CHAPTER II

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SOCIETY AND SLAVERY

We walked across the parade-ground, and past the spot where, in my dream, I had seen the old Van Riebeek fort crumbling to pieces, with its canal and little bridges: now, there is a building called the Post Office, and instead of the canal, with its tree-bordered pathways, a street called Adderley Street, with shop-windows where the trees stood. Even the old Exchange is gone, with its stiff row of trees and its chained posts and _kiosque_, before which, in the turbulent days of Sir Harry Smith's régime, all Cape Town, English, Dutch, Malay, in stock, and crinoline, and turban, with one united voice roared against the Imperial Government's decree, which was to turn the Peninsula into a dumping-ground for convicts. Crinoline, stock, and turban kept the half-starved convict ships with their unwelcome freight for five months at anchor in Simon's Bay. Sir Harry, with an eye of sympathy on the mob, and the other eye of duty on the starving convict ships, ordered food to be sent, offered famine prices: no one moved. A few judicious civil servants, with both eyes on the main chance, smuggled a small supply on board. But the crowd in front of the old Exchange won the day, and Australia profited instead.

At the end of the eighteenth century a young lady described the Cape and its inhabitants in a few words: 'Di menschen zyn moei dik en vet, di huizen moei wit en groen' (The people are very fat and plump; the houses are pretty white and green).

Up Strand Street, which was the 'Beach Street,' lived all the high in the land, the Koopmans, or merchants--'a title,' says an old writer, 'that conferred rank at the Cape to which the military even aspired.' There they lived, in flat-roofed, high-stoeped houses with teak doors and small-paned glass windows, facing the sea; the men smoking, drinking and selling; the women eating, dressing and dancing. Not a decent school in the town, not a sign of a library, only a theatre whose productions bored them intolerably: 'Ach, foei toch, Mijnheer Cook,' says the lady with the smallest feet in all Kaapstad to the famous sailor Cook, who was the guest of her father, Mijnheer Le Roux, 'go to the theatre? to listen for three hours to a conversation?' Cook gave in, and, instead, was carried off in a big 'carosse,'[2] with a Malay coachman in large reed hat over his turban, pointed and with flowing ribbons at the side, to the Avenue in the Company's Gardens, a modest Vauxhall, and then on to one of the monthly dances given in the Castle by the Governor Van Plettenberg.

Dancing was the great form of exercise. 'The ladies of the Cape are pretty and well dressed,' says the French traveller Le Vaillant, visiting the Cape about this time--1772. He expressed great surprise at the way they dressed: 'With as much attention to the minutiæ of dress as the ladies of France, with neither their manners nor their graces.' How could they have manners and graces? With the adaptability which amounts to genius, which the women of newly-arisen cosmopolitan nations possess as Fate's compensation for depriving them of the birthright of history, tradition, and ancient habitation, they imitated the manners and fashions of the passing passengers resting a few days at the Cape on their way to India. Those belonging to the better class all played on the harpsichord and sang; they had generally a good knowledge of French, and often of English; were experts with the needle, making all kinds of lace, 'knotting' and tambour work; and they usually made up their own dresses.

The men and youths, who never mixed with the English or foreign visitors, were entirely different: phlegmatic and dull, badly dressed and badly mannered. Anne Barnard, writing Cape gossip to London, has many stories to tell of pretty Cape ladies running off with Englishmen or Frenchmen. The thanksgiving sigh of one worthy 'Koopman' is conclusive: 'Grace à Dieu, ma femme est bien laide!'

However, we must return to the house of Le Roux in the Strand Street. It is the day after the fête in the Avenue and the Governor's ball. At an old French bureau, with metal inlays, praising Monsieur Buhl in every beautiful line, this gallant Captain Cook wrote in his _Journal_ while the pretty little 'Foei toch,' with sighs of neglect, sat playing the spinet in a corner of vantage. They changed places presently--he would dictate and she should write. Two minutes passed, and Cook got up and looked over her shoulder. She had written, atrociously, a funny little French verse and signed it:

'Marion pleurt, Marion rit, Marion veut, qu'on la marie. 'MARION.'

