings," to which five of his friends, members of a " Goose- 
 quill Club," contributed, was the result. Garrett's 
 renderings were for the most part from the Greek and 
 Latin poets, and especially from the Greek Anthology. 
 This is a task which will never be accomplished with com- 
 plete success, but each generation makes its attempt, and 
 some of Garrett's versions come at least as near as others 
 to attaining the impossible. I select as an example the 
 epigram of Meleager to Heliodore {AaKpva. a-oi koX vepOe . . . ) : 
 
 Tears for thee, where thou liest, Heliodore, 
 
 Love's slender meed, the grave allows — a tear ! 
 Tears, bitter tears, o'er the damp stone I pour. 
 
 Pledge of my yearning and remembrance dear. 
 Even where thou art, his piteous sighing vain 
 
 To those dull shores thy husband doth entrust. 
 Ah ! Where's the bloom I cherished ? Death has ta'en 
 
 And at its flushing soiled the flower with dust. 
 This boon I crave, kind earth : — where She doth rest 
 
 Oh, gently fold her to a mother's breast ! 
 
 In lighter vein was a " Ballad k la Mode," in which 
 Garrett satirised the aesthetic nursery cult of the day, and 
 paid, as a Cambridge man should, his tribute to Calverley ; 
 
 Then blame me not, altho' my verse 
 
 Sounds like an echo of C. S. C. 
 Since stUl they make ballads worse and worse 
 
 Savour of diddle and hey-de-dee !
 
 14 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 But of Garrett's pieces in " Rhymes and Renderings," 
 the one in which I find most of the essential spirit of the 
 man is the following sonnet : 
 
 dullard souls ! by sense and circumstance 
 
 Enclosed, unstirred by generous discontent 
 
 To burst tbe bonds that hold ye prison-pent — 
 The caitiff creatures of ignoble chance ! 
 For you the heavens are but a blind expanse ; 
 
 In vain achieved stone grows eloquent, 
 
 Or sobbing organ labours, heavenward spent, 
 Or Poet seeks God's spirit in the Man's ! 
 O as some trembling vestal acolyte 
 
 Might nurse the flickering flame that may not die. 
 Or beacon-watcher rouse on some lone height 
 
 The red heart 'mid the ashes fearfully, 
 Cherish, ere yet it falter mto night, 
 
 The fitful spark of immortality. 
 
 Age was to " approve what youth had planned." 
 Garrett, in the long watches of after years, when he had 
 run his active course, was best to show the strength of 
 his character in keeping bright and gem-like " the flicker- 
 ing flame that may not die."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PALL MALL GAZETTE 
 
 " In journalism, if anywhere, Napoleon's is the motto : ' the tools to 
 him that can handle them,' as Carlyle translates it." — F. E. G. 
 
 A YOUNG man who has taken no very distinguished degree 
 at the University, who is possessed of a decided hterary 
 gift, who has an innate aversion from drudgery and has 
 not yet acquired any fixed habit of plodding industry, 
 and who moreover is confronted with the urgent necessity 
 of earning his own Hving forthwith — to what should such 
 an one turn his thought, since his views inclined him in 
 no sort to the Church, but to literary journalism ? A 
 " chaotic haven," Carlyle calls it ; "a questionable 
 profession." And doubtless he is right, but some there 
 be who in such questionable surroundings make for them- 
 selves some kind of ordered and honourable career. 
 
 Garrett, after finishing his Tripos at Cambridge in the 
 summer term in 1887, presented himself, aged twenty-two, 
 at the offices of the Pall Mall Gazette, then in Northumber- 
 land Street, and asked for work. Mr. Stead, most accessible 
 of editors, received him kindly, but had no opening on 
 his staff and was very busy. For once he was in no mood 
 to talk, even to so pleasant-spoken a young man ; but 
 his visitor had come for an interview and meant to have 
 it. Since the great man showed no disposition to play 
 the interviewer, his caller assumed the part himself, and 
 settling himself comfortably down in the chair drew the 
 editor on into general conversation. He left the office 
 with no promise of work or encouragement other than 
 such as an interview with so genial an editor might inspire. 
 
 15
 
 16 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 " I saw he didn't think much of me," said Garrett after- 
 wards ; " why should he ? A pasty-faced undergraduate 
 who thought he wrote verses ! " He returned to Cam- 
 bridge, and spent the evening in composing, in the style 
 so far as might be of Mr. Stead himself, an " Interview 
 with the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette," adorned with 
 a pen-and-ink sketch of him, too, with his feet up on the 
 mantelpiece of his sanctum. It was posted to the editor, 
 who perceived at once that here was a young man of spirit 
 and audacity, wielding moreover — in spite of a University 
 education (which other editors besides Mr. Stead have 
 regarded as no sure guarantee of journalistic efficiency*) — 
 the pen of a ready and picturesque writer. Garrett was 
 sent for, and was given a commission for a descriptive 
 article. This was the beginning of a connection with the 
 Pall Mall Gazette and with its off-shoot the Westminster 
 which, with interruptions from ill-health, lasted for eight 
 years. t 
 
 * I know of a young aspirant who had called, with a letter of introduction 
 from an Oxford tutor, upon another editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. Editor : 
 " What class did you take ? " Aspirant (cheerfully) : " A first in Mods, 
 and a first in Greats." E. : " Humph ! and a fellowship ? " A. (crestfallen) : 
 " No." E. (cheerfully) : " Then there is still some hope of you ! " 
 
 t To the Rossallian of June 18, 1894, Garrett contributed an article of 
 excellent advice, amusingly given, upon " Going in for Journalism." The 
 following is an extract : " You want to write to the papers ; you must begin 
 by reading them. I know this is a serious undertaking ; but you must clench 
 your teeth and go through with it. He who would command, say the copy- 
 books, must first learn to obey. He who would bore, says the book of the Law 
 of Editors, must first be bored. Do not waste a thing good in itself by sending 
 it to the wrong paper. Everything can be said in at least fifty ways, most 
 things in more. Papers have their own languages. A good journalist will 
 know them all. Suppose you were writing an article : subject, ' Death of a 
 family at Fleetwood from eating mussels.' For most of the London evening 
 papers your style would be that of a letter written to a friend : short, bright, 
 to the point, with perhaps a bold but quite impracticable suggestion for dealing 
 with the evil. Your assumption would be that your reader was not interested 
 in the subject in itself, and must be made so. For the Times you must appear 
 to be addressing yourself to persons already interested and well-informed, who 
 only want to be led, with the aid of some statistics, ' while on the one hand 
 remembering ' ' yet on the other not omitting,' &c. &c., to a mature conclusion, 
 which, however, must never quite arrive. For the Oldbe ' turnover,' you would 
 begin : ' The first mention of mussels is in Herodotus, we mean the bivalve.
 
 THE PALL MALL GAZETTE 17 
 
 In July 1887, the Salvation Army celebrated its " coming 
 of age " and held a religious festival after its kind at the 
 Alexandra Palace. There was a long account of it in 
 the Pall Mall. I remember that one of my colleagues 
 on the paper, who was away for his holiday at the time, 
 wondered from afar what new hand was here at work — 
 so vivacious, so pointed, so like Mr. Stead's and yet so 
 clearly not his. The article attracted the attention also 
 of an old member of the staff, now Lord Milner. " Behold," 
 he said, " the new Stead, with all his virtues and none 
 of his faults."* This, the first of Garrett's contributions 
 to the Pall Mall Gazette, is a capital example of the descrip- 
 tive article at its best — vivid, amusing, sympathetic ; 
 alive to the humorous and the grotesque, yet seizing the 
 essential spirit of the phenomena described. The Salva- 
 tion Army was dismissed by an eminent man as " Cory- 
 bantic Christianity." The phrase was good, but Garrett's 
 heading to one of his paragraphs — " A Cheerful Religion " 
 — went nearer to the heart of the matter : 
 
 It was a meeting of their own body in which they were neither 
 " carrying the war," as their phrase goes, into the " enemy's 
 country," nor were they the amused spectators of the performances 
 of others, acrobats or what not ; and these strange people 
 actually passed a whole day in talking, preaching, walking, 
 making music, exhorting and edifying one another among them- 
 selves. That was their day's pleasuring, and it was plain that 
 so they looked upon it. As they sat about in groups under the 
 trees, they joined from time to time in little spontaneous outbursts 
 of singing. Here and there one or two would be preaching in 
 an animated way to a ring of sympathetic spectators. Their 
 
 not biceps,' &c. &c. For the Daily Telegraph, you would make the subject 
 the excuse for a dazzling display of allusive omniscience. The mussel itself 
 would begin as a mussel ; but it would presently become ' the succulent bi- 
 valve,' 'the seductive shell-fish,' 'the moUuscous morsel,' 'the long-shore 
 death-trap,' ' the modern and marine version of the lethal bolus on which 
 Claudius made his last repast.' If hard put to it you may even call it a 
 ' crustacean' ; what you must not do is to call it a second time a mussel. As 
 long as you don't say that, it does not matter much what you do say. But 
 you see at once how careful you ought to be." 
 
 * It is Mr. Stead who is the authority for this anecdote. 
 
 B
 
 18 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 work and enjoyment are one. They enjoy themselves and 
 laugh and chat as a proper part of a religious demonstration : 
 and they take their religious exercises as a recreative enjoyment. 
 That was one thing which struck a stranger most forcibly. It 
 was always hard to understand at school how the Greeks used 
 to split their sides at farces as part of a religious cult. They 
 have a curious parallel to-day in the Salvation Army. In the 
 very midst of a scene of " testifying " and exhortation, you see 
 a couple of officers, temporarily relieved from the ministration, 
 sit down and have a joke together ; it is not augur meeting augur 
 — not a bit ; only that religion in the heart of a Salvationist 
 is of that sort which maketh a cheerful countenance. 
 
 Garrett had seized the essential point — the point which 
 connects the Salvation Army, not only (as he noted) w^ith 
 the Greeks, but with Roman Catholicism, as it may be 
 witnessed in our own day in many a village fete of Italy. 
 General Booth, who must be a shrewd judge of character, 
 saw in Garrett the spirit of a crusader, and at one time 
 had hopes of enlisting him as an " officer " in the Salvation 
 Army. Garrett was not drawn to the suggestion, though 
 presently, as we shall hear, he struck a blow for the Army 
 as an unattached auxiliary. Meanwhile he devoted 
 himself to rescue work on his own account. A spirit of 
 chivalry ran deep in his nature, and his work upon the 
 Pall Mall Gazette brought it into play. At the time when 
 he joined the staff, Mr. Stead's crusade and imprisonment 
 were in the past, but Garrett was deeply interested in the 
 cause, and he also joined the ranks of explorers into the 
 subterranean regions of the " modern Babylon." Out 
 of this work grew an attempt, carried on at the cost of 
 much self-sacrifice, to rescue a poor girl. He fought hard, 
 and sometimes literally, for her. He had the spirit of 
 ten to make up for what he lacked in bodily strength, 
 and I have been told of an occasion on which he threw 
 a ruffian down a flight of stairs, himself on top, and emerged 
 from the wreckage to call a policeman in order that his 
 adversary, if so minded, might give him into custody for 
 the assault. From such adventures our Galahad emerged
 
 THE PALL MALL GAZETTE 19 
 
 scatheless, but perhaps — as others have done in Uke case — 
 somewhat disillusioned. It was easy to fight against 
 open foes, but difficult to bear up when those who were 
 to be rescued faltered in the struggle, or even turned upon 
 the rescuer. " Everything seems melting away," he 
 wrote at one stage to his cousin Agnes, who was here, as 
 in all else, his confidante and helper. 
 
 Garrett's journalistic work during the years 1887-1889 
 covered a wide range, and the variety attracted him. 
 "■ Still an obscure pressman," he said, " I have written 
 reports and paragraphs, leaders and skits, verses and 
 parodies, reviews and stage critiques, interviews and special 
 correspondence — to-day making acquaintance with a 
 prima donna, to-morrow with a Cabinet Minister, and, 
 in between, turning a ready hand to any trivial, dull 
 little piece of drudgery which happens to need doing." 
 He did not take to the drudgery very kindly ; and his 
 main work at this time — a daily summary of the parlia- 
 mentary proceedings written from the gallery of the 
 House of Commons — was not greatly to his liking. The 
 space allotted to him in the paper was small, and he was 
 seldom able to let himself go. Parliamentary " sketches " 
 in those days were not so freely personal and impressionist 
 as they presently became ; it was expected, even of the 
 descriptive reporter, to give some succinct and colourably 
 impartial account of what was actually said and done, 
 and political pemmican becomes very dry when it is stale. 
 I have looked back at many of Garrett's reports. Here 
 and there a happy hit occurs in them ; and on " field 
 days," when he was given more elbow-room, his descrip- 
 tions were lively and caught the dramatic aspects of the 
 scene. This was the case, too, with many of the reports 
 which he wrote of the proceedings of the Parnell Com- 
 mission. But in large part the Parliamentary sketches 
 come as near to being savourless as anything from Garrett's 
 pen could be. Perhaps it is from the " scenes " and
 
 20 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 " struggles " described that the savour has departed. 
 Let them rest in peace. 
 
 The ParUamentary work was that which opportunity- 
 had thrown in his way and had enabled him to be given 
 regular employment on the paper, but it was the very 
 worst fate that could have been contrived for a man of 
 Garrett's delicate constitution. Already in the autumn 
 of 1887 he had been laid up for some weeks, at the West 
 London Hospital, with a sharp attack of pleurisy. He 
 had made, however, a good recovery, and thrown himself 
 again into the full current of work. Two years later, in 
 the autumn of 1889, he had a serious breakdown. I was 
 acting as editor in Mr. Stead's absence, and had asked 
 Garrett to write a leading article on the Parliamentary 
 session. He was unequal to the task, and went away 
 at once for a holiday. Before doing so, he had been to 
 a doctor who diagnosed his case as one of phthisis. He 
 announced the verdict, and a subsequent reprieve, in this 
 letter to his friend, Mr. Badley : 
 
 On the eve of my departure — I won't trouble you with 
 knacker's details — but I was so much worse that I went to a 
 doctor, a good little cheap man that a friend recommended, 
 practising among the poor in Soho. He, good man, after a 
 perfunctory examination had assured him of a rattling in my 
 breath, and a cursory glance had put a hasty gloss on my con- 
 fessed symptoms, leaped to the idea of consumption and as 
 good as hinted that I was in a swift decline with phthisis. On 
 this cheering intelligence I slept a night and then concluded that 
 except J. J. W., to whom I confided it on my return from the 
 purlieus of Soho, none need know it — my people especiallj'. 
 The gloomj' secret, as you may suppose, was a poor companion 
 to start ofi on a holiday witli. I seemed to get worse and worse 
 the first few days, and often I reflected on the dashing of all my 
 ideas of being of a little service to make the world a bit softer 
 
 in time to the good , and of perhaps giving the timely leg 
 
 up to , and so on. However, I am luckily of a sanguine 
 
 and lightsome temperament, as thou knowest ; I was surprised 
 hdw soon I got accustomed to the idea ; how soon after that
 
 THE PALL MALL GAZETTE 21 
 
 I threw it up altogether ; and how gaily I rallied in the exquisite 
 September summer in the soft Sussex air. 
 
 So far a sort of mild heroics. Now comes comedy. Agnes 
 [Garrett] and Amy [his eldest sister] had fretted their good 
 hearts unbeknown to me, about my illness ; and about the middle 
 of the holidays Agnes went so far as to make inquiry privily, 
 through a friend, of the worthy doctor to whom I had been, 
 and hearing thus without mask or phrasing his alarmist sayings, 
 fretted greatly unbeknownst to me, for the rest of the holidays. 
 At the end, it transpired what she had done, and how she knew 
 all — and after my first chagrin I couldn't help smiling at the 
 absurd situation in which we had both been deceiving each 
 other. And so here was all this coil for nothing. 
 
 At once on my return I arranged to see , who is a really 
 
 first-class man, and gave me immense care and attention. After 
 a most searching examination, the great man pronounced my 
 lungs absolutely free from disease ; and while he said that of 
 course I was very delicate all over and must take great care 
 and all that — a thing not wonderful after my pleurisy and night 
 work — yet held out hopes of my being able to go on Avith my 
 work under whatever conditions might be absolutely indispensable 
 provided only I made all dispensable ones as favourable as possi- 
 ble. You may suppose this was a relief, though personally I 
 can't somehow get up any sort of elation. 
 
 Garrett's failure " to get up elation " was only too well 
 founded. In this case the great man was wrong, and the 
 little man, right. Both, however, were agreed that a 
 change of air was imperative, and Mr. Stead decided to 
 send Garrett as a " Special Commissioner " to report on 
 the state of affairs in South Africa. The breakdown was 
 thus ordered to his good ; for this commission was to 
 introduce him to the scene of his principal work in life.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 " IN AFRIKANDERLAND " 
 
 " Cabo Tormentoso was the name which old Diaz gave the Cape when 
 first the winds buffeted him round its confronting bluffs. Cabo de 
 Boa Esperanza, King John of Portugal rechristened it, for he knew 
 that beyond it lay the wealth of Ind. To us, too, the Cape has been 
 a Cape of Turmoil ; to us, too, it has become indeed a Cape of Good 
 Hope, and shall yet be of assured Good Fortune." — F. E. G. 
 
 Garrett's first visit to South Africa, though short, was 
 to exercise a decisive influence on his subsequent career. 
 South Africa, " the problem-land," as he called it, made 
 a profound impression upon him ; and he, some impres- 
 sion upon the questions and personages of South Africa. 
 The articles upon its scenery, its industries, its peoples, 
 and its problems which he contributed to the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, attracted much attention both there and at 
 home. " I think," he wrote to one of his intimate friends, 
 " a little success was just what I wanted. It has, I believe, 
 only done me good. It has tonicked me up. The work, 
 such as it was, was not accomplished without putting my 
 heart into it, and that all should have gone like clockwork 
 proves that some of my besetting sins were temporarily 
 got under. Success, in measure as full as I could wish, 
 has certainly beamed, and beyond all desert rewarded 
 my efforts. Politicians, M.P.s, colonists, authorities 
 and officials swell the chorus. Some one seems to have 
 been struck by each one of the letters — one by one, and 
 another by another. The trip has improved my standing 
 at the office greatly, it seems — and that with the business 
 and managerial side as well as the other." The articles 
 were presently reprinted as a " Pall Mall Gazette Extra," 
 
 22
 
 " IN AFRIKANDERLAND " 23 
 
 and this rapidly ran through two editions. The Httle 
 book has long been out of print ; but even now, after the 
 lapse of twenty years which have witnessed some volcanic 
 changes, I have heard South Africans say that there is 
 no better introduction to South African problems. The 
 articles attracted the attention, which Garrett correctly 
 described, by their vividness of impression, their literary 
 skill and their clear grasp of the essential point in com- 
 plicated questions. Something, too, they owed to their 
 appearance at a psychological moment. 
 
 South Africa, when Garrett landed there at the end of 
 1889, was at an interesting stage in its development, and 
 was filling a large space in the thoughts and imaginations 
 of Englishmen. The development of the gold mines in 
 the Transvaal was altering the face of the country, and 
 no less the political currents below the surface. The 
 storied riches of the " Land of Ophir " were attracting 
 British enterprise to the further North. A man of large 
 outlook and masterful will was on the spot, laying the 
 foundation of vast schemes of commercial and political 
 expansion. The centre of gravity was being pushed 
 northwards by economic forces, and Cecil Rhodes was 
 bent upon " pegging out claims " to secure the political 
 paramountcy of Great Britain.* Opposed to him was 
 
 * The Johannesburg Chamber of Mines was founded, and the Charter of the 
 British South Africa Company granted, in October 1889. In connection with 
 the northern expansion, Garrett had a story about Rhodes and Sir Hercules 
 Robinson. Rhodes, in a speech of 1894, described how ten or more years before 
 he had taken Sir Hercules " up an exceeding high mountain " and there showed 
 him all the wonders of the Northern expansion. " But the truth is," said Sir 
 Hercules to Garrett, " that I had seen the importance of that expansion before 
 I ever saw Rhodes. The battle of keeping open the road was fought by me 
 in London in the winter of '83-'84. Later when the Freebooters had gone 
 in and founded their so-called Republic, I sent first Mackenzie (the Rev. John) 
 and then Rhodes to report." However that may be, to whomsoever the first 
 vision may have been granted, it was Rhodes's despatch that made the Home 
 Government send Warren's Expedition, and it was Rhodes who took steps to 
 make the occupation of the North effective. And this Sir Hercules Robinson 
 fully admitted. He used to compare Rhodes to Lesseps ; " in his power of 
 conceiving immense schemes, in absolute self-confidence, in indomitable 
 perseverance and in power of fascinating men."
 
 24 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 another remarkable man, of will no less stubborn than 
 his own and perhaps even then harbouring in his mind 
 schemes as ambitious and far-reaching as those of his 
 rival. However this may be, the gold of the Rand had 
 placed in Paul Kruger's hands resources capable of develop- 
 ing a little pastoral community into a powerful State. 
 He used the natural resources which the Uitlanders had 
 provided, but showed no disposition to admit them to 
 equal political rights. He had concluded a pohtical 
 treaty with the Orange Free State. He was bent upon 
 a railway system of his own, and was in no mood to link 
 it up with that of Cape Colony. He was passionately 
 set upon securing access to the sea and command of a 
 seaport. 
 
 In the light of subsequent events, it is easy to say that 
 a conflict for mastery was inevitable. The long duel 
 between Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger was something 
 more than a rivalry between two masterful men. It was 
 the personification of a conflict of race, a conflict of ideals, 
 and a conflict of political ambitions ; such a conflict, 
 it may now be said, could in the long run be decided only 
 by clash of arms. But this, at the period with which we 
 are now concerned, was not the better opinion. The 
 conflict of race was partly masked, and partly perhaps 
 assuaged, by the shrewd statesmanship which Rhodes 
 at this time displayed. He had a thorough understanding 
 of the South African Dutch, and much sympathy with 
 them. Upon many aspects of Cape politics, the Conserva- 
 tive Dutch burgher, with his hankering after economic 
 protection and his Carlylean gospel of work for the natives, 
 was more to Rhodes's liking than the views of men whom 
 he regarded as political ideologues. Policy combined 
 with sympathy to attract Rhodes to the Dutch, and he 
 was, at the time of Garrett's visit to South Africa, about 
 to become Premier with their support. He was on the 
 best of terms with Mr. Hofmeyr, the ruling spirit in the
 
 " IN AFRIKANDERLAND " 25 
 
 Afrikander Bond in Cape Colony. The root-idea of his 
 policy was to set off the commercial interests of the Colony 
 against the racial sympathy which existed between the 
 Dutch there and in the Transvaal. He relied upon the 
 Dutch to help him in his policy of Northern expansion, 
 and he relied successfully. As for the underlying conflict 
 of ideals and ambitions, the prevailing opinion was that 
 it would settle itself under the compulsion of economic 
 forces. And at any rate it was sound statesmanship, 
 when men said that the conflict was inevitable " sooner 
 or later," to reply with a famous British politician " then 
 later rather than sooner." In the years 1889-90 many 
 adjustments, compromises, conciliations seemed both 
 possible and likely. 
 
 The conditions, the hopes, the ideas which I have 
 summarised in preceding paragraphs were all reflected 
 and expounded by Garrett in the pages of "In Afrikander- 
 land." His articles caught the stir, the bustle, the fever 
 of the time. Read his description of his companions on 
 the voyage : 
 
 Among the imports of a newly-stirring colony like the land 
 of gold and diamonds none are more miscellaneous tlian the 
 human ; and capital in the saloon is at least as mixed as labour 
 in the steerage. There is the sportsman, off to shoot big game, 
 with Colts in cases and an arsenal of cartridges. There is the 
 enterprising bagman, going to open up new fields in calico or 
 hardware. There is the exploring adventurer who sits pricking 
 out fortunes on a map ; he carries his concession in one pocket 
 and his quinine in the other — and his life in his hand. There is 
 the valetudinarian, seeking a kindlier clime, where the clear 
 dry air of South Africa is to take the hectic flush out of his cheek 
 — or hers — and tan it instead with the glow of sunburnt health. 
 There is the prodigal son, whose parents have sent him out to 
 see whether colonial soil is more favourable than that of the 
 mother country to crops of wild oats — the youth will probably 
 return in the steerage, if he does not gravitate into the Bechuana- 
 land mounted police. Then there is the genuine young colonist, 
 hopeful and determined, lord of his presence and no land beside, 
 who means to carve out a fortune in the country where there
 
 26 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 are more acres and fewer German clerks. And there is the girl 
 for whom just such another young fellow has already knocked 
 a little home together : she goes to join him, carrying his photo- 
 graph, some furniture, and rather slender trousseau. (Here's 
 to their happiness ; surely this is better than waiting till he is 
 a blase city man at home.) Last, there is the various crowd 
 draw^n by the magic name of Gold — engineers and prospectors, 
 and geologists and hangers on, all hoping to find it in the ground, 
 and speculators (more or less legitimate) who mean to find it 
 in other people's pockets. 
 
 Or this shorter impression of the Kimberley mail starting 
 from Cape Town : 
 
 You might fancy yourself at Charing Cross seeing off a Conti- 
 nental mail, only there is rather more handkerchief-waving 
 and hand-grasping here. This train is packed with Englishmen 
 — engineers, speculators, doctors, clerks, every trade and craft 
 that a growing community requires. A few of them are for 
 Kimberley, many more are bound for the Rand. Their goal is 
 the Eldorado of the Transvaal, and it is the Englishing of the 
 Transvaal that they are going to help. 
 
 Thither Garrett presently followed them, bringing back 
 with him accounts very vivid and interesting of the City 
 of Diamonds and its compounds, with a special chapter 
 also on " the romance of diamond smuggling," and un- 
 ravelling in the Transvaal Eldorado all the mysteries of 
 reefs and pennyweights and levels. He did not himself 
 visit Mashonaland or Matabeleland, but he was fortunate 
 in coming across some of those who had been making 
 history there. His chapter entitled " The True Romance 
 of ' King Solomon's Mines,' " with its amusing account 
 of the court of King Lobengula, is one of Garrett's liveliest 
 pieces and is reprinted in this volume (p. 251). 
 
 With so much British stir and bustle, with so many 
 explorers, adventurers, engineers going up "to help the 
 Englishing of the Transvaal," the political future seemed 
 to Garrett secure. He, like Rhodes, found himself very 
 much at ease among the Dutch, and his picture of " The
 
 " IN AFRIKANDERLAND " 27 
 
 Afrikander at Home " will be read with pleasure in these 
 days of reconciliation : 
 
 " But who and what is an Afrikander ? " The word itself 
 is simply Cape Dutch for African. At first it was what the 
 Dutch settlers called the natives. Of late years it is what they 
 have begun to call themselves. As their own definition of it, 
 the definition given by the " Afrikander Bond," is equally 
 applicable to every patriotic South African, English or Dutch, 
 in Colony or Republic, I shall sometimes apply it loosely in that 
 broader sense, a sense which is crystallised in the title of this 
 book. But in this particular chapter we are dealing with the 
 Afrikander proper — the Dutch farmer, the Boer if you like, own 
 cousin to the Boer of the Transvaal, and the ruling class in this 
 English colony of the Cape. " Boer," of course, is just our 
 " boor," only that, hke " churl," the old Enghsh word has come 
 down in the world. " Boor " once meant, and " Boor " now 
 means, simply a " farmer." And it was the Boers, both those 
 of the Cape Colony and those in the Transvaal to whom we 
 more commonly apply the name, that I was straitly charged 
 to see and to study in South Africa by every authority to whom 
 I appealed for counsel, from Lord Carnarvon to Mr. Froude. 
 Hitherto my ideas had been formed upon Tant Sannie in the 
 " Story of an African Farm " — a figure coarse, squalid, and 
 brutish. Now I was to see for myself. By good luck, a Dutch- 
 speaking friend at Capetown, who has friends on farms in a wine- 
 growing district thirty or forty miles away, was proposing one 
 day to go and visit them. I went with him. 
 
 As the train drew in, there rose at the window the figure of a 
 great, gaunt, grizzled, uncouth man, smiling welcome. His 
 clothes seemed to have been gathered anywhere, and thrown 
 on anyhow. His neck was not caparisoned as necks are wont 
 to be in Bond Street, or even in less metropolitan regions. He 
 wore a " shocking bad hat " of soft, weather-beaten felt. His 
 general appearance would in England have stamped him as a 
 respectable labourer. " This is one of the farm men," said I 
 to myself ; "he has been sent down to drive us to the farm." 
 I found it was our host. It was the " Dutch Question," in fact, 
 in coat and leggings. , . . 
 
 Within doors, if I looked for anything of the stertorous rough- 
 ness of a Farmer Sandford, the bluff boorishness, however 
 honestly meant, of the Yorkshire yeoman, or any other English 
 type which sprang to mind as parallel, I was agreeably dis-
 
 28 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 appointed. The urbane, kindly manners, the plain, intelligent 
 speech of my entertainers, in five minutes obliterated from my 
 mind the visionary forms of Tant Sannie and the farm labourer. 
 Instead, I saw a worthy pair of country gentlefolk, grave and 
 courteous without ceremony, minded to make the stranger feel 
 at home, and with the rare savoir faire which does so. Their 
 English was racy of a foreign contact, but well chosen and expres- 
 sive. Lapses into the more familiar Dutch, even among them- 
 selves, were quickly repressed. The same natural delicacy and 
 consideration for the stranger appeared in everything. When 
 in the yard we were all trying to manipulate the whip of the 
 country, with its puzzling lash about twenty feet long, and failing 
 ridiculously, did Uncle Dan, who with ease could flick a fly off 
 the ear of the leading ox in the team, stand by and laugh at our 
 efforts ? No, he set himself to remind each of us of the various 
 accomplishments at which the tables would be turned, and he 
 the laughing-stock. Prayers, too, were tacitly forgone that 
 evening, because the good souls were not sure of the stranger's 
 religion. 
 
 Presently, in the large hall on which the door opened, the 
 mid-day meal was smoking before us. Before and after, four 
 red Gargantuan flngers came up before our host's face, and a 
 Dutch grace was reverently muttered to bowed heads. Turkey, 
 smoked beef, and half a dozen vegetables, besides the boiled 
 rice which is served as such at Cape tables, were among the 
 dishes loading the long board. It was gay besides with roses 
 and with fruit. We are a large party ; for the strapping family 
 on the farm is swelled by a posse of nephews and nieces — poor 
 relations of two degrees who had been left orphans. That is 
 their way here ; the kindly Dutch blood runs a great deal stronger 
 than water. The youngsters wax mighty on this plain, good, 
 plentiful fare. The staple jam puzzled my palate. It was 
 mos-komfyt, I found, made with fresh grape-juice on a basis of 
 pear, quince, and what not. Mos is, of course, our " must." 
 This is the best and wholesomest jam in the world. The Dutch 
 housewife is like Dame Primrose ; she has scant book-learning, 
 but has no equal at preserves, and her brandy liqueur is the praise 
 of the county — or rather the " field-cornetcy." Yet this large 
 lady, with her cheeses and komfyts, is devoted to music, starts 
 at a false note, and not long ago sang beautifully. They are 
 solid people, but they like their joke as well as we, and the laugh 
 is ready against themselves. " You have no fat women in 
 England, eh ? " says my hostess. " If you have, they are small
 
 " IN AFRIKANDERLAND " 29 
 
 made ; not like us ; we are coarse, you see, and big. As I tell 
 Flip there — he will grow up like his mother, all body and no 
 brains ! " But I cap that with a rhyme of my own county in 
 
 England : 
 
 Derbyshire born and Derbyshire bred, 
 Strong i' the arm and thick i' the head. 
 
 In the evening we sat talking of many things — the Dutch 
 Boer and the English courant-schryver " takin' notes " — out 
 in the clear air on the stoep. A cool breeze rustled the blue- 
 gum over our head. Flocks and herds came trailing in from all 
 sides towards the stone kraal, where they spend the night. The 
 sunset was one of those that hold you breathless. A few clouds 
 swam about the sky, each one an argosy of changing hues. The 
 far-off mountains, and the stony knolls or " kopjes " on the farm, 
 were mantled first with gold, then crimson, then purple, then 
 softest dun, as the glory faded out of a " bed of daffodil sky " 
 and left a dim, tender green. And then, in all the purity of an 
 African night, the Southern Cross and all the constellations of 
 the south sailed into our ken. 
 
 Our good hosts would not hear of the invaders hurrying away, 
 so I slept that night in the corner of an Afrikander farm. As I 
 turned into the small, clean, snowy bed, I thought over this 
 new kind of fellow citizen that I had come to know. Have I 
 idealised at all ? Have the warm tints of that evening glow 
 got upon my brush by stealth ? I think not. I do not say 
 that Uncle Dan was not a favourable specimen — a man more 
 than the common, shrewd and intelligent, as well as honest. 
 He could laugh, for instance, at his Dutch neighbours the wool- 
 farmers for their blind resistance to the Scab Act — a necessary 
 measure which they fancy will ruin them in sheep-wash in the 
 vain attempt to cure what they regard as a visitation of God. 
 But he had the prejudices of his class all the same, and spoke 
 them out. He was dead against the Excise, for instance, deemed 
 it a blow aimed at the farmers, and cried that they were the back- 
 bone of the country. He was wrong about the Excise, but he 
 was right about the farmers, as Sir Gordon Sprigg declared when 
 I told him of the conversation. They are, as yet, the backbone 
 of the colony. They must be that until and unless there is some 
 big industrial, and manufacturing advance in the towns. Well, 
 I drove to other farms, I saw other farmers. One might be of 
 more gigantic mould, another of less ; this one had pomegranates 
 in bloom at his door, that one gardenias and roses. But the 
 type was the same ; and it is one of whose intermixture in our
 
 30 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 national manhood we may be glad. Farewell, Uncle Dan ! 
 You and I, most likely, will never meet again. But to you and 
 your sturdy race henceforth I can never feel a stranger. Now, 
 at last, my fellow countrymen at home are beginning to under- 
 stand you ; and, for my part, I will tell them that I never want 
 to see in rougher coat or homelier fashion a better gentleman. 
 
 With " Uncle Dan " Garrett had political conversa- 
 tions ; his host was one of those Dutch voters who, for 
 all their racial sympathy with Transvaal cousins, did not 
 love President Kruger's treatment of Cape Colony in 
 fiscal matters. He was a type of the Dutch upon whom, 
 as described above, Rhodes relied. Garrett, when he 
 landed in South Africa, had not, I think, met Rhodes, 
 nor did he come across him till towards the end of his visit. 
 "I was seedy," he wrote, " after six nights in the train, 
 part of which penance was a flying rush to catch the great 
 Rhodes ; I did catch him, and had him to myself in a 
 railway carriage for a good many hours." He saw with 
 his own eyes and listened with his own ears, and his con- 
 clusions were his own. That they coincided with the 
 policy which Rhodes was then pursuing is further illustra- 
 tion of the ideas fermenting in men's minds. But Garrett 
 was never satisfied with reporting generalities ; he believed, 
 like his master Mr. Stead, in the journalist as unofficial 
 diplomatist ; and even a travelling correspondent might 
 put in a stroke of business on behalf of his country, while 
 at the same time securing what in journalistic slang is 
 called a " scoop " for his paper. 
 
 For such adventures Garrett was peculiarly well fitted. 
 He was a capital talker ; he had complete assurance, and 
 " a way with him " which even the grimmest or most 
 consequential of men found it difficult to resist. He had 
 not been many days in South Africa before he determined 
 to beard the lion in his den ; to interview President 
 Kruger, that is, and submit to him terms for the pacifica- 
 tion and fusion of South Africa. I forget whether it was
 
 " IN AFRIKANDERLAND " 31 
 
 of this, or of a later adventure of a like kind, that I have 
 been told a story of a horror-stricken High Commissioner. 
 Garrett called on his Excellency to propound his patent 
 for settling all outstanding questions with President 
 Kruger. The great man's incredulous smile passed into 
 close attention as his visitor enlarged upon the theme 
 in a way that showed complete mastery of the subject. 
 " I think," said his Excellency, " that there may be some- 
 thing in what you suggest. If you will be good enough 
 to submit a written memorandum of your views to me, 
 I will go carefully into the many complicated bearings 
 of the question ; and if I see my way through them I 
 shall communicate with the Colonial Office and ascertain 
 if anything can be done." " Oh," said Garrett, " I have 
 already been up to Pretoria and laid the scheme before 
 Oom Paul, so that everything is ready." His Excellency 
 knew not whether to frown at the young man's indiscretion 
 or to smile at his audacity. 
 
 Garrett's fu'st interview with President Kruger was in 
 January 1890. Five years later, at a more critical stage 
 in South African history, there was a second interview. 
 The reports of them (in each case sanctioned by the Presi- 
 dent) are reprinted in this volume (pp. 201, 209). They 
 are of interest to journalists, as touching, I think, the high- 
 water mark of skill in that sort. As human documents, 
 they are well worth preservation, for they give a more 
 vivid character-sketch of a remarkable man than is else- 
 where, so far as I am aware, to be found. Read together, 
 they afford also an interesting illustration of a passage 
 in South African history — revealing as they do the harden- 
 ing of President Kruger's heart, and the widening incom- 
 patibility between two political systems, which were to 
 have a sequel so momentous. 
 
 The political details of the interviews need not here 
 detain us ; the phase to which they refer is dead and buried. 
 Garrett's idea, to which he reverted in many an article
 
 32 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 in the Pall Mall Gazette, was that Swaziland should be 
 bartered for political and fiscal concessions in the Trans- 
 vaal. This was an idea which had already, in a somewhat 
 half-hearted way, been taken up by the Colonial Office. 
 In the end it came to nothing ; whether because Great 
 Britain would not pay the full price, or because President 
 Kruger raised his terms and was unwilling to give adequate 
 quid pro quo, is a question which the reader acquainted 
 with South African affairs may here be left to answer for 
 himself. The interesting thing is that Garrett, collecting 
 the best information on the spot, was convinced in 1889-90 
 that the difficulties in the Transvaal would in one way 
 or another find a peaceful solution. He was not insensible 
 to the dangers of the situation, and his account of the 
 Flag Incident (March 4, 1890) is worth recalling for 
 its emphatic prediction that " the gold-reefed city " 
 did not contain the materials out of which revolution 
 is made, and for its curious revelation of mad-cap 
 ideas which even then were working in some men's 
 minds : 
 
 " We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each 
 other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties." So ran the 
 oath of the insurgent gold-diggers thirty-six years ago, who lost 
 the battle of Ballarat, but won no less than freedom for Australia. 
 The Ballarat of to-day is Johannesburg. Are the Englishmen 
 there also to have their battle of Ballarat ? I hope not. They 
 have no such personal wrongs to resent, and every day drives 
 a nail in the coffin of the obstructive policy by which their in- 
 dustry is crushed. But the situation has its elements of danger ; 
 and at the time when I went out to report on it I know that the 
 soberest statesmen had qualms. Such a man as the late Lord 
 Carnarvon, for instance, then fancied that he caught the first 
 far-off mutterings of a thunderstorm. He had hope that it 
 would never burst ; but it was rather hope than assured faith. 
 When I reached the Republic, I half expected to find the air 
 surcharged w'ith electricity. Talks with representatives of every 
 section of the community soon gave me a less sensational reading 
 of the barometer. My report was emphatic enough in the pacific
 
 " IN AFRIKANDERLAND " 38 
 
 sense, I thought, to satisfy the most settled optimist. I gave 
 four very sufficient reasons why the only people in the Transvaal 
 who might conceivably begin a fight would never do anything 
 of the kind. 
 
 First, that they were not of the stuff of which revolutionaries 
 are made. Next, that they had not the plant of a revolution — 
 or not of one which should last more than twenty-four hours. 
 Then, that they had no grievances worth fighting about. And 
 last, that such as they had were in course of removal. Whatever 
 else may be said of these generalisations, a lack of airy confidence 
 is probably the last defect which most people would find in them. 
 But they who hang on the ups and downs of stocks are a sensitive 
 race of men ; and in some quarters I was taken to task as an 
 alarmist for having so much as suggested the possibility of any 
 breach of the peace on the Rand goldfields. 
 
 A week or two later (it was in March 1890), the cable flashed 
 to London from Johannesburg the startling news of the " flag 
 incident." The " flag incident " came at a critical moment. 
 Under the joint influence of financial depression and dilatory 
 promises of reform, feeling just then among the mining com- 
 munity ran high. On his way to a conference with the Queen's 
 High Commissioner, which promised to seal a general South 
 African amity. President Kruger passed through Johannesburg. 
 Ten thousand uitlanders surged round him, eager for a declara- 
 tion, furious when they were disappointed. There was something 
 like a riot, almost a mob-siege of the house where his Honour 
 was. Then some reckless spirit took the lead, and to the tune 
 of " Rule Britannia " the national flag was dragged down from 
 the Government offices, and trampled in the mud. One impul- 
 sive Jingo who was there has since unfolded to me a very pretty 
 plot, which happily went no further than the mad impulse of a 
 few young spirits that evening — a plot for capturing the Transvaal 
 Republic — no less. Hard by were tethered the horses of the 
 President's guard of honour. The surprise party was to seize 
 these, dash for Pretoria, take and distribute the State arsenal — 
 I forget how many stands of arms. Another surprise party 
 meanwhile was to seize the person of the President, and then — 
 but enough of a folly which at least illustrates the Rabagasian 
 spirit of the hour ; for, mind you, my man was a man of substance 
 and standing here and at Johannesburg. It is all very ridiculous, 
 of course, and the respectable residents hastened to say so next 
 day. But it was some time before the public peace was quit 
 of the menace of retaliation. 
 
 o
 
 34 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 Garrett, then, did not believe in revolution ; what he 
 believed in was a stream of tendency which would make 
 for reform. In Cecil Rhodes he saw " the Necessary- 
 Man." " Mr. Rhodes," he wrote, " is the one common 
 denominator to all the fractions — the Colonial Imperialist, 
 the Federal Home Ruler, the English Afrikander, the man 
 who can so carry the Union Jack that Dutch Boer will 
 go forward under its folds shoulder to shoulder with Cape 
 Colonist, with Natalian, with Englishman. He alone 
 at the Cape seems able to strike out of his native energy 
 heat enough to bring to the fusing point those divergent 
 elements — divergent in a low temperature — ' Empire ' 
 and ' Self-Government.' " Such was to be the role of 
 Mr. Rhodes as Premier of Cape Colony, and director of 
 the northern expansion. In the Transvaal, the Zeitgeist 
 was to work. " Even the staunchest and the stolidest 
 of the men in power at Pretoria realise," thought Garrett, 
 " that they are but making terms with time." The Orange 
 Free State — whose President, Mr. Reitz, was also inter- 
 viewed — was to assist in the general pacification ; and 
 Garrett's final words were of confident hope : 
 
 Of the great forces which make for union among peoples — 
 community of laws, of manners, of interests, of religion, of 
 language and of race — we find all in South Africa except the 
 two last. Those two exceptions, indeed, would suffice to sever 
 a nationality, but only if the drift of them were apart. The 
 drift of them is together. As for language, we can surely afford 
 to stand aside and let nature have its way. The " Cape Dutch " 
 idiom is a flexible and racy patois. But a patois it is : a natural 
 son, bred of accidental strains, and differing from his mother 
 Dutch as green " Cape Smoke " differs from ripe old Hollands. 
 On the side of English fight two mighty allies — Commerce and 
 Letters ; besides that flourishing native strength which has 
 already made of the round world as it were a huge Whispering 
 Gallery to carry to its uttermost ends the lightest word of English 
 speech. When we think that — 
 
 Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us. 
 
 Bums, Shelley, were with us — they watch from their graves !
 
 " IN AFRIKANDERLAND " 35 
 
 — surely we need not vex ourselves about the Language question. 
 And as for Race, it is no wonder how well these two manly strains 
 are mingling together ; for what are these Afrikander Dutch 
 at bottom, and what else are we, but Frisians brightened with 
 French or Norman blood, and hardened with a touch of Scandi- 
 navian mettle ? I believe your typical Boer family has every 
 one of those grafts somewhere on its genealogical tree ; and 
 there is something startlingly Afrikander-like in the pictures 
 which history draws for us of our own Boer ancestor, the Frisian 
 ceorl, the " weaponed man," the landed man, in his homestead 
 among the sand-flats of the Elbe. Perhaps the train of thought 
 seems fanciful. It has its purpose. To stubborn English 
 insularity there is great virtue in a touch of kinship. The Boers 
 of the Cape, not long ago, have chafed under our rule. The 
 Boers of the Free State have thrown us off. The Boers of the 
 Transvaal have stood against us rifle in hand. Are we then to 
 go on for ever bandying the hard name of " rebel " and the 
 untrue name of " traitor " ? 
 
 " Strong mother of a lion-line, be proud of those strong sons 
 of thine, who wrenched their rights from thee ! " That is how 
 we have learnt to feel towards the rebels of Bunker's Hill — our 
 sons. Towards the rebels of Brunker's Spruit, our cousins, 
 we might rise at least to the temper of those fine lines of Clough's 
 to the men who fell at Peschiera : 
 
 You said (there shall be answer fit), 
 
 " And if our children must obey, 
 
 They must — but thinking on this day 
 'Twill less debase them to submit ! " 
 
 We may call them slow-coaches, these South African kinsmen 
 — Rip Van Winkles in politics and in religion. We may deplore 
 their primitiveness, marvel at some of their ideas, and smile 
 over their toilets. But at least let us speak of them and think 
 of them as friends. Treat in that spirit South African questions 
 as they come up. Admit that spirit in Swaziland, where we 
 are not masters of the situation, as well as in Matabeleland or 
 Bechuanaland, where we are. Realise that for that sort of 
 Imperialism which means the Divine Right of Downing Street 
 there is indeed, in Sir Hercules Robinson's words, no more 
 room in South Africa ;* and that the idea of any reimposition 
 of Lanyonism in the Transvaal would be scouted at least as hotly 
 by the English there as by the Dutch. Grant the idea that this 
 no more means Republicanism in them than the Home Rule 
 * See below, p. 94 n.
 
 36 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 instincts of the colonial Dutch mean " treason " and " separa- 
 tion." Once grasp these things here in England, put in the 
 stocks the people who talk or write about " keeping down the 
 Boers " or " hemming-in the Boers," as if they were rat-hunting 
 rather than seeking to cement a political alliance ; gag, in the 
 occasional aberrations of those good men, the Aborigines' Protec- 
 tion Society ; and you will have gone a long way towards that 
 unity through which alone South Africa can grapple with its 
 future. Only, we must not hurry. " Raw haste, half-sister 
 to Delay," is the evil genius which has again and again betrayed 
 us. ... " Geduld en moed," as President John Brand used 
 to say to his handful of Free State burghers in the troublous 
 times through which he piloted them so well: " Geduld enmoed" 
 (Patience and Pluck), " alles zal regt komen." In that spirit, 
 Reader, let us part company. 
 
 It was the right spirit in which to approach the problems 
 of South Africa, and Garrett's cheery optimism found 
 favour with all parties. To himself also, who had gone 
 out in search of health, the Cape seemed truly to be of 
 Good Hope. South Africa, he said, was " the land of 
 health restored," and with such an England beyond the 
 sea " no young Englishman need take any message from 
 his lungs, however urgent, as a death-warrant. Here, 
 among his own kith and kin, under English laws, with 
 English speech, he may carve out a career as high as he 
 is capable of." He recalled how both Sir Gordon Sprigg 
 and Cecil Rhodes first came to South Africa as boys 
 whose friends hardly looked to see them live to be men. 
 Garrett also had found new strength in the land of Good 
 Hope, and returned to England fit and ready to take up 
 new work.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ASSISTANT-EDITOR OF THE PALL MALL 
 
 " The more one does, the more one can do. I have a busy day, but 
 I like it. A new keenness and feeling of power and responsibility, 
 and the need for supplying with all diligence 10,000 shortcomings and 
 wasted opportunities, press me daily forward." — F. E. G. to J. H. B. 
 
 Garrett returned to England from South Africa early in 
 1890, and at once resumed work upon the Pall Mall 
 Gazette. Mr. Stead had resigned the editorship, and on 
 succeeding him I had offered the assistant-editorship to 
 Garrett. He received my offer at Madeira, and cabled a 
 willing acceptance. There now began, I believe for both of 
 us, and certainly for me, a period of very happy co-operation. 
 We were well disposed to each other already; our intercourse 
 soon became more continuous, and ripened into a friendship 
 which I account one of the chief privileges of my life. 
 
 Edmund was the gayest and most inspiriting of com- 
 panions. He was deeply interested in all political and 
 other matters of serious import, but he was the sworn foe 
 of whatever is pompous and tiresome. These were 
 characteristics also of his writing. I suppose that no 
 daily journalist can hope never to fall into the otiose, 
 the trite, or the vapid ; but the proportion of those 
 elements in Garrett's articles was unusually small ; his 
 style was pecularly pointed, alive, alert. It was part of his 
 duty to see many " great, wise and eminent " persons, 
 and he used to hit off their foibles in happy phrases or 
 nicknames. Perhaps I have forgotten of whom he com- 
 plained that he would never field out and could only with 
 the utmost difficulty be persuaded to bat, and of whom 
 it was that he used to speak as the Uncle Pumblechook 
 
 37
 
 38 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 of the Party. He was an excellent mimic, and had his 
 favourite butts. He was specially fond of imitating the 
 question put to him by a certain eminent divine : " Tell 
 me, young man, what is the reason that your paper has 
 so little sympathy for this m-e-enistry ? " I can quite 
 believe that Garrett satisfied his curiosity, and that, at 
 no inconsiderable length. It was of the same divine 
 that a story was told me — place and particulars indeter- 
 minate — of Garrett in his Cambridge, or early London, days. 
 At the conclusion of a long discourse, the speaker desired 
 to know if any young man present would like to ask a 
 question. Garrett sprung up, and held the audience for 
 a full half-hour, not asking a question, however, but 
 contraverting much of the previous discourse. 
 
 Into the daily work of the paper, Garrett threw himself 
 with whole-hearted zest and enjoyment. We were 
 proud of our positions, glad of our opportunities, and 
 devoted, in common with our colleagues, to the welfare 
 of the Paper, which, if this piece of egotism may be for- 
 given, attained in our hands a prosperity in some respects 
 which hitherto it had more richly deserved, but had not, 
 in fact, attained. Garrett described the work in a letter 
 to his friend, Mr. Badley (March 7, '90) : 
 
 I am supposed to get down to office at 8, having read the 
 day's news over breakfast table. From then to 9.30 or 10 it 
 is a wild scramble. There are occasional notes, &c,, to be written 
 on whatsoever the day has brought forth, and barely time to 
 get through the mere writing of them in quantity. Rapid 
 decision and sharp, short clarifying and expression of ideas 
 are the order of the day. I may at any moment be called on 
 to write the leader ; for instance, I did write the one the other 
 day on Swaziland. It is stiff work at first. 
 
 Of Garrett's miscellaneous contributions one skit in par- 
 ticular is still well remembered. Mr. Rudyard Kipling and 
 his Anglo-Indian fame had just reached England, and 
 he had been made the victim of exuberant heralding 
 as a " Celebrity at Home " in the World, There was
 
 ASSISTANT-EDITOR OF THE PALL MALL 39 
 
 the inevitable reaction of revolt against the " boom " 
 and " J. K. S." wrote his vision of the good time coming 
 " when Rudyards cease from Kipling and Haggards ride 
 no more." Garrett took his turn in the game by an article 
 under this heading : 
 
 LIONS IN THEIR DENS. 
 
 NO. DCCCXCIX. 
 MR. HATCHARD CHICKLING AT TEMPLE FLATS * 
 
 Mr. Chickling was depicted, in " the commanding emi- 
 nence from which he looks down upon his fellow men, 
 though, in fact, only raised above their heads by a few 
 stories," as " smoking incense out of a hubble-bubble." 
 Mr. Kipling, I have been told, found in Garrett's skit 
 both amusement and instruction ; and registered a vow 
 which, I believe, has been strictly kept, that never again 
 would he surrender himself to an interviewer. Those 
 few stories, and their successors were, I may add, to take 
 a place among Garrett's favourite reading. He and 
 Kipling met afterwards in South Africa, and became the 
 best of friends. He organised a dinner to Mr. Kipling at 
 the City Club in Cape Town, writing an appropriate menu, 
 beginning with " Caviare to the Little Englander," and 
 on another occasion Mr. Kipling and his family spent a 
 day with him at " The Eagle's Nest," of which retreat 
 we shall hear later. Of Garrett's genuine interviews, 
 a good example is one which he wrote after seeing Miss 
 Elizabeth Robins and Miss Marion Lea about their " Ibsen 
 Experiment " at the Vaudeville. " Only please don't 
 put us down as Ibsenites ! " he made the ladies say. " We 
 don't cut our hair short, and we don't wear green bed- 
 gowns, and we don't rebel against baulked individuality, 
 and that sort of thing. We don't reall}^" Ibsen was 
 one of Garrett's principal hobbies, and he wrote critiques 
 
 * Pall Mall Gazette, April 8, 1890.
 
 40 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 of Hedda Gabler and other plays. An interview with Sir 
 Edward Poynter is also worth mentioning. The artist did 
 not come off second best in this friendly encounter. He 
 was painting his Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon. 
 Garrett opened thus : " What with Solomon and Mrs. 
 Solomon (that is, two or three rows of her as Artemus 
 Ward phrased it among the Mormons), and Solomon's 
 guards, and slaves, and counsellors, and the Queen of 
 Sheba and her retinue, you must have found it rather 
 hard to invent so many faces or to find so many suitable 
 models ? " " That," replied the artist, " is just the diffi- 
 culty I am in. And excuse me, but would you mind 
 giving me a sitting ? Oh yes, you would do very well. 
 I know just what I want. Look, I should put you in 
 there against the pillar. Now, your eyes on that blue 
 pot, please." The study which Sir Edward Poynter 
 made of his interviewer is preserved ; it showed, Garrett 
 wrote, " how much more interesting one looks in chalk 
 than one ever contrived to in a looking-glass."* Standing 
 for his portrait did not prevent conversation, and the 
 interviewer published a lively account of " How I became 
 a model : A talk with Mr. Poynter " — a revenge which 
 the artist took in good part, in consideration of the charm- 
 ing little piece which Garrett made of it alLf 
 
 * Garrett was, in fact, of prepossessing appearance. The photograph, 
 reproduced as frontispiece to this volume, is a good likeness, but misses the 
 sparkle of his eyes and sunny smUe. A jest which some of his friends will 
 remember is a suggestion which he sent to a journalistic comrade for a prize 
 competition to select the two ugliest men. He placed himself high in the 
 list, but the point of the thing was to carry by a heavy vote a mutual Cam- 
 bridge friend to the head of the poll. 
 
 ■f Pall Mall Gazette, May 23, 1890. On reading the interview, Sir Edward 
 Poynter wrote to Garrett objecting to interviews on principle, but added : 
 " This being premised, I must say that it would be impossible to record the 
 ' interview ' in a less indiscreet way, or in a kinder spirit than you have done ; 
 and I should be most ungrateful to complain, especially as you have put such 
 opinions as I expressed not only quite accurately, but in far better terms than 
 I could myself have used to convey them. If the article were not about myself, 
 I should venture to add a little praise of the delightfully light style in which 
 it was written."
 
 ASSISTANT-EDITOR OF THE PALL MALL 41 
 
 Pieces such as this, with descriptive articles, occasional 
 verse and the like, were among Garrett's brightest work, 
 but it was on politics that his heart was set. He was 
 now the South African expert, and kept in touch with all 
 persons and events connected with that country. I 
 remember an interview of his with " King Gunguny ana's 
 Envoys," for a phrase he used of their " fluent and sonor- 
 ous Zulu " : it was " the Italian of South African 
 tongues." In the matter of leading articles, we some- 
 times adopted a plan of co-operation. We used to talk 
 the subject over, plan out the treatment and then each of 
 us write a half of the article. Authors say, I believe, 
 that the title is the hardest part of the book. Certainly, 
 in the case of political journalism, a happy title, a phrase 
 that puts the point in a nutshell, is often more than half 
 the battle. Garrett used to enjoy this hunt for " the proper 
 leader-title " — a form of sport in which our first master, 
 Mr. Stead, had been an adept. When Lord Salisbury was 
 meditating one of his " graceful concessions " to Ger- 
 many in Central Africa, by surrendering uninterrupted 
 communication along the thin water-way, we asked " Why 
 cut the wasp's waist ? " The Minister's alternatives, 
 it was said on another day, were " Settle, scuttle or scram- 
 ble " ; and when he chose what we considered the least 
 desirable alternative, we gave ourselves, as political 
 opponents, the exaggerated satisfaction of remembering 
 that " Lord Salisbury's Sedan " had been announced 
 (June 18, 1890) on the anniversary of Waterloo. But the 
 little exercise in this sort which pleased us most was when, 
 in a joint-article on the subject of Electoral Reform and 
 Redistribution, we first hit upon the phrase " One Vote, 
 One Value."* 
 
 The political crisis which was of most importance 
 during the years of Garrett's assistant editorship of the 
 Pall Mall Gazette was the Parnell Split, caused by the 
 
 * PaU Mall Gazette, March 3, 1891
 
 42 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 O'Shea Divorce case. I have told the story of it fully 
 elsewhere, in a little brochure which I issued with the 
 assistance of Garrett and other members of the staff.* 
 The sudden bolt from the blue (so far as the general public 
 was concerned), coming quickly upon the conclusion of 
 the Gladstone-Parnell alliance, caused equal excitement 
 and consternation, and quick decisions had to be taken. 
 The political stir and bustle pleased Garrett greatly, and, 
 though he was far from well at the time, he revelled in 
 being in the thick of the fight. On one occasion, when I 
 was otherwise detained, he kept an appointment with 
 Mr. Gladstone on my behalf. This, his only personal inter- 
 view with one of his political heroes, made a great impres- 
 sion upon him, and some years later he recalled the scene : 
 
 In his closing years Gladstone told somebody that it was 
 only his intense desire to achieve justice to Ireland that kept 
 him in political " and, I may say, in physical life." Few things 
 were more pathetic than to watch the slow pitiless course of 
 events impressing it upon him that it would never be his to 
 reach the goal for which he had sacrificed everything. The Lords 
 would last him out, hampered by Irish faction. It happens 
 that the present writer had the privilege of a talk with Gladstone 
 at one of the most cruel moments of this slow and painful dis- 
 illusionment. It was the only time, save for an empty social 
 meeting ; and therefore it is well remembered. The talk was 
 at the time of the attempt to make Parnell retire till the O'Shea 
 scandal had blown over ; it was on the very morning of the 
 appearance of Mr. Parnell's letter refusing, and bidding defiance 
 to Mr. Gladstone, and dubbing him (was it not in that letter ?) 
 " grand old spider." The day before, like many days, had been 
 a day of parleyings, deputations, persuasions, disputations all 
 day long, such as might well have kept an octogenarian late abed 
 next morning. But he was up and alert at his writing-table 
 with the paper and the fatal letter spread out before him. Very 
 aged and worn he looked, in the grey wintry London light (it 
 was in Mr. Stuart Rendel's house where he was then living) ; 
 and his hands trembled as he sought among his papers for the 
 copy of the letter which he had written. 
 
 * " The Story of the Parnell Crisis : Told from Authentic Sources, Public 
 and Private." (Pall Mall Gazette " Extra," No. 64.) 1891.
 
 ASSISTANT-EDITOR OF THE PALL MALL 43 
 
 " Most extraordinary, aye and well-nigh incredible ! " he said 
 in a sad, tired voice, of Mr. Parnell's action. And again : 
 
 " This will be hard to heal ; this makes terrible difficulties ! " 
 And his eye kindled a little at the remark of his interlocutor 
 that most young Liberals never wished to heal the breach, so 
 far as Parnell personally was concerned : the insult and the 
 ingratitude were enough for them. The flash showed how sore 
 and wounded the personal violence, as well as the political 
 recklessness, of Parnell's letter had left him. That after all 
 the squalid wrangling and faction-fights that followed Gladstone 
 should still have been able to get one last Home Rule majority, 
 to form his fourth Ministry, and to build up the house of cards 
 for the House of Lords to knock down, is certainly a reminder 
 that faith can remove mountains.* 
 
 Garrett during these years shared a flat in Museum 
 Chambers, Bloomsbury, with Mr. J. J. Withers, the friend 
 to whom the verses at the head of my first chapter were 
 addressed. He sends me the following reminiscences of 
 their life together : 
 
 Edmund Garrett threw himself into everything heart and 
 soul ; there were no half-measures with him. While Parhament 
 was sitting he was generally at the House from the early after- 
 noon to the early hours of next morning, when he used to have 
 to return home and write his " copy." I fully believe that in 
 these nights of strenuous work with little food the seeds were 
 sown of the illness which ultimately carried him oflP. During 
 the time the House was not sitting, and on the nights in the 
 Session when it rose early, I used to go home in the afternoon 
 at about six. We used to meet at our flat or the British Museum 
 Reading Room, where we were both employed to a certain 
 extent, and we then used to dine at the Holborn Restaurant, 
 or afterwards at the National Liberal Club. I say we used to 
 " dine," but generally it was I who dined and Garrett who did 
 not. The procedure was somewhat as follows. On coming in, 
 I found him writing some article. He looked up from his work 
 and said, " Oh, wait a minute, old chap, and I'll come out to 
 dinner." Half-past seven came. I said, " Hadn't you better 
 come out to dinner ? " " Oh ! hang you, wait a minute and I'll 
 come out ; I haven't quite finished." At half-past eight I used 
 to slip out of the door without attracting his attention. At 
 
 * " Gladstoniana," in the Ca'pe Times, May 23, 1898.
 
 44 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 half-past nine I would come back. He was still writing. I 
 would sit down and read the paper. At eleven he would say, 
 " Well, that's finished ; now let us go out and have some dinner." 
 I explained that I had had my dinner. He would look at his 
 watch, swear it was wrong, and then go out and have some 
 fruit and cream, which was pretty well all he would eat when 
 he was tired. 
 
 His Parliamentary work brought Garrett in touch with many 
 interesting people, and they used to come to our flat to see us. 
 Michael Davitt at one time was a frequent visitor, and I have a 
 very vivid recollection of discussing with him and Edmund 
 the evidence which Pigott was to give in the Parnell Commission. 
 Davitt was exceedingly anxious to get up the past history of 
 Pigott, and Garrett threw himself with no little energy into 
 assisting in this investigation, with some success. Another 
 occasional visitor was Mr. Stead. He appeared to me to be much 
 of the same temperament as Edmund, for when they were 
 discussing anything they were so absorbed in the discussion that 
 nothing material seemed to affect them at all. I remember one 
 afternoon when Stead was coming to tea, that Edmund made 
 great preparation for the entertainment. He sent out our old 
 servant to get some cakes, and these were produced in the 
 shape of some extremely brittle and hard pieces of pastry with 
 cream inside. Wlien Stead arrived these were placed before 
 him, and, as was customary, he and Edmund got into a dis- 
 cussion at once. Stead, however, had the cream cakes in front 
 of him, and he prodded at them with a fork to try to break one 
 in two. The cakes were so brittle that they flew about in all 
 directions over the floor. This did not seem in the least to 
 trouble either Stead or his host. Stead didn't want to eat them, 
 and Edmund calmly trod them into my carpet, which caused 
 me a very great deal of heart-burning at the time, for to tell the 
 truth I was very much more concerned in the carpet than in 
 the discussion. 
 
 Many old Cambridge friends of both of us used to come to 
 see us. In fact our little flat was a place of call for all sorts of 
 Cambridge men, who were much attracted by Garrett's lovable 
 nature, his power of conversation and his quick sympathy. I 
 have heard him, whose ideas of rowing were of the crudest, 
 discussing the niceties of the latest rowing question, such as 
 the length of a slide for a sliding seat, with Cambridge " blues," 
 and giving his opinion with the best of them. Mr. G. L. Dickin- 
 son, the philosopher, and Mr. Barry Pain, the humourist, often
 
 ASSISTANT-EDITOR OF THE PALL MALL 45 
 
 came to see us. Mr. Barry Pain was then starting in London 
 and was just making a name for himself, and he and Garrett 
 had much in common. One thing especially they had in common 
 — each was absorbed in any work he was doing at the time and 
 anxious that the other should hear all about it. I remember 
 one evening in our flat sitting opposite the fire with Barry Pain 
 on one side and Edmund on the other, when they both had 
 proofs in their hands. Each proceeded to read the proof with 
 running comments, paying not the slightest attention to the fact 
 that the other was doing exactly the same thing. The position of 
 myself as ultimate peacemaker was not enviable. 
 
 Garrett had no idea of time, and he used to get into some 
 trouble at the office of the Pall Mall for this reason. " This 
 must stop," he said to me, " and matters must be mended." A 
 day or two afterwards an invitation came from the proprietor 
 to dinner. Edmund said that at any rate there must be no 
 doubt about this entertainment and his punctual attendance 
 thereat, and a good deal of fuss was made about getting ready 
 for it. Shirts were looked out, white ties and dress clothes 
 were overhauled, and all the resources of our establishment 
 brought into requisition, so that the appearance of the guest 
 should do justice to the host. Dinner was at eight, and long 
 before that time Edmund was arrayed in spotless raiment, 
 starting out in good time to get to the dinner. I stayed reading 
 in the flat. After about half an hour I heard somebody coming 
 upstairs, and I heard to my amazement the latch-key put into 
 the lock. The door opened and in came Edmund with a face 
 ashy pale. He took off his hat and threw it on the floor, and 
 said, " Hang it all, old man, I have muddled it again ; it was last 
 Wednesday." We did not hear very much of punctuality for 
 some time after that, although he was always exhorting me to 
 keep time. One Sunday he determined that he should have 
 some good healthy exercise on the river, and it was explained 
 to him that to get a good day down at Maidenhead we had to 
 start by an early train in the morning. He was all for starting 
 at any time in the morning, and due preparations were made. 
 The night before it was pointed out to him that there was a very 
 nice train about nine o'clock in the morning at Paddington. He 
 wondered whether we could not catch an earlier train, but 
 finally that was decided upon. Next morning we had endless 
 trouble to get him off, and ultimately he caught the eleven 
 o'clock, being helped into the guard's van as the train was going 
 out. Down on the river he lay back in the stern and said to us.
 
 46 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 " But it's really worth while you fellows getting up in the morning 
 to get this glorious day on the river. It is such a difference if 
 one starts early." We asked him gently what train he thought 
 he had caught. " The nine o'clock, you fools, of course," he 
 replied. He was extremely annoyed when he found that he 
 had just caught the eleven o'clock, and that with some difficulty. 
 About money he Avas as vague as about time. He was, as 
 Mr. Rhodes said of his college dons, " a child " in such matters. 
 
 Garrett had an extraordinary power of throwing himself into 
 any cause which he took up. His whole life for the time was in 
 what he was engaged upon. He simply saw that subject and 
 nothing else. He would have been a crank, to use a familiar 
 expression, but for one circumstance, and that was he had a 
 saving sense of humour that kept him within bounds and made 
 his work so effective. Keen as he was on social questions, and 
 especially on all questions relating to the sexes, yet this sense 
 of humour always kept him within reason. Had he not had it 
 he would have been a bigot, and a very troublesome one at that. 
 But this sense of the ridiculous always modified his views and 
 made his considered attitude of real value. 
 
 His knowledge of English poetry was astonishing. He had 
 almost every well-known passage in English verse by heart,* 
 and he himself was no mean rhymester. He improvised verses 
 on every question of the moment then pending, either personal 
 or public. 
 
 As a friend Garrett was loyalty itself. I well remember in 
 the little smoking-room of the National Liberal Club (known as 
 " The Vestry "), where we used to go sometimes after dinner, 
 some old habitue in a pompous way speaking disrespectfully of 
 one of Edmund's friends. He listened attentively for a moment 
 to the conversation, and then without a moment's hesitation 
 jumped up, stood in front of the fireplace, and addressed the 
 audience of the room, to their utter amazement, and soundly 
 abused the old and reverend gentleman who had dared to criti- 
 cise any one who was his friend. It was an angry scene, but 
 good nature subsequently prevailed, and hands Avere shaken at 
 the end of the entertainment. His friends were no less warmly 
 attached to him, and well they may have been, for his combina- 
 tion of qualities — such as chivalry, highmindedness, loyalty, 
 wit and power of hard work — made up a man whose like we 
 shall not easily see again. 
 
 * I may add that Garrett (as became a Trinity man) was especially fond, 
 among the older poets, of Marvell [E. T. C.].
 
 ASSISTANT-EDITOR OF THE PALL MALL 47 
 
 The days which Mr. Withers thus describes were always 
 pleasant in Garrett's memory. " Come what may," he 
 wrote in illness to his old friend many years later, " I 
 have had a very happy and bright life, in snatches ; and 
 one of the snatches which I always remember with most 
 warmth and with many a wholesome laugh, is that of 
 the old Museum Chambers days. Both of us have done 
 a lot since then, but the first fine careless rapture belongs 
 undimmed to old M. C. Life ' took us all of a 'cap,' and 
 
 we drank it (not quite) all in January — like poor old 
 
 with your ' audit.' " 
 
 Garrett's holidays during these years of work at the 
 Pall Mall Gazette were generally spent with his sisters and 
 with college friends abroad. His high spirits soon shook 
 off the lassitude of over-work and even the memory of his 
 constitutional weakness. " No one," writes Mr. Badley 
 of a holiday in Norway in 1888, " could more keenly 
 enjoy the delights of an open-air holiday than he always 
 did ; and in Norway we had them to the full — scrambling 
 to our heart's content ; days' tramps in scenes of endless 
 variety and endless beauty ; bathing now in crystal-clear 
 river-pools, now in a fiord chill with glacial river or warmed 
 with the gulf -stream, or, ' to see what is felt like,' in the 
 stinging and blinding drive of the spray of a giant water- 
 fall ; belated on unknown mountains, caught in storms 
 on mountain-lakes ; finding everywhere the warmest 
 hospitality and, in those less travelled parts to which we 
 mainly kept, a people absolutely unspoilt and unsophisti- 
 cated. The charm of country and people awoke interest 
 in its literature, and led, later on, to his translation of 
 Brand and of others of Ibsen's poems ; and he always 
 looked back to the times we had together in Norway, 
 not only as the best of holidays, but also as a happy influ- 
 ence in his life. A second visit to Norway in the following 
 year, completed the spell that ' der gammle land ' had 
 thrown over us."
 
 48 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 A letter of this period to Mr. Badley, shows the vein 
 
 of mock-seriousness which Garrett used a good deal to 
 
 his friends : 
 
 2 MtrsEUM Chambbes, 
 
 October 10. 
 
 Dear J. H. B., — I very much want to answer properly your 
 two splendid letters, for which thanks a thousand times and for 
 all that underlies them. I should have answered before but for 
 work — a week away at Manchester — neuralgia, &c. I will write 
 soon. But meanwhile something rather serious has come up, 
 which I must write about at once. 
 
 Dear old John and I have been having some talks about your 
 name. 
 
 We think " Jack " sounds somehow too Hght and flippant. 
 If you come to think of it, there isn't really much to choose 
 between it and " Jamie." " Jack the Ripper," for instance, is 
 a rather too ripping association. But first I should tell you that 
 we have written to Henry about calling him by that name. 
 " Harry " is so awfully un-serious, you know. A man called 
 Harry is blasted from the font. I think it is easy to under- 
 rate the influence of these little things on character. Now 
 " Henry " calls up grand historical associations. The mere 
 name is a trumpet. We both hope it will be of great help to 
 him in his life. 
 
 Have you heard from my sister Mary lately — by the way, I 
 haven't told you yet, have I, about our agreeing to call her by 
 this name ? It is her flrst name, you know ; and we think 
 " Amy " doesn't describe her at all. One wants a name to be 
 more than a mere way of calling one. It should convey a 
 testimonial, a picture, a criticism of life. " Amy " suggests 
 only the " shallow-hearted " associations of Locksley Hall. 
 
 Now about yourself. You see we want " John " for Withers, 
 and Henry is already occupied for the friend whom, in our 
 thoughtless days, when we were content to take names as we 
 found them, we used to call " Harry." So that unless your 
 second name turns out to be Habakkuk or Hezekiah or Hali- 
 carnassus — something for the mind to feed on — we shall be 
 rather up a genealogical tree in the matter of nomenclature. 
 We think, both of us, that it would be really the best thing for 
 us all to meet and talk it over — say up at Newcastle, which 
 seems the most natural and simple thing now that we are all 
 pretty well massed in the South of England.
 
