I Pay Twelve Shillings A
Day For S- And Self, Without A Sitting-Room, And My Bed Is A Straw
Paillasse; But The Food Is Plentiful, And Not Very Bad.
That is
the cheapest rate of living possible here, and every trifle costs
double what it would in England, except wine, which is very fair at
fivepence a bottle - a kind of hock.
The landlord pays 1 pound a
day rent for this house, which is the great resort of the Capetown
people for Sundays, and for change of air, &c. - a rude kind of
Richmond. His cook gets 3 pounds 10s. a month, besides food for
himself and wife, and beer and sugar. The two (white) housemaids
get 1 pound 15s. and 1 pound 10s. respectively (everything by the
month). Fresh butter is 3s. 6d. a pound, mutton 7d.; washing very
dear; cabbages my host sells at 3d. a piece, and pumpkins 8d. He
has a fine garden, and pays a gardener 3s. 6d. a day, and black
labourers 2s. THEY work three days a week; then they buy rice and
a coarse fish, and lie in the sun till it is eaten; while their
darling little fat black babies play in the dust, and their black
wives make battues in the covers in their woolly heads. But the
little black girl who cleans my room is far the best servant, and
smiles and speaks like Lalage herself, ugly as the poor drudge is.
The voice and smile of the negroes here is bewitching, though they
are hideous; and neither S- nor I have yet heard a black child cry,
or seen one naughty or quarrelsome.
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