Letters from the Cape by Lucy Duff Gordon (ebook reader computer txt) 📖

of a Malay soiree. They spoke English very little, but made up for it by their usual good breeding and intelligence. On Monday, I am going to see the school which the priest keeps at his house, and to 'honour his house by my presence'. The delight they show at any friendly interest taken in them is wonderful. Of course, I am supposed to be poisoned. A clergyman's widow here gravely asserts that her husband went mad THREE YEARS after drinking a cup of coffee handed to him by a Malay!--and in consequence of drinking it! It is exactly like the mediaeval feeling about the Jews. I saw that it was quite a DEMONSTRATION that I drank up the tea unhesitatingly. Considering that the Malays drank it themselves, my courage deserves less admiration. But it was a quaint sensation to sit in a Mosque, behaving as if at an evening party, in a little circle of poor Moslim priests.

I am going to have a photograph of my cart done. I was to have gone to the place to-day, but when Choslullah (whom I sent for to complete the picture) found out what I wanted, he implored me to put it off till Monday, that he might be better dressed, and was so unhappy at the notion of being immortalized in an old jacket, that I agreed to the delay. Such a handsome fellow may be allowed a little vanity.

The colony is torn with dissensions as to Sunday trains. Some of the Dutch clergy are even more absurd than our own on that point. A certain Van der Lingen, at Stellenbosch, calls Europe 'one vast Sodom', and so forth. There is altogether a nice kettle of religious hatred brewing here. The English Bishop of Capetown appoints all the English clergy, and is absolute monarch of all he surveys; and he and his clergy are carrying matters with a high hand. The Bishop's chaplain told Mrs. J- that she could not hope for salvation in the Dutch Church, since her clergy were not ordained by any bishop, and therefore they could only administer the sacrament 'unto damnation'. All the physicians in a body, English as well as Dutch, have withdrawn from the Dispensary, because it was used as a means of pressure to draw the coloured people from the Dutch to the English Church.

This High-Church tyranny cannot go on long. Catholics there are few, but their bishop plays the same game; and it is a losing one. The Irish maid at the Caledon inn was driven by her bishop to be married at the Lutheran church, just as a young Englishman I know (though a fervent Puseyite) was driven to be married at the Scotch kirk. The colonial bishops are despots in their own churches, and there is no escape from their tyranny but by dissent. The Admiral and his family have been anathematized for going to a fancy bazaar given by the Wesleyans for their chapel.

April 8th.--Yesterday, I failed about my cart photograph. First, the owner had sent away the cart, and when Choslullah came dressed in all his best clothes, with a lovely blue handkerchief setting off his beautiful orange-tawny face, he had to rush off to try to borrow another cart. As ill luck would have it, he met a 'serious young man', with no front teeth, and a hideous wen on his eyebrow, who informed the priest of Choslullah's impious purpose, and came with him to see that he did NOT sit for his portrait. I believe it was half envy; for my handsome driver was as pleased, and then as disappointed, as a young lady about her first ball, and obviously had no religious scruples of his own on the subject. The weather is very delightful now--hot, but beautiful; and the south-easters, though violent, are short, and not cold. As in all other countries, autumn is the best time of year.

April 15th.--Your letters arrived yesterday, to my great delight. I have been worrying about a ship, and was very near sailing to-day by the Queen of the South at twenty-four hours' notice, but I have resolved to wait for the Camperdown. The Queen of the South is a steamer,--which is odious, for they pitch the coal all over the lower deck, so that you breathe coal-dust for the first ten days; then she was crammed--only one cabin vacant, and that small, and on the lower deck--and fifty-two children on board. Moreover, she will probably get to England too soon, so I resign myself to wait. The Camperdown has only upper-deck cabins, and I shall have fresh air. I am not as well as I was at Caledon, so I am all the more anxious to have a voyage likely to do me good instead of harm.

