Priests, Men,
Women, And English Crowded In And Out In The Exterior Division.
The English Behaved A L'Anglaise - Pushed Each Other, Laughed,
Sneered, And Made A Disgusting Display Of Themselves.
I asked a
stately priest, in a red turban, to explain the affair to me, and
in a few minutes found myself supplied by one Mollah with a chair,
and by another with a cup of tea - was, in short, in the midst 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English as well as Dutch, have withdrawn from the Dispensary,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.
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