Chapter 29
In 1877 he married and found in his wife just the helper that he needed. She too had the historical imagination, the love of research, and the power of writing. Husband and wife produced in co-operation a small geography of the British Isles, well planned, clear, and pleasant to read. But, apart from this, she was content, during the too brief period of their married life, to subordinate her activities to helping her husband, and her aid was invaluable at the time when he was writing his later books. There is no doubt that his marriage prolonged his life. The care which his wife took of him, whether in their home in foggy London, or in primitive lodgings in beautiful Capri, helped him over his worst days; and the new value which he now set on life and its happiness gave him redoubled force of will. There were others who helped him in these days of perpetual struggle with ill-health. His doctors, Sir Andrew Clark and Sir Lauder Brunton, rendered him the devotion of personal friends. The historians gathered round him in Kensington Square, the home of his later years, and cheered him with good talk. Those who were lucky enough to be admitted might hear him at his best, discussing historical questions in a circle which included Sir Henry Maine and Bishop Stubbs, as well as Lecky, Freeman, and Bryce. He had many other interests. Such a man could not be indifferent to contemporary politics. His heroes--and he was an ardent worshipper of heroes--were Gladstone and Garibaldi, and, like many Liberals of the day, he was violent in his opposition to Beaconsfield's policy in Eastern Europe. Hatred of Napoleonic tyranny killed for a while his sympathy with France, and in 1870 he sympathized with the German cause--at least till the rape of the two provinces and the sorrows of disillusioned France revived his old feeling for the French nation. Over everything he felt keenly and expressed himself warmly. As Tennyson said to him at the close of a visit to Aldworth, 'You're a jolly, vivid man; you're as vivid as lightning'.
Particularly dear to him was the close sympathy of Stopford Brooke and that of Humphry Ward, to whose father he had been curate in 1860 and who had himself for years learnt to cherish the friendship of Green and to seek his counsel. Mrs. Ward has told us how she (then Miss Arnold) brought her earliest literary efforts to Green, how kindly was his encouragement but how formidable was the standard of excellence which he set up. She has also pictured for us 'the thin wasted form seated in the corner of the sofa... the eloquent lips... the life flashing from his eyes beneath the very shadow of death'. His latter years, lived perpetually under this grim shadow, were yet full of cheerfulness and of hope. However the body might fail, the active brain was planning and the high courage was bracing him to further effort. Between 1877 and 1880 he published in four volumes a _History of the English People_, which follows the same plan and covers much the same ground as the _Short History_. He was able to revise his views on points where recent study threw fresh light and to include subjects which had been crowded out for want of space. But the book failed to attract readers to the same extent as the _Short History_. The freshness and buoyancy of the earlier sketch could not be recaptured after so long an interval. In the last year of his life he began again on the early history of England, working at a pace which would have been astonishing even in a man of robust health, and he completed in the short period of eleven months the brilliant volume called _The Making of England_. He had thought out the subject during many a day and night of pain and had the plan clear in his head; but he was indefatigable in revising his work, and would make as many as eight or ten drafts of a chapter before it satisfied his judgement. His last autumn and winter were occupied with the succeeding volume, _The Conquest of England_, and he left it sufficiently complete for his wife to edit and publish a few months after his death.
The end came at Mentone early in 1883. Two years of life had been won, as his doctor said, by sheer force of will; but the frail body could no longer obey the soul, and nature could bear no more.
If in the twentieth century history is losing its hold on the thought and feeling of the rising generation, Green is the last man whom we can blame. He gave all his faculties unsparingly to his task--patience, enthusiasm, single-hearted love of truth; and he encouraged others to do the same. No man was more free from the pontifical airs of those historians who proclaimed history as an academic science to be confined within the chilly walls of libraries and colleges. We may apply to his work what Mr. G. M. Trevelyan has said of the English historians from Clarendon down to recent times; it was 'the means of spreading far and wide, throughout all the reading classes, a love and knowledge of history, an elevated and critical patriotism, and certain qualities of mind and heart'.[59] Against the danger which he mentions in his next sentence, that we are now being drilled into submission to German models, Mr. Trevelyan is himself one of our surest protectors.
[Note 59: _Clio and other Essays_, by G. M. Trevelyan, p. 4 (Longmans, Green & Co., 1913).]