I got my cart and Choslullah photographed after all. Choslullah came next day (having got rid of his pious friend), quite resolved that 'the Missis' should take his portrait, so I will send or bring a few copies of my beloved cart. After the photograph was done, we drove round the Kloof, between Table and Lion Mountain. The road is cut on the side of Lion Mountain, and overhangs the sea at a great height. Camp Bay, which lies on the further side of the 'Lion's Head', is most lovely; never was sea so deeply blue, rocks so warmly brown, or sand and foam so glittering white; and down at the mountain-foot the bright green of the orange and pomegranate trees throws it all out in greater relief. But the atmosphere here won't do after that of the 'Ruggings', as the Caledon line of country is called. I shall never lose the impression of the view I had when Dr. Morkel drove me out on a hill-side, where the view seemed endless and without a vestige of life; and yet in every valley there were farms; but it looked a vast, utter solitude, and without the least haze. You don't know what that utter clearness means--the distinctness is quite awful. Here it is always slightly hazy; very pretty and warm, but it takes off from the grandeur. It is the difference between a pretty Pompadour beauty and a Greek statue. Those pale opal mountains, as distinct in every detail as the map on your table, are so cheerful and serene; no melodramatic effects of clouds and gloom. I suppose it is not really so beautiful as it seemed to me, for other people say it is bare and desolate, and certainly it is; but it seemed to me anything but dreary.

I am persuaded that Capetown is not healthy; indeed, the town can't be, from its stench and dirt; but I believe the whole seashore is more or less bad, compared to the upper plateaux, of which I know only the first. I should have gone back to Paarl, only that ships come and go within twenty-four hours, so one has the pleasure of living in constant expectation, with packed trunks, wondering when one shall get away. A clever Mr. M-, who has lived ALL OVER India, and is going back to Singapore, with his wife and child, are now in the house; and some very pleasant Jews, bound for British Caffraria--one of them has a lovely little wife and three children. She is very full of Prince Albert's death, and says there was not a dry eye in the synagogues in London, which were all hung with black on the day of his funeral, and prayer went on the whole day. 'THE PEOPLE mourned for him as much as for Hezekiah; and, indeed, he deserved it a great deal better,' was her rather unorthodox conclusion. These colonial Jews are a new 'Erscheinung' to me. They have the features of their race, but many of their peculiarities are gone. Mr. L-, who is very handsome and gentlemanly, eats ham and patronises a good breed of pigs on the 'model farm' on which he spends his money. He is (he says) a thorough Jew in faith, and evidently in charitable works; but he wants to say his prayers in English and not to 'dress himself up' in a veil and phylacteries for the purpose; and he and his wife talk of England as 'home', and care as much for Jerusalem as their neighbours. They have not forgotten the old persecutions, and are civil to the coloured people, and speak of them in quite a different tone from other English colonists. Moreover, they are far better mannered, and more 'HUMAN', in the German sense of the word, in all respects;--in short, less 'colonial'.

I have bought some Cape 'confeyt'; apricots, salted and then sugared, called 'mebos'--delicious! Also pickled peaches, 'chistnee', and quince jelly. I have a notion of some Cherupiga wine for ourselves. I will inquire the cost of bottling, packing, &c.; it is about one shilling and fourpence a bottle here, sweet red wine, unlike any other I ever drank, and I think very good. It is very tempting to bring a few things so unknown in England. I have a glorious 'Velcombers' for you, a blanket of nine Damara sheepskins, sewn by the Damaras, and dressed so that moths and fleas won't stay near them. It will make a grand railway rug and 'outside car' covering. The hunters use them for sleeping out of doors. I have bought three, and a springbok caross for somebody.

April 17th.--The winter has set in to-day. It rains steadily, at the rate of the heaviest bit of the heaviest shower in England, and is as cold as a bad day early in September. One can just sit without a fire. Presently, all will be green and gay; for winter is here the season of flowers, and the heaths will cover the country with a vast Turkey carpet. Already the green is appearing where all was brown yesterday. To-day is Good Friday; and if Christmas seemed odd at Midsummer, Easter in autumn seems positively unnatural. Our Jewish party made their exodus to-day, by the little coasting steamer, to Algoa Bay. I rather condoled with the pretty little woman about her long rough journey, with three babies; but she laughed, and said they had had time to get used to it ever since the days of Moses. All she grieved over was not being able to keep Passover, and she described their domestic ceremonies quite poetically. We heard from our former housemaid, Annie, the other day, announcing her marriage and her sister's. She wrote such a pretty, merry letter to S-, saying 'the more she tried not to like him, the better she loved him, and had to say, "Aha, Annie, you're caught at last."' A year and a half is a long time to remain single in this country.

Monday, April 21st, Easter Monday.--The mail goes out in an hour, so I will just add, good-bye. The winter is now fairly set in, and I long to be off. I fear I shall have a desperately cold week or so at first sailing, till we catch the south-east trades. This weather is beautiful in itself, but I feel it from the suddenness of the change. We passed in one night from hot summer to winter, which is like FINE English April, or October, only brighter than anything in Europe. There is properly, no autumn or spring here; only hot, dry, brown summer, with its cold wind at times, and fresh green winter,