 ASSISTANT-EDITOR OF THE PALL MALL 49 
 
 Please write about this, and send it on to Mary and Henry. 
 Love from John. 
 
 Believe me, Hezekiah, old man, 
 
 Yours, 
 
 Fydell. 
 
 Of Garrett's services in graver friendship, Mr. Badley 
 sends me the following illustrations : 
 
 That winter I was going through a time of much difficulty 
 and perplexity, and found new depths in his friendship, both 
 unfailing sympathy and also a sureness of judgment that brushed 
 aside the puzzling surface questions and went straight to the 
 heart of the matter. There was in him always the true quality 
 of statesmanship that in any question at once looked through 
 to the principle involved, and never lost grip of that while 
 adjusting externals ; while in this adjustment he was no doc- 
 trinaire but took all sides of human nature into account. No 
 less striking was his faith in human nature and in the ultimate 
 working out of things for good — a faith that only deepened 
 in the later years when he had to give up so many of his 
 own hopes. It was characteristically expressed in a letter of 
 this time : 
 
 " cannot recognise (what to me seems inseparable from 
 
 any conception of good as the strongest in the universe) that 
 there never is, though there often seems to be, for any human 
 soul on earth, an Inextricable Woe. To look upon any one, 
 however high, loved, and beset, as a damned soul even for the 
 period of this material life, is to my mind simply lack of faith 
 — lack of that ultimate indispensable faith which is broader and 
 deeper than all religions, seeing that they are only superstructures 
 on it. 
 
 " To me, this trouble does seem inextricable in away, because 
 I don't wholly understand it and feel helpless before it. But 
 that it is so really and altogether — I simply scout the idea. I 
 have faith absolute in love, working under any humanly con- 
 ceivable conditions, so long as it is within itself firm and sure, 
 no matter what conflicts with it outside of its own essence. 
 Love is strong, as the world testifies ; but two loves are as near 
 as possible almighty." 
 
 In 1891 the month's holiday was spent in Switzerland 
 instead of Norway. Garrett was far from well, and an
 
 50 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 uncomfortable day and night journey out to Arolla, in 
 the mistaken idea of getting as long a time as possible in 
 the mountain air, resulted in his having to spend a good 
 part of the time in getting over the fatigue. He and his 
 friends did not realise that it was any more than this ; 
 but another warning came when, after a fortnight's rest 
 and a few scrambles, they made the first attempt at the 
 climbing they had come for. Near the top there was a 
 sudden drag on the rope, and in a moment the guide was 
 applying handfuls of snow to Garrett's neck. Alike in 
 work and play the strength of body was unequal to the 
 strain. A characteristic episode in the autumn of 1891 
 brought things to the breaking-point. 
 
 In the romance of "Sir John Constantine," Q.'s hero is 
 fired by an announcement in the newspapers to the follow- 
 ing effect : 
 
 A gentleman — having read that the Methodist Preachers are 
 to pay a visit to Falmouth next month, and that on the occasion 
 of their last visit certain women, their sympathisers, were set 
 upon and brutally handled by the mob — hereby announces that 
 he will be present on the Market Strand, Falmouth, with intent 
 to put a stop to such behaviour, and invites any who share his 
 indignation to meet him there and help to see fair play. 
 
 EUGENIO. 
 
 There was romance to be found in the nineteenth, 
 as in an earlier, century. One day in October 1891, 
 " Eugenio " appeared in person in Northumberland Street. 
 Garrett was told off to see him, and described the 
 interview with characteristic spirit, humour and literary 
 skill :— 
 
 Yesterday there irrupted into the office from which issues 
 this sheet a Man. Large, athletically built, in a Norfolk jacket, 
 he had the air of a country gentleman. Branching moustaches, 
 soldierly bearing, and a weather-beaten face with boldly cut 
 features, made him look like an officer. But, officer and gentle- 
 man apart, he bore upon him the unmistakable stamp of a 
 Man. Before he had been long talking I found myself thinking
 
 ASSISTANT-EDITOR OF THE PALL MALL 51 
 
 of Dartrey Fenellan, of Nevil Beauchamp, of Beauchamp's 
 Tory uncle and Radical teacher, of Richard Feverel, of half a 
 dozen other variations of that type which Mr. George Meredith 
 loves so well, and which he has introduced into his novels almost 
 as regularly as that excellent foil to it — the cynical epigramma- 
 tist. Clearly tliis man was an Englishman after Mr. Meredith's 
 own heart — one of those who are to this Agnostic age what 
 the " muscular Christians " were to an age of Church 
 Revival. 
 
 I had always liked them from afar in books. And now I 
 was to meet a live one. " Upon my soul, sir," said Fenellan, 
 flaming tremendously, " things have come to a pass." 
 " Admitted ; but which particular things have you in your 
 mind ? " " Things at Eastbourne." " You are a sym- 
 pathiser with the Salvationists ... on the side of con- 
 stitutional right, perhaps ? " "I don't know about that 
 off-hand. I should have thought they might have been 
 let alone. But that's not my point. The women, sir, the 
 women ! " Dartrey Fenellan was urgent, instant, almost 
 pleading in tone. " They might bully and hustle the men as 
 they please — though that's cowardly enough, thousands of them 
 against an unresisting handful. But women — do you under- 
 stand ? Have you read it ? They knocked down women — 
 trampled them in the mud — beat them — bruised them — jumped 
 on one of them — made her hands stream blood ! It makes my 
 own blood boil ! " 
 
 Fenellan's eyes flashed like hard steel. He paused, and felt 
 his pockets for some scraps of paper, untidily pencilled, signed 
 with a flourish, addressed to the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 
 " I had scribbled something out on paper — I thought you might 
 print it as a letter. Perhaps it is too wild. Let me read it to 
 you — I can decipher my own fist ! " . . . Having read his letter, 
 Dartrey Fenellan — or, to give him now his own name as signed, 
 Mr. Charles Money, a scion of the well-known family of that 
 name — Mr. Money paused, evidently not ill-pleased, like Mr. 
 Micawber on a famous occasion, with the rounding of his own 
 sonorous sentences. 
 
 " But what do you propose to do, sir ? " " Do ? Why, go 
 down there myself, sir, with whoever cares to come and join me. 
 Take my stand in front of the poor girls myself, and see if I 
 can't appeal to the manhood of those fellows — if they have any. 
 But they have ! Every one has some better self somewhere ; 
 especially, sir, in a crowd, when he stands to be judged by other
 
 52 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 men. All that's needed is for some one to seize the moment 
 and strike the spark. Why, I remember a fellow in the Mutiny 
 — but I mustn't waste your time with autobiography. Suffice 
 it to say that I have lived among pretty rough-and-tumble men, 
 seen something of life in the old days in Australia, and know 
 human nature at its rudest. Sir, I believe I could shame them 
 if half a dozen other Englishmen will come and stand with 
 me. . . . Will they come ? They must, they will ! Never 
 did men fail for such a forlorn hope. Say that you will 
 receive names and suggestions — for next Sunday at Eastbourne 
 — and let who will, gentle or simple, do himself the honour to 
 volunteer ! " 
 
 The editorial post-bag was not over-weighted, if I 
 remember aright, with letters of enlistment. It requires 
 some effort of imagination in these days — when the Salva- 
 tion Army is an established institution, basking in Royal 
 favour, patted by Government, and having no more frowns 
 to fear than those of rigid Poor-Law inspectors — to realise 
 the prejudice, the hostility, the passion which blazed out 
 in the weekly battles upon the Eastbourne beach. Garrett 
 himself had urged upon Mr. Money counsels of prudence 
 and correctitude. But his tongue was in his cheek, and 
 he had no intention that Dartrey Fenellan should be 
 left in the lurch. Garrett and a few others — among 
 them a staunch friend of his and a colleague at that time 
 upon the Pall Mall Gazette, Mr. J. W. Robertson-Scott — 
 made up the minimum band of six, and the expedition 
 met with the success which it deserved but had little 
 expected. To his friend, Mr. Badley, Garrett described 
 the fortunes of the day : 
 
 November 3. 
 
 Dear Jack, — I survive, you see. All has gone splendidly. 
 I personally have had about the biggest success of my life in 
 the way of getting hold of a hostile crowd. 
 
 Old Money and I went down on Saturday. I was coughing 
 myself out of my skin, and dreaded a cold and drizzly morrow. 
 It rose fine and warm, and I am better for going. 
 
 We saw the Mayor — pulled him out of church for the purpose ;
 
 ASSISTANT-EDITOR OF THE PALL MALL 53 
 
 he partly came round to our view, though he utterly denied that 
 women had been knocked down and struck. We then went to 
 the Chief Constable, who told us of several cases . . . and wel- 
 comed our aid on the lines that he would stand by, spot, and 
 offer evidence — which no one in Eastbourne dared do, even 
 the local reporters being mobbed for giving accounts of 
 outrages. 
 
 We then put on wicket-keepers' " protectors " over a certain 
 part of our anatomy said to be much favoured by the mob when 
 kicking, and went down to the beach where the show was to 
 begin. Nothing much happened there. Thousands of people 
 looked on ; the police protected the Salvationists ; there were 
 a few ugly rushes. Then the Salvationists, and the crowd, to the 
 number of six or seven thousand, swept along through the 
 streets to the barracks. We six fellows. Money's men, kept 
 near the " lasses " with an open eye. We were spotted as 
 " spies " and hustled and kicked very casually and slightly 
 now and then, but no one seemed to identify us with the " four 
 hundred fighting men " which rumour reported Money to be 
 bringing down from London to champion the lasses. At last 
 the " citadel " was reached. There was a last ugly rush. The 
 police, behaving splendidly, shot the Salvationists into the said 
 citadel, and kept the mob at bay. Suddenly, amid the yells 
 and rushes. Money appears on the wall in front of the citadel, 
 over some spiked railings which the police tell him he'll be 
 knocked down on in five minutes if he doesn't get off, as they 
 won't be able to keep back the mob, now yelling and threatening 
 him. He yelled against them, got out a few words at last about 
 the women, struck an answering note here and there, but got 
 down with the bulk of the crowd hostile. He got down inside 
 the wall, in the citadel yard. 
 
 I had been cheering him just below outside, where the police 
 were. I had said I would back him if he spoke ; so I jumped 
 up on to the railings and stood there, and they yelled for five 
 minutes. I didn't yell but swore and waited. At last a few 
 began to be for hearing a word ; but the claque yelled again, 
 and I swore again — and then some one nigh gave me a hint to 
 get off Salvation Army property. Happy thought ! I crawled 
 along the railings to a high party-wall adjoining, climbed on to 
 the corner of that, and finally stood high thereon. This brought 
 some cheers, and I got out that I was not a Salvationist. " Open 
 your coat " (I was muffled like a Salvationist somewhat). I 
 flung everything open to my white shirt-front. Cheers and
 
 54 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 laughter. Got out then this: "Hear me for five minutes and 
 I'll get down, away from the police, and come into the middle of 
 you, and you can kick me on the belly if you like ! " " You've 
 got five minutes to live then ! " shouted a voice. 
 
 I had my five minutes — appealed about the women — got an 
 absolute silence in the surging sea of 6000 faces — appealed that 
 those who didn't wish Eastbourne to be called coward through 
 all England should put down the few blackguards that hit 
 women — said the " 400 fighting men " were only six, and / 
 was one of them ! Got cheers and a sort of salvo to the question 
 about putting down the women-beaters, if any such appeared 
 in future ; came down into the crowd, and through them in five 
 minutes into the open through a lane of cheering, hand-shaking, 
 back-patting, drink-ofifering people. So to the hotel, whither 
 about two thousand of the mob followed (Money having a 
 scuffle or two on the way, but the others sticking to him as to 
 me finely) ; and there they called for speeches from everybody 
 from the balcony, and when I asked three cheers for Money 
 they roared them and all ended happily. Nobody was hurt. 
 The Salvationists fared better than ever before all day, and are 
 effusively grateful. I am rather pleased ; for it was with a 
 heavy heart I went, being so seedy. Every one says it has 
 done good. 
 
 Garrett was quite right. The expedition turned the 
 tide ; and not the Salvation Army only, but the cause of 
 civic decency and good order had reason to be grateful 
 to Dartrey Fenellan and his men. Garrett himself gained 
 from the afTair a life-long friend. " My dear ' old ' Money," 
 he wrote ten years later, " not old nor in any danger of 
 ageing in the essential sense, so long as that grand red of 
 enthusiasm glows in the old bonfire called C. L. M. Your 
 enthusiastic young letter delighted me. Let a few of us 
 keep always young in this sense ; young in the power to 
 take impressions of people and events fresh and ardently. 
 To be sure, ' old ' in ' old Money ' has always been for me 
 as we use the word in ' old wine, old books, old friends are 
 best.' " But in other respects this business cost Garrett 
 dear. His courage and his high spirit could carry him
 
 ASSISTANT-EDITOR OF THE PALL MALL 55 
 
 triumphantly through such adventures, but he was making 
 continual overdrafts on his strength. Not many weeks 
 after the visit to Eastbourne, a complete cessation of 
 work was ordered, and Garrett set out on his second 
 search after health.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 EGYPT AND NORDRACH 
 
 Exiles, the derelict of fate. 
 
 Must love her unpossessed — 
 But 0, 'tis not the fortunate 
 
 That love her best.— F. E. G. 
 
 Garrett's next exile from England, in search of health, 
 was to Egypt. In that respect it was unsuccessful. He 
 had been advised to try the Baths of Helouan. In talking 
 of his sojourn there, he used to shorten the place-name 
 to a single syllable. The cure did no good to his lungs, 
 and in those days the place, to him at least, was insipid 
 and dispiriting. " About the poorest sport I've ever tried," 
 he wrote, " sand-glare, white houses, dusty streets — no 
 natives — nothing to see, nothing to learn, no one to speak 
 to." " How sick I am," he wrote again, " of hotel life, 
 hotel food, hotel corridors and halls and bedrooms and 
 officials — the fussy, noisy, alien, don't-care-a-damn-for- 
 you-sir, populous solitude." In other respects, however, 
 the months which he spent in Egypt were fruitful. They 
 were his introduction to the spirit of the East ; the fascina- 
 tion of it is described in a letter from Cairo " the most 
 enchanting and enchanted city in the world " : 
 
 To J. H. Badley. 
 
 April 25, 1892. 
 I have seen and loved — 
 
 The Sphinx — a weird personality in stone, expressionless and 
 therefore waking any expression in the mind of the onlooker, 
 and much more profoundly impressive than when first perfect 
 and unmutilated before the Pyramids and ages before the 
 Pharaoh of Joseph. 
 
 56
 
 EGYPT AND NORDRACH 57 
 
 The Pyramids — brute mass typifying brute force. Petrified 
 irony of fate, biggest tombs in the world yet builders' bones 
 rifled and names only a theory. When rightly seen, morally 
 and physically crushing and terrible. 
 
 The Pyramids terrify and depress. The Sphinx, immovable, 
 mute, almost benign in tolerant contempt of life, time, eternity 
 and mortality, almost consoles. 
 
 The Life, Colour and Spirit of the East as represented in Cairo ; 
 Saladin's capital ; Haroun al Raschid's fairyland ; a mediaeval 
 Arabian foil to the primaeval Egypt of the monuments, in a 
 nineteenth century of the English occupation. Description 
 limps here, but just by the way I jotted this down in ten minutes 
 of spare time on coming in the other day : 
 
 If you were here you would either be sketching all day or else, 
 like me, sitting with folded hands wanting some one else to do 
 it for one. To-day I was in the Brass Bazaar. There were 
 three elements, any one of which was worth a day's study — 
 the people, their wares, and the place itself. The place con- 
 sisted of streets at all angles and of all degrees of crooked narrow- 
 ness ; overhanging houses, their windows filled with mouldering 
 Arabian fretwork {moushrdbieh), and at odd corners arches, 
 showing one behind another, giving on by-ways or other bazaars, 
 the stones of them covered with worn Arabesque ornaments in 
 gentle relief. The people were buyers, beggars, passengers, 
 sellers and craftsmen at their v/ork. A veiled harem lady (but 
 with a roving eye) chaffers with a man who meanwhile goes on 
 chasing a brass incense-bowl wdth primitive tools. This shop 
 is a sort of big shallow cupboard (a mere excrescence on the 
 house which backs and overhangs it) — and he squats on a sort 
 of lowest shelf of it, and offers her coffee and a seat to continue 
 the bargain (now only in its third afternoon). The whole interior 
 of the cupboard-shelf behind him is full to the top with brazen 
 and copper-jugs and bowls and pans and ornaments and house- 
 hold things of all sorts and shapes and sizes, some old, some new, 
 many exquisitely chased or pierced. But here a donkey jostles 
 against us, carrying a fat sheikh, and we knock down a big lamp 
 six feet high of old embossed work, and feel bound therefore to 
 give a few piastres for a small pannikin used for " kohl " to 
 paint the eyes with . . . when a string of camels, whose loads 
 brush each side of the street, crowds us into a group of such 
 fleasy and odoriferous persons, of three or four colours and races, 
 that we flee through a Moorish arch and find ourselves in a 
 street of leather-sellers, ablaze with red and canary retrousse
 
 58 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 shoes hung out everywhere, just as a melancholy muezzin from 
 the grey minaret over our heads reminds us that it is the sunset 
 hour of prayer and hurries me back to my hotel. 
 
 Garrett's sojourn in Cairo synchronised with an import- 
 ant political episode in the history of the English occupa- 
 tion. Of this " Firman Crisis," as it is called — a serio- 
 comedy in several acts — there is a short account at the 
 beginning of Lord Milner's " England in Egypt." Beneath 
 the external absurdity of the thing, there was, as Lord 
 Milner said at the time, deep underlying significance. 
 There was a point involved at once of principle and of 
 practical importance. The Firman was from the Porte 
 investing Abbas II. with the Khediviate of Egypt. The 
 British Government had no desire to question or limit the 
 suzerainty of the Sultan, but it was an essential condition 
 of the British occupation that " no alteration should be 
 made in the Firmans regulating the relations between the 
 Sublime Porte and Egypt without the consent of her 
 Britannic Majesty's Government."* It had become known 
 to Sir Evelyn Baring that the Firman which the Turkish 
 Envoy had brought in his bag contained a vital alteration. 
 How vital, appeared only the other day in the " Sinai 
 Peninsula Crisis " of 1907. Of the diplomatic intrigue, 
 of the foiling of it by the British representative, of the 
 scenes of comedy which relieved the crisis, Garrett sent 
 a lively account to the Pall Mall Gazette. He had access 
 to the best source of information, and a journalist may on 
 occasion season his account of public affairs with just a 
 spice of indiscretion forbidden to the diplomatists them- 
 selves. His article on the subject may be consulted as a 
 footnote to Anglo-Egyptian history.f Of one of the most 
 interesting personalities in that history, Nubar Pasha, he 
 
 * Sir Evelyn Baring's despatch of April 13, 1892. 
 
 I " A Diplomatic Comedy : The Story of the Firman Crisis," Pall Mall 
 Gazette, April 26, 1892.
 
 EGYPT AND NORDRACH 59 
 
 wrote a capital character-sketch, from which a few 
 passages of Nubar's conversation may be quoted : 
 
 Old and of small stature — though neither so old-looking nor 
 so small as that wizened crab-apple enclosing a bombshell, Riaz 
 — Nubar in conversation grows to a dignity and gracious power 
 which are very winning. Given what he calls a sympathique 
 audience, he is wonderful. As a compliment he had begun in 
 English ; but he soon broke into the lingua franca of Egypt, 
 and though I followed his rapid French periods with the vagary 
 of the average Briton, Nubar's French is so artistic that I enjoyed 
 it even through my pangs. The language of facile epigram, it 
 fits Nubar like a glove. For Nubar is the prince of phraseurs. 
 In this particular talk we were largely engaged on a subject, 
 the special hobby of the Father of the Mixed Tribunals, his 
 devotion to which is proved by its tempting him out of paradox 
 into platitude. Le gouvernement c'est la justice ! Nubar declared. 
 Another side of Egypt appears in his remark that the government 
 of the land of the Nile, alone among governments, resembles the 
 Creator in the power of giving or withholding rain in due season. 
 On the subject of the British occupation I remember a striking 
 phrase which he used to me. " You English," he said, " are 
 the Turks of Western Europe." * It was not altogether meant 
 flatteringly ; but Nubar has a high respect for the Turk. The 
 Turk, to him, is the conqueror and the governor ; the man who 
 takes countries and who stolidly holds together what he has 
 taken (in spite of every one sajdng continually that it must soon 
 fall to pieces). The Turk is also, to the Egyptian, a proud man, 
 and a man of phlegm. Finally he resembles us " Turks of the 
 West " in his offensive manner and his impregnable, complacent 
 stupidity. For, to Nubar, the Englishmen in Egypt, whose 
 dogged lips do not relax even at exquisite phrases, are dull dogs 
 all.t 
 
 At Cairo, Garrett saw Lord Cromer. " I had an hour's 
 talk," he wrote, after the first interview, " with the great 
 and formidably-spoken-of Baring ; he was most friendly 
 and gracious, like every one else I have yet seen here." 
 Lord Cromer, as most other men who chanced to meet 
 
 * Nubar's phrase may be found also in Lord Cromer's " Modern Egypt," 
 vol. ii. p. 173. 
 
 t " A Day with Nubar Pasha : the Egyptian Premier at Home," West- 
 minster Gazette, April 20, 1894.
 
 60 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 Garrett, was impressed by his attractive and brilliant 
 qualities, and had schemes for enlisting him in the ranks 
 of Anglo-Egyptian journalism. He had urgent offers at 
 the same time of a like kind from South Africa, but he had 
 not yet abandoned hope of being able to resume work in 
 England. Garrett met Lord Milner also, then serving as 
 under-secretary for finance in Egypt, and a friendship 
 sprung up between them which was afterwards to ripen 
 in another part of Africa. " One of the nicest, ablest and 
 best of fellows," was his description of Lord Milner at 
 first sight. Had Garrett stayed in Egypt, he would not 
 have lacked friends. Wherever he was, he made them 
 quickly. I find mention in a letter to his cousin of an 
 official in the Irrigation Department and his wife who 
 invited him in the kindest possible way if he remained, 
 to come and live with them. " I was rather touched," 
 he wrote, " by the impulsive, generous, kind way with 
 which the offer was made — ' for some unknown reason 
 seemed to have known me all their lives,' &c. &c. All 
 this out of sheer kindness of heart." But there was that 
 in Garrett which found its way to the heart. 
 
 Garrett returned from Egypt none the better in health 
 but rather the worse ; indeed, on the voyage home, he 
 was very seriously ill. It was clear that any return to 
 daily journalism was at present impossible ; his place at 
 the Pall Mall Gazette had to be filled up ; and the question 
 for Garrett was whither to go in search of a cure. A 
 year or two before, his elder sister had gone with Mr. 
 Badley, whom she was presently to marry, to visit her old 
 friends at Nordrach, in the Schwarzwald — the sanatorium 
 where the open-air cure for phthisis had been practised for 
 some years, and had already won the recognition in 
 Germany that it won later in our own and other countries, 
 through many similar systems of treatment that derived 
 their inspiration from it. What Garrett's sister and Mr. 
 Badley saw and heard during their stay in the wooded
 
 EGYPT AND NORDRACH 61 
 
 upland valley, ideally suited for the purpose for which it 
 had been selected, convinced them that if Edmund had 
 to go anywhere for rest and cure, this was the place 
 of all others ; and there in June 1892 they went with 
 him. 
 
 Letters to his cousin record his pleasant impressions 
 of the place, and of the hopeful view which the doctors 
 took of his case : 
 
 To Miss Agnes Garrett. 
 
 June 2. 
 
 This is written in the open air on my knee to bring you my 
 dear love, and say that the launching-off of care and forethought- 
 fulness that I had at Gower Street have availed to carry me all 
 the way here in sunshine, and here I am making as fair a start 
 as man could make. The hosts are as hospitable and cheery and 
 friendly, the place is as beautiful and bracing, the plan is as 
 well ordered, to my first impressions, as ever I have been told, and 
 more so than ever I looked to find. The Herr Dr. and I have 
 chummed up excellently. They find my weight more than 
 they expected and my soundings much better too, and they 
 couldn't bring my temp, out much above the normal, though 
 they do resort to ways of taking it. 
 
 To the same. 
 
 June 10. 
 
 How wonderful it is — how good everybody has been to me 
 in this business ! Some of the happiest time in my life was in 
 bits during that wretched Egjrptian time when it seemed to 
 come in upon me that I have a real little place of my own in 
 the world and that there are people to whom it would be different 
 if I wasn't there to fill the place. The sources of joy, and bitter- 
 ness lay very close together — especially when I thought I might 
 have before me a purgatory of helpless burdensomeness to all 
 these people, and that even if it were soon ended, what a ship- 
 wreck it would be of how many dear cares and hopes and labours 
 and priceless pains spent on me these eight years past by you, 
 my Deare. Now I do begin to feel as if there was a new heaven 
 and a new earth suddenly risen out of the sea, and I will take 
 thankfully and cheerfully whatever lot comes, if it allows me 
 strength and power to work my way in however humble a 
 capacity, and be in your life, and that of a few other dear folk,
 
 62 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 one among the things that help, not among the things that 
 hinder and oppress. But I mustn't ramble on this way, even 
 writing on moss in a pine-wood. Shall I ever have you here, to 
 show you the Norwegian bits of Nordrach ? Elsie [his younger 
 sister] and I are sitting in just such a bit, at the end of my morning 
 walk's tether, sprawling on moss-cushions among rounded 
 boulders down by a bubbling brook full of brown and green and 
 glancing pools with the sun dodging the pine-branches and 
 dropping down round us in restless little blots and patches. 
 
 To the same. 
 
 June 23. 
 
 The walks are lovelier the farther one goes. The nuisance is 
 having to go them " Krank pace " and forswear steep paths, 
 which of course are always the nicest. I horrified the Herr 
 Doctor soon after I first came by being seen running at a very 
 gentle trot down a grassy slope to cut off some of the elaborate 
 zigzags of a Krank path — also by dropping down one day like a 
 spider on to Nordrach from a view-point on the neighbouring hill. 
 Now I have acquired something nearer the true Krank instinct, 
 and you can hardly tell which way I'm going on a given road ; 
 though I still hold out for some Dispensation on the ground of 
 being an Englishman and not a native waddler. 
 
 To one of Garrett's temperament the long inaction 
 and monotony of the life, the constant restraint on his 
 activity and the daily struggle with the amount of food 
 on which much of the cure depended, could not but be 
 irksome in the highest degree ; but having made up his 
 mind to go through with the cure, he would not let patience 
 or good humour fail him. He read much, wrote as much as 
 he was allowed, and made the most of the restricted exercise 
 that was enjoined. For the doctors of the sanatorium he 
 soon had high regard, and from this year dated a friend- 
 ship with Dr. Hope Lehmann that for the rest of his life was 
 of the utmost value to him. Of other society there was not 
 much to attract him. On his part he was always ready to 
 be friendly to all, though he would never waste time in 
 empty social politeness where there could be nothing 
 really in common ; and here as everywhere his unfailing
 
 EGYPT AND NORDRACH 63 
 
 sense of humour helped him through things that others 
 would have found simply vexatious. 
 
 In the autumn Garrett had a welcome diversion. " In 
 order," says Mr. Badley, " that Edmund might be present, 
 my marriage with his sister took place in the quaint little 
 town nearest to Nordrach ; and in all the arrangements 
 and preparations for the school we were about to open 
 he took the keenest and fullest part, from journalistic 
 help down to the planning of badge and motto — work of 
 each for weal of all — that was to embody its spirit." 
 
 Among Garrett's letters I find a lively account of the 
 simple ceremonies of a wedding in the Black Forest which 
 may not be without interest to some readers : 
 
 To Miss Agnes Gaekett. 
 
 November 8. 
 
 " It has them," as the Burgomaster choicely expressed it 
 yesterday. It took us two days, but it is done, and here fol- 
 loweth the true and particular account. Yesterday was the 
 State's only; to-day, the Church's. In Germany it's only the 
 State that matters ; no church can register ; so by rights it 
 was yesterday, the 7th, that they were married, but we all agreed 
 to count it from to-day, since the Church still keeps the poetry 
 to herself and the State was very prosaic indeed. Yesterday 
 morning the Herr Doctor drove Jack and Amy and me down to 
 Nordrach. As we passed the old Burgomaster's house two 
 white shirt-sleeves appeared strikingly at the window : his Frau 
 was helping him on with his black coat. This abashed us a 
 little, for Jack and I were very much in mufti — indeed I wore 
 knickerbockers with plum-coloured stockings. At the Rathhaus 
 further down the street we got out and waited. At last the 
 Burgomaster appeared — we thought the black coat must have 
 split down the back and needed sewing up again. Into the 
 Rathhaus we went — a large building including schoolroom, 
 from which latter could be heard the sing-song of the children 
 at their lessons. The Burgomaster was very cordial and genial, 
 and we all sat about the table. The sheaf of certificates which 
 we had accumulated to show our bona-fides were produced on a 
 file, and Jack and Amy were instructed to say Ja to whatever 
 was asked them. Then the Burgomaster got down their names
 
 64 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 on a private note of his own in phonetic spelling {Schon hedn badli, 
 &c. &c.) ; and explaining parenthetically that it was the first 
 time he had ever married an English couple, prepared to ask 
 the fateful question. First, however, he dismissed all smiles 
 from his clean-shaven old face, and with a child-like expression 
 slipped over his grey head what looked like a silver watch-chain 
 with a florin at the end. Thus invested with full municipal 
 dignity, he addressed " Schon " and " Emi " and asked them 
 if each really wished to marry the other ? Each replied " /a," 
 and — behold it was done ! The old man doffed his chain, re- 
 sumed the merely human role, and shaking them paternally by 
 the hand, pronounced some appropriate wish which Jack [breezily 
 " danke'd," as who should say " It's all in the day's work." 
 Then to the inn, where the representative of civic dignity joined 
 us, and we all partook of some of the nastiest wine which family 
 devotion ever brought its reluctant lips to smack over. 
 
 And then we went home to dinner. The Kranks were all 
 eyes, especially when the Herr Doctor addressed Amy down 
 the table as " Mrs. Badley." " Never mind," quoth Jack, 
 " when we are well through this we shall be armed with triple 
 brass ! " In Amy's place was a pretty little stand made of 
 fir-sprigs bearing a gratulatory card of colour and design which 
 even German art could hardly beat. This was a friendly Krank's 
 offering. But there was more to come. That evening we were 
 all bidden to the Speisesaal at 6.45, and sat as in a theatre — no 
 tables, and a cold collation (of ample size) served in our seats. 
 Jack and Amy were put in the centre chairs of the front rank, 
 but we had managed to protest against " thrones." First, the 
 children did a little play, which was encored — and very prettily 
 they did it. It represented a young man going round a family 
 to ask for the hand of the daughter and being referred from one 
 to another in a House-that-Jack-built sort of way. Then a boy 
 called Karl, got up as a geigerl (I won't swear to spelling), or 
 Viennese Anglo-maniac masher, recited a little ballad composed 
 by one of the Kranks with a comic English burden of " Oh jes ! " 
 (as it was spelt in the MS.). This was very topical ; it described 
 Jack coming from England in cavalier style, and reminded " Mees 
 Eme " not to forget at the appropriate moment to answer " Oh 
 jes ! " They (the pair) sat through this beautifully ; I felt the 
 " martyr's stalls " weren't good enough for them. But the fact 
 is every one was brimming over with good humour and good 
 wishes, and nobody had a doubt but that the whole thing was 
 the very heart's desire of the bride and bridegroom in whose
 
 EGYPT AND NORDRACH 65 
 
 honour it was done. The evening ended with fireworks out- 
 side and the salute-gun which we had on the Grand Duke's 
 birthday. 
 
 This morning we arose early and showed the breakfasting 
 Kranks what we could do when we tried in the smart line. Amy 
 in all her glory, Jack in new clo', and I in my best dove-coloured 
 bags and new shoes and the Fur Coat over all ! The drive to 
 Gengenbach is over the hills, lovelier even than the one to 
 Biberach-Zell. They both looked very quiet and happy. I felt 
 I must try to represent all of us, and could not succeed in repre- 
 senting what I felt myself. There was no sun, but it was not dull ; 
 fresh and cool air, and the last of the autumn glories looking 
 almost like sunlight from wood to wood till we got to Gengen- 
 bach. This is a perfect gem of the Black Forest : picturesque 
 streets, towers, gates and so on. But the " Evangelical Church " 
 turned out to be a little newish place, not unlike the chapels 
 in Littlehampton Cemetery. Alas for Protestant architecture ! 
 However, inside it proved to be plain, simple, almost pretty. 
 The Pfarrers' house was close by. He was a gentlemanly little 
 man, a Lutheran German edition of my father. We felt that 
 he would do very well. After looking over the certificate from 
 the Burgomaster, he led the way to the church. The Pfarrer 
 appeared in a neat black gown with white bands, and read a 
 homily from a book in resonant sonorous German. Then he 
 motioned those two to the altar steps, where each had to respond 
 " Ja " to the familiar question. They took each other's hands 
 first kneeling on the steps and then standing up — there is no ring 
 in the German ceremony. In a quarter of an hour the service 
 was ended. Afterwards Jack told me the service seemed to 
 him as beautiful as the English without its defects. I had only 
 understood parts myself. 
 
 I'm sorry to say that while the Pfarrer was pronouncing sen- 
 tences and putting " Amens " at the end of each, I was somehow 
 reminded of Karl last night and his " Oh jes " after each verse. 
 But when they joined hands I had to try to think of Karl to 
 prevent my eyes filling with tears. They two were just quietly 
 happy, facing the new life full of hope and faith, and I did not 
 want to show more emotion than they did. 
 
 Shortly after these events, my wife and I came to spend 
 a day or two with Garrett at Nordrach, and he entertained 
 us with an account of their lighter passages. His conver- 
 sation was very like his letters ; though it gained much,
 
 66 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 which the sympathetic imagination of the reader of these 
 letters must supply, by the frank, hearty laughter, and 
 many a dramatic accompaniment — as in this case by 
 appeal to the self-same plum-coloured stockings, by assur- 
 ance to my wife as we sat out in the woods with him in 
 rough homespun that he could cut a very elegant figure 
 when he tried. The principal subject of interest to him 
 on this occasion was, however, an event in the history of 
 the Pall Mall Gazette. In the previous September I was 
 taking holiday in Italy, when a telegram reached me 
 announcing to my intense surprise and no little mortifica- 
 tion that the paper had been sold to a new proprietor. On 
 reaching home, I was invited on behalf of the new pro- 
 prietorship to retain the editorship ; but having ascer- 
 tained that the invitation did not cover an entirely free 
 hand, and having reason to suspect (for there had been 
 much superfluous mystery) that the real intention was to 
 convert the paper into a Conservative organ, I at once 
 resigned my post, being followed therein by most of the 
 members of the editorial staff. These events stung 
 Garrett to the quick. " Here, we have been," he said, 
 " you and the rest of us working loyally with high falutin' 
 ideas of the prestige and traditions of the Paper, working 
 to put those ideas on a sound financial basis — only to find 
 ..." well, what we did find. For my part I was too 
 absorbed in arrangements for the future to trouble over 
 much about the past. I was very busy in the multifarious 
 work of the new Liberal Gazette — ultimately named 
 The Westminster — which Sir George Newnes had enabled 
 me to found. Garrett in his enforced inactivity could 
 only brood and expostulate — which he did in various 
 letters and verses, to somewhat explosive effect. " But 
 when one has eased one's mind," he wrote, " by all the 
 swears in the world there remains the irreparable gap — 
 the fortress betrayed. I feel as if a great piece of my life 
 was broken off and thrown into the sea." Does all this
 
 EGYPT AND NORDRACH '67 
 
 sound a little over-tragic to the reader ? Very likely it 
 does ; for he can have no knowledge of the amount of 
 labour, zeal, and enthusiasm thrown into what we always 
 fondly called " the old Pall Mall,'' or of the hopes, am- 
 bitions, ideals which centred in it. In any case Garrett's 
 indignation and the expression which he gave to it were 
 very characteristic of him. Characteristic, for one thing, 
 of his high ideal of journalism ; characteristic also of his 
 high-strung temperament. Other people suppressed their 
 feelings ; the more did he burn that some one should 
 " bell the cat." The quarrel, such as it was, affected 
 others more nearly than him ; it was like him to be more 
 eager in another's cause than in his own, and the hard 
 fortune of his old colleagues long rankled in his generous 
 soul.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE 
 
 Friends that the winds have scattered, 
 
 Friends that the waves have hurled. 
 Hail to your blown and battered 
 
 Flag once again unfurled ! 
 Slip the last shoreward tether, 
 And staunch, once more together, 
 Launch in the north-west weather. 
 
 Steer for the newer world ! — F. E. G. 
 
 Garrett returned from Nordrach in the spring of 1893, 
 much better in health, but not yet able to plunge back 
 into the full tide of journalism. Two years later, he was 
 appointed editor of the Cape Times. The intervening 
 period was one of gradually recovered strength. He took 
 up quarters in London in the house of his London physician 
 and warm-hearted friend, Dr. Jane Walker. To friend- 
 ships with women he owed much throughout his life ; 
 and they, not a little to him for the terms of equal and 
 easy comradeship upon which he made such friendships 
 to live and move. It was Dr. Walker's care to see that 
 the ground gained at Nordrach was not lost again by undue 
 exertion. Into these two years Garrett put, however, 
 a great deal of work — partly journalistic, and partly 
 literary ; though in his case this is a distinction which 
 need not be pressed too far ; his topics in journalism were 
 seldom trivial, his treatment of them was never devoid 
 of literary spirit. For change of air and scene, he often 
 went during these years to Bedales, the " New School " 
 started by his brother-in-law, and now conducted by him 
 and his wife (the Jack and Amy of the previous chapter). 
 
 68
 
 THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE 69 
 
 Garrett had always taken the liveHest interest in his 
 friend's experiment in the co-education of boys and girls, 
 and in the supplementing of games by manual labour. 
 He had collaborated in the pamphlet* — extending almost 
 to a book, " the Mammoth " he used to call it — which 
 sets out the aims and system of the school, and which 
 is well worth the notice of those who are interested in such 
 experiments. Mr. Badley tells me that Garrett entered 
 keenly into every detail of the school's welfare, as though 
 he had never had anything else to think of. " For our 
 first school-play, Macbeth,'"' for instance, " he wrote and 
 illustrated an article on amateur acting, f that procured 
 us the dresses ; he made at a few hours' notice and chiefly 
 out of brown paper, a witches' cave ; and himself acted the 
 part of Banquo with such horrific effect as the ghost that 
 our maids confessed to being ' afraid to go past the door 
 of his room when they thought of it.' " The recollection 
 is characteristic of the zest which Garrett threw into all 
 the business of life, small or great, gay or grave. It was 
 in 1893-4 that his verse translation of Brand,X begun at 
 Nordrach, was revived and completed with the help of a 
 Norwegian friend who was spending the winter at Bedales. 
 "It is easy not to write a five-act tragedy " ; easy also, 
 as Garrett said in a prefatory note, not to translate it 
 when written. His performance of the self-appointed 
 task was a tour de force. It had been long in his mind, 
 but his power of concentrated work had, as we have seen, 
 been broken by ill-health. Another version of the same 
 play was announced in the press, when Garrett's was still 
 in scraps. He set to and had it finished in six weeks. 
 Ibsen was a favourite author with him ; and at a time 
 when the later stage-plays were making much stir in the 
 
 * " Bedales School : Outline of its Aims and System. An Essay in Educa- 
 tion." Cambridge. Printed at the University Press, 1900. 
 
 \ " How to Get Dressed Up," Westminster Gazette, December 21, 1893. 
 
 J " Brand : a Dramatic Poem by Henrik Ibsen. Translated into English 
 Verse in the Original Metres." T. Fisher Unwin : 1894.
 
 70 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 world, Garrett was anxious, I think, to bring before the 
 English reader, in poetic form, an example of the more 
 imaginative work of the poet's earlier period. A passage 
 from Garrett's introduction describes the poignancy 
 which the central motive of the play had for him : 
 
 There is a broad simplicity about the central motive of Brand ; 
 a simplicity which, amid so much that is romantic and so much 
 that is realistic, almost recalls classic models. And after all, 
 whatever else you may choose to see in the poem, it is this simple 
 central motive which gives it its poignancy. In Brand's succes- 
 sive renunciations, in his sacrifice of ambition and career, his 
 ordeal as a son, as a father, as a husband, the eternal struggle 
 between life and ideals, between the absolute and the human, 
 is represented with a native force which renders some of the 
 scenes, to me at least, among the most moving in literature. 
 We are stirred as with a trumpet-blast when the weak and 
 paltering side of human nature goes down before Brand's " All 
 or Nothing " ; when it is pure and tender love that is crushed 
 by the inflexible demand, the pathos becomes too deep for tears. 
 But that is because the pity and terror of it are the pity and 
 terror of life. 
 
 Garrett's version is easy to read ; it seems to me to 
 abound in metrical ingenuity, and it is, I believe, faithful 
 to the original. But this is a point upon which I am 
 incompetent to speak. Mr. P. H. Wicksteed, a friend of 
 Garrett's, admirably equipped to appreciate this side of 
 his work, has very kindly sent me the following note : 
 
 Garrett's translation of Brand is, so far as the noblest and 
 most vital portions of that great drama are concerned, a truly 
 inspired piece of work. The " pity and terror " of the poem 
 had entered into him and were part and parcel of his whole 
 sense of human life. The central heart-beat of Brand was to 
 him an " exchange of pulses " with the universal throb of human 
 passion and aspiration. It was one with the tragedy of victory 
 in defeat, and defeat in victory, of which every heroic soul is 
 in its turn the protagonist. It possessed him. There is a great 
 passage in the first act in which Agnes, after she and Einar have 
 been interrupted in their sport by Brand, is wooed back by her 
 lover to the light-hearted joy which the seer's visions and appeals
 
 THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE 71 
 
 had dissipated. She hardly hears his words, but in awed abstrac- 
 tion of mind asks him did he not see " how the man grew as he 
 spoke." The reader of Garrett's translation, no less than the 
 reader of the original, knows well what she means. For he has 
 already felt, once and again, a spiritual elevation and expansion 
 entering into Brand's discourse which is as palpable as a physical 
 phenomenon. 
 
 Garrett professed no fine Norse scholarship. But there is 
 something more vital to a translator than sensitiveness to 
 philological minutiae. It is sensitiveness to the author's moods 
 and insight into his experience. To have an instinctive sense 
 of what the author means is better than pedantic scrupulosity 
 as to what he says. But evidently Garrett under-estimated the 
 delicacy of his own feeling for the language. He relied much 
 on the judgment of his friends and was generous in his acknow- 
 ledgments, but no one could have turned out such work as 
 his without a sound, if not a technical, knowledge of the idiom 
 from which he was translating. In any case his mastery of 
 English admits of no question. His resources seem to be almost 
 boundless. He evidently believed that effective rhyme and 
 rhythm could be and must be secured without any sacrifice 
 of sense or phrasing. The English language always had the 
 turn of expression that was not the best compromise between 
 the two requirements, but the alliance by which each reached 
 its maximum of realisation. 
 
 In the great passages betw^een Agnes and Brand this ideal is 
 infallibly embodied in Garrett's work. In the long passages 
 in which we feel the almost unendurable jar between Brand's 
 ideals and the commonplaces of his two principal foils — the 
 Sherif and the Dean — the translator himself evidently feels less 
 secure, and is less firm in his tread. Here "inspiration" can 
 hardly be thought of and resourceful skill is all that seems 
 possible. And here, though Garrett is perpetually delighting 
 the student of the original by his felicity and strength, his results 
 have less of the sustained and sustaining quality than \\\\&n the 
 tension is higher. A discerning critic on reading his Brand 
 would already have marked him out as the man chosen by the 
 gods to translate Ibsen's lyrics. 
 
 Garrett's work upon Brand, with the larger knowledge 
 that it had given him of the Norwegian people and litera- 
 ture, added fresh zest to his next holiday. In August 
 1894 he went with his two sisters, joined presently by
 
 72 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 Mr. Badley, to revisit old scenes in Norway, A letter to 
 his cousin gives us a pleasant glimpse of sunny gleams 
 and simple hospitality : 
 
 Lass LaerdaVs farm, near the Tunshergsdalsbrae. — Our first 
 afternoons were lovely, and ever since we have gone some jolly 
 expeditions every morning and every afternoon to valleys and 
 waterfalls, both old friends and new discoveries. We have had 
 a good deal of rain, but plenty of fairyland weather between 
 whiles, for in this land the barometer cannot keep up with the 
 changes from shine to shower — only the rainbow is swift enough 
 to come in between. I have done some grand spins, and feel 
 that by the time Jack comes I shall be game to go anywhere. 
 This is not an inn at all, but a farmhouse which took us in two 
 years ago when benighted returning from the Tunsbergsdals 
 glacier. We always said if they would let us we would next 
 time come and stay some days — so we just turned up and are 
 installed grandly in the guest chamber. 
 
 Of the subsequent wanderings of the party, Mr. Badley 
 has again a characteristic reminiscence : 
 
 We had visits to return to hospitable friends ; and it was just 
 like him that in a house where our host could speak no English, 
 while the rest of us could manage only the merest " bread and 
 butter " prate, he kept all delighted by talk made only the more 
 amusing by a highly poetical vocabulary drawn from Brand. 
 But so it was wherever he found himself. If the direct attack 
 failed, he would make a flank movement which never failed to 
 produce, not only the thing wanted, but so much delight that 
 he was at once on good terms with all he had to do with — one 
 of those traits that contributed to the feeling with which all 
 alike regarded him. 
 
 I forget whether it was from this or an earlier visit to 
 Norway that Garrett brought back a favourite story. 
 " You've been to Norway ; what is the Gothenburg system 
 like ? " " Oh, as far as I can remember, it's something 
 like this : you order whisky as hot water, and they put it 
 down in the bill as sugar." 
 
 The literary work to which Garrett turned upon the 
 conclusion of Brand, was an examination of Theosophy,
 
 THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE 73 
 
 as developed under the personal influence of Mrs. Besant.* 
 " Everybody knows " — I here quote Garrett's preface — 
 " that Madame Blavatsky, the original founder of the 
 Theosophical Society, supported its pretensions to an 
 occult origin by the production of phenomena which were 
 pronounced by careful investigators to be due to systematic 
 trickery, but which are still believed by the faithful to 
 have been produced, at Madame's request, and in support 
 of the Theosophic movement, by certain Eastern sages 
 possessed of transcendental powers over mind and matter. 
 Everybody will remember that Mrs. Besant, on whom the 
 mantle of Madame Blavatsky has fallen, made a sensational 
 public assertion, some time after her teacher's death, to 
 the effect that those ' powers ' were still at work (they were 
 indeed !), and that she was herself now the recipient of 
 similar ' communications ' from the ' Mahatmas.' A few 
 people are aware that as the result of a sort of split among 
 prominent members of the society, there was recently a 
 Theosophic meeting at which Mrs. Besant confessed to her 
 friends that there had been something wrong with the 
 ' communications ' which she had been in such a hurry to 
 announce to the public ; made certain Theosophically 
 obscure charges against a brother official of the society ; 
 but persuaded those assembled to rest content with a 
 general statement and not to inquire into the facts further 
 — in short, generally to hush the matter up." 
 
 Garrett's object was to prevent this hushing up, and to 
 unveil what he called " the Great Mahatma Hoax." His 
 papers before collection into volume-form, appeared 
 serially in the Westminster Gazette, where they attracted 
 much attention and controversy. Garrett during these 
 weeks was in the highest spirits. He was a born con- 
 troversialist, and loved nothing more than a good scrim- 
 
 * " Isis Very Much Unveiled : The Story of the Great Mahatma Hoax." 
 (Westminster Gazette Library, vol. ii. 1904-5.) The design on the cover was 
 Garrett's draughtsmanship. A cartoon on p. 1 19 was by Mr. Arthur Rackham.
 
 74 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 mage. He was seldom tempted into taking an unfair 
 point, but he never missed an opportunity for ridicule. 
 " I have tried," he said, " to render a service to truth ; 
 but I cannot see, with some good people, that a sense of 
 truth necessarily excludes a sense of humour." I can 
 hear his pleasant laugh now as he would direct my atten- 
 tion to some palpable hit, or hurry back into the room 
 to steal time from impatient proof-reader or printer's- 
 boy to insinuate one last little dig or polish some thrust 
 to yet finer point. Garrett " tried to render a service to 
 truth." His exposure caused misgivings among some 
 of the faithful at the time ; whether it has permanently 
 weakened the congregation, I do not know. The yearning 
 to pierce behind the veil will survive many unveilings, 
 such as Garrett performed ; and there are those, I daresay, 
 to whom the ruder the exposure, the greater is the grace 
 in not being ashamed. I find, however, among Garrett's 
 papers the following quaint letter, dated 1903, from the 
 United States : " Several years ago the writer read your 
 ' Isis very much Unveiled.' I remember writing you rather 
 an hysterical letter, but still have the decency to thank 
 you for what you did for me. The dose was a severe 
 one, and my recovery has been slow. I enlisted in the 
 army and have served in Cuba. You cannot appreciate 
 the journey from a diet of stewed prunes or Theosophical 
 gruel to one of embalmed beef in the U.S. Army. It 
 was a severe change but did lend me some self-respect, 
 and I believe I am cured." So, after many years, Garrett 
 did at least rescue one convert from the Theosophical 
 maze. 
 
 Garrett's journalistic work during the years with which 
 we are concerned in this chapter was contributed to the 
 Westminster Gazette. His place as assistant editor, had 
 already been filled, in his enforced absence, by another 
 distinguished journalist, the present editor of the West- 
 minster, Mr. J. A. Spender. Our first number appeared
 
 THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE 75 
 
 on January 31, 1903. Garrett sent for it " A Song of 
 Launching," written in swinging Swinburnian metre. 
 He often spoke of this as one of his pieces which pleased 
 him most; in its references to public and journalistic 
 affairs, it contained much of his loves and some of his 
 hates ; I have drawn upon it once or twice for chapter 
 headings. It was agreed that he should look in at the 
 office when it suited him, and regard himself as a semi- 
 attached member of the staff. In this capacity he con- 
 tributed many miscellaneous articles, interviews, book- 
 reviews and topical verses. " In my Radical Days ; a 
 Brummagem Ballad," would still delight those who like 
 turning over on the tongue the inconvenient utterances 
 of politicians with a past. An interview with Sir John 
 Gorst on his East-end experiences contained a story which 
 must be disinterred for the sake of members of Garrett's 
 London Club : 
 
 It was a true East-end melodrama. Scene, in the snow 
 outside the Foundling Hospital. The villain casting off his 
 own daughter. He flings her down in the snow — he is in gorgeous 
 evening dress, that is how j^ou know he is a villain — and, turning 
 to the cabman, says : " Drive me to the National Liberal 
 Club ! " 
 
 " Was this the leaven of the Independent Labour Party 
 working on the stage ? " I asked Sir John. He was inclined 
 to think it rather the expression of the fact that the N.L.C. 
 was to East-end imagination the grandest and most gorgeous 
 and wicked thing conceivable ! 
 
 " National Liberal Club," I found myself telling my cabman, 
 as I came away ; and my cabman wondered what I found to 
 laugh at in the direction.* 
 
 The recollection of this little story gave a relish to many 
 a luncheon which we took together at that blameless 
 establishment. 
 
 Garrett occasionally contributed a leading article 
 
 ♦ Westminster Gazette, May 30, 1894.
 
 76 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 also,* on some subject that specially interested him, such as 
 the education or rights of women ; in which connection 
 a passage may be cited from a little skit entitled " May 
 Men eat Macaroons ? " 
 
 Ought men — manly self-respecting men — to eat macaroons ? 
 It is a momentous question. It is the epitome, the test case 
 of the whole Woman Question from A to Z, It is a sign of the 
 times that it should be raised, for it represents the beginning of 
 a terrible revanche which I have long prophesied. Man's return 
 match in the game of sex-usurpation. It is the beginning of the 
 end. Those bold and brazen wild women, that shrieking sister- 
 hood against whom I have so often been compelled, alas ! reluct- 
 antly, to break the silence which St. Paul so judiciously commends 
 to my sex, these epicene monsters are now to be paid back in 
 their own base coin. Woman has usurped the sceptre of mag- 
 nanimous, long-suffering man, and now, maddened beyond 
 endurance, man threatens to invade the sphere of woman, and 
 so complete the chaos which she has begun. . . . 
 
 If we could confine the macaroon habit to one class or to one 
 time of day — But can we ? There will be nothing but his own 
 individual caprice between the man and the macaroon. With 
 the democratisation of the times, all barriers are falling away. 
 Jeames will be crumbling biscuits over his master's best black 
 coat, and his master will enclose crumbs in his most important 
 business communications. The coachman will drive into a 
 lamp-post while drawing the biscuit bag from his coat-tail pocket, 
 and the footman drop his petits morceaux into the soup as he 
 hands it round at table. That which has gone well enough 
 with the petty cares of kitchen and nursery will now be interfer- 
 ing — a degrading habit — in the weighty and exhausting cares 
 of the forum, the bench, the Stock Exchange. The barrister 
 pleading for his client's life ; the judge signing that life away 
 on circumstantial evidence ; the " bear " wrestling with the 
 aggressive " bull " for thousands of pounds, the " bull " dis- 
 
 * I have already mentioned that he and I used often to write " combination 
 leaders " in Pall Mall days. I hope my friend Mr. Spender will not feel badly 
 compromised by my adding that he also thus co-operated with me even more 
 frequently. There was one occasion when the three of us joined in a dove- 
 tailed composition of this sort, and I doubt if any one — ourselves included — 
 if shown the article, could apportion the sections. This triviality may perhaps 
 be pardoned for the pleasure it gives me to recall the memory of a close and 
 sympathetic comradeship with both men which I gratefully cherish.
 
 THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE 77 
 
 tracted in his bovine tactics against the " bear " ; all will be 
 nibbling the insidious macaroon, with results to the health of 
 the body politic hardly less fearful than to their own. Already, 
 weakened by this opiate of the confectioner, we see the husband 
 sitting tranquilly while his lady drives the prancing pair, the 
 lover lying supine while his mistress sculls in the blistering 
 sunshine, her complexion as indifferent to her as her conduct. 
 The beetle swells itself to match the giant : the giant dwindles 
 to the beetle. Soon everything will be turned upside down ; 
 human society, having defied nature, will sink into hopeless, 
 irretrievable chaos ; over its ruins will dance in horrid glee, 
 hand in hand, the monotonous figures of the Smoking Woman 
 and the Nibbling Man, while with one despairing cry of " Epicene ! 
 Epicene ! " all right-minded persons will abandon a world 
 rendered intolerable.* 
 
 Mrs. Lynn Linton angrily failed, I remember, to see 
 any fun in this production. Garrett had a short way with 
 those who argued that this or that extension of the sphere 
 of women's activities or customs was against nature. He 
 put it tersely in a review of Mr. Havelock Ellis's "Man 
 and Woman " : 
 
 This accumulation of unimpassioned facts has a very clear 
 and a very useful moral. On the one hand, it shows that sex 
 goes deep. A woman is a woman all over, out and in, to the 
 tips of her finger nails. There is das Ewigweibliche in every 
 hair on her head. A woman she is, and a woman she will be 
 to the end of the chapter. On the other hand, this is the very 
 reason why it is absurd to tremble at proposed readjustments 
 of social arrangements, the ephemeral inventions of man. It 
 is Nature who decides whether the details of these fit in with 
 her design ; if they do, there's no harm done ; and if they don't, 
 Nature needs the aid of no puny pamphleteer in disposing of 
 them. Give Nature, therefore, a fair field and no favour.f 
 
 The more important of Garrett's contributions to the 
 Westminster Gazette were concerned, however, with those 
 Imperial and South African questions which greatly 
 interested him. In 1903 Queen Victoria opened the Im- 
 
 * Westminster Gazette, October 20, 1893. 
 t Hid. May 23, 1894.
 
 78 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 perial Institute with the high hopes which are preserved 
 in Tennyson's invocation to " You the Patriot Archi- 
 tect " and, it is to be feared, nowhere else, Garrett 
 spent much time in going over the galleries and grounds, 
 and in interviewing all who were concerned or interested 
 in the actual working of the scheme. A series of " special 
 articles " was the result. He foresaw, what the subse- 
 quent history of the Institute was to show, that it sought 
 to combine incompatibles and was likely to fail in enlisting 
 popular interest. He put to everybody the question : 
 " Yes, it's a very big place, and a very fine place, but what 
 is it going to do ? what is the good of it ? " One important 
 official dryly answered by another question : " But will 
 it be of use at all ? I was not aware of it. I only wish I 
 were." An Agent -General pointed out in his own section 
 a certain stuffed snake, and positively apologised for it. 
 " I know we don't export snakes," he murmured ; " but 
 there (explaining how the offending reptile came to be 
 there) what can one do ? To be sure," he added wistfully, 
 " the British public does like snakes." " My dear sir," 
 exclaimed Garrett, " take your book and write fifty snakes ! 
 Anything to relieve this appalling dulness." A definite 
 popular idea, something really calculated to " spread among 
 the public at home a fuller knowledge, &c.," -was wanted, 
 and Garrett proposed — illustrating his idea with imagina- 
 tive plans and sketches — to lay out the Institute gardens 
 as a map or model of the world on a flat projection with 
 special reference to the British Empire. 
 
 The sea was to be represented by hard blue mosaic 
 which could be freely walked over, and the continents 
 built up on this out of concrete also faced with mosaic or 
 some other durable material : 
 
 It would be desirable to raise the continents an inch or two 
 above the sea at the coastline, if they are not to be walked over, 
 and to represent the broadest features of their contour, exaggerat- 
 ing the mountains nearly as much as is usually done in contour
 
 THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE 79 
 
 globes for schools — quite so much would not be necessary. The 
 Himalayas might run half a foot or a foot high. British military 
 and naval posts should be marked in some way — even a flag- 
 staff for St. Helena in mid- Atlantic w^ould not seriously incom- 
 mode people walking, and small appropriate flags hoisted on 
 all capital towns or great ports would give the whole a very 
 gay look. The great lines of trade and communication should 
 be marked by lines in the mosaic. Colour might be employed 
 to show either " races and religions," density of population, 
 stage of self-government, or nature of vegetation ; the last 
 perhaps most practical, a yellow plain indicating " corn," cream 
 colour " wool," white " cotton." The general rule should be 
 do nothing for mere scientific completeness ; stick to broad 
 features ; let everything explain itself to the eye, and label 
 clearly and picturesquely. The map might be done in two 
 hemispheres, one in each court ; leaving plenty of room for 
 people to circulate over the " oceans." With a hemisphere of 
 120 ft. diameter, Australia would be about 20 ft. long, Africa 
 40 ft.. Great Britain 6 ft. They might even be larger. The 
 band at a pinch might be accommodated up in Siberia. 
 
 Now just imagine the completed scheme : a sunny day in the 
 Imperial Institute Gardens, bands playing, flags flying, and 
 crowds of the British public realising the unhoped-for dream of 
 statesmen by a tour round their own Empire ! They would 
 stroll across the Atlantic, cross that Imperial highway the 
 Canadian Paciflc Railway, walk five abreast between New Zea- 
 land and Australia, noting the products of New South Wales 
 as they passed, then home by the Suez Canal, or round the Cape, 
 the value of which as a war-route would be thus for the first 
 time perhaps brought home to them. The quadrangles are 
 joined by a short covered way, so the cruise round the world 
 would present no difficulties. 
 
 Dear 'Arriet, — Meet me in the N. Atlantic to-morrow at 
 three. I'll be waiting by the Bahamas. Yours, 
 
 'Arry.* 
 
 The grounds have now been built over, and the Institute 
 itself — in what remains to it from the University of London 
 — has settled down to a career of some usefulness on more 
 restricted lines ; but Garrett's idea may be commended 
 
 * Westminster Gazette, May 23, 1893.
 
 80 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 for what it is worth to the managers of Earl's Courts, White 
 Cities and the Hke. 
 
 Garrett's interest in South Africa was constantly sus- 
 tained after his visit there in 1889-90. He had become 
 absorbed, as we have seen, in its problems. He had 
 made friendships there, and his little book " In Afrikander- 
 land " had marked him out as a journalistic expert upon 
 South African questions. He followed the course of events 
 closely, and was well placed for obtaining access to South 
 African personages when they visited London. The great 
 event of 1893, in that sphere, was the Matabele War,* 
 and upon this Garrett contributed many articles to the 
 paper. He analysed the blue books, he interviewed the 
 experts, he focussed the outstanding facts. The policy 
 of the war excited much opposition at the time in some 
 Radical quarters among those with whom it is an article 
 of faith to assume that their fellow countrymen in a 
 distant land are always in the wrong. From Garrett's 
 articles — as, for instance, from an interview with the High 
 Commissioner, Lord Loch, whom he called " The Man who 
 made the Matabele War " {Westminster Gazette, April 24, 
 1894), a reader will find the real rights of that incident 
 in South African development explained more tersely and 
 clearly than in the official publications wherein history 
 lies buried. The most stirring incident of the war was the 
 isolation of Major Wilson's patrol, and its heroic last rally 
 upon the Shangani river. Of the events immediately 
 preceding the final scene, Garrett obtained a full account 
 from Mr. Burnham.f 
 
 * If this page should meet the eye, or (more improbably) arrest the attention 
 of any journalistic novice, I will venture to commend to him Garrett's article 
 entitled " King Lobengula as Polite Letter- writer " (Westminster Gazette, Sep- 
 tember 23, 1893), as an admirable model in the art of extracting the substance 
 of a seemingly dry Blue-book and presenting it in a lively and intelligible form. 
 But these things come not except from some acquaintance with the subject, 
 from much pains, and from a sense of style — conditions for which there is, 
 unhappily, not always a journalistic demand. 
 
 t Westminster Gazette, January 7, 8, 1895.
 
 THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE 81 
 
 These articles in the Westminster Gazette and others upon 
 South African topics or personages — such as the " Romance 
 of Diamond Smugghng," a character-sketch of Mr. Rhodes, 
 an interview with Mr. Hofmeyr * — confirmed the South 
 African reputation which Garrett had already made. 
 It chanced that at this time Mr. Frederick York St. Leger, 
 the editor and principal proprietor of the Cape Times, 
 was forced, by reasons of health, to abandon the journal- 
 istic career which he had pursued with marked distinction 
 for twenty years in South Africa. Garrett was the natural 
 — almost one may say the inevitable — man to be thought 
 of as a successor. His health, though still delicate, was in 
 sufficient measure restored, and the climate of South 
 Africa was likely to be beneficial. Early in April 1895 
 terms of agreement were signed, and a few weeks later he 
 sailed for the scene of his new labours. 
 
 * September 11, November 9, 1893 ; August 9, 1894. An interesting account 
 of conversations with Sir George Grey, entitled " How can I Help England ? ", 
 may also be mentioned (June 19, 1894).
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 
 
 You too know time and season, 
 
 Close-reefed to ride the gales, 
 And steered by steadfast Reason 
 
 And ballasted with bales ; 
 But since not yet the Real 
 Is man's end-all and be-all. 
 High hope and high ideal 
 
 Fill full your bellying sails. — F.E.G. 
 
 Garrett now had the chance of his Hfe ; this and the 
 two following chapters will show what use he made of it. 
 He was placed for the first time in full editorial control 
 of an important journal. What precisely did this mean 
 to him ? I can best answer the question by clearing 
 away some things which it did not mean. 
 
 There is the theory which I suppose is tenable, for it is 
 held, that the function of a political journalist resembles 
 that of a barrister ; the hired pleader paid to make the best 
 of a case, good or bad ; bound to his brief, and in no way 
 held to compromise his honour by subordinating private 
 opinions of his own. Some years ago, when certain 
 editorial changes " for conscience' sake " were being 
 mooted, I had a conversation with an American journalist 
 on the subject. He neither approved nor disapproved ; 
 he found the position simply unintelligible, and he told 
 me this story in illustration. A political " boss " noticing 
 some able silver articles in a Chicago paper, said, 
 " Introduce me to that man ; I should like to see him 
 President of the United States." Afterwards he was 
 equally struck by some able gold articles in a New 
 
 82
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 83 
 
 York paper, and said, " Introduce me to that man ; I 
 should hke to see him shot." It was the same man. I 
 need not here discuss the theory of journahsm thus 
 implied. It is enough so say that the theory was not 
 Garrett's ; he valued his editorial chair only as a pulpit 
 from which to utter things which he believed with all his 
 heart. 
 
 There is another theory which identifies the political 
 journalist with the party hack — the man who, as Sir 
 William Gilbert describes, rises to place or title because he 
 " never thinks of thinking for himself at all." If a Liberal, 
 the loyal journalist of this kind must not write in a Con- 
 servative paper, and vice versa ; but on the other hand 
 he must subordinate his judgment to that of the party 
 leaders. I remember once innocently asking the con- 
 ductors of a party paper what line it was taking on a 
 subject which had come somewhat unexpectedly into 
 prominence. " We do not know," was the reply, " we 
 have not yet had an opportunity of asking Mr. A., or B., 
 or C." (or whatever other letter of the alphabet it may 
 have been). This, I need hardly say, is a theory of political 
 journalism which is widely and most respectably held ; 
 but, again, it was not Garrett's theory. " From a deter- 
 mination never to do its party any harm, a paper comes 
 in time," he said, "to be impotent to do it any good. 
 ' Dependent support ' is a contradiction in terms. It 
 recalls Sam Slick's figure of a man trying to lift himself 
 by his boot-straps. Rich men imagine that only money 
 is needed to make a paper. They can order the machines, 
 the plant, the printing ink, the brains, the enterprise, ' the 
 novel and attractive features,' all for cash down. Why not 
 the soul too ? Ah ! there's the rub. A rich man creates 
 a whole system of paper simulacra, galvanised direct 
 from his counting-house. Why wonH people believe they 
 are alive ? A party leader secures a reliable tame paper- 
 echo, warranted to repeat him without an error. Why will
 
 84 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 nobody accept it as corroborating his opinions ? The 
 good puzzled men cannot make it out." * 
 
 Garrett was not the man to serve as an echo ; he rated 
 his profession very high, and himself not very humbly. 
 The editor of an important newspaper should, he thought, 
 be a leader, not a mere follower. Also, as may already 
 have been gathered, Garrett believed in the possibilities 
 which journalism sometimes offers for initiative in action. 
 He was not content to be a mere hearer or recorder of 
 the word. He believed in what has been called " the 
 journalism that does things," 
 
 Should an editor write ? High authority, and probably 
 the more general practice, are in favour of the negative 
 answer. But Garrett had been trained upon the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, where the tradition and practice, in its old days, 
 were on the other side. Mr. Frederick Greenwood wrote 
 largely. Lord Morley wrote a regulation quantity every 
 week, and his leading articles were the main feature of his 
 editorship, Mr. Stead was a cormorant for writing ; he 
 thought nothing of contributing to a single day's paper 
 the leading article, most of the " Occasional Notes," an 
 interview, and a column or two of " special news." His 
 successor tried, longo intervallo, to continue the tradition ; 
 and this was also Garrett's practice. He mentions in a 
 letter of September 1896, that he had " written or re- 
 written every leader in the Cape Times bar six since 
 July 1895," except only during a few days when he was 
 absent at Pretoria. I doubt if editorship would have had 
 much attraction for him on other terms. He valued it 
 as an instrument of direct self-expression. 
 
 Next, there is the question of the relation of the editor 
 to the proprietor, or proprietors, of a paper. Every pro- 
 prietor, if he have political interests or ambitions, selects 
 an editor whose views are likely to agree with his own ; 
 and this rule presumably holds good alike whether the 
 
 * " Have Papers Souls ? " Ca-pe Times, February 18, 1896.
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 85 
 
 proprietor's capital be derived from gold-mines, mustard- 
 fields, cocoa-plantations, mineral waters, ground-rents or 
 what not. Some proprietors reserve rights of political 
 control in their own hands ; others concede a free hand 
 to their editors. Garrett would never have accepted any 
 editorship except on the latter terms. He had no sooner 
 been appointed to the editorship of the Cape Times than 
 the story was put about that he was " Rhodes's nominee " 
 and that the paper was " controlled by Rhodes." In 
 what degree such statements were inspired by professional 
 rivalry or political animosity, need not be discussed. 
 As political feeling about South African affairs intensified, 
 the statements were repeated both in that country and in 
 this. Insinuations were also made that " Rhodes's gold " 
 was not unknown to the pocket of his " mouthpiece " in the 
 Cape Times. To the friends of Garrett, the most inde- 
 pendent, the least self-seeking of men, any refutation of 
 such insinuations seemed and seems ridiculously super- 
 fluous. But even to this day you may hear in South 
 Africa, and from the lips of men who ought to know 
 better, a repetition of the slander that the Cape Times 
 was in Rhodes's pay and its editor presumably in his 
 pocket. It may be well, therefore, to state that Mr. 
 Rhodes was not a proprietor in any sort of the Cape Times ; 
 that his friend, Dr. Rutherfoord Harris, though a part- 
 proprietor, had no voice in the management ; that full, 
 absolute and exclusive control over the contents of the 
 paper was, by legal instrument, vested in Garrett through- 
 out his editorship ;* that his salary was £800 a year, and 
 
 * The Memorandum of Agreement between Mr. F. Y. St. Leger and Dr. 
 Rutherfoord Harris of the one part and Garrett of the other Is before me. 
 Clause 4 runs : " Fydell Edmund Garrett shall have sole control over the policy 
 and conduct of the said Newspaper and of everything published therein, and 
 nothing shall be published in such paper except by authority of the said Fydell 
 Edmund Garrett." By another clause, Garrett could only be deposed by 
 twelve months' notice, whereas he was free to leave at three months' notice. 
 At an earlier date there had been negotiations with a view to Garrett becoming 
 editor of the Cape Argus, in which Mr. Rhodes had an interest. The draft
 
 86 . EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 that this very modest sum was never, directly or indirectly, 
 increased. Garrett himself, early in his editorship, took 
 occasion to notice the insinuations to which I have referred, 
 and the piece well expresses his high ideal : 
 
 It is a great trust which Mr, St. Leger has confided to me. 
 I am touched and humbled by it. But humility does not exclude 
 pride and I know not what, in the record of my eight years' 
 work as a journalist, should suggest that I care for the squabbles 
 of millionaires or the rise and fall of rival dividends. I have 
 never written for a kept paper — not even for a party paper. 
 I graduated in the school of the Pall Mall Gazette, of which five 
 years ago I was assistant editor. The first editor of that journal 
 differed from a new proprietor ; he resigned and founded the 
 St. James' Gazette. A successor differed from his proprietor ; 
 he resigned and founded the Review of Reviews. This successor 
 differed from a new proprietor, a millionaire proprietor, and he 
 resigned with all his staff and founded the Westminster Gazette. 
 Coming from the grand English school of open speech, it is strange 
 to me that the giving an independent support to any public 
 man or cause should entail on a journalist the indignity of having 
 to explain that he is not in that man's pocket. I do so only 
 because I will not in silence let the fountain of the influence 
 of a great paper be puddled at the source. I will not leave 
 matters so that I rest under a chronic temptation to damn with 
 faint praise, even where I wholly approve, in order to conciliate 
 paltry suspicions. I will be free here, as I have been free all 
 my journalistic life, to praise or censure just as it seems to me 
 right according to such faculties as God has given me. {Cafe 
 Times, June 25, 1895.) * 
 
 agreement stipulated that " the said Cecil John Rhodes hereby expressly 
 repudiates all claim to control or influence the policy or management of the 
 said newspaper." Rhodes agreed to this ; the negotiations fell through, 
 because Garrett had not yet made up his mind to migrate to South Africa. 
 
 * Mr. F. Y. St. Leger, the principal proprietor and former editor, in a " vale- 
 dictory " article on the previous day had thus referred to his successor : " Of 
 all men in the world of journalism I should say that about the last to serve 
 a monopolist's purpose would be Mr. Edmund Garrett, as honest, independent 
 and fearless a fellow craftsman as I could have found with the aid of Diogenes' 
 lantern itself. . . . Mr. Garrett I need not introduce. He is known in South 
 Africa ; he has written about South Africa ; and he has watched with intelligent 
 eyes the making of South African history. ... In his editorial undertaking 
 Mr. Garrett is assured of the perfect independence which is indeed the sole 
 condition on which a man of his spirit would carry on the work. It has been
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 87 
 
 " I well remember," writes one of his colleagues, " the 
 first — and the last— attempt to induce Mr. Garrett to 
 submit to a censorship from outside the editorial sanctum. 
 He had completed his article for the following day's 
 paper when a certain gentleman, who shall be nameless, 
 entered the office and, after discussing with Garrett the 
 subject of the moment which the latter had dealt with in 
 his leading article, took strong exception to the line 
 Garrett proposed to take, and ended by ordering him, 
 under divers pains and penalties, to cancel the article 
 and write another according to his own views. The 
 tension was high for two minutes. Garrett's door flew 
 open — it opened near the head of the stairs — and his 
 visitor was invited to make what speed he could out of 
 the building, failing which Garrett promised to hasten 
 his departure by other means. Garrett's anger was 
 blazing ; his visitor hesitated a moment as he glanced 
 at the thin wasted frame ; then he went, never again to 
 enter the Cape Times office in any capacity." 
 