Cook smiled and bowed. 'Me dear, you have the most adorable foot in the world, but I dare say little for your hand.' Very witty of him, but of course she wrote badly; there were no schools, only ill-paid writing masters. The parsons, all well paid by the Government, would not condescend to such a worthless occupation.

So Cook wrote his _Journal_ himself, in large, scrawling writing, with old-fashioned _s_'s, while his two ships, the _Resolution_ and the _Adventure_, anchored by stout chains instead of cables in this Bay of Storms, lay waiting for a good wind to sail away round the world. And Marion sang from her corner at the spinet:

'Marions ci, Marions ça, Mais jamais, jamais marions là.'

Cook writes:

'THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, '_Monday, November 2, 1772_.

'The Cape of Good Hope, in Caffraria, or the Country of the Hottentots, is the most southern promontory of Africa.

'It is very mountainous.

'The Table Mountain is of a great height (_sic_), and the top of it is always covered with a cap of clouds before a storm. There are no harbours, though there is a sea-coast of a thousand miles. When Commodore Byron touched at the Cape he was obliged to work into Table Bay with his top sails close reefed. Indeed, the Cape is scarce ever free from storms a week together; the winds blow hard and on every side from the vast southern ocean, and the waves of the sea rise to a height never seen or experienced in any part of Europe. The Bay of Biscay, turbulent as it is, has no billows that mount like those on this extensive ocean; the stoutest vessels are tossed and almost lifted to the skies. A number of rich ships have perished on this coast; the Dutch have lost whole fleets even at anchor before the Town.

'The climate is very healthy, the country is fine, and it abounds with refreshments of every kind. The Company's garden is the most ravishing spot.'

(He read this to Mademoiselle Marion, who had found Mr. Pickersgill, his Third Lieutenant, a good second when the gallant Captain, with his tongue in his cheek and a wink at Marion, escorted the fat wife of Governor Van Plettenberg round the most ravishing Gardens.) The Captain went on with his diary:

'The garden produces all the most delicious fruits of Asia and Europe. It is guarded from the winds and storms by hedges of bay, very thick and high, affording a most refreshing shade in the hottest season. It abounds with peaches, pomegranates, pineapple, bananas, citrons, lemons, oranges, the pears and apples of Europe, all excellent in their kind, and the crimson apple of Japan, appearing through the green leaves, of all the most beautiful. The Dutch have large plantations of almond-trees, and many sorts of camphor-trees, and there is scarce a cottage without a vineyard to it. Their cabbages and cauliflowers weigh from thirty to forty pounds, their potatoes from six to ten, raised from seed brought from Cyprus and Savoy. Their corn is ripe in December, and our Christmas is the time of their harvest. In January they tread out their corn, and in February the farmers carry it to the Company's magazines.

'They sow every kind of grain but oats. Lions, tigers, leopards, elephants, and the rhinoceros are to be found here; the elephants are very large; their teeth (_sic_) weigh from sixty to one hundred and twenty pounds. The Dutch keep up a body of regular forces, and have a strong garrison at the Cape; they have also a militia, a corps of men in all nations formidable in themselves, most dreadful to an enemy, and, when called out for service, spreading destruction all around them in the heights of their ungovernable fury. They are of so robust a disposition, and so naturally inclined for war, that, like the Devonshire and Northamptonshire champions in England, they are ever ready to solicit employment, even against the principles of their own institution.'

Next day the Governor, the English Consul, the Fiscal, Marion and her father, together with a large party, boarded the _Resolution_, to see them make fresh water out of salt water; and when they left, and before the _Resolution_, firing fifteen guns, and the _Adventure_ nine, sailed away round the world, Mr. Pickersgill and Marion had found time to fall in love. Marion at her spinet that evening shed very salt little Dutch tears when she came to the lines, 'Mais jamais, jamais marions là.'

There is a charming poem by Ian Colvin which Marinus thinks might be inspired by Marion and her Lieutenant.