CECIL RHODES
1853-1902
1853. Born at Bishop's Stortford, July 5. 1870. Goes out to Natal. 1871. Moves to Kimberley. 1873-81. Intermittent visits to Oxford. 1880. First De Beers Company started. 1880. Member for Barkly West. 1883. Commissioner in Bechuanaland. 1885. Warren expedition: Bechuanaland annexed by British Government. 1887. Acute rivalry between Rhodes and Barnato. 1888. Barnato gives way: De Beers Consolidated founded. 1888. Lobengula grants concession for mining. 1889. British South Africa Chartered Company formed. 1890. Prime Minister of Cape Colony. 1890. Occupation of Mashonaland. 1893. Second Rhodes ministry. 1893. War with Lobengula. Matabeleland occupied. 1895. 'Drifts' question between Cape and Transvaal Government. 1895. Jameson Raid, December 28. 1896. January, Rhodes's resignation. Visit to England. 1896. Rebellion in Rhodesia. 1897. Inquiry into the Raid by Committee of the House of Commons. 1899. D.C.L., Oxford. 1899. Outbreak of Great Boer War. 1902. Dies at Muizenberg, March 26.
CECIL RHODES
COLONIST
The Rhodes family can be traced back to sturdy English yeoman stock. In the eighteenth century they had held land in North London. Cecil's father was vicar of Bishop's Stortford, a quiet country town in Hertfordshire on the Essex border; he was a man of mark, wealthy, liberal, and unconventional, with the rare gift of preaching ten-minute sermons which were well worth hearing. Of his eldest sons, Herbert went to Winchester, Frank to Eton; Cecil, the fifth son, born on July 5, 1853, was kept at home. He had part of his education at the local Grammar School, but perhaps the better part at the Vicarage from his father himself. The shrewd Vicar soon saw that his fifth son was not fitted for the ordinary routine of professional life at home, and at the age of seventeen he was sent out to visit his brother Herbert, who had emigrated to Natal. Cecil said good-bye to his native land for the first time in 1870, and thus early elected to be a citizen of the Greater Britain beyond the seas.
The brothers had certain points of resemblance, being both original and adventurous; but they had marked differences. The elder was a wanderer pure and simple, a lover of sport and of novelty. He could follow a new track with all the ardour of a pioneer; he could not sit down and develop the wealth which he had opened up. The management of the Natal cotton farm soon fell into the hands of Cecil, now eighteen years old, who noted every detail, and studied his crops, his workmen, and his markets, while Herbert was absent in quest of game and adventure. It was this spirit which led Herbert westward in 1871, among the earliest of the immigrants into the diamond fields: before the end of the year Cecil followed and soon took over and developed his brother's claim. It was no case of Esau and Jacob; the brothers had great affection for one another and fitted in together without jealousy. Each lived his own life and followed his own bent. As Kimberley was the first field in which Cecil showed his abilities, it is worth while to try to picture the scene. It remained a centre of interest to him for thirty years, the scene of many troubles and of many triumphs.
'The New Rush', as Kimberley was called in 1872, was a chaos of tents and rubbish heaps seen through a haze of dust--a heterogeneous collection of tents, wagons, native kraals and debris heaps, each set down with cheerful irresponsibility and indifference to order. The funnel of blue clay so productive of diamonds had been found on a bit of the bare Griqualand Veld, marked out by no geographical advantages, with no charm of woodland or river scenery. Here in the years to come the great pits, familiar in modern photographs, were to grow deeper and deeper, as the partitions fell in between the small claims, or as the more enterprising miners bought up their neighbours' plots. Here the debris heaps were to grow higher and higher, as more hundreds of Kaffirs were brought in to dig, or new machinery arrived, as the buckets plied more rapidly on the network of ropes overhead. In the early 'seventies there were few signs of these marvels to be seen by the outward eye--everything was in the rough--but they were no doubt already existing in the brain of 'a tall fair boy, blue eyed and with somewhat aquiline features, wearing flannels of the school playing-field, somewhat shrunken with strenuous rather than effectual washings, that still left the colour of the red veld dust'.
Here Cecil Rhodes lived for the greater part of ten years, finding time amid his work for dreams: living, in general, aloof from the men with whom he did his daily business, but laying here and there the foundations of a friendship which was to bear fruit hereafter. Rudd,[60] of the Matabeleland concessions, came out in 1873; Beit,[61] the partner in diamond fields and gold fields, the co-founder of the Chartered Company, in 1875; and in 1878 there came out from Edinburgh one whose name was to be linked still more closely with that of Rhodes. Leander Starr Jameson, a skilful doctor, a cheerful companion, gifted with a great capacity for self-devotion, and with unshakeable firmness of will, was now twenty-five years old. Rhodes and he soon drew closely together and for years they were living under one roof. While his casual and rather overbearing manners repelled many of his acquaintances, Rhodes had a genius for friendship with the few; and it was such men as these who shared his work, his pastimes, and his thoughts, and reconciled him to spending many years in the unattractive surroundings of the mines.