 It was on these lines of fearless independence that 
 Garrett speedily made his paper a power in the land. 
 
 Garrett threw himself from the first enthusiastically 
 into every question which concerned the well-being either 
 of Cape Town or of the colony. He was insistent upon 
 the need of better education for the coloured races — as a 
 corollary of the coloured vote : "to abandon the poor 
 black and brown children to the discipline of the streets 
 would be to pull down with one hand while building up 
 with the other ; with a nursery of dock and thistle under 
 the hedge of the flower garden, what would the garden 
 
 objected to him that he believes in Mr. Rhodes ; it has been said that he 
 invented Mr. Rhodes. I too have had the misfortune to incur rebuke because, 
 with all my criticism of Mr. Rhodes's policy, I have still retained an affection 
 for his personality. . . . Mr. Garrett's appreciation of Mr. Rhodes centres 
 in his great work of expansion and in his conciliatory attitude towards the old 
 Colonists."
 
 88 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 show ? " He was an ardent advocate of the Scab Act. 
 He wanted to see the Cape made the health resort which 
 its cUmate rendered possible, and pleaded for the com- 
 pulsory notification of diseases, and for the provision 
 even for the lepers of at least " a decent Hell." He 
 crusaded against slumland, and advocated better holidays 
 for shop-assistants. He argued for the development and 
 extension of art galleries and South African museums. 
 Municipal elections were pending in Cape Town shortly 
 after Garrett's arrival. He noted the absence of any 
 meetings or other signs of public interest, and wrote a 
 series of articles on the text that " Cape Town was worth 
 serving." He organised, too, a Cape Times Labour Bureau, 
 distributing on the liners forms for newcomers to fill up. 
 In short, as editor of the Cape Times, he showed himself 
 to be a public-spirited citizen, seeking earnestly to lead 
 public opinion in a Progressive direction upon all matters 
 of municipal and State concern. He was much interested, 
 too, in the old buildings of Cape Colony, and an illustrated 
 Christmas number which he brought out in 1898 introduced 
 some readers for the first time to the Dutch domestic 
 architecture of the eighteenth century.* A scheme which 
 owed something to his advocacy was that for building a 
 cathedral in Cape Town : 
 
 Our surroundings are eloquent of commercial activity, of 
 industrial progress, of the " push-along, keep-moving spirit " 
 proper to the age. Wliat we want is more that is beautiful to 
 the eye ; more that suggests repose of mind ; more that lifts 
 up the spirit from the depressing influences of the struggle for 
 existence — a sursum corda in stone. . . . There must be many, 
 not numbered among regular churchgoers, perhaps not even 
 among churchmen, who would be glad to see the gate of South 
 Africa dominated by such a symbol in stone of the old tradition 
 
 * Many of the illustrations were by Mrs. A. F. Trotter, who incorporated 
 her sketches in a book entitled " Old Cape Colony : a Chronicle of Her Men 
 and Houses from 1652 to 1806." (Constable and Co. : 1903.)
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 89 
 
 and of the higher aspiration. . . . [Cape Times, November 10, 
 
 1898.) 
 
 A sursum corda in stone ! Garrett's endeavour was in 
 all things to raise men's hearts and minds to the things 
 which really matter, and for such service he is gratefully 
 remembered in Cape Town, even by many who differed 
 from him in politics. 
 
 Very acceptable, too, to many readers scattered through 
 South Africa was the literary touch which he brought to 
 all his work and the attention which he paid in his columns 
 to things of the mind. To educated men, living far from 
 any literary centre, the leading articles in the Cape Times 
 were as water in the desert — or, almost literally in one case, 
 at least — a rose in the wilderness. " I thank you most 
 sincerely," says a letter to Garrett which I have before me, 
 " for all you are doing in the Cape Times for our land . . . 
 I am moved to write on this occasion in consequence of 
 your article of (to us) to-day's issue. I have for a long 
 time been looking for some felicitous quotation from 
 Browning and to-day my expectation has been fulfilled — 
 ' Roses, roses all the way,' " &c. This was an article 
 on the vicissitudes of Mr. Rhodes's public career. For 
 the most part what a journalist writes lives only for a day. 
 His words of wisdom, as he deems them, go on the morrow 
 to light the reader's fire or wrap up his boots. I was 
 struck, however, in speaking to friends about my intended 
 memoir of Garrett, to find how often a particular article 
 of his — and among them, literary articles — had remained 
 in their memories. 
 
 What, however, most attracted serious and earnest men 
 to Garrett and his newspaper -work in South Africa was 
 the spirit in which he approached public questions. They 
 might agree or disagree with his views on particular matters ; 
 but the vigour of his touch and the elevation of his tone 
 commanded their grateful respect. From several letters 
 which illustrate this I here print two — the first from a
 
 90 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 dignitary of the church, writing from a distant part of 
 South Africa, the other from one of the best-known mission- 
 ary workers in that country : 
 
 I am addressing you personally — if I may — to thank you again 
 for many articles in the C. T., which one feels sure are good 
 for us all to read ; but specially, I think, for so many who " know 
 not " and only think they know or think they think they know. 
 If I may say it, we've got to fashion, or rather form, opinion here 
 far more than in England. The manhood of the Colonist is 
 splendid, but it's a splendid childhood as yet, and men who think 
 clearly and express straightly their thoughts have a very solemn 
 opportunity for guiding (not driving) all young and rising men 
 into solid ways. The world, just now specially I think, needs 
 inspiration. It does and dares gloriously — most, I fear, for the 
 love of doing and daring. It wants an object. Writers like 
 yourself and preachers of sorts can do this. Men will listen and 
 read if we supply them with " meat in due season." It may 
 possibly encourage you to have a word of sympathy from even 
 a Bush parson. So pray go on lifting up public questions into 
 the Blue (by no means the blues !), and helping men to see that 
 politics and policies and objects and plans may be, and ought 
 to be, formative of national character, and should be prophetic 
 of the glory that is to be — in " common aims and common 
 service," as Keble so beautifully puts it, " each for her brethren, 
 all for God." 
 
 I want to tell you what a blank Mr. Garrett's departure left 
 in my life. I mean, of course, his departure from the Cape ; 
 for when he went back to England he was lost to those of us 
 who had felt the influence of his noble personality in our com- 
 munity here. We may not always have agreed as to details ; 
 but beyond and above these, it was good to have among us a 
 man who lifted the treatment of public affairs into a higher and 
 clearer region — a man strong and at the same time sensitive in 
 his perception of the standard of honour ; who will strike hard, 
 and yet take no mean advantage of an adversary. I would fain 
 believe that, though his career was prematurely cut short in 
 South Africa, he has left behind him in the hearts of some an 
 influence that will not die. 
 
 Into Garrett's treatment of purely Cape politics I do not
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 91 
 
 enter. Scab Acts, Glen Grey Acts and the like— import- 
 ant though these are in their sphere — were very far from 
 circumscribing Garrett's activities, and they are of minor 
 interest to the general reader. As editor of the leading 
 paper in the then premier colony of South Africa, Garrett 
 conceived his position to be the journalistic counterpart 
 of that held by the representative of the Crown, who was 
 at once Governor of Cape Colony and High Commissioner 
 for South Africa. It was into Cape politics, as affecting 
 those of the sub-continent, and into the larger questions 
 of South African development, that Garrett threw his 
 most eager efforts. He was a good citizen of Cape Town 
 and a loyal Cape Colonist; but above all, his ambition 
 was to do something to forward the wider patriotism of a 
 united South Africa. 
 
 He had returned from the Cape in 1890 full of con- 
 viction that to this event the stars in their courses 
 were inevitably guiding, and of hope that the end would 
 be reached without catastrophic disturbance. During 
 the five years which had now elapsed, many of the ten- 
 dencies, sketched in a previous chapter, had run their 
 expected course. The gold-mines of the Transvaal had 
 been greatly developed, and there had been a large inrush 
 of English and other settlers. Railway extension had 
 forged ahead, and given South Africa the plant, as it were, 
 for closer union . Natal had received ' ' responsible ' ' govern- 
 ment. The Orange Free State was pursuing the even 
 tenor of its way, as a model Republic, with no grievances 
 or burning questions. Cape Colony, under the premier- 
 ship of Mr. Rhodes, had "helped him in his Northern 
 extension," and taken over British Bechuanaland. The 
 Chartered Company was negotiating for the transfer of 
 the other portion of Bechuanaland (the " Protectorate "), 
 had fought its Matabele war and established effective 
 occupation in the further north. Suzerainty over Swazi- 
 land had been given to the Transvaal, but Amatongaland
 
 92 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 between it and the sea was annexed by Lord Ripon to the 
 British Crown. The conditions, so far as they have 
 hitherto been described, seemed all favourable to the 
 ideal which Garrett had brought from South Africa in 
 1890 — the ideal of internal union under different flags, 
 secured externally by the sea-power of Britain. But 
 there was one condition, and that the most important of 
 all, which had palpably worsened. " South Africa," 
 wrote Lord Milner at a later date, " can prosper under two, 
 three or six Governments, but not under two absolutely 
 conflicting social and political systems — perfect equality 
 for Dutch and British in the British Colonies, side by side 
 with permanent subjection of British to Dutch in one of 
 the Republics." The disquieting feature of the situation 
 in 1895 was that President Kruger had shown little dis- 
 position to remove this cause of disunion, and some indica- 
 tion of cherishing a quite other ideal. His reforms in the 
 franchise had been reforms backward.* To a deputation 
 from the Transvaal National Union, he had replied, " I 
 shall never change my policy, and now let the storm 
 burst " (1892). To a petition presented in the Volksraad, 
 one of the members replied, " Come on and fight " 
 (1895). Lord Loch, the High Commissioner, had by a 
 visit to Pretoria (1894), secured the abrogation of com- 
 mandeering applied to the Uitlanders, but no satis- 
 factory promise of political reform. A few months 
 later. President Kruger, at a banquet in honour of the 
 German Emperor's birthday, had spoken of his desire to 
 foster intimate relations with Germany and " to give 
 her all the support a little child can give to a grown-up 
 man." 
 
 Such, in brief, was the South African situation as it 
 was known to exist in June 1895. In that month Garrett 
 arrived to edit the Cape Times, and Sir Hercules Robinson 
 
 * A reader desirous of detail will find the facts tabulated in chap. ii. of 
 my " Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal War."
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 93 
 
 to succeed Lord Loch as High Commissioner.* The centre 
 of interest was Pretoria ; and thither Sir Hercules Robin- 
 son repaired early in July. A fortnight later, Garrett 
 followed and had his second interview with President 
 Kruger. The report of their conversation, printed in this 
 volume (p. 209), is a document, as I have already said, 
 of some historical importance, and it excited widespread 
 attention. " A Plain Talk with Oom Paul," Garrett called 
 it ; and plain his language certainly was, plainer and 
 more direct than any official diplomatist was likely to 
 use. It required no little adroitness on Garrett's part to 
 coax the President into allowing this plain talk to appear 
 in cold print. Nowhere — either in the windings of Blue- 
 books or in historical tomes founded on them (and it 
 has been my lot ere now to delve a good deal into such) — 
 is so clear a presentation to be found, as in Garrett's 
 interview and subsequent articles, of the policy of " sane 
 Imperialism " which, had it been accepted on all hands, 
 might have spared South Africa much of blood and 
 tears. 
 
 The leading idea in Garrett's mind, as in that of others 
 at this time, was the gradual accomplishment of South 
 African union on the basis of (1) internal Home Rule 
 for each State and Colony, subject to (2) union in matters 
 of tariff, customs and railways, and to (3) the external 
 paramountcy of Great Britain. There was, as we have 
 seen, a fourth condition, a condition precedent, indeed, 
 of the others : namely, that causes of internal dissension 
 and commotion should be removed by substantial equality 
 of political rights between English and Dutch. This 
 already obtained in the British Colonies and in the Orange 
 Free State ; it did not exist in the Transvaal. (4) Garrett's 
 
 * Sir Hercules Robinson told Garrett that when the appointment was being 
 made he had received a letter from Mr. Rhodes saying : " If we come to dis- 
 agree on anything, I promise to take that as indicating that I am wrong." 
 " I file that letter," added Sir Hercules drily.
 
 94 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 hope was that pressure would be exerted upon the Trans- 
 vaal through the constitutional agitation of the British 
 settlers therein, supported, as far as might be, by the 
 sympathy of the British, and by some of the Dutch in the 
 other States. The sphere left in this scheme for the 
 intervention of the British Government was thus small. 
 Sir Hercules Robinson, now for the second time High Com- 
 missioner, had said that there was no permanent place 
 for Downing Street in South Africa.* (5) Garrett accepted 
 this dictum, with one qualification. The Imperial Factor, 
 if it interfered at all, must never do so except in the interests 
 of South Africa as a whole. 
 
 Such, then, were the leading ideas upon one or another 
 of which, as occasion served, Garrett's articles were made 
 to turn. The first of them — that of internal autonomy — 
 went indeed without saying at the Cape, as in any other 
 British Colony. There was no need to preach to the 
 converted ; but Garrett always conceived of himself, and 
 not untruly, as addressing England, as well as South Africa. 
 He was, therefore, careful from time to time, to preach 
 the truth, as he had come to hold it, upon the Native 
 Question — a question which has been in the past a fruitful 
 source of misunderstanding between English and Colonial 
 opinion. Even now the question is very much alive ; it 
 was acute in the discussions of closer union in South 
 Africa in relation to the native franchise, and in relation 
 to the Native Reserves much is likely to be heard of it. 
 Moreover, and apart from any particular controversy, 
 the Native Question is the greatest of all the permanent 
 South African questions. For the natives, the people whom 
 many of us, in thinking of the future of South Africa, 
 often leave out of account altogether, are more than 80 
 per cent, of its inhabitants. I think, therefore, that 
 
 * "There are three competing influences at work in South Africa ; they are 
 Colonialism, Republicanism and Imperialism. As to the last, it is a diminishing 
 quantity, there being now no permanent place in South Africa for Imperial 
 control on a large scale " (April 27, 1889).
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 95 
 
 some account of Garrett's standpoint on this question 
 may not be unprofitable or uninteresting. He called one 
 of the chapters in his " In Afrikanderland " " From 
 Assegai to Ballot-Box, " and the following extracts are 
 taken from it : 
 
 We are wont to class the Cape with Canada and Australia. 
 India, if we for the moment take colour as a great ineradicable 
 marking-hne, independent of all others — India would be the 
 better parallel. In Canada and Australia, despite a flicker now 
 and then, the natives are a decaying remnant. In South Africa, 
 secured from internecine warfare under the pax Britannica, they 
 daily increase and multiply. How are the twin destinies to be 
 harmonised, to be saved from clash, and secured to concord ? 
 
 The old-fashioned way of fighting has been replaced by the 
 civilised plan which we call " competition." Except over com- 
 paratively small areas, the blacks are numerically double, treble, 
 or quadruple the whites. These numbers are increasing year 
 by year ; and their largest and most virile factor is the racial 
 family which we call Kafir. 
 
 But, you will say, surely there is plenty of room ? That is 
 true. Even if we treat the Karoo and the Kalahari as Sahara- 
 patches to be taken out of the map, you have only to compare 
 the square mileage with the population to see that South Africa 
 is one of the spots where the world has lots of elbow-room. It 
 is true also that the whites require the aid of unskilled labour, 
 plentiful and cheap, and that the Kafir supplies it. But there's 
 the rub. The Kafir au naturel has no affection for work. He 
 loves to lie in the sun, and watch his wives doing it for him. 
 Lazy and independent, satisfied with a mess of mealies, he has 
 few wants to which we can appeal. Wives are a want, and 
 cattle are the currency with which wives are bought. For 
 these then, he will serve a term, as Jacob did under Laban. Then 
 off he goes again. In Natal the planters had to give him up in 
 despair, and take to importing coolies from India, The result 
 is that the coolies in Natal are now as numerous as the whites. 
 Already they are beginning, like the " Arab " traders from 
 Zanzibar way, to compete with the small shopkeepers of Cape 
 Colony and the Transvaal, and their white Indian dress catches 
 the eye in the streets of Kimberley and Johannesburg. In 
 Natal the semi-tropical conditions preclude white field labour. 
 Elsewhere, in places which latitude or elevation renders suitable 
 for the European worker, the Kafir ousts him by dint of his
 
 96 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 strong thews and slender needs. He is the miner, the navvy, 
 the labourer, under white supervision. As his wants and his 
 intelligence increase together, he will more and more infringe 
 the frontier which divides skilled from unskilled labour. And 
 upon whatever field of work the Kafir enters, there the European 
 working man throws down his pick or spade and discovers that 
 it is " nigger's work." Because of these things the pessimists 
 predict that the South Africa of the future will be a white aris- 
 tocracy buttressed upon the universal labour of a subject race. 
 
 You see at once that the " labour difficulty " is a very big 
 factor in the Native Question. But there is at least one good 
 thing about it. There are some excellent philanthropists who 
 are in a chronic apprehension that the " poor black man " out 
 in South Africa will be ill-treated by his white masters. It is 
 reassuring to find that it costs those masters no small pains to 
 tempt and wheedle him into disposing of his labour. Look at 
 Kimberley, and compare the Kafir there to the Kafir at home. 
 I have seen the " compounds " where the native is housed and 
 fed and amused, and kept from drink, during his term of contract, 
 with a solicitude to which the British working man is a stranger, 
 and in receipt of wages which many a British working man 
 would jump at. When I was in the Transvaal I made a visit 
 to a small native kraal, the mud walls and low-cooped huts of 
 which harboured half a dozen dusky families. There was much 
 that was pleasant, I admit. There was the friendly hospitality 
 which handed me a gourdful of dusty-tasting " Kafir beer." 
 There was the swarm of pottle-bodied babies waddling about, 
 and the strange Methuselah figure sitting torpid in the sun : a 
 mere skinful of bones, how old none knew, but " an old man 
 when the Boers came into the country " — half a century ago. 
 There were other signs of kindliness towards age and childhood. 
 But the squalor, alive with vermin — the body, horribly scarred 
 and seamed, of an old crone bent double with laborious mother- 
 hood — the half-articulate animalism of the whole scene — these 
 things stuck in a pigeon-hole of my memory next to that which 
 holds the pleasanter sights of Kafir service on Afrikander farms 
 or in the Kimberley compounds. 
 
 I must own that to enter into the Dutch farmer's point of 
 view about his " boys " requires some little effort. You must 
 be prepared to exercise, not only common charity, but a little 
 sympathetic imagination. In the Transvaal Volksraad, for 
 instance, an old-fashioned Boer will get up and thunder against 
 the idea of black children attending the same school with white
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 97 
 
 and will do it with all the pious ferocity of a Georgian or Louisia- 
 nian holding the polling-booth with his revolver against the 
 enfranchised negro. I wonder if I can make the standpoint at 
 all intelligible ? 
 
 In the early days of frontier reprisal there was, of course, 
 many a deed of Dutchman and of Englishman too, that would 
 not bear the light. The practice of adopting and bringing up 
 as servants the black children left in a village from which the 
 parents had been harried out, was a mixture of kindness and 
 kidnapping in which kidnapping played sometimes the bigger 
 part. No doubt, too, long after that a farmer would shoot a 
 Bushman on sight as he would a beast of prey. He had no 
 quarter for the pariah race of dwarfs who came sneaking about 
 with a poisoned arrow on the string ; though, to be sure, the 
 rifle bullet against wliich shields of liide are vain must have 
 seemed to the Bushman equally unfair. But what else could 
 you expect from a people whose only book was the Bible, who 
 had all kinds of queer manias about being the chosen people, 
 who made a fetish of the bloodthirsty Old Testament ? If they 
 were the chosen people, the Kafirs were obviously the Canaanites. 
 And was it not written : "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly 
 destroy all that they have, and spare them not ; but slay both 
 man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and 
 ass " (1 Sam. xv. 3). ~A11 these things they believed were written 
 for their learning ; and when, stung by our tactless philanthro- 
 pising, old Pretorius set up liis State of malcontents beyond our 
 borders, he wrote it upon the tables of stone of their constitution 
 that they acknowledged " no equality of the coloured people 
 either in Church or State." That will go down in history side 
 by side with the immortal declaration of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Theoretically, you see, these Israelitish old Dutch settlers 
 were as bad as they could be. Practically they treated a coloured 
 servant almost like one of the family. There was the feeling, no 
 doubt, of " below the salt." But it Mas a patriarchal despotism 
 under a patriarchal roof. From slaves to servants, it was but 
 a change of name. All along, to the Dutch way of thinking, the 
 natives have been grown-up cliildren. That is what they seem 
 to the Afrikander to-day, whether his blood be Dutch or English. 
 And that is exactly what they seemed to me. Naughty children, 
 pleased children ; children at work, or children at play ; children 
 to be treated kindly, educated firmly — but always, at bottom, 
 children. 
 
 Let us distinguish principle from cant. The Afrikander of
 
 98 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 to-day, of the new generation, would no more dream of harking 
 back to slavery than of restoring the blmiderbuss. But he 
 cannot readily frame his mouth to our fine phrases about the 
 perfect equality of the black man. What is it that we really 
 mean, if you come to think of it ? I yield to none in my abhor- 
 rence of disabilities based on the accidents of birth. I hold that 
 rich and poor, gentle and simple, white and black, are equal by 
 right of common humanity. That is, they have an equal right 
 to all the opportunities that can be given them. Make your raw 
 Kafir equal before the law by all means, so long as it does not 
 mean letting him debauch himself with " Cape Smoke." But 
 remember that he is not equal, unless by a prodigy, in half the 
 attainments, aptitudes, inherited amenities, of the European. 
 It would be a poor thing otherwise for the centuries of Aryan 
 civilisation. Our duty is to help the African to catch up " the 
 heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time." But the 
 leeway of an seon is not made up in a generation, and nothing 
 is gained by pretending that it can be. No, whatever may be 
 dreamed over here by good people to whom the word " native " 
 suggests confused associations of Christy minstrels and mis- 
 sionary meetings, a black man is not merely a white man 
 painted black, nor will he at one stroke of the pen emerge (like 
 the little nigger-boy in the pictorial advertisement of a certain 
 soap) snowy as his cravat, the black all concentrated into boots 
 and broadcloth, to take his place in the European social march, 
 step for step with his European fellow citizen. 
 
 In the Dutch States there is no pretence of giving the 
 Kafir political equality. In Cape Colony he has it. But how 
 about social equality ? Broadly speaking, a white man who 
 should think of Jmarrying a Kafir woman, however educated, 
 would regard himself as altogether declasse. The thing is 
 unknown. 
 
 Did you read that curious literary product of the fashionable 
 Orientalism of a few years ago — Mr. Marion Crawford's " Mr. 
 Isaacs " ? And if so, could you really reconcile yourself at heart 
 to the union of the Iranian hero, with all his gifts, to Katharine 
 Westonhaugh ? How, then, would you have felt if, instead of 
 the refined descendant of Zoroaster, the novelist had imposed 
 upon his English heroine a hulking, woolly-headed, prognathous 
 Kafir, whether straight from the wilds or a mission product 
 — however much' the poor fellow's well-schooled smugness 
 might add suggestions of the conventicle to those of the prize- 
 ring ?
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 99 
 
 " Yes, but," says the ardent philanthropist, " all this will be 
 changed. Educate, educate, educate ! " Educate by all means, 
 but do it to equalise, not to assimilate. It is an axiom of the 
 colour problem, all the world over, that there is no solution in 
 fusion. The half-caste is either a crime or a mistake, and the 
 octoroon the ghost of one. That way lies, not regeneration, but 
 (Regeneration. Nature's bars, the ingrained differences of race, 
 are not all differences to the advantage of the superior white. 
 But there they are, as plain as the nose on your face, and quite 
 distinguishable by that organ. To the sensibilities of Mr. Lemuel 
 Gulliver, if I remember him aright, the grosser physique of 
 Brobdingnag smelt most unsavoury. Europeans have made 
 the same observation upon the Kafir, But when Mr. Gulliver 
 was among the Lilliputians he was chagrined to discover from 
 their finer sense that the same fault of unconscious offensiveness 
 was chargeable to himself. There is a profound allegory in that, 
 and it suggested a curious inquiry to me in South Africa, as the 
 result of which I am happily able to instruct my countrymen 
 upon a delicate point. To us, the Kafir smells abominably. 
 But, ladies and gentlemen (how shall I say it ?), so do we to the 
 Kafir. And it is a question of skins, not of soaps. The point is 
 significant of many other things — things which are recognised 
 perforce by every white man in South Africa, and not a whit 
 more by Dutch than by English. It is a very cheap humanity 
 for us to hold out oui' arms to the " man and brother " six 
 thousand miles away. It is another matter for the colonist- 
 cousin who is within daily touch. 
 
 Nowhere in South Africa, neither in the British colonies nor 
 in the Boer Republic, is the law really colour-blind as between 
 black and white. And those who would make it so as to property, 
 as to person, and as to political power, are the first to plead for 
 special treatment of the black in regard to drink. Broadly 
 speaking, I should say that the black is regarded as an adult 
 citizen in the colonies and as a minor in the States. But he is 
 a " citizen " with a difference — especially in Natal. His is a 
 citizenship which stops short every evening at the curfew bell, 
 and which ceases on the threshold of the " canteen." 
 
 As to master and servant, a Kafir will always submit to be 
 struck by his own baas for a fault, as in the eternal fitness of 
 things ; and a " boy " caught thieving on a remote farm will 
 sometimes be offered the choice of being beaten at home or 
 taken before the distant magistrate, and will choose the beating. 
 But, if he thinks otherwise, he has his remedy at law as much
 
 100 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 in the Transvaal as in Cape Colony. A great hulking Kafir was 
 " larking " with some luggage outside a store, when out dashed 
 a little counter-jumper and welted him over the arm with a 
 sjambok (riding-crop). My blood boiled, and I looked to see the 
 black giant crumple the counter-jumper up like a piece of paper. 
 Not a bit of it. Nor did he dream of taking out a summons. 
 But what he showed was not the cringing passiveness of 
 servitude — it was the rueful stoicism of the school-boy caught 
 cribbing. 
 
 There remains the franchise. The Kafir votes (and, as we 
 have seen, drinks) in Cape Colony alone. It is a great and 
 generous experiment — how great I only realised when I saw at 
 Kimberley, walking about in blanket or in nothing, beating a 
 kind of tomtom, or skipping in a furious war-dance, savages who, 
 a few weeks afterwards, might be free and independent electors. 
 I recalled the description I had heard of raw Kafirs marching in 
 single file to the poll, blanket on back, long kerrie in hand, and 
 chorusing in Kafirised form the name of the candidate — " Oo-smit, 
 Oo-smit, Oo-smit ! " — for whom the missionary had bidden them 
 vote. And as I remembered all these things, and looked upon 
 my naked fellow citizens, I confess I was bewildered. Of every 
 one I met I asked questions about the Kafir voter. The replies 
 were more bewildering still. I heard of Kafir working men in 
 the eastern provinces, clothed artisans, politicians who would 
 walk for miles and miles to register, who turn elections, and who 
 poll 90 per cent, of their men. Five minutes afterwards I hear 
 of a canteen-keeper who boasts that he can bring up some two 
 hundred black " lambs " for either side. But if I was surprised 
 to find what different views different Cape colonists took about 
 the Kafir voter, I was still more surprised to find how many 
 people had formed no views at all. In face of the fact that 
 there are twice as many natives in the colony as whites, all 
 within easy reach of the qualification, nobody seems in the 
 least afraid of the issue, and very few appear to have given it a 
 moment's thought. The white men mean to govern the country, 
 and there is an end of the matter. Yet, it is easy to imagine a 
 political regimentation of " the colour " — a canteen party, let 
 us say, with white or half-caste " bosses " — which would be as 
 intolerable at the Cape as it was found in America. The fact is 
 that the enfranchisement of the black, here as in America, was 
 as much a piece of gerrymandering as of generosity. 
 
 Where enfranchisement is such a gigantic experiment, it does 
 not lie with the rulers of British India to cavil at the Boer
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 101 
 
 Republic for not hastening to copy Cape Colony, nor at Cape 
 Colonists for looking carefully to the electoral qualification. 
 
 And now, I hope, you will begin to understand what it is that 
 the colonist means when he growls about " meddling with the 
 Native Question." You cannot discuss that question (or, I 
 might almost add, any other) with a South African colonist, 
 Dutch or English, without hearing the words " Exeter Hall " 
 and " Aborigines' Protection Society " repeated with every 
 inflection of contempt and epithet of contumely. Does this 
 mean that your South African friend wishes to re-establish 
 slavery, or to rival the atrocities of the Aruwimi ? Not a bit of 
 it. A few years ago it came to light that some brutal fellow 
 had twisted a bit of soda-water-bottle wire in with the strands 
 of a " cat " which was in use (or was alleged to be in use) at a 
 certain prison where natives were confined. " It came to light," 
 I said ; no, it was brought to light by a Commission appointed 
 to look into prison treatment by the Colonial Government itself. 
 No sooner was the news flashed over here than all England was 
 roused against the cruel colonist who habitually flogs the poor 
 black man with " cats " made of twisted wire ! At this the 
 colonist waxed furious. But it was not because he was in favour 
 of flogging with wire. 
 
 I do not share, I merely record, the sweeping colonial prejudice 
 against the A.P.S. Let me define my position. The sentiment 
 to which that society appeals, the principles on which it relies, 
 go to the bottom of the English character at its best. In the 
 hold which those sentiments and those principles have upon the 
 English mind lies the essential strength of English rule wherever 
 it is strong. Right round the world men look to us to do justice 
 and to love mercy. When the British Empire has served its 
 turn and gone to pieces, it will be remembered that in its day it 
 made some of the dark places of the earth less dark, that where- 
 soever it came it made the strong more orderly and the weak 
 less afraid. And as long as the dark places are dark, there will be 
 use for a bull's-eye, even in the hands of a busybody. All this 
 I believe, the colonists at bottom know and feel as well as we do 
 — or, if less keenly, only because they are more close to the 
 practical difficulties, and the bulk of them can surely be shamed 
 into righting a wrong, if only you go the proper way about it. 
 The society begins at the wrong end. Wherever a self-governing 
 colony like the Cape is concerned, the public opinion to which 
 the society should appeal is the public opinion of that colony. 
 Active work on the spot should take the place of wire-pulling in
 
 102 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 London. There is the press, the platform, all the machinery of 
 agitation equally open there as here. If the appeal failed, be 
 sure it would be for some good reason. If it succeeded, even to 
 the point of reversing a policy and thwarting a government, it 
 would be by the consent of those to whom that government is 
 responsible, and without straining one single tie between the 
 colony and the mother country. 
 
 Let us put some trust in our own kith and kin ; let us do 
 some justice to our cousins of Dutch descent ; let us recognise 
 how deep and complex a problem is before them, and be slow 
 to meddle imperiously with things which to them are entangled 
 with every thread of daily life. That is what, in these rough 
 suggestions, I have tried to say. 
 
 One other extract, taken in this case from a leading 
 article, will suffice to make Garrett's position clear : 
 
 We do not propose to round off this article by solving the 
 Native Question. But there is one practical point which we 
 may suggest — one thought which has often struck us when 
 confronting the social aspect of the colour question all over the 
 world. This social aspect, remember, only presents itself where 
 the darker race is rather highly developed. It is easy enough 
 to recommend frank legislation on the tutelage theory in regard 
 to the raw Kafir working at the Docks or in the Kimberley com- 
 pound. The social difficulty arises when one is dealing, so to say, 
 with the first-class, not the third-class, passenger. On this 
 public resort side comes the crux. Ought we to put resolutely 
 before us the ideal of equality and try to act up to it, or should 
 Ave here too, as in our laws about locations and drink and so 
 forth, frankly recognise that between us and our coloured country- 
 men (the very word sounds odd to a South African ear) a great 
 gulf is fixed, and never try to overpass it ? We are inclined to 
 think that while the former plan may be pursued by small and 
 special circles of people missioning, teaching and the like (always 
 short of miscegenation), the latter is the only possible one for 
 the mass of the community. How, then, minimise white over- 
 bearingness and black degradation ? The one clue to the maze, 
 we think, is to substitute as far as possible the conception of 
 difference in kind for that of difference in degree. 
 
 Say not that we are superior and they inferior (a thing by no 
 means true in every respect), but simply that we are different, 
 and that the difference involves, as a matter of practical comfort 
 and convenience for both colours, a certain amount of keeping 
 to ourselves. Of course we shall go on thinking ourselves the
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 103 
 
 superior race ; but it is quite open to our coloured friends to do 
 the same. . . . We fancy a little true racial pride, shunning 
 white familiarity within some limits of preference, taking the 
 tone, "I don't ^^-ish to force my company upon you," would be 
 a most healthy sign in our dark neighbours. And we are con- 
 vinced that to err in the opposite direction — to force the trial 
 of these delicate issues on every pretext and to press a pretended 
 amalgamation in social forms where no real one exists — is to 
 challenge that American bitterness of feehng to which South 
 Africa is happily a stranger {Cape Times, October 2, 1895). 
 
 Such, then, was the spirit in which Garrett appealed 
 to public opinion in the Mother Country to leave to 
 South Africa internal autonomy ; therein to work out 
 a solution of the native question for herself. Of his 
 suggestions upon the problem in connection with present- 
 day politics, I shall have something to say in a later 
 chapter (p. 192). 
 
 On the second of the subjects noted above (p. 93), that 
 of Customs Union, railway agreements and the like, 
 I shall not enter here. Details are of the essence of such 
 discussions, and the details have changed since Garrett's 
 day. The third fundamental of his South African policy 
 — the external defence of the sub-continent by Great 
 Britain — is of more abiding interest, and in regard to 
 it he was able to contribute the service of a pioneer. At 
 the time when I am now writing (April 1909), the Mother 
 country and the Empire have been stirred by the uncon- 
 ditional offer by New Zealand of a first-class battleship 
 for the Imperial Navy. The British State which set the 
 precedent in such unconditional offers is Cape Colony. 
 In 1897, at the time of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen 
 Victoria, Mr. Goschen announced one evening that he had 
 " received the present of an ironclad at the hands of a 
 British Colony. There was," he added, " no ceremonial, 
 there was no great reception, there was no blare of trumpets ; 
 but Sir Gordon Sprigg simply came to the First Lord of the 
 Admiralty and told him that the Cape Colony was prepared
 
 104 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 to place an ironclad of the first-class at the disposal of the 
 Empire,"* Sir Gordon Sprigg was the Prime Minister 
 who accepted a resolution to this effect passed in the 
 Cape Assembly ; Sir James Rose-Innes was the private 
 member who tabled the resolution. The real author of 
 the proposal was Garrett. It was, as he had often said 
 to his friends, one of the main objects which he put before 
 himself in going out to South Africa, and he lost no time 
 in setting to work upon it. H.M.S. Afrikander was 
 the title which Garrett gave to the battleship of his imagina- 
 tion, and he first floated her in the current of public 
 opinion a few weeks after he landed at Cape Town.f That 
 all was not going to be plain sailing v/as clear from the 
 fact that even Mr. Rhodes was at first indifferent ; the 
 idea was impracticable, there must be a united South 
 Africa first, and the question of coast protection would 
 follow ; in any case Garrett must " get up more steam.'* 
 And he did. The leading article was followed up by a 
 " boom," taking the approved form of "special interviews," 
 " special articles " and so forth. Garrett endeavoured 
 to persuade Sir Gordon Sprigg to make H.M.S. Afri- 
 kander a Government proposal, and place a definite sum 
 on the estimates for her. Sir Gordon, however, is one of 
 those cautious politicians who like to be well assured of 
 public opinion beforehand, and Garrett pegged aAvay at 
 driving the idea into the public mind. He had his reward 
 on June 3, 1897, when Mr. Rose-Innes (who had been 
 favourable to the idea from the first) carried without a 
 division the resolution on which Sir Gordon Sprigg acted. J 
 " It will make him a big man at the Jubilee Conference,'* 
 wrote Garrett to his cousin (June 9), " and all the time 
 
 * Speech at the St. George's Club, July 10, 1897. 
 
 t Cape Times, August 16, 1895. 
 
 J But acted, as it afterwards turned out, without the authority of his Parlia- 
 ment. Ultimately, after some vicissitudes, the scheme was embodied in an 
 unconditional contribution of £30,000 a year (afterwards £50,000). Garrett 
 reviewed the story of the movement in an article (December 2, 1898) on the 
 second reading of the Bill.
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 105 
 
 it's I who pulled the wires — isn't it fun ? Not a single 
 allusion to the Cape Times either in the Parliament dis- 
 cussion, where they faked up my old arguments, or in the 
 Press ; but that doesn't matter. Most of my other little 
 ' booms ' I have got well tacked on to the paper ; this is 
 too big a thing for one to care about such incidentals." 
 Garrett knew the rules of the game, it will be seen. It is 
 often a journalist of ideas and initiative who starts the ball ; 
 the statesman who takes up the ideas gets the glory of the 
 goal. The journalist, with unmoved muscle, applauds, 
 as if they were new to him, the "bold initiative," the 
 " happy phrase," or the " convincing arguments " which 
 he, it may be, has supplied to the statesman. And this, 
 I think, is generally the more excellent way ; for the way 
 to get things done, as a wise man has said, is not to mind 
 who gets the credit of doing them. If, on the other hand, 
 the journalist works up some idea as a newspaper " boom " 
 and parades his " scoop," his self-gratulation should not 
 be judged too harshly. He has the Paper to serve, as 
 well as the public cause. He should be judged by the 
 standard applied in like case to politicians. A statesman's 
 ambition may be pure, and his public service disinterested, 
 even though he should boast of some achievement as 
 reflecting the highest credit on the insight of a Ministry 
 or as adding new glory to the Great Liberal (or Con- 
 servative) Party. The real test is whether the policy, 
 which is the subject of the newspaper " boom " or the 
 party psean, is inherently wise and beneficial. 
 
 That the policy of H.M.S. Afrikander was wise, will 
 be generally admitted. The principles of it were explained 
 by Garrett in the letter to his cousin from which I have 
 already quoted : 
 
 Note that while the Australian squadron idea is to get a sort 
 of local fleet semi-detached from Imperial central control, I the 
 Cape proposal has been kept on the right lines of simply sub- 
 scribing to the Queen's Navy, without making conditions. I do
 
 106 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 hope people will see the significance of this, the only practicable 
 scheme of Imperial unity yet on the tapis, which can begin 
 to-morrow^ if all the colonies agree, and what an object-lesson 
 for the ATorld ! I do hope nobody will raise the objection that 
 if once help with the navy is accepted it will lead sooner or later 
 to pressure for colonial representation at Westminster. Of 
 course it will. Just the beauty of it ! But my idea is again 
 quite simple for the transition period. Triennial Premier Con- 
 ferences on Foreign Policy, merely consultative, and therefore 
 requiring no new constitutional machinery but carrying naturally 
 great advisory weight with Imperial Cabinet in decisions which 
 may require the use of the Aveapon subscribed to by the colonies, 
 the actual responsibility and control, of course, remaining where 
 it is at present, till actual representation becomes practicable, 
 too far ahead for us to see. 
 
 Those who have followed recent developments and pro- 
 posals will note Garrett's suggestions with lively interest. 
 But his H.M.S. Afrikander was not at the time quite so 
 beneficial for its incidental effect upon South African 
 politics, as Garrett had hoped. He had advocated it 
 on its merits as a contribution to the better and fairer 
 adjustment of the problem of Imperial Defence ; but 
 also as a means of emphasising the solidarity of South 
 Africa, locally self-governed, but depending for external 
 protection upon the paramountcy of Great Britain. This 
 was the meaning of a speech which Sir Hercules Robinson 
 made at Pretoria on the occasion of the extension of the 
 Delagoa Bay railway from the Portuguese frontier (July 8, 
 1895) : the Transvaal, he said, must remain " a member 
 of the South African family, with none but family differences 
 with the British Colonies." President Kruger, however, 
 was looking fondly, as will be seen from the interview with 
 him (p. 218), for a seaport of his own, and Garrett advocated 
 the policy of H.M.S. Afrikander, partly as a counter- 
 demonstration to " this Europeanising policy, this itching 
 anxiety of the little Transvaal oligarchy to masquerade 
 as a fifteenth -rate European power, instead of loyally 
 working as ' a member of the South African family,' as
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 107 
 
 the High Commissioner happily phrases it " {Cape Times, 
 July 22, 1895). Garrett's naval policy was thus con- 
 nected in his mind with another of his leading ideas, as 
 defined above. He hoped that his demonstration would 
 do something to promote the idea of a " South African 
 family " in which all its members were, though under 
 different roofs, entitled to equal rights. More and more 
 it was becoming clear that unless President Kruger could 
 be persuaded to soften his heart towards the Uitlanders 
 serious friction would result ; and more and more it was 
 seen to be probable that in case of such friction the inter- 
 vention of Great Britain might in one form or another 
 become inevitable. Concurrently, therefore, with advo- 
 cating his H.M.S. Afrikander, Garrett was preaching his 
 other doctrines — that the conception of " the South 
 African family " required some sympathy with the Uit- 
 landers on the part of the Dutch elsewhere, who themselves 
 already enjoyed equal political rights, and that any inter- 
 ference on the part of the British Government should and 
 would be made in the interests of South Africa as a whole. 
 The criticism which Garrett's " Plain Talk with Oom 
 Paul " had evoked in the South African press gave him 
 occasion to define his position very clearly. The criticism 
 was as conflicting as voluminous. The Rand papers 
 found Garrett too indulgent to President Kruger : " any 
 sympathy with his sullen stand against the inevitable 
 was," they complained, " absurd and ignorant." Garrett, 
 however, maintained his ground, recognising that Presi- 
 dent Kruger's extreme Conservatism was not contrary to 
 nature, but losing no opportunity of appealing to the 
 Cape Dutch to prevent persistence in it becoming con- 
 trary to peace and good policy. The Krugerite press, 
 on the other hand — " that chorus of newspapers which 
 we may describe as the Pretorian guard " — were very 
 angry with Garrett for exposing the President's German 
 intrigue :
 
 108 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 The main idea — the broad give and take of South African 
 policy — has been missed by editors, but while they are tearing 
 their hair it may be their readers were giving attention to this. 
 If there is one point on which the boulevardiers, the anti-colonial 
 claque, are unable to influence their readers, it is the matter of 
 German intriguing. 
 
 We in South Africa do not want any power in for " balancing 
 against England " or any other pretext. We are perfectly con- 
 fident of our power to maintain our own self-government without 
 any meddling from Berlin. . . . Great Britain in South Africa 
 is simply acting as guardian of the interests of the future whole 
 against hostile action by any of the present parts. A Free State 
 Transburgher may detest England . . . but he sees that 
 England is the only power here whose interests are for integra- 
 tion, not disintegration. . . . When Germany steps into 
 Damaraland and Namaqualand those are gone — or only to be 
 rescued for South Africa like the Portuguese bits by some happy 
 bankruptcy, while England regards every bit . . . as simply 
 held in trust till one or other of the self-governing members is 
 ready and competent to take it over. 
 
 The burgher " feels that so long as the union England works 
 for . . . leaves the republics their autonomy, she is simply 
 doing our work ; while the Europeanising policy of Dr. Leyds 
 and his henchmen can do nothing but drive South Africa to 
 decorate a clique with the Order of the Spread Eagle." * 
 
 This characteristic article well shows the fundamental 
 object of Garrett's policy ; it was to appeal to the wider 
 patriotism of South Africa against the exclusive particular- 
 ism of President Kruger. 
 
 The appeal deserved more success than it obtained. 
 At one moment there was an appearance, but only an 
 appearance, of a response. In October and November 1895 
 Great Britain and the Transvaal were on the verge of war 
 over the closing of the Drifts on the Vaal River. In 
 pursuance of his policy of " building a wall " around the 
 Transvaal, the President had used the completion of the 
 railway from Delagoa Bay to strike a blow at the import 
 of goods by the Cape route. The Netherlands Railway 
 Company raised to a prohibitive figure the rates between the 
 
 * "Unity or Disunion," Cape Times, August 2, 1895.
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 109 
 
 Vaal river and Johannesburg. Importers thereupon un- 
 loaded their goods south of the river and placed them in ox 
 waggons. President Kruger retorted by closing the Drifts 
 as ports of entry for oversea goods. The Cape Govern- 
 ment, thus threatened with a loss of customs dues and 
 railway rates, protested against the President's proclama- 
 tion as a clear violation of the London Convention of 1884. 
 The protest availed nothing, and the Cape Government 
 (of which Mr. Rhodes was Premier and Mr. Schreiner 
 Attorney-General) appealed to Downing Street. Mr. 
 Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, promised to take 
 the matter up and to see it through, provided that the 
 Cape Ministry, in the event of an armed expedition becom- 
 ing necessary, would bear half the expense, furnish an 
 armed contingent, and give the free use of its railways for 
 military purposes. The Cape Ministry accepted these 
 terms, which, however, it stipulated, were not to be 
 divulged unless action upon them became necessary. Mr. 
 Chamberlain, thus armed, sent an ultimatum to the Trans- 
 vaal Government, and the Drifts were reopened. Mr. 
 Chamberlain's ultimatum and its success were quickly 
 made known in Cape Town, but not the action of the 
 Cape Government which had supported it. Mr. Rhodes, 
 the Cape Premier, enjoj'-ed at this time the support of the 
 Bond. When the full facts became known, it was, therefore, 
 assumed, and in discussions upon the subsequent war 
 it was in some quarters vehemently asserted, as con- 
 clusive proof of the willingness of the Cape Dutch to put 
 pressure upon President Kruger, that the Afrikander Bond 
 had supported the Drifts ultimatum. It was not so. Gar- 
 rett's hopes that they would be induced to take any decisive 
 line, in the interests of the South African family against the 
 Transvaal, were, as he afterwards had to admit, never 
 realised : 
 
 The sole shadow of excuse for saying that " the Bond offered 
 to back Great Britain " is the fact that the Rhodes Ministry
 
 110 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 offered secretly ; and Mr. Rhodes (then on the e^e of his fall) 
 thought, or affected to think, and advised Sir Hercules Robinson 
 that he would be able to get a Parliamentary majority, and if 
 so, presumably, some part of the Cape Dutch, to support him 
 if the secret agreement had to come to light. Mr. Rhodes was 
 wrong. The agreement did not come to light till a year or 
 eighteen months later, when the question had become academic 
 and another government was in office ; but the Bond showed, 
 and has continued to show, that Mr. Rhodes could as much and 
 as little have got it to go halves in the Raid as in the proposed 
 Imperial campaign. There was one Bond man in the Ministry 
 which made the secret agreement ; at the next election the 
 Bond turned him out as a " false Afrikander," and on one 
 ground or another they have since proscribed every other Minister 
 concerned. . . . The truth about the Bond " offering to back 
 Great Britain," then, comes to this : that the Bond knew no 
 more than the man in the moon about the offer till all was over, 
 and since it has got to know has proscribed everybody concerned 
 with making the offer {Contemporary Review, August 1900). 
 
 All this, however, was matter of subsequent comment. 
 Garrett, meanwhile, eagerly turned the Drifts incident to 
 the purpose of his constant text. A few weeks before, 
 the annexation of British Bechuanaland to Cape Colony 
 had been approved by a unanimous vote ; and presently 
 the Bechuanaland Protectorate (lying between the now 
 extended boundaries of the Colony and Rhodesia) was 
 handed over to the British South Africa Company. Gar- 
 rett pointed to these events as illustrations of " John 
 Bull as Afrikander," of the Imperial Government acting 
 in South African affairs only in interests of South Africa 
 as a whole : 
 
 Every intervention has been on behalf of South Africa as a 
 united whole as against the supposed interests of a part, and has 
 in fact served South African and not any selfishly British pur- 
 poses. Take Bechuanaland, e.g., which was not a mere grabbing 
 of territory for Great Britain ; the territory is now being handed 
 round in South Africa. What it did was to rescue the way to 
 the Hinterland for the South African unity by saving it from 
 being parcelled up into little particularised Transvaals, which 
 at this moment would be exhibiting little particularist Hoi-
 
 EDITOR OF THE CAPE TIMES 111 
 
 landerisms, Drift-closings, and all the rest of it, on the present 
 Transvaal pattern. There will be no Drifts closed on the Bulu- 
 wayo line — thanks to John Bull Afrikander {Ca'pe Times, 
 November 5, 1895). 
 
 Among the Dutch in Cape Colony, however, there was 
 no indication of any forwardness to side with the Uit- 
 landers in their agitation for those political rights enjoyed 
 by both races equally in Cape Colony. Garrett was 
 constantly trying to " draw " Mr. Hofmeyr, with whom 
 he was on not unfriendly terms, but, though some wise 
 counsels were, it is believed, privately given, nothing of 
 marked significance was forthcoming. To Garrett, there- 
 fore, things seemed in the late autumn of 1895 to be 
 tending dangerously "to an end which cannot be fore- 
 seen." 
 
 Much, meanwhile, of the true inwardness of which he 
 was as yet unconscious, was going on behind the scenes. 
 
 There were, for instance, the various negotiations, 
 already briefly mentioned, which were to give Mr. Rhodes 
 command of what was afterwards called the " jumping- 
 off ground of the Raid." These included the question 
 of Khama's territory, ultimately settled by leaving the 
 territory as a Native Reserve, but requiring the cession 
 of a strip of land for the purposes of the Matabeleland 
 Railway. Khama, it will be remembered, came over to 
 England on the subject, and Garrett had a series of articles 
 which were very sympathetic to the claims of the Bechu- 
 ana chief. " Rhodes very angry with me," he wrote 
 home, " for coddling Khama, as he calls it." He did not 
 connect such matters with events which were presently to 
 follow. He knew, no doubt, as much as Mr. Chamberlain 
 knew, but no more. Things seemed to him to be drifting 
 dangerously, and South African statesmen to be careless 
 or lethargic. Some of them were, in fact, reckless rather, 
 and headstrong. Some months later I remember seeing 
 Mr. Rhodes in London, and our talk fell, among other
 
 112 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 subjects, upon Garrett and his attitude towards recent 
 events. " A week or two," said Rhodes, " before Jameson 
 started, Garrett said to me one day, ' Now look here, 
 Mr. Rhodes, I can't stand this country ! You are all too 
 fat and lethargic ; nothing moves.' I smiled and advised 
 him to wait. The next time I saw him was after my 
 trouble had happened. ' I hoped it was hot enough for 
 him now ' ! " He would have been hard to please, if 
 it were not. In November and December the Reform 
 movement at Johannesburg seemed to be coming to a 
 head. On December 26 President Kruger made one 
 of his pithy speeches. He was " often asked," he said, 
 " about the threatened risings. Wait until the time 
 comes," added he ; " for take a tortoise, if you want to 
 kill it, you must wait until it puts out its head." Next 
 day, Mr. Charles Leonard, President of the Transvaal 
 National Union, issued its manifesto ; President Kruger 
 waited. On December 29 Dr. Jameson, in Rhodes's 
 phrase, " took the bit between his teeth," and started on 
 his ill-fated raid. The news reached Johannesburg on 
 the following day, and caused the greatest consternation 
 among the reformers to whose aid and assistance he was 
 supposed to be coming. In Cape Town, meanwhile, that 
 same day, Monday, December 30, was one, as Garrett 
 described, of strange, undefined tension of feeling, though 
 the general expectancy strained towards Johannesburg, 
 not towards the Border. Gradually, news began to filter 
 through. The situation thus disclosed was " hot " enough 
 for the most eager spirit ; difficult, also, and embar- 
 rassing enough for the quickest and most nimble -witted of 
 journalists.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 " THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS " 
 
 The teller had to consider two classes of reader, those in South Africa 
 and those in England. As The Princess has it : 
 
 " And I, betwixt them both, to please them both. 
 
 And yet to give the story as it rose, 
 
 I moved as in a strange diagonal, 
 
 And maybe neither pleased myself nor them." — F. E. G. 
 
 The night of Monday, December 30, 1895, was a memora- 
 ble one in Garrett's life, as in that of others who were 
 making or chronicling South African history. He described 
 it, two days later, in a letter to his cousin, from which 
 some extracts may be given : 
 
 Let me tell you the history of one night of my life — Monday, 
 December 30, 1895. News of Revolution being hourly expected, 
 I send for Hofmeyr, and after an hour's hard work squeeze out 
 of him a word of almost sympathy with Uitlanders for publica- 
 tion.* I know, meanwhile, not from Rhodes, that " something " 
 has begun in Transvaal. Wires blocked : exact news coming 
 in morning. I concoct a most careful article to secm-e Afrikander 
 sympathy ; the Physician, sent by me, drags by the beard a 
 Dutch master from Normal College to translate same into 
 Dutch, ready to print in Dutch and Enghsh. Long wires from 
 Edwards [representative of Ca^pe Times'] at Johannesburg on 
 tension of feehng there, but ignorant of Jameson's movement 
 so far ; I also ignorant of exact facts. Scarcely has Hofmeyr 
 gone when in comes Sir Graham Bower, Imperial Secretary. 
 Tells me of Jameson's move ; authorises me from High Com- 
 missioner to announce that Excellency had repudiated and 
 recalled Jameson, but announcement only to be made if I get 
 
 * " His views on the franchise demand Mr. Hofmeyr has expressed long ago. 
 He favoured a compromise then, but it found no support at Pretoria. Now 
 it would be useless to offer the compromise which then might have satisfied 
 legitimate aspirations." — Ca'pe Times, December 31. 
 
 113 H
 
 114 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 news of Jameson's move from other sources than official, so that 
 it can't be kept longer unknown in colony. I have to write such 
 a leader as covers this, and puts best face on it while not appearing 
 to know the facts ! Telegrams filtering in all night. News of 
 Jameson comes 4 a.m. only ! Paper going to press. I write 
 up new matter, adding news and High Commissioner's message 
 thereon. Meanwhile a friend from Johannesburg comes in ; 
 goes quite hysterical when I say that Rhodes and Government 
 must and will repudiate blunder, and tell him my news from 
 High Commissioner. I send for shorthand man and dictate 
 very slowly in his presence the part of leader expressing impossi- 
 bility of backing Jameson. 4.30 to 5.30, doss on office sofa. 
 5.30, walk up slope of Table Mountain vid Roeland Street ; find 
 I'm tired ; watch sun rising over Cape Town ; come back to 
 Physician's, 6 a.m. ; she is up already ; we confer ; she feeds me ; 
 I doss again on her sofa ; bath and breakfast, and the Cape 
 Times going like wildfire ; it has partly saved situation with 
 Afrikanders for one day. 
 
 Garrett's letter gives a vivid picture of the strain, the 
 excitement, the pressure under which a journalist has, 
 at moments of acute crisis, to do his work. The politician 
 need not speak till he likes, and can take time for second 
 and third thoughts, with all the facts before him in orderly 
 sequence. The journalist, on an occasion such as Garrett 
 describes, has to collect his facts as he writes, to form 
 his judgment on the instant, to express it on the spur of 
 the moment. Only a cool head, a quick intelligence and a 
 firm grasp of principles can carry a man successfully 
 through the ordeal. Garrett's handling of the crisis with 
 which he was suddenly confronted showed all these qualities. 
 If I do not print in extenso the article which, as he hoped, 
 had " partly saved the situation," or any of those which 
 followed it, my reason is that even the best of articles, 
 written solely for the occasion, are apt to lose their savour 
 when the moment has passed away, and even to become 
 unintelligible without a formidable array of critical appara- 
 tus. Nor do I propose to retell here the story of the 
 Raid and subsequent events. The original sources are to
 
 THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS 115 
 
 be found in Blue-books, Green-books, White papers innu- 
 merable ; and the gist of them has been compressed in 
 many histories of the time. Garrett's own " Story of an 
 African Crisis," published by him in 1897,* remains, 
 in my judgment, the best monograph on the subject. It 
 may be hereafter, when access is possible to private 
 memoirs, that " some acuter wit, fresh probing," will 
 " sound this multifarious mass of words and deeds deeper, 
 and reach through guilt to innocence," or through inno- 
 cence to guilt. It may be, though I doubt it ; but Garrett's 
 account of the events is as clear and readable, as his estimate 
 of the motives, actions and responsibilities of the principal 
 personages is fearless and impartial. To " The Story of an 
 African Crisis," then, the reader is referred who desires 
 to refresh his memory, in any detail, of that unhappy 
 page in South African history. Garrett himself, however, 
 played some part — though neither so large nor so Machia- 
 velian as his opponents put to his count — in the events 
 of the time. For this reason, and because the part he 
 played belongs to the story of his own life and throws light 
 upon his character and ability, some account of it is given. 
 What was generally known in Cape Town at the turn 
 of the year 1895-6 was that Dr. Jameson had crossed the 
 border into the Transvaal ; what was expected was that 
 the Uitlanders in Johannesburg were making, or would 
 make, an armed rising ; what was not yet known was that 
 the movement — or rather a movement — was preconcerted 
 between Mr. Rhodes, Dr. Jameson, and the Reformers, 
 that Dr. Jameson was armed with an undated letter 
 from them invoking his aid in protection of " unarmed 
 men, women and children," and that he had forced the 
 pace by riding in before the Reformers were ready for him. 
 
 * First issued by him as the 1896 " Christmas Number " of the Cape Times, 
 and re-issued in 1897 with additions in book-form — " The Story of an African 
 Crisis : being the Truth about the Jameson Raid and Johannesburg Revolt of 
 1896, told with the assistance of the leading Actors in the Drama." By 
 Edmund Garrett and E. J. Edwards. Constable and Co.
 
 116 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 Some of this knowledge was now in Garrett's mind ; but 
 nobody at the Cape knew or foresaw what was actually 
 to happen ; the revolution might, it was supposed, still 
 occur. In these circumstances, Garrett, as he put it, 
 had to ride two horses. On the one hand, in accordance 
 with a fixed principle of his already explained, he appealed 
 for sympathy with the Uitlanders. " The struggle to-day," 
 he wrote in his leading article addressed " To all Afrikan- 
 ders," " is the same as the struggle of 1881, only the parts 
 are reversed " : 
 
 What did the burghers fight for, then ? For the right to govern 
 themselves, to be free men, not to have to obey the laws of other 
 people. And what are the " Uitlanders " fighting for to-day — 
 if to fight they are forced ? For that very same right to govern 
 themselves, to be free men, to have laws of their own, not of 
 other people's. The burghers called God to vindicate a great 
 right in 1881. The "Uitlanders" can call to God to vindicate 
 the very same right in 1895. The " Uitlanders " are struggling 
 for their freedom, aye, and for their country ; for they feel that 
 it is their country. The Boer began the making of it, but they 
 are finishing it ; it is their work that has added all that poAver 
 and prosperity and wealth, all those outward and visible signs 
 of a great Republic, of which the Boer is as proud as anybody 
 when he outspans his wagon at Nachtmaal in the square at Pre- 
 toria and looks at the splendid Raadzaal. The Boer would see 
 that he is in the wrong now, as he was in the right then, were 
 it not that his simple mind, his little stock of prejudices (the 
 Cape Colonist knows his cousin's little weaknesses), have been 
 worked upon by evil counsellors from outside South Africa. 
 When the Boer was right. Cape Afrikanders saw it and said so. 
 Will they not now see that the right is on the other side, and 
 say so with equal honesty ? 
 
 But those who would be free, themselves must strike the 
 blow ; it was no part of the Imperial Government's duty 
 or right to intervene, or to sanction intervention by means 
 of a raid. Garrett's second point, then, in accordance 
 with another of his fixed principles, was to assert and 
 defend the duty of the Imperial Government to disavow, 
 repudiate and recall the raiders :
 
 THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS 117 
 
 We have not the slightest hesitation in saying that if the 
 troops in question did cross the border in this airy way, they 
 would be promptly repudiated and recalled by the Imperial 
 authority. Trouble in the Transvaal has been long foreseen, 
 and the infatuated policy of the President has threatened to set 
 his house on fire these two years past. Everybody foresaw 
 possibilities Avhich might even render it necessary to send for 
 the Suzerain Power to intervene with armed force and part the 
 combatants, in order to stop a race war. All this is common- 
 place, but through all such events the High Commissioner's duty 
 is to stand high above the quarrels — even the just quarrels — of 
 the " Uitlanders," for it is to him that all South Africa will look 
 to hold the balance even and to mould the united statesmanship 
 of South Africa into the great settlement which must inevitably 
 follow the struggle. 
 
 That settlement was not to come so soon as Garrett 
 hoped, nor in the way that he anticipated ; but to the two 
 lines indicated above — sympathy with the objects of the 
 Revolution, reprobation of the Raid — he steadily adhered, 
 endeavouring on his part also to hold the balance even. 
 At one point, however, his zeal on behalf of the Reformers 
 at Johannesburg ran somewhat away from discretion. 
 He saw much of Sir Hercules Robinson during the anxious 
 hours before the High Commissioner started for the north. 
 Sir Hercules knew and respected him as a man of indepen- 
 dent judgment to whom, as to himself, the honour of England 
 and the welfare of South Africa were dearer than any 
 private interests of Mr. Rhodes or of Johannesburg. To 
 Garrett, therefore. Sir Hercules showed the Draft Pro- 
 clamation which had been suggested and approved by 
 Mr. Hofmeyr. Garrett criticised one passage in the 
 Draft which seemed to him not to hold the balance even, 
 which might, indeed, be read as an interference (though 
 on President Kruger's side) in the internal affairs of the 
 Republic. " It was one thing," he argued, 
 
 to proclaim Jameson's external intervention. It was quite 
 another thing to use words tantamount to an internal in- 
 terference between the Transvaal Government and certain
 
 118 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 Transvaal inhabitants. The Imperial policy towards the 
 Johannesburg movement 'per se had been, so far, one of 
 strict impartiality. It could neither promise the Uitlanders 
 support nor could it officiously bid them sit down under their 
 grievances. It might intervene to part the combatants, as the 
 Power mainly responsible for the peace of South Africa ; or to 
 prevent whichever side won from proceeding to extreme action 
 against the other ; but the conversation of the Johannesburg 
 leaders then in Cape Town sufficed to show how deeply Johannes- 
 burg would resent any act on the part of the Imperial Govern- 
 ment that could fairly be described as first leaving the Uitlanders 
 to work out their own salvation against an armed Government, 
 and then stepping in to divide and paralyse their ranks the 
 moment they began to do it.* 
 
 There was one sentence in the Draft Proclamation 
 which seemed to Garrett obnoxious to this objection. It 
 was the last, calling upon British subjects even to abstain 
 from demonstrations or any action calculated to disturb 
 public order. Garrett pleaded with the High Commissioner 
 for the omission of this paragraph. An injunction which 
 vetoed even the calling of a public meeting was, he argued, 
 an unnecessary piece of intervention in the internal affairs 
 of the Transvaal ; as such, it would amount, in spirit, to a 
 breach of the Convention. Sir Hercules Robinson, after 
 long consideration, admitted the force of Garrett's argu- 
 ments, and the paragraph was struck out. This action 
 of Garrett's was legitimate enough, though as things hap- 
 pened, it caused some little delay in the issue of the Pro- 
 clamation — a delay which was indeed of no practical 
 consequence, but became afterwards the subject of some 
 bitter controversy. Garrett's next action was, I think, 
 injudicious, though it is not so easy to be wise in the 
 excitement of the moment as afterwards when the con- 
 sequences of each move can be considered in due sequence. 
 He sent the following telegram to the Johannesburg Star : 
 
 You must expect, and not misunderstand, a proclamation 
 putting Jameson formally in the wrong. Imperial authorities 
 
 * " The Story of an African Crisis," p. 193i
 
 THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS 119 
 
 have no other course. Don't let this weaken or divide you. 
 This merely for your information. 
 
 This, Garrett explained, " was merely a private reading 
 of the situation exchanged between two journalists, 
 perfectly understood by the recipient, and conveying a 
 common-sense hint which proved of some small use in the 
 confused brouhaha at Johannesburg." The substance of 
 Garrett's telegram was defensible ; it was on the lines of 
 the amendment which he induced Sir Hercules Robinson 
 to make in the Proclamation ; he intended to emphasise 
 the distinction between Revolution (an internal affair) 
 and Raid (an external act of aggression). But the word- 
 ing of the telegram — " putting Jameson formally in the 
 wrong " — was not happily chosen ; and it is easy to under- 
 stand why the Transvaal Government, in the strain of 
 suspicion produced by the crisis, seized on Garrett's 
 message as a find of sinister significance and gave promi- 
 nence to it in their Green Book. It was afterwards the 
 subject of a debate in the Cape Parliament, and Garrett 
 was called before the Select Committee of that Parliament 
 to give explanations. The telegram was sent, it should 
 be stated, entirely " off his own bat " ; it was an impulsive 
 hit, characteristic of him. He longed to be on the spot 
 himself, believing that his presence there might be of 
 importance, and he even made plans for going up to 
 Johannesburg disguised as a German waiter — a make-up, 
 by the way, which he would not have found easy ; but the 
 strain and excitement were telling on his lung, and the 
 doctor imperatively forbade the journey. 
 
 Garrett's famous telegram revived the standing fiction 
 that he was " Rhodes's mouthpiece." The absurdity of 
 this should have been obvious to any candid and intelligent 
 reader of the Cape Times. Garrett was, it is true, on very 
 friendly and even familiar terms with Mr. Rhodes. It 
 has been said of Delane that no Minister would have 
 thought it odd if he -had sent in his card and asked to see
 
 120 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 him at any hour of the night * ; Garrett's way of summoning 
 the Prime Minister to an audience, I have heard him say, 
 was upon occasion to throw a stone at the window. But at 
 the time of the Raid Rhodes saw httle of Garrett, and said 
 httle to him. " Well, there is a little history being made ; 
 that is all." And that was all that he said. " Among his 
 Dutch furniture at Groote Schuur," wrote Garrett in his 
 paper (January 6, 1896), " Mr. Rhodes sits mute as the 
 Sphinx." As Garrett gradually learned from other sources 
 scraps of the real truth and of Rhodes's complicity in the 
 affair — in a Raid, that is, as contemplated, not at the 
 last moment in the Raid as actually carried out — he blurted 
 out his information in the hope of forcing Rhodes's hands 
 or rather tongue. Whereupon, said some, " even Mr. 
 Rhodes's mouthpiece admits " this, that and the other. 
 The real fact was, as Garrett wrote to me, that he knew 
 nothing, but printed what he surmised to be likely, " in 
 the hope of bringing Rhodes out into the open and forcing 
 him to be as frank as possible. This infuriates Rhodes 
 and the rest." But Garrett was not the man to be de- 
 flected from his own course by the fury either of friend 
 or of foe ; and he stuck consistently to his line that the 
 proper and the wise course was for Rhodes to make the 
 cleanest possible breast of it at the earliest possible mo- 
 ment. The phrase, which afterwards became current, 
 that Mr. Rhodes was " to face the music," was Garrett's. 
 He was equally free and independent in his criticisms of 
 the Reformers and their plan, as he called it, of " Revolu- 
 tion by Proxy," and, as any reader of " The Story of an 
 African Crisis," will speedily note, of Dr. Jameson and his 
 associates. " We know," he wrote in the paper (Janu- 
 ary 4), " there must be brave men on the Rand. We 
 feel that we do not yet know all. Some day, perhaps, we 
 may be enabled to take back some of our reproaches." 
 That day came, when Garrett was entrusted with a 
 
 * Sir Algernon West's " Recollections," vol, i. p. 244.
 
 THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS 121 
 
 commission to write the story of the Imperial Light Horse, 
 and the epitaph for the officers and troopers who fell in 
 the war. 
 
 Meanwhile, for all who were in positions of influence 
 there was work to be done in " picking up the broken 
 crockery " left by the Raid. Garrett here acted with 
 admirable energy and wisdom. The first thing to be 
 done was to prevent the blood-feud which could hardly 
 have been avoided if summary vengeance had been 
 executed upon Dr. Jameson. Nothing seemed impossible 
 at the moment. Even men ordinarily level-headed 
 were expressing the hope that President Kruger would 
 hang the Doctor upon the nearest tree, the terms of his 
 surrender to Commandant Cronje being as yet unknown 
 in Cape Town. Garrett immediately promoted a petition 
 to the High Commissioner, " earnestly representing that 
 Your Excellency should treat the release of Dr. Jameson 
 and his comrades as of more importance than any other 
 conditions which the Government of the South African 
 Republic is asked to grant." Part of every copy of the 
 Cape Times was made into a form for this petition, and 
 in a few days 10,000 signatures, in twos, and tens, and 
 fifties, had come in ; and the Mayor telegraphed the fact 
 to the High Commissioner. The Cape Times petition 
 ran through the Colony ; Kimberley, Port Elizabeth, 
 and East London did the like ; there were many Afri- 
 kander names among the signatures ; and the united 
 voice found an echo in the watchwords of the negotiations 
 then in progress. The position had been somewhat eased by 
 the telegram of the German Emperor. This officious mis- 
 sive, of which the inner history is still matter of occasional 
 and conflicting revelations, aroused a storm of anger among- 
 the British ; and its hint about the help of other Powers 
 being available excited uneasiness even among the Dutch. 
 Here was a matter which vitally affected one of Garrett's 
 root-ideas — the external paramountcy of Great Britain ;
 
 122 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 and he was quick to defend it. 0ns Land, the Dutch organ 
 at the Cape, had an article palHating the German Emperor's 
 interference ; Garrett at once drew attention to this in 
 the Cape Times, and appealed to Mr. Hofmeyr to speak 
 out. The appeal was successful ; Mr. Hofmeyr sent to 
 Garrett for immediate publication a most emphatic repudia- 
 tion of " Kaiser William's blundering utterances." * Gar- 
 rett's personal relations with Mr. Hofmeyr were, I may 
 here remark, of a friendly character. Garrett had a high 
 opinion of Mr. Hofmeyr's abilities, and often took occasion 
 in the English press, to defend and expound some aspects 
 of his policy. As his articles " In Afrikanderland " were 
 among the first to popularise the personality of Mr. Rhodes 
 in this country, so also he did much to introduce to the 
 British public the figure of the Veiled Prophet of the 
 Afrikander Bond. He used to give amusing accounts 
 of his friendly intercourse with Mokanna ; discussing 
 the vexed question of Mr. Hofmeyr's illnesses, which 
 «ome explorers affirmed (inaccurately, I believe) to have 
 only a diplomatic origin, and describing how the presence 
 of a chaperon was always deemed necessary when he and 
 Mr. Hofmeyr met at table. From a journalistic point of 
 view, it added not a little to the interest and influence of 
 Garrett's paper that he was able, on occasion, to play Mr. 
 Hofmeyr as well as Mr. Rhodes. 
 
 The release of Dr. Jameson and the raiders, to be dealt 
 with by the British Government, was presently followed 
 by the trial of the Reformers. Garrett went up to Pre- 
 toria to describe the scene, and a note of a characteristic 
 incident will be found in another chapter (p. 172 n). The 
 four ringleaders — Mr. George Farrar, Mr. John Hays 
 Hammond, Mr. Lionel Phillips, and Colonel Frank Rhodes 
 — were condemned to death, whilst the rank and file were 
 sentenced to imprisonment for two years. These sentences 
 were soon commuted to fifteen years' imprisonment, 
 
 * Cape Times, January 14, 1896,
 
 THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS 123 
 
 in the case of ringleaders, and to reduced terms in that of 
 the others. It was beheved that further commutations 
 were in prospect ; but it seemed to Garrett that what was 
 wanted, in the interests of South Africa, was speedy 
 amnesty, rather than " a doling out of magnanimity 
 •of inches." He set on foot therefore, through the Cape 
 Times, an Amnesty Movement, which proved one of the 
 most successful of his politico-journalistic " sensations." 
 He started it in the Cape Times of May 23, in a stirring 
 article addressed " To the Towns of South Africa : an 
 Historical Opportunity," suggesting the adoption of a 
 uniform resolution to be sent to the Transvaal Government 
 in favour of amnesty. 
 
