Whenever It Is Hot, I Am
Well, For The Heat Here Is So LIGHT And Dry.
The wind tries me,
but we have little here compared to the coast.
I hope that the
voyage home will do me still more good; but I will not sail till
April, so as to arrive in June. May, in the Channel, would not do.
How I wish I could send you the fruit now on my table - amber-
coloured grapes, yellow waxen apples streaked with vermillion in
fine little lines, huge peaches, and tiny green figs! I must send
dear old Klein a little present from England, to show that I don't
forget my Dutch adorer. I wish I could bring you the 'Biltong ' he
sent me - beef or bok dried in the sun in strips, and slightly
salted; you may carry enough in your pocket to live on for a
fortnight, and it is very good as a little 'relish'. The
partridges also have been welcome, and we shall eat the tiny haunch
of bok to-day.
Mrs. D- is gone to Capetown to get servants (the Scotch girl having
carried on her amours too flagrantly), and will return in my cart.
S- is still keeping house meanwhile, much perturbed by the placid
indolence of the brown girl. The stableman cooks, and very well
too. This is colonial life - a series of makeshifts and
difficulties; but the climate is fine, people feel well and make
money, and I think it is not an unhappy life. I have been most
fortunate in my abode, and can say, without speaking cynically,
that I have found 'my warmest welcome at an inn'. Mine host is a
rough soldier, but the very soul of good nature and good feeling;
and his wife is a very nice person - so cheerful, clever, and
kindhearted.
I should like to bring home the little Madagascar girl from
Rathfelders, or a dear little mulatto who nurses a brown baby here,
and is so clean and careful and 'pretty behaved', - but it would be
a great risk. The brown babies are ravishing - so fat and jolly and
funny.
One great charm of the people here is, that no one expects money or
gifts, and that all civility is gratis. Many a time I finger small
coin secretly in my pocket, and refrain from giving it, for fear of
spoiling this innocence. I have not once seen a LOOK implying
'backsheesh', and begging is unknown. But the people are reserved
and silent, and have not the attractive manners of the darkies of
Capetown and the neighbourhood.
LETTER X
Caledon, Feb. 22d.
Yesterday Captain D- gave me a very nice caross of blessbok skins,
which he got from some travelling trader. The excellence of the
Caffre skin-dressing and sewing is, I fancy, unequalled; the bok-
skins are as soft as a kid glove, and have no smell at all.
In the afternoon the young doctor drove me, in his little gig-cart
and pair (the lightest and swiftest of conveyances), to see a wine-
farm. The people were not at work, but we saw the tubs and vats,
and drank 'most'. The grapes are simply trodden by a Hottentot, in
a tub with a sort of strainer at the bottom, and then thrown -
skins, stalks, and all - into vats, where the juice ferments for
twice twenty-four hours; after which it is run into casks, which
are left with the bung out for eight days; then the wine is drawn
off into another cask, a little sulphur and brandy are added to it,
and it is bunged down. Nothing can be conceived so barbarous. I
have promised Mr. M- to procure and send him an exact account of
the process in Spain. It might be a real service to a most worthy
and amiable man. Dr. M- also would be glad of a copy. They
literally know nothing about wine-making here, and with such
matchless grapes I am sure it ought to be good. Altogether, 'der
alte Schlendrian' prevails at the Cape to an incredible degree.
If two 'Heeren M-' call on you, please be civil to them. I don't
know them personally, but their brother is the doctor here, and the
most good-natured young fellow I ever saw. If I were returning by
Somerset instead of Worcester, I might put up at their parents'
house and be sure of a welcome; and I can tell you civility to
strangers is by no means of course here. I don't wonder at it; for
the old Dutch families ARE GENTLEFOLKS of the good dull old school,
and the English colonists can scarcely suit them. In the few
instances in which I have succeeded in thawing a Dutchman, I have
found him wonderfully good-natured; and the different manner in
which I was greeted when in company with the young doctor showed
the feeling at once. The dirt of a Dutch house is not to be
conceived. I have had sights in bedrooms in very respectable
houses which I dare not describe. The coloured people are just as
clean. The young doctor (who is much Anglicised) tells me that, in
illness, he has to break the windows in the farmhouses - they are
built not to open! The boers are below the English in manners and
intelligence, and hate them for their 'go-ahead' ways, though THEY
seem slow enough to me. As to drink, I fancy it is six of one and
half a dozen of the other; but the English are more given to
eternal drams, and the Dutch to solemn drinking bouts. I can't
understand either, in this climate, which is so stimulating, that I
more often drink ginger-beer or water than wine - a bottle of sherry
lasted me a fortnight, though I was ordered to drink it; somehow, I
had no mind to it.
27th. - The cart could not be got till the day before yesterday, and
yesterday Mrs. D- arrived in it with two new Irish maids; it saved
her 3l., and I must have paid equally.
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