[Note 60: C. D. Rudd (1844-96), educated at Harrow and Cambridge.]
[Note 61: Alfred Beit, born at Hamburg, 1853; died in London, 1906.]
But his life at this time had other phases. Not the least wonderful chapter in it was the series of visits which he paid to Oxford between 1873 and 1881. The atmosphere of a mining camp does not seem likely to draw a man towards academic studies and a University life. But Rhodes, who had a great power of absorbing himself in work, had also the power of projecting himself beyond the interests of the moment. Seven times he found opportunity to tear himself away from the busy work of mining and to keep terms at Oxford; and they made a lasting impression upon him. It was not the love of book-learning, still less the love of games, which drew him there. To many he may have seemed to be spending his time unprofitably. He indulged in some rowing and polo, he was master of the drag-hounds, he worried his neighbours by nocturnal practising of the horn. The examinations in the schools, and the more popular athletic contests, knew little of him. But his sojourn in Oxford was a tribute paid by the higher side of his mind to education and to the value of high thinking as compared with material progress; and no one who knew him well in later life could doubt that the traditions of Oxford had deeply influenced his mind. On these things he was by nature reticent, and was often misjudged.
Between the years 1878 and 1888 must be placed the struggle between him and his rivals for predominance in Kimberley. It had begun with small enterprises, the purchasing of adjoining claims, the undertaking of drainage work, the introduction of better machinery. It attracted more attention in 1880 with the founding of the first De Beers Company, named after a Boer who had owned the land on which the mine lay. It culminated in 1887 in the battle with Barnato,[62] his most dangerous competitor, when by dexterous purchasing of shares in his rival's company Rhodes forced him into a final scheme of amalgamation. In 1888 was founded the great corporation of De Beers Consolidated mines. The masterful will of Rhodes dictated the terms of the Trust deed, giving very extensive power to the Directorate for the using of their funds. He was already laying his foundations, though few could then have guessed what imperial work was to be done with the money thus obtained. The process of amalgamation was not popular in Kimberley. It resulted in closing down many of the less profitable claims and in reducing the amount of labour employed. But it brought in better machinery and it saved expenses of management. Above all, it curtailed the output of diamonds and so kept up the market price in Europe and elsewhere. Many people refused to believe that Rhodes could have outmanoeuvred a man of exceptional financial ability without using dishonourable means. But there is no doubt that it was masterful character which won the day, that strength of will which decides the issue at the critical moment. Many others have been prejudiced against him merely from the fact that he spent so much time and energy in the pursuit of 'filthy lucre'. We must remember that Rhodes himself said: 'What's the earthly use of having ideas if you haven't the money to carry them out?' We must also remember that all witnesses of his life agree that the ideas were always foremost, the money a mere instrument to realize them. The story was told to Edmund Garrett by one of Rhodes's old Kimberley associates 'how one day in those scheming years, deep in the sordid details of amalgamation, Rhodes ("always a bit of a crank") suddenly put his hand over a great piece of No Man's Africa on the map and said, "Look here: all that British--that is my dream".'[63]
[Note 62: Barney Barnato, born in Houndsditch, 1852; died at sea, 1897.]
[Note 63: Perhaps the best character sketch of Rhodes is that printed as an appendix to Sir E. T. Cook's _Life of Edmund Garrett_ (Edward Arnold, 1909). Garrett's career as journalist and politician in South Africa was terminated by illness in 1899.]
But long before this struggle was over, Rhodes had embarked on new courses which were to carry him still farther. His dreams of political work began to take shape when Griqualand was created a British province in 1880. Two electoral divisions were formed, Kimberley and Barkly West; and it was for the latter that Rhodes first took his seat in the Cape Parliament in 1880, a seat which he retained till his death. The Prime Minister was Sir Gordon Sprigg, a politician with experience but few ideas, more skilled in retaining office than in formulating a policy. Rhodes was at first reticent about his own projects, and spent his time quietly studying commercial questions, examining the problem of the native races and making friends among the Boers. If these friendships were obscured later by political quarrels, there is no reason to suspect their genuineness. His sympathy with the Dutch farmers had begun in 1872, when he made a long, lonely trek through the Northern Transvaal, and it lasted through life. He was interested in farming, he liked natural men, and was at home in unconventional surroundings. One of the closest observers of his character said that to see the true Rhodes you must see him on the veld. So long as the supremacy of the British flag was assured, there was nothing that he so ardently desired as friendly relations between British and Dutch, a real union of the races, a South African nation. It was for this that he worked so long with Jan Hofmeyr, leader of the Cape Dutch, and earned so many unfair suspicions from the short-sighted politicians of Cape Town.