 This article evoked immediate response from many centres. 
 On the follo^^'ing Monday a letter from Mr. Rose-Innes proposed 
 a capital amendment to the Cape Times plan : viz., that the 
 " uniform resolution " should take rather the form of a uniform 
 petition, which the Mayor should be authorised by each town's 
 meeting to sign and carry to Pretoria as its delegate. Mr. Innes' 
 name gave the movement fresh impetus. The Political Associa- 
 tion of Cape Town (May 27) set to work to organise the other 
 centres. On the 29th of the same month the Cape Town meeting 
 under the scheme was held in the Good Hope Hall, and in the 
 course of the ensuing week the rest of the towns followed suit. 
 The example thus set told in other directions. The Cape and 
 Natal Governments, as soon as they saw that the movement 
 was going to be a universal one, addressed friendly representations 
 to the Transvaal Government recommending amnesty, while 
 the Bond itself and the Associated Chambers of Commerce deter- 
 mined to send delegates of their own to Pretoria. The first 
 fruits of the agitation were soon gathered. The day after the 
 great Cape Town meeting, the whole of the prisoners, with the 
 exception of the four leaders and Messrs. Sampson and Davies, 
 were released on payment of their fines and entering into a bond 
 not to meddle A\ith Transvaal politics for a term of years. It was 
 explained that as Messrs. Sampson and Davies had refused to 
 sign a petition to the Executive, their cases had not been con- 
 sidered, and they still remained in prison.* On June 10 the great 
 
 * Garrett hammered away in his paper for the release of these prisoners 
 also, printing day after day that this was the 100th, the 101st, and so on.
 
 124 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 deputation of over fifty mayors or other municipal officials, 
 having a large additional number of petitions from unrepresented 
 centres, mustered in Pretoria. And on the following day came 
 the news that the four leaders were to be released immediately 
 on payment of a fine of £25,000 each. The decree of banishment 
 was waived on an agreement being entered into by each of the 
 four not to be mixed up in Transvaal politics again for the space 
 of fifteen years {The Story of an African Crisis, pp. 265-6). 
 
 Garrett was in high spirits at the success of his action. 
 " I predict," he wrote to me on June 3, " that Leyds will 
 let out the rest — forty-six out already — before my Mayors 
 have time to get up to Pretoria. It's the mobilisation of 
 South African public opinion just at the right psycho- 
 logical moment. I wired all over the country ; forced 
 the hand of the political folk here, and made them force 
 the Pretoria Government's hand. We even galvanised 
 up dear old Hofmeyr ; he was just going to start for 
 Pretoria when they let out the forty-six. Such larks ! " 
 
 The other side of the work which Garrett set himself 
 to do after the Raid was more difficult. " How can we 
 get back the Afrikanders politically ? " he asked in a letter 
 of the time. How indeed ? As for inducing them to 
 exercise any friendly pressure in favour of reform in the 
 Transvaal, that, as we have seen, was not hopeful before ; 
 it was hopeless now. But how to get them back to the posi- 
 tion which they held before the Raid, when they were at 
 any rate in sympathy on some points with Mr. Rhodes 
 and his general policy ? This was a piece of broken 
 crockery which Garrett knew to be well-nigh past mending. 
 But he must try. " Any fool," he wrote — and the words, 
 
 day of their confinement. They were ultimately released on June 22, 1897. 
 Both played a conspicuous part in the subsequent war. Garrett had charac- 
 teristic stories of both men. Colonel Wools Sampson, as soon as he was 
 released, wrote a letter which Mr. Rhodes showed Garrett with much relish, 
 volunteering for any kind of use or service in Rhodesia, with the characteristic 
 postscript — " P.S. — Nothing shady, of course." Of Major Karri Davies, Garrett 
 used to say that he declined to be recommended for the V.C. " I shouldn't 
 like," he said, " to go about wearing it, and then come across the mother of 
 some other fellow wearing crape."
 
 THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS 125 
 
 as I have said before, were often in his mouth — " any fool 
 can play a winning game." One thing, at any rate, he 
 could do to prevent what he saw must inevitably be a losing 
 move. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain, after the Raid, seems to have thought 
 for a while that the time was propitious for cozening or 
 compelling President Kruger to a settlement. Garrett 
 on the spot saw quite clearly that the Raid must necessarily 
 be followed by a breathing-space. The High Commissioner 
 was instructed to enter into proposals and negotiations ; 
 but it is absurd, wrote Garrett privately, " to expect 
 Sir Hercules Robinson to play the part of a Cromer without 
 Cromer's army of occupation," and this view, as is gene- 
 rally known, was entirely shared by Sir Hercules himself. 
 Then Mr. Chamberlain invited President Kruger to come 
 over and have a square talk with him, and a scheme of 
 modified " Home Rule for the Rand " (originally suggested 
 it is said, by Mr. Merriman) was formulated. The over- 
 tures were rejected, and war-talk began to appear in the 
 Jingo press. Garrett thereupon wrote a series of articles 
 in the Cape Times — entitled " A Fool's Paradise," " A 
 Word to Mr. Chamberlain " and so forth — in which he 
 strongly deprecated any continuance of the Colonial 
 Secretary's pressure : 
 
 We hear that the Pretoria Government is very restive under 
 some recent despatches. If Mr. Chamberlain is allowing himself 
 to be pushed over the precipice, it is the duty of the High Com- 
 missioner, and the Colonial Government, too, for that matter, 
 to pull him up before he gets any nearer the edge. We value the 
 influence of the Paramount Power too highly in the present chaos 
 of South African units to care to see that influence imperilled 
 by a blunder. ... As we have pointed out over and over again, 
 even while the negotiations for the Kruger visit and the Big Deal 
 seemed still practicable, the " Uitlander " must not expect that 
 much can be done for his political status at the present moment. 
 The Boer would have to be either a fool or a supreme statesman 
 — and he is neither ; he is a Boer (April 1, 1896). 
 
 These articles rendered real service in damping down
 
 126 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 an impolitic movement. They caused a good deal of 
 excitement, and Garrett was freely denounced as a " turn- 
 coat " by the pavement politicians of Cape Town. His 
 articles were, however, warmly approved, I believe, by Sir 
 Hercules Robinson ; and Mr. Hofmeyr wrote to beg that 
 the substance of them should be cabled immediately to 
 London. Garrett's sagacity was shown also in his treat- 
 ment of the status of the Chartered Company as affected 
 by the Raid. " My own idea is," he wrote, " that the 
 military side should be taken away from the charter ; 
 administration left with an Imperial magistrate in inde- 
 pendent command over the police. This is the best we 
 can or ought to do for them." It was exactly what the 
 British Government presently did. 
 
 Garrett's conduct of the Cape Times during the stirring 
 and critical times glanced at in this chapter enhanced the 
 admiration of his friends, and won the respect even of 
 many opponents. During a little breathing-space in 
 July 1896, he gave a dinner to his editorial staff,* to 
 
 * " To his staff," writes one of his colleagues, " Garrett was always a firm 
 friend and wise counsellor. His quick appreciation of good work done was a 
 stimulus to one and all. Perhaps his goodness of heart led him at times to 
 make greater allowances than a strict sense of newspaper requirements would 
 justify. Once, for example, he had sent one of his staff a two days' journey 
 to Graaff Reinet. The occasion was the opening of a railway, and the reporter, 
 learning in the afternoon that Lord (then Sir Alfred) Milner was to deliver a 
 speech of the first importance that night, sent a warning message. It never 
 reached Garrett, but it reached the sub-editor, who walked home composedly 
 at ten o'clock without troubling his head as to the fate of the speech. By some 
 unlucky chance — and allowance must be made for the easy-going ways of 
 Cape newspaper offices in those days — not a member of the staff remained 
 when the first portions of the telegram began to come in at eleven o'clock. 
 Garrett himself happened to be away for the day. The telegram — it was 
 MUner's first declaration of his policy, his first clear and unmistakable warning 
 to Kruger — lay unopened in the office, and next day the rival journal printed 
 a full report. To one of Garrett's keen journalistic instinct the miss was 
 almost crushing. The explanation was wholly unsatisfactory ; the erring 
 sub-editor had frequently offended before and was to make equally grave 
 blunders in the future. But his appeal on behalf of his wife and children 
 touched Garrett's quick sympathy, and the man was let off with a reprimand — 
 and an increase of salary. For, poor fellow — he has long been dead — his 
 income, as Garrett found in the stormy interview that morning, was little 
 enough for his needs."
 
 THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS 127 
 
 which also Mr. St. Leger, his predecessor, was invited. 
 No man held a longer or a more honourable record in 
 South African journalism, none was of greater esteem in 
 Cape Colony than he ; and Garrett was much pleased 
 when Mr. St. Leger rose and " said very nice things about 
 me which you can supply, that I had steered the paper 
 with, &c. &c., through the most difficult period he remem- 
 bered." He had the satisfaction also of knowing that 
 the circulation of the paper had steadily and largely 
 increased during his year of editorship. He had never 
 spared himself in his endeavours to serve it, and he found 
 little time for any outside occupations. He was supposed 
 to live, for his health's sake, at Rondebosch, a suburb ta 
 the north of Cape Town. " One day," records a printer 
 on the paper, " Mr. Garrett comes in and says, ' I'm going 
 to live out at Rondebosch, and the last train goes at 11.45, 
 so you're bound to get the leader by 11.30. We shook 
 hands with ourselves at that, we did ! But Lord ! it 
 made no difference. He'd stay and lose the last train 
 and drive out to Rondebosch in the small hours, or spend the 
 night at the City Club." On one occasion, when Garrett did 
 catch the last train to Rondebosch, he found awaiting him 
 there a telegram from Sir William Milton containing 
 important news from Rhodesia. There was no train back, 
 and in those days neither cabs nor motors were available 
 in the little suburb. Garrett dashed up to Groote Schuur, 
 only to find that servants and occupier had retired for 
 the night. From the path without he bombarded Rhodes's- 
 bedroom window with gravel until at last the great man 
 put out his head with a grumble and asked what was the 
 matter. Garrett's words brought him down in a hurry ; 
 the telegram was discussed ; Rhodes threw fresh light 
 upon it ; and at half-past twelve Garrett was engaged 
 with the groom in saddling up the cart, and driving furi- 
 ously into Cape Town, a distance of some five miles.. 
 " There," says a member of his staff, " I remember weE
 
 128 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 watching him, standing at the ' stone ' in the printer's 
 room, dashing off sUp after shp of copy, and completing 
 s, column of magnificent stuff without a word altered 
 and without hesitation, in something less than three- 
 quarters of an hour. The Cape Times caught the post 
 that day by inches, and readers throughout the country 
 had a wonderful piece of journalism to digest at their 
 breakfasts, five hours later." 
 
 Rondebosch was sometimes abandoned for Muizenburg, 
 by the sea, where Garrett shared quarters with his 
 friend, Mr. Herbert Baker, the architect, in a cottage 
 known as " The Eagle's Nest." It was here that 
 Garrett invited a party for a week-end " to meet 
 Rudyard Kipling." Mr. Kipling had either not been 
 asked or had failed to come. In his absence, Garrett 
 hastily put forward an early arrival, whom we will 
 call Charlie, for the part of the great man. Now 
 Charlie was a stockbroker, and at the time had never 
 read a word of Kipling. Garrett, having introduced him 
 to the next comers (who were as much impressed as were 
 the boys in " A Conference of the Powers " at meeting 
 Mr. Cleever), proceeded to put Charlie in a tight place 
 by plying him with questions about stories and poems he 
 had written, and places and persons he had seen. None 
 of the party has forgotten the demure and glum silence of 
 ** Rudyard Kipling " under Garrett's endeavours to make 
 him talk about " himself." Garrett seldom failed to be 
 the life and soul of any company he was in. "I think 
 he was happiest," says a Cape Town friend, in recalling 
 a series of Saturday meetings, " on those days when he 
 was with us." " He was never so happy," says a com- 
 positor in recalling a wayzgoose, " as when he was with 
 us!" 
 
 His high spirits and the amount of work and energy 
 which he had put into his task are astonishing when one 
 remembers that his health was all the while on the verge
 
 THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS 129 
 
 of breaking down. The achievement was only made 
 possible by the constant solicitude — more careful and 
 minute than he was allowed to suspect at the time — which 
 was devoted to him by his physician in managing his 
 diet, in seeing that he had warm clothes and sheets, in 
 counselling him to sleep, whenever possible, by the sea- 
 shore at Muizenburg. Some years later, when Mrs. 
 Fawcett was in South Africa inquiring on behalf of the 
 British Government into the Concentration Camps, Garrett 
 thus wrote of his friend and physician. Dr. Jane Waterston 
 of Cape Town : 
 
 October 5, 1901. 
 
 She made the greatest difference to my life conceivable. I 
 simply can't imagine those years at the Cape with her taken out. 
 . . . She helped me in my work, she helped me in my election, 
 she kept me alive, I think, and I am sure she made my life incal- 
 culably brighter and happier. And she is that best kind of 
 friend who will always have a friend be, and do, his best. God 
 bless her for all ! And now you have been adopted too, and I 
 tell you all this which you knew already because I know that 
 now you will understand it. It is written in the Euclid of moral 
 geometry that friends of the same friend should be friends of 
 one another, and vice versd ; but it isn't always so ; and when it 
 comes off, it seems to double them all round ! . . . 
 
 Garrett was not, it is to be feared, the best of patients. 
 If he had been, he would not have done so much in the 
 world of South African affairs as he did. When he was 
 better, the physician had to report that he was " intoxi- 
 cated with betterness." So long as there was any physical 
 strength left in him to respond to the stimulus of his 
 eager brain, he was never a man to do things by halves. 
 He was intoxicated with betterness when he joined a 
 Riding Club at Cape Town, known to its members as " The 
 Suicide Brigade." " We were afraid of over-tiring him when 
 he first joined us," says one of the survivors, " he looked 
 so white and frail ; we used to slack down a bit for him. 
 But before we had done, it was he who was off away and
 
 130 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 ahead, and it was all we could do to keep up with him." 
 These rides — sometimes with the club, sometimes with 
 Cecil Rhodes or other friends — were among Garrett's 
 happiest hours at the Cape, and they often figure in his 
 letters. " On Saturdays six to twelve of us go a regular 
 two hours' spin over the Flats and through the bush and 
 everything ; it's huge fun." " I went out on the Flats 
 yesterday, taking Colonel Rhodes and led him galloping 
 through bush two feet high studded with mole-holes. He 
 said his heart was in his mouth all the time, but I feel, 
 now that this piece of work is off my mind, what matters 
 a broken neck." Whether this form of fun was prudent in 
 the case of a man with a damaged lung is another question. 
 But Garrett was intoxicated with betterness ! Here is 
 the letter written on his 31st birthday to his cousin (July 
 20, 1896) : 
 
 At this moment I feel less of an invalid than for several years 
 past. How many " well " people who marry and breed up sons 
 and deem themselves living a full life, enjoy such a full year of 
 effort as 1895-96 has been to me ? The horrible haunting fear 
 of being knocked out of the line and walked over by the other 
 fellows, a subject no more for the battle, only for the ambulance, 
 no help to the world but a burden only — that is lifted for the 
 time at least. Some good work has been done. I have never 
 told you all the difficulties or early doubts and struggles. The 
 other day old Faure, one of the Ministers who was up at Pretoria 
 and came to see me in bed when I was ill there just a year ago, 
 said to some members in the Lobby of the House : " Look at 
 this fellow ! I visited him on his sick-bed at Pretoria, fading 
 away to slow music and looking like a regular ' sent out to die ' — 
 and here he is, the most dangerous man in South Africa ! " 
 
 Garrett meant to make himself more " dangerous " 
 still. For in that frame of his, " so white and frail," there 
 was an indomitable spirit, and the whole man tingled 
 with vitality and honourable ambition. " Rhodes goes 
 off to Rhodesia, nothing else for him to do," he wrote ; 
 " but then what are we to do at the Cape ? I shall have
 
 THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN CRISIS 181 
 
 to go into Parliament here in the long run if I stay. I 
 wish one could be editor and M.P., and revolutionary, 
 and war-correspondent * all at once." " Life piled on 
 life were all too little " ; and of one, little was destined 
 to remain to him. What use he made of it, before the 
 fates doomed him to inactivity, will be told in the next 
 chapter. 
 
 * The reference is to the revolt in Rhodesia (March-October, 1896).
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 
 
 " He dares not bind, , -. 
 
 He dares not stem, whate'er befall, 
 The headlong current of his call." 
 
 F. E. G. (from Ibsen's Brand). 
 
 The combination of the roles of Member of Parliament and 
 Editor is one which has often attracted energetic and 
 ambitious men, but few, if any, even among those blessed 
 with strong constitutions, have found it practicable. To 
 be at once an actor on the political stage, and a critic of 
 it, to make political history in Parliament and record it 
 in the newspaper : this may well seem an alluring prospect 
 of power and influence. But the double strain is too great, 
 and the chances are that a man, in aiming at both spheres 
 of influence, will either sacrifice something of each, or 
 involve himself in physical breakdown. The combination 
 of sleeping Member and active Editor, or of active Member 
 and sleeping Editor, may indeed be possible enough, and 
 there are cases in many countries in which it has been 
 accomplished not without some measure of personal 
 success. If, however, a man means to pursue a full life 
 of journalistic work on the one hand, and an energetic 
 parliamentary career on the other, he soon finds that he 
 must make his choice between the two. There are journal- 
 ists who have stepped from the editorial chair to high place 
 in the political world. Others have preferred to remain 
 in their chosen calling, content to exercise therein a political 
 influence which, after all, may be infinitely greater than 
 any which most members of Parliament can ever hope to 
 
 132
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 133 
 
 wield. Lord Morley chose the one course ; Delane the 
 other. Garrett, within the more modest sphere of Cape 
 Colony, aspired to double the parts. 
 
 Perhaps he calculated that the easier conditions at the 
 Cape would make the thing possible even to his delicate 
 constitution. The sessions there are comparatively short, 
 the hours are early. By husbanding his physical resources, 
 he might be able to sit, vote and speak in the afternoons, 
 and yet to direct, write and control in the evenings. There 
 is an exhilaration in the air of South Africa which has 
 caused many men to believe, and attempt, the impossible ; 
 and Garrett, as we have seen, was " intoxicated with 
 betterness." Or it may be that he counted the cost, and 
 was prepared, on due deliberation, to pay the price. Not 
 many years, but full years, may have been his choice. 
 More probably, I think, he made no such calculation ; 
 but like Ibsen's hero flung himself unreservedly into 
 " the current of his call." During the period between 
 the autumn of 1896 and that of 1898, when he was elected 
 a member of the Legislative Assembly, the politics of Cape 
 Colony and of South Africa generally became of absorbing 
 interest to him. He had ideas, plans, policies for shaping 
 them, and he followed, at the call, where his own increas- 
 ing influence might seem to lead. 
 
 The Raid had broken into atoms the party crockery 
 in Cape Colony. Mr, Rhodes, who had been Premier 
 for six years, was in disgrace and almost in exile. The 
 political combination which had kept him in power was 
 irretrievably destroyed. The average citizen had lost 
 his bearings. In the confusion and uncertainty which 
 prevailed, there seemed room only for policies of drift, 
 for stop -gap governments, for the day of the " mugwumps." 
 Yet the Cape was an integral part of South Africa, and the 
 larger problem, in which the Raid was rather a symptom 
 than a cause, was as insistent as ever. That political
 
 184 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 adventure had justly given a time of grace to the State 
 whose exclusive policy was a standing menace to the 
 peace, and an obstacle to the union, of South Africa ; 
 but nothing was more certain than that, if the grace were 
 not well used, the crisis would recur. There was need, 
 then, for political reconstruction at the Cape, both in 
 view of its own developments, and as a factor in the larger 
 South African question. 
 
 Garrett had a policy for the occasion. At this point, 
 I must explain that here as elsewhere when I speak of 
 " Garrett's policy," I am not perpetrating the absurdity 
 of claiming for his brain or his paper any patent rights 
 or exclusive credit. In the shaping of all policies, many 
 factors and many influences — personal, economic, intellec- 
 tual, sentimental — are involved, and it is always difficult 
 to determine the several measures in which a politician 
 or a newspaper forms or reflects public opinion. The 
 influence of an editor with a fixed and definite policy 
 must always, however, be considerable, and especially 
 in times of unsettlement. He is on the platform every 
 day. He enforces, or insinuates, his principles on every 
 occasion. His paper is a mirror which flashes the light 
 from every point. The forces of reiteration and emphasis 
 are great ; and it is a tenable proposition that this influ- 
 ence of a newspaper with a definite policy is greater than 
 elsewhere in new and sparsely-populated countries, 
 where other means for the formation of public opinion 
 are less highly developed. With this explanation, I 
 proceed without further circumlocutory qualification to 
 speak of " Garrett's policy." I shall not forget my pro- 
 mise not to entangle the reader in any minutice of Cape 
 politics. There is the less reason to do so, because Garrett's 
 line at this time can be traced in accordance with a few 
 very clear principles. 
 
 His main objects were to put Mr. Rhodes again in the 
 saddle, and to make him a Progressive. The latter purpose
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 135 
 
 was the more difficult of the two, but Garrett did it. I 
 recall conversations of later years in which we talked of 
 the difficulties which a certain High Commissioner had 
 in persuading a minister to agree to one thing, and another 
 eminent man to do another thing. Garrett used to say 
 laughingly that the only stiff er job was his in inducing 
 Mr. Rhodes to " toe the line " of his Progressive pro- 
 gramme. There are few more dramatic events in Cape 
 politics than the rehabilitation of Mr. Rhodes after the 
 Raid. He had left for the north early in 1896, a broken 
 man. He returned in December, a popular hero in Cape 
 Town. Garrett's enemies in the press credited or dis- 
 credited him with having as they said " engineered the 
 Rhodes boom." It is quite true that he suggested (Decem- 
 ber 4) " a public reception for Mr. Rhodes after his services 
 in Matabeleland " ; but he did not create the popular 
 reaction ; he only recognised it, and suggested the absurdity 
 of pretending that it did not exist. " Somebody," he 
 wrote (December 5), " has passed the word : ' Mr. Rhodes 
 is coming to Cape Town, let's pretend we don't see him.' " 
 Other people found in the popular reception of Mr. Rhodes, 
 and in his subsequent rehabilitation in Cape politics, the 
 mark of moral obliquity, the sign of complicity in political 
 brigandage. Garrett was careful to distinguish his own 
 point of view from extremes on either side : 
 
 There are [he wrote] people so incensed by the Jameson affair 
 that they consider that any good thing that Mr. Rhodes may do 
 should be passed over in silence for the rest of his unnatural life. 
 This category numbers many people in the Republics, and some 
 newspaper writers and politicians elsewhere. Then there are 
 people so delighted by the Jameson affair, so pleased with Mr. 
 Rhodes, because, as they think (they are quite wrong, by the 
 way), he tried to " jump the Transvaal," that they would be 
 equally ready to cheer him if since then he had done nothing 
 but rest upon the supposed laurels plucked at Doornkop. This 
 class of profound thinkers includes, it must be confessed, a 
 certain number of men in Cape Town, who aforetime used to
 
 136 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 denounce Mr. Rhodes for " truckling to the Dutch." . . . 
 Thirdly, there is a large and increasingly large number of South 
 Africans who see in Mr, Rhodes's labours in Matabeleland 
 during this year a reparation, a first and splendid instalment 
 of a great debt owed to South Africa. They do not pretend 
 that the debt is thus paid off. . . . iCape Times, December 5, 
 1896.) 
 
 Neither at this time, nor later, did the desire to see Mr. 
 Rhodes again in the saddle mean condonation of the Raid, 
 or blindness to his faults and failings. It meant a recog- 
 nition of two things, neither of them easily disputable : 
 first, that Mr. Rhodes with all his failings was a command- 
 ing man ; secondly, that his influence at the Cape was in 
 any case bound to be considerable, and that it was better 
 to have that influence linked to open responsibility. The 
 first point was clearly put in a reported conversation with 
 the Rev. J. S. Moffat : " I have often seriously differed," 
 he said, " from Mr. Rhodes, but he stands on an altogether 
 different level from any other politician we have ; and 
 he is so great that, notwithstanding his faults, we cannot 
 do without him. He stands alone for his far-reaching 
 and really statesmanlike views."* That was Garrett's 
 estimate also, as it is eloquently expressed in an article 
 on one of Mr. Rhodes's speeches to an open-air meeting at 
 Cape Town (October 26, 1898) : 
 
 Last night the great Expansionist spoke to Cape Town about 
 what he calls the " big idea " under a roof expansive enough for 
 anything ; for he spoke practically under the Southern Cross. 
 But it makes up for all when Mr. Rhodes gets on to his far-off" 
 dreams and ambitions, the real ideals of his own rectitude — 
 unctuous or otherwise — and lifts his hearers up with him into 
 the same vast uplands. The thread of that argument is one of 
 which Cape Town audiences never tire from Mr. Rhodes, because 
 what would be talking in another man with him has been doing. 
 He takes the current petty matters in the lobby in Cape politics 
 and throws them all against the great background of the expan- 
 
 * Daily News, November 9, 1898.
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 137 
 
 sion of Africa : brings them into relation, in short, with his life's 
 work, and ^nth all that to Cape Town audiences he himself 
 embodies. That is the best thing to see at these gatherings, the 
 lifting of the young fellows in the audience out of themselves 
 and out of our localisms, and making them feel that they too are 
 a part of the great mysterious process that is creating a new 
 world out of the chaos of the continent. Faces kindle at this 
 familiar talk about " Kitchener at Sobat " and the " telegraph 
 at Tanganyika," and the confident promise of the railway link 
 to follow these, and of the political developments to follow the 
 railway, make them feel that the Good Hope Hall and the hum- 
 drum work in shop or store are all in the same moving world of 
 effort. There is here, after all, something of the light that never 
 was on sea or land, the consecration and the poet's dream. It 
 leavens much cynicism, it gives the clue to what is best in the 
 human mixture labelled Rhodes. 
 
 That was one of the true secrets of Mr. Rhodes's power ; 
 and Garrett desired to see the power frankly harnessed 
 to responsibility. " Many persons," he wrote in a review 
 of the year 1898 (January 1, 1899), "especially among 
 the relics of the older Rhodes' following were desperately 
 anxious over the prospect of his leadership becoming open. 
 They preferred that he should sit behind the scenes and 
 pull the wires, Hofmeyr-like .... The view persistently 
 preached by this journal was that if Mr. Rhodes admittedly 
 led, he should lead openly and responsibly." That was 
 surely a sound principle. 
 
 But whither and whom was Mr. Rhodes to lead ? Gar- 
 rett was ready to tell him. The effect of the Raid and Mr. 
 Rhodes's downfall had been to detach the Afrikander Bond 
 finally from him. He could no longer count on their 
 support or sympathy in any matter. Therefore, argued 
 Garrett, if Mr. Rhodes was " to lead a party which was 
 anti-Bond upon external politics, he should frankly break 
 with his Bond past upon internal politics also, and come out 
 on the Progressive platform." Now Garrett was a convinced 
 Free Trader ; and, although the full gospel of free imports 
 might be too strong for a Colonial public, the Cape con-
 
 138 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 sumers were suffering painfully at this time from high 
 taxes on corn and meat. In the autumn of 1896 Garrett 
 started a vigorous campaign against these duties. The 
 files of the Cape Times for several months are full of it. 
 Nor did he merely preach a crusade ; he did much to 
 promote it, especially by suggesting an appropriate organi- 
 sation, starting a " shilling fund " to provide it with the 
 sinews of war, and convening a Cheap Food Conference. 
 "• When I started the shillings," he wrote home, " I went 
 into the compositors' room and made a little speech. 
 They cheered and every man put down his bob. The 
 example is being followed by every place of business in 
 the country ; it is a new idea here." In the following 
 January, Garrett came to England for a few weeks — his 
 first real holiday since he had been editor of the Ca'pe 
 Times. Mr. Rhodes came in the same ship, " to face the 
 music " of the Select Committee on the Raid. Garrett, 
 we may be sure, made the most of his opportunities in 
 preaching the Progressive gospel ; but there was doubtless 
 some difficulty. Sir William Harcourt's amusing parody 
 of Mr. Rhodes's views will be remembered : " Reasonable 
 man, Mr. Rhodes — so easily satisfied. All he asks us is to 
 give up Free Trade and restore slavery." It chanced that 
 " Oliver Schreiner " was also on the boat, and Garrett 
 said that both his friends thought him desperately wrong- 
 headed when they talked politics. Oliver Schreiner con- 
 sidered that he had woefully misused his opportunities 
 for telling Mr. Rhodes what was good for his soul, while 
 Mr. Rhodes classed him in Cape politics with " the Innes 
 group " (a great honour, but not meant so), and even con- 
 gratulated him on making common cause with the 
 " unctuous rectitudes." Garrett returned to Cape Town 
 in March ; Mr. Rhodes a month later. His speech on 
 landing contained a memorable phrase — a watch- 
 word which was to be remembered through many
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 139 
 
 and stormy events, and which is now, we may hope, 
 inscribed for ever in the act of South African Union — 
 " Equal Rights for every White Man South of the 
 Zambesi." 
 
 It was a wide formula, covering not only the Transvaal 
 problem but involving also the question of Redistribution 
 at the Cape, then much canvassed. But Garrett found 
 Mr. Rhodes slow to follow it up ; why did he not attend 
 more regularly in Parliament, take a more prominent part 
 in the proceedings, speak out clearly as a full-fledged 
 Progressive ? He was constantly egging Mr. Rhodes on in 
 this way, both privately and in the paper. The articles 
 of the time turn on incidents of the moment, but are 
 amusing in their frank admission of the difficulties of the 
 editor's task. They alternately call on Mr. Rhodes to be 
 more Progressive ; and argue that after all he was quite 
 as Progressive as practical politicians in South Africa need 
 expect. It was " only by comparison with the material 
 we have got to work in that Mr. Rhodes could be called 
 a Progressive at all " ; but then all terms are comparative, 
 political " Progress " in South Africa was not extreme, 
 and "it is obviously idle to trouble about the more com- 
 plex parts of Liberal speech while the very elements of 
 its grammar are still to seek among us." The ABC 
 of democracy was the fight for the franchise, and there 
 Mr. Rhodes could be warranted sound. This was in May 
 1897. By March 1898 Garrett had completed what he 
 used laughingly to call his education of Mr. Rhodes. An 
 important interview with the great man was published 
 in the Cape Times (March 9), and referred to as evidence 
 that the pupil was now competent to stand any reasonable 
 Progressive test. This interview with Mr. Rhodes, which 
 is of great interest, is printed in extenso (p. 222). It is, I 
 think, a masterpiece in the treatment of a journalistic 
 medium which, though often misused and turned to paltry
 
 140 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 purposes, is capable of the highest things. I know no 
 statement which, within so short a compass, embodies so 
 much of the manner, character and ideas of Mr. Rhodes 
 as this presentation by Garrett of the substance of several 
 conversations.* 
 
 The reappearance of Mr. Rhodes in the fighting-line 
 as Progressive leader in posse was a great gain for the 
 party. Another thing which was essential to success 
 was the closing up of the ranks. Then, as so often in 
 the politics of South Africa — elsewhere, as well as in Cape 
 Colony — the strength of the Afrikander Bond, or similar 
 parties, was in union ; the weakness of the opposing forces 
 was in division. A Bond partisan would say, I suppose, 
 with the old Greek poet, that there is only one way of 
 being right, but various ways of going wrong. On the 
 other side, it might be said that there is only one way of 
 standing still, but many ways of going ahead. At any 
 rate, the British element in South Africa has generally 
 been weakened by divisions about the more or less, the 
 quicker or slower ; and there has often been a middle party 
 which seemed to eager spirits to be " neither for God nor for 
 his enemies." A campaign for the elimination of the mug- 
 wumps was after Garrett's own heart and the vigour with 
 which he prosecuted it is still remembered in South Africa. | 
 He had a constitutional dislike of the tribe — not of the 
 
 * Journalistic beginners, to whom I wUl venture again to imagine myself 
 as speaking, may be advised that a fatal impediment to a really good interview 
 (either as a vehicle of eliciting ideas and character or as a work of art) is the 
 presence of a note-book. A good memory is, of course, necessary ; but who 
 ever talks with any characteristic freedom to a companion armed with a 
 reporter's note-book ? I remember telling Garrett of some journalists who 
 came away disappointingly barren from a great man's ante-room ; " and 
 yet," they had said to me, " we had our note-books with us." Garrett was 
 greatly tickled ; and " there they were with their note-books " became a stock 
 jest. 
 
 •j- During the elections at Johannesburg in February 1907, Sir Percy Fitz- 
 patrick was addressing a meeting of some six thousand persons. He waa 
 attacking the mugwumps, and a phrase of Garrett's — " virulent moderates " — 
 came to his mind. It excited much laughter, and Sir Percy then acknowledged
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 141 
 
 persons (for some of them were attached friends of his) 
 but of their poUtics. Against a certain Cape poUtician 
 — a vir yietate gravis — Garrett's grievance was " not the 
 conscientiousness of his decisions, but the indecision of his 
 conscientiousness." And of another friend he said that 
 he longed to apply to him the law of Solon who, as Plutarch 
 tells us, " declared disfranchised a citizen who in a party 
 conflict took neither side, seeking to encourage men boldly 
 to attach themselves to the right party and share all its 
 dangers, rather than in safety to watch and see which side 
 would be successful." The law of Solon, and the philippics 
 of Garrett, are contrary to the decrees of Providence in its 
 ordering of human nature ; but for a while there was unusual 
 unanimity among the Progressive forces at the Cape. 
 
 A General Election was now imminent. The Govern- 
 ment of Sir Gordon Sprigg, who had succeeded to the 
 Premiership upon Mr. Rhodes's resignation in January 1896, 
 was drawing to an end. The Upper House (the Legislative 
 Council) was dissolved in January 1898, and the elections 
 in March resulted in a small Progressive majority. Sir 
 Gordon Sprigg, as a preliminary to the dissolution of 
 the Lower House, had brought in a Redistribution Bill, 
 and this passed its second reading on June 20, by forty-two 
 votes to thirty-five. But the state of parties was in 
 unstable equilibrium, and two days later Mr. Schreiner 
 carried a vote of no confidence by forty-one votes to thirty- 
 six. Sir Gordon Sprigg thereupon dissolved, appealing 
 to the country on Redistribution and the other issues. 
 Garrett, as we have seen, had played a considerable part in 
 shaping the Progressive policy, and in providing the Pro- 
 gressive leader. He believed victory to be in sight, and 
 the prospect of taking a personal share in the campaign 
 in and out of Parliament appealed to him with irresistible 
 force. 
 
 his indebtedness to the author of the phrase ; whereupon from many different 
 parts of the hall there were cheers for " good old Garrett."
 
 142 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 Into the electoral fray Garrett threw himself with the 
 utmost vigour. " We'll have a grand fight," he wrote 
 home, " and very likely be beat, but what does that 
 matter ? " " The fight is half the guerdon," and that 
 share of the guerdon was within Garrett's own power to 
 seize. " I made that speech," he wrote to his cousin, 
 " in a shouting and surging crowd of four hundred roughs 
 without feeling any lung or paying for it afterwards." 
 That was earlier* in the campaign — a speech, I think, in 
 support of Mr. Rhodes. Garrett was keeping a careful 
 eye on his leader ; dotting the i's and crossing the t's in 
 any of his Progressive utterances, and explaining away 
 any ambiguities. A political journalist is fortunate indeed 
 if he does not acquire extensive experience in that gentle 
 art ; but Mr. Rhodes's campaign-speeches gave on the 
 whole much comfort to his supporter : " he is all right," 
 wrote Garrett, " speaking largely on my phrases and with 
 my points," though " not always word perfect." At a 
 public meeting where he was called upon to speak after 
 Mr. Rhodes, he confessed that he " would have liked him 
 to go a little further " ; but " there," he added, pointing 
 to the great man, " we have a big, strong, half-way horse 
 ready to take us some way up Table Mountain, and I think 
 you had better accept him." The constituency which 
 Garrett himself was invited to contest was agricultural, 
 Victoria East in the up-country. Electioneering has many 
 common features all the world over, and Garrett's im- 
 pressions of campaigning in a rural constituency in South 
 Africa will not be without interest at home : 
 
 It happened that my own previous experience had been 
 gained in more or less urban constituencies. That means packed 
 halls, processions and demonstrations, mass meetings at corners, 
 applause, groans, interruptions, gladiatorial heckling and every- 
 thing at fever-heat. Consequently my first impression of a 
 Cape country constituency was " Oh, how dead ! " 
 
 Over a few thousand square miles are sparsely scattered a
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 143 
 
 farming population, not in villages or hamlets, but in farmsteads 
 half an hour's ride from each other or more. 
 
 A meeting is called by notice and handbell, in the town-hall 
 or the schoolroom. Do not expect a packed vivacious audience 
 of politicians, keen to catch a party point or spot an omission. 
 Do not prepare a peroration. Do not weakly depend on applause 
 for encouragement. In short, do not expect to find your audience 
 ready-made. You have to make it yourself. You must build 
 a political public from the foundation up. You will get a fair 
 hearing — fair to a fault ; use it to pave the way for a keen one 
 on some future occasion. Into the depths of the country, to 
 men busy with making their livings, which are often hard enough 
 — men unhelped by a daily press to take the world's affairs hot- 
 and-hot each morning — you have come, no matter what side 
 you are on, as a missioner, a political Revivalist preacher, a sort 
 of Extension Lecturer, and as such you must behave. Do not 
 think that fifteen men in a schoolroom, or twenty men in a town- 
 hall, listening in profound silence as if they were in church and 
 not helping you out a bit with your points or your pauses, 
 represent a cool reception. Not at all. They represent a 
 material out of which it is your honourable duty to create some- 
 thing organised and interested. 
 
 The material is there. It Avill not kindle at the first spark ; 
 but you will find later that there are strenuous, patriotic, devoted 
 people latent under this seeming tolerant or kindly indifference ; 
 and through them, if you can once win them, all the rest will 
 come. Do not shirk hard work ; ride and drive to and fro, speak 
 wherever you can get more than six hearers, canvass patiently, 
 repeat yourself shamelessly ; and in a few weeks you "will find 
 your packed room (meaning probably 150 people) and earnestness 
 and enthusiasm, and current political information, of which you 
 and your immediate helpers have got to be the travelling focus. As 
 an old Dutch farmer said to me : " It's a school for a candidate 
 coming round among us." It is a school and an invaluable one. 
 
 In a country in this stage of development, or undevelopment, 
 it is inevitable that the Parish Pump should bulk big, dwarfing 
 grave national policies. To get a railway, which means a market 
 for produce to men living wholly off the land, and which in the 
 little towns seems like rescue and salvation to the inevitable few 
 who feel oppressed by the smallness and monotony of their 
 conditions — what, besides this, matters it who holds the reins 
 of power in Grove Street ? But the Pump has been quite at a 
 discount at the General Election of 1898. The country has
 
 144 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 wakened up for once, and with the League providing a stir and 
 a nucleus on one side, and the Bond moved thereby to redoubled 
 efforts, the constituencies have received, and even compelled, 
 a discussion of the basic principles of our politics. For my part, 
 I was, of course, often asked, sometimes A\ith pathetic wistfulness 
 and doubt, Parish Pump questions by men to whom they meant 
 much : and I showed that I was up in the details ; but I put it 
 that it was best not to multiply pledges beyond the general one 
 to do one's best wherever there was a fair opening, and in the 
 end that always commanded their assent. I was returned on a 
 platform almost wholly national.* 
 
 Though the constituency was agricultural, there was an 
 English settlement : 
 
 What gives character to the Border population is the note of 
 " Englishman " and " Frontiersman." Here in the Western 
 Province English folk in the towns, when they go afield, find the 
 country Dutch. One gets an uneasy impression, fostered by 
 much of the talk in Parliament and in papers, of the English- 
 speaking population as a transitory exotic shallowly planted 
 on the pavement of sea-coast towns ; the Dutch-speaking popu- 
 lation being deep-rooted on the soil. We are all so much in touch 
 with those educated Western farmers, and they are so pleasant 
 in their pretty old homesteads, that one feels at their deep- 
 rootedness no pang ; but one feels envy. To an Englishman 
 going East, therefore, however friendly with Western Afrikanders, 
 it is pleasant to find the soil there planted out Avith Englishmen 
 — at least English names preponderating over arge areas.t 
 
 With these British frontiersmen Garrett got on famously ; 
 but he succeeded also in conciliating many of the Dutch 
 farmers. The elections in Cape Colony were fought by the 
 Afrikander Bond largely on the race issue ; but Dutchmen 
 voted for the young British candidate " on the personal " 
 (as Mr. Rhodes used to say), and Garrett described with 
 pleasure how on the polling day " one of them went for 
 another with a stick for evil speaking of me."{ When 
 
 * " A Candidate's Jottings," Cape Times, October 4, 1898. 
 f Cape Times, October 6. 
 
 J A South African colleague of Garrett sends me this anecdote: — "On 
 polling day he was near the booths when an old and decrepit Boer, with one foot
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 145 
 
 the figures were announced, Garrett and his Progressive 
 colleague were found to be returned by a handsome 
 majority* ; the capture of the second seat was a gain to 
 the Progressives. Garrett maintained that the most 
 remarkable feature of the elections was the double return 
 of Mr. Rhodes (for Namaqualand and Barkly West), 
 but Mr. Rhodes generously replied that Garrett's own 
 return was more remarkable still. 
 
 The elections as a whole did not go so favourably for 
 the Progressives as the more sanguine of them had hoped.f 
 Some results were in doubt owing to election petitions, 
 but as far as could be seen the House of Assembly would 
 show a slight majority for the Afrikander Bond. Mr. 
 Rhodes hoped that the Governor would consent to a 
 further prorogation, but Sir Alfred Milner declined to 
 listen to this suggestion. J In October the House met, 
 and Sir Gordon Sprigg met the new Parliament by reintro- 
 ducing the Redistribution Bill. Mr. Schreiner thereupon 
 moved a vote of no confidence, and this was carried by 
 thirty-nine to thirty-seven. Sir Gordon Sprigg resigned, 
 and Mr. Schreiner became Prime Minister. Garrett's 
 maiden speech was a great success ; the report is 
 punctuated throughout with more " cheers " and loud 
 
 in the grave, almost unable to totter along, hobbled out of the voting shed. He 
 was introduced to Garrett by an acquaintance as a bitter opponent of the 
 Progressive Party. Garrett smiled one of his magnetic smiles. ' I don't care 
 what your politics are, old friend,' he said, ' but I honour the man who in your 
 state of health has the pluck to drive thirty miles in order to record his vote.' 
 The Boer was delighted, and from that moment he and Garrett were firm 
 friends, remaining so for years. It was this old Boer who, as Garrett was 
 driving through the town a day or two later, when the result of the poll had 
 been announced, came out to seize his hand and congratulate him on his success 
 — a success, be it said, which from the party point of view was a bitter pill 
 to the poor old feUow. Feeling ran high in those days, and this simple act of 
 the Boer farmer, though to those acquainted with the amenities of election 
 struggles to-day it may appear trifling, was at the time a marvellous tribute to 
 Garrett's personal magnetism." 
 
 * H. T. Tamplm (P.), 387, F. E. Garrett (P.), 383 ; W. Hay (Bond), 226. 
 
 t In votes polled, however, they claimed a large majority — thus : Pro- 
 gressives, 73,680 ; Bond, 57,048. % On this point, see p. 165. 
 
 £
 
 146 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 laughter " than often fall to the lot of a new member 
 on his first appearance. It was made in the course of one 
 of those debates which always follow a General Election. 
 In them, the Government claims that now at last the great 
 heart of the people has beaten true, and the Opposition 
 retorts that it does not envy them a victory won only 
 by " terminological inexactitudes." Garrett's speech was 
 on the regulation lines, but showed what in a new member 
 was unconventional directness, vigour, audacity. He 
 went straight for the Prime Minister. He challenged 
 denials, courted interruptions, and turned them to 
 effective use. " We Press fellows," he said, " are record- 
 ing angels," and he made great play with a collection of 
 newspaper reports of all the more wild and whirling words 
 used on the other side during the campaign. There was 
 a blood-curdling appeal to race prejudice, it seems, from a 
 Mr. Moll — " not the Mole," explained Garrett, " though it 
 was not to be decided what subterranean communica- 
 tions there might be between one Mole and another " — 
 a dig at Mr. Hofmeyr which convulsed the House ; and 
 so forth, and so forth. The position which Garrett 
 made for himself in Parliament on his first appearance was 
 maintained and strengthened by many subsequent speeches 
 both in Parliament and on the platform. One happy 
 hit may be recalled without offence, now that the bitter 
 memories of the past are disappearing. It was during 
 the debate in the House of Assembly upon the despatch 
 of arms and ammunition through Cape ports to the Orange 
 Free State. Garrett with an irony that bit deep, though 
 his remarks were couched in the mildest language, gave 
 the Prime Minister (Mr. Schreiner) his assurance that 
 for his part he had no suspicions that the rifles were to be 
 used for any sinister purpose. " Of course," he said, 
 " they are intended for shooting buck. But would it not 
 be the most natural thing in the world for the Prime 
 Minister to say, ' Gentlemen, we feel with you ; we admire
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 147 
 
 your attitude and we reciprocate it, but inasmuch as the 
 state of feeUng in the country is very exacerbated and 
 anxious, we would suggest that you should pretermit the 
 shooting of buck during the present crisis.' " The remark 
 for many years afterwards became almost proverbial in 
 South Africa. 
 
 A piece of legislation stands to Garrett's account in this 
 session, on a matter which he had very much at heart. A 
 small Bill had been introduced by a Dutch member amend- 
 ing a Police Offences Act by increasing the fines for solici- 
 tation by women. Upon this Garrett grafted several new 
 clauses dealing, on the lines of the English Criminal Law, 
 with procuration and other offences of a like kind by men. 
 The manoeuvre required much adroitness and perse- 
 verance. Garrett described his tactics, and their success, 
 in a letter to one of his cousins : 
 
 To Mrs. Fawcett. 
 
 Your Act on the Statute Book of Cape Colony is, or should be, 
 a useful bit of work. I merely adapted to Cape conditions the 
 English Act which you sent, and read your Times extract to 
 the House to drive it through. The joke is that the thing which 
 I made the vehicle for it all was a little amending Bill (of a Police 
 Offences Act) introduced by a Dutch member to increase the 
 fine for soliciting. On this peg I hung all your proposal. The 
 last two days of Session found it not yet in Committee stage, 
 though I had engaged Schreiner's and other Ministers' sympathy 
 for my amendments (which were the whole thing) ; but I vowed 
 not to let my first session slide by. I got several members with 
 precedent Orders of the Day to drop them or move them off ; 
 I got the Clerk of the House to waive some red tape about not 
 having time to prepare a clean proof of amendments incorporated 
 in text for the Speaker ; I got Chairman of Committee to rattle 
 through, and the little Dutchman whose Bill it was supposed 
 to be to leave it all to me and devote himself to securing the 
 Upper House old Dutch buffers to take it on (as his) when it 
 came up ; I told, of the two professional obstruction pedants.- 
 each that the other was going to play the pedant on it and 
 showed each the paragraph I had ready ridicuhng that other 
 as^patron of the pimps ; and in short, in two days we put it
 
 148 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 through Committee stage, Report and third Reading in the 
 Assembly, and all stages in Council, and in three days it was law.* 
 A most disgraceful precedent ! . . . If I can do anything worth 
 anything here it will be with the tonic sense of your being behind 
 the Grille. 
 
 Garrett, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, had 
 given much study to the painful subject touched by this 
 Act ; when it had become law, he was vigilant in stirring 
 up the police to take action under it ; and a shocking case 
 reported in the Cape papers presently showed how serious 
 were the evils for which he had provided means of legal 
 punishment. 
 
 As a speaker on the public platform Garrett had a 
 facility unusual in the writer who is accustomed, under 
 the stress of extreme condensation of thought, to compress 
 his ideas into the minimum of space, and is unable in a 
 single article to reinforce a particular argument by fre- 
 quent repetition. One of his first public appearances was 
 at the Good Hope Hall during his agitation on behalf of the 
 Reform prisoners. " When he first rose," writes one who 
 was present, " his extraordinarily youthful appearance 
 amused the crowd. Roars of laughter went up, for he 
 was known only by name, and there were cries of ' Go 
 home to your mother,' and the ordinary banalities of a 
 rather stormy meeting. Garrett faced the meeting with 
 absolute composure and dignity, looking over their heads 
 with that curious half-abstracted smile that was always 
 so winning. Then he suggested that we had had ' enough 
 of this nonsense,' and a moment later the whole vast 
 gathering was hanging on his every word. He had an 
 extraordinary gift of picturesque illustration, and made 
 his points come home to every man in the hall." 
 
 " I shall never forget meeting Garrett first," writes the 
 same friend (Mr. Wilson) ; "he did not know my age or 
 
 * The Act is No. 44 of 1898. If any one should chance to turn it up, I 
 may explain that the substance of the Bill as introduced was limited to Clause 
 2. Garrett's new clauses were 3, 4, 5 and 6.
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 149 
 
 my extremely youthful appearance at the time, and I 
 was in like case with regard to him. To meet one's new 
 Chief and find him prima facie a mere schoolboy was a 
 delightful sensation." Garrett's boyish appearance was 
 seized by the caricaturists, who would represent him now 
 as a youth running beside some Minister who was learning 
 to ride a Progressive bicycle, and now as a Little Minister 
 in the pulpit. He himself, by the way, had much felicity 
 in devising cartoons, and often furnished the rough draft 
 for those which appeared in the Cape Times during his 
 editorship. 
 
 His extra-parliamentary speeches made a profound 
 impression upon many of those who heard them. Of 
 few of his speeches, however, is any full report extant, 
 for he made it a rule never to admit into the Cape Times 
 any but the barest summaries of his platform performances. 
 He belonged to what must now, I suppose, be called the 
 old-fashioned school which holds that the individual 
 editor or writer is made for the paper, not the paper for the 
 individual. " I shall never forget," writes a cool-headed 
 Cape merchant, " a speech he once gave at Kimberley ; 
 he made me realise then what it meant to be an Englishman. 
 Why, you know, he had us all out of our chairs and on to 
 our feet." Some passages from this speech — made at a 
 " South African League " dinner in April 1899, and 
 printed by the League — will show his gift in this sort : 
 
 There was a question so great that the Rhodes question they 
 heard so much talking about was but a little offshoot of it — a 
 question which was to-day dividing them, and dividing them, 
 he was sorry to say, largely upon race lines, and a question 
 which would continue to divide them and embitter their hfe in 
 Africa until it was settled. He meant the question whether 
 those who were having the making of Africa in their hands 
 were to be equal citizens, or whether there was to be a class 
 above and a class below, an upper dog and an under dog, those 
 that freely gave and those that freely took, those that asked and 
 could not receive, those that took and withheld.
 
 150 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 The Bond had just beaten them at the elections. There was 
 no harm in that under the British flag. Self-government ! — 
 that was right enough ; they fought, and took the fortune of 
 war. Yes ; but why were not their kindred allowed a chance of 
 winning an election in other parts ? Why did the Afrikanders 
 of the Colony use their influence here to encourage their kinsmen 
 there in refusing to ours what we gave to them ? When they 
 went north of the Zambesi and further up, when they went in 
 imagination right up into the heart of this great Continent, 
 through the central forest where the savages still with reverence 
 showed the tree which marked the grave of Livingstone, up into 
 the far wastes of the Soudan to the grave of Gordon, men who, 
 by their elevation of character and their strong personality, 
 commanded a veneration among the natives that men of no other 
 race but ours had ever been able to inspire ; when they went 
 up through the trackless places among the real sons of the soil 
 in their black myriads — sons of the soil beside whom voortrekkers 
 and Huguenots were only fungus-growths of yesterday, where 
 the name of Afrikander was only senseless babble ; — they said 
 how absurd it sounded, this cry of Africa for the Afrikanders, 
 along the miles of map we had painted red with the blood of our 
 best and bravest, Livingstone and Gordon and the rest, right 
 through the heart of the Continent where the genius of one 
 man — an Englishman and an Uitlander — was carrying the 
 arteries and the nerves of civilisation — the iron road from Cape 
 to Cairo. After this did it not sound almost funny, this cry of 
 " Africa for the Afrikander." 
 
 Ten years ago, in 1889, he came to Kimberley a roving special 
 correspondent. He returned to-day editor of a paper that they 
 knew ; and nothing touched him more, though it made him 
 ashamed, too, when he thought of so many days or nights of 
 scamped work and tasks half-done, than to be shaken by the 
 hand by men from far districts whose names he scarcely knew, 
 and told, " We have often read and thanked you for things 
 you have written ; even when we were down we liked to see 
 there was fighting kept up, and you were doing your best." He 
 could promise them this for the Progressive Party, that next 
 session as before, and for many a long day, whether or not they 
 saw them triumphing, they should see them fighting. 
 
 Garrett was ever a brave fighter, and it was this that 
 helped to make his reputation and to cause his memory to 
 be cherished. " We have much to be grateful to him for,"
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 151 
 
 wrote one of the leading politicians at the Cape ; " we 
 don't forget it, and we don't forget him." 
 
 So far, I have spoken in this chapter of Garrett's share 
 in the politics of Cape Colony ; but during these years 
 (1897-9) other and more momentous forces were at work in 
 South Africa in which also he had a part to play. In 
 May 1897 Sir Alfred Milner had arrived at Cape Town, 
 succeeding Lord Rosmead as Governor and High Com- 
 missioner ; and it soon became clear, as Garrett put it, 
 that " the Imperial Factor was in the saddle." The rights 
 or wrongs of Lord Milner's policy, which culminated in the 
 South African War and has been followed by the South 
 African Union, need not here be discussed. They have 
 been treated by many pens in many books — in one by 
 myself, among the number. Garrett's considered retro- 
 spect of these events has also been printed, and in several 
 places.* He had first met Lord Milner, as we have heard, 
 in Egypt, and saw him often afterwards in London. They 
 were warm friends ; and Garrett, during his visit to 
 England in January 1897, took occasion, I do not doubt, 
 of interviews with Mr. Chamberlain to add his voice, for 
 what it was worth, to the many which were suggesting 
 Milner's appointment to South Africa. Mr. Chamberlain's 
 choice was a great pleasure to Garrett, and Garrett's presence 
 in Cape Town was, I imagine, very agreeable to Lord 
 
 * " The Inevitable in South Africa," Contemporary Review, October 1899. 
 " Sir Alfred MLlner and his Work," Coiitemporary Review, August 1900. " Lord 
 Milner and the Struggle for South African Union : a Retrospect, 1897-1905," 
 National Review, February 1906 (reprinted from C. S. Goldman's " Empire and 
 the Century"). The article last mentioned ended thus: "All who during 
 those hard years had to do with him, be they soldiers or civilians, will echo of 
 Milner what was said of Chatham — that ' no one ever left his Cabinet without 
 feeling himself a braver man.'" In some verses also, entitled "Off Duty" 
 {Outlook, April 8, 1905), Garrett summed up his appreciation of Lord Milner's 
 work in South Africa ; as in these lines taken from them : 
 
 The long, lean face, whose level look 
 
 Outstared the frowning hour, nor shook, — 
 
 The man on whom the choice was thrust. 
 
 Who weighed great issues like fine dust. 
 
 And while the iron dice were thrown 
 
 Stood answerablo and alone.
 
 152 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 Milner. He trusted Garrett as fully as his predecessor. 
 Lord Rosmead, had done ; and doubtless with more 
 familiarity of intercourse, as was natural between personal 
 friends. Not that the new High Commissioner was one 
 to see with other people's eyes or lean over much upon 
 any other man's advice. Lord Milner was the most self- 
 reliant and independent of rulers. " The Governor 
 takes his own line," we shall hear Mr. Rhodes say of him. 
 The fact, however, that Lord Milner's line agreed with that 
 at which his journalistic friend had arrived may well have 
 lent closer sympathy to the intercourse between them. 
 However this may be, Garrett was a whole-hearted advo- 
 cate, at every stage of Lord Milner's policy — alike of the 
 pause, at the first, and of the effort to rally the Cape 
 Dutch to a broadly South African policy, and of the sub- 
 sequent development of pressure by the Imperial factor. 
 All this was in the logical sequence of Garrett's ideas, as I 
 have traced them in an earlier chapter. There could be no 
 internal peace or external security in South Africa unless the 
 Transvaal accepted a place frankly in what Lord Rosmead 
 called "the South African family," and accorded freely 
 to the British within its borders the same political equality 
 that the Dutch enjoyed elsewhere. When all other means 
 of 'attaining this end were seen to be hopeless, the direct 
 intervention of the Imperial factor alone remained. Garrett 
 summed up the situation in an article on May 2, 1899 : 
 
 " Clouded" is again the Bond organ's word for the political 
 atmosphere. There is undoubtedly a great suspense caused 
 by the growing belief that the Imperial Government is going 
 to "do something " in response to the late petitions from British 
 subjects. Let us state as simply and concisely as we can the 
 facts of the situation. During the series of elections to both 
 Houses which have been going on from March 1898 to April 
 1899, it has been drummed into the ears of Afrikanders from 
 every platform that if they returned the Progressives to power 
 it meant war, and per contra if they returned the Bond it would 
 secure peace. The elections are practically over. The Bond
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 153 
 
 thanks very largely to this very cry of peace and war, which 
 has secured from Cape Afrikanders an almost solid race-vote, 
 is in the majority. The IVIinistry of Peace is at last firmly 
 seated. South Africa ought to be able to turn over and go to 
 sleep. Eedeunt Saturnia regna ! 
 
 So far from this what do we find ? A war scare, worse than 
 any that ponderous Peace Resolutions have been called in to 
 assuage since 1896. The same authorities who told us that the 
 safe cure for alarms was to return a Bond Ministry are full to-day 
 of the gloomiest vaticinations, and hear, like Kubla Khan, 
 ancestral voices prophesying war. There must be something 
 wrong somewhere. What is it ? 
 
 Can it be that after all the real storm-centre is Pretoria ? 
 
 The KjTuger Government, and the pastoral oligarchy behind it, 
 since the time when the Raid gave them a new lease of life, have 
 had three years' grace. To relieve the situation, which was then 
 shown to be acute, they have done — what ? Absolutely nothing. 
 
 Leaving aside the proper persons to end this state of things, 
 since for three years they could not or would not even try, what 
 of others ? 
 
 The Uitlanders have tried and failed ; every one admits that 
 they are to-day powerless. 
 
 Mr. Rhodes has tried and failed ; every one admits that he is 
 wholly out of court. 
 
 Afrikander would-be reformers within the Kruger fold have 
 tried and failed — Kotze in 1897, Reitz and Smuts in 1899. 
 
 Friendly advice from neighbours, if it has been tried, has 
 failed. We do not say that it has been tried, but if not it is all 
 the more unlikely to be tried to any real purpose now. 
 
 There remains, then, the last resort — to the Power which in 
 1881 set up the regime complained of, the Power whose subjects 
 are the persons complaining and the Power which is most damni- 
 fied through its surrounding possessions by the resulting unrest 
 and distraction. 
 
 It was often said by opponents of Lord Milner that a 
 little more tact, a little more pains and a little more 
 patience might have changed the course of affairs. This is 
 a point with which Garrett dealt fully in his accounts of 
 Lord Milner's work : 
 
 The solution — " equal rights for every civilised man " * — had 
 
 * Not quoted textually : see above, p. 139. The turn which Garrett here 
 gives to the formula was Lord Milner's rather than Rhodes's.
 
 154 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 been formulated by Rhodes at the moment of his fall. It 
 remained for Milner to apply it. How ? 
 
 Direct Imperialism was supposed to have gone to the scrap- 
 heap a decade since. Rhodes' Colonialism, after the Raid fiasco, 
 had just followed it. Milner decided first to give the colonial 
 method one more chance. He began hopefully — worked, as 
 no predecessor had done, at the Dutch language, both High Dutch 
 and the Cape taal ; studied, as nobody else has ever done, the 
 Dutch vernacular press ; talked with leading Dutchmen and 
 travelled hundreds of miles among the farmers, with whom in 
 Cape Colony, as recently in the Transvaal, he got on excellently. 
 He soon saw the need of the moment. The storm-clouds were 
 banking up ; if the Dutch of the Colony were to be roused to 
 the danger and their duty, the need was not smooth sayings, 
 the well-worn cliches of Government House, but "straight talk." 
 
 On this matter of faithful dealing one thing is certain. Let 
 them say what they will of Rhodes, the charge of not being 
 " straight with the Dutch " is one which calumny itself can 
 hardly bring against Milner. No husbanding influence, for him, 
 at the price of a neglect of urgent duty. He had borne witness 
 at the Jubilee to Dutch loyalty — the personal loyalty of Dutch 
 colonists to Queen Victoria. That was a genuine sentiment. 
 Had it all evaporated in a feu de joie on the Queen's birthday, 
 or was it of such stuff as would stand in a day of trouble ? Was 
 loyalty to the Queen only valid unless and until the call came 
 to choose between it and loyalty to Paul Kruger ? If so, the 
 Queen's representative could not count on it for any help in 
 the hard task before him of securing justice while keeping peace. 
 If otherwise, now was the time to show it. He invited them 
 to throw over that old tradition, " The Republics, right or 
 wrong ! " and substitute for it the principle, " Rights for the 
 British in the Republic like those which Dutchmen enjoy in the 
 Colonies." He granted fully the claim of kinship, but he asserted 
 that of allegiance, and called upon the Dutch colonists by timely 
 mediation to reconcile and fulfil both. Such in essence was the 
 famous " Graaff-Reinet speech " of 1898. A Cape Governor, 
 in the heart of a Dutch district, suggested the point of view, 
 seemingly a novel one, that they should think of England not as 
 a debtor for their loyalty, but as a generous creditor for their 
 freedom. What a stir it made ! What a tale of a tradition of 
 mealy-mouthed officialism is told by the mere fact of that stir ! 
 It stands as a historic appeal, that fell, alas ! mainly on deaf 
 ears. 
 
 Not altogether so, however. People may talk now as if Milner
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAPE ASSEMBLY 155 
 
 had never tried to influence the Dutch, or, trying, had wholly- 
 failed to gain their confidence. But that will not do, since a 
 chance of war has broken into the post-bags of Dutch leaders, 
 and a Blue-book shown the Avorld the terms in which they wrote 
 from Colony to Republic at the time of the Bloemfontein Con- 
 ference. We thus have it beyond dispute that before Milner 
 went to meet President Kruger he had convinced the Cape 
 Dutch leaders, who had come into personal contact with him, 
 that he was honest, that he preferred peace, that he was not 
 prepared to pay all prices for peace, and, lastly, that unlike Sir 
 Bartle Frere, he had the British Government and people behind 
 him. And of these things they advised Presidents Steyn and 
 Kruger, who went their own appointed way. If Milner failed 
 with the Dutch, in this, at least, he succeeded beyond any 
 predecessor : he opened the lips of the Dutch leaders in Cape 
 Colony. To open the ears of the Dutch leaders in the Republic 
 was beyond him ; and beyond any man was it (since not even to 
 gods is it given to undo the past) to make that secret and tempo- 
 rising voice, wrung from Cape Dutch politicians, penetrate to the 
 dumb masses of their countrymen — the men on whose consensus 
 really hung the issue of peace or war, and who had to decide 
 without ever having heard the truth — except from Milner. . . . 
 In short, it is as unreasonable to blame Milner for not con- 
 ciliating the Dutch into Imperialism in 1897-1899 as it is to 
 blame him for not coaxing Mr. Kruger into abdication, when in 
 June 1899 at last they came to conference. Critics suggest that 
 if Milner at Bloemfontein had abandoned dialectics for true 
 diplomacy — if Mr. Chamberlain, somewhat later, had said, " Ah, 
 my kind Christian friend ! " instead of talking about a squeezed 
 sponge — the prejudices dear to the strong old Dopper as life 
 would have melted away. Such critics do not know their 
 Kruger nor their Boer. The Dutchman is not, like the Irishman, 
 a creature of sentiment. Providence in its infinite indulgence 
 has spared us the task of reconciling any race which combines 
 both the Dutch and the Irish gifts of recalcitrance. Our re- 
 doubtable Dutch fellow subject is a practical fellow. He knows 
 what he wants. Give it him, and you may call him a squeezed 
 sponge or a scalene triangle, and welcome. Insist on his giving 
 it to you, and he will dislike you, even if you say that he prevail 
 and sing more sweetly than the nightingale. The most that 
 can be expected of him is to admit of Milner, as the schoolboy of 
 Dr. Temple, " A beast, but a just beast." * 
 
 * " The Empire and the Century," pp. 493, 497 ; also in the National 
 Review, February 190G, pp. 1104-1105, 1107.
 
 156 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 It was on these lines that Garrett supported the poHcy 
 of Lord Milner and Mr. Chamberlain — not desiring war, 
 not for a time believing in war as probable, but recognising 
 without reserve that pressure must be applied up to ulti- 
 matum point and beyond, if necessary. 
 
 At the beginning of June the Bloemfontein Conference 
 was held, and failed. War was now seen to be inevitable ; 
 but Garrett was not destined to remain in the country. 
 Under the combined pressure of his journalistic and par- 
 liamentary work, his small strength was fatally under- 
 mined. He held on as long as physical power availed, 
 and a little longer ; to give in would be to desert his post. 
 But serious haemorrhage of the lung recurred, and his 
 life was in imminent danger.. 
 
 " I consciously and deliberately kept on too long after 
 danger-point," he wrote to his friend Mr. Baker, " and I 
 miust pay for it. I shed my blood for the country like 
 Paardekraal." * 
 
 * Referring to a meeting of Boers held at Paardekraal in 1899, when there 
 was talk of " shedding the last drops of their blood."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 BROKEN THREADS 
 
 The fight is half the guerdon. 
 The hope is all a gain. — F. E. G, 
 
 Into the next four years of Garrett's life were crowded 
 all that circumstance could bring of bitterness, vexation, 
 disappointment. The thread of his career had been broken 
 — at its brightest point, so far as the hopes of honourable 
 ambition were concerned ; at a most critical point, in the 
 fortunes of the country which he longed to serve, and this 
 second disappointment was the more poignant of the two. 
 " Ah," he wrote wistfully, to his old friend, Mr. Money 
 (and our old friend the " Dartrey Fenellan " of an earlier 
 chapter), " what schemes and dreams I had for serving 
 England in that strangely fascinating problem-country ! 
 A few know partly, but probably nobody will ever quite 
 know now, what a pull I was getting towards realising 
 some part of them." It is no secret among those in 
 official circles that Garrett was at one time recommended 
 for responsible employment in the service of the State in 
 South Africa. Afterwards, when he had entered the 
 Cape Parliament, those best able to judge predicted con- 
 fidently that, if his health sufficed, he would attain very 
 high position in that Assembly. The opinion generally 
 entertained of his abilities was shown by a speech which 
 Sir Gordon Sprigg made on Garrett's resignation* — a 
 
 * " The House would doubtless pardon him if, before proceeding with the 
 business of the day, he made a few remarks concerning the losses the House 
 had sustained during the last two or three years. He would refer in the first 
 instance, to the hon. member for Victoria East. Mr. Garrett had rendered 
 excellent service to his country ; he had occupied a distinguished position as- 
 
 157
 
 158 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 speech the more significant and generous because Garrett 
 had not always abstained from sharp criticism of the 
 Premier. In many ways, though also with many differ- 
 ences (and not all of them to Garrett's disadvantage), 
 he seemed destined to be the political successor of Mr. 
 Rhodes, who in his characteristic way had been heard to 
 speak of " I myself, Milner and Garrett." His forced 
 departure at so critical a moment in South Africa was a 
 heavy blow to some of those who bore the burden of affairs. 
 " It is no use," wrote Lord Milner, " protesting against 
 the decrees of Fate, nor do I want to say too much on what 
 Rhodes calls ' the personal.' But this really was a great 
 blow to me, and I have never quite got over your break- 
 down and departure, never quite felt the same man since, 
 either politically or privately . . . Dear friend, I miss 
 you fearfully, always shall miss you. So does this young 
 country." Garrett hoped against hope ; thinking at 
 first to be able to resume either his editorship or his parlia- 
 mentary career. The esteem in which he was held in both 
 spheres was shown by the action of the newspaper pro- 
 prietor in the one ease, and the party managers in the other, 
 in keeping his place long vacant for him. One after 
 another, his hopes had to be abandoned ; the editorship 
 shrank into the chance of perhaps sufficient strength to 
 conduct a South African magazine ; the seat in Parlia- 
 ment, into the possibility of an occasional political essay. 
 The shrinkage of hope went on in surroundings of painful 
 contrast to the stimulus of the South African air and the 
 
 a journalist — they all knew the magnitude of their loss in the latter respect — 
 (hear, hear) — and they regretted also his absence from the House. The hon. 
 member, who spoke with evident emotion, was at this point partially inaudible, 
 but he was understood to say that those members of the House who remembered 
 the tenor of Mr. Garrett's speeches regarded him as one of the coming men 
 • — (hear, hear) — as there were not too many of the younger type of members 
 in the House to take the place of the elder men who would soon be passing 
 away. (Hear, hear.) He felt sure they felt with the deepest regret that 
 Mr. Garrett would occupy his seat no longer, and they regretted still more that 
 serious illness was the cause." — (Speech in the House of Assembly, September I, 
 1902.)
 
 BROKEN THREADS 159 
 
 glad excitement of busy life among men. These years of 
 sickness, of inactivity, of hope abandoned, were as severe 
 a trial as Fate could conceive for a man of Garrett's eager 
 temperament, and nobly did he pass through the ordeal. 
 " Even in a palace, life may be led well ! " Garrett had a 
 task, perhaps, of even greater difficulty. His it was to show 
 that even in a sanatorium, life may be led unselfishly and 
 touched to fine issues. The friend who, apart from his 
 nearest relations, was most often with him during these 
 years sends me words which from my smaller intercourse 
 I can thankfully accept as my own : " When he himself 
 had to drop back and let the ' firing line ' go on without 
 him — forced gradually to realise that it was no longer 
 a question of regaining health but only of keeping up the 
 weariful fight against disease, and of doing what he could 
 yet do before the end — still no one ever came to him 
 without finding fresh courage with which to face a difficulty, 
 small or great, or left him without carrying away a deepened 
 sense of the worth of life. To the affairs of Empire, and 
 the joys and disappointments of his friends, he brought the 
 same living interest, the same warm personal devotion, 
 and the same strength of will to find the best possible 
 and help to get it done." " Even in a palace," or even in a 
 sanatorium. The stage of life matters not. " The aids to 
 noble life are all within." 
 
 Garrett's breakdown at the Cape in August 1899 was 
 severe, and his life was in imminent danger. He was 
 sent to the sanatorium at Kimberley, and there gained 
 sufficient strength to undertake the journey to England. 
 With great pain and difficulty, but with no weakening in 
 point of vigour, he wrote, before leaving South Africa, 
 an article on the situation for the Contemporary Review. 
 It was called " The Inevitable in South Africa," and may 
 be consulted with advantage, even now, by any who are 
 in doubt upon the proposition which it was meant to
 
 160 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 enforce.* When the article appeared (October), Garrett 
 was already in England, and the editor of another Review, 
 who was much struck by it as " the ablest statement of the 
 case for intervention that I have seen anywhere," begged 
 him to follow it up. But he was unequal to any exertion. 
 I remember seeing him the day after his return. He 
 was the ghost of his old self ; frame and cheeks were 
 sadly sunken ; but his eyes were as bright and he himself 
 as cheery as ever. He was full of hopes and plans, and 
 talked of "if I live " as calmly as others might say " if 
 I stay in town." After a day or two, he was sent by his 
 physician into the country for a short spell of fresh air, 
 and a month later he went for a second time to Nordrach. 
 The Nordrach-Colonie in the Badische Schwarzwald 
 is a health-resort of much repute, but in a wet and cold 
 winter its dripping woods are not the most cheerful of 
 places. The winter of 1899-90 was unfavourable in those 
 respects, and still more so to our invalid in its social sur- 
 roundings. The society at the sanatorium was mainly 
 German, and the bitter anti-English spirit, called out by 
 the South African War, made life at Nordrach difficult to 
 endure, and deprived his stay of most of the benefit he had 
 reaped from his former " cure " there. He shall tell his 
 experiences in his own words : 
 
 To E. T. C. 
 
 December 5. 
 