In the Museum at the top of the old Company's gardens lies a little English shoe of surprising smallness--surprising, for not only Anne Barnard remarked on the size of the Cape ladies' feet: there is that nice story of the enterprising merchant who chartered a large shipload of out-sizes in ladies' shoes, and the ladies sent their slaves in the dark to buy them!

The poem goes:

'There's a tiny English shoe Of morocco, cream and blue, Made with all a cobbler's skill By Sam Miller in Cornhill.

'Many a story, quaint and sweet, Of the lady fair, whose feet Twinkled with a charm divine Beneath her ample crinoline, Making her tortured lovers dream That heaven itself was blue and cream.'

The story tells of how this dainty creature walked down the 'Heerengracht,' followed by the tortured lovers:

'Van der Merwe, Jacques Theron, The Captain of the garrison, Petrus de Witt, or Van Breda, Or Cloete of Constantia. And then the Fiscal--fat and old-- What matters? he had power and gold, Coffers of dollars, and doubloons, Gold mohurs, pagodas, ducatoons, And in his cupboards stored away The priceless treasures of Cathay.'

Then it tells of how she loved this English sailor, how he left to sail to many strange lands, and asked her what she wished to have.

'And she, although her cheeks were wet, Was in a moment all coquette: "Your English fashions would, I fear, But ill become my homely sphere; Besides, you know not how to choose-- Bring me instead a pair of shoes."'

So the English lover sailed away, and the Fiscal became a menace to the poor little cream and blue 'Jonge Vrouw,' and the wedding-day arrived:

'From Signal Hill to Witteboom, From Kirstenbosch to Roodebloem, With cannon, bugle, bell and horn, They ushered in the wedding morn.'

But the English lover and the shoes arrived just in time; the bride was missing; the wedding-party and the storming Fiscal rushed down to the sea-shore--'a ship in a cloud of sail was riding out of the Bay in a favouring gale.'

'They heard above the ocean's swell Ring faint and clear a wedding bell; And where the boat put off, they found A tiny shoe upon the ground.'

'Marions ci, Marions ça, Et jamais, jamais marions là.'

A charming idyll to amuse us as we climbed up the hill to Riebeek Square, where the flat-roofed houses and the old Slave-Market with a few wind-twisted pines have so much of the 'old order' in their keeping.

Behind the square were the old brickfields, where poor Lieutenant Schut's duties lay. The Slave-House stands in the middle of the square.

This energetic young man disappears from the pages of the _Journals_ and presumably from society.

'_August 1, 1668._

'Lieutenant Schut is expelled from the Council, because he has passed a deed of reclamation to the widow of the late Reverend Wachtendorp for libellous words uttered by him behind her back, and to her injury.

'The Council should keep itself free from obloquy, and unpolluted.'

Praiseworthy sentiments, but they must have suffered for them. I find no mention of another paragon who was able to accept the responsibilities imposed upon Schut.

Indiscriminate gossip or libel was most severely punished at the Cape, the desire to be free from obloquy not being confined to the Council.

In 1663 Teuntje Bartholomeus, wife of the burgher, Bartholomeus Born, is banished for six weeks to Dassen Island for having libelled a certain honest woman. A perfect rest-cure! Six weeks on Dassen Island! alone with Nature, wind, sea, rock-rabbits, and seals!

There is no official mention of her return from exile.

SLAVES.

'For there is no country in the world where slaves are treated with so much humanity as at the Cape,' writes Le Vaillant in 1780, but in reading through the old day-books of Van Riebeek, Hackius, Borghorst, Isbrand Goski, and the Van der Stels, the punishments inflicted on slaves might have been inspired by those old, over-praised painters, who gloried in an anatomical dissection of a poor wretch whose miserable body possessed no anatomy at all. The Mozambique, Madagascar, and Malay slaves were keel-hauled; they were tied in sacks and thrown into the Bay; they were tortured. Here is the sentence of one: 'Bound on a cross, when his right hand shall be cut off, his body pinched in six places with red-hot irons, his arms and legs broken to pieces, and after that to be impaled alive before the Town House on the Square, his dead body afterwards to be thrown on a wheel outside the town _at the usual place_, and to be left a prey to the birds of the air.' Could any torture of the Inquisition be worse? But these tortures were in 1696, years before the enlightened days of Le Vaillant. The half-breed slaves of the early days were a source of worry to the ruling council; several times in the _Journals_ one may come across a case of a freeman or burgher marrying his emancipated slave:

'"Maria of Bengal," a Hindoo woman, set the fashion, and the famous interpretress, Eva, during her extraordinary career of diplomatic and immoral episodes within the walls of the Fort, where she wore garments made by kind Maria van Riebeek, or outside the walls, where she wore the filthy skins of her own people, the Hottentots, beguiled the senior surgeon to such lengths that he was granted permission to marry her. He fortunately was killed during an expedition to Madagascar, but not before he had had sufficient time to regret the beguilings of Eva.'

Many of the slaves were children of convicts sent from Batavia and the Malay Settlements. Here is the case of a half-breed girl, which was sent to Batavia for judgment:

'Regarding the half-breed girl, you order that she is to serve the Company until her twenty-second year, when she is to be emancipated on condition that she makes profession of the Christian faith, and, moreover, pays R. 150 for her education. We are well aware that this rule is observed in the case of _slave children having Dutch fathers_, but whether it applies to children of _convict women_ by Dutch fathers, as in the case of this girl, would like to hear from you.'

When Le Vaillant wrote, all these rules had changed, though even he talks with some mystery of a runaway slave having received a _slight correction_. When slaves landed at the Cape, they cost from a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty dollars (_i.e._, rix-dollars) each, that being about £22 10s. to £27 10s. The negroes from Mozambique and those of Madagascar were the best labourers; the Indians were much sought after for service in the house and in the town. Malays were the most intelligent and the most dangerous. Barrow, in whose days (1798) the price of slaves had gone up considerably, tells a story showing the revengeful spirit of the Malay. A slave, thinking that he had served his master sufficiently long and with great fidelity, and having also paid him several sums of money, was tempted to demand his liberty. He was met with a refusal. He straightway went and murdered his fellow-slave. He was taken up and brought before the Court, acknowledged that the slave he had murdered was his friend, but said that the best form of revenge he could think of was not to murder his master, but to deprive him of a slave worth the value of a thousand rix-dollars (_i.e._, £187 10s.) and of another thousand by bringing himself to the gallows!

The Creole slaves were sold for a higher price than the others, and were often 'acquainted with a trade,' when their price became exorbitant. They were clothed properly, but went barefooted. Twenty to thirty slaves were generally found in one house. 'That insolent set of domestics called _footmen_,' writes the French explorer, 'are not to be seen at the Cape; for pride and luxury have not yet introduced these idle and contemptible attendants who in Europe line the ante-chambers of the rich, and who in their deportment exhibit every mark of impertinence!' The abolition of the Rack and Torture was responsible for an extraordinary occurrence: the public executioner made an application for a pension in lieu of the emoluments he used to receive for the breaking of legs and arms; the second hangman upon inquiry learnt that not only did the English of this new régime abolish the Rack and Torture, but that they were not thinking of establishing breaking on the wheel; this was more than he could bear, and, fearing starvation, he went and hanged himself! Strange irony of fate.

In every family a slave was kept whose sole duty was the gathering of wood. It was strictly forbidden to gather any fuel, scrub, or bush on the Downs or Flats, so the slave would go out every morning up the mountains, and would return at night with two or three small bundles of faggots--the produce of six or eight hours' hard labour--swinging at the two ends of a bamboo carried across his shoulder. In some families more than one slave was kept for this purpose, and this gives a very good idea of the scarcity of wood at the Cape as late as 1798. From the diaries of that time one gathers that, though wood was only used for cooking purposes--as only the kitchen possessed a fireplace--yet the cost of fuel for a small household amounted to forty or fifty pounds a year.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Barouche.