M. De Villiers Has Had No Education AT ALL, And
Has Worked, And Traded, And Farmed, - But The Breed Tells;
He is a
pure and thorough Frenchman, unable to speak a word of French.
When I went in to dinner,
He rose and gave me a chair with a bow
which, with his appearance, made me ask, 'Monsieur vient
d'arriver?' This at once put him out and pleased him. He is very
unlike a Dutchman. If you think that any of the French will feel
as I felt to this far-distant brother of theirs, pray give him a
few letters; but remember that he can speak only English and Dutch,
and a little German. Here his name is CALLED 'Filljee', but I told
him to drop that barbarism in Europe; De Villiers ought to speak
for itself. He says they came from the neighbourhood of Bordeaux.
The postmaster, Heer Klein, and his old Pylades, Heer Ley, are
great cronies of mine - stout old greybeards, toddling down the hill
together. I sometimes go and sit on the stoep with the two old
bachelors, and they take it as a great compliment; and Heer Klein
gave me my letters all decked with flowers, and wished 'Vrolyke
tydings, Mevrouw,' most heartily. He has also made his tributary
mail-cart Hottentots bring from various higher mountain ranges the
beautiful everlasting flowers, which will make pretty wreaths for
J-. When I went to his house to thank him, I found a handsome
Malay, with a basket of 'Klipkaus', a shell-fish much esteemed
here. Old Klein told me they were sent him by a Malay who was born
in his father's house, a slave, and had been HIS 'BOY' and play-
fellow. Now, the slave is far richer than the old young master,
and no waggon comes without a little gift - oranges, fish, &c. - for
'Wilhem'. When Klein goes to Capetown, the old Malay seats him in
a grand chair and sits on a little wooden stool at his feet; Klein
begs him, as 'Huisheer', to sit properly; but, 'Neen Wilhem, Ik zal
niet; ik kan niet vergeten.' 'Good boy!' said old Klein; 'good
people the Malays.' It is a relief, after the horrors one has
heard of Dutch cruelty, to see such an 'idyllisches Verhaltniss'.
I have heard other instances of the same fidelity from Malays, but
they were utterly unappreciated, and only told to prove the
excellence of slavery, and 'how well the rascals must have been
off'.
I have fallen in love with a Hottentot baby here. Her mother is
all black, with a broad face and soft spaniel eyes, and the father
is Bastaard; but the baby (a girl, nine months old), has walked out
of one of Leonardo da Vinci's pictures. I never saw so beautiful a
child. She has huge eyes with the spiritual look he gives to them,
and is exquisite in every way. When the Hottentot blood is
handsome, it is beautiful; there is a delicacy and softness about
some of the women which is very pretty, and the eyes are those of a
GOOD dog. Most of them are hideous, and nearly all drink; but they
are very clean and honest. Their cottages are far superior in
cleanliness to anything out of England, except in picked places,
like some parts of Belgium; and they wash as much as they can, with
the bad water-supply, and the English outcry if they strip out of
doors to bathe. Compared to French peasants, they are very clean
indeed, and even the children are far more decent and cleanly in
their habits than those of France. The woman who comes here to
clean and scour is a model of neatness in her work and her person
(quite black), but she gets helplessly drunk as soon as she has a
penny to buy a glass of wine; for a penny, a half-pint tumbler of
very strong and remarkably nasty wine is sold at the canteens.
I have many more 'humours' to tell, but A- can show you all the
long story I have written. I hope it does not seem very stale and
decies repetita. All being new and curious to the eye here, one
becomes long-winded about mere trifles.
One small thing more. The first few shillings that a coloured
woman has to spend on her cottage go in - what do you think? - A
grand toilet table of worked muslin over pink, all set out with
little 'objets' - such as they are: if there is nothing else, there
is that here, as at Capetown, and all along to Simon's Bay. Now,
what is the use or comfort of a duchesse to a Hottentot family? I
shall never see those toilets again without thinking of Hottentots-
-what a baroque association of ideas! I intend, in a day or two,
to go over to 'Gnadenthal', the Moravian missionary station,
founded in 1736 - the 'bluhende Gemeinde von Hottentoten'. How
little did I think to see it, when we smiled at the phrase in old
Mr. Steinkopf's sermon years ago in London! The MISSIONARIZED
Hottentots are not, as it is said, thought well of - being even
tipsier than the rest; but I may see a full-blood one, and even a
true Bosjesman, which is worth a couple of hours' drive; and the
place is said to be beautiful.
This climate is evidently a styptic of great power, I shall write a
few lines to the Lancet about Caledon and its hot baths - 'Bad
Caledon', as the Germans at Houw Hoek call it. The baths do not
concern me, as they are chalybeate; but they seem very effectual in
many cases. Yet English people never come here; they stay at
Capetown, which must be a furnace now, or at Wynberg, which is damp
and chill (comparatively); at most, they get to Stellenbosch. I
mean visitors, not settlers; THEY are everywhere. I look the
colour of a Hottentot.
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