 Devilish sleety biz taking one's walks abroad here in the 
 current weather. And I've concluded that German food is really 
 
 * A happy phrase, suggested by President Kruger's " turn for comparisons 
 from animated nature," is worth recording here : " On certain plants — rose- 
 bushes, for instance, one finds clusters of a fat and sticky insect, the aphis, 
 which, as Linnaeus long ago observed, serves as milch-cow to the ants. The 
 aphis labours to produce a kind of honey, and then the ant squeezes him. 
 The aphis does not object ; he is a soft, industrious creature ; only let him 
 make himself sticky and drowsy enough, and he will not ' care a fig for the 
 franchise,' or even if he does it will not matter. A few soldier-ants, taking 
 toll at discretion, find no difficulty in maintaining order in a large herd of 
 aphides. President Kruger has missed, I think, the perfect analogy of 
 burghers and Uitlanders to soldier-ants and aphides."
 
 BROKEN THREADS 161 
 
 unnecessarily offensive to the palate of a civilised man ; especially 
 their revolting foible of eating the flesh of various beasts un- 
 cooked. Unhouseled, unannointed, unannealed, a large plateful 
 of raw swine went to its long home last evening, and the struggle 
 is vivid in my memory. The Doctor's contention, however, 
 
 that it doesn't matter a d whether one eats with gusto or 
 
 otherwise so long as one eats, is once more proved by my slow 
 but steady average gain of 1 lb. a week. I have been here seven 
 weeks and there's exactly 7 lb. German (more than English) 
 more of me than when I came. This is done along with walking 
 a lot lately, and should stick better than the quicker mass I put 
 on in Miss Walker's place at odd times and generally off again 
 in my swoops on London. I had a worse turn than for years — 
 wretcheder than I ever felt — with Stevenson's fever and ' Bluidy 
 Jack ' (aren't his Letters jolly ?) — soon after I arrived. But now 
 all symptoms have set fair, and with steady progress one can 
 put up with any discomforts. They will very likely send me 
 away in spring — your spring. But just what sort of plunge 
 I shall then be wise to take offhand is not clear to me, I should 
 dearly like to go another seven years before the next breakdown 
 and put in something worth doing in the time. . . . [Then 
 talk about politics, the Daily News, &c.] The Germans are 
 disgusting about the war ; but I am acquiring a power of sarcasm 
 in their ponderous tongue, and when they capitulate Ladysmith 
 once a week, I have a fine day out on the morrow. The only 
 man I could bear war-talk with was, oddly enough, a Hollander, 
 now departed. We both felt, you see, and so respected each 
 other's feeling.* A sample German joke (not bad) is as follows : 
 
 A. Have you heard, the English are already in Pretoria ? 
 
 B. A^^iat, already ? Is it possible ? 
 A. Aber als gefangene ! 
 
 To Miss Agnes Gareett. 
 
 December 1899. 
 
 Christmas is a week away. I walk the freezing woods and 
 stamp my feet and say " seasonable weather." Fancy lifeboat 
 work in that wintry surge ! and all this heroism, tragedies 
 
 * A friendship which Garrett made at a later time was with one who differed 
 fundamentally from him on the subject of the war. " The fact," writes the 
 friend in question, " that he and I were to so great an extent in opposite camps 
 in the matter about which, perhaps, I have cared most and felt most deeply 
 of anything in public life, had a softening effect upon my judgments which 
 nothing but his noble candour, large sympathy, and generous consideration 
 and appreciation could have produced."
 
 162 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 divinely met, suspense, cold death and bitter endurance, to save 
 
 a few lives ; and then we send those same lives or others to beat 
 
 themselves out against a heap of stones in South Africa. The 
 
 man behind the stones giving life up for an idea, too ; their 
 
 heroism, their suspenses and fortitude, the same human stuff 
 
 as ours ; and on both sides always the agony of waiting women 
 
 and grieving lovers outside the struggle. One man left his 
 
 bride after church to rush to the front, and was shot dead the 
 
 day he got there. And here, to add the touch of satire in all 
 
 human things, are fifty or sixty mostly useless and potentially 
 
 noxious sick men and women living month by month only to 
 
 keep alight the flame that these strong men squander and quench 
 
 so gloriously. It's quaint ; I often think of it ; and all to go 
 
 through the same thing in the end, so desperately shrunk from 
 
 so often and so narrowly avoided. . . . [Then, after describing 
 
 the courage of certain of his fellow patients] I feel sorry for these 
 
 people, and wonder if I shall have some day as sore a fight, and 
 
 fight it as patiently. Any fool can fight a winning battle. [Then 
 
 remembering himself] Mine seems to be a winning one, my 
 
 Deare, so don't find this talk of others mournful. I may come 
 
 out with no more right to pose as one marked for such wrestling 
 
 than half the people one meets. Were it otherwise, I should say, 
 
 Thank you for the life you have helped me to : the happiness. 
 
 As it is, let us with grateful heart celebrate yet another 
 
 Christmas. 
 
 To the same. 
 
 March 17, 1900. 
 
 The rare, almost unique conjunction of a spring morning with 
 a spring mind in me makes me hasten to write before the sun 
 has gone in again figuratively as well as literally. I do sometimes 
 despise myself for " want of character," to quote Walther's 
 unvarying explanation of anything amiss, because I have lost 
 my old cheerfulness during these weary months without getting 
 any of that iron resolution in its place which kept up the Lady- 
 smithers after they lost hope of relief. But did it really ? They 
 didn't -udlt in their bulletins. Well, 1 could write stoical 
 bulletins if there was any point in doing so. But I doubt if they 
 were cheerful company in private life. 
 
 Well, here's a morning with sunshine in fugitive blots, and a 
 wind which a healthy person would find delicious and which 
 even we Kranke shiveringly pronounce " fresh." And I feel 
 the tonic in my blood for once. You know, I missed the Cape 
 spring ; the Flats lay still sodden with late and long rains when
 
 BROKEN THREADS 163 
 
 I left Cape Town, and, Kimberley had been nipping. Here, a 
 record winter, trailing off in interminable alternations of snow 
 and slush, I have had nearly a year's winter, between the two 
 hemispheres. Then lately a few spring days found me gloomy 
 that I didn't muster any answering impulse to meet the spring's 
 embrace. " In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns 
 to " — what was my fancy to turn to ? Patent spitpipkins and 
 a temperature chart. I was feeling sick. To-day's my first 
 good turn in good weather, and, as it happens, first walk, for 
 long. I pull myself together, and thank God, and greet 
 you. . ." 
 
 Garrett, it will be seen, had his periods of depression. 
 So for that matter had many of his countrymen, in good 
 health, during the black weeks at the end of 1899. The 
 uncongenial surroundings in which he was placed weighed 
 upon him. Even at home such surroundings had some- 
 times to be borne. An occasion is burnt in upon my 
 memory when, on the receipt of news of one of the British 
 reverses, I was confronted with the cheery remark, " Well, 
 your friends do not seem to be making much of it." " My 
 friends " were the British army. But we who were well 
 were able to reply promptly and sometimes not wholly 
 ineffectually to attacks upon the British cause. Garrett, 
 in his weakness and forced retirement, had but small and 
 pitifully inadequate means of reprisal. I shall never 
 forget his describing to me how the foreigners at the sana- 
 torium used to write up on the walls of the salon or carve 
 on trees or seats in the woods the name of each British 
 defeat. When Mafeking was relieved, Garrett retaliated 
 in like fashion, but his inscription was speedily effaced. 
 So he went out after dark with an iron, carved the letters 
 MAFEKING once more, and burnt them in. To 
 such poor resources was he now confined, in order to secure 
 the last word (and he an editor !). " Childish," is it said ? 
 Well, there was always, it is true, something boyish 
 about Garrett, and it was one of his greatest charms ; 
 but I know that when he told me the tale, in his lively.
 
 164 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 sparkling way, it moved me wellnigh to something else than 
 laughter. Childish or not, the escapade was certainly reck- 
 less ; Garrett was never deterred from any adventure, 
 small or great, by self-calculating prudence. The conse- 
 quence in this case was a serious return of haemorrhage. 
 
 There was the same contrast in less trivial matters 
 between Garrett's eagerness of spirit and poverty of oppor- 
 tunity. The outbreak of the war, the anxiety of the 
 struggle, had not diminished the bitter zeal of those 
 who were convinced that their country was in the wrong. 
 Garrett watched the controversy eagerly, and was ever alert 
 to pin down a misstatement or expose a fallacy. He 
 would write his letters or articles for the newspapers, 
 and hurry them off by special messengers, only to find, 
 too often, that the correspondence had been closed or a 
 new turn given to the discussion which made his contribu- 
 tion no longer timely. In those days, when the passion 
 of anti-patriotism ran high, any journalist on the Liberal 
 side who took an anti-Boer line was accused or suspected 
 of the basest motives, and some controversialists imagined 
 that it was an effective way of meeting Garrett's points to 
 raise the old cry of " Rhodes's gold." When some par- 
 ticularly malevolent attack of this kind had been made, 
 Garrett consulted me, among other friends, upon the 
 question of bringing an action for libel. We strongly 
 dissuaded him. The enemy, we said, was not worth 
 powder and shot. Malevolence would not be persuaded 
 by proof, and for those who knew Garrett the suggestion 
 that he was the servile tool of any other man could only 
 excite a contemptuous smile. He was somewhat impatient 
 with such counsels, and implored me to " drop the silent 
 contempt line." His friends had, however, another 
 reason for maintaining it. The medical advices showed 
 that the excitement of any other line would be at peril of 
 his life. 
 
 Some effective blows, for the cause which he held dear,
 
 BROKEN THREADS 165 
 
 Garrett was able to strike even during his internment at 
 Nordrach. He contributed various letters and articles 
 to the Daily News (which I was then editing), and to the 
 Contemporary Review of August 1900 an important paper 
 on " Sir Alfred Milner and his Work." Like some other 
 of Garrett's controversial pieces, this is too full of points 
 for the moment to bear reprinting in full to-day ; but a 
 characteristic anecdote of Mr. Rhodes may be cited. 
 After the General Election of 1898 at the Cape, the balance 
 of parties hung on the upshot of a number of election 
 petitions. If the Governor could be persuaded to post- 
 pone the summoning of Parliament, the Sprigg Ministry 
 might pull through.* Mr. Rhodes was set upon keeping 
 that ministry in power. " Ministers having failed to 
 move the Governor, Mr. Rhodes himself was called in. 
 ' I happened to meet him,' said Garrett, ' just after the 
 interview.' ' No,' he said shortly, ' the Governor takes 
 his own line.' ' So what did you say ? ' I asked with 
 unholy curiosity. ' Oh, I didn't waste time ; I simply said, 
 " I see, sir, you have made up your mind." ' And, with 
 a quality which gives much of Mr. Rhodes's talk its zest, 
 he at once began to sketch a new plan for turning minority 
 into majority under the new conditions." The whole 
 article was alert and full of point. " What was so delight- 
 ful," wrote a friend after reading it, " was to see that 
 illness had not blunted your rapier, or more wonderful 
 still, damped your spirits." 
 
 When the summer came, Garrett left Nordrach, little 
 the better for his cure ; and at the suggestion of Dr. Hope 
 Lehmann, to whose kindness and professional help he 
 owed much throughout the years of his illness, he went, 
 with relations to keep him company, to the Walchensee 
 in Bavaria. My wife and I, with a niece of ours, spent 
 two or three days with him there. He was painfully 
 weak, could walk only a few yards and that very slowly. 
 
 * See above, p. 145.
 
 166 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 The shoulders were round ; the back was bent ; the 
 appearance was of an old man. But the impression 
 vanished the moment he began to talk. Though sad at 
 times, when he spoke to me of the apparent failure of his 
 cure, he still laughed and chatted with us all as gaily as 
 ever. We rowed him on the lake to a favourite haunt, 
 where he swung his hammock, and the invalid was not 
 the least merry of the picnic party. 
 
 He had an unfailing resource in reading, and his cousin 
 kept him well supplied with books. One or two letters 
 may be given as examples of the comments he would 
 make : 
 
 To Miss Agnes Garrett. 
 
 The Athenmum was very irritating about R. L. S.'s Letters. 
 It regretted lack of polish. R. L. S. could break every part of 
 speech in twain and yet give a charm to his most careless word, 
 and the letters show that his style was not affected ; only his 
 own natural way of putting things raised to a slightly higher 
 power. 
 
 To the same. 
 
 I have asked Nurse to send back some more of your many 
 books — including " Jowett's Life and Letters." I got a great 
 idea of J.'s sweetness and holiness of disposition, and I could 
 never again speak of him as a humbug. But the puzzle what 
 he really believed and how he reconciled his wow-beliefs with 
 (not only his " orders " but also) his praying and piety and 
 general framework — that is as much a puzzle as ever. They 
 regret that he published no system. I don't think he ever 
 could have made one. Plato didn't either — at least I speak 
 under correction, as you certainly know much more about Plato 
 than I do ; more shame to me whom you sent to College ! 
 
 always speaks of Jowett as a dilettante — has his Plato in his 
 
 top shelf of all : " you see how Jiigh I place him." That's the scorn 
 of the systematic scholar (Oxford says " pedant ") for the purely 
 literary and ethical culture. Privately I think the clue to Jowett 
 is this. He was neither a philosopher nor a theologian, but a 
 Tutor : the greatest of Tutors, Balliol and " the young men " 
 were his whole life. They hint tliat he sacrificed marriage on 
 this altar. And when they said " Sign the Thirty-nine Articles," 
 what he really signed was " I believe in — Balliol " ; and the
 
 BROKEN THREADS 167 
 
 duty of doing nothing that would spoil his life-work for Balliol 
 stopped him from becoming the great Heresiarch as neither 
 money considerations nor social, nor anything else that generally 
 stops people, had power to do. Milner, as you know, is one of his 
 " young men." Thej'- are in the ends of the earth in high places : 
 as Kipling has it : 
 
 Wherefore praise we famous men 
 From whose bays we borrow ? — 
 
 They that put aside To-day — 
 
 All the joys of their To-day — 
 
 And with toil of their To-day — 
 Bought for us To-morrow. 
 
 In the autumn of 1900 Garrett returned to England, 
 and from that date till the beginning of 1903, he remained 
 under the medical charge of Dr. Jane Walker, first in a 
 farm-house (Maltings), and afterwards in her East Anglian 
 Sanatorium at Wiston, near Colchester. It was of this 
 devoted friend that he was thinking when he wrote some 
 verses on " A Woman Doctor " : 
 
 I know a w^oman 
 
 Who lives life with a childlike zest 
 
 And has a heart for all things human ; 
 
 And well she loves the world, and best 
 
 Whatever in the world is lovehest ; 
 
 Yet cannot wholly scorn the rest — 
 
 Vice, dirt, 
 
 And poverty, and helplessness, and pest. 
 
 Not hers to avert 
 
 From tlie prone wretch beneath the wayside palm 
 
 The virtuous Levite skirt : 
 
 She asks not, Wliat is his desert ? 
 
 But, Is he hurt ? 
 
 That found. 
 
 She pours her cunning oils into the wound 
 
 And tends the wastrel wdth the costliest balm. 
 
 For this she made 
 
 Herself a Good Samaritan by trade ; 
 
 Cloaked her large heart 
 
 And bounteous feeling 
 
 Behind the faculty and art
 
 168 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 Of healing : 
 
 That ofttimes those whom she relieves 
 
 Give, kneehng, 
 
 Thanks for that day they fell among the thieves. 
 
 The story of Garrett's sojourn at Maltings Farm and the 
 sanatorium is still of broken threads — of life deprived of 
 most of its opportunities for work and action, but bravely 
 battled for, and even in its darkest hours, accepted with a 
 smiling face. There were, indeed, here as at Nordrach, 
 times of depression. " I sometimes feel," he wrote to 
 his cousin, " with Odysseus on his raft in the storm : 
 would I had fallen with so many brave comrades on the 
 plains battling round Troy, for then I should have had 
 fame but now I shall perish and be forgotten." In 
 July 1901 he was thought to be dying. Intimate friends 
 did not dare to hope, and one of them wrote to his 
 cousin : " He will be able to quote Stevenson : ' Gladly 
 have I lived and gladly will I die.' To live gladlj^ and 
 spread sunshine, in spite of the suffering body, is a 
 very noble achievement." For achievement in this sort, 
 he was destined still to find scope. Gradually he crept 
 back, as he wrote, " to companionship with the moist, 
 warm, kind earth of living things." 
 
 As he recovered some little strength, Garrett threw 
 himself with renewed zest into reading and writing. The 
 death of Cecil Rhodes moved him much, and to the Con- 
 temporary Review of June 1902 he contributed an estimate 
 of " The Character of Cecil Rhodes." This is one of his 
 best pieces, and it is reprinted in this volume (p. 228). 
 There is no trace of weariness in its pages, but the article 
 " threatened," he said, " to cost me an inch of lung." 
 There was at one time some idea of commissioning Garrett 
 to write a life of Rhodes, a suggestion which Colonel 
 Frank Rhodes strongly favoured ; but the proposition 
 was not, I think, definitely made, and in any case Garrett's 
 strength would have been unequal to the task. He was
 
 BROKEN THREADS 169 
 
 asked to undertake a History of the Imperial Light 
 Horse, and this was a work which almost to the end he 
 clung to the hope of being able to accomplish. But it 
 was not to be. One after another each bit of his plans 
 and hopes had to be resigned and renounced. By careful 
 husbanding of his failing strength, he could write a letter 
 or an article ; but the continuous and sustained labour, 
 required for a book, was impossible to him. The book 
 on Rhodes shrank into one or two further magazine 
 sketches. Already in January 1900 he had resigned the 
 editorship of the Ca'pe Times. It then still seemed within 
 the bounds of possibility that he might be able to return 
 to South Africa ; and as the party managers did not desire 
 to force an election, and his constituents were willing to 
 give him leave of absence, he clung to his seat in the 
 Legislative Assembly. The time had now come when 
 this also had to be resigned. His farewell to his con- 
 stituents contains some references to the politics of the 
 moment which need not be detailed ; but also some 
 personal references, as well as a plea for moderation, which 
 gives eloquent expression to his constant ideal — that of a 
 United South Africa : 
 
 To the Electors of Victoria East. 
 
 Gentlemen, — . . . Our connection, though not long, has 
 been close enough for you to know that I resign the seat with 
 very keen regret. When I left South Africa, I hoped that six 
 months' steady treatment might send me back to work, either 
 as an editor or as a member, if not again as both. But I had 
 held on just a little too long. In these times of impending 
 crisis there were obligations which could not be hurriedly shaken 
 off. Till the issue passed finally from the pohticians to the 
 soldiers, pubhc men, great or small, felt like sentries at a post : 
 in Lord Milner's fine phrase, " civilian soldiers of the Empire." 
 Consequences willingly risked should be accepted without 
 mawkish self-pity ; and when I think of all that has been borne 
 since then, by men and women on both sides, in behalf of a cause, 
 I should be ashamed to grudge my paltry share. If I say I have
 
 170 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 spent a time equal to a ninth part of my life in the penal servitude 
 of sanatoria, that for many months I could not see a friend, hardly 
 a newspaper, and that a year ago I had given up the hope, almost 
 the desire, of continuing the struggle — it is only that you may 
 understand that I am not to-day an absentee member from 
 caprice, I am now so much better that with a little more, or 
 perhaps a good deal more, patience, I am believed to have a 
 good prospect of recovery, not to public life, not to parliaments 
 and meetings, but to some obscurer service of the same cause, 
 and, I hope, in the same country. 
 
 Parliament, and especially the Progressive party, meets the 
 poorer by some irreparable losses. In the crowd of Cape poli- 
 ticians. Natal politicians, Transvaal politicians, Cecil Rhodes, 
 with all his faults, stood out as the one great political figure of 
 South Africa as a whole. Death, like distance, is a great teacher 
 of proportions. As, when we gaze at Table Mountain from far 
 out to sea, we lose the faults and fissures of the rock and see the 
 whole in its true grandeur of mass and outline, so it is already, 
 and as time goes on so it will be even more, with men's views of 
 Cecil Rhodes. In Sir James Rose-Innes w^e have given the 
 Transvaal a perfect Chief Justice, and lost, not indeed a perfect 
 leader, but a perfectly single-minded statesman, which is some- 
 thing our public life, and indeed public life anywhere, can ill 
 afford. We felt, at times, that he too much reserved his strength, 
 but how glad we were to draw on that reserve in the late troublous 
 period ; how glad we should be to draw on it now ! Frederick 
 York St. Leger — my late chief and most kind friend — I may 
 well speak of to you, for without his indulgent help and sympathy 
 I could never have added the honour of representing you to 
 the appointment which I held from him. . . . This is not the 
 place to dwell on his political teachings — a high-minded Impe- 
 rialism with a strong vein of Christian Socialism — or on the 
 singular charm, once known, of his mind, in which the sense 
 of honour and the sense of humour were equally delicate. But 
 of his long public work let me say this : not a newspaper writer 
 among us but is the richer for it, the better able, after that 
 model, to rise above all that is tawdry or servile or unchival- 
 rous. It means much for the broadening river of South African 
 journalism that it flowed near the source with so pure a 
 stream. . . . 
 
 Let me, however, warn you against being carried away by talk 
 about " putting down the Bond once for all," " putting down the 
 taal," and so on. British supremacy means not the supremacy
 
 BROKEN THREADS 171 
 
 of the " Britisher " but of the British flag, which means pohtical 
 equality. Let the Bond — as it must unless it is to be more Boer 
 than the Boer leaders — accept the new order ; let it learn from 
 moderate Afrikanders like Mr. Schreiner to reconcile the nation- 
 alism of South Africa with the larger nationahsm of the Empire ; 
 and we shall all recognise that while treason, overt and covert, 
 sounds as ill in English as in the taal, loyalty is none the worse 
 for being bilingual. 
 
 In the time that is coming, Cape politics will become a minor 
 thing relatively to the federal movement. Our late brave foes 
 in their pride of race, preferred to forfeit independence rather 
 than concede equality ; but I believe they will find consolation 
 in realising an ideal which is dear to them also, and which, 
 without that equality would have been impossible — the ideal of 
 a United South Africa. 
 
 I congratulate you on the honourable share which men of 
 Victoria East have had in this great struggle. You can afford 
 to be tolerant now. 
 
 I do not know if I shall have any opportunity to address you 
 further before my resignation takes formal effect ; if not, I 
 thank you here and now from my heart for the loyal confidence 
 you have throughout reposed in me, and am, gentlemen, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 F. Edmund Garrett. 
 Sanatortum, Nayland, Sxjitolk, 
 August 21, 1902. 
 
 None of his resignations cost Garrett a keener pang than 
 this. One thing, however, he never resigned or renounced 
 — the command of an indomitable spirit. To friends who 
 saw him in the sanatorium, he was still the embodiment 
 of zest and gaiety. Yet not the embodiment, either. If 
 you looked at him, as he lay on the deck chair in the 
 verandah, you saw a sick and wasted body ; but if you 
 shut your eyes, and listened only to his continual stream 
 of eager, lively talk, it seemed impossible that this could 
 be a doomed or dying man. The doctors, nurses, or 
 loving relatives would tell you, however, what careful 
 husbandry of resource had gone before, what lassitude, 
 and sometimes what return of fever, followed after. I
 
 172 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 never came away from seeing Garrett in these years of his 
 illness without feeling that I had been privileged to witness 
 a rare and beautiful achievement in human life — the 
 triumph of spirit over body. 
 
 A visit which Garrett much enjoyed was one from his 
 old " chief," Mr. Stead, for whom he ever cherished feelings 
 of affectionate regard. There had been some estrange- 
 ment owing to Mr. Stead's line upon the South African 
 war, and it was previously agreed that the subject of South 
 Africa should be barred. When the time came, they 
 talked of nothing else. They arrived at an hypothesis 
 which composed matters to their mutual agreement. It 
 was decided that one or the other of them was the victim 
 of demoniacal possession ; which of them, was left open. 
 But the visits which probably gave Garrett most pleasure 
 were those from men who could bring him the latest news 
 from South Africa. Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, Major Karri 
 Davies and Colonel Frank Rhodes, to all of whom Garrett 
 was warmly attached, were among his visitors during these 
 years.* Lord Milner also, during a brief visit to England 
 
 * Some characteristic anecdotes with regard to the trial of the Reformers 
 at Pretoria were told in print by Garrett. The first is of Sir Percy Fitz- 
 patrick : " When the lawyers reported that the evidence against him was just 
 not black enough to imperil his neck along with the four comrades, who 
 were to be charged with high treason, and that he would be parted from 
 them on the milder charge, somebody found ' Fitz ' with his head on a 
 table in abject misery. He is probably the only man who ever cried 
 because he could not share the chance of a halter." — Contemporary Review, 
 October 1899. 
 
 The other anecdote is of Colonel Frank Rhodes, and refers to the scene in 
 Court when the death-sentence was pronounced over him and the other three 
 high traitors : " A better pen has done justice to his bearing in all that business, 
 especially on its dignified and pathetic side. The scene lives in my mind by 
 a single little touch of another kind, which will not strike any discernmg person 
 as bathos unless I fail to convey the charm it carried at the moment. The 
 tension was at height. The climate in court was such as Themis loves to breathe 
 all the world over. The moral climate was heavier still. Four times the fee- 
 faw-fum allocution associated with the black cap was got off in fluent gutturals 
 by the judge ; four times it was Englished by the interpreter with professional 
 unction. Some lady fainted and was removed. The courage and self-command 
 of the four were not in doubt. But it was a moment of sympathetic impulses 
 for their friends. I happened to be standing close to the dock, somewhat
 
 BROKEN THREADS 173 
 
 in 1901, went down to see Garrett in the sanatorium. I 
 remember Lord Milner saying afterwards how difficult it 
 was to reaHse that our friend was ill, how bright and 
 animated was his talk, how keen his interest in all South 
 African affairs, " What a magnificent fight it is !" he added ; 
 " Garrett will die, thinking and talking of these things." A 
 true prophecy. 
 
 Garrett was no less gay and cheerful in relation to the 
 every-day life of his surroundings. In July 1901 Miss 
 Ellen Marriage came as a patient (not with phthisis) 
 to the sanatorium, and her reminiscences will best 
 describe the impression made by Garrett upon those 
 around him : 
 
 He was lying out all day in a long chair, and carried up to his 
 room at night ; not allowed to talk, or to receive visitors. I 
 remember the strict orders issued to me by his devoted Nurse 
 Preston (also my nurse) " not to speak to Mr. Garrett." For some 
 weeks (I suppose) we were both planted out in this way, lying 
 out of doors in silence. Afterwards I used to feel most grateful 
 
 behind, and under cover of the interminable drone I ejaculated, ' Never mind, 
 you fellows — it's only a cruel farce.' Colonel Rhodes heard. Half turning 
 his head as he stood, he caught my eye, which no doubt was full of distress 
 and sympathy. The muscles of his own face were as if in church or on parade. 
 Without otherwise relaxing those muscles for an instant, he gravely, deliberately 
 and reassuringly winked — then turned eyes front again to hear the dreary 
 incantation out. 
 
 " As a matter of fact, nobody knew better than he that the farcicality of 
 the capital sentence was not at that moment a foregone conclusion at all. 
 Care had been taken that a whisper should reach the prisoners of a certain 
 historic gallows-beam which patriots had brought up from Slachters Nek for 
 their prospective use, and such reassurances as counsel had been able to give 
 had rested on a supposed agreement with the prosecution, the breakdown of 
 which was proved by the mere fact of a capital sentence being pressed for. 
 But all this only made it one of those tight places in which Frank Rhodes had 
 always at call, not merely the soldier's and sportsman's coolness, but a quick 
 sense of humour and an instant response to any kind of comradeship. It is 
 traits like those I have tried to touch on which gave his personality its rare 
 charm. And that is why the friendly wink under sentence of death dwells 
 in my memory as both delightful and characteristic. It was quite unobserved, 
 there was perfect respect for the decorum of the occasion ; but Rhodes hated 
 to see anybody distressed on his account, and was simply incapable of taking 
 himself in any stress pompously." — The Outlook, October 10, 1903.
 
 174 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 to liim for the clever ways in which he prevented other people 
 from talking to me ; he was doing much better by that time. 
 
 A little later we began reading stories aloud of an afternoon, 
 if he was not well enough to get up ; and " The Treasure of 
 Franchard " proved a lucky find ; for he, a Stevenson-lover, 
 had not read it before. From reading (in spite of nurse) we fell 
 to talk ; I well remember his abrupt plunges into deep waters, 
 starting off from a point only reached after an hour or so by 
 ordinary hesitating or timid talkers. 
 
 That Christmas, 1901, he started vol. ii. of the Sanatorium 
 Magazine. Most of the patients contributed, but his share, the 
 great event and success of the season, was the " Sanatorium Dic- 
 tionary " : a sort of Jabberwockian language for the use of 
 " Sanageese and Sanaganders," very esoteric and extremely 
 personal. 
 
 During a long, discouraging bad spell in November 1902, 
 " stationary quite six months," he wrote : " I try all my old 
 prescriptions, of which the chief is to waive the future wholly, 
 away with efforts and impatiences, and lap myself in any happy 
 hap the present may offer." Waiting for life to come back, he 
 would not fret nor yet fritter strength away. I realised keenly 
 in those times, when I too was a patient, what a day-long battle 
 it was to him to refrain from doing, to give up and to hold back, 
 in addition to the other battle for life which is the routine of a 
 sanatorium. Writing was often out of the question (even the 
 " Dictionary " had knocked him up) ; bird- watching had been 
 a great resource out on the terrace, so taking the nearest " happy 
 hap," we laid a plan for coaxing the titmice up to his window, 
 and made a nest-box for the ledge. The success was great. " I 
 am beginning on a solid nest-box with observation spy-hole 
 and shutter ! " he wrote. The birds fought over the food. " I 
 shall have to descend to lumps of suet," was the next report, 
 " and high off the ground to foil the wagtails ! " 
 
 After the farewell letter to his constituents was written, he 
 said, " Well, that's a tooth that has ached a long while ; but it's 
 out at last. And there are lots of things left to do." And he 
 went straight on to talk of these things, Native questions and 
 other problems that he wanted to work at when (if ever) he left 
 the sanatorium. " One of my lungs is about as useful to breathe 
 with as boot-lacings, and I suppose half the other is gone ; still 
 with luck I may perhaps count on five years more. A man in 
 my position can't make plans, but one can dream dreams." 
 And his dreams were of South Africa.
 
 BROKEN THREADS 175 
 
 Friends came forward in the autumn of 1902 with proposals 
 of work (I. L. H. memoirs, &c.)- "The idea is to give me all the 
 materials ready gotten and unlimited time and facility. . . . 
 I can't tell you how considerate and absurd they are about it ; 
 roughly, in brief, this awaits me [and probably in the end the 
 Rhodes life too], and every sign that the latter can wait . . . 
 if only, only, only I . . . it's always the same story in the end — 
 Tantalus and Ixion ; but you know T. or Ix, would have been 
 much worse off if tliey'd just been left to grizzle without any 
 proffers and approaches and glimpses at all. It's sickening the 
 success with which I get your and 's sympathy about every- 
 thing. Some day the bottom will fall out of the fraud, but I 
 hope it will hold out a bit yet." 
 
 The spell of Garrett's way of making the best of things 
 spread wide in the sanatorium. Patients who had never 
 seen him, caught something of the infection, while others 
 who came into personal contact with him became warmly 
 attached. There was no iron stoicism about his courage ; 
 no grim and self-contained fortitude ; he valued sympathy ; 
 and any pleasures he found, he liked to share. " You are 
 going to have half the cocoa nut," he said, " and we shall 
 see who'll get most tomtits." 
 
 Garrett was the " Father of the Sanatorium," and 
 proposals for subscriptions, presentations and the like 
 were submitted to him. He would amuse himself and 
 delight the others by giving them a humorous turn or 
 putting them into ingenious rhyme. Many a patient 
 at the sanatorium, treasures such scraps of his and still 
 more the notes of good cheer he would send to companions 
 in illness, as, for instance, this to a young girl : 
 
 This at least I can say, for it's true, whatever your bulletin may 
 be : (1) Don't underrate the heart of sweetness in things sorrow- 
 ful which those who love us j&nd — just when we are grieving over 
 " troubling " them — in the very act of sharing and lightening 
 our troubles. And (2) see how Life sometimes keeps the love- 
 liest surprises in store for one just at what seemed the very 
 greyest or even blackest times. So may it be for you ! 
 
 It is no wonder that doctors, patients, nurses were all
 
 176 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 drawn to him,* " You would do anything for Mr. Garrett," 
 was the saying of all who served him in any capacity. 
 He had his own way of putting it. He was terribly spoilt, 
 he used to say, by all the staff, including the nice old 
 cook, whose testimonial to his merits he thus described : 
 " Oh, Mr. Garrett, he is a nice man ! he pass me on the 
 stairs and says he, ' Good morning, Mrs. Jones.' " 
 
 * Some lines he addressed to his nurse at the sanatorium fit other members 
 also of that zealous profession : 
 
 There was a young person called Nurse 
 Who for exercise don't give a curse. 
 
 The pastime called biking 
 
 Is not to her liking. 
 And walking is fifty times worse.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 VITA NUOVA 
 
 INVENTORY 
 
 Health, success, adventure, the rainbow fortune 
 
 Dreamed, desired, half-held and resigned with a sigh — 
 
 Middle-aged I bid you, whom youths importune. 
 Hail, bright wings ! and good-bye. 
 
 Not, assuredly, in a fever- witted 
 
 Fling, sham-stoic, at failure or at disease ; 
 Only I smile that, lacking you, should be pitied 
 
 One who possesses these s 
 
 English birthright, in this the old builder island's 
 
 Keystone age : a cause to carry uphill 
 Making each workday trudge a bid for the highlands : 
 
 Friends : and just one gift still. 
 
 F. E. G. (for E. M. G.). 
 
 In March 1903, Garrett's friends received the following 
 card : 
 
 Gabrett — Maeriage. — On March 26, 1903, F. Edmund Garrett, lately 
 Member of the Legislative Assembly of Cape Colony, son of the late 
 Rev. J. F. Garrett, Rector of Elton, Derbyshire, to Ellen Marriage, 
 eldest daughter of James Haworth Marriage, of Ellerby, South Woodford. 
 —The Times, March 27, 1903. 
 
 Since [he] is, as j^ou see, taking [his] last Farewell of the 
 Country, I think to walk this Sunshine Morning with [him], to 
 help [him] on [his] Way. . . . 
 
 Then I saw in my Dream that they went very lovingly on 
 together. . . . 
 
 I had sunshine all the rest of the Way . . . also through the 
 Valley of the Shadow. — " The Pilgrim's Progress." 
 
 F. E. G. 
 
 To one of the friends who received the card, Garrett 
 
 wrote further : "I have six months to live. A brave and 
 
 177 M
 
 178 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 sweet woman, my dear Friend Ellen Marriage, is going 
 to share those months with me. Life and Death and Love 
 — what a grand chord they make together." 
 
 On leaving the Sanatorium in January 1903, after a 
 sojourn there of two years, Garrett had gone to stay for a 
 few weeks in Hampshire. He wrote thence in his gay 
 and cheery style to Miss Marriage : 
 
 Another P(aying) G(uest) is coming \\ho has a great funk of 
 
 Lungers. Mrs. evidently fears I shall funk her (vb. active 
 
 and trans.) even at the distance of half a garden. I suggested 
 I might be passed off as a mental with a touch of " Bronx." 
 Nurse, if asked where we came from, was to say in a whisper 
 
 " Don't repeat it, please, but Mr. G. was in an institution. 
 
 Sad, isn't it ? By the way, when you go down to the village, 
 will you bring him any new Penny Toy you see ? " I am pre- 
 pared to play up to this, of course. It is my ambition that the 
 P. G. should anon say, " You'd never know when you're talking 
 to him, would you ? Perfectly harmless, I can see — a child 
 could manage him ! " 
 
 In his rural retreat he seemed to improve greatly in 
 health. He enjoyed the return to something like ordinary 
 life, with walks in the fir-woods and visits from friends. 
 It seemed as if the corner had been turned, and some 
 reward was to come for his long fight for health. He was 
 busy with verse translations, from the German and the 
 Danish, and full of plans — the projected memoirs of the 
 Imperial Light Horse, translations and more translations, 
 and a little book, upon which his friend was engaged, to 
 be finished out of hand in partnership, " our united voltage 
 alone being equal to it." The plans included their mar- 
 riage, " perhaps that summer." Sometimes he felt 
 stronger, and the clouds dispersed ; but at others he had 
 misgivings that fresh trouble was beginning : 
 
 Only sometimes. 
 
 When I have fears that I may cease to be
 
 VITA NUOVA 179 
 
 Before — 
 we have been able to have a little happy life together — then it 
 comes upon me with a gulp that I can no longer fall back on the 
 old, cheap pretence-stoicism of which I was sometimes guilty — 
 you always take the best reading of me — and that any bitter 
 cup I may have to drain must be henceforth for your lips too — 
 and then I drink in all the terror and beauty of this new happiness : 
 and then I fall to concerting plans for getting round the diffi- 
 culty, if by perverse fate I fall worse just w^hen I most want to 
 fall better . . . and in all I count on you, and know it is futile 
 to invent any way of bearing the burden quite alone : and then 
 nevertheless I pray — my way of praying — that somehow, if I 
 have brought this upon you, I may be enabled to bear it my sole 
 self, and what drags me under may be made somehow not to 
 spoil your life at all : somehow : God must know how, they say 
 He can do impossibilities. . . . 
 
 Presently the nurse who had attended him at the Sana- 
 torium came on a visit ; serious mischief was seen to be 
 at work, and she urged Garrett to go up to London for 
 medical advice. The sentence of the doctor was that he 
 had but six months at most to live. He broke the news 
 in this letter to his friend : 
 
 Dear, we are in for a disappointment about my health — come 
 and hear all there is to it. 
 
 But deep down I feel that we shall continue to wrest some 
 happiness out of any future, however troubled at times and how- 
 ever clipped. 
 
 There remain these three — Life and Love and Death. And 
 the strongest of these is — Death, I suppose. But like the bee, 
 he can but sting once — and the shadow of Death is . . . only a 
 shadow. Love is stronger than that ! And I shall see you 
 to-morrow. 
 
 His friend hesitated not for a moment, and they were 
 married on March 26 at the Registry Office in Broad Street, 
 Bloomsbury. To her, as wife, companion, friend and 
 nurse, he owed not only the happiness of love fulfilled, 
 but a period — a halcyon period, almost — of new life.
 
 180 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 The shadow was never far away, but it troubled him 
 
 not ; 
 
 Sleepe after toyle, port after stormy seas, 
 
 Ease after warre, death after Hfe, doth greatly please. 
 
 In early April, influenza, followed by bronchitis, was 
 nearly fatal. In country air at Albury, near Tring, he 
 slowly recovered, though it was three months before he 
 could talk much or hold a pen. The medical verdict was 
 revised, and some hopes were held out of longer life, if 
 every care were taken, if a warmer climate were sought, 
 and if exertion were rigidly restrained. All idea of literary 
 work had thus to be abandoned. His wife's income was 
 insufficient, and his own small resources were near ex- 
 haustion. In this emergency two old Cambridge comrades 
 came forward, being joined presently by a few of his South 
 African friends, to relieve him of financial anxiety. He 
 was profoundly touched by this tribute of affection, ren- 
 dered, as he said, at a time when he was " a back number 
 and might quite well have been allowed to drop out of 
 memory." The winter of 1903-4 was spent in Cornwall, 
 at St. Ives, and Garrett recovered some measure of strength. 
 The idea of setting up house on their own account now 
 seemed feasible, and his wife scoured the west country in 
 search of a suitable sun- trap. They fixed upon a little 
 house, situated on gently rising ground, a few miles from 
 Plympton — Sir Joshua Reynolds's birthplace. There — 
 at Wiverton Acre — in June 1904, they settled and there 
 the remaining years of his life were spent. 
 
 The spot was well chosen for the life of fresh air which 
 was indispensable. The open doors and windows of the 
 living-rooms on the ground floor showed nothing across 
 the garden-balcony except fields and trees and clumps and 
 hedgerows. The furnishing of the little house gave him 
 much pleasure. After so many years of wandering, the 
 home of his own, the ordering of its arrangements, the
 
 VITA NUOVA 181 
 
 planning of a garden, the alternate joys and worries of 
 housekeeping — all these, in company with his wife, were 
 a new and grateful experience to him ; he was possessed, 
 he felt, of infinite riches in a little room. " We long to 
 show it to you," he wrote to his cousin, " so soon as the 
 rooms are fit to make their bow to their fairy godmother." 
 The country around, in which he was sometimes able to 
 walk or drive, is one of deep Devonshire lanes, overgrown 
 with clematis and honeysuckle and foxglove ; full of a 
 quiet beauty, with glimpses here and there of the great 
 moor behind. The garden and the birds were very dear 
 to him ; and when one visited him, he was sometimes 
 able to walk around his little domain, pointing out improve- 
 ments, plantations, the latest device in garden-chairs, or 
 cunning sun-traps, with the pleasant pride which every 
 gardener feels. But his own letters will give the best 
 impression : 
 
 To Miss Agnes Garrett. 
 
 June 1904. 
 
 I am as full of improvements and plans as if I were going to 
 live a lifetime. But, please God, we may have some quiet happy 
 days here. 
 
 To the same. 
 
 August 10, 1904. 
 
 Garden full of birds. Watched a lovely green woodpecker in 
 one apple-tree, and a fluffy family of long-tailed tits (the kind 
 that build bottle-nests) in another simultaneously. Break- 
 fasting, watched four young stoats larking in the grass like a 
 school of porpoises. Water-hens came to a cattle-pool. 
 
 To the same. 
 
 December 18, 1904. 
 
 To-day was like a perfect spring — blue, balmy, sunny. We 
 had dinner in the tent, and the robins sang divinely a yard 
 away. We have bad several such days in December, and want 
 you to know how blessed the tent makes them when they do
 
 182 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 come. No more fights with the Avind, no pegs or ropes now, 
 and a sound wooden floor and frame, raised on piles at one side, 
 backed into the thickest of the hedge, getting the whole day's 
 sun and embowered in trees and shrubs, some of which we have 
 transplanted for the purpose. In short, we have made things 
 hum, as you will see when we meet. 
 
 To the same. 
 
 July 21, 1905. 
 
 We had a lovely afternoon (my fortieth birthday) picnicking 
 in a hayfield with the Stevenson volume — welcome as flowers — 
 over our tea. This was in a new place — a discovery near enough 
 for me to walk to, with a shady hedgerow to sit under and com- 
 mand a great open view such as Millie craves — coombes slanting 
 seaward under warm haze and great green glooms of woodland 
 in the middle distance ; a few steps away, a gap opens up a 
 mighty blue shoulder of Dartmoor, in the other direction. A 
 great find, so near home. There we sat and read a bit of Fon- 
 tainebleau — have you, by the way, the " Treasure of Franchard," 
 a gay short story of R. L. S. with the Fontainebleau colour ? 
 And there we counted up our mercies, as the Quakers say, and 
 told our rosary of loved and loving names, the givers, who are 
 themselves the chiefest among our gifts. 
 
 To the same. 
 
 June 2, 1905. 
 
 E. should have added to our bird news the triumph that the 
 house martins, by prayer, and keeping down the bullying sparrows 
 a bit, have at last begun to build on the house. Not a nest till 
 now, though the ledges and eaves and little pents seemed made 
 for them. But now we hope soon to say : 
 
 " This guest of summer, 
 The temple-haunting martlet, doth approve. 
 By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's heath 
 Smells wooingly here." 
 
 At the moment the obscene little noisy sparrow-canaille has 
 succeeded in breaking in on the little twittering masons after 
 two or three nests were up, and annexing them. We are inter- 
 fering in turn, and hope to abolish the thieves, and woo back the 
 others to the polluted nests. A family of blue tits, nearly ready 
 to fly, are on daily view in that nest -box which I made at
 
 VITA NUOVA 183 
 
 St. Ives out of a bit of tree, which opens and shows the interior 
 at will. 
 
 The balance of nature offers problems. Our family of weasels 
 threatens the nests, but keeps down rats and rabbits, and is 
 most graceful to watch. The cats are horrible foes to nests and 
 birds, and Seth-Rascal won't worry them ; I wish to pervert 
 him to this practice. Then the garden mice, which eat our peas, 
 and rabbits, which eat our lettuces, begin to swarm. I propose 
 to trap the mice, and cope with the rabbits by ^\^re. This leaves 
 the birds free ; but then tliey badger one another. But I shall 
 bore you with birds. 
 
 The birds were a constant joy to him, and he kept a soft 
 place, as well as open house, for insect-friends. " The little 
 glow-worms," says his wife, " were the pleasantest ; but 
 we had enormous spiders. Edmund had once ' kept ' 
 tame spiders, but these insisted on terms of impossible 
 intimacy. So did earwigs. There was nothing for it 
 but to slay these last, and I got into a habit, I suppose, 
 of killing at sight. I remember that one day when Edmund 
 was lying out of doors in his long chair, apparently absorbed 
 in his work, I brushed the all-pervading earwigs off his 
 writing-pad, and was going to destroy them, when he laid 
 his hand gently on my arm and said, ' No, don't ! Out-of- 
 doors is their house.' " Then there was his dog — " dear 
 old Seth redivivus " — with his resolute determination to 
 join in : " Let me so much as take E.'s hand for a moment 
 and a damp nose intervenes." Garrett was a true lover 
 of the dog ; as these lines from a piece of his shall 
 testify : 
 
 Friends, rejoicing in our joys 
 
 Sorrowing in our sorrows : friends 
 
 Whom our kindness never cloys 
 Nor capriciousness ofifends : 
 
 Quick, upon the least pretext, 
 Mood to master-mood to suit ; 
 
 Rapturous at a word — the next 
 Wistful, eloquently mute :
 
 184 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 Who when all the world's awry 
 
 Never argue, never pose, 
 Only hint dumb sympathy 
 
 With a soft intrusive nose. 
 
 Soul ? who doubts your Soul ? Not I, 
 Yours, who drown, one Hfe to save — 
 
 " Greater love hath none " — or die 
 Pressed upon the loved one's grave. 
 
 This much of creation's plan 
 
 Shows whatever else is fog : *" 
 
 Who made Woman for the Man, 
 
 For them both He made the Dog. 
 
 The master of Seth was keenly interested in Sir Percy 
 Fitzpatrick's " Jock of the Bushveld." He did not live 
 to see Jock's adventures in print, but he used to say chaf- 
 fingly to his friend, " When once the book is published, you 
 will be known only as Fitz of ' Jock.' " When the time 
 came and the book had a great success. Sir Percy wrote : 
 " How he would have enjoyed it all in his own boyish and 
 bubblingly generous way : the success of others or of a 
 cause was infinitely more enjoyable to him than his own ; 
 and I was always struck, when his own work was really the 
 theme, with the way in which he managed to rake one in 
 as a sort of partner in it, and almost made one believe 
 that we had done something. It was always ' We,' never 
 
 t T ) 55 
 
 As Garrett lay out in his garden, he would often write 
 snatches of verse, both grave and gay — as, for instance, 
 this Tennysonian echo from the farmyard : 
 
 And from a neighbour byre sweet country sounds, 
 Some not so sweet as others, but all blent — 
 The caw of solemn rooks, the low of kine, 
 The rakish challenge of cacophonous cocks 
 And clucking of incorrigible hens. 
 
 To a column of facetice which his friend Mr. Spender 
 occasionally inserted in the Westminster Gazette, Garrett
 
 VITA NUOVA 185 
 
 sometimes contributed, both in prose and in verse. Some- 
 body had described Birmingham as " the clearing-house of 
 ideas." " Why not," asked Garrett, " the change-alley 
 of convictions ? " "If Free Trade is a parrot-cry, it 
 must be admitted," he wrote during the elections, " that 
 it makes a pretty poll." And so forth, and so forth. To 
 the same journal, Garrett contributed during these years 
 a long series of translations of Ibsen's Lyrics. He con- 
 ceived the idea, too, of doing for Peer Gynt what he had 
 already done for Brand ; but this scheme went no 
 further than a version, in the rhymed metre of the original, 
 of a single scene at the end of the first act * — one of the 
 three scenes in contemporary literature which, he said, 
 appealed to him most poignantly, the other two being 
 the adventure and death of Patya Rostof in Tolstoy's 
 War and Peace and the scene in Brand where Agnes 
 gives up the relics of her dead child to clothe the child of 
 the tramp. The northern literature had great fascination 
 for him. " We read sagas together," says his wife, " and 
 to these he took at once and mightily. I suppose we read 
 Grettir twice, and parts of Njal many times. I was also 
 put on my mettle to read to him the very best short stories, 
 English and French, ancient or modern, and only the best. 
 He condemned Merimee's ' How we took the Redoubt ' 
 after ' Linesman's ' work in the Cornhill, which he much 
 admired ; efforts to read or tolerate Balzac ended in failure, 
 no Frenchman save Anatole France won his heart. A plan 
 for reading ' Kipling as a whole, right through the lot,' 
 
 * " To Soria-Moria Castle." This appeared in the Independent Review, 
 April 1904. The version is prefaced by a short dissertation on the 
 question between prose and verse translations. " ' Prose for the study,' " he 
 reports a friend as saying from experience ; " ' for an audience one wants the 
 swing and lilt of verse.' 'Twas Homer's own conclusion . . . Have we not 
 minor poets who have little to say, but a perfect way of saying it ? Why 
 should they not turn to verse translation ? They might not equal the scholar 
 and poet in one — a Murray, a Mackail, a Verrall. But they would supersede 
 the labours of a journeyman like myself. And if they helped their countrymen 
 to enjoy some part of the best of other literatures, it would be worth a great 
 deal of machine-made poetry on hand-made paper."
 
 186 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 unluckily was interrupted ; but I had the good fortune 
 to discover that he had not read ' In Flood-time ' ; bor- 
 rowed the little grey book with infinite difficulty, and 
 reaped a full reward." This was relaxation. Garrett's 
 main interest was still in South Africa, and he consumed 
 much solid fare from blue-books and the like. " Tell him," 
 he said wistfully, by way of answer to a lad who had written 
 to him from the Cape, " that South Africa is just now the 
 place where a man, by minding his own business, can serve 
 the Empire." He wrote during these years many memorial 
 verses and inscriptions for South Africa, and some of these 
 are printed below (p. 269). The epitaph which he adapted 
 from Simonides of Ceos is engraved on the obelisks which 
 at Elandslaagte and on many another battlefield surmount 
 the graves of officers and troopers in the Imperial Light 
 Horse. He was much pleased when his longer epitaph, 
 for Boers and Britons buried side by side, was quoted by 
 Mr. G. P. Wessels in a reconciliatory speech. 
 
 Visits from relations and friends continued to be a 
 great pleasure to him ; but these had to be carefully 
 economised, for " downs " followed quickly upon " ups," 
 and an hour's talk with a friend often meant days or weeks 
 of previous rest or subsequent exhaustion. He was 
 supposed to listen rather than to talk, and to smile rather 
 than to laugh, but he was incapable of either form of 
 repression. " Larf ? " he wrote after a visit from Sir Percy 
 Fitzpatrick, fresh from South Africa with the latest stories, 
 " Larf ? I thort I should a' died ! " His life had perforce 
 to be, in externals, that of the confirmed, and for months 
 at a time, of the bed-ridden, invalid ; but what most struck 
 those about him was that he kept firm grasp of the relative 
 values in life. The little things, the irksome things, the 
 unpleasant things ; the discomfort, the pain — these never 
 seemed to become principal. Living, as he did, in an 
 invalid atmosphere, confined, as he often was, to a single 
 room in a small house, he yet never lost his sense of pro-
 
 VITA NUOVA 187 
 
 portion. He took all the " downs " as part of the day's 
 work, to be accepted uncomplainingly, and counted only 
 the " ups." " Why," he wrote to his cousin (July 11, 
 1905), " the most pink-blowsed robuster that one meets 
 fails to get the taste of life on his palate even so much as 
 a poor crock like me can have it, as I have it to-day. I 
 suppose it's a gift of zest." 
 
 To friends in London or in South Africa he wrote as 
 gaily as ever, following all their fortunes and activities, 
 domestic or political, with ever-ready sympathy. The 
 first two of the following letters was written from St. Ives ; 
 the others from Wiverton : 
 
 To J. H. Badley. 
 
 We have a gorgeous scheme for Jock [his nephew]. Across 
 the bay, a mile away or more, is a stranded three-master, wrecked 
 last M'inter in a storm, driven ashore in the estuary of the Hayle 
 with a cargo of China-clay — all hands saved. At low tide she 
 seems to be high and dry on Portliminster sands ; at high tide 
 she seems well out in the sea, but we never see it break over 
 her, and she is always high out of the water. When she was 
 driven ashore, she was abandoned as hopeless and put up to 
 auction. The cargo fetched 75. 6^. and the ship 5s. ! ! No doubt 
 that's all she's worth to a marine store-dealer — but to a boy ! 
 Fancy playing pirates on her, specially when the tide comes in. 
 I felt like Loudon Dodd in " The Wrecker." My idea was to 
 buy her, cargo and all, from tlie purchaser and solemnly present 
 her to Jock. He may refloat her, and sail the Spanish main in 
 her if he can, and likes. E. says : "A boy who has a pony 
 already, and then has a ship given him at eight years old, has 
 nothing left in the world to dream of." We have had great fun 
 imagining the whole thing. 
 
 To Mes. Fawcett. 
 
 January 2, 1904. 
 
 I am glad to hear of your pegging away for Free Trade. Strange 
 how utterly Chamberlain's Imperial-Colonial aspect of his scheme 
 has dropped into the background under the electoral and material
 
 188 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 temptations of the regular Protectionist game — wire-pulling of 
 all the clamorous "interests." But no wonder. The manufac- 
 turers are playing up, all agog — the Colonists are not. Thej' 
 were not ready, from his own point of view. If he had stuck to 
 his line at the last Colonial Conference — " better your offer " — 
 he might have been educating Colonial opinion most usefully. 
 Instead of that, he goes about the country, &c. Clearly, with 
 the volume of our trade, it's far more for us to put up a wall 
 than for the Colonies to pull down a bit of their walls — unless 
 they make some real approach towards the ideal of Imperial 
 Free Trade. That is what, in the teeth of Rhodes's scheme, 
 I always stuck to and preached at the Cape. But of course now 
 that a British Colonial Secretary has taken the hne that the 
 Colonies are doing their bit enough and that we should do ours 
 by putting Free Trade into the melting-pot, the whole case is 
 prejudiced. I know the spirit which colonists are only too ready 
 to show the moment you begin to bargain and strike the note of 
 local interests, " legitimate trade assistance," &c. I've seen it 
 at our Customs Union Conferences in South Africa. As I say, 
 this is getting the colonist on his worst and smallest side. On 
 Defence you get him on his biggest. But something might be 
 done some day with tariffs, if Chamberlain would (or could) 
 revert to that Colonial Conference position till things were 
 riper. 
 
 To E. T. C. 
 
 April 16, 1905. 
 
 I see you in the Times dining Greenwood, dining with the 
 Libimps and so on. I track you where you eat your way like 
 a caterpillar on a cabbage. Do report of the cabbage. Are the 
 Limps cheering up ? Is Sir E. Grey still talking of chucking 
 politics ? . . . I wish you and I could write an article together — 
 a sort of group-manifesto ; they're all the fashion now — two or 
 three young solemn asses meet and start it like chaps did a 
 Blazer at the 'Varsity. Seriously, if you ever feel game for such 
 a thing, come do\^Ti and talk it over. You would have to do all 
 the work and architecture. Mine's a dropping fire nowadays. 
 But I'm able to report very unusually gaily on the last three 
 months or four. My wife has brought me through the winter 
 marvellously. I'm as lean as a wolf, but with the leanness which 
 
 nothing checks have recovered the wolf's appetite. D the 
 
 symptoms, but what a relief to the patient ! and to his wife's 
 kitchen strategy. Come and see the garden. The garden's
 
 VITA NUOVA 189 
 
 great larks, the birds and all that, and my plantings. Put in 
 a new privet hedge and hope to see it a few feet up anjru'ay. 
 I don't rise to Rhodes's old man planting oaks quite * ; privet's 
 my form, it's the quickest grower. But you know we've cele- 
 brated our second year — almost a silver wedding for us, all 
 things considered. And you've to meet my wife. The pear 
 blossom's out and plum too, in bits ; when the old cider apple- 
 trees are in flower you positively must run down, if not before. 
 I should vastly enjoy it. I " torp " a lot, but with big streaks 
 of animation ; and find life extremely good. 
 
 To Sm Percy Fitzpatrick. 
 
 November 7 (on being knighted). 
 
 Vm frankly pleased. I expect most of your friends are. 
 Don't take great stock in titles 'per se, but all depends on the 
 context. If you and Farrar had been military instead of civil, 
 you would have got a " step " or two ; as it is, this is the natural 
 King's Thank you, like Milner's peerage. You needn't tell me 
 your conflicting feelings about having it ; but when a chap has 
 played such good cricket, it's in the interests of the game that 
 he should get his " blue," as we said at Cambridge — though we 
 all know the " blue " doesn't make the cricketer. . . . One's 
 past work is the capital of politics, and a thing like this is a sort 
 of notification that there is a balance at the political bank. 
 
 To E. T. C. 
 
 November 17, 1905. 
 
 The Lost Leader [p. 265] brought me shrieks of joy from tired 
 Unionists, as I find a nasty one for dear Arthur never fails to do. 
 He nearly had the pea under the other thimble too quick for me, 
 as once before, but I nipped in just in time. Once let him speak, 
 when anything seems coming to a point, and you're done. (N.B. 
 
 * " I remember in the impetuosity of my youth I was talking to a man 
 advanced in years who was planting — what do you think ? He was planting 
 oak-trees, and I said to him very gently that the planting of oak-trees by a 
 man advanced in years seemed to me rather imaginative. He seized the point 
 at once, and said to me : ' You feel that I shall never enjoy the shade ? ' I 
 said ' Yes,' and he replied : ' I have the imagination, and I know what that 
 shade will be, and, at any rate, no one will ever alter those lines. I have laid 
 my trees on certain lines. I know that I cannot expect more than to see them 
 beyond a shrub, but with me rests the conception and the shade and the glory.' " 
 — " Life and Speeches of Cecil Rhodes," p. 359.
 
 190 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 — Asquith and Co. are in much the same case about Home Rule, 
 and it's larks to see the papers of each side myopically blind to 
 the one absurdity and acute for t'other.) . . . Ever so glad you 
 saw and liked the lines on poor Frank Rhodes * and the others ; 
 it's jolly nice to hear, sequestered with the birds in this shrubbery, 
 when you marked me up a hit. 
 
 To a friend on the death of a son in early youth. 
 
 November 18, 1905. 
 Dear fellow, it's a poor pagan sort of comfort, and not one I 
 would dare to ofifer a woman, but yet methinks not false neither 
 — the comfort I came upon cited in an Addison essay the other 
 day, offered by some old Greek or another to a friend who was 
 in your case : " As far as it went, this young life was just as 
 bright and innocent as it could be, and a deal more so than any 
 but the rarest can count on remaining if granted the good and 
 evil mixed of life's later stages. You should therefore say. 
 Well that it never declined.'''' We all agree, when contemplating 
 a life prolonged after its best point, that it would have been 
 better closed in the full flush of its best. The book, we say, should 
 have ended there. What is the best point, the happiest I mean, 
 of a life ? There are few better, at least, than the point your 
 dear lad stood at. " Now stand you on the top of happy hours." 
 Life as far as he knew it was the life full of zest and possibilities 
 which belongs to healthy young creatures ; he was snatched 
 away from the table with the edge of appetite keen, and that's 
 sad indeed for you who hoped to see him go through many a 
 course yet — but don't you think perhaps he may have had the 
 cream of it ? " Call no life happy till it be dead " ; his you may 
 now call happy — it was happy. Bah ! how irrelevant is such 
 talk to the sense of personal loss, which is the real ache. And for 
 that I can offer nothing, except, my dear friend, a clumsy hand 
 on your shoulder. 
 
 To E. T. C. 
 
 July 27, 1906. 
 
 Forgive my slowness in saying " Good " to your fly-sheet of 
 Liberal Colonial Club programme. Have been creeping about, 
 gathering strength. I am, of course, warmly with you, and am 
 prepared to roar as mildly as any sucking dove if only we can 
 get a voice raised at all. What I want hinted is that — with on 
 
 * The Memorial verses, given below, p. 272.
 
 VITA NUOVA 191 
 
 the one side Joe and Co. crying " Ours is the only policy if you 
 want to unite the Empire," and on the other (only this you can't 
 say out) with half the Liberal party crying " Empire be damned " 
 (except in occasional vague perorations) — naturally we stand to 
 lose all young people who are keen on the Empire and see some- 
 thing must be done in the next generation or so, unless they 
 happen to be so keen on reforms as to forget the Empire in our 
 own politics. 
 
 "Mine's a dropping fire nowadays; " but it was fairly 
 constant, and showed all the old brilliance. In 1904 
 more especially he fired into the political field some of his 
 happiest squibs. One was the piece, already mentioned, 
 which fitted Browning's " Lost Leader " to Mr. Arthur 
 Balfour's " unsettled convictions " on the fiscal question. 
 Another was a parody of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's eulogy 
 of Mr. Chamberlain (p. 263). " A really splendid piece 
 of work," wrote an appreciative editor, " and as full of 
 literary charm as it is of vigour ; a more demolishing 
 piece of chaff I never read." " That small jape of mine," 
 wrote Garrett, " brought a shower of letters from old friends 
 and acquaintances, but Kipling's own magnanimous and 
 jolly enjoyment of it was the best." " My earnings last 
 year," he said, " were rather more than in my first year 
 of journalism, which sounds like one of life's little ironies, 
 but would be very cheery really if I were keeping it up." 
 
 The dropping fire, however, had to become more and 
 more intermittent ; yet he kept it up to the end. His 
 longest piece during these years was a chapter, contributed 
 to a volume entitled " The Empire and the Century," 
 upon " Rhodes and Milner." These estimates had pre- 
 viously been printed elsewhere, and he was pleased at 
 receiving " the j oiliest echoes from all over South Africa." 
 A little later, two South African questions especially excited 
 Garrett's interest. They arose in connection with the 
 Transvaal Constitution, and are of like importance now 
 in connexion with the Constitution of the South African 
 Union. One was the Native Question. In this, as we
 
 192 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 have seen, Garrett had been interested since his first visit 
 to South Africa. He had remarked then that the people 
 who are often ignored in schemes for the future of South 
 Africa are those who form the great mass of its population. 
 He noticed the same thing in the discussions about the 
 Transvaal Constitution. The newspapers were full of the 
 rights of the Boers, the claims of " Het Volk," the claims 
 of the " Progressive Association " ; but the natives were 
 hardly mentioned ; " yet most people in South Africa, 
 most people in the two new Colonies for which we were 
 Constitution-making, are natives." Garrett devoted much 
 of his last remnants of strength to the cause of " The 
 Unheard Helot." * The problem is one of equal difficulty 
 and importance. How can some sort of representation of 
 the natives be attained without prejudice to the strong 
 feeling of the white population as a whole against anything 
 like the (ostensibly colour-blind) franchise of Cape Colony ? 
 How, on the other side, can the Imperial Government 
 remain faithful to its trust on behalf of the native races 
 without causing its intervention to develop into a Colonial 
 grievance ? Garrett's solution took the form of indirect 
 representation through " an Advisory Council of leading 
 natives and experts in native affairs." He developed his 
 scheme in a memorandum upon " Natives and the New 
 Constitutions," which was circulated privately in July 
 1906. It has since been printed in South Africa f ; and, 
 
 * See an article by Garrett, so entitled, in the Westminster Gazette, July 31, 
 1906. 
 
 t In The State : the Organ of Closer Union, February 1909, with the following 
 editorial note : " Though the proposals are not entirely applicable to the 
 situation as it exists at the present day, we think that the Memorandum will 
 be welcomed, as showing the views of one who for many years was well known 
 in Cape Colony as an earnest student of the Native Problem and of the consti- 
 tutional difficulties to which it gave rise." The Memorandum was the subject 
 of an excellent and sympathetic leading article in the Manchester Guardian of 
 April 9, 1909 : " We are disposed to favour the suggestion of advisory Native 
 Councils as the most hopeful instruments of native government in those States 
 which are not yet prepared to apply the principle ' equal rights for all civilised 
 men.' Even where a native franchise is accorded the Native Councils might
 
 VITA NUOVA 193 
 
 though it would now require adjustment to altered con- 
 ditions, the scheme is in principle well worthy of con- 
 sideration, and in his formula that the natives " think in 
 kraals " a solution may some day be found. The other 
 topic which most interested Garrett was the principle of 
 " one vote one value " as the basis of the white franchise. 
 He was in favour of the grant of responsible government, 
 but he regarded with anxiety the apparent inclination of 
 the British Government of the day to stretch points and 
 make exceptions in favour of the country districts (that is, 
 mainly, the Boer vote) against the towns (that is, mainly, 
 the British vote) : 
 
 We alone in all the world [he wrote] would have hurried to the 
 sublime experiment, just as we alone stick to Free Trade and 
 hold out against conscription — and I am John Bull enough to be 
 proud of all the peculiarities. Only, why at the expense of our 
 own people ? AVhy this business of the five seats, and all the 
 rest of it ? Why any departure at all from the plain justice and 
 common sense of the claim that the industrial and British 
 vote should be made to count at least as much as any 
 other? ("The Boer in the Saddle," Standard, April 12, 1907.) 
 
 Garrett's attention was thus fixed on the two vital 
 matters upon which the peace and prosperity of South 
 Africa must depend, and by which the success and good 
 credit of British statesmanship there will hereafter be 
 judged — the just and considerate treatment of the native 
 races, and strict equality of political rights among all the 
 white subjects of the Crown. Garrett's last article on 
 
 be of conspicuous use as a mode of representing those natives who were not 
 ' civilised ' and who still lived under the tribal system. It must not be for- 
 gotten that the large majority of Kafirs do not possess or desire that individual 
 status, political and economic, which is essential to the free exercise of a fran- 
 chise. Most of them not only live in kraals but ' think in kraals,' and the only 
 feasible method of giving them any form of self-government is by some such 
 council of head-men as meets for Basutoland in Maseru. If the Union becomes 
 effective some such Advisory CouncU as Mr. Garrett proposed should certainly 
 be attached to the Government of the newly admitted territories, and might 
 very well be extended so as to secure representation for the general body of 
 kraal Kafirs m the States brought under the Union Govei'nment." 
 
 N
 
 194 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 this subject — " The Boer in the Saddle " — appeared in 
 the Standard of April 12, 1907,* a month before he died. 
 It had been written several weeks before. Like many of 
 his pieces, including some of his brightest and most vigo- 
 rous, it was written under grievous physical disability. 
 They were often composed when he was prostrated with 
 illness, and committed to paper by dictation in a 
 whisper. 
 
 " He will die thinking and talking of these things," said 
 Lord Milner. At the end of February, Garrett wrote a 
 pencilled note to Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, congratulating him 
 on his electoral victory at Pretoria : 
 
 Dear old Fitz, — If you live to be 100 and incidentally (as 
 I trust) Prime Minister of a United South Africa, you will never 
 beat the pulsing swing and joy of this Pretoria adventure. I 
 have been following from this bed tensely. I must tell you I'm 
 in a new trouble just now, and my voice has been hung up for 
 three weeks. No talk ; so I was chuckling and waving my 
 hands at the wafe all day. Trust you get a rest. Mind the 
 reaction, old chap. 
 
 And on the other leaf he scribbled a little sketch entitled 
 " The De'il's awa' wi' the Mugwump." These were the 
 last lines Garrett wrote. The end came quietly and gently, 
 after a period of weaknesses and exhaustion so extreme 
 that the watchers could only feel thankfulness when the 
 long conflict was over. He died on May 10, 1907. Three 
 days later he was buried, under the elm-trees, in the neigh- 
 bouring churchyard of Brixton, f The headland to the 
 South is the first sight of England for South African 
 ships homeward bound. 
 
 During the last years of his life. Garret had one great 
 wish. It was that the " brave and sweet woman," his 
 
 * He had also contributed numerous letters to the Times on the subject in 
 January and February 1906, and a long article to the Westminster Gazette, 
 February 14, 1906. 
 
 I On the slab, after his name, are these true words : " Whose life quickened 
 in all who knew him Love and Courage and Joy in life."
 
 VITA NUOVA 195 
 
 '* dear friend," who had " walked with him to help him on 
 his way," should, in her memories of him, be able to count 
 some unclouded hours. He spoke of this to me, as I 
 doubt not to other friends, and I find the same thought in 
 his letters. No sympathetic reader of this chapter will 
 need, I think, to be assured that Garrett's wish was 
 abundantly fulfilled ; but I shall venture to quote a few 
 words which his wife wrote to me after the death of her 
 husband : "I hold fast to the thought that we had four 
 whole years, instead of the few weeks or months promised, 
 and I do not think any moment of those four years was 
 wasted ; they held a whole lifetime, and more." 
 
 Two other wishes Garrett had. He often talked of 
 death ; he had no fear of it, and he cared not what might 
 happen to his body. But he looked wistfully for some 
 little remembrance in the land where he had " made 
 beginnings." He put his plea into these lines : 
 
 Where e'er I fall, like yonder ripped 
 
 Old elm, there lay me ; so but one 
 Small brass hang where the solemn crypt 
 
 Gives respite from the Cape Town sun, 
 Hard by the hurrying street, alive 
 
 With strength and youth : 'tis all I claim, 
 That where the heart is, there survive 
 
 The dust and shadow of a name. 
 
 And one other hope he had ; it was that, when he was 
 gone, some few of the things which he had most cared to 
 say would not wholly be forgotten ; that they might here 
 and there be found to have enough of vital force to live on 
 awhile and speak for him. 
 
 The first of these wishes was easily and spontaneously 
 fulfilled. A committee was formed in Cape Town imme- 
 diately after his death to raise a memorial to him there. 
 The subscriptions were limited to five shillings, in order 
 that many sorts and conditions of men and women might 
 equally contribute. A London committee was also formed.
 
 196 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 presided over at its first meeting by Lord Milner, and 
 attended by many of Garrett's Cambridge, journalistic 
 and South African friends. The Cape committee, in 
 concert with the other, placed in the cloister of the new 
 cathedral at Cape Town a brass tablet to Garrett's memory ; 
 it is inscribed with his own verses. The London com- 
 mittee in addition have presented to the Union Society of 
 Cambridge a " Garrett Library " of books connected with 
 the history of the British Colonies, and especially with 
 that of South Africa. 
 
 Garrett's second wish I have endeavoured in this volume 
 to carry out. I have tried to present some picture of the 
 ideals, in journalism and in politics, which he cherished, 
 and to place on record some of the things which he had it 
 most at heart to say and to do. " In the brief opportunity 
 given him he eagerly endeavoured to serve England and 
 South Africa. He looked forward and made some begin- 
 nings." And in these later days, when the time of fulfil- 
 ment seems to be at hand, the memory of Edmund Garrett 
 is cherished among many of those with whom he had lived 
 and worked. " This is the opening day," wrote one of 
 the Transvaal delegates from the South African National 
 Convention at Durban, " and I would like to let you know 
 that old friends and old comrades of Edmund have thought 
 of him, and have been thinking, too, how happy he would 
 have been to be here, helping to realise the great dream 
 we shared. No one can say what part or influence would 
 have been his in this work ; but we know it would have 
 been a big part, and an influence wholly good and healing 
 and constructive." 
 
 I will end with a hope of my own. It is that I may 
 have conveyed some impression of what Garrett was — of 
 the character, which made him respected and beloved, and 
 of the high example which he set in the conduct of life. 
 " I remember," writes his brother-in-law, " how one 
 night after his return from South Africa, when we had been
 
 VITA NUOVA 197 
 
 talking of the hopes and aims that now seemed lost, he 
 pictured a great debate in the courts of heaven on the ques- 
 tion of human life — whether it was just to men to give 
 them high powers and noble visions and yet to make their 
 lives, as it seems, the sport of chance. The President, 
 summing up the arguments before he put the question 
 to the vote, concluded : ' Well, gentlemen, this is human 
 life — all that I could make it if it was to be a thing of 
 growth ; battered by circumstance and scarred with 
 failure, but with love and friendship and high purpose. 
 Is it worth having ? ' " No one who knew Edmund 
 Garrett — and as I would fain believe no one who has 
 read these pages — can doubt for an instant on which side 
 his vote was given.
 
 APPENDIK 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 SOME WRITINGS BY GARRETT REFERRED 
 TO IN THE MEMOIR
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN PERSONS AND 
 POLITICS 
 
 I 
 
 PAUL KRUGER 
 
 (I) OOM PAUL AT HOME 
 January 1890 * 
 
 Half-past six a.m. is not the hour which you would expect to 
 be named for an audience at Buckingham Palace, or even for an 
 interview at Hatfield House. But President Kruger is a hard 
 worker and an early riser. I was accompanied by Mr. Johannes 
 Rissik, my kind interpreter. Mr. Rissik is a Hollander who 
 has lived in the Transvaal for fifteen years ; he holds ofiice in the 
 Surveying Department ; he was the man who surveyed Johannes- 
 burg, and, as his friends vow, the man after whom the town 
 was named ; and, what was more to my purpose, he is a 
 straightforward gentleman who enjoys the confidence of the 
 President. 
 
 " Oom Paul," as his own people affectionately dub him, is a 
 strong man and a shrewd. He has matched that strength and 
 that shrewdness against English proconsuls and European 
 statesmen, and for a time he did not come off worst. But no 
 man or President is strong enough to grapple Fate ; and Fate 
 just now is engaged in the experiment of planting out the English- 
 man, malgre lui, over some large regions of the world. We — 
 the English — certainly did our best to forfeit any share in that 
 particular tract which lies between the Vaal and the Limpopo. 
 From the annexation of the Transvaal to its retrocession — from 
 Shepstone with his two dozen policemen and his proclamations, 
 
 * Reprinted from "In Afrikanderland," ch. x. For the occasion of this 
 interview, see p. 31. 
 
 201
 
 202 APPENDIX I 
 
 to poor Colley with his mob of panic-stricken red-coats on 
 Amajuba Hill — it all reads like one mad abdication, on the part 
 of our statesmanship and of our arms alike, of any title to shape, 
 create and govern. Yet five short years had scarcely passed 
 when the whole situation was changed. To burrow for a precious 
 metal, English men, with English money and English enterprise, 
 swarmed into the country. Undeterred by a thousand diffi- 
 culties, they built works, they sunk money, they subjugated 
 the earth. Cities sprang up in the wilderness. Markets were 
 created and supplied. The Boer, who had been enjoying his 
 independence with a wry face and an empty pocket, was only 
 too glad to be bought out of his farm. And so it comes about 
 that already the capital of the Dutch Republic is more English 
 than that of the Cape Colony ; that every day brings an accession 
 to the English-speaking population ; and that the Boer in the 
 near future seems destined, in one word, to be swamped. In 
 fact, our position in the " South African Republic," as it prefers 
 to be called, is far stronger to-day than it would have been had 
 we continued to hold the country by force. Piet Joubert, one 
 of the two generals who divide the honours of Amajuba, admitted 
 as much to me. It looks as if the only result of that disastrous 
 fight on the course of history were destined to be an impulse 
 given to the adoption of the magazine rifle as the arm of the 
 British soldier. Meanwhile there are dangers and difficulties 
 and delays, and the Englishing of the Transvaal is a process to 
 which Oom Paul has still quite enough to say to make it worth 
 John Bull's while to be closer acquainted. At the time of my 
 talk with him, Mr. Rhodes's Company had but newly cut him 
 off from the north, and the old man's eyes were turned to the 
 one opening left him on his south-eastern marches, where the 
 barbarous little Swazi country, already made over to white 
 adventurers and overrun by his own Boers, interposes between 
 him and the Indian Ocean. The " Swaziland Question," there- 
 fore, was just then the easiest peg to hang a talk on ; and the 
 utterly provisional, half-and-half, ad interim nature of the recent 
 Swaziland agreement makes every word of the President's as 
 much to the point to-day as it was then. And now to introduce 
 you. 
 
 The old man was sitting on the stoep before his house, puffing 
 away at a long pipe. Early as it was, he was already deep in 
 consultation with two of his faithful burghers. The one I 
 recognised as a transport rider, by whom I had myself been
 
 " OOM PAUL AT HOME " 203 
 
 driven only a day or two before. The other was a depressed 
 and silent man, rougher still and more unkempt, who sat by in 
 gloomy enjoyment of the audience with Oom Paul, Avhile his 
 fellow wdth great freedom tackled the President about a certain 
 waggon road which he wanted to see made. The President as 
 forcibly declared against it. No making straight of the path 
 before the incoming Englishman, till the invader has given 
 some material proofs of friendly intentions. Fast and loud 
 waxed the debate, interrupted only by short truces of tobacco 
 smoke, and by that lubricative habit (testified to by the surround- 
 ing stoep) which the Boer shares with our American cousins. 
 The President, meanwhile, had no attention to spare, and I had 
 leisure to take in the personaHty of the Dutch Grand Old Man — 
 the pater (or shall I say avunculus) patrice of the Transvaal — 
 Oom Paul to his leal burghers, Paul Kruger to his friends, and 
 his Honour the President of the South African Republic to the 
 rest of the world. 
 
 A hale old man of between sixty and seventy : the long, 
 narrow head, the small, shrewd eyes deep set in furrows, the 
 large nose and mouth, the straggling beard framing the face — 
 all these are of the rough, coarse, strongly marked old " Dopper " 
 tj^e of Boer physiognomy. A stout man of his hands, even yet 
 — in his greener days, they tell me, Paul Kjuger was like Here- 
 ward the Wake's man Martin : he could keep pace with a horse. 
 The lank hair, the top hat with its heavy band, the rusty black 
 suit worn as Dr. Johnson wears his clothes in the familiar 
 pictures, suggested that stamp of Dissenting minister to 
 whom the Dutch " Dopper " is akin. Just over the way 
 stands the little chapel where his honour's discourse is wont 
 to awake the responsive ejaculations of the faithful, just 
 as Mr. Gladstone is wont to read the lessons in Hawarden 
 Church. 
 
 " I am afraid," I began, when at length the transport rider 
 had been routed, foot, horse and artillery, and had left the field 
 with his submissive friend — " I am i fraid, President, you don't 
 think much of newspapers ? " (I was aware, in fact, that he 
 never reads one, and that he views the press with profound 
 contempt.) 
 
 The President, through Mr. Rissik, informed me that he thought 
 for himself, and that, certainly, when he had made up his mind 
 he did not care what was said by the newspapers. 
 
 I applauded his firmness. But in England, I explained, the
 
 204 APPENDIX I 
 
 newspapers were in part the battlefield of the contending 
 parties, and had to inform the mind of the elector on political 
 questions. 
 
 President Kjuger, condescending gently to the weak ways of 
 John Bull, said he knew that this was so, and that a well-informed 
 newspaper might have great influence. 
 
 " Yes," said I, pushing my advantage, " but this is especially 
 so in regard to South African questions, which are far away 
 and little understood. About Swaziland, for instance " (the 
 President was on the qui vive at once), " the facts are very 
 little known in England to the average elector ; so that the 
 Government might be quite willing to give Swaziland up, but 
 afraid " 
 
 "It is no case of ' giving up ' at all," the President broke in 
 with vivacity. " Neither side can take it without leave of the 
 other. It is not yours to take or to give up." 
 
 " Of course. But I mean that people in England are as a 
 
 whole unwilling to see Swaziland giv " (I was somewhat 
 
 at a loss how to amend my phrase) " to see it pass with our assent 
 into the hands of the Transvaal, because they don't know the 
 reasons for the change, and they think in a vague sort of way 
 that it is only another bit of knuckling under to the victors of 
 Amajuba." 
 
 The mention of that name gave the conversation a most 
 happy turn. 
 
 " Amajuba ! " repeated the President, with warmth. " It is 
 all wrong about Amajuba. I am sorry that the English people 
 seem to keep up such a foolish feeling about that. People say 
 that we think we conquered the English. I'll tell you what we 
 do think — and not one man, or two men, but all the men in the 
 Republic." The President paused a moment, and blew a cloud 
 of smoke with great energy. He has no Dutch phlegm, by the 
 way, in conversation, but is forcible, voluble, prone to gesture. 
 " We think that the English did not know what were the wishes 
 of our people when they took our country away from us. Then 
 we said, ' We will show them that we do love our country.' We 
 knew that England was much stronger ; but we said, ' Sooner 
 than have our country taken away from us unjustly, we will fight 
 until we die.' Then the English people saw that they were 
 wrong, and so they gave us back our country. You can tell the 
 English people that this is what we think. It is the busy- 
 bodies who write to England, and make out that we are always 
 boasting about Amajuba, who do the harm. But you can go
 
 " OOM PAUL AT HOME " 205 
 
 and talk to the farmers, and you will find that what I say is 
 the truth." 
 
 I will add here that on this subject the tone of Generals Joubert 
 and Smit — the other two members of the triumvirate of warriors 
 at the head of the Transvaal — was equally free, sensible and 
 manly. " We knew, of course," the former said to me, " that 
 England could beat the whole of South Africa if she chose ; but 
 if Russia and France and all the world wanted to take away our 
 freedom, we would fight till we all died." And Vice-President 
 Smit, when I asked him how it was that he with his handful 
 routed our men at the fatal hill, said simply that he supposed 
 it was because their bullets hit and ours did not, and so our men 
 became downhearted — adding, fairly enough, something about 
 the feeling of being in the right or in the wrong having something 
 to do with hearts being up or doAvn, 
 
 " Down in Cape Colony," said I, encouraged by the President's 
 speech about the war, " I found that the Dutch and English 
 are growing more and more to be friends, and to work together 
 for their common interests. Cannot this be so in the Transvaal 
 also ? " 
 
 "If," returned the President, deliberately, "if I find the 
 English Government willing to work with me, and help me to 
 promote the interests of this country, then I will do the same for 
 England. But if not, I must go my own way. Each hand 
 must wash the other, you know," he added with a characteris- 
 tically homely metaphor. " If one hand washes and the other 
 does nothing, what happens ? The one hand remains dirty. 
 That will not do." 
 
 " Certainly, President ; there must be give and take ; only 
 let us be frank with each other. Let the Transvaal say, for 
 instance, why it really is that she wants Swaziland so 
 much." 
 
 The President launched forth into the familiar story about 
 the necessities of geographical position, the trouble about Boer's 
 grazing rights, the smuggling which goes on over the border, and 
 so forth. As to the gold reported to exist in Swaziland, he did 
 not want it, and did not believe in it. Sir Francis De Winton 
 and his fellow Commissioners had been shown in proof of its 
 existence one little bit about so big. (Here the President, whose 
 scepticism on this point subsequent exploration has tended to 
 justify, contemptuously pinched between finger and thumb an 
 imaginary pea.) 
 
 " But, President, whether there be gold or not, if we decide
 
 206 APPENDIX I 
 
 to waive our ascendency in a native State — phrase it how 
 you will — we do undoubtedly give up something. I should 
 like to hear from yourself what you are willing to do for us in 
 return." 
 
 " Well, there is the question of Matabeleland," he replied. 
 " I have influence on our northern frontier. I am wilHng to use 
 that influence in aid of the British South Africa Company, instead 
 of against them, as I might claim to use it." 
 
 " And my countrjnnen on the Rand — they hope to get certain 
 privileges sooner than they otherwise would ? " 
 
 " What do they want ? " the President asked, sharply. " They 
 have the same protection as my own burghers." 
 
 " True. But about railways, for instance," ventured I. 
 It was several months then before the President's public 
 abandonment of the policy of obstruction. But he declared to 
 me that the blame did not rest with him, that he would fain 
 have had a railway long ago from Delagoa Bay, and that what 
 he wanted was a grand trunk line right through from that port 
 to Cape Town. 
 
 " The Cape Colony and Natal talk about being stopped at the 
 frontier," quoth he ; " they are not there yet. By the time 
 they are, there will be no railway question. Let them push on 
 and complain when they are stopped." 
 
 These words are coming true faster, perhaps, than either of 
 us thought for when they were spoken, or even when I first 
 published them. But all this time I had an impatient feehng 
 of not getting to the real point. I had asked the President why 
 he wanted Swaziland. In reply he had said nothing of his wish 
 to get, through it and through Tongaland beyond, to the sea. 
 That wish I knew to be the dominant motive in his mind. It 
 might be, as General Joubert explained it to me, the feeling that 
 an independent port, actual or potential, would enable him to 
 bargain on equal terms with Portugal, with the colonies as to a 
 Customs Union, or with ourselves. It might be, as I rather 
 believe, largely sentimental — the desire to evacuate the north 
 with full honours, and to satisfy the nomadic and patriotic in- 
 stincts of his people, restive under English encroachment at 
 home and abroad, by an appearance of quid pro quo and honour- 
 able exchange. I thought it, in any case, a natural object 
 enough, and an object which, with such a growing EngHsh garri- 
 son behind the port which it would create, it were a foohsh thing 
 to fear and a churlish thing to grudge. What President Kruger 
 would give for Swaziland alone, if conceded, not as the earnest
 
 " OOM PAUL AT HOME " 207 
 
 of a liberal policy of conciliation, but as a mere grudging piece 
 of political barter, he had told me. What he would give for a 
 half-interest in the country 'plus such a half-approach to the sea 
 as the miserly strip which we have since offered him the Swazi- 
 land Convention has shown. But I was for looking somewhat 
 further ahead, and I put to the President a plain question. 
 " Now," said I, "if we frankly give up some day the policy of 
 distrust and isolation — if we recognise as something nowise 
 inimical the desire of this Republic to touch the seaboard — if 
 we throw absolutely open the path through Swaziland and Tonga- 
 land to the sea, and invite the Transvaal to work out its own 
 ambition with British coast protection, how far then will you, 
 on your part, fall in with a scheme of cordial South African co- 
 operation ? " 
 
 " Then," exclaimed Oom Paul, with the greatest emphasis 
 " if England works together with me in that way, I wall do 
 everything to work together with England and with the colonies. 
 I will come into a Customs Union ; I will give free leave for 
 railways to be built wherever it will pay any one to build 
 them ; I will do my best to make the South African States in 
 one ; I will do everything together with the colonies, for I 
 believe their interests are the same as the interests of this 
 country. But what can I do," he cried, catching himself up — 
 " what can I do as long as England persists in shutting me up 
 like this ? " 
 
 He put two brawny hands together, finger-tips to finger-tips, 
 in illustration. A moment later our conversation was cut short 
 by a voice from within doors summoning the President to break- 
 fast. But the look of the old man as he made these memorable 
 declarations, and the quaint gesture that accompanied them, 
 stuck in my mind. I noticed on the left hand that the thumb 
 was wanting. It seems it was shattered by a gun which burst 
 when Kruger as a lad was out hunting. It was in the early 
 days of the voortrekkers (for Paul's parents were among the first 
 in the country, wliither they brought him as a boy of ten, teaching 
 him, no doubt, some Hannibal's oath against the English from 
 whose rule they fled). Surgeons, therefore, there were none. 
 Paul pulled out his pocket-knife, and with his right hand coolly 
 whipped off the offending member at the joint. It was charac- 
 teristic of the iron resolution of the man. 
 
 Oom Paul is a bad enemy, as we have learnt to our cost. He 
 has proved to us of late that he can also be a leal friend. Slowly 
 but surely, I believe, my countrymen are coming to reaHse that
 
 208 APPENDIX I 
 
 his friendship is worth having. I regard the Swaziland Conven- 
 tion of last August as a first initiative step towards closing with 
 the bold and generous policy which President Kruger sketches 
 out above for us to take or leave. I hope the second step may- 
 be a new Convention carrying that policy whole-heartedly into 
 accomplishment. . ..
 
 "A PLAIN TALK WITH OOM PAUL" 209 
 
 (II) A PLAIN TALK WITH OOM PAUL 
 
 Juhj 1895* 
 
 It is six years, roughly, since I last picked my way across the 
 streets of Pretoria — six o'clock of a sultry January morning it 
 was, I remember — for the honour of a chat vrvih President Kruger. 
 In these six years much has happened in the President's republic ; 
 more in some ways if less in others than sanguine folk 
 expected. 
 
 Materially, things have come true which I was able then, on 
 due inquiry from those who knew, to promulgate as bold fore- 
 casts. The railways have come in with a rush, and the gold 
 output gone up with steady strides. Long before the baptism 
 of fireworks of the Delagoa Bay line, which the President then 
 swore must come first, the Cape trunk line, let in by famine and 
 tumult, has enabled the then bankrupt Rand to pay its way and 
 that of the Republic ; to rebuild Pretoria, and to change the 
 lodgings of Oom Paul's Executive from Van Erkom's tobacco 
 store to the great Raadzaal, which now dominates Church Square. 
 And that extraordinary mortgage on the future known as " Deep 
 Levels " — the boring, at colossal cost, of a second set of holes 
 beside the first along the miles of the great banket reef — this is 
 one of many new signs that all this material development has 
 come to stay, that the industrial Uitlander, outnumbering the 
 pastoral Boer, is a feature of the situation absolutely per- 
 manent. 
 
 Yet politically it is " as you were." The Johannesburger is 
 only a politician in lean times ; and these are fat ones. The 
 mob, despite two or three moments of crisis when a random shot 
 would have fired South Africa, is still practically voiceless ; the 
 handful still rules ; the impossible quietly continues ; the Boer, 
 rifle and biltong at saddle-bow, is still the man who counts across 
 the Vaal. And Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger is still 
 President, President for the third time ; though there was talk 
 of gerrymandering at the last election, and though some of 
 
 * From the Cape Times, July 22, 1895. For the occasion of the inters^iew, 
 see above, p. 93. 
 
 O
 
 210 APPENDIX I 
 
 Piet Joubert's men are said to have taken an oath, Boer-like, 
 that they would not wash till they had shot Paul — and, as some 
 say, kept it. 
 
 So at three o'clock of a crisp July afternoon, I once more 
 sought the low-pitched bungalow-looking house opposite the 
 little Dopper Church, for a talk with Paul Kruger. With me 
 was the same interpreter as before, my good friend Johann 
 Pissik. The six years have made him State Surveyor- General, 
 and a rich man to boot, they tell me ; but they have not touched 
 Mr. Rissik's simple readiness to take trouble for other people, 
 nor his transparent straightforwardness, nor the President's 
 complete trust of him, even as interpreter for a courant- 
 schryver. 
 
 A little more grizzled, a little more bent is Paul Kruger at 
 seventy than he was at sixty-five ; but he is still Paul 
 Kjuger, every inch of him. 
 
 In the stiff though homely parlour — just such a parlour as one 
 knows in certain old countrified places in England, with just 
 such rugs, just such antimacassars — the old man motioned us 
 to a pair of chairs, and pulling up an armchair point-blank to 
 them, sat down himself and faced us with the characteristic 
 Boer air of masked vigilance. As he did so, he lit the inevitable 
 long pipe and began pufi&ng at it. 
 
 How stolid he looks ! How ox-eyed ! (And the comparison 
 Homer meant as a compliment to a goddess may be permitted 
 for the President of a pastoral Republic.) How mildly rumina- 
 tive ! But give him one little opening for the point he wants to 
 make, and down he comes upon you, in under your guard, 
 flashing and relentless as a rapier. " Great men," said 
 ]VIr. Chamberlain of another grand old man, " are like great 
 mountains " : if so, the Paulberg is certainly a sleeping 
 volcano. 
 
 " The next talk we have " (I had to open somehow) " I hope, 
 President, to be able to speak to you in the taal. Hitherto, I 
 have had no opportunity to learn it." 
 
 " Humph ! " 
 
 A guttural and phlegmatic response showed me that my good 
 intentions towards the cherished patois were discounted. 
 
 I reverted to our last meeting, and hastened to drag in the 
 blessed word Swaziland — once a sure conventional " open 
 sesame." " I told you then. President, that you would get 
 Swaziland as soon as people at home understood what you would 
 do in return. Well, you have got it."
 
 "A PLAIN TALK WITH OOM PAUL" 211 
 
 The President fixed deep-set eyes on the interpreter while the 
 words were translated ; then suddenly, and A^dth characteristic 
 vehemence, he brought up that official phrase about Swaziland 
 not being " actually incorporated in the Republic." Heaven 
 knows what the phrase means. 
 
 " But, President, you know that is purely a question of words 
 — diplomatic language meant to hoodwink a few people who 
 want to be hoodwinked. You must understand that with our 
 party-government a thing of this kind, that is in the teeth of 
 certain prejudices, has to be done gingerly. There is a section 
 of people in England — very good people — who become quite 
 unreasonable on the least pretext where natives are concerned ; 
 a Government has to think of them." 
 
 " But I have also my difficult people to think of. I have done 
 my part, all the same ; only the British Government have not 
 done theirs. I risked my position here — yes, I risked it — carry- 
 ing out what I promised, because I had promised." . . . 
 
 " ' Damping the trek,' you mean ? " 
 
 " Yes ; it was a risk for me, but I did it ; and then the British 
 Government have got out of their promise." 
 
 " But surely you have, or are on the point of having, everything 
 that is of any use to you in Swaziland ? " 
 
 " Swaziland ! Swaziland is nothing . . . Swaziland is nothing 
 at all. . . . There is a little gold, perhaps ; that is nothing to 
 me ; and some grazing ; but Swaziland in itself is nothing at 
 all ! " 
 
 The sentences were given out with immense force and intention, 
 the pipe being clutched in the right hand and \dthdrawn only 
 momentarily for each sentence from the teeth, which closed 
 upon each statement like a guillotine, then sent after it a great 
 jet of smoke. 
 
 " But, sir, you did not say Swaziland was exactly nothing . . . 
 six years ago. ..." I ventured. 
 
 " I always said it was nothing save as a way to the sea. I 
 said that all along, and it was well understood. And now they 
 no sooner give it to me than they take away altogether the only 
 thing that made it worth having — the way to the sea." 
 
 I knew of course that we must come to the Zambaan and 
 Umbegiza business soon ; but I could not have the Swaziland 
 cession whistled down the wind so coolly ; so I interjected 
 the excellent Boer formula for all doubtful cases — Wacht en 
 beitje ! 
 
 " Wait a moment, President, I beg you. You used a phrase
 
 212 APPENDIX I 
 
 to me six years ago : ' Each hand must wash the other.' You 
 could not expect to get everytliing for nothing. Swaziland, as 
 I understood it was for ' damping the trek ' ; expansion eastward 
 for giving up claims to expand northward. The way to the sea 
 surely was to be for a further quid 'pro quo : to wit, for joining 
 the Customs Union." 
 
 " See, it was like this ! " the old man burst in so soon as 
 he had grasped my statement of the case. " There is the trek 
 and there is the haven " — he actually laid down his pipe for a 
 moment, and putting up two fingers of his right hand, no dapper 
 one, ticked them off with the left. 
 
 " No ! no ! " I interjected, determined not to be mistaken, 
 and copying his pantomime : " here is the trek, and here is Swazi- 
 land only ; then here (a third finger) is your haven against 
 (fourth finger) our Customs Union." 
 
 The President gave up the hand and fell back on still quainter 
 symbols. Turning to the table, he seized a great leather tobacco- 
 case which lay there close to the enormous family bible, and 
 catching up in the other hand a matchbox, he set them up against 
 each other like a man bartering. 
 
 "This" (the tobacco-pouch) "is the way to the sea, including 
 Swaziland (he hurried on), which is only useful as part of the 
 way to the sea. This (the matchbox) is the piece of coast with 
 means to make a port — that certainly is something more than 
 the way to the sea. For that (match-box again) vryhandel : (free 
 trade, meaning customs union) ; but for this (tobacco-pouch) I 
 have already given what I promised, and you have not yet 
 given it me (brusquely withdrawing it, and throwing it on the 
 table), you have made it now quite impossible." 
 
 He recovered the pouch, refilled his pipe which had gone out, 
 and puffed forth volumes of smoke, while bis meaning was being 
 made clear to me. 
 
 " This is to me quite a new conception of the case, President," 
 I rejoined. " Granted, the way to the sea was always part of 
 the bargain ; but it was a distinct part, and belonged to the 
 coast side, not the Swaziland side of the business." 
 
 " I assure you it was as I say ; it was clearly understood so 
 in conversation after conversation with British statesmen." 
 
 " But President " — a bright idea coming to my rescue — " we 
 gave you a chance of your way to the sea as well in the 1890 
 Convention ; and your Raad rejected it. Then in the new 
 Convention the chance was not repeated. But you had it, and 
 lost it. How was that ? "
 
 "A PLAIN TALK WITH OOM PAUL" 213 
 
 The shot told. Wliat the President would have liked to say 
 was perhaps something about his recalcitrant Raad. What he 
 did say was simply that the Raad did not consider the way to 
 the sea which was then proposed acceptable in its method of 
 arrangement. I asked what they really did want, and jumping 
 up with the alacrity of excitement, the old man fetched from 
 the next room a large school-map on a roller. We went to the 
 table, where he spread it out, and talked rapidly over it, laying 
 his hand now over Swaziland, now over the coast, now over that 
 fateful little strip between the two which the recent annexation 
 has turned into a " No Road " notice-board. He depreciated 
 the road to Kosi Bay proposed in the abortive Convention ; it 
 ran over ground not feasible : he depreciated Kosi Bay itself, 
 talking of its shallowness and sandiness till I asked myself, " Has 
 the old man really grasped the utter futility of the dream of 
 Kosi Harbour ? " He wandered down the coast to Sordwana 
 Bay, which is just opposite the point where the Republic most 
 projects towards the coast, south of Swaziland and much more 
 coastward — only forty miles o£P, in fact : but that bay surely is 
 part of Zululand and a clear reversion of Natal's ; Natal would 
 always see to it that there should be an Imperial non-possumus 
 there. He traced Avith one broad finger the northward course of 
 the Pongo River, which connects this same south-east corner of 
 the Republic, through the Tonga lowlands, with a southern 
 coign of Delagoa Bay — as if it would really profit him to have a 
 second string, besides the semi-Portuguese railway, to the wholly 
 Portuguese port. But finally he made it clear that what he 
 really yearns for is free leave to drive a wedge of Republican 
 territory through the new annexation and the Tonga protectorate 
 to anjrvvhere that suits best on the coast between the Portuguese 
 frontier and Zululand. 
 
 " But what is the use of talking — after this annexation ? " 
 He always came back to his point. " They practically say to 
 me, ' You are shut in — shut into a kraal for ever ! ' " 
 
 He put his two hands together to make the kraal, just as he 
 had done six years ago over the same expression. And as then, 
 so now again voice and gesture had a certain pathos, the note 
 of an old man against Fate ; and I noticed once more the sad 
 gap on the rough left hand where the thumb should be — and 
 recalled, with teeth on edge, the story of how the boy Paul 
 amputated it himself long ago with his pocket-knife out on 
 the lonely veldt. Truly that boy was father of this hard 
 old man before me, who never forgets, never relents, always 
 suspects.
 
 214 APPENDIX I 
 
 *' For ever is a long time, President. What if the British 
 Government has only made its title clear to this strip of country 
 so as to be able to bargain better — to have no questions next 
 time which side the asset really belongs to ? " 
 
 " I have been played with so often," was the gloomy reply. 
 " Great Britain holds a thing out, and says : ' We will consider 
 the Republic's rights favourably, only you must just do some- 
 thing more ' ; then again it says : ' Now you positively get it, 
 only first there is one small thing we must have from you ' ; and 
 so it goes on. . . ." 
 
 What could I answer ? The very expressions almost that 
 I have written over and over again these dilatory years 
 past. The President's sarcastic sketch of our diplomacy on 
 the Swaziland question was an uncomfortably speaking 
 likeness. 
 
 I turned the tobacco-pouch over in my hand rather stupidly, 
 remembering in a vague way that the French blague means at 
 once " tobacco-pouch " and " humbug." To be sure, the dang- 
 ling as of a bunch of carrots has not been all on one side in 
 Transvaal pourparlers. 
 
 In my embarrassment I caught up the President's other 
 symbol again, the match-box, and copying his own dumbshow 
 of bartering the one against the other, I said : 
 
 " I think. President, you and me have been like two savages 
 exchanging treasurers. Neither hand liked to give credit ; 
 neither would be the first to let go its prize before closing on 
 the return value." 
 
 The President was rolling up the map. We went back to our 
 chairs, I assuring him earnestly that there was no real hostility 
 to his sea ambitions in England, and quite a cordial feeling 
 growing up in these latter days towards himself. 
 
 " You should visit England again, President, if you like 
 being banqueted " 
 
 " I have always found, when people banquet me, they want 
 something out of me," quoth the unmitigable old cynic without 
 the ghost of a smile. And, after a smoky pause, he burst out 
 again at the annexation grievance : " It Avas the way it was 
 done. I was never told — never consulted — never warned 
 even." 
 
 It must out. It was a thing I had come to say — the unpala- 
 table truth that the oft-threatened annexation fell when it did 
 fall simply as a sharp riposte to the German intriguing of Mr. 
 Kruger and his late inspirers.
 
 **A PLAIN TALK WITH OOM PAUL" 215 
 
 " It was, after all, President, a kind of rude tit for tat." 
 
 " Tit for tat ! \Y\mt had I done ? What had I done, or 
 failed to do, since the Swaziland Convention which this simply 
 makes nothing of ? " 
 
 Of course there was but one possible answer to the challenge, 
 (generalities would not serve here. That gauche speech of 
 the President's at the Kaiser- Kommers playing off Germany 
 against England was the easiest thing to name. I promptly 
 named it. 
 
 Then did President Paul Kruger wax very wroth. He began 
 with, a volley against newspaper reports. Newspapers had to 
 make something startling for their readers. He was utterly 
 misrepresented. If I had been there I should have seen at once 
 that his meaning was a perfectly harmless one. 
 
 Might I ask what it really was ? 
 
 The explanation was tortuous. To my dull apprehension, it 
 amounted to saying — well, pretty much what the papers always 
 said he said. That did not surprise me. But the gloss was to 
 the effect that, whatever he said, the President meant only a 
 little joke, and his little joke was as much at the expense of 
 Germany versus England as of England versus Germany. He 
 would expect either to prevent his head being punched (were 
 such a design conceivable) by the other. There was no mis- 
 chievous bringing in of Germany — not more than of England. 
 In fact (the President rounded off with this suggestion) the 
 whole thing was after dinner. 
 
 " But on your own showing. President, I must join issue with 
 your view of the German position here. We cannot allow that 
 Germany has any right to be brought in here on a footing equal 
 with England. Wh&t has Germany to do in this galere with 
 any footing at all ? " 
 
 " Do you deny my right to look to other Powers for moral 
 support ? " 
 
 " Certainly ; it is treason to South African unity ! . . ." 
 
 " Suppose England wanted to cut my throat ! I do not for a 
 moment say she ever would, but supposing ! Should I not then 
 have a right to moral support from Germany ? " 
 
 " Giving you your independence does not look like cutting 
 your throat ; and as for moral support, what moral support 
 got you that independence ? Not German ; not European at 
 all ; but just the moral support of your kinsmen, my friends 
 down there in Cape Colony. You looked to them then, and surely 
 it is them you should look to now, if support you want : not to
 
 216 APPENDIX I 
 
 France or Germany or any Power outside South Africa, Presi- 
 dent ! " 
 
 " I know what they did ! I do not forget their support ! I 
 do not wish to bring in European powers unnecessarily," insisted 
 the President with rising disquiet ; and feehng I had the advan- 
 tage of him, this time I pressed him for a pronouncement. 
 
 " Will you not say frankly, President, that you adopt the 
 South African standpoint — the only one I hear taken in the Free 
 State as well as the Colony : that every other European Power, 
 beyond the maritime power of England which keeps the coasts, 
 is an exotic, an intruder in the South African States and colonies. 
 You are angry wdth England just now over this annexation ; 
 but you know that country is not lost to South Africa, as Mada- 
 gascar is lost when France steps in, as Damara is lost when Ger- 
 many steps in ; it is only kept warm some day to be handed over 
 as British Bechuanaland is being handed to Cape Colony, as 
 Zululand will be handed to Natal " 
 
 " It does not help me to have country taken from me and 
 handed to Natal," said the President hotly. . . . 
 
 " And as Swaziland has been to the Republic," I closed up my 
 argument ; " as this very strip may yet be, for value received." 
 
 " Swaziland was by right ours already ! They were all ours ! 
 Natal itself was ours ! It is like stealing my watch " — he pulled 
 out a great clock, disengaging the chain and seals with trembling 
 fingers, and thrust it into my embarrassed hands : " You take 
 my watch, then you say, ' Look ! we give you this. Here is a 
 nice present for you ; be grateful ' ! I w-ill not say anything 
 unfriendly to Germany ! " Then, as if he had committed him- 
 self too far, he went on pettishly : " I do not wish this conversa- 
 tion printed. It must not be published. I inform you that 
 I was only giving you a friendly chat. . . ." 
 
 Here was a pretty kettle of fish ! It is ill to argue with the 
 master of interviews, as of legions. I had won the argument, so 
 I fondly told myself, and lost my paper the interview. I had 
 angered Oom Paul ; he knew his German speech was a blunder, 
 and he was determined to punish me. Was he inexorable ? 
 Not at all, when the moment's testiness had been got over. 
 There were explanations and apologies ; the temperature re- 
 sumed the normal ; fairness and good temper reasserted them- 
 selves ; the embargo on publication was removed ; and my 
 interview was saved by the skin of its teeth. 
 
 The old man, remembering his Boer hospitahty, went out to
 
 "A PLAIN TALK WITH OOM PAUL" 217 
 
 order coffee, and on his return hastened to leave the dangerous 
 topic for more attractive ground. 
 
 " President, will you bargain with me a moment for your 
 seaport, as you did six years ago for Swaziland ? I Avant another 
 outspoken message to the English people. Imagine me pleni- 
 potentiary for them — all we journalists are that in a sense. ..." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " First, there is the railway question. . . ." 
 
 The President frowned slightly. 
 
 " The Cape asks for too much. We cannot agree for so much. 
 We have not yet a basis of agreement." 
 
 " Granted. But after we have had all the lines working 
 together, with no cutting down prices, so as to see where the 
 trade will naturally run — say eighteen months or two years 
 hence : suppose it were possible for a committee of railway 
 experts to apportion the profits on the ascertained facts : would 
 you consider the idea of a general pooling of the railway systems 
 and of the customs at the same time — for customs are an 
 asset in a railway fight, and vice versa — if the same conference 
 which achieved this gave you out of hand and at once your port, 
 your access, everything you want to get to the sea ? 
 No promises, mind ; no more nonsense about ' good AAill ' 
 on either side ; but cash down — harbour for rail-and-customs 
 union ? " 
 
 Needless to say it took the President some time and a great 
 ■deal of tobacco smoke to digest this portentous offer, which has 
 all the sweeping largeness of the irresponsible diplomat. 
 
 " I cannot well say yes or no without knowing more of the 
 Railway and Customs Union. All w^ould depend on the terms," 
 he answered at last. " Hitherto in all the unions proposed, 
 this Republic has had all to give and nothing to gain." 
 
 " But if it had the sea to gain, and union were the only con- 
 dition ? Put yourself for a moment in Oma's place," I pleaded 
 {Oma, Grandmother, is colloquial Boer for Her Britannic Majesty's 
 ■Government). " Oma has to think of her children. Natal and 
 the Cape may say, ' Why give the Transvaal a port which might 
 be used to cut us out ? The Transvaal is rich ; we are poor ; 
 but we have our ports.' " 
 
 " But I don't want a port to cut them out. I only want it to 
 prevent them from joining together to bleed me." 
 
 " Then surely you can have no objection to getting your 
 port on terms which simply lay that down. Once come wath a
 
 218 APPENDIX I 
 
 Customs and Railway Union, and any hostileaction between the 
 various ports is impossible. Surely you don't ask us for a port, 
 and in the same breath refuse guarantees that the giver of the 
 port shall not suffer by it ? " 
 
 " I will give any guarantee of equal treatment at the port that 
 England demands," exclaimed the President. " I -will promise 
 that it shall never be less favourably open to English or English 
 Colonial trade than to any other in the world." 
 
 " Not even by the expedient of differential railway rates ? " 
 
 " No ; that is also a point which can be settled beforehand, 
 when we come to discuss the harbour." 
 
 " Then, in effect, you are not opposed in principle to such 
 a simultaneous settlement of all these open questions as I 
 suggest ?" 
 
 " I am in favour of a settlement. I have always been in 
 favour of a settlement, so it be only fair and reasonable ; then 
 it is for the benefit of the republics as well as the colonies ; it 
 will help us all together." 
 
 With this very proper sentiment the President evidently 
 meant the interview to close. It had indeed lasted well over an 
 hour, and I felt I must not abuse the old gentleman's courtesy 
 longer. Yet there was one question yet in the bottom of the 
 wallet that must out. I could not go away without a word 
 about the franchise and the Uitlander. We had settled up South 
 Africa ; but the internal affairs of the Transvaal we had been 
 ignoring. 
 
 " One thing more I must ask, President — and understand, 
 please, that I speak now not in an English character. England 
 claims no voice in your private affairs on the Rand or elsewhere." 
 
 The President nodded slowly, and resigned himself to the 
 unwelcome line of country. 
 
 " No doubt, you have there among the rest some of the scum 
 of the earth," I pursued, anxious to get out at once all my 
 credentials of moderation. " But you have also " 
 
 Tramp, tramp, tramp ! At this point in came half a dozen 
 members of the Volksraad, evidently keeping an appointment 
 with the President. They drowned my sentence unfinished. 
 He rose to welcome them, and Mr. Rissik to go. I surveyed 
 the situation, and ^vith a bold stroke brought the intruders into 
 the conversation. 
 
 " Let us ask these gentlemen," said I, turning to a bearded 
 farmer in broadcloth : "I appeal to your own burghers, Presi- 
 dent. Are there not, besides the scum of the earth in Johannes-
 
 "A PLAIN TALK WITH OOM PAUL" 21» 
 
 burg, thousands of honest folk who are building houses, and 
 rearing children, and meaning to spend their lives here, and could 
 be safely inspanned as citizens ? " 
 
 The half-dozen must have all this translated, of course. There 
 was handshaking and introductions ; the talk became general. 
 Platitudes were poured forth, and the President slyly dropped 
 out of the conversation. At last I carried off Mr. Rissik in 
 triumph, and got back to his Honour. 
 
 " There are our own Afrikanders from Cape Colony, too, 
 President. Surely they can be trusted with your independence* 
 I know you suspect them as Engelsche gesind " 
 
 " I have no hatred of the English," was the wary answer. 
 " See this ring. ..." And he began working away at a big 
 plain gold ring on his finger, wetting it and trying to push it off* 
 I knew that old ring. It was a gift from an English sympatliiser 
 on one of the President's visits to us in the 'seventies or 'eighties. 
 Bother the ring ! I mentally ejaculated. 
 
 " Surely you could trust the Afrikanders with a vote," I per- 
 sisted, escaping from a vicious, if golden, circle. 
 
 " They can vote already," said the President, impatiently 
 enough. " After only two years, they can vote for a Land- 
 drost and a Commandant, and the Second Raad, which has to 
 do with many important things, and will have more still given 
 to it. . . ." 
 
 " President, if I had cast my lot in with your Republic I 
 should be willing to exchange British citizenship for yours ; but 
 I would not be put off with half-citizenship. I should not care 
 a straw, if you will excuse me, about your Land-drost and your 
 Second Raad ; I should demand a voice in the real government 
 of the country. As it is, you are less of a Republic here in reaUty 
 than we in the Cape Colony." 
 
 " What ! " exclaimed the President ; " you can only vote for 
 one Raad in the Colony. ..." 
 
 And he launched into a constitutional disquisition from which 
 it appeared that he imagined that at the Cape the Assembly 
 co-opts the Council. 
 
 I assured him the Council was elected by the very same voters 
 as the popular chamber ; whereon he fell back on comparing 
 himself, directly elected by the people, with the Governor and 
 the Prime Minister whom the Colony does not elect directly. 
 I rejoined that we could at any rate make our Prime Minister 
 responsible for his mistakes and turn him out. And so on and 
 so forth. It was characteristic of much that, when at a loss for
 
 220 APPENDIX I 
 
 any other argument of Transvaal constitutional superiority, 
 the President fell back on colour. " You in the colony," said 
 he, " are governed by black men. You let black men vote ! " 
 
 At last we escaped from the constitution and returned to the 
 point. 
 
 I asked him plainly what he would do if the Orange Free State 
 proposed an assimilation of the oligarchical Transvaal franchise 
 to their own liberal one as a condition precedent of the much- 
 talked-of inter-Republican federation ? He at once and firmly 
 declined to discuss the question. 
 
 There was a j)ause ; then Oom Paul said gravely, " See, I 
 will tell you what is the truth about this stemregt. I know neither 
 English nor Dutch, Afrikander nor Uitlander ; I only know good 
 people and bad people. You yourself say, some of these people 
 in the towns are the scum of the earth. Very well. We cannot 
 let people in without proving them. We let them in once before 
 the war, and therefore the war came ; for it was people let in on 
 this easy plan who misled the Enghsh Government into coming 
 in and annexing us. Therefore we must first frove this popula- 
 tion — we must prove them to see if they are good people or bad 
 people. Then . . . we shall see." 
 
 A most characteristic pronouncement ! Derive from it, O 
 reader, what sap thou may'st. Around, the faithful burghers 
 sat drinking it in with heavy concentration ; puffs of smoke were 
 the commas, and the full-stops — well, you know how a Boer puts 
 in the stops in a conversation . . . till you scarcely know where 
 to tuck your feet. 
 
 We rose to go. 
 
 And so, with thanks on my side and mutual expressions of 
 good will, ended my latest — not, I hope, my last — plain talk 
 with the " grand old man " of the Transvaal. 
 
 " Oom Paul is a bad enemy, as we have learned to our cost. 
 He has proved to us of late that he can also be a leal friend. 
 Slowly but surely, I believe, my countrymen are coming to realise 
 that his friendship is worth having." So I wrote six years ago, 
 after a talk at Pretoria. My countrymen so far agreed with me 
 that they gave Oom Paul Swaziland. If they now grumble that 
 they have seen little friendship since, I answer that they got 
 what they were promised, and that they dangled the gift too 
 long for any further graciousness to cling to it. Do not suppose 
 that now the strenuous old man is done with. In a sense, 
 age is strength to him : I felt a touch of pathos, an impulse of 
 hero-worship myself ; how much more must his own burghers.
 
 "A PLAIN TALK WITH OOM PAUL" 221 
 
 If there are two just men in South Africa who know what 
 they want and hold by it in the teeth of fate, he is one of the two. 
 For the Uitlander in the Transvaal, Oom Paul will do just so 
 much as he is forced to, when he is forced : no sooner and no 
 more. As well talk to the Paarl rock ! But for a frank and bold 
 policy of South African amity outside, may not the one strong 
 man be as good to bargain with as ever the Uitlander in his 
 thousands is likely to prove, when the Uitlander has come by 
 his own ? Be that as it may, I have the honour to offer Presi- 
 dent Kruger's words, through the Cape Times, to the considera- 
 tion of England and South Africa.
 
 II 
 
 CECIL RHODES 
 
 (I) AN INTERVIEW : 1898 * 
 
 *' Speak ? Of course I'm willing to speak if I'm wanted. I 
 don't like speaking, as you know. I don't speak by choice. 
 But if there's a definite purpose, if it's going to help in the elec- 
 tion, and I'm asked to speak — why, what do you suppose I am 
 waiting about here for ? I am waiting over the election simply 
 on the chance that one's influence may be of use to help the 
 Progressive party. If I followed my own wishes, do you think 
 I should be messing about down here ? " 
 
 That set my eyes travelhng from the broad white-pillared steep 
 of Groote Schuur away up past the trim Dutch garden, past the 
 faint blue hydrangeas in the spinney, past the oaks and the pines, 
 up the hill to the steep purple bluffs of the mountain, with the 
 old Blockhouse at its edge — ^Mr. Rhodes has just had a tree 
 felled to open his view to the Blockhouse. I suggested that 
 Groote Schuur grounds, even when shared with all Cape Town, 
 as Mr. Rhodes shares them, were not such a very bad place to be 
 *' messing about " in. 
 
 " Yes, yes — it's a picture here, a picture one never tires of ; 
 but life isn't all looking at pictures, and I want to get back to 
 my North, you see. They want one there, everything is moving ; 
 I ought not really to have left. Here one sits talking and talking 
 and seeing people. Here it's all talking — in the North its doing. 
 Away on the veld I am always happy. Can't you see that if it 
 was not for a purpose I should have been back there weeks 
 ago ? » 
 
 He threw himself on to one of the big sofas in the stoep with 
 a bang. 
 
 * From the Cape Times, March 1898. For the occasion of this "inter- 
 view," which embodied the substance of several conversations, see above 
 p. 139. 
 
 222
 
 CECIL RHODES : AN INTERVIEW 223 
 
 " But, Mr. Rhodes, you can hardly grudge, if you are going 
 to take a leading place again in Cape politics " 
 
 He bounced up again from the sofa even more impatiently 
 than he had bounced into it. 
 
 " Don't talk as if it was / who want your Cape politics. You 
 want me. You can't do without me. You discuss ' Ought 
 Rhodes to do this ? ' and ' Will Rhodes keep in the background ? 
 and so on — I am quite willing to keep out, but you have to take 
 the feeling of the people, and the feeling of the people — you may 
 think it egoism, but there are the facts — is that somebody is 
 wanted to fight a certain thing for them, and there is nobody 
 else able and willing to fight it. You say, ' Oh, but that's your 
 ambition ; you want to get back into power ' " 
 
 " I never said " 
 
 " Well, somebody else says it then. I reply, quite fairly. No 
 humanly speaking, qua ambition at the Cape, one has had 
 everything. There is no more to offer, only work and worry. 
 Qua the North " 
 
 He paused. This somewhat elliptical use of " qua " is very 
 Rhodesian, by the by. 
 
 " Qua the North — well, there we are really creating a country. 
 It's interesting to create, I can teU you ; much more interesting 
 than politics. We've had the war and rinderpest and rebellion 
 and drought and so on, and now everything is pushing on ; and 
 there's the native question to solve and the new constitution 
 to get under way ; and that tarifiE arrangement I wanted to 
 make — the treaties were in the way, but Laurier has got rid of 
 them ; and I have a big irrigation scheme on ; and then the 
 
 development to make way for a population You will say. If 
 
 it comes out all right ; but I don't bother about that ; I know 
 the country too well, and with Heany crushing twenty penny- 
 weights in May — I can wait. Then the railway and the tele- 
 graph — you know that telegraph of mine that the British public 
 wouldn't look at. There is imagination in that. It is really 
 an immense thing, only you people won't see it " 
 
 Here a protest against the " you " as quite incorrect passes 
 unnoticed. 
 
 " You won't see it, though it was the dream of the ancients 
 to pierce through this continent ; and, if you look you will see 
 Alexander got so far, and Cambyses so far — got to Memphis, 
 didn't he, and then went mad ? — and Napoleon so far — there's a 
 tablet his soldiers stuck up at Pliilae, and we are pushing up 
 from the other end right through. They used to say I was too
 
 224 APPENDIX II 
 
 soon, but the danger now is being too late in connecting, with 
 the French cutting in. Really there are many other things to 
 think of besides Cape Town parish pump." 
 
 " Of course (I admitted) Cape Town is parish pump, if you 
 take it as a localism apart from the broader unity ; Buluwayo 
 is even more parish pump, and Salisbury parish pump in excelsis ! '* 
 
 " Quite true. You have it exactly. Do you know our people 
 up there are no more thinking about uniting than the people 
 here, or at Johannesburg. They're hoeing their own patch for 
 all they're worth ; of course they are, and as for unity wdth the 
 Cape, they look on the Cape as a sort of Bond-ridden place — 
 Bond, varied by unctuous rectitude and all sorts of wobbling ; 
 and as to my ideas of working in ^\dth the Cape as to railway, 
 and so on, I really beheve they say ' Oh, this is Rhodes's amiable 
 lunacy — we must humour him because after all he does Avork 
 for the country.' You see, it's very amusing. Localism here 
 and in Johannesburg, and in Natal and in Cape Colony ; and 
 that's where I think, to be frank, that one is perhaps able to be 
 of a certain use, because one has a certain influence with a good 
 many people in all these places, and you know my idea — Colonial 
 Federation. One was trying the general federation before, with 
 the Republics in ; only Kruger and Leyds made it impossible, 
 and then in the middle of the mess they had made one made a 
 mistake, on the top, and so the whole plan is altered." 
 
 " You say * made a mistake.' The ' unctious rectitude ' of 
 some of us has consisted in wanting you just to say so much 
 to your former Dutch supporters." 
 
 " I said so much at Westminster ; but I am not going on saying 
 it, and crawling in the dust to please you or anybody, so I told 
 some Dutch constituents of mine who made advances, after 
 abusing one Uke a pickpocket at the time. ' Oh,' they said, ' do 
 say you repent ! Only tell us you repent ! ' ' That's my business,' 
 I answered. I know what my idea was — no race feeling at all 
 — and what my motive was, and it all went wrong, and I and 
 others made mistakes, and that's all about it." 
 
 I now pass to Mr. Rhodes's very frank and simple treatment of 
 the supposed difficulty of his position in Cape internal politics. 
 
 We took the thorny points first, beginning with the Food 
 Duties ; but as about these the conversation took a rather 
 argumentative turn, I prefer not to try to reproduce the ipsissima 
 verba, but to leave Mr. Rhodes's exact position to be stated by 
 himself on Saturday. Broadly, however, his position is this. 
 The meat duty he is prepared to aboHsh, recognising that the
 
 CECIL RHODES : AN INTERVIEW 225 
 
 duty is at present pinching the families of working men in the 
 towns without being the slightest protection to the farmer, who 
 has no stock left to protect * ; that it will take long to re-stock 
 the country ; and that a legislator's duty is to deal Avith the 
 present. On food-stuffs apart from meat he is evidently pre- 
 pared to make something of a new departure, though not nearly 
 so large a one as his urban admirers would like. He frankly 
 declines to give up his strong feeling that the community at large 
 ought to be ready to sacrifice something to keep white men settled 
 on the land, which he holds can only be secured in Cape Colony 
 by giving some special consideration to the products of the soil ; 
 but he declares that the form and the amount of such considera- 
 tion he has always treated purely as a question of degree and of 
 fair adjustment between the claims of the various classes of the 
 population. The times have changed. He once voted for an 
 increase of duties ; that is now utterly out of the question. 
 He fully owns that any change in the present state of things 
 must be in the other direction ; and I think if the party strongly 
 unites on the 50 per cent, compromise adopted by the League — 
 which itself contains many farmers — Mr. Rhodes will see his way 
 to pledge himself to that extent of reduction. Fortunately, 
 IVIr. Rhodes's tendency to consider each local question, not only 
 as between local producers and consumers, but with a view to 
 the broader South African scheme, helps in this case on the 
 right side. In 1895 he distinctly made use of the argument that 
 increased duties would help to keep the Free State in the Customs 
 Union. To-day his federal scheme looks rather towards Natal, 
 and Natal still stands, though not so sharply as formerly, for low 
 duties. 
 
 On all the other planks of the Progressive platform, Mr. 
 Rhodes claimed that, so far from having a past to bury, his 
 record includes nearly all the real Progressive measures that 
 have been actually carried in the Colony. The Rhodes Ministry 
 passed the Scab Act, in the teeth of what Sir Gordon Sprigg 
 called " the demons of prejudice and ignorance," to improve 
 the staple product of the colony. It also passed the Glen Grey 
 Act, which took the first great step for the progress of the native 
 in our social and economic scheme, by giving him an individual 
 hold on the land. 
 
 " \^Tiat about the Excise ? " 
 
 " I voted against the Excise when it was levied in the wrong 
 way, that is with a minimum of revenue and a maximum of 
 
 * The rinderpest year was '97-8. 
 
 r
 
 226 APPENDIX II 
 
 irritation to the farmers with their smairstills, but I have long 
 had a plan for the Excise to be levied from the canteens and 
 really paid by the consumer." 
 
 " \\Tiat about the Innes Liquor Bill for keeping drink from 
 the aboriginal native ? " 
 
 " Keeping drink from the native ? Why, I might say that that 
 has been my whole life. I have run De Beers on ginger beer. 
 In Rhodesia the Native Liquor Law is the most stringent in 
 South Africa. In the Transkei I found the traffic only checked 
 by a fine, and substituted confiscation because the sellers could 
 afford to pay the fine and go on. If anybody in South Africa 
 has done more than I have to keep drink from the native, I 
 should like to know his name." 
 
 " And education ? " 
 
 " Of course any one can see that education is the key to 
 progress among us. As you know, I wanted to found a real 
 South African University, and put the scheme aside only in 
 deference to the susceptibilities of Stellenbosch, which you may 
 call vested interests." 
 
 " But what of the Progressive party's demand for compulsory 
 education in centres ? " 
 
 " I have a scheme for what I would call permissive compulsory 
 education. That is to say, compulsory for the individual when 
 adopted by the district and assisted by the consolidated fund 
 on the £ for £ principle. The Colony might be divided into 
 seven districts, of which five would adopt the permissive com- 
 pulsory right away, and the others would have the strongest 
 inducement to follow suit." 
 
 Needless to say, Mr. Rhodes is strong for redistribution. No 
 need to enlarge on that. 
 
 " I do not pretend to be a town politician," he says, summing 
 up. " Production interests me. My sympathy with the farmer 
 is natural. Look at my own pursuits and tastes. I can conceive 
 a time when the people in the towns who have stood by me so 
 well in my time of failure, and for whose fair demands I hope to 
 do something now, will say that I am too moderate for them in 
 my politics. I say my Progressive record already is pretty good, 
 considering that I was working with the Bond and for the 
 Northern Extension, and you cannot do everything at once. To- 
 day what is the Bond — I mean the ofl&cial Bond, the Bond which 
 rejects Dutchmen like Faure and BelUngan because they are not 
 narrow enough ? It is not only against progress, it is against 
 equality, against unity, and it is domineered by that continental
 
 CECIL RHODES : AN INTERVIEW 227 
 
 gang from Pretoria. It is not a case of whether the Bond will 
 forgive me. It is I who will have no compromise with them 
 and their continental gang. You may find Mr. Hofmeyr very 
 moderate and very nice, but I take ' 0ns Land,' which represents 
 Mr. Hofmeyr among his own people. Look at the line it takes. 
 They talk of race hatred ! Some of my greatest friends are 
 Dutch ; and in what I may call my own country, in Rhodesia, 
 the only thing that is said sometimes is that the Dutch get 
 actually favoured more than my own people. But these others 
 with their eternal whine of Afrikanders, Afrikanders, poor 
 oppressed Afrikanders, and their abuse of England and English- 
 men, and their support of everything rotten at Pretoria, they 
 are simply spreading hatred as hard as they can spread it. 
 Those are the people we are going to fight. We shall want all 
 our discipline and all our organisation and unity for that fight, 
 But it will all come right later on. I may not live to see it, 
 but you will all be putting up statues to me." 
 
 The reader may be surprised, by the bye, to find Mr. Rhodes 
 in his casual talk dipping into the remote past ; hitching his 
 telegraph wire on to Cambyses ; and picturing himself, with 
 
 Burns' lady. 
 
 Gone, like Alexander, 
 
 To spread his conquests further. 
 
 But this is quite characteristic. I remember once his going 
 to Aristotle to explain experiences in the Matoppos. At the 
 historic indaba, for instance, he was not afraid because he thought 
 he knew it was all right. That was one kind of courage, the 
 courage of superior knowledge, as defined by Aristotle. In 
 actual fighting, on the other hand, the noise of the elephant-rifle 
 bullets fired close by always made liim duck his head, and the 
 sight of men hit and bleeding made liim feel sick. In short, 
 " I was in a horrible funk. But I stayed at the front because 
 of being far more afraid to be thought afraid " — which, he 
 explained, corresponded to another Aristotelian classification 
 of courage. Is it not a triumph for Oriel, for Oxford, and for 
 Greats that Cambyses and Aristotle should thus mingle with the 
 thread of the musings of a man of action in the whirl of Cape 
 politics or in the wide spaces of life on the veldt ? At any rate 
 it is very quaint and interesting.
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 (II) A CHARACTER-SKETCH 
 
 A FEW years ago, Mr. Rhodes was discussing the near future of 
 South Africa with a younger poUtician. He spoke wdth the 
 unreserve which, especially in later years, was characteristic 
 of his conversation. As iron sharpens iron, the two men kindled 
 each other, and broadly and boldly the steps of the coming 
 Federation were laid down. Suddenly Mr. Rhodes turned on 
 the younger man with the question : " How old are you ? " 
 
 The other was still on the right side of forty. 
 
 " What ! " Rhodes exclaimed, and seemed to make a momen- 
 tary mental calculation ; then, turning quite red and in a tone 
 almost of indignation, " To think," he burst out, " that you 
 will see it all . . . and I shan't ! " 
 
 In that cry, wrung from Rhodes under some passing shadow 
 of prevision, at an age when the career of the average English 
 ])olitician lies still before him, is summed up the tragedy of the 
 event of March 26 : a tragedy of incompletion. 
 
 Not till latterly did this shadow of prevision lie across 
 Rhodes's common mood. I remember a far more characteristic 
 outburst : 
 
 " They think they will tire me out. They think I shall die. 
 But I'm not going to die. I've got a very good constitution." 
 That was soon after the crash in his career, when things looked 
 black enough. But the forces he felt himself wrestling with were 
 but human forces then. There is much staying power in Dutch 
 resentment, as the world has learnt, but he was to be conscious 
 soon of something more inexorable. 
 
 I remember one evening when I called at Groote Schuur, on 
 some political business, after dinner. 
 
 The house was full of guests — Groote Schuur generally was — 
 for he had brought off the veld a batch of impecunious or fever- 
 bitten young pioneers from Rhodesia to recruit at the coast. 
 But he had sent them all along to the theatre, and, as it fell out, 
 
 * From the Contemporary Review, June 1902. 
 228
 
 CECIL RHODES : A CHARACTER-SKETCH 229 
 
 was dining quite alone, a thing he detested. He hailed me as 
 a castaway hails a sail, and I must sit down with him to 
 dessert. 
 
 With a sudden movement he threw out his right arm, pulUng 
 up his sleeve as he did so, and resting the hand, palm upwards, 
 on the table, " Look there," he said. 
 
 There was nothing to look at in Mr. Rhodes's hands ; they 
 were like a schoolboy's ; but what I was to look at was the wrist. 
 Where a doctor feels one's pulse, there stood out as it were a 
 knot, and as the artery pumped and laboured one could count 
 the throbs by the eye, without laying a finger there. 
 
 " Look ! You never saw a man with a pulse like that. No, 
 no " — he brushed aside some commonplace reassuring remark 
 of mine — " not like that. Do you know what you see there ? 
 You see the heart." 
 
 And he fell into a vaguely gloomy train, from which I was glad 
 to lead him off to the subject of my call. Not long before, 
 walking up a hill on the lofty plateau of Mashonaland, he had 
 fainted and lain as one dead for a day and a night. 
 
 I can recall that evening well : the quiet, rather sombre dignity 
 of the teak-wainscoted room ; the old tapestry and furniture ; 
 the wax candles guttering as the mild evening air drew in through 
 the open door off the slope of Table Mountain (the mountain 
 springs almost from Rhodes's verandah) a gleam of old silver 
 sconces reflected in the table as in a dark pool — for Rhodes 
 liked the old custom of taking away the cloth for dessert — and 
 in the zone of light at the head of the table, Rhodes. Can I 
 call up a picture of him for the reader ? The leonine head, 
 always looking large even on the large loose-knit body ; the 
 light crisp hair, grizzling fast at the temples, tumbled impa- 
 tiently on end above the wide and massive forehead — 
 
 the prone brow. 
 
 Oppressive with its mind ; 
 
 the face red, tanned, weather-beaten — an outdoor face ; the 
 chin and jaw formidable, except when lit by an attractive, 
 almost boyish, smile ; the prominent, light-grey, absent-minded 
 eyes — now gloomily looking down at the outstretched wrist on 
 the table, and at that menacing, throbbing knot of pulse. . . . 
 
 The reason why I remember that little scene, better than 
 many more interesting conversations, is that I then first realised 
 that Rhodes was a man living under a Damocles-sword, and 
 that he knew it. Later, all his friends came to know it. One,
 
 230 APPENDIX II 
 
 however, had long known it, and known by how tliin-spun a 
 thread the sword hung ; and perhaps it is significant that Jame- 
 son the doctor-friend was also the raider-friend who tried, by 
 what surgeons call a Caesarean operation, to hasten, by a decade 
 or so, the coming to birth of Rhodes's great opportunity. If so, 
 never was Nemesis exacter or more relentless, 
 
 Rhodes was ahvays sanguine in his estimate of how many 
 years the work of Federation would take, but, pathetically 
 enough, as his estimate of his own span grew shorter, so his 
 estimate of the years the work would take grew shorter too. 
 Before the Avar, when he was maturing a plan to federate the 
 three Colonies as a beginning, it was to be two years for that, 
 and ten to bring in the Republics. Later, it was to be five years 
 after the war — then two years — and the new Colonies were to 
 start life as Federal Provinces. But the war dragged on ; the 
 Moving Finger wrote — sadly confused writing ; and having 
 writ, no power could lure it back to cancel half a line. Only for 
 King Hezekiah was the shadow upon the dial ever made to go 
 backward. 
 
 " He was very stoical and noble about it," writes a friend who 
 saw Mr. Rhodes after the end was in sight, " only sometimes 
 there was a caged-soul look in his eyes." 
 
 II 
 
 Mr. Rhodes's faults, to wliich he was as quick to own as he 
 was chary of promising amendment, were — hke the rest of him 
 — on the grand scale. There was enough to account for his 
 looming to some eyes as a sinister figure, if we count only the 
 faults he had. It is the more surprising that critics and enemies 
 should have been at pains to blame him for faults that were 
 not his. 
 
 When I was about to leave England to take up the editorship 
 of the Cape Times I received many warnings. A philanthropic 
 lady, a pillar of Nonconformity, assured me confidentially that 
 Mr. Rhodes was a man of infamous private life. A leading 
 Radical member of Parliament filled in details by telling of a 
 sort of Pare aux Cerfs for coloured women, which, as he averred, 
 was kept up somewhere on the Groote Schuur estate. Who 
 first invents these stories, which spread so far and to which a 
 certain sort of conscientious mind falls so easily a victim ? 
 There was not a word of truth in them. It would be hard for a
 
 CECIL RHODES : A CHARACTER-SKETCH 231 
 
 man of the active world to plan out a more strenuous, temperate, 
 almost abstemious life than that of Cecil Rhodes in his prime, 
 during that part of his career when I had the best opportunities 
 of knowing it. 
 
 He was up at six every morning taking his mountain ride ; 
 all day he was transacting the business of his complex gangUon 
 of interests, some of it in the Premier's office in Cape Town, 
 most of it on the broad pillared stoep of his house, with the 
 mountain view which was always pure joy to him ; to lunch and 
 dinner there were nearly always a bevy of guests, sometimes 
 oddly assorted, mine- managers, farmers, pioneers from the far 
 interior, political wire-pullers, missionaries, men who touched 
 that full life of his at one or other of its hundred facets ; and 
 about eleven o'clock he would suddenly rise without a word and 
 steal off to bed. I have heard him say things brutal or cynical 
 — it was an ugly foible — but things gross, such as men even of 
 exemplary life often affect in the licence of the smoking-room, 
 never. He was no ascetic ; he liked to eat and drink heartily 
 what was put before him ; but the character of a voluptuary 
 is one for which he held and expressed the deepest contempt. 
 He liked best the riding and camping life which he often led for 
 months at a time away on the veld in Rhodesia. As for drinking 
 habits of the kind and degree attributed to him by the most 
 widely-spread rumour of all, it would have been impossible, as 
 a doctor once remarked, for a man with heart-mischief like 
 Rhodes's in his later years to live at all with such excess — much 
 more to live as strenuous a working life as his. The truth is that 
 the life-work which was to Mr. Rhodes a devouring passion, if 
 it left too little scope for some of the virtues, left even less for 
 most of the vices.* 
 
 At one time it was an established dogma with those who 
 disliked Mr. Rhodes that he was a physical coward. It would 
 be hard to say how it originated. Mr. Rhodes did not come of 
 a family of cowards. Nearly all his brothers are in the army ; 
 more than one of them wear the D.S.O. ; in Colonel " Frank's " 
 extreme popularity his repute as a dashing fighter is a distinct 
 element ; while Herbert Rhodes, the brother who shared Cecil's 
 earliest labours on the diamond fields and came to a tragic end 
 while big-game hunting in Central Africa, was as dare-devil a 
 
 * The delirium tremens story, circulated while Rhodes lay dying by some 
 German doctor, diagnosing across seven thousand miles, is as false as it is 
 indecent.
 
 232 APPENDIX II 
 
 young Englishman as ever strolled publicly down a street of 
 Portuguese Africa, daring arrest, with a price upon his head 
 for gun-running. Perhaps it was thought appropriate that a 
 man of money-bags should be one who took good care of his 
 own skin ; and no doubt it added a further artistic touch to 
 represent him as coldly callous about others who had to risk 
 their lives in executing the schemes which he spun in safety. 
 At any rate, the legend was so current and so accepted that 
 when he first went up to the scene of the native rebellion and 
 was reported to be in a position of some danger, a London 
 weekly paper, affecting the coarsely candid, declared that " the 
 notion that Mr. Rhodes would ever risk his personal safety 
 would be received with guffaws of derision in any bar in South 
 Africa." And in one of the several novels a clef of which he has 
 been made the subject — one hardly to be mentioned among the 
 others except for its malignity and the fact that the author has 
 since confessed to having received large sums from the Kruger 
 Government for " literary and political services " — a fancy 
 picture is drawn of the bloated magnate of Kimberley shrinking 
 aloof and fortifying himself with brandy while everybody else 
 is intent on trying to rescue some entombed miners. 
 
 There are, of course, two Rhodes legends — that of the eulogists 
 and that of the detractors. I am illustrating the kind of stuff 
 that went to build up the latter ; but there is no need now, 
 on this part of the legend at least, to labour any vindication. 
 The calumny has been answered by deeds. 
 
 Answered by that historic scene in the Matoppos when " the 
 great white chief, our father," palavered unarmed in the centre 
 of a ring of Matabele rebels, and put an end to the still smoulder- 
 ing rebellion ; answered by the lonely waggon-tent, miles outside 
 the British lines, which preceded and prepared the way for that 
 palaver — perhaps this was of the two the more real, though the 
 obscurer test of courage ; answered in the open field under fire 
 in several sharp brushes of the rebellion ; and answered lastly 
 by the " irresistible impulse," as Mr. Rhodes explained it to a 
 friend, which made him throw himself into beleaguered Eamberley 
 by the last train that got through the closing Boer lines, and 
 share the hardships and dangers of the siege with his workmen ; 
 turning the De Beers workshops into a skilful modern arsenal 
 and astonishing the Boer besiegers with the grim pleasantry, 
 stamped on all the shells there manufactured, " With C. J. 
 Rhodes's Compliments.' 
 
 Really typical, I think, are stories I have heard from men
 
 CECIL RHODES : A CHARACTER- SKETCH 233 
 
 who were closely with him during brushes with the Matabele 
 rebels. He made no pretence of enjoying being under fire. 
 " One may get hit — in the stomach — very unpleasant, very 
 unpleasant," he remarked in his detached, contemplative tone ; 
 then as the peculiar scream recurred, caused by the lacerating 
 slugs the rebels fired from their elephant-guns, he could not 
 help ducking, as all beginners do under fire ; adding at once, 
 in a sort of naive apology to the companion who was riding close 
 to him : 
 
 " Absurd, isn't it, how one can't help ducking ? Not a bit 
 of good ! " — and riding on all the same. 
 
 If that is cowardice, it is such cowardice as the immortal 
 Chicot marked and admired in Henry of Navarre at the siege of 
 Cahors. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It has been said, vrith. as much truth as an epigram can be 
 expected to contain, that ]\Ir, Rhodes was a pubhc man who 
 had no private life. Can it be said also that he had no private 
 friends ? Plenty of people have been devoted to him : was he 
 himself devoted to individual persons ? Or was his affection for 
 the Anglo-Saxon stock in gross compatible vaih a good deal of 
 indifference to them in detail ? It is certainly true that the 
 men Mr. Rhodes drew round him and saw most of were generally 
 — if we leave out a few dependents — just the men that he hap- 
 pened to work with or find useful at the time. And if they satisfied 
 that test, he was not particular about applying any other. It 
 is an old complaint against men of masterful personahty in 
 politics that they come to prefer (the habit grows with years 
 and successes, as parasites multiply on an old Hon) to have about 
 them men of second-rate mind and even second-rate character. 
 How often latterly one used to hear that complaint of Mr. 
 Gladstone ! Tired with the long pubhc strife, these gladiators 
 perhaps find it a rehef in their leisure to be in contact only with 
 men who never tax or contest their superiority. A common 
 pair of slippers, so it be but an easy pair ! To Rhodes, for 
 instance, personal veracity was a department of personal dignity ; 
 but he could tolerate an dme damnee who provoked remarks like 
 Captain Macmurdo's to Lord Steyne's useful man : " You don't 
 stick at a trifle, Mr. Wenham." And if he found a man easy 
 and useful, he had a large way of brushing aside any objection 
 brought against him.
 
 234 APPENDIX II 
 
 " Ah, well, I find it best never to bother about gossip." " There's 
 something against everybody." " I take men as I find them : 
 now you'll grant that so-and-so has always been loyal to one." 
 That " loyal to one " (he often used the impersonal " one " for 
 the first personal pronoun) is specially characteristic. The 
 touchstone, If ye love me keep my commandments, is one that 
 men with a mission, holy or secular, are always prone to apply. 
 " If you're my friend, support my policy " was the Rhodes 
 version. And, magnanimous as he could be to a foe, he had 
 no bowels for a professing friend who had once supported him 
 and ceased to do so. Of this I could give several illustrations ; 
 let one suffice — his attitude after the break of 1895-96 towards 
 Mr. Hofmeyr, the Dutch leader whose support he had found it 
 necessary to secure while he was " taking the North " for 
 England. He used to seem surprised and uneasy that a jour- 
 nalist like myself, on the English side, happening to enjoy the 
 privilege of genial relations with that powerful if rather furtive 
 mind, should continue to cultivate such relations in spite of 
 sharp political antagonism. It happened once that I was met 
 in Mr. Hofmeyr's company several times in one week by a person, 
 a specimen of the political fauna familiar everywhere, locally 
 known as " Rhodes's jackals." " Here's the wolf colloguing 
 with the lamb again ! " said he at last, eyeing us askance. " Which 
 is the wolf and which is the lamb ? " asked Mr. Hofmeyr, twink- 
 ling through his spectacles. " At least," quoth I, " there 
 is no difficulty in saying who is the jackal." Doubtless 
 Mr. Rhodes was warned what ill company I was keeping ; for 
 the next time I called at Groote Schuur I was rallied on the 
 subject with a persistence which with him always meant 
 mischief. 
 
 " It's no good talking ! The Blind Man's very clever ; he's 
 too clever for you ! The Dutch always beat us at politics. 
 He'll get hold of you ! " (The jBHnd Man is the ironical 
 Cape Town nickname for the most sharp-sighted of Dutch 
 politicians.) 
 
 " Well," I turned on him, nettled at last, " at any rate, I don't 
 ride to Hout Bay and back with the Blind Man every Saturday." 
 (This had been Mr. Rhodes's practice in the years when Mr. 
 Hofmeyr was his political ally.) 
 
 Mr. Rhodes flushed and took an angry turn along the stoep 
 before answering ; then he burst out : 
 
 " Yes, I did that. And in those years — I took the North ! " 
 
 " But surely you were personal friends ? "
 
 CECIL RHODES : A CHARACTER- SKETCH 235 
 
 " Pooh ! He thought I was serving his object ; he finds he 
 was serving mine." 
 
 Now, I happened to have heard Holmeyr's version. " I will 
 tell you what I felt like about this business," he had remarked 
 in conversation soon after the Raid. " Rhodes has never been 
 married, so he would not understand the illustration ; but such 
 was the confidence between us, I felt as a man feels who suddenly 
 finds that his wife has been deceiving him." I repeated 
 the expression to Mr. Rhodes, certain that it would touch 
 him. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I know ! " he checked me the moment I began. 
 " About the wife, and so on. . . . I've heard that already from 
 
 — who do you think ? Little Z of the Civil Service " (with 
 
 withering scorn). " Hofmeyr goes about saying it ! " 
 
 To him, clearly, it was a repulsive piece of sham sentiment. 
 
 There was another remark of very different tenor, which (so 
 he had heard and believed) the same gentleman had made, in 
 the first crash of the Raid discovery and fiasco, when Mr. Rhodes 
 shut himself up at Groote Schuur, and saw nobody — the remark 
 that " Rhodes would " (or perhaps, should) " cut his throat." 
 Long afterwards, Mx. Rhodes even hinted at that in a speech, 
 adding the bludgeon words : " No doubt he'll come and slobber 
 at my funeral." 
 
 In short — and it is typical of the whole breach with the Dutch, 
 for though he did once bring out the word " reparation " it was 
 with a sore wrench — ^he always spoke as if of the two, he, 
 not Mr. Hofmeyr, was the aggrieved party. If we knew all, 
 would this be more intelligible ? I cannot say. But I could 
 not leave this trait untouched — even though the reader be 
 repelled. 
 
 He was no less immitigable in loyalty to those whom he deemed 
 loyal to him. The implicit reliance upon him of his associates 
 was one secret of his success against rivals like Barnato in amal- 
 gamating the diamond mines. The mutual loyalty between 
 Dr. Jameson and himself has stood searching ordeals. It was 
 always easy to strike sparks from him about " Dr. Jim's " 
 escapade. " Jameson, at any rate, tried to do something," he 
 would flash back. " All of you down here " (down here was 
 his word for Cape Town and the Cape Parliament as opposed 
 to the veld) " do nothing at all — except jabber, jabber, 
 jabber ! " 
 
 There was one friend, I have been told, whose death Mr. 
 Rhodes could not speak of — an obscure young fellow whom he
 
 236 APPENDIX II 
 
 made his secretary long ago at Kimberley and nursed when he 
 was ill. But he had a constitutional dislike — it was a genuine 
 and rather English trait — for the expression of any conventionally 
 proper feeling. After taking some pains to learn all about the 
 last days of one whose death he certainly felt keenly, he affected 
 to dismiss the subject with the remark : 
 
 " Well, one must go on with one's work. After all a thing 
 like this is only a big detail" 
 
 The loving care he devoted to such matters as the noble 
 memorial to the Wilson Patrol in Rhodesia, or the one to com- 
 rades who fell in the Kimberley Siege, shows that such " details " 
 were really bigger to him than to most. 
 
 Women readily liked Mr. Rhodes. They are attracted by rude 
 strength with a dash of grace ; and he could be gracious enough, 
 especially as a host. But he was wedded to celibacy. He liked 
 celibates to work with. He was no misogjmist. But he had a 
 horror of the uxorious domesticity, with its petty horizon, 
 which sometimes absorbs a good man out of the fighting effec- 
 tives of life. For himself, he felt as one dedicated to an order of 
 working friars ; and their freedom from family ties was one of the 
 things that impressed him about the Jesuits. Their type of 
 applied energy always fascinated him. 
 
 Yet, to one who studies Mr. Rhodes's character, in its lights 
 and shades, the thought must occur that a fine woman, had the 
 fates chosen to find a help really meet for him, might have 
 made of that character something not smaller, but greater, or 
 at least finer. She, too, must have been a " dreamer devout," 
 a sister of his imperial order ; the sort of woman who would 
 take his own view of peerages and officialisms ("I want the power 
 — let who will wear the peacock's feathers," was a favourite 
 saying of his) ; but one whose feminine insight would have 
 helped him to be more patient of detail, more scrupulous of 
 methods, to apply his abundant ideality to men as well as to 
 continents, to " every day's most quiet need " as well as to 
 posterity. 
 
 Once, in old Kimberley days, Rhodes looked up a bachelor 
 acquaintance for a chat. The acquaintance, an assistant- 
 manager of something or other, was making a list of his 
 washing : 
 
 " Wait a moment, Rhodes — six collars — m'm — three shirts " — 
 
 " Do you know," Rhodes interrupted him solemnly, " you 
 will never be anything more than an assistant-manager." And 
 he never was. Yet there is probably a place in the scheme of
 
 CECIL RHODES : A CHARACTER-SKETCH 237 
 
 things even for the checking of washing-bills. A wife con- 
 descending to detail might have checked Rhodes's ethical 
 washing, and saved him some dirty linen. 
 
 IV 
 
 What posterity, no doubt, will deem almost the most signal 
 of all the perversities that blamed Rhodes for the wrong faults 
 has yet to be touched. He, penetrated beyond all other mil- 
 lionaires by the sense that the talent of money-making is a trust 
 for pubUc uses, he who could not acquire so much as a back- 
 garden to walk in, or a rood of earth to be buried in, but he must 
 throw it open to the crowd or make it serve some public end, 
 was singled out for the sneers due to dull accumulation or vapid 
 ostentation. No charge, during much of his life, was more 
 %videly current. To-day, after his death, none less needs refuting. 
 " To me," wrote Mr. Labouchere then, " this Empire jerry- 
 builder has always been a mere vulgar promoter masquerading 
 as a patriot, and the figurehead of a gang of astute Hebrew 
 financiers, ^^^th whom he divided profits." * " I do not suppose 
 he cared for money," writes Mr. Labouchere now, " except for 
 the power that it gave ; and though, in the making of it, he had 
 to associate himself with a crew of financial adventurers, he was 
 head and shoulders above them all." 
 
 I could never understand how anybody, on even the most 
 cursory study of the facts of Rhodes's life, could fail to see that 
 for him finance was merely the creature of politics, not politics 
 of finance, and it seems strange that people who were blind to 
 this truth while Mr. Rhodes was living and giving continual 
 illustration of it, should ha^e their eyes opened by his bequests 
 at death. No man can take his money with him. The will, 
 unique document as it is, would prove little if it were not of one 
 piece, without seam, wdth the life-work which went before and 
 which it is meant to carry on. 
 
 Rhodes was not a rich man who took up the Empire as a hobby 
 when he was tired of making money. He formed the ideal first, 
 the fortune afterwards. How early he began I cannot say exactly; 
 but a document in the possession of Mr. W. T. Stead takes us 
 back to the age of twenty-four.f With Mr. Stead, in the period 
 when he was the apostle of militant democratic Imperialism, 
 
 * Truth, March 29, 1900. 
 
 t Published in part among the interesting Rhodes matter in the Review of 
 Reviews.
 
 238 APPENDIX II 
 
 Rhodes struck up a rare intimacy ; opened to him, more freely 
 perhaps than to any one else, his more visionary side, and con- 
 fided, among other things, a sort of college essay, referable by 
 internal evidence to the time of the Russo-Turkish War, when 
 Mr. Rhodes had begun work on the diamond fields but was still 
 keeping his terms at Oxford. In this curious holograph, naive 
 and full of a boyishness which in Rhodes happily never quite 
 died out, he discusses a young man's choice of an object in life. 
 After reviewing several — dissipation, travel, big game hunting, 
 " a happy marriage " — he pronounces : 
 
 "To myself, thinking over the same question, the wish came 
 to render myself useful to my country." 
 
 And with that he proceeds to Empire-extension, Anglo-American 
 reunion, and all the rest of it — including that idea of a sort of 
 Jesuit-like Secret Society for the Promotion of the Empire, 
 which for long he hugged, and which — minus, perhaps, the 
 secrecy and the Jesuitry — I know to have had a good deal of 
 fascination for others among our contemporaries not reckoned 
 visionaries by the world. 
 
 The biographer owes Mr. Stead a debt. But even without this 
 there is plentiful evidence that Rhodes amalgamated Kimberley 
 with the Empire — or " the North " — in view. Visiting Kim- 
 berley before he was a Colonial Prime Minister, and while he was 
 still looked at askance by most Imperialists, I gleaned many 
 such reminiscences from his early business associates. One, 
 showing me an old map that hung in his office, told me the story 
 (now well known) how one day in those scheming years, deep 
 in the sordid details of amalgamation, Rhodes (" always a bit 
 of a crank ") suddenly put his hand over a great piece of No 
 Man's Africa on that map and said, " Look here : aU that British 
 — that is my dream." 
 
 It seemed dreamj^, to madness, at the time, to insist on the 
 insertion of a clause in the De Beers trust-deed enabling a diamond 
 mine company to blossom out if required into a Government in 
 the interior of Africa. " It is not business," as Barnato protested 
 in the famous all-night conclave which settled the final amalga- 
 mation. The business man was quite right. It was politics. 
 But it was Mr. Rhodes's mission to inject politics into business 
 men. As the dawn crept in at the dusky window, Barnato 
 sighed, " I suppose we shall have to give it you." And they did. 
 
 Mr. Rhodes entered politics in the period generally named 
 after the skirmish at Majuba Hill, when British Imperialism was 
 at its nadir in South Africa, and the British taxpayer tired of
 
 CECIL RHODES : A CHARACTER-SKETCH 239 
 
 spending blood and money. He saw that the money which 
 would be needed for the " dream " must come from other pockets. 
 He got it from the British (and foreign) speculator. Expansion 
 in South Africa had come to seem to the taxpayer a game in 
 which he paid the bill, and if any minerals turned up others got 
 the profit. Rhodes proposed to him to come in on a different 
 basis : speculative it must be, but at least, if the speculation 
 succeeded, those who found the means should share the profits. 
 On that basis was built up "chartered finance." It is open to 
 criticism, no doubt. The objections to Empire extension by 
 joint stock company are obvious and inherent. Perhaps a 
 Kimberley career blunted Rhodes's perception of them ; but his 
 point was that those who objected to the joint stock plan did 
 little to convert " the weary Titan " to extending the Empire 
 by any other. The Rev. John Mackenzie was the one excep- 
 tion : and he failed. It was therefore Rhodes's plan, or — 
 Germany and Kruger. 
 
 It has been said by a defender that Rhodes's genius was for 
 investment ; mere speculation he despised. That is put rather 
 too absolutely. A corporation like the Consolidated Gold Fields 
 of South Africa, during a time of " boom," is not widely distin- 
 guishable (I imagine) from a sublimated City " bucket-shop." 
 But it is probably true that Rhodes more and more left the 
 speculative side to financial allies. His was not a mind fascinated 
 by the gamble of the market. Had finance remained his mistress, 
 instead of politics, few can doubt that he might have doubled 
 his fortune and rivalled, as some of his friends rival, the American 
 multi-millionaires. I yield to none in ignorance of scientific 
 finance ; but I can see that, speaking broadly, much of Rhodes's 
 finance may be described as making De Beers and the goldfields 
 bleed freely for " the North," when required ; then making it 
 up later when the see-saw of the market allowed ; and, while 
 drawing freely on moneyed friends, using his own fortune as a 
 kind of mobile reserve, to be husbanded in fat years that in 
 lean years it might be concentrated on any weak point in the 
 African frontiers of the Empire ; now to save a province by a 
 timely direct subsidy to the British Treasury — let Sir Harry 
 Johnston tell how ; now to build a railway or a telegraph that 
 the City would not look at ; now to supply something for which 
 neither City nor Treasury could be appealed to : remember how 
 some critic pounced on his sale of a big block of " Charters " at 
 boom prices before the Raid, and the naive explanation that 
 it was to meet the bill for the Uitlanders' rifles. 
 
 He used to tell the story how he circularised De Beers share-
 
 240 APPENDIX II 
 
 holders once, in a fat year, with an invitation to invest some of 
 their profits, byway of "ransom," in the Cape to Cairo telegraph, 
 or some other hazy Imperial scheme ; and how the only reply 
 drawn was from one indignant shareholder, who protested 
 against the circulars being sent out at the cost of his company. 
 To a certain class of critics everything was either a " worthless 
 swamp " into which Rhodes was inveigling the public, or else 
 " rich plunder " that he was keeping to himself and his "gang". 
 Sometimes the same thing was both. Some of the critics were 
 honest enough ; but to see Rhodes steadily and see him whole 
 they wanted a little imagination ; and imagination is not always 
 strong in men who spend their lives thinking about money and 
 writing about money. 
 
 " The little street-bred people " pursued him with their little 
 judgments even to his grave. Among a column of newspaper 
 extracts about the will, few of which failed to seize the ideality 
 of the plan for a South African Valhalla among the Matoppos, 
 the voice of the Morning Leader was given thus : 
 
 " That Mr. Rhodes should bequeath £4000 a year to keep 
 his tomb in repair is not surprising." 
 
 What can one say, except with Touchstone : " God help thee, 
 shallow man ! God make incision in thee ! " 
 
 Of the many verbal misrepresentations inspired by some 
 people's resolve to have Mr. Rhodes at all hazards a man who 
 thought only of money, perhaps the most perverse is the one 
 about the flag being a " commercial asset." The phrase is from 
 a speech at Kimberley just after the siege ; it was seized on in a 
 score of papers as putting into naked words what the writers had 
 always declared to be Mr. Rhodes's sordid conception of the 
 Empire. 
 
 " There at last we have it ! " cried the accusers. " The Empire, 
 to this man, is £ s. d. The flag is a commercial asset. He says 
 so himself. What need have we of further witness ? " 
 
 Now if the phrase had been reported of almost any public man 
 except Mr. Rhodes, it would have been passed by as a patriotic 
 platitude meaning that where the British flag waves, there is 
 commerce safe and prosperous ; a remark hardly worth cabling 
 to England, but both familiar and innocent. That is so, even 
 ignoring the context. But the moment the context is examined, 
 it turns out that, so far from commercialising politics, the boot 
 was on the other leg altogether. When the war broke out, 
 Kimberley, thanks to the laches of a pro-Boer Ministry at the
 
 CECIL RHODES : A CHARACTER-SKETCH 241 
 
 Cape, was a weak spot in the defences of the Empire ; the 
 De Beers Diamond Company, under Mr. Rhodes's personal 
 direction, spent lavishly to make up the deficiency ; the expendi- 
 ture had to be justified at a business meeting, for shareholders 
 many (probably most) of whom are not British subjects. Such 
 was the occasion. And the speech is so characteristic of Mr. 
 Rhodes's ways of thought on the whole subject, and the use 
 made, and still being made, of one phrase in it, is so characteristic 
 of Mr. Rhodes's traducers, that I must quote a little. First, 
 about the " asset " : 
 
 " During the past four months we have not been miners. . . . 
 I have to tell the shareholders in Europe that we have for the 
 last four months devoted the energies of the Company to the 
 defence of the town. ... I, and my fellow directors, looked at 
 it broadly. . . . Our people received their usual pay, only 
 instead of digging diamonds they were fighting Boers. I feel 
 sure the European shareholders will not cavil. . . . We merely 
 did our duty. . . . We have done our best to preserve that 
 which is the best commercial asset in the world — the protection 
 of her Majesty's flag." 
 
 From the same speech : 
 
 " Shareholders may be divided into two classes. . . . There 
 are those of the unimaginative type who pass their whole lives 
 in filling money bags, and when they are called upon, perhaps 
 more hurriedly than they desire, to retire from this world, what 
 they leave behind is often dissipated by their offspring on wine, 
 women and horses. Of these purely unimaginative gentlemen, 
 whose sole concern is the accumulation of wealth, I have a large 
 number as my shareholders, and I now state for their consolation 
 that the transactions with the Chartered Company are closed, 
 and closed satisfactorily. . . . We have also, I am glad to say, 
 the imaginative shareholder. To him I would say : ' It is 
 pleasant for you to consider that undertakings which were 
 embarked upon in the spirit of what I may call the doctrine of 
 ransom have turned out so successfully. Had they failed, I 
 feel sure I should never have heard a word of reproach from you 
 as to this trifle that we spent out of our great wealth to assist 
 the work of opening up the North. We have now got the country 
 developed far, far into the centre of Africa, largely through the 
 means supplied by this commercial Company. If I might go 
 further, and venture to draw a picture of the future, I would 
 
 Q
 
 242 APPENDIX II 
 
 say that any one visiting these mines one hundred years hence, 
 though he saw merely some disused pits, would, if he pushed his 
 travels further into the interior, recognise the renewal of their 
 life in the great European civilisation of the far North, and 
 perhaps he would feel a glow of satisfaction at the thought that 
 the immense riches which have been taken out of the soil have 
 not been devoted merely to the decoration of the female sex. 
 And so, for my part, when the policy of this Corporation is 
 challenged, I always feel it is no small thing to be able to say 
 that it has devoted its wealth to other things besides the expan- 
 sion of luxury." 
 
 And this is the speech from which Rhodes has been written 
 down a soulless materialist, by people many of whom probably 
 have never risen to as much idealism in their most inspired 
 moments — let alone at a company meeting. The truth is, of all 
 Rhodes has left to South Africa — including his version of la 
 carriere ouverte aux talens, and his consistent application of it in 
 treating individuals, Dutch or Enghsh, with perfect equality — 
 he has left nothing better, in precept and example, than his 
 scorn of the " make-my-pile-and-quit " ideal, whether held 
 by Rand artisan or Park Lane millionaire, and his lifelong 
 upholding of the counter-ideal that private means imply 
 a public trust, and no man may shirk civic duties. No 
 lesson needed more teaching in South Africa ; and it is bearing 
 fruit. 
 
 V 
 
 Did Rhodes hold, ^vith Walpole, that every man has his price ? 
 In Walpole's restricted sense, he did not ; the chosen intimate 
 of General Gordon could hardly fall into that mean error ; and 
 the oft-quoted boast — " I never met a man with whom I could 
 not deal " — made in connection with the half -jocular proposal 
 of "squaring the Mahdi," had evidently no such narrow meaning 
 as that of a money bribe. Nevertheless, in considering Rhodes's 
 character, here comes the difficult place ; and I am determined 
 not to shirk it. 
 
 A man does not spend the spring and first summer of manhood 
 in such work as the Eamberley Amalgamation and come out at
 
 CECIL RHODES : A CHARACTER-SKETCH 243 
 
 the end with mind quite unsubdued to that it works in, hke the 
 dyer's hand. Coming from amalgamation in finance to an 
 attempt not all unlike it in politics, Rhodes was apt to think 
 that the formula which carried all before it in the one arena 
 would do for the other. At Kimberley he had been an Ueher- 
 mensch with a larger ideal, ready for infinite accommodation in 
 detail, but adamant as to that ; while for the rest of the local 
 world it was all a wrestle of material interests. You satisfied 
 or balanced those and so got your way about the larger. It 
 cannot be denied that a certain amount of all democratic pohtics, 
 however clean, answers to that rather crude formula. The 
 Patronage Secretaries of administrations everywhere are persons 
 who walk not with their heads in the clouds, perhaps rather with 
 their feet in the mud. And when Mr. Rhodes was official head, 
 of the Cape Colony, and at the same time head of a large con- 
 solidation on the goldfields, despot of De Beers on the diamond 
 fields, and uncrowned king of Rhodesia, he had enough patronage 
 in his hands to make a cynic of a saint. 
 
 Then, again, politics were for years a duel between Rhodes, 
 and Kruger ; and there stood Kruger on his side with the pat- 
 ronage of the richest Government in South Africa, which was at 
 the same time exempt from the need of making even a show 
 of probity and efiiciency, and drew on the plunder of the whole 
 Rand. Between the unctuous -MTi-rectitude of Kruger, and the 
 candid cynicism of Rhodes, it came about that a man could 
 scarcely act or speak in South Africa without being presumed a 
 swashbuckler for one camp or the other — an atmosphere in- 
 tolerable. Even in England people came to believe in the 
 figment of a " Rhodes Press." As a matter of fact, the Press of 
 South Africa, being a thing of the towns and therefore Enghsh,^ 
 did not need to be " bought " to take the English side in the 
 great duel. If bought, it was bought by the public, which was 
 more Rhodesian than Rhodes. It only needed to be " bought," 
 that is, subsidised so as to push it with an indisposed public 
 in the few cases where it took the other side — Kruger's. (I am 
 not, of course, referring to the Dutch Press.) Nor was there 
 any more truth in the language often used as if Rhodes had 
 made Government at the Cape a sink of corruption. There was 
 never anything at the Cape even remotely resembling the un- 
 blushing enrichment of the Kruger-Eloff connection, or the 
 hundred quotable public service scandals at Pretoria. The 
 familiar business of share-allotment to influential men by pre- 
 ference has a nasty flavour of " Panama " when so much mixed
 
 244 APPENDIX II 
 
 up with politics as a chartered company must needs be. A 
 probing censor might make much of that. But even taking that 
 at its worst, where are the Rhodes Government scandals, jobs 
 to the detriment of the public service, " boodle," in the sense 
 in which even a statesman as clean-handed himself as Sir John 
 Macdonald in Canada was accused of letting grow up precedents 
 of boodle ? Rhodes scandals, in this sense, are not easy to 
 name.* Government at the Cape, judged by the standard of 
 the British Colonies at large — a standard probably as high as 
 any outside these islands — is clean. 
 
 Rhodes, in this as in other matters, was better than his word, 
 for his word was often cynical to brutality. But words too 
 have their weight ; and if you start by expecting the average 
 man to have an axe to grind, you are very likely to find him 
 what you expect. 
 
 Imagine Rhodes in council : a large question of policy has 
 just been settled, on the largest considerations ; follows the 
 question, what about votes ? Two members are doubtful : A. 
 because he cannot get his constituents a new railway station ; 
 B. on some point, perhaps pedantic or pettifogging, but respectable. 
 Rhodes pronounces : " Promise A. his ' pump ' and let us get 
 on." But about B. he growls : " Another wretched mugwump 
 developing a liver or a conscience ! " 
 
 * An attempt has been made to discover such a scandal since Mr. Rhodes's 
 death in regard to the last-discovered of the Kimberley diamond mines — the 
 Wesselton, now called the Premier, which was acquired by the De Beers 
 Company during Mr. Rhodes's Cape Premiership, in the same way as it had 
 previously acquired all the other mines. The charge is that Mr. Rhodes 
 somehow abused his official position to prevent this mine being made or declared 
 State property. I may remark that I do not remember ever hearing this 
 charge made at the Cape in all the bitter party polemics since 1895. No 
 proposal that the Government should either expropriate or purchase the 
 diamond mines, or acquire and work any one of them ui competition with 
 De Beers, has ever been made in the Cape Parliament by any party or any 
 responsible politician. 
 
 There are, however, conditions in which a property can be proclaimed an 
 " open diggings," and at the time of the Wesselton discovery there was a 
 diggers' agitation for having that property so proclaimed. The Attorney- 
 General's opinion was that the conditions did not exist to make proclamation 
 in that case legal. The Attorney- General was Mr. (now Sir) James Rose-Innes ; 
 and the opinion has never been challenged. Later, a Parliamentary Select 
 Committee, appointed on a larger subject, suggested altering the law, to give 
 the Government larger powers of proclaiming open diggings in any case like 
 the Wesselton. It reported unanimously against Government trying to own 
 or work mines. The one practical application of " ransom " to De Beers ever 
 proposed is by a profit, or income, tax ; and to this Mr. Rhodes was markedly 
 more favourable than most of his party {see Budget debates, 1899).
 
 CECIL RHODES : A CHARACTER-SKETCH 245 
 
 In the human adjustment that large schemes require, the 
 lower man was the less inconvenient. To sum up : Rhodes's sins 
 in this kind have been absurdly exaggerated both in kind and 
 degree ; at worst, he never sought gain or private ends by such 
 means ; but his wilHngness to use sordid people in his combina- 
 tions, and to deal with them on their own ground, did exist. 
 The atmosphere it created was demoralising, and sometimes froze 
 the support of men of more scrupulousness, whose whole-hearted 
 help would have been well worth his gaining. Rhodes would 
 have been a greater man if he had only expected, and so en- 
 couraged, ordinary people to be actuated by motives more nearly 
 on a level %\'ith his own. 
 
 But after all, the Rhodes who won over doubters or antagonists 
 was not the Rhodes of the blank cheque, nor were his most 
 potent champions so won. It was the Rhodes who lounged and 
 hugged a knee opposite his man on the pillared stoep at Groote 
 Scliuur, or harangued him over a big outspread map, scoring and 
 re-scoring it with clumsy pencil, or rode with him round the 
 lovely sylvan pleasance ; talking, hstening ; speaking often not 
 to the moment, but as one elliptically following worn grooves 
 of solitary thought : conceding, " You object very fairly " . . . ; 
 pouncing, " But I meet you there : the real crux is " so-and-so ; 
 appealing, " You catch my thought ? " ; seeming not to argue 
 but to think aloud ; without eloquence, without dialectics, 
 without charm, as commonly understood ; making admissions, 
 making confidences ; insisting, recapitulating, riding a phrase 
 to death, breaking from deep notes into a queer falsetto ; but 
 always going to the root of the matter — and often making a 
 conquest by sheer frank force of personality. . . . 
 
 " It's all right about B," comes the next report in council. 
 " He will come in with one — no, not squared, you're quite wrong 
 — just on the 'personal." Yes, that was the really formidable 
 Rhodes — the Rhodes who won men not on the purse, but, in 
 his own phrase, " on the personal."
 
 246 APPENDIX II 
 
 VI 
 
 The cynic who asks, in the vein dear to every advocatus diaboli 
 from the time of Job downwards, " Did Rhodes serve the Empire 
 for nought ? " has at least more to say for himself than he who 
 questions whether it really was the Empire that Rhodes served. 
 He has been accused of coquetting with Dutch Republicanism 
 as well as with Irish disruption. Be it said at once, that if we 
 do not touch Mr. Rhodes's one fixed political principle here, we 
 shall touch it nowhere, and he is of all men most miserable. It 
 would be Bismarck without his Prussia. In my opinion, no 
 politician has or ever had a record on any subject of more per- 
 sistency and consistency than the record of Cecil Rhodes as a 
 life-long worker for the British Empire, conceived as (1) self- 
 governing in its parts ; (2) federated at its centre ; (3) expand- 
 ing over the whole of the unappropriated earth. If he did not 
 work for that, from dreamy youth through strenuous manhood, 
 he worked for nothing. Friends of the two rival unity move- 
 ments in South Africa, that for uniting it within and that for 
 uniting it without the Empire, sometimes may have worked 
 together, but he, for one, never left it in doubt which path would 
 be his when the paths diverged. One of his plainest utterances 
 on the subject occurs at the height of his alliance with the Afri- 
 kander Bond and in a speech at a Bond banquet, Kimberley, 
 1891.* The two Republics themselves openly regarded him, 
 from 1885 at least, as their most formidable foe. Such opening 
 for misrepresentation as exists arises from the fact that at the 
 beginning of his career in the early 'eighties " Downing Street " 
 (that is, direct Colonial Office rule, now enjoying a transient 
 new lease of life) had not a friend in South Africa — not even its 
 own High Commissioner. The Republican movement was to 
 be fought not by Imperialism, but by Coloniahsm, as Sir Hercules 
 Robinson put it ; and when attempts are made (as once by a 
 writer in the Contemporary Review, by an audacious piece of 
 garbling, since exposed) to identify Rhodes with the other side 
 on the strength of some phrase about the " Imperial factor " 
 or some action like the quarrel with Sir Charles Warren and 
 John Mackenzie in Bechuanaland, it should suffice to remark 
 that the phrase, the quarrel, the whole policy, were equally those 
 
 * See the useful fat volume of Speeches (Chapman and Hall), p. 273. The 
 ocus classicus is p. 52.
 
 CECIL RHODES : A CHARACTER-SKETCH 247 
 
 of that old and sagacious servant of the Queen who died as Lord 
 R-osmead. The one clue to Rhodes's mad resolve to have a 
 finger in the Johannesburg revolt was the fear that a cosmo- 
 pohtan Uitlander Repubhc might be tempted to share Mi-. 
 Kruger's ambition — and realise it. To a mind dreaming dreams 
 of Anglo-American reunion as the next step to Imperial Federa- 
 tion, the " independent South Africa " which fired a Steyn or a 
 Reitz was the vision of a parish councillor.* 
 
 Of the £10,000 to Parnell there have been three interpretations. 
 The first is that Mr. Rhodes was a sincere Home Ruler and an 
 insincere Imperialist. The second is that he was a sincere 
 Imperialist and an insincere Home Ruler, and subscribed to 
 Home Rule as a way of squaring the Irish party to vote for the 
 Chartered Company's charter. The third is that JVIr. Rhodes 
 was an Imperialist Home Ruler, no less sincere in the one cha- 
 racter than in the other : as hostile as the staunchest Unionist 
 could be to Gladstonian (1886) Home Rule, but warmly in favour 
 of a Home Rule Bill which should be in actual provisions as well 
 as in principle the first step in Imperial Federation ; and that 
 his object was to obtain from Parnell a public admission of the 
 case against the former kind of Home Rule, and a public accept- 
 ance of the principles and provisions of the latter kind : in short, 
 that IMr. Rhodes was simply what he professed to be, and his 
 object simply that which was recorded, and in a measure achieved, 
 by the correspondence forthwith published as part of the tran- 
 saction. 
 
 The first of these theories need not detain us. As to the 
 second, the squaring explanation, I cannot prove a negative, 
 but I can prove from the mere dates that it implies, to say the 
 least, a very long shot. The subscription was practically 
 promised to Mr. Swift MacNeill in the autumn of 1887, almost 
 exactly two years before the Charter was obtained, and a year 
 before the obtaining of the concession from Lobengula which 
 alone led to a Charter being applied for. At that time Mr. 
 Rhodes was still trying to get Cape Colony, as a colony, to 
 assume direct responsibility in the North ; the whole idea of a 
 chartered company was therefore in nubibus, and any calculation 
 that the Charter would depend on the vote of the Irish members 
 would surely have been more so. There remains the third 
 
 * Forgotten instances, showing liow far South Africa was from being Mr. 
 Rhodes's parish, are his Matabeleland constitution clause, anticipating in germ 
 the Canadian Imperial tariff scheme ; and his cable, offering Australian Govern- 
 ments the use of the Cape credit at the time of the Australian banking crisis.
 
 248 APPENDIX II 
 
 explanation, and as this is the natural one and supported by a 
 long series of Mr. Rhodes's speeches, acts and conversations at 
 the time, before and since, it is not clear why any other should 
 be sought for. Mr. Rhodes's Home Rule and his Imperialism 
 were of one warp and woof. He did not want to make Ireland 
 as loosely united as the colonies, but the colonies as closely united 
 as a federal Ireland. The provision to this end which Parnell 
 promised Rhodes to support may be criticised as crude or imprac- 
 ticable. It may be argued that it is vitiated by a false analogy 
 between a colony, remote merely by distance, and Ireland, 
 remote by sentiment and strategically close on England's flank. 
 But Unionists who accept such tenets, in Lord Rosebery or 
 Mr. Asquith, as sincere though mistaken Imperialism, cannot 
 rationally call them high treason in a colonist who never had any 
 truck with Gladstonian Home Rule at all. To write about 
 " supplying the sinews of war to the forces of disruption," in the 
 case of a man who valued a recantation of that heresy by the 
 arch-disruptionist at £10,000, is as absurd as anything not in 
 mathematics can be proved to be. I for one constant reader of 
 the Spectator should feel that a mystery was cleared up if the 
 editor confessed that he had never, during the fourteen years 
 since it was published, really read the Rhodes-Parnell corre- 
 spondence.* 
 
 A more plausible line of attack would be to say that Rhodes 
 was an Imperialist but had no right to bribe Parnell to be one. 
 That assumes that the policy which Parnell accepted was one 
 which he could not accept honestly. If the Irish party's feeling 
 towards " the Imperial partnership " was what Parnell declared 
 in his letter of June 23, 1888, the transaction was honourable on 
 both sides. On the other hand, if that feeling was what some of 
 Parnell's successors are constantly assuring us now — repudiation 
 of all partnership in the " robber Empire " and alienation from 
 Crown no less than Parliament — then, no doubt, Parnell did 
 sell their consciences for them, and they are in the painful posi- 
 tion of refusing delivery after having spent the price. What- 
 ever may be the truth as to that, Rhodes merely took Parnell at 
 his word, and the tone which Irish members have lately affected 
 about him seems injudicious. 
 
 * Accessible now in the Rhodes Speeches volume, also in Mr. Barry O'Brien's 
 ' Life of Parnell."
 
 CECIL RHODES : A CHARACTER-SKETCH 249 
 
 VII 
 
 In this slight sketch we have considered several faults that 
 Mr. Rhodes had not and made no secret of some others that 
 he had — intelligible, perhaps, in a character eager, masterful, 
 and so possessed by a great purpose as to leave no time to be 
 nice about means or squeamish about individual people's feelings. 
 " I won't make my tiger a cat to please anybody," as Boswell 
 said of Johnson, " nor even a milk-white hind." Cecil Rhodes 
 was no angel, but a big, rough-grained, strong-headed, great- 
 hearted man. In some ways " a great ebauche, a rude draught 
 never completed," as Carlyle said of Napoleon ; " as indeed," 
 he adds, " what great man is other ? Left in too rude a state, 
 alas ! " — but on the whole worthy to be summed up in those 
 other words of Carlyle's about Napoleon : " The man was a 
 divine missionary, though unconscious of it. . . . Madly 
 enough he preached, it is true, as enthusiasts and first missionaries 
 are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant ; 
 yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him, 
 if you will, an American backwoodsman, who had to fell unpene- 
 trated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not 
 entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft ; whom, 
 notwithstanding, the peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts 
 the boundless harvest, bless." Does not the very spirit of 
 those closing words speak in Rhodes's own laconic summing-up 
 of his life-work, when he stood with a friend on one of the granite 
 masses of the Matoppos, at the very spot where he now lies 
 and waving his arms over the " great spaces washed with the 
 sun " towards the horizon still further north, jerked out this : 
 
 " Homes — more homes ! that's what I work for." 
 
 Or again, how apt his own little apologue — perhaps the only 
 poetry he ever made, in words — the apologue of the Old Man 
 planting Oaks. He, like the old man, knew he should never 
 live to see his saplings trees, but nevertheless could " see the 
 people walking under my trees," and was content in the thought 
 that the lines would remain as he had set them. " Others will 
 enjoy the shade, but mine is the conception and the glory." * 
 
 Ages ago, in that same land where he lies, gold was mined by 
 fierce Phoenicians or Sabseans, sword in hand, to be borne by 
 ship coast-wise to the Red Sea and by camel through Arabia, 
 * See above, p. 189 n.
 
 250 APPENDIX II 
 
 along with, the " almug trees and precious stones," to be built 
 into King Solomon's Temple. That ancient history of Rhodesia 
 cast a profound spell over Rhodes's romantic mind. He loved 
 to stand with one hand, as it were, reaching forward to the future 
 and the other reaching backward to that remote past, of which 
 the pits that sear the land, the broken crucibles, the ruined 
 stone keeps, the " zimbabwes " regarded by the natives with 
 superstitious awe, remain as silent witnesses. He, too, with 
 " the gold of that land " would build a Temple — a Temple of so 
 vast design and mighty sweep that the poet's words about another 
 mountain burial seem hardly too high for Cecil Rhodes : 
 
 Lofty designs should close in like effects : 
 
 Loftily lying 
 Leave him, still loftier than the world suspects, 
 
 Living and dying.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE TRUE ROMANCE OF "KING 
 SOLOMON'S MINES " * 
 
 The quest for ancient treasure — the handful of white men 
 seeking it wath their lives in their hands at the court of a savage 
 despot in the far Dark Continent — here are all the materials of 
 the romantic story-book which made the fame and fortune of 
 jVIr. Rider Haggard. Naked fact in Matabeleland keeps up so 
 closely with the flights of ]VIr. Haggard's buoyant invention that 
 King Lobengula would deserve a chapter even if he did not share 
 with IVIr. Rhodes the credit of preserving King Solomon's Mines 
 for the benefit of the people of Queen Victoria, 
 
 Had Lobengula been another Umbandine, we should have lost 
 the land of Ophir. Swamped by a rabble of concessionaires, 
 and under a monarch debauched by drink, the country would 
 have become a second Swaziland. But Lobengula was of 
 another mettle, or he would never have held his own among a 
 nation fixed in the military mould into which the Matabele 
 nation was cast by its genesis. Originally a tribe of insurgent 
 Zulus, who cut their way north under Lobengula's father Moseli- 
 katze (or, more correctly, Umziligaze), they retain to tliis day the 
 military organisation which, since the time of Tchaka, has lent 
 a terror to the Zulu name. When Umziligaze first led his nation 
 of warriors into the Promised Land, then thickly populated, he 
 set to work to clear it wdth a ruthless ferocity remarkable even 
 in savage annals. Neither the Matabele nor their neighbours 
 have ever forgotten this baptism of blood. The tradition of 
 insolent savagery on the one side, and cringing servitude on 
 the other, has been kept up by periodical rapine and massacre to 
 tliis day. The tribe plants maize and rears cattle, hke other 
 tribes, but its business is bloodshed. It is not so much a tribe 
 as a standing army. Absolute as is the despotism of Lobengula, 
 even he must temporise wdth the ferocious and overbearing 
 
 * From " In Afrikanderland," chap. xiv. 
 251
 
 252 APPENDIX III 
 
 matjahas. The matjahas are special regiments of young fighting 
 men, drawn from all and sundry surrounding races, caught 
 young by the raiders, weeded out by a stern application of the 
 survival of the fittest, and reared on a diet of raw flesh to the 
 proper pitch of headstrong brutality. In this way the finer 
 Zulu blood has died out of the Matabele race, and the matjahas, 
 having never met a foeman worthy of their steel, can barely be 
 coaxed into tolerable behaviour even to the white men about 
 the king. Only on raids among the wretched Makalaka or 
 Mashonas are they thoroughly in their element — stabbing babies 
 on the arms or in the bosoms of their mothers, and making live 
 bonfires of the old women who are not worth carrying off. " Wlio 
 are we, to stand against the warriors of the Eang ? " said a 
 Makalaka whom some of Mr. Rhodes's pioneers came upon, 
 bewailing the loss of two wives, carried off by a couple of Matabele 
 rascals in the face of the whole village : "we are but women." 
 The Mashonas have guns, but they never dream of using them 
 against the Matabele assegais. They hide their round huts away 
 on difficult hill-sides, burrowing like conies among the rocks. 
 
 Such is the Matabele reign of terror. Hundreds of miles away 
 their name carries panic, and the mere rumour of their coming is 
 solitude. To the fiery impis of Lobengula, twelve to twenty 
 thousand strong, and always straining in the leash to " wash 
 their spears," we owe it that his coveted demesne, with its still 
 more coveted fiefs and dependencies, has been secured all this 
 time from white encroachment either by the filibuster or by the 
 more insidious concession-monger. 
 
 That we have at last achieved what neither Portuguese nor 
 Boer could ever quite bring themselves to essay, we must thank 
 both Enghsh pluck and English luck. It was luck, indeed, to 
 make that march of four hundred miles right under the noses of 
 the Matabele without firing a shot. But there was pluck, good 
 English and colonial pluck, in the little band which did it — only 
 seven hundred, all told, " police " and " pioneers " together, and 
 many of them mere lads. They set out amid confident Boer 
 predictions that they would never return ; false alarms and 
 threatening messages dogged them in the bush ; they knew that 
 they faced another Isandlhwana all the way. When, at last, 
 they left the bush, climbed out on to the free, rolling plateau, 
 and packed up the electric search-light which might have had to 
 illuminate a ghastly night-scuffle in the plain, Colonel Penne- 
 father's seven hundred must have hailed the sandy landscape 
 with as hearty a shout as ever went up from Xenophon's Ten
 
 *'KING SOLOMON'S MINES" 253 
 
 Thousand, safe from the desert and the Mede, at first sight of 
 the blue Euxine. 
 
 Yes, there was pluck in the march to Hartley Hill ; but there 
 was also pluck in the long waiting game at Buluwayo, by which 
 the great concession, the foundation of the whole fabric of the 
 Company since reared, was won and kept through months of 
 harassment and peril, till the decisive seal of the Queen's Charter 
 was achieved. There are three men who can tell the story. 
 There is the Mr. Rudd by whose name the concession goes ; he 
 is now back at the humdrum round of Cape finance. There is 
 Mr. Rochfort Maguire, M.A., M.P., sometime Fellow of All Souls, 
 who drew the concession up, and who figures as the Captain Good 
 of the re-cast story-book. And there is Mr. Frank Thompson, 
 of Natal, who told me, and who shall here tell you the story, 
 which, first to last, he knows more of than anybody. 
 
 When the concession of all the gold in the country was first 
 proposed to the indunas in council, " Mai babo," was the cry, 
 " yo yo gho ! " " Mother of Angels, listen to this madness ! " 
 However, gifts went freely round, the King himself being pre- 
 sented with a bag of sovereigns as an earnest of more to come ; 
 and Mr. Thompson, as the linguist of the party, devoted his 
 energies to the slow task of convincing the King that in the 
 long run it was only a choice between one strong man who would 
 deal fairly with him and a crowd of Boer and Portuguese adven- 
 turers. At last one day the King said to Mr. Thompson, for the 
 hundredth time, " You are sure you are not coming after grass 
 and ground ? " (The question of farming in Mashonaland was 
 not at that time raised.) Said Mr. Thompson : " King ! no ; it 
 is minerals we want. We are not Boers ; we have no cattle to 
 feed." " Give me the paper," said the King. Mr. Thompson 
 hurried out and brought in Mr. Rudd and Mr. Maguire, together 
 with Mr. Helm, the missionary, to see that all was fair. A posse 
 of indunas was summoned, and then and there, on October 30, 
 1888, the momentous scrawl was put upon what Lobengula 
 described as " that fly-blown paper," by which the minerals of 
 an empire, in consideration of £100 a month, a gunboat, and an 
 arsenal of rifles and ammunition, were made over to the men 
 from whom they passed by the usual gradations to the Chartered 
 Company. 0£f went Mr. Rudd to Cape Towti, triumphant ; but 
 all three agreed that the mere signing was a trifle — all hung on 
 the history of the next few months ; the thing was'^to keep the 
 lung and his indunas, and above all, his army, up to the mark ;
 
 254 APPENDIX III 
 
 to allay suspicions, conciliate opposition, and avert the popular 
 tumult which baffled rivals were bent on inflaming. 
 
 But to introduce Mr. Thompson. He is a bronzed, hardened- 
 looking man, with a quaint, dry way of telling his adventures ; 
 incidents the most blood-curdling and the most ludicrous rolling 
 out in the same everyday tone. He is an Afrikander, but the 
 son of a Yorkshire yeoman ; he has seen service in South Africa 
 under Sir Charles Warren, carries some nasty wounds about him, 
 and has had more than one narrow escape of his life. 
 
 " First, Mr. Thompson, give us a picture of King Lobengula 
 himself." 
 
 " Lobengula ? You would not easily forget him if once you 
 saw liim. He stands six feet in his skin, and he is fat and big 
 all over, and he weighs about twenty stone. In age he is forty- 
 eight to fifty. He walks as I have seen no other man walk, 
 before or since, moving his elephant limbs and planting his feet 
 one after the other as if he were planting them for ever, and 
 rolling his shoulders from side to side and looking round him 
 in a way which is dreadful to see. He has great bulging, blood- 
 shot eyes, and when he rolls them to look you up and down, in 
 liis lordly sort of way, I tell you it's enough to scare a man off- 
 hand. His palace, you must know, is a waggon that somebody 
 has given him. There he used to sit, on a block of wood in the 
 middle of a great pole stockade, surrounded by hundreds of 
 sheep and goats. Every yard of the ground is covered with 
 dung, layer over layer, and the whole place is filthy dirty. When 
 you approach the King, you have to squat down on your haunches 
 and remain in that position during the whole of the interview." 
 
 " Did Mr. Maguire do that ? " I asked at this, as there dawned 
 on me the incongruous picture of the dapper gentleman, the 
 dilettante Member of Parliament, the ex-attache, the Fellow of 
 All Souls, squatting in Homeric dung. 
 
 " He had to," said Mr. Thompson, drily. " He didn't like it, 
 didn't Maguire. He used to complain a good deal, now that I 
 come to think of it, about the maggots. In fact, at first he used 
 to shirk a bit ; he'd try it on with one leg — like this, d'ye see — 
 keeping the most of him off the ground. But they wouldn't 
 have that, of course. 
 
 " ' Gho, dslapanza ! ' the young warriors would shout, as they 
 stood about twirling assegais ; ' Gh-h-h-o ! that's the man that 
 wants to be as big as the King ! ' 
 
 " ' Down, man, down ! ' says I, nudging Maguire with my 
 elbow ; ' I tell you it's as much as your life's worth to shirk ; '
 
 " KING SOLOMON'S MINES " 255 
 
 and down goes Maguire, with a groan, into the dung and the 
 maggots." 
 
 " Conversation must have been lively under these circum- 
 stances ? " 
 
 " Well, it was a bit nasty when the King was in a bad temper. 
 He used to try to catch you out and make you contradict your- 
 self ; and he was as sharp as a needle at his own style of palaver. 
 He remembered everything, and if you did contradict yourself 
 he was down on you at once. ' You have two words ; you lie,' 
 he would rap out. Then the ' Dogs,' as we call them up 
 there, were always egging him on, prompting him to ask nasty 
 questions, and twisting round the answers so as to make him 
 angry. 
 
 " The ' Dogs,' I may explain — ' mean whites ' in American 
 parlance — are runaways from civilisation, who have thrown in 
 their lot with the savages and live among them on the King's 
 bounty in the savage style of life. There were a dozen or so of 
 them at Buluwayo it seems, always buzzing in the King's ear 
 against the concession ; for, of course, it was not their idea at 
 all to have civilisation coming in, and white men with it. Besides 
 some of them were bought (several times over) by rival concession 
 seekers, 
 
 " Well," pursued Mr. Thompson, " we used to heckle and argue 
 with these fellows before the King, and there Maguire came in 
 useful." 
 
 " Mr. Maguire did not know the language, did he ? " 
 
 " Not a word. But he is a cool, quiet sort of fellow, and he 
 used just to lie low till I began to lose my temper. Then he'd 
 nudge me, and say : 
 
 " ' Let it drop, Thompson. Don't argue with the master of 
 many legions.' 
 
 " ' You have two words, Thompson ! ' Lo Ben would growl 
 out. 
 
 " ' No, King,' says I. 
 
 " ' My dear fellow, what does it matter ? ' whispers Maguire. 
 
 " ' You're a liar, Thompson,' says the King. 
 
 " ' Yes, King,' I would agree cheerfully, and then I would set 
 to work patiently to reconcile the supposed contradiction. 
 
 " But," added Mr. Thompson, reflectively, " Maguire nearly 
 threw all the fat in the fire once through his imprudence." 
 
 " How was that, Mr. Thompson ? " 
 
 " Why, he would wash. It was this way. To begin with, he 
 would have exercise. The Matabele can't understand the idea
 
 256 APPENDIX III 
 
 of a man ' going a walk,' as we say, for the mere sake of walking. 
 Well, there we stuck, and there we sat, and played backgammon 
 till we got dead sick of it. You know backgammon ? Well, 
 we played that game every day for eight months. At last 
 Maguire up and said he could stand it no longer, he was going 
 a walk. I told him they would very likely stick him — and me 
 too. 
 
 " ' I can't help it,' says Maguire, ' I'm dying of indigestion, and 
 I'm going a walk.' 
 
 " Then he tried walking up and down, up and down, inside the 
 camp ; sometimes he went a bit out of the way ; but there were 
 always half a dozen of these infernal warriors hanging about 
 looking miscliief. Well, then Maguire takes a freak that he must 
 and will go and have a wash in the stream. He's rather particular 
 about his toilet, Maguire is, and he had a lot of tooth-brushes 
 and hair-brushes and nail-brushes and pomade and scent and 
 tooth-powder up at the kraal %\ith him. Well, he took a selection 
 of this baggage and sallied down to the stream followed by a 
 considerable part of the Matabele nation. Maguire is not a man 
 who loves publicity, but he is a bit of a philosopher, and nothing 
 could have been cooler or more deliberate than the way he 
 stripped, folded up his clothes on the bank, and took to the 
 water. Well, the Matabele nation looked on, commenting freely ; 
 but as he couldn't understand a word that didn't matter to him. 
 Presently Maguire produces a tooth-brush and a box of chalk, 
 and starts brushing his teeth. There they drew the line. A 
 man who puts strange things into his mouth, who foams at the 
 lips, and who turns the water to milk, he must be a ^mtagati, a 
 magician ! 
 
 " Yells of astonishment rent the air. A party went off to teU 
 the King, taking Maguire's paraphernalia, and, what is more. 
 Maguire's clothes ! I heard a great noise, and presently re-enter 
 Maguire wearing — well, wearing a hat. Half a dozen niggers 
 Avere hopping about in portions of his attire, and the King was 
 sitting, like an inquest, upon the brushes and bottles. 
 
 " ' What's this ? ' says the King, sni£fing cautiously at Maguire's 
 eau de Cologne, ' It stinks ! ' 
 
 " A Zulu — one of Ketch wayo's men — who had been among 
 white men in past times, was able to explain. 
 
 " ' King ! ' quoth he, ' the white men like the stink of that 
 bottle ! ' 
 
 " ' H'm ! ' says Lo Ben, ' that accounts for them smelling so 
 vilely ! '"
 
 " KING SOLOMON'S MINES " 257 
 
 " Did Mr. Maguire get back his treasures ? " I was inquisitive 
 enough to ask. 
 
 " One by one I managed to get them back for him by trading," 
 said Mr. Thompson, " here a rug and there a handkerchief. It 
 was a great nuisance ; but Maguire is so particular. The worst 
 of it is, that the very day after Maguire ' poisoned the river,' 
 Lobengula's mother died ; so there was the deuce to pay. Hap- 
 pily, the King's attachment to the deceased lady had limits." 
 
 " He is a truculent fellow, King Lobengula, by all accounts ? " 
 
 " I tell you he's deadly cruel. He will inflict torture or death 
 on the slightest pretext. I remember once," pursued Mr. 
 Thompson, meditatively, " when I was waiting for an audience, 
 listening to the monotonous abject chant which is kept up about 
 the King — I saw a man brought in who was guilty of having 
 drunk some of the King's beer. It was at the time of the great 
 dance, when for a month there is special licence, and when any 
 one carrying beer about is liable to have it raided. But this 
 man had levied toll on the King's beer, when it was being carried 
 by the King's women. The poor wretch was brought before the 
 King. He was horribly afraid. His eyes stuck out of his head, 
 and his knees knocked together as he tried to make obeisance. 
 The King bade them hold him fast, then he said, looking the 
 culprit up and doA;!! : 
 
 " ' You have a nose and a mouth, and two ears, and two eyes. 
 You have used your nose to smell King's beer — (turning to atten- 
 dants) — cut ofiF his nose ! ' 
 
 " They cut off the man's nose. 
 
 " ' You have used your mouth to drink King's beer : cut off 
 his mouth ! ' 
 
 " They cut off the man's lips. He was a horrid sight. Loben- 
 gula waited a moment. Then he said, deliberately : 
 
 " ' You have heard with your ears that it is not allowed to 
 drink King's beer ; but your ears are no good to you.' 
 
 " Off went the poor wretch's ears. He looked at the King 
 with a look dreadful to see. 
 
 " ' Your eyes — cover up his eyes ! ' shouted the King. ' Put 
 his forehead over his eyes that they may not see King's beer ! ' 
 and they cut the forehead of the man, and turned down the flap 
 of skin as a surgeon might turn it, so that it hung over his eyes. 
 
 " Then the King looked at the man for a few minutes, and the 
 man groveUed before him in the dung, until suddenly the King 
 fell into a rage — perhaps he was ashamed of himself — and bade 
 them beat the man with logs of wood. They beat him within
 
 258 APPENDIX III 
 
 an inch of his life. Last, the poor wretch mustered strength to 
 crawl away, like a broken snake, along the ground, and he went 
 and lay under a waggon until nightfall. Then he crept down 
 to the stream to bathe his wounds. He came close past my 
 waggon, and you never saw such a ghastly sight as he was. 
 The flap of skin hung over his eyes, but it was dried and 
 stark." 
 
 " Horrible ! And you and Mr. Maguire had to witness this 
 sort of thing ? " 
 
 " Ah ! but the worst was when Maguire was away on business, 
 and I was left alone. The ' Dogs ' worked upon the King, and 
 made Lobengula believe for a time that he had been tricked, 
 and that the document he had signed meant all kinds of things. 
 They inflamed an opposition party among the Matabele, and as 
 the popular excitement grew, the expressions of hostility towards 
 me became louder and more open. I waited anxiously day by 
 day to hear from Rhodes that he had got the Charter. One day, 
 before a big meeting of all the Matabele, I sat ten and a half hours 
 under a tropical sun answering a cross-examination by the King 
 and the ' Dogs.' However, somehow I rubbed along until the 
 two indunas came back with the letter from the Aborigines' 
 Protection Society. Then Lotchi was made the scapegoat ; 
 then heads and bodies began to lie about the camp — but you 
 have told that story. I went in fear of my life, daredn't stir 
 from my waggon, and slept by winks, revolver in hand. That 
 was a time I wouldn't go through again to be a millionaire twice 
 over," and as Mr. Thompson spoke there came a haggard look 
 across his face. " I thought every day I should have to die as 
 I saw my poor father die, in Zululand, after 'Sandhlwana, when 
 they burnt our homestead. . . . My God ! I saw them thrust 
 a ramrod down his throat, so that it twisted like a corkscrew, 
 and came out of his back on the left side. That scene came 
 back to me at Buluwayo." 
 
 " In the end you had to run — isn't that so ? " 
 
 " That is so. I had put horses to my waggon, when I saw 
 three black devils, fully armed, sneaking my way. I knew what 
 they wanted. I jumped down, cut the harness, and was off on 
 my best horse before you could say ' knife.' I rode for my life 
 down to Shoshong — you can see the distance on the map — with 
 neither food nor drink, and my tongue bursting out my throat. 
 I went back very soon after in triumph (but not alone), bearing 
 the news of the Charter. Lobengula chaffed me in his pecuhar 
 style about my abrupt departure, and then everything quieted
 
 " KING SOLOMON'S MINES " 259 
 
 down as nicely as could be, Lobengula taking his £100 every new 
 moon with great contentment. 
 
 " Then I left Matabeleland, never, I hope, to return. 
 
 " And that's the story," concluded Mr. Thompson, " of my 
 eighteen months with Lobengula." 
 
 " Is it all true ? " I asked Mr. Maguire, M.P., the next time I 
 saw him. 
 
 " Well — some of it," conceded that most good-tempered and 
 philosophic of Captain Goods. More I could hardly expect him 
 to concede.
 
 IV 
 
 NATIVES AND THE NEW CONSTITU- 
 TIONS: A PROPOSAL* 
 
 Question I. — How, in conferring Responsible Government on 
 the two new colonies, to do something towards the representation 
 of the natives, without prejudice to Article VIII. of the Vereeni- 
 ging Agreement or to the strong feeling of the white population 
 as a whole against anything like the (ostensibly colour-blind) 
 franchise of Cape Colony. 
 
 Question II. — How to prevent the practice of " hanging up " 
 colonial native legislation, as lately enforced by his Majesty's 
 Government for the protection of native interests, from deve- 
 loping into a colonial grievance and prejudicing both the merits 
 of the matter in dispute and the whole question of the Imperial 
 veto. 
 
 Section I. — Proposal : (a) To associate the two questions, and 
 meet both dangers together, by empowering the Governor of each 
 colony to assemble by methods partly of nomination, partly of 
 election, analogous to those in use under the Glen Grey Act, an 
 advisory Council of leading natives and experts in native affairs, 
 to assist him in forming his opinion on such Bills of the colonial 
 legislature as specially affect natives. 
 
 (6) To remit to the Governor thus assisted, in consultation 
 with his Ministers, the task of exercising, on the spot and at all 
 appropriate stages of the Bills, the mediating influence which is 
 at present exercised from Downing Street, necessarily at a less 
 plastic stage of the Acts in question and usually at the instance 
 of agencies or persons who are not in touch with South African 
 opinion nor responsible to any one in South Africa. 
 
 * For particulars of this memorandum, see above, p. 192. 
 260
 
 THE NATIVE QUESTION 261 
 
 (c) To make it constitutional practice that such Acts, when 
 reported by the Governor as embodying reasonable consideration 
 of his Native Council's views, should be no more liable to reserva- 
 tion of the royal assent than any other colonial legislation ; that 
 " hanging up " should be kept for cases where the Governor has 
 failed to secure such reasonable consideration, the veto receding 
 to its old place, for these as for other Acts, as a weapon of rare 
 and last resort. 
 
 Section II. — Further development of the proposed Native 
 Council : 
 
 So far, the Council would merely exist as an aid to the Governor 
 in the discharge of a part of his duties for which he is responsible 
 to the Imperial rather than to the Colonial Ministry.* The 
 Council once approved in action, the Colonial Legislature might 
 bo moved to give it a more definite constitutional status within 
 the colony. 
 
 (1) As an administrative authority over all districts proclaimed 
 under Acts analogous to the Glen Grey Act (compare position of 
 Transkei General Council, under Act No. 352 of 1894, Cape of 
 Good Hope). 
 
 (2) As a promoter of Bills for the consideration of the 
 Colonial Legislature on specific matters of native welfare, e.g., 
 education. 
 
 (3) Ultimately it might be possible also to extend by cautious 
 degrees the elective principle in the Council's composition. 
 
 Section III. — Note : 
 
 So far the suggestions for native representation have been 
 practically three : 
 
 (i) Franchise without colour-distinction as in Cape Colony. 
 (This is outside practical discussion — especially if the Transvaal 
 is to be given manhood suffrage.) 
 
 (ii) The Native Commission appointed by Lord Milner suggested 
 allocating a limited number of members to be returned to Parlia- 
 ment by native voters only, the rest being returned by Europeans 
 only. 
 
 (iii) A line of less resistance, so far as South African public 
 
 * To read a " High Commissioner " for " Governor " throughout, and 
 propose accordingly one Council for both Colonies, would meet an obvious line 
 of objection, bub would also sacrifice certain advantages as an inspirer of 
 compromises which the Governor would enjoy precisely by virtue of his double 
 responsibility.
 
 262 APPENDIX IV 
 
 opinion is concerned, would certainly be that of a nominee mixed 
 advisory council somewhat as above. It is submitted that 
 additional support would be gained by linking it, as here sug- 
 gested, with the removal of the veto grievance, while if developed 
 in the way sketched, such a scheme might weU ultimately act 
 more effectively for the satisfaction of legitimate native aspira- 
 tions than the Cape Colonial franchise, with all its drawbacks and 
 perhaps dangers, has done or will ever do.
 
 POLITICAL VERSE 
 FACTS AND THE BOSS * 
 
 With Apologies to Mr. Rudyard Kipling : see the " Times," Av^ust 1. 
 " And Joseph said unto them . . . Wot ye not that such a 
 man as I can certainly divine ? "—Genesis xUv. 15. 
 
 He, singly, grappled two-and-two. 
 
 And made it five, w^ith flouts and flings. 
 He proved that trade by taxes grew ; 
 That wealth consists of outgoings— 
 The export, not the goods it brings ; 
 
 And, these shut out, 'twere gain, not loss. 
 To live by mutual laundryings— 
 Once on a time, so spake a Boss. 
 
 He split a party through and through, 
 
 Till shocked Foundations t danced on springs, 
 And, all a league behind, he drew 
 Quite half a leader's soul in slings. 
 He filled the Press, he pulled the strings, ^ 
 
 He thwacked his own once-worshipped joss, 
 With Words he ran amuck at Things — 
 Once on a time, there was a Boss. 
 
 His figures one another slew ; 
 His argument full-circle swings. 
 
 * From the Spectator, August 6, 1904. 
 
 t " Foundations of Economic Doubt." A Pamphlet. By a Prune 
 
 Miniater. 
 
 263
 
 264 APPENDIX V 
 
 A tied-house Empire, stuck with glue, 
 He underpropped with tariff-rings. 
 No Briton he, who pronely clings 
 
 To truths long overgrown with moss, 
 Takes logic lying down, while sings 
 Tunes for the time a siren Boss. 
 The one-man fight against a " crew " 
 Is joy for bards, is sport for Kings ! 
 Though blown to vaunt a one-eyed view, 
 The one-note trumpet stirs and stings. 
 He'll sweep the polls ! A Gladstone brings, 
 
 A Bryan, fortune to the toss. 
 Sure of the pendulum. . . It swings — 
 And — once, ah ! once, there WAS a Boss ! 
 
 O ye ! — or may I write it " you " ? — 
 
 WTiose songs full oft an Empire sings. 
 Don't mix the tinsel with the true ! 
 
 Fly high, see clear, shake free your wings ! 
 Leave one-man cults to underlings ; 
 
 Rub clean your slate and write across : — 
 " Facts, in the end, are stubborn things ; 
 Once — for a time — there was a Boss ! "
 
 THE LOST LEADER* 
 
 Song written for the Tariff Reform League, upon reading Lord Londonderry's 
 speech claiming Mr. Balfour as an anti-ChaTnberlainite, and before they had 
 " shut the gates of Derry." 
 
 Just for a half-sheet of paper he left us, 
 
 Just for a quibble to catch at a vote ; 
 Straddled the split, till it widened and cleft us. 
 
 Balanced and trimmed till he foundered the boat. 
 They, the Free Fooders, will dole out their praises, 
 
 Hail the sage guide w^ho let others go first : 
 Ah ! had he rallied with us to the Standard, 
 
 How we had beaten the drum till it burst ! 
 We that had humoured him, worked with him, shirked with him. 
 
 Dotted his mild and ambiguous i's, 
 Learned up his lingo, pored o'er his pamphlets, 
 
 Sworn he w^as really our chief in disguise ! 
 Chaplin was of us, Hewins w^as for us. 
 
 Peel, Cobden, were done for — they turn in their graves ! 
 Now he climbs down from the van by the tailboard. 
 
 Smiles on the hustlers, but skulks with the slaves. 
 
 II 
 
 Leaflets will rain for us — not through his caucus ; 
 
 Speeches will gush for us — he will not spout ; 
 Seats Avill be lost, though, the more he may baulk us. 
 
 We shall be beaten, but — he will be out. 
 Write off his name ; add one more to the black-list, 
 
 One more Fiscal stampede, one more score to the foe, 
 
 ♦ From the Westminster Gazette, November 9, 1905. 
 265
 
 266 APPENDIX V 
 
 One more General Election and chance for the wobblers, 
 
 One more anguish for Jesse and insult to Joe. 
 Let him dissolve, not attempt to come back to us ! 
 
 There would be doubt, metaphysics, and fog ; 
 Forced praise on our part, the shuffle of Sheffield — 
 
 Not the glad squeal of the integral hog. 
 When we return to the House — what is left of us — 
 
 He shall be first in a sort of a sense : 
 Leader no longer, he yet may rejoin us. 
 
 Finding salvation, the first off the fence ! 
 
 Note. — The above is subject to all the obvious apologies of the parodist, 
 but above all to a profound apology to Mr. Balfour for seeming to assume that 
 he will not be able, in his forthcoming speech, once more so to define himself 
 that neither Lord Londonderry nor Mr. Austen Chamberlain, nor the party 
 will know whether he, they, or it stand on his, their, or its heels, or on our, 
 your, or anybody's heads respectively. — F. E. G. 
 
 The following piece is a skit of another kind.
 
 VI 
 
 MR. BLOGG ON MAXIM GORKY* 
 
 I can't pick up a magazine but it's cram-full of talky-talky 
 about a man (I'd never seen his name till lately) — Maxim Gorky. 
 I don't quite understand his game. His views are odd. His 
 style is jerky. Some knowing people write his name (I can't say 
 it improves it) Gorky. The wine of life seems mostly corky to 
 Gorky — or, if you like, the world seems murky to Gorky. His 
 heroes are unwashed and lank — claws, beak, the whole impression 
 hawky ; and if you've money at the bank he writes you down a 
 slave, does Gorky. Unless you're classified as " free " (which 
 means felonious and lurky) you're either sweater or sweatee in 
 the economy of Gorky. For while a tramp will loaf and walk 
 he charms Gorky, but if he takes to honest work he bores Gorky. 
 Beggars who'd ride must earn the horse. Why cannot liberty 
 and law kiss each other ?— take a middle course, neither financiers 
 nor Gorkys ? I make the £ s. d.I spend : am I on that account 
 a cur ? Qui s' excuse s'accuse : I don't defend myself ; merely 
 smile at Gorky. My choice between the cheese and chalk is not 
 Gorky's ; of two extremes I'd rather Yerkes than Gorky's. 
 Once Kipling wrote about a boy with the peculiar name of Stalky, 
 who broke all rules, and took no joy in cricket — quite a touch of 
 Gorky ; but in the end, however bad his form, however queer 
 and quirky, he turns out a sound British lad to quite another 
 tune than Gorky. Success is always smug and porky to Gorky, 
 and failure debonair and perky to Gorky. The Kailyard School 
 is soft as silk ; their humour's what the Scotch call pawky, their 
 pathos rather thick, and milk and water their whole tone, to 
 Gorky ; the dialect I find a bore ; they're kaily of the kail, and 
 kirky of the Scotch kirk — but all the four I'd get by heart before 
 
 * From the Westminster Oazette, November 17, 1902. 
 267
 
 268 APPENDIX VI 
 
 one Gorky. Yes ; read the lot — tres quatuorque — before Gorky, 
 and live the happier — ter quaterque — without Gorky ! I read a 
 page to Mrs. Blogg. She soon ejaculated " Lawky ! just fancy 
 meeting in a fog these free-and-easy folks of Gorky ! " " My 
 dear," I said, " I may be quick — may jump at things ex-pede- 
 Hercy — but, in plain language, I can't stick the sort of thing I 
 find in Gorky. So I shall turn my British door-key on Gorky, 
 and say to Russia — or to Turkey — ' Keep Gorky ! ' "
 
 VII 
 
 MEMOEIAL VERSE* 
 
 INSCRIPTIONS FOR STONES IN SOUTH 
 AFRICA t 
 
 Tell England, you that pass our monument, 
 Men who died serving Her rest here, content. t 
 
 II 
 
 Together, sundered once by blood and speech, 
 Joined here in equal muster of the brave. 
 Lie Boer and Briton, foes each worthy each : 
 May peace strike root into their common grave, 
 And blossoming where the fathers fought and died. 
 Bear fruit for sons that labour side by side. 
 
 * The verses, printed on pp. 269-272, with two other pieces, were collected 
 in the African World Annual, December 8, 1905. For this collection Garrett 
 wrote an introductory essay, entitled " Sermons in Stones." " Each of these 
 little pieces," he said, " was a messenger sent out to carry a message, rolled 
 up small and compact, like the messages people send by carrier-pigeon, but 
 just as clear and full of meaning as the sender-out could make it." 
 
 t Printed in the Monthly Review, April 1902 ; see above, p. 186. 
 
 J After Simonides of Ceos. 
 
 269
 
 THE LAST TREK* 
 
 Lines written for the funeral progress of Paul Kruger through Cape Town, on 
 the way to burial at Pretoria, December 16, 1904. The funeral of C. J. Rhodes 
 passed through the same streets, April 3, 1902. 
 
 Who comes, to sob of slow-breathed guns borne past 
 In solemn pageant ? This is he that threw 
 Challenge to England. From the veld he drew 
 
 A strength that bade her sea-strength pause, aghast. 
 Before the bastions vast 
 And infinite redoubts of the Karoo. 
 
 " Pass, friend ! " who living were so stout a foe, 
 Unquelled, unwon, not uncommiserate ! 
 The British sentry at Van Riebeck's gate 
 
 Salutes you, and as once three years ago 
 The crowd moves hushed and slow. 
 And silence holds the city desolate. 
 
 The long last trek begins. Now something thrills 
 Our English hearts, that, unconfessed and dim. 
 Drew Dutch hearts north, that April day, with him 
 
 Whose grave is hewn in the eternal hills. 
 
 The war of these two wills 
 
 Was as the warring of the Anakim. 
 
 What might have been, had these two been at one ? 
 Or had the wise old peasant, wiser yet. 
 Taught strength to mate with freedom and beget 
 
 The true republic, nor, till sands had run, 
 Gripped close as Bible and gun 
 The keys of power, like some fond amulet ? 
 
 * From the Spectator, December 10, ] 904. 
 270
 
 THE LAST TREK 271 
 
 He called to God for storm ; and on his head — 
 
 Alas ! not his alone — the thunders fell. 
 
 But not by his own text, who ill could spell, 
 Nor in our shallow scales shall he be weighed, 
 Whose dust, lapped round with lead. 
 
 To shrill debate lies inaccessible. 
 
 Bred up to beard the lion, youth and man 
 He towered the great chief of a little folk ; 
 Till, once, the scarred old hunter missed his stroke, 
 
 And by the blue Mediterranean 
 
 Pined for some brackish 'pan 
 
 Far south, self-exiled, till the tired heart broke. 
 
 So ends the feud. Death gives for those cold lips 
 Our password. Home, then ! by the northward way 
 He trod with heroes of the trek, when they 
 
 On seas of desert launched their w^aggon-ships. 
 The dream new worlds eclipse 
 
 Yet shed a glory through their narrower day. 
 
 Bear home your dead ; nor from our wTcaths recoil, 
 Sad Boers ; like some rough foster-sire shall he 
 Be honoured by our sons, co-heirs made free 
 
 Of Africa, like yours, by blood and toil. 
 And proud that British soil. 
 Which bore, received him back in obsequy.
 
 IN MEMORIAM F. W. R * 
 
 Dalham Churchyard, Friday, October 27. 
 
 So here the long adventure ends. 
 
 Gay, gallant life, so oft at stake, 
 Danger and you seemed such old friends 
 
 We had learned to mock it for your sake. 
 
 When the great die, like yours who sleeps 
 Among the granite hills, there seems 
 
 Some fitness : Death's pageant keeps 
 The heroic stature of their dreams. 
 
 But you, compact of happier dust, 
 You were so bright, so boyish-brave. 
 
 So kind, sane, wholesome — needs we must 
 Grudge aught so life-warm to the grave ! 
 
 So light a touch, so true a grip ; 
 
 A " frolic welcome " for mischance ; 
 A heart of perfect comradeship, 
 
 Knightly as ever couched a lance. 
 
 Long travel in this churchyard ends. . . . 
 
 A Gentleman who knew not fear, 
 A Soldier, Sportsman, prince of Friends, 
 
 A Man men could but love, lies here. 
 
 * From the Westminster Gazette, October 27, 1905. Also printed in " Frank 
 Rhodes : a Memoir," by G. T. Hutchinson (printed for private circulation only) ; 
 1908. 
 
 272
 
 A MILLIONAIRE'S EPITAPH* 
 
 He gave by stealth, nor rose a new-made knight. 
 He worked for England, to be dubbed " Herr Beit." 
 The friend he loved, he served through good and ill ; 
 The man struck down, he served the memory still ; 
 Nor, toiling, asked more recompense of fame 
 Than to be coupled with another's name. 
 Thus, in despite of that hard Scripture which 
 Shuts up the poor man's heaven against the rich, 
 Devotion learned from Dives to be true, 
 And Britons to be patriots from a Jew : 
 A monument which envy cannot shake. 
 Which millions never made, nor can unmake. 
 
 * From the Westminster Gazette, July 20, 1906. 
 
 273
 
 WHERE SHALL ENGLAND FIND 
 HER OWN ? 
 
 Where shall England find her own ? 
 
 The desert-places are her sanctuaries ; 
 
 The five lands and the seven seas 
 Shall answer for her when the trump is blown. 
 
 Some with neither shroud nor stone 
 Lie solitary, or by twos and threes ; 
 Their thought was not of obsequies 
 
 Nor asked they if the sacrifice were known. 
 
 Some in serried ranks lie strown ; 
 
 But with her patient eyes the sower sees 
 
 The slow, maturing centuries 
 Whiten to harvest where that seed was sown. 
 
 The parching veld, immense and lone, 
 Low graves among the lean acacia trees ; 
 Yet England shall remember these 
 
 In that day when she numbers up her own. 
 
 274
 
 LIST OF BOOKS 
 
 BY 
 
 EDMUND GARRETT 
 
 Published 
 
 1887. Rhymes and Renderings. [By F. E. G. and others.] 
 Cambridge : Macmillan and Bowes. 
 
 1891. In Afrikanderland and the Land of Ophir : being Notes 
 and Sketches in Political, Social and Financial South 
 Africa. Pall Mall Gazette " Extra," No. 58. Second 
 edition in the same year. 
 
 1894. Brand : a Dramatic Poem, by Henrik Ibsen. Translated 
 
 into English Verse in the Original Metres. T. Fisher 
 Vnwin. 
 
 1895. Isis Very Much Unveiled : the Story of the Great Mahatma 
 
 Hoax. Westminster Gazette Library, vol. ii. 
 Second and third editions in the same year. 
 
 1897. The Story of an African Crisis : being the Truth about the 
 Jameson Raid and Johannesburg Revolt of 1896, told 
 with the assistance of the Leading Actors in the Drama. 
 By Edmund Garrett and E. J. Edwards. A. Constable 
 and Co. 
 
 1905. " Rhodes and Milner." A Chapter in The Empire and 
 the Century : a Series of Essays on Imperial Problems 
 and Possibilities, with an Introduction by C. S. Gold- 
 man. John Murray. 
 
 275
 
 INDEX 
 
 Aborigines' Protection Society, 36, 
 
 101, 258 
 Addison, quoted, 190 
 African World Annual, F. E. G.'s 
 
 Memorial Verses in, 269 
 Afrikander, Afrikanders : meaning 
 
 of the word, 27 ; " Tiie Afrikander 
 
 at Home," 27-30 ; attitude of, 
 
 towards the natives, 97-8 
 H. M. S. Afrikander, 104 seq. — See 
 
 also Imperial Defence 
 "Africa for the Afrikander," 150 
 Afrikander Bond, 25, 27, 109, 171 
 Albury, ISO 
 
 Amajuba Hill, 202, 201, 238 
 Amatongaland, 206 ; annexation of, 
 
 92 
 Aristotle, quoted by Rhodes, 227 
 Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H., 190, 248 
 
 Badley, J. H., 60; marriage to 
 F. E. G.'s sister at Nordrach, 63-5 ; 
 reminiscences of F. E. G., at Cam- 
 brids^e, 10-13, in Norway, 47, 72; at 
 Bedales, 69 ; F. E. G.'s friendship, 
 49, 159, answer to " Is Life Worth 
 Living?", 196-7; letters to, 20, 
 22, 38, 48, 52-4, 56-8, 187 
 
 Badley, Mrs. — See Garrett, Miss Amy 
 
 Baker, Herbert, 128 ; letter to, 
 156 
 
 Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., 189, 191, 
 265 
 
 Ballarat, 32 
 
 Barnato, B., 238 
 
 Bechuanaland, 91, 110 
 
 Bedales School, 63, 68-9 
 
 Beit, A., Memorial verses on, 273 
 
 Besant, Mrs. Annie, 73 
 
 Birds, 174, 181 
 
 Blavatsky, Madame, 73 
 
 Bloemfontein Conference (1899), 155, 
 156 
 
 " Boer," 27 
 
 Booth, General, 18 
 
 Bower, Sir Graham, 113 
 
 Brand, President, 36 
 
 British South African Company, 23 w, 
 
 126, 202, 206, 241 
 Browning, Oscar, 13 
 Browning, Robert, quoted, 4, 89, 115 
 
 191, 250 ; parody, 267 
 Burnham, F. R., 80 
 
 Cairo, as the Spirit of the East, 57 
 
 Calverley, C. S.. 18 
 
 Cambridge, F. E. G., at, 10-13 ; his 
 C. friends, 180 
 
 Cape Colony : political questions in 
 (1889-90), 27-80 ; position of 
 Natives in, 98, 100-1 ; local 
 questions (1895 seq.), 87-8 ; the 
 Drifts crisis (1895), 109-10 ; British 
 Bechuanaland annexed to (1895), 
 110; contribution to the Imperial 
 Navy, 103-6 ; political situation in, 
 after the Raid, 133 seq. ; food taxes 
 in, 137-8 ; redistribution in, 139, 
 141, 145 ; elections in (1898), 141, 
 145 ; as health resort, 36, 83 ; old 
 buildings of, 88 
 
 Cape Dutch (language), 34 
 
 Cape "of Good Hope," 22, 36 
 
 " Cape to Cairo," 137, 150, 223-4, 240 
 
 Cape Times, F. E. G. appointed editor, 
 81 ; F. Y. St. Leger on the appoint- 
 ment, 86 n ; his editorship, 82 seq. 
 {see under " Garrett ") ; cartoons in, 
 149 ; F. E. G. resigns editorship, 
 169 ; F. E. G.'s writings in {see 
 under "Garrett ") 
 
 Cape Town, cathedral, 88 ; local 
 questions at, 88 
 
 Carnarvon, Lord, 27, 32 
 
 Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. Joseph : ulti- 
 matum on the Drifts question, 109 ; 
 negotiations with President Kruger 
 after the Raid, 125 ; F. E. G. sees 
 (1897), 151 ; Colonial Preference, 
 187-8 ; Kipling's eulogy of, 191 
 263 
 
 Clough, A. H., quoted, 35 
 
 Contemporary Review, F. E. G.'s con- 
 tributions to, 159, 165, 168, 228 
 
 277
 
 278 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cook, E. T., letters to, 120, 124, 160, 
 188, 189, 190 ; offers assistant- 
 editorship of Pall Mall to F. E. G., 
 37 ; reminiscences of F. E. G. on 
 PaU Mall, 7, 37 ; at N ordrach, 65-6 ; 
 on Westminster, 74 
 
 Crawford, Marion, 3[r. Isaacs, 98 
 
 Cromer, Lord, 58, 59 n ; F. E. G. sees 
 (1892), 59-60 
 
 Customs Union, in South Africa 
 188, 206, 207, 212, 217, 225 
 
 Daily Ke^vs, 126 91, 165 
 
 " Damping the Trek," 206, 211 
 
 Davies, Major Karri, 124, 172 
 
 Davitt, Michael, 44 
 
 De Beers Company, 226, 239, 241, 
 
 244 n 
 Delagoa Bay, 106, 213 
 Delane, J. T., 119, 133 
 Diamond smuggling, 81 
 Dickinson, G. Lowes, 44 
 Drifts question, 108-110 
 
 "Eagle's Nest," The, 39, 128 
 East Anglian Sanatorium, 167 ; Maga- 
 zine, 174 
 Eastbourne — See Salvation Army 
 Egypt, F. E. G. in, 56-60 
 Elandslaagte, 186 
 Ellis, Havelock, Man and Woman, 77 
 
 Fakeae, Sir George, 122, 189 
 
 Faure, Sir P., 130 
 
 Fawcett, Mrs. Henry, F. E. G.'s 
 
 cousin, 6 ; letters to, 129, 147, 
 
 187 
 Fawcett, Miss Philippa, 8 
 Firman crisis, the (1892), 58 
 FitzPatrick, Sir Percy, anecdote of, 
 
 172 n ; visits F. E. G. in England, 
 
 172, 186 ; Jock of the Bushveld, 184 ; 
 
 speech at Johannesburg (1907), 
 
 140 71 ; on F. E. G., 184 ; letters 
 
 to, 189, 194 
 Food Duties, 224-5 
 France, Anatole, 185 
 Free Trade, 137. 187 
 Frere, Sir Bartle, 155 
 Froude, J. A., 27 
 
 Gaeeett, Miss Agnes, care for 
 F. E. G., 5, 6 ; his dedication of his 
 version of Brand to her, 7 n ; letters 
 to, V, 8, 19, 61, 63, 72, 104-5, 105-6, 
 113-4, 130, 130-1, 138, 142, 161, 162, 
 168, 181, 191 
 
 Garrett, Miss Amy (Mrs. Badley), 
 F. E. G.'s sister, 21, 48, 60, 63, 
 68 
 
 Garrett, Fydell Edmund: 
 biography : 
 parentage, 5 ; childhood, 5-6 ; 
 school days at Rossall, 7-10 ; at 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, 10-13 ; 
 joins the Pall Mall Gazette, 16 ; 
 rescue work, 18 ; writes Parlia- 
 mentary summaries, 19 ; reports 
 Parnell Commission, 19 ; attack of 
 pleurisy, 20 ; phthisis suspected, 20 ; 
 sent as " Special Commissioner " to 
 South Africa, 21 seq. ; interviews 
 President Kruger (Jan. 1890), 31 ; 
 returns to England in improved 
 health, 36 ; appointed assistant- 
 editor of the Pall Mall, 37 ; mis- 
 cellaneous work for the paper, 37- 
 42 ; home-life at Museum Cham- 
 bers, 43-7 ; holidays in Norway 
 (1888, 18S9), 47 ; in Switzerland 
 (1891), 49-50 ; accompanied Mr. 
 Charles Money to Eastbourne to 
 protect the Salvation " lasses," 
 50-4 ; illness (1891), 55 ; winters in 
 Egypt, 56-60; goes for a "cure" 
 toNordrach (1892-3), 60 se?. ; settles 
 in London (spring 1893), 58 ; visits 
 to Bedales School, 68-9 ; translates 
 Ibsen's Brand, 69-71 ; holiday in 
 Norway (Aug. 1894), 71-2 ; writes 
 Isis Very Much Unveiled, 72-4 ; 
 miscellaneous work for the West- 
 minster Gazette (1893-5), 74-81 ; 
 appointed editor of the Cajye Timex 
 (April 1895), 81 ; agreement and 
 salary, 85-7 ; interest in local Cape 
 questions, 87-90 ; tributes to his 
 conduct of the paper, 90 ; attitude 
 on South African questions, 91 seq. ; 
 interviews President Kruger (July 
 1895), 93,209 ; advocates Cape con- 
 tribution to the Navy, 103 ; un- 
 aware of preparations for the Raid, 
 111 ; the night en Dec. 30, 1895, 
 113-4 ; attitude of the Raid, 141 
 seq. ; secures alteration in the High 
 Commissioner's proclamation, 117 ; 
 sends telegram to Johannesburg 
 Star, 116-9 ; relations with Cecil 
 Rhodes, 119 ; seeks to make Rhodes 
 " face the music," 120 ; promotes 
 petition for release of Dr. Jameson, 
 121 ; attends trial of Johannesburg 
 reformers, 122, 172 «; promotes 
 Amnesty movement, 123-4 ; calls 
 daily attention to imprisonment of 
 Sampson and Davies, 123 ?j ; dep- 
 recates Chamberlain's pressure on 
 Transvaal, 125-6 ; tribute to his 
 conduct of the paper during critical 
 times, 127 ; relations with his staff
 
 INDEX 
 
 279 
 
 126 n, 127; private life at Cape 
 Town, 127-9 ; a riding club, 129- 
 30 ; " intoxicated with betterness," 
 129, 130 ; advocates resumption of 
 political leadership by Rhodes, 134- 
 7, as head of a Progressive jjarty, 
 137 seq. ; promotes Cheap Food 
 Conference, 138 ; holiday in Eng- 
 land (Jan. 1897), 138 ; sees Chamber- 
 lain, 151 ; relations with Sir Alfred 
 (Lord) Milner, 151-2; "educates" 
 Khodes to be a Progressive, 135, 
 139-142 ; contests Victoria East 
 (1898), 142-4 ; elected, 145 ; maiden 
 speech in the House of Assembly, 
 145-6 ; speech on despatch of arms 
 through Cape ports, 146 ; secures 
 enlargement of a Police Offences 
 Act, 147; extra - Parliamentary 
 speeches, 148-50 ; attitude on South 
 African Affairs (1897-9), 151 ^eq. ; 
 recommended for official employ- 
 ment, 157 ; serious illness (Aug. 
 1899), 156, 159 ; writes on " The 
 Inevitable in South Africa " (Oct. 
 1899), 159; returns to England, 
 159 ; goes for a second cure to 
 Nordrach (1899-1900), 160 ; anti- 
 British feeling there, 161, 163; 
 •writes letters and articles on South 
 African War, 165 ; goes to the 
 Walchensee, 165; returns to Eng- 
 land, and goes to the East Anglian 
 Sanatorium, 167 ; his life despaired 
 of, recovery, 168 ; abandonment of 
 plans and schemes, 169 ; resigns seat 
 in Cape Parliament, farewell ad- 
 dress to his constituents (Aug. 
 1902), 169-71, 174 ; life in the 
 Sanatorium, 171 seq. ; in Hamp- 
 shire, 178 ; consults London doctor 
 and is given but six months to live, 
 179; marries (March 1903), 177, 
 179 ; partial recovery of health, 
 180 ; winters in Cornwall (1903-4), 
 180 ; life there, 181 seq. ; literary 
 translations, 185 ; favourite read- 
 ings, 185-6 ; visits from friends, 
 HQseq. ; political verse, 191 ; essays 
 &c. on South African questions, 
 191-4 ; last illness, and death (May 
 10, 1907), 194 ; memorials, 195-6 ; 
 epitaphs, 4, 195 
 haracteristics, c&c. : 
 as invalid, 186-7 ; assurance, 30-1, 
 38 ; candour and sympathy, 161 n ; 
 casual habits, 45 ; cheerfulness, 
 166, 173 ; chivalry, 18 ; concep- 
 tion of journalism, 30, 82-7; 
 conversation, 11, 30, 44-5, 65-6; 
 courage and unflagging interest, 
 
 159, 160; a favourite saying (" any 
 fool can play a winning game "), 
 4, 124-5, 162; a fighter, 73-4, 
 150-1 ; fondness for birds, dogs, 
 &c., 183; friendship, 46, 49, 68; 
 gaiety and high spirits, 37, 128 ; 
 humour, 46 ; independence, 85 ; in- 
 domitable spirit, 171 ; interest in 
 Women's Rights, &c., 6 ; journal- 
 istic work, 127 ; personal appear- 
 ance, 10, 40 n, 148-9 ; "Rabelaisian 
 humour," 11 ; style, 37 ; talent 
 for drawing, 7, 10, 11 ; zest, 69, 
 187 
 letters to : 
 J. H. Badley, 20, 22, 38, 48, 52-4, 
 
 56-8, 187 
 Herbert Baker, 156 
 E. T. Cook, 120, 124, 160, 188, 189 
 
 190 
 Mrs. Fawcett, 129, 147, 187 
 Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, 189, 194 
 A friend on the death of his son, 
 
 190 
 Miss Agnes Garrett, 8, 19, 61, 63, 
 72, 104-5, 105-6, 113-4, 127, 130, 
 130-1, 138, 142, 161, 162, 168, 
 181, 191 
 Miss Ellen Marriage (Mrs. Edmund 
 
 Garrett), 174, 175, 178, 17S-9 
 C. L. Money, 54, 157 
 J. J. Withers, 47 
 writings : 
 {a) books : list of, 285 ; translation 
 of Brand, extract from Preface, 
 70, estimate of the translation, 
 70-1, various references, 7 n, 47, 
 69,71 
 
 In Afrihanderland, publication 
 of, 22 ; extracts from, on " Cape 
 of Good Hope," 22, the voyage to 
 Cape Town, 25, the Kimberley 
 Mail, 26, the Afrikander at Home, 
 27, Cecil Rhodes as "common 
 denominator," 34,"alles zal regt 
 Komen," 34-6, the Native Ques- 
 tion, 95-103, "Com Paul at 
 Home," 30, 201-8, the True Ro- 
 mance of King Solomon's Mines, 
 251-9 
 
 Isis Very Much Unveiled, publica- 
 tion and occasion of, 72-3, letter 
 from a reader of, 74 
 Rhymes and Renderings, 13 ; 
 pieces from, 13, 14 
 The Story of an African Crisis, 
 publication of, 115 ; extracts 
 from the preface, 113, on — Sir 
 Hercules Robinson's Proclama- 
 tion, 117-8, Amnesty movement, 
 123-4
 
 280 
 
 INDEX 
 
 (6) contributions to periodicals : 
 
 A Candidate's Jottings (Cape Times), 
 142-4 
 
 A Day with Nubar Pasha West- 
 minster), 59 
 
 A Diplomatic Comedy : the Rtory 
 of the Finance Crisis, 1892 
 (P.M.Q.), 58 
 
 A Plain Talk with Oom Paul {Cape 
 Times), 31, 93,209-221 
 
 A Sursum Corda in Stone {Cape 
 limes), 88 
 
 Editorial Independence, June 25, 
 1895 {Cape Times), 86 
 
 " Gladstoniana " {Cape Times), 9, 43 
 
 Going in for Journalism {Rossal- 
 llan), 16 n 
 
 Have Papers souls ? ( Cape Times), 
 83-4 
 
 Interview with Charles L. Money 
 {P.M.G.), 50-2 
 
 Interview with Sir Edward Poynter 
 P.M.G.), 39-40 
 
 Interview with Rhodes, March 
 1898 {Cape Times), 139, 222-7 
 
 John Bull as Afrikander, Nov. 1895 
 {Cape Times), 110-1 
 
 Lions in their Dens (P.M.G.), 89 
 
 Man and Woman : a review ( West- 
 minster), 77 
 
 May men eat Macaroons ? ( West- 
 minster), 76 
 
 Sir Alfred Milner and his Work 
 {Contemporary), 165; extracts 
 from, 109-10, 165 
 
 Lord Milner and the Struggle for 
 South African Union : a" Retro- 
 spect, 1897-1905 {Empire and the 
 Century, and National Review), 
 extracts from, 153-5 
 
 Mr. Rhodes's "Big Idea," Oct. 26, 
 
 1898 {Cape Times), 136-7 
 Rhodes : a Character-Sketch {Con- 
 temporary), 168, 228-250 
 
 Mr. Rhodes's Return, Dec. 5, 1896 
 {Cape Times), 135-6 
 
 Colonel Frank Rhodes {Outlook), 
 172-3 ;j 
 
 The Boer in the Saddle {Standard), 
 193, 194 
 
 The Imperial Institute {West- 
 minster), 78-9 
 
 The Inevitable in South Africa ( Con- 
 temporary), 159, 160 w, 172 rt 
 
 The Native Question {Cape Times), 
 102-3 
 
 The Salvation Army {P. 31. G.),17 
 
 The South African Situation, May 
 
 1899 {Cape Times), 152 
 
 To All Afrikanders, Dec. 31, 1895 
 {Cape 'Times), 114,116, 117 
 
 Unity or Disunion, Aug. 1895 {Cape 
 Times), 107-8 
 
 Minor references to articles in the 
 Cape Times, 120 bis, 137 
 
 Minor references to articles in the 
 Pall Mall, 39, 41 
 
 Minor references to articles in 
 Westminster, 69, 80 «, 184-5, 185, 
 192, 194 /i 
 verses : 
 
 A Millionaire's Epitaph {Westmin' 
 ster), 273 
 
 A Song at Launching ( Westminster)^ 
 68,75, 82, 157 
 
 A Woman Doctor, 167 
 
 "Ballad A La Mode," 13 
 
 *' Exiles the derelict of fate," 56 
 
 Facts and the Boss {Spectator), 191, 
 263 
 
 In Memorian F. W. R. {Westmin- 
 ster), 190, 272 
 
 " In my Radical Days," 75 
 
 Inscriptions for Stones in South 
 Africa {Montldy Eevieio), 269 
 
 Off Duty {Outlooli), 151 « 
 
 Mr. Blogg on Maxim Gorky {West- 
 minster), 267 
 
 "O Dullard Souls," 14 
 
 " Old friend, recall the open road," 
 3 
 
 The Dog, 183 
 
 The Last Trek {Spectator), 270 
 
 The Lost Leader ( Westminster), 189, 
 265 
 
 To Heliodore (from the Greek 
 Anthology), 13 
 
 "To Soria-Moria Castle " : transla- 
 tion from Ibsen's Peer Gynt 
 {Independent Revieic), 185 
 
 Translations of Ibsen's Lyrics ( West- 
 minster), 185 
 
 " Where e'er I fall," 195 
 
 "Where shall England find her 
 own," 274 
 Garrett, Mrs. F. E. (Miss Ellen Mar- 
 riage), meets F. E. G. at East 
 
 Anglian Sanatorium, reminiscences, 
 
 173-5 ; marries (March 26, 1903), 
 
 177-9 ; a " Vita Nuova," 179-80 ; 
 
 various references, 183 ; letters to, 
 
 174, 175, 178, 178-9 
 Garrett, Miss Elsie, F. E. G.'s sister, 62 
 Garrett, Rev. J. Fydell, 5 
 Garrett, Miss Rboda, 5, 6, 8 
 German Emperor's telegram to Presi- 
 dent Kruger, 121 ; Germany and 
 
 the Transvaal, 215 
 Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., 232; 
 
 speech on the Affirmation Bill, 9 ; 
 
 F. E. G.'s interview with, during 
 
 the Parnell Crisis, 42-8
 
 INDEX 
 
 281 
 
 Glen Grey Act, 91, 225, 260, 261 
 
 Goosequill Club, 13 
 
 Gordon, General, 150, 242 
 
 Gorky, Maxim, " Mr. Blogg" on, 267 
 
 Gorst, Kt. Hon. Sir J. E., F. E. G.'s 
 
 interview with, 75 
 Gothenburg System, 72 
 Greenwood, Frederick, 84, 86, IBS 
 Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward, 188 
 Grey, Sir George, 81 74 
 Groote Scbuur, 222, 228, 229, 230, 231 
 Gungunyana, King, 41 
 
 Haggard, H. Eider, 251 
 
 Hammond, John Hay, 122 
 
 Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir William, on 
 Rhodes, 138 
 
 Harris, Dr. Rutherfoord, 85 
 
 Helm, Mr., 253 
 
 Helouan, 56 
 
 Hofmeyr, Jan : andSirHerculesRobin- 
 son's Proclamation, 117 ; as "the 
 Mole," 137, 146 ; F. E. G.'s relations 
 with, 111, 113, 122, 126, 234 ; on the 
 German Emperor's telegram, 122 ; 
 Rhodes's relations with, 24, 81, 227, 
 234 
 
 "Home Rule for the Rand," 125 
 
 Ibsen, F. E. G.'s interest in, 39, 47 ; 
 his translations from : — Brand, 47, 
 69-70, 185 ; Lyrics, 185 ; Peer 
 Gynt, 185 
 
 Imperial Defence, F. E. G. urges 
 unconditional contribution from 
 Cape to Navy, 103-4, in relation to 
 schemes of Imperial Defence, 106 
 
 Imperial Institute, 77-86 
 
 Imperial Light Horse, 121, 169 
 
 Independent Review, F. E. G.'s contri- 
 bution to, 185 
 
 Inscriptions for graves in South 
 Africa, 186 
 
 liis Very JIuch Unveiled, 73 
 
 James, Rev. Dr. H. A., 7 
 
 Jameson, Dr., 230, 235; the Raid, 
 113, 114, 115, 120 ; release of, 121 
 
 Johannesburg, Chamber of Mines 
 founded, 23 n ; political feeling at, 
 32 ; the Flag Incident (March 
 1890), 33 (see also Uitlanders) 
 
 Johnston, Sir H. H., 239 
 
 Joubert, General, 202, 205, 206, 210 
 
 Journalism : as a profession, Carlyle 
 on, 15 ; its variety, 19 ; the art of 
 interviewing, 31, 139-140, 140 « ; 
 composite leading articles, 41, 76n ; 
 " leader titles," 41 ; the descriptive 
 article, 17 ; digests of blue-books, 
 80 n ; editor and 31. P., 132-3 ; 
 
 F. E. G.'s hints to aspirants, 16 n ; 
 initiative and credit, 105; journa- 
 lists as amateur-diploraalists, 30-1, 
 217 ; needfor rapid judgment, 114 ; 
 political influence of, 134 ; theories 
 of, discussed : — party-allegiance, 
 82-3 ; echo or voice ? 84 ; should 
 editors write ? 84 ; editors and 
 proprietors, 84-7 
 Jowett, Rev. Benjamin, 166 
 
 Kaiser-Kommers, 215 
 
 Khama, 111 
 
 " King Solomon's Mines," The True 
 Romance of, 26, 251 
 
 Kipling, Rudyard, F. E. G.'s skit on, 
 38-9 ; regard for, and friendship 
 with, 39, 128, 185-6 ; quoted, 167 ; 
 parody, 191, 265 
 
 Kosi Bay, 213 
 
 Kruger, President, F. E. G.'s inter- 
 view with :— (1890) 31, 201, (1895) 
 93 ; desire for a sea-port, 106, 206, 
 211 ; German intrigues, 92, 107, 
 214-6 ; policy of (1889), 24, 30 ; 
 (1890-5), 92 ; on— Amajuba, 261, 
 banquets, 214, newspapers, 203-4, 
 Swaziland, 32, 92, 204, 205 seq.-, per- 
 sonal appearance, 203, 207, 210 ; 
 sayings : " each hand must wash 
 the other," 205, 210, " the tortoise's 
 head," 112 ; memorial verses on, 270 
 
 Labouchere, Rt. Hon. Henry, on 
 Rhodes, 237 
 
 Land of Ophir, 23, 251 
 
 Lanyonism, 35 
 
 Lee, Miss Marion, 39 
 
 Lehmann, Dr. Hope, 62, 165 
 
 Liberal Colonial Club. 190 
 
 Liberal Imperialists, 188 
 
 " Linesman," in the Cornhill Maga- 
 zine, 185 
 
 Linton, Mrs. Lynn, 77 
 
 Livingstone, 120 
 
 Lobengula : succeeds Moselekatze 
 (1870), 251 ; raids against Mashonas 
 and Makalaka, 252 ; cruelty of, 257 ; 
 and the Rudd Concession, 253 ; life 
 at the court of, 26, 251 seq. ; per- 
 sonal appearance, 254 
 
 Loch, Lord, SO, 92, 93 
 
 MackAil, J, W., 185 n 
 Macdonald, Sir John, 244 
 Mackenzie, Rev. John, 23 n, 239, 246 
 Magjuire, J. Rochfort, 253 ; at the 
 
 Court of King Lobengula, 254, as 
 
 miracle-worker, 256 
 Mahatmas, 73 
 Majuba — See Amajuba 
 Maltings Farm. 167, 168
 
 282 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Manchester Guardian, article on 
 F. E. G.'s " Native Question," 192 n 
 
 Marillier, H. C, 48 
 
 Marriage, Miss Ellen — See Garrett, 
 Mrs. F. E. 
 
 Marvell, Andrew, 46 n 
 
 Matabele, Matabeleland : trek to the 
 north, 251 ; concession of mining 
 rights to Rudd, Maguire & Thomp- 
 son (October 1888), story of, 253 ; 
 pioneer expedition of B.S.A. Co. 
 under Colonel Pennefather (June 
 1890), 252-3 ; and President Kruger, 
 206; war (1893), 80, 91 ; rebellion 
 (1896), 232 
 
 Matjahas, 252 
 
 Makalaka, 252 
 
 Mashonas, 252 
 
 Meredith, George, 51 
 
 Merimee, Prosper, 185 
 
 Merriman, J. X., 125 
 
 Milner, Alfred ("Viscount): on F.E.G.'s 
 first article in the Pall Mall, 17 ; 
 meets F. E. G. in Egypt, 60 ; suc- 
 ceeds Lord Rosmead as High Com- 
 missioner in South Africa, 151 ; 
 Rhodes on, 152, 165 ; relations 
 with F. E. G., 151, 152 ; F. E. G. 
 on his policy, 151 n, 153-5 ; letter 
 to F. E. G. on his breakdown, 158 ; 
 visits F. E. G. in England, 173 ; 
 sayings of, quoted, 92, 169, 173 
 
 Milton, Sir W., 127 
 
 Moffat, Rev. J. S., on Rhodes, 136 
 
 Money, Charles L., 50-4 ; letters to, 
 54, 157 
 
 Morley, Rt. Hon. J. (Viscount), 84, 
 133 
 
 Mugwumps, 133, 140-1, 140 n, 194 
 
 Muizenburg, 8, 128 
 
 Murray, Professor Gilbert, 185 n 
 
 Museum Chambers, 43, 47 
 
 Natal, 213, 217, 225 
 
 National Liberal Club, 43, 46 ; in an 
 East End melodrama, 75 
 
 Native question, discussion of, 94-103, 
 191-3 ; education, 87-8, 99 ; fran- 
 chise, 100 ; non-interference, 101 ; 
 social position, 98, 102 
 
 " Natives and the New Constitution," 
 192, 260-2 
 
 Navy, F. E. G., suggests Cape contri- 
 bution to, 104 ; history of the 
 movement, 103-5, 104 n ; principles 
 of his proposal, 105-6 ; ulterior 
 purposes, 106-7 
 
 Netherlands Railway Company, 108 
 
 Newnes, Sir George, 66 
 
 Nordrach, 60, 160 
 
 Nubar Pasha, 58-9 
 
 Oma, 217 
 
 One Vote, One Value, 41, 193 
 
 Ons Land, 122, 227 
 
 Orange Free State, 24, 34, 91, 93, 146 
 
 Pain, Barry, 44-5 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette, F. E. G. obtains 
 work on, 16 seq. ; appointed assist- 
 ant-editor, 37-42; sale of (1892), 
 66 ; F. E. G.'s articles in (see 
 Garrett) 
 
 Parish Pump, 224 
 
 Parnell, C. S., and Rhodes, 240 ; Com- 
 mission, 44 ; crisis, 41 
 
 Parry, Sir HulDert, 8 
 
 Pennefather, Colonel, 252 
 
 Phillips, Lionel, 122 
 
 Pigott, Richard, 44 
 
 Poynter, Sir Edward, 40 
 
 Preston, Nurse, 173, 176 n 
 
 Pretoria, 202, 209 
 
 Pretorius, 97 
 
 Pyramids, The, 57 
 
 Q., Sir John Cunstantine, 50 
 
 Rackham, Arthur, 73 n 
 
 Raid, the Jameson, 111 seq. 
 
 Railway question in South Africa, 
 206, 217 
 
 Reitz, F. W., 34, 247 
 
 Rhodes, Right Hon. Cecil John : 
 F. E. G.'s relations with, 30, 85-6 n, 
 111,112. 119, 120, 127, 138,158; 
 interview with, 139, 222 seq. 
 biography, 2'^olicy, <t-c. : goes out to 
 S. Africa for sake of health, 36 ; 
 schemes for Northern expansion, 
 23, 238, Sir H. Robinson on, 23 n, 
 rivalry with Kruger, 23, 24,243,270 ; 
 mission to Bechuanaland (1884), 
 246-7 ; founds British South Africa 
 Company, 202 ; amalgamation of 
 diamond mines, 235,238; subscribes 
 to Home Rule Funds, 247 ; Cape 
 Premiership, 91 ; works with the 
 Afrikander Party, 24, 3 i ; relations 
 with Hofmeyr, 234-5 ; the " neces- 
 sary man," 34, 136 ; Imperialism 
 and Colonialism, 154, 246-7 ; and 
 Cape newspapers, 85 n, 243 ; and 
 the Drifts ultimatum, 109, 110 ; on 
 H.M.S. Afrikander, 104 ; on Sir 
 Hercules Robinson's appointment 
 (1895), 93 « ; preparations for the 
 Raid, 111, 112, 115, motive, 247 
 resigns Premiership, 141 ; F. E. G 
 urges him to speak out, 120 
 "exile" to Rhodesia, 130, 133 
 settles revolt in Rhodesia, 136, 232 
 return to the Cape, 135; "faces 
 the music" before South African
 
 INDEX 
 
 283 
 
 Committee, 138 t declaration on 
 " equal rights," 139, 153-4 ; F. E. G. 
 urges him to assume leadership of 
 the Progressives, 134. 137, 139, 223; 
 his views on Progressive policy, 
 224-7 ; elections of 1898, 144, 145 ; 
 F. E. G.'s speech for, 142 ; seeks to 
 induce Milner to prorogue Parlia- 
 ment further, 145, 152, 1C5 ; pre- 
 diction of South African Union, 
 230 ; death, 168, 170, 228, previsions 
 of 228, 229 ; tomb in the Matoppos, 
 240 
 characteristics^ etc. : attitude to wo- 
 men, 236 ; candid cynicism, 243-5 ; 
 companions and friends, 233-6, 
 237-8 ; conversation, 245 ; courage, 
 227, 231-3 ; life at Groote Shuur, 
 222, 228, 229, 230, 231 ; money and 
 its uses, 237-40 ; personal appear- 
 ance, 229 ; romantic mind, 250 ; 
 strenuous life, 231 ; summary, 249 ; 
 Sir W. Harcourt on, 138 ; Sir H. 
 Robinson on, 23 n 
 sayings, speeches: on — " Cape to 
 Cairo," 223-4, talking and doing, 
 222, " the North," 223 ; " qua," 223; 
 " squaring the Mahdi," 242 ; the 
 flag as "commercial asset," 240-1 ; 
 " Homes, more homes," 249 ; the 
 old man planting oaks, 189, 249 ; 
 "the personal," 144, 158, 245; 
 " unctuous rectitude," 138, 224 
 various nitntions, 81, 89, 117, 122, 
 149, 153 
 Rhodes, Colonel Frank, F. E. G.'s 
 rides with, 130; sentenced to death, 
 122, anecdote of, 172 n; wishes 
 F. E G. to write Life of Cecil 
 Rhodes, 165 ; popularity of, 231 ; 
 memorial verses on, 272 
 Rhodes, Herbert, 231 
 Rhodesia, revolt in (1896), 131 ; 
 
 Native Liquor Law, 226 
 Ripon, Marquis of, 92 
 Rissik, Johannes, 201, 203, 210 
 Robertson-Scott, J. W., 52 
 Robins, Miss Elizabeth, 39 
 Robinson, Sir Hercules (Lord Eos- 
 mead) : on the Northern Expansion 
 (1883-4) and Rhodes, 23 n, 247 ; 
 comparison of Rhodes to Lesseps, 
 23 n; onColonialismandlmperialism 
 (1889), 35, 94 and n, 246 ; succeeds 
 Lord Loch as High Commissioner 
 (1895), 93 ; Rhodes and the appoint- 
 ment, 93 11 ; relations with F. E.G., 
 117 ; speech at Pretoria on the 
 Transvaal as a member of the 
 " South African family," 106, 107, 
 152 : communicates news of Jame- 
 
 son's expedition to F. E. G., 113 ; 
 shows his Proclamation to F. E. G., 
 117 ; on Chamberlain's negotiations 
 with Kruger, after the Raid, 125, 
 126 
 
 Rondebosch, 127 
 
 Rose-lnnes, Sir James, 104, 123, 138, 
 170, 244 n 
 
 Rossallian, the, 9 ; article in, by 
 F. E. G., on " Going in for Jour- 
 nalism," 16 n 
 
 Rudd, C. D., 253 
 
 Rustington, 8 
 
 Sagas, 184 
 
 St. Ives, 180 
 
 St. Leger, Frederick York, 81, 86, 
 127, 170 ; on F. E. G.'s appoint- 
 ment as editor of the Cape Times, 
 86 n 
 
 Salvation Army, F. E. G.'s article on 
 its Coming of Age, 17 ; riots at 
 Eastbourne, 51-4 
 
 Sampson, Col. Wools, 123 n 
 
 Scab Act, 29, 88, 225 
 
 Schreiner, Olive, 138 ; The Story oj 
 an African Farra. 27 
 
 Schreiner, W. P., 109, 141, 145, 171 
 
 Slick, Sam, 83 
 
 Smut, General, 205 
 
 Solon, law of, against mugwumps, 
 141 
 
 South African League, F. E. G.'s 
 speech to, 149 
 
 South African War, 161, 162 
 
 South Africa, "the problem-land," 
 22 ; F. E. G.'s first visit to (1889- 
 90), 22 ; political conditions at that 
 time, 23-5, at the time of becoming 
 editor of the Cape Times (1895), 
 91-2 ; prospects and conditions of 
 Union, 93-4 
 
 Spectator, 248; F. E. G.'s verses in — 
 See Garrett 
 
 Spender, J. A., 74, 76 n, 184 
 
 Sphinx, the, 56, 57 
 
 Sprigg, Sir Gordon, 29, 36, 103, 104, 
 Ul, 145, 225 ; speech on F. E. G.'s 
 resignation, 157 n 
 
 Standard, article by F. E. G. in 
 ("The Boer in the Saddle "), 194 
 
 State, The. article by F. E. G. in 
 (" The Natives and the New Con- 
 stitution "), 192 ?i 
 Stead, W. T., F. E. G.'s introduction 
 to, 15 ; interviewed by F. E. G., 16 
 employs F. E. G. on Pall Mall, 16 
 sends him to South Africa, 21 
 visits him at the sanatorium, 172 
 Rhodes and, 237 ; various refer- 
 ences, 17, 18, 20, 30, 37, 44, 84, 86
 
 284 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Stellenbosch, 226 
 
 Stevenson, R. L., 174, 182; Letters, 
 161, 166 ; The Treasure of Fran- 
 chard, 174, 182 
 
 Steyn, President, 247 
 
 Swaziland, 32, 92, 202, 204, 205, 208, 
 210 seq. 
 
 Table Mountain, 170, 229 
 Tennyson, 78 ; F. E. G.'s echo of, 184 
 Theosophy, 72-4 
 Thompson, Frank R., 254 ; and the 
 
 Rudd Concession, 253 seq. 
 Titles, 189 
 
 Tolstoy, War and Peace, 185 
 Tongaland — See " Amatongaland " 
 Translation, prose and verse, 185 n 
 Transvaal : annexation by Shepstone 
 (1877), 201 ; retrocession (1881), 
 202 ; discovery and development 
 of the gold mines, 23, political 
 effect of, 24, 202 ; President Kruger 
 and the Uitlanders, 24 (see also 
 " Uitlanders "), and the Transvaal 
 National Union, 92 ; Lord Loch at 
 Pretoria, 92 ; President Kruger and 
 German friendship, 92 ; Drifts 
 question, 108-110 ; Jameson Raid, 
 111 seq. ; Sir A. Milner's policy, 
 152-2 ; constitution of new colony, 
 193 
 
 UlTLANDEKS : as aphides, 160n; 
 Cape Dutch and. 111, 116; com- 
 mandeering, 92 ; President Kruger's 
 attitude to, 92, 1U7, 218-220; revolu- 
 tion at Johannesburg, 115 
 
 Umbandine, 251 
 Uncle Pumblechook, 37 
 Union of South Africa, 169, 171, 196, 
 prospects of (1890), 34 
 
 Veekall, a. W., 185 n 
 
 Walchensee, 165 
 
 Walker, Dr. Jane, 68, 161 ; verses to, 
 167 
 
 Walther, Dr., 61, 62, 161, 162 
 
 Warren, Sir Charles, 23 n, 246, 254 
 
 Waterston, Dr. Jane, 113, 114, 129 
 
 Wessels, G. P., 186 
 
 Wesselton (Premier) Mine, 244 n 
 
 Westminster Gazette, foundation of, 
 66 ; start of, 75 ; F. E. G.'s "Song 
 of the Launching," 68; his work 
 for (1893-5), 73-81, (1903-7) 184, 
 192 (see also Garrett) 
 
 Wicksteed, P. H„ on F. E. G.'s ver- 
 sion of Brand, 70 
 
 Wilson, G. H., reminiscence of F. E. 
 G. at the Cape Times, 87, 126 n, 127- 
 8,149; as parliamentary candidate, 
 144-5 n ; as a public speaker, 148 
 
 Wilson, Major Allen, at the Shangani 
 River, 80, 236 
 
 Winton, Sir Francis de, 205 
 
 Withers, J. J., 20 ; reminiscences of 
 F. E. G., 43-6 ; letter to, 47 ; verses 
 to, 3 
 
 Wiverton Acre, Plympton, 180 
 
 Women's Rights, 6, 76, 77 
 
 Zambaan and Umbegiza, 211 
 Zulu language, 41 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne &' Co. Limited 
 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden London
 
 .o .'r.^^^g^^"^^ = , +1 and 43 Maddox Street, 
 
 * Scholarly, London. 
 
 _, , , Bond Street, London, W. 
 
 1 elephone : 
 No. 1883 Mayfair. September, 1909. 
 
 Mr. Edward Arnold's 
 
 Autumn Announcements, 
 
 1909. 
 
 MEMORIES OF FIFTY YEARS. 
 
 By MARY JEUNE (LADY ST. HELIER). 
 With Illustvations. One Volume. Demy 8vo., cloth. 15s. net. 
 
 Lady Jeune's salon was the rendezvous of all that was best in 
 English society during the last thirty years of the nineteenth 
 century. To her house in Harley Street flocked notabilities in every 
 walk of life — statesmen, politicians, men distinguished in literature, 
 science, and art, famous generals and naval officers, legal luminaries, 
 and apostles of culture. It would probably be difficult to mention 
 a single person of distinction of either sex who had not at some time 
 or other been present at her receptions, sure of meeting there the most 
 interesting ' lions ' of the day. To European and American 
 visitors. Lady Jeune's parties stood for the English counterpart 
 of the brightest French salons, and their popularity remained 
 unabated after Sir Francis Jeune was raised to the peerage as 
 Baron St. Helier, until his death caused them to be discontinued. 
 
 It can truly be asserted that Lady St. Helier's ' Reminiscences ' 
 form an integral part of the history of the Nineteenth Century, if 
 the social life of England counts for anything in its pages. No 
 mere summary of the book would give a clue to the interest of its 
 contents ; this is the grand vin of society, sparkling and unique. 
 
 LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W.
 
 2 Mr. Edward Arnold's Aiihinm Announcements. 
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN MEMORIES. 
 
 By THE LADY SARAH WILSON. 
 
 With Illustrations. One Volume. Demy ^vo., cloth. 15s. net. 
 
 These entertaining memories of society, war, and sport in South 
 Africa, covering a period from 1895 to 1904, are written from diaries 
 kept at the time, and contain many novel and interesting episodes. 
 The author tells us that everything of interest that has happened to 
 her in life has been in connection with Africa : she was there at the 
 time of the Jameson Raid ; she was present in the siege of Mafeking 
 during the war, an episode that has never yet been adequately de- 
 scribed ; she has hunted lions in the vast country north of the Zambesi ; 
 she has been nearly drowned in the Nile; and in Africa she has made 
 some of her best friends. Lady Sarah Wilson has often proved the 
 truth of the saying that * adventures are to the adventurous,' and no 
 more attractive motto could be found for such a volume as the present. 
 The book is dedicated to the memory of her sister Georgina, Countess 
 Howe, whose health and life were sacrificed in labours undertaken on 
 behalf of the Yeomanry Hospitals during the war. 
 
 HOUSEBOAT DAYS IN CHINA. 
 
 By J. O. P. BLAND, 
 
 Author of ' Lays of Far Cathay,' etc. 
 
 Illustrated by WILLIAM STRAIGHT. 
 With Map. One Volume. Medium Svo., cloth. 15s. net. 
 
 To charter a houseboat and make an expedition along a river 
 ' up country ' is one of the favourite recreations of British residents 
 in China. Mr. Bland is an old hand at the game, and knows how 
 to accept its drawbacks with philosophy, while enjoying the pleasures 
 to the full. Sport is the ostensible object of these expeditions, and 
 Mr. Bland had many exciting days in the pursuit of duck, geese, 
 and snipe. Even more entertaining than his sporting episodes are his 
 shrewd descriptions and comments on the types of Chinamen he 
 came across, from the Lowdah who managed the boat, and his crew, 
 to the Mandarin and the Missionary. The Ethics of Houseboat 
 Travel forms an amusing chapter, and however far he journeys he 
 cannot escape ' The Eternal Feminine.' Thoughts on books and 
 poetry intrude themselves among recollections of smuggling and the 
 coming of railways. The volume winds up with a subject ever 
 present to the Briton in China — reflections ' On Coming Home.' 
 
 The volume is charmingly illustrated by Mr. William Straight, 
 every chapter having appropriate head-pieces and terminals, while 
 there are a large number of delicate vignettes in the text.
 
 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements 3 
 
 SIKHIM AND BHUTAN. 
 
 Bipertences of Zwcntxi l^ears on tbe TRortbaEaetern 
 
 frontier of JnDia. 
 
 By JOHN CLAUDE WHITE, CLE., 
 
 Late Political Agent in Sikhim. 
 
 With 7 Photogravure and numerous other Full-page Illustrations and a Map. 
 One Volume. Royal Svo., cloth. 21s. net. 
 
 Until the recent expedition to Lhasa, the north-east frontier of 
 India attracted much less attention than the north-west, and the 
 regions of Sikhim and Bhutan have remained shrouded in the 
 isolation of inaccessible mountains and shadowed by the proximity 
 of mysterious Tibet. This independence of the outer world makes 
 their inhabitants a most interesting study. The primitive state of 
 society, the influence of the priests and monks, and the way in which 
 the gradual spread of British influence was received, read like a 
 chapter of history from another world. For twenty years Mr. John 
 Claude White has been the one Englishman who has had the key to 
 these remote countries, conducting missions to their rulers, travers- 
 ing their fastnesses from end to end, studying the people and their 
 curious customs. He has had to combine the energy of the explorer 
 with the arts of the diplomatist and administrator, and has been 
 responsible for such measure of development as has been possible of 
 achievement. The present volume owes much to its illustrations, 
 for the author is an expert and enthusiastic photographer, and his 
 zeal has induced him to carry a large camera into spots where most 
 people would find even a Kodak a burden. 
 
 WITH A PRE-HISTORIC PEOPLE. 
 
 XLbe Bsftl=ku=\:u of JBritlsb Bast Bfrica. 
 
 By W. SCORESBY ROUTLEDGE, M.A., Oxon, 
 
 And KATHARINE ROUTLEDGE (born Pease), M.A. 
 
 Trin. Coll., Dublin. 
 
 With a great many Illustrations. Medium Svo. i8s. net. 
 
 This is the first published account of one of the most interesting 
 of African peoples, previously unknown to white men, who have 
 lately come under British rule. The object of the authors, who 
 have just returned from a prolonged sojourn amongst them, is to 
 describe primitive life as it really exists, and the book should be of 
 great value to those who are interested in our Empire and its 
 responsibilities as well as to those of more scientific tastes. It should 
 also prove of material assistance to Government officials, settlers, 
 and travellers in the country described, enabling them to understand 
 native thought and custom. ' The great interest of the subject,' 
 say the authors, 'lies in the fact that the A-ki-kii-yu of to-day are 
 at the point where our ancesters stood in earliest times.' There are 
 over a hundred pages of illustrations from the authors' photographs.
 
 4 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements 
 
 THE SALMON RIVERS AND LOCHS 
 OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 By W. L. CALDERWOOD, 
 
 Inspector of Fisheries to the Fishery Board for Scotland. 
 Author of ' The Life of the Salmon.' 
 
 With Illustrations and Maps of the Principal Rivers. One Volume. 
 Demy ^vo., cloth. 21s. net. 
 
 Also a Large Paper Edition de Luxe, limited to 250 copies, on hand-made 
 paper. Handsomely bound. One Volume. Quarto. £2 2S. net. 
 
 This comprehensive and valuable work gives a complete account 
 of the rivers and lochs of Scotland frequented by salmon. The 
 author has personally visited every important river described, and 
 possesses unequalled knowledge of his subject. 
 
 Among the matters discussed in the book are the boundaries and 
 fisheries of estuaries ; obstructions and sources of pollution in the 
 rivers ; fish passes and croys ; means adopted for maintaining the 
 water supply ; descriptions of angling waters ; ownership of the dif- 
 ferent fisheries ; angling obtainable at hotels ; records of the annual 
 catch on various fisheries ; influence of temperature on the salmon ; 
 stories of great * days ' on famous rivers ; the scenery of the river- 
 valleys, etc., etc. 
 
 The book is well illustrated, and contains several maps, specially 
 drawn on the scale of 2 inches to the mile, to show the different 
 fisheries on such important rivers as the Tweed, Tay, Dee, 
 Spey, etc. 
 
 A FIFTH SERIES OF 
 MEMORIES OF THE MONTHS. 
 
 By the Right Hon. Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart., 
 
 Author of ' Scottish Gardens,' etc. 
 
 With Photogravure Illustrations. Large Crown Svo., cloth. 7s. 6d. 
 
 The pleasure given by each fresh instalment of Sir Herbert 
 Maxwell's ' Memories of the Months ' continues unabated, and the 
 welcome accorded to the Fourth Series was such that a large circle 
 of readers may be confidently predicted for the Fifth. 
 
 Every year rings new changes on the old order of Nature, and the 
 observant eye can always find fresh features on the face of the Seasons. 
 Sir Herbert Maxwell goes out to meet Nature on the moor and loch, 
 in garden and forest, and writes of what he sees and feels. This is 
 what gives his work its abiding charm, and makes these memories 
 fill the place of old friends on the library bookshelf.
 
 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements 5 
 
 THE COTTAGE HOMES OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Drawn by HELEN ALLINGHAM, 
 and Described by STEWART DICK. 
 
 With 64 Full-page Coloured Plates from Pictures never before reproduced. 
 In One Volume. 8vo., cloth. 21s. net. 
 
 Also a Large Paper Edition, limited to 500 copies for the British Empire. 
 Handsomely bound, with the Plates artistically mounted. £2 2s. net. 
 
 Mrs. Allingham's pictures of English rural life and scenery are 
 already famous. She possesses a rare power of expressing the 
 incomparable beauty of the commons, gardens, and cottages of 
 England, and each drawing forms a perfect little idyll in colour. 
 The counties of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent naturally provide a 
 wealth of charming subjects for the volume, and examples are also 
 given of cottages in Cheshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Devon, the Isle of 
 Wight, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, etc. 
 
 Mr. Stewart Dick's letterpress gives an extremely interesting 
 account of the history and construction of the ancient cottages and 
 farmhouses for which English country districts are conspicuous. 
 Among the contents are chapters on the Evolution of the Cottage, 
 the Great Building Time, the Structure, Tiled and Thatched 
 Cottages, Mud Cottages, Stone Cottages of the Cotswolds, Farm- 
 houses, Inns, and Old Gardens. 
 
 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING. 
 
 By OWEN JONES. 
 
 With Numerous Illustrations from Photographs by the A uthor. One 
 Volume. Demy 8vo., cloth. los. 6d. net. 
 
 The author, who was educated at Marlborough and Oxford Uni- 
 versity, being reluctant to follow a conventional pursuit, took up the 
 occupation of a Gamekeeper as a means of livelihood. After twelve 
 years' experience he feels that he is thoroughly acquainted with his 
 subject, and that the public may be interested to read a record of 
 what he has seen and learned in the course of his duties. As regards 
 game, Mr. Owen Jones gives many a wrinkle about partridges, 
 pheasants, hares, rabbits, and wild fowl, that may be studied with 
 advantage by the owner or tenant of a shooting. There are chapters 
 on vermin, trespassers and poachers, and the great question of foxes. 
 
 Some very attractive reminiscences are given of ' My Dogs ' ; 
 while ' My First Shoot,' ' My Brother Keepers,' 'Tips and Tippers,' 
 present certain aspects of sport from an original and novel point of 
 view.
 
 6 Mr. Edward A mold's A utmnn A nnouncements 
 
 IN A YORKSHIRE GARDEN. 
 
 By REGINALD FARRER, 
 
 Author of 'My Rock-Garden,' 'Alpines and Bog Plants,' etc. 
 
 With Illustrations. Demy ^vo., cloth. los. 6d. net. 
 
 In his latest book on the garden, Mr. Farrer will delight his many 
 readers by conveying them round all his own provinces, with 
 accounts of this plant and that as he goes. Though less technical 
 and severe than ' My Rock-Garden,' his new book will be found more 
 practical and helpful than ' Alpines and Bog Plants,' in so far as it 
 deals with the garden as it is, its ups and downs and difficulties as 
 they lie before us, rather than with any purely abstract and visionary 
 ideal of bog-garden or mountain-slope. In especial, will those who 
 have long waited for help on the subject be delighted to hear that 
 Mr. Farrer has at last dealt exhaustively and practically with the 
 Moraine Garden ; nor, though rock-plants are, of course, Mr. Farrer's 
 particular friends, has he neglected other parts of the garden, but has 
 many words to say on shrubs, and herbaceous treasures, and 
 bamboos, and the wild garden. Let the names of a few chapters 
 give a hint of the rest : The Old Garden ; The Piz Languard and 
 the Piz Padella ; Among the Primulas ; The Old Moraine ; Round 
 the Frames ; The Cliff-garden ; The Terrace-wall ; Alice's Garden 
 in the Wood. 
 
 A HANDBOOK OF 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 By C. E. BAINES. 
 
 Crown Svo., cloth. 
 
 This volume covers the entire period of the history of our 
 literature down to the close of the Victorian Age, with the deaths of 
 Swinburne and Meredith — but the period before Chaucer is only 
 briefly dealt with. Special care has been taken that, while the book 
 contains all the names, dates, etc., that a text-book should contain, 
 it should be as little cumbered as possible with the names of writers 
 who ' deserve a passing mention.' Occasionally a typical author or 
 work is dealt with at some length, even though this involves a 
 sacrifice of proportion. This seems, on the whole, the best way, in 
 a short book, to give the reader a general idea of any particular 
 period without employing undesirably vague generalities.
 
 Mr. Edward Arnold's AtUumn Announcements 7 
 
 A CENTURY OF EMPIRE, 1801-1900. 
 
 By the Right Hon. Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart., P.C, 
 
 Author of ' The Life of Wellington,' etc. 
 
 Volimie I., from 1801 to 1832. With Photogravure Povtvaits. About 
 ^00 pages. Demy Svo., cloth. 14s. net. 
 
 NOTE. — The work will be completed in Three Volumes, which will be 
 issued at intervals of about six rnonths. 
 
 The great task which Sir Herbert Maxwell has undertaken, and of 
 which the f.rst instalment is now offered to the public, is the history 
 of the British people during the nineteenth century. It is a history 
 in the broadest interpretation of that term ; the back-bone of it is 
 political, as was inevitable in the case of a constitutionally governed 
 country, but all the principal aspects of the national life are duly 
 dealt with in his closely knit narrative. Sir Herbert Maxwell writes 
 with the authority conferred by a union of wide knowledge and with 
 practised literary skill, and the insight gained by an active and varied 
 participation in the public affairs of his own time. To these quali- 
 fications he adds an intimate familiarity with that side of social and 
 political history which is embedded in countless volumes of the letters 
 and memoirs of the leading personages of the time. From this 
 source arises what forms perhaps the most characteristic excellence 
 of his narrative, the many dramatic touches which enable us to follow 
 the progress of events, not only in the light of subsequent knowledge, 
 but as they presented themselves to the actors at the time. 
 
 EDMUND GARRETT. 
 
 % /iRemolr. 
 By E. T. COOK, 
 
 Author of 'Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal War,' Joint Editor of Ruskin's 
 
 Works, etc. 
 
 With Portrait. One Volume. Demy Sw., cloth. los. 6d net. 
 
 Edmund Garrett was a journalist of genius, and his short but 
 brilliant career was tinged with romance. Going to South Africa, 
 in the first instance temporarily for reasons of health, he eventually 
 settled there, and so it came about that at the time of the Jameson 
 Raid, of which he wrote a singularly lucid and convincing account 
 in ' The Story of an African Crisis,' he was Editor of the Cape Times. 
 Henceforward he was involved in the turmoil of events of world- 
 wide significance, and it was no small matter that his post should 
 have been occupied by one so clear-sighted and courageous.
 
 8 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements 
 
 THE LIFE OF 
 SIR SYDNEY WATERLOW, BART. 
 
 By GEORGE SMALLEY, M.A., 
 
 Author of 'Studies of Men,' etc. 
 
 With Portrait. One Volume. Demy Svo., cloth. los. 6d. net. 
 
 There have never been lacking in the City of London men of the 
 type which is associated in the popular mind with the name of 
 Richard Whittington, and the story of their early struggles and 
 gradual rise to wealth and distinction can never fail to appeal to the 
 imagination. Sir Sydney Waterlow was one of Whittington's most 
 eminent successors ; from small beginnings and slender resources he 
 created one of the greatest printing businesses in the whole country, 
 and in due course he arrived at the highest distinction which London 
 can bestow, the office of Lord Mayor. But his chief iitle to remem- 
 brance is his unequalled success as a practical philanchropist, and at 
 the present time this side of his strenuously active life is probably 
 the most interesting and valuable, more especially the story — fully 
 told in these pages — of his wise and far-reaching work in connection 
 with the housing of the poor, 
 
 TEN GREAT AND GOOD MEN. 
 
 Lectures by HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Master of Trinity College, Cambridgs. 
 
 One Volume. Crown Svo., cloth. 6s. net. 
 
 These studies are not, in the ordinary sense of the word, bio- 
 graphical ; the object of the author was in each case to give his 
 audience, in broad outline and with as little as might be of historical 
 fact and detail, some understanding of the mind and soul of a great 
 figure by whom the destinies of the country had been moulded. 
 Thus, while he has illustrated his studies by characteristic examples 
 of the great public utterances in which the aspirations and ideals of 
 his heroes are formulated, he has also enlivened them by recording 
 those incidents which, trivial in themselves, reveal the personality of 
 the man behind the trappings of the statesman. For his purpose, 
 to take a single example, Pitt dominating the House of Commons 
 with his eloquence is scarcely more interesting than Pitt romping 
 with a roomful of children. The skilled and sympathetic employ- 
 ment of this method has resulted in a singularly charming gallery of 
 portraits.
 
 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements 9 
 
 A HISTORY OF 
 THE LONDON HOSPITAL. 
 
 By E. W. MORRIS, 
 
 Secretary of the London Hospital. 
 
 Illustrated. One Volume. Cloth. 6s. net. 
 
 The history of this great Hospital is not only interesting on 
 account of the particular incidents of its long and honourable career, 
 and the prominent men who have been connected with it, but also 
 provides a typical example of the way in which our splendid medical 
 charities have grown and developed. Beginning with a survey of 
 the condition of Medicine and Surgery in 1741, the date of the 
 foundation of the Hospital, the author describes its early days in 
 Goodman's Field, the move to Whitechapel, and the gradual growth 
 during the last hundred and fifty years. He then deals with the 
 system of Administration, Finance, and Management, the relation of 
 the Hospital to Medical and Surgical Science, the Medical School, 
 and the Development of Sick Nursing. The reader is initiated into 
 some noteworthy customs and ceremonies of the Hospital, and some 
 account is given of the men whose names stand out in its history. 
 The author has enjoyed exceptional advantages in writing his book, 
 through his position as Secretary of the Hospital, and has collected 
 some valuable materials for illustrating it from sources not generally 
 accessible. 
 
 A GREAT BISHOP 
 OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO: 
 
 JBeing a Sketcb ot tbc Xife ot asisbop Iborsley. 
 By the Rev. H. H. JEBB, 
 
 Rector of Streatham. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 
 This book has considerable historical interest. It touches on several 
 present problems, including the condition of the Welsh Church, 
 Passive Resistance, and the immigration of Roman Catholics. 
 Overton, the historian, says that Bishop Horsley was regarded as 
 far and above all other contemporary writers on the side of the 
 Church. The author possesses the Bishop's private letters, and 
 information hitherto unpublished.
 
 10 Mr, Edward Arnold's Autumn A7inouncements 
 
 HIGH ALBANIA. 
 
 By M. EDITH DURHAM, 
 
 Author of 'The Burden of the Balkans' and 'Through the Lands of the Serb.' 
 
 Illustrated from the Author's Sketches. One Volume. Demy Bvo. 
 
 14s. net. 
 
 No writer on the Balkan peoples displays more intimate know- 
 ledge and sympathy than Miss Durham, and it is fortunate that she 
 should have taken up her pen again at the present moment when so 
 much attention is focussed on Turkish affairs, for the warlike and 
 independent Albanians are nominally within the Ottoman Empire, 
 despite the fact that there is no conscription and Albanians cannot 
 be tried by Turkish law. Miss Durham's new volume is the first 
 book to deal with the whole district, and is written mainly for the 
 purpose of recording manners and customs that will soon be extinct, 
 and which belong to a very early period of the world's history. The 
 humour and spirit of tolerance that distinguish her other works is 
 again present, and the author contributes her own very effective 
 illustrations. 
 
 A SCAMPER THROUGH THE 
 FAR EAST. 
 
 5nclu&ing a IDisit to tbe ^ancburian Ji3attlefiel&s. 
 By Major H. H. AUSTIN, C.M.G., D.S.O., R.E., 
 
 Author of ' With Macdonald in Uganda,' etc. 
 
 With Illustrations and Maps. One Volume. Demy Bvo., cloth. 15s.net. 
 
 Major Austin is a keen-eyed and practised observer, with a 
 remarkable flair for the minor details and incidents which make a 
 narrative of travel pictorial and lively. The story of his scamper 
 across Siberia, and through China, Corea, and Japan, would have 
 been well worth telling even if he had enjoyed no privileges and 
 experiences of an exceptional character ; but the record of this 
 accomplished soldier's visit, in the company of veteran Japanese
 
 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements ii 
 
 officers, to the scenes of the great battles in Manchuria, and to the 
 approaches to Port Arthur, raises his book to an altogether higher 
 plane of interest. Moreover, he was fortunate enough to be present 
 at some manoeuvres carried out, on a grand scale, by Japanese 
 troops under the eyes of the Mikado himself, and to take part as a 
 guest in the accompanying festivities. Major Austin's knowledge of 
 the points of interest to look out for, and his trained eye for resem- 
 blances and contrasts with similar operations carried on in other 
 countries, have enabled him to describe the spectacle with exceptional 
 vividness and force. 
 
 TURKEY IN TRANSITION. 
 
 By G. F. ABBOTT, 
 
 Author of 'The Tale of a Tour in Macedonia," 'Through India with the Prince,' etc. 
 
 With Illustrations. One Volume. Demy Svo., cloth. 12s. 6d. net. 
 
 Mr. Abbott's original intention was to write a book about the 
 present position of affairs in the Balkan States generally, but while 
 he was in Turkey collecting and amplifying his material he had the 
 good fortune to be an eye-witness of the counter-revolution — a 
 subject that he felt must be treated with all the fulness it deserves. 
 It not only afforded admirable material for the illustration of the 
 political conditions which caused it, and which will continue to 
 influence the situation, but it also gave him a splendid opportunity 
 for dramatic writing. The Advance of the Macedonian Army on 
 Constantinople, the Siege, the Capture of the City, the Fall of Abdul 
 Hamid and his subsequent fate — all these events could not be 
 spoilt by the dullest pen, let alone one so racy and graphic as 
 Mr. Abbott's. 
 
 He has devoted, as well, considerable space to the social changes 
 that have come over Turkish life since the establishment of the 
 Constitution — e.g., the new Turkish woman. It was a rare chance, 
 and Mr. Abbott has made the most of it.
 
 12 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements 
 
 NEW NOVELS. 
 
 THE PASQUE FLOWER. 
 
 By JANE WARDLE. 
 
 Author of 'Margery Pigeon,' 'The Lord of Latimer Street,' etc. 
 
 Crown 8vo., cloth. 6s. 
 
 Jane Wardle's new story centres primarily in the search for a 
 monkish treasure supposed to be hidden at an ancient mansion in 
 the Wiltshire downs, and secondarily in the love affairs of a young 
 man who is not able to make up his mind which of two girls he is 
 in love with. Such is the groundwork of a tale that is told in the 
 author's charming and original manner, and one that displays her 
 talent for character drawing to its fullest advantage. 
 
 A CRUCIAL EXPERIMENT. 
 
 By A. C. FARQUHARSON, 
 
 Author of 'St. Nazarius,' etc. 
 
 Crown 8vo., cloth. 6s. 
 
 A distinguished composer and teacher of music, wealthy and 
 independent, but wholly wrapped up in his art, goes through the 
 form of marriage with a young girl possessing a genius for music, in 
 order to enable her to escape from hostile surroundings, and pursue 
 her true vocation under his roof. This is the crucial experiment. 
 Needless to say, it does not work out in the way contemplated by its 
 originator. The situation develops to a tragic climax ; the interest 
 of the book lies in the portrayal of the emotional conflicts which 
 rack the essentially noble and upright characters whose destinies are 
 involved. 
 
 THE BEGGAR IN THE HEART. 
 
 By EDITH RICKERT, 
 
 Author of 'The Golden Hawk,' 'The Reaper,' etc. 
 
 Crown Svo., cloth. 6s. 
 
 Miss Rickert has already shown in * The Golden Hawk ' that she 
 possesses the true spirit of romance, and her new story will not 
 disappoint her large and increasing circle of admirers. The scene is 
 for the most part laid in London, and the characters are drawn with 
 remarkable charm and delicacy. It is a story that cannot fail to 
 give pleasure, and to remain long in the memory.
 
 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements 13 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF THE YELLOW 
 
 ROOM. 
 
 By GASTON LEROUX. 
 
 Crown 8vo., cloth. 6s. 
 
 This mysterious and fascinating story has not yet been published 
 in a form adapted for library reading, and it may be confidently 
 expected to prove the same wonderful success in this edition as in 
 the cheap sixpenny issue which made such an impression upon a 
 section of the public not repelled by small type and paper covers. 
 The book deserves to have a place beside the classic works of 
 Gaboriau, and can safely be recommended as one of the most 
 thrilling mysteries of modern fiction. 
 
 ORPHEUS WITH HIS LUTE. 
 
 stories of tbe TKHorlD's £pring*timc. 
 By W. M. L. HUTCHINSON, 
 
 Author of ' The Golden Porch,' etc. 
 
 Illustrated. Crown 8vo., cloth. 5s. 
 
 In this book some of the earliest and most beautiful of Greek 
 myths are presented under the guise of stories told to the child Orpheus 
 by the Muses, whom he meets on nine moonlight nights in their 
 woodland haunts. Thus, the first part, entitled ' The Making of 
 a Minstrel,' forms a ' Forest Night's Entertainment,' including, 
 among others, the legends of Prometheus, Pandora, the Coming of 
 Apollo to Delphi, Demeter and her Maiden, and the fortunes of 
 Cadmus and his house. The shorter second part deals with Orpheus 
 the Singer, and ' his half-regained Eurydice,' and takes us to the 
 Underworld, where the minstrel hears from the shades of ancient 
 heroes — Sisyphus, Ixion, Meleager — the tale of their crime or 
 misfortune. We are shown the realm of Pluto, not in the darker 
 colouring of Virgil's pencil, but as Greek imagination pictured it, 
 a shadowy land where souls dwell, as in Dante's Limbo, ' only so 
 far afflicted that they live Desiring without hope.' The fate of 
 Orpheus is reticently and simply told, and the story has the happiest 
 of endings — in the Elysian Fields.
 
 14 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements 
 
 A New and Cheaper Edition, 
 
 IN THE DESERT : 
 THE HINTERLAND OF ALGIERS. 
 
 By L. MARCH PHILLIPPS. 
 
 With Illustrations. One Volume. Crown Svo. 6s. net. 
 
 The original edition of this interesting book being quite out of 
 print, it has been thought advisable to re-issue it in a cheaper form, 
 for the benefit of the numerous travellers who visit Algeria and the 
 Desert beyond. The volume provides an admirable supplement to 
 the guide-book, enlarging upon the life of the Desert Tribes, the scope 
 and meaning of their art, and the influence of natural surroundings 
 in shaping their destiny. 
 
 From a review in TAi: Times : — ' There are many who go to the Desert, but few are chosen. Mr. 
 Phillipps is one of the few. He sees, and can tell us what he has seen ; and reading him, we look 
 through his eyes and his sympathies are ours. He can be lyrical without irritating, and analytic 
 without boring.' 
 
 A New and Cfieaper Edition, 
 
 RUTHLESS RHYMES FOR HEARTLESS 
 
 HOMES. 
 
 By Col. D. STREAMER (Captain HARRY GRAHAM). 
 
 A New and Cheaper Edition, with Additional Illustrations by Hon. 
 G. Gat home -Hardy, and some New Rhymes. 
 
 One Volume. Oblong Crown Svo. , paper boards. 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 The steady and continuous sale of these Rhymes for over ten 
 years seems to indicate the permanent elements of popularity, that 
 bid fair to make them a classic of their kind. They have therefore 
 been reprinted in a more handy form, and the author has included 
 a few additional ' Ruthless Rhymes ' which were not in the earlier 
 editions. He has fortunately been able to enlist the assistance of the 
 original illustrator, whose style has matured considerably without 
 losing any of its quaint freshness. 
 
 A Popular Cheap Edition, 
 
 THE POEMS OF GEORGE CRABBE. 
 
 Edited by BERNARD HOLLAND, 
 
 Author OF ' Imperium et Ligertas,' 'Letters of Mary Sibylla Holland,' etc. 
 
 With Photogravure Frontispiece. One Volume. Crown Svo., 
 
 cloth. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 This edition of Crabbe's poems was originally issued with a 
 
 number of illustrations, but it is felt that the demand is rather for a 
 
 cheap well-printed standard volume than for a more costly and 
 
 ornamental edition. 
 
 Crabbe's readers are more numerous than ever, and it is hoped 
 that the present issue will bring his works within the reach of all.
 
 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements 15 
 
 THE THEORY OF STRUCTURES. 
 
 By R. J. WOODS, M.Inst.C.E., 
 
 Fellow and formerly Assistant Professor of Engineering, Royal Indian Engineering 
 College, Cooper's Hill. 
 
 With 157 Illustrations. Demy 8w., cloth. los. 6d. net. 
 
 The author deals with the design of masonry and steel structures, 
 as based upon the determination of the working stresses in them. 
 Various types of girders, with parallel chords, parabolic, and with 
 curved chords not parabolic, plate girders, arched ribs, and suspen- 
 sion bridges are in turn considered. 
 
 Other chapters are concerned with the strength of columns and 
 design of struts, riveted joints, and earth pressure, and a final 
 chapter is devoted to reinforced concrete construction. 
 
 The subjects are treated from a practical point of view, and a large 
 number of examples from everyday practice are worked out. 
 Although self-contained and independent, the volume forms a more 
 advanced continuation of the same author's previous book, ' The 
 Strength and Elasticity of Structural Members.' 
 
 THE GEOLOGY OF ORE-DEPOSITS. 
 
 By H. H. THOMAS and D. A. MACALISTER, 
 
 OF THE Geological Survey of Great Britain. 
 
 Illustrated. Crown 8vo., cloth. 7s, 6d. net. 
 
 This book forms the second volume in the Geological Series now 
 being issued under the general editorship of Dr. J. E. Marr, F.R.S., in 
 in which especial attention is paid to the economic aspect of Geology. 
 
 The authors here present as concisely as possible an account of the 
 various processes by which in nature local concentrations of metal- 
 liferous material have been brought about in such amounts and 
 under such conditions that the ores become commercially valuable. 
 Segregation from igneous magmas, pneumatolysis, hydatogenesis, 
 and metasomasis are first described; next, precipitation from solution, 
 and sedimentary deposits ; and lastly, secondary changes in lodes. 
 The subject is one of great importance, not only to the student of 
 geology, but also to the practical mining expert, and the authors 
 have considered typical deposits of all the principal metals with 
 examples from various parts of the world. 
 
 A TEXT-BOOK OF 
 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING. 
 
 By Dr. ADOLF THOMALEN. 
 Translated by G. W. O. HOWE, M.Sc, 
 
 Senior Whitworth Scholar, Lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the 
 City and Guilds College. 
 
 Second edition, revised and enlarged. With 454 Illustrations. Royal B>vo., 
 
 cloth, 15s. net. 
 The call for a second edition of Mr. Howe's translation of Dr. 
 Thomalen's ' Kurze Lehrbuch der Elektrotechnik ' shows that it has 
 successfully met the want for a good text-book to bridge the gap
 
 i6 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements 
 
 between elementary books and specialized works on advanced 
 electrical engineering. Second and third year students will here find a 
 book dealing with the broad principles of electrical machinery without 
 entering into all the details of its practical construction and design. 
 
 In thoroughly revising the book for a second edition, the translator 
 has further added several valuable sections on the rise of tempera- 
 ture of electric motors under continuous and intermittent loads, on 
 the Rosenberg constant-current variable-speed dynamo, and on 
 six-phase rotary converters. 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO 
 THE THEORY OF OPTICS. 
 
 By ARTHUR SCHUSTER, Ph.D., Sc.D., F.R.S., 
 
 Honorary Professor of Physics at the University of Manchester. 
 
 Second Edition. With i8o Illustrations. Demy 8vo., cloth. 15s. net. 
 The second edition of Prof. Schuster's introduction to the study of 
 the advanced theory of optics has had the advantage of complete 
 and thorough revision by the author. Among the new matter added 
 may be especially mentioned the fuller account of Michelson's and 
 other methods for the absolute determination of wave-lengths, and 
 the direct comparison of the lengths so determined with the French 
 standard metre. 
 
 ELEMENTARY PHYSIOLOGY 
 FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS. 
 
 By W. B. DRUMMOND, M.B., CM., F.R.C.P.E., 
 
 Medical Officer and Lecturer on Hygiene to the Edinburgh Provincial Committee 
 
 for Training Teachers. 
 
 Author of ' An Introduction to Child Study,' etc. 
 
 With Illustrations. Crown 8vo., cloth. 2s. 6d. 
 
 This work differs from the usual type of text-book on Elementary 
 Anatomy and Physiology in several important particulars. In the first 
 place special reference is made throughout the book to the differences 
 between children and grown people. For example, there are special 
 sections dealing with the diet of children, with the peculiarities of 
 the child's skeleton, and with the nervous system in childhood. 
 
 In the second place, those organs and systems are described most 
 fully which are of special importance in reference to the care of 
 children. Thus, the skeleton and muscles are described in greater 
 detail than usual in works of the same size in reference to physical 
 training. The effect of exercise on the different organs of the body 
 is discussed. Considerable space, as might be expected in a book 
 intended for teachers, is devoted to the nervous system. 
 
 Lastly, while the work does not deal directly with either hygiene 
 or education, the bearing of physiology on these subjects has been 
 kept in view throughout. 
 
 LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W. 
 
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