Hofmeyr was a curious man. He had a great understanding of the Dutch character and a great power of influencing men; but this was not done by parliamentary eloquence. By one satirist he was called 'the captain who never appeared on the bridge'; by another he was nicknamed 'the Mole', because his activity could only be conjectured from the tracks which he left behind him. A third name current in Cape Town, 'the Blind Man,' was an ironical tribute to his exceptional astuteness in politics. His organ was 'the Afrikander Bond', a society formed partly for agricultural, partly for political purposes, a creature which like a chameleon has often changed its colour, sometimes working peacefully beside British politicians, at other times openly conducting an anti-British agitation. He certainly had no enthusiasm for the British flag, but he probably realized the freedom which the Colony enjoyed under it, and was clear of all disloyalty to the Crown. The policy dearest to the farmers of the Afrikander Bond was the protective system for their agricultural produce. If Rhodes would support this, he might induce the Dutch to give him a free hand in his plans for expansion towards the North; and this was needed, because the problem of the North was becoming urgent, and Sprigg and his party were blind to its importance.
A glance at the nineteenth-century map will show that the territories of the Dutch Republic, lying on the less barren side of the continent, tended to block the extension of Cape Colony and Natal towards the north, the more so as the Boers from time to time sent out fresh swarms westward and encroached on native territory in Bechuanaland. The Germans did not annex Namaqualand till 1885, but already their interest in this district was becoming evident to close observers. Rhodes's most cherished dream had been the development of the high-lying healthy inland regions to the north by the British race under the British flag. But in those days, when Whitehall was asleep and officials in Cape Town were indifferent, Rhodes saw that his best chance was to convert the Dutch in the Colony. He hoped to make them realize that, if they supported him, the development of the interior might bring trade through Cape Town, which otherwise would go eastward through Portuguese channels. The building of railways, the settlement of new lands in which Dutch and English would share alike, were practical questions which might interest them, and Rhodes was quite genuine in his desire to see both races going forward together. 'Equal rights for every civilized man south of the Zambezi' was his motto, and to this he steadfastly clung.
To describe all the means by which Rhodes worked towards this end would be impossible. He worked hard at Kimberley to furnish the sinews of war; he used his personal influence and power of persuasion at Cape Town to win support from Hofmeyr and others; and he was ready to go to the frontier at any moment when there was work to be done. His first commission of this sort had been in Basutoland in 1882, when he helped the famous General Gordon to pacify native discontent; but the following year saw him at work on another frontier more directly affecting his programme. The Boers had again been raiding westwards and had started two new republics, called Goshen and Stellaland, on the route from Kimberley to the north. Rhodes travelled to the scene of action, interviewed Mankoroane, the Bechuana chief, and Van Niekerk, the head of the new settlement, and by sheer personal magnetism persuaded them both to accept British control. When the Cape Parliament refused the responsibility, he referred to the Colonial Office in London, and by the help of Sir Hercules Robinson, the High Commissioner, he carried his point. When the new Governor, who was appointed by the Colonial Office, quarrelled with the Boers, it was Rhodes who made up the quarrel, and when in 1885 the Transvaal Dutch interfered and provoked our home Government into sending out an overpowering force under Sir Charles Warren, it was Rhodes once more who acted as the reconciler, and effected a settlement between Dutch and British. When the indignant Delarey,[64] provoked by English blundering, said ominously that 'blood must flow', Rhodes replied, 'No, give me my breakfast, and then we can talk about blood'. He stayed with Delarey a week, came to terms on the points at issue, and even became godfather to Delarey's grandchild. He was never the man to resort to force when persuasion could be employed, and he usually won his end by his own means.
[Note 64: General Jacobus Delarey, one of the most successful commanders in the Great Boer War of 1899-1902.]
While his great work in 1883-5 was on the northern frontier he was growing to be a familiar figure among politicians at Cape Town. We have an impression of him as he appeared on his entrance into politics. 'He was tall, broad-shouldered, with face and figure of somewhat loose formation. His hair was auburn, carelessly flung over his forehead, his eyes of bluish grey, dreamy but kindly. But the mouth--aye, that was the unruly member of his face--with deep lines following the curve of the moustache, it had a determined, masterful, and sometimes scornful expression.... His style of speaking was straight and to the point. He was not a hard hitter in debate--rather a persuader, reasoning and pleading in a conversational way as one more anxious to convince an opponent than to expose his weakness. He used little gesture: what there was, was most expressive, his hands held behind him, or thrust out, sometimes passed over his brow.'[65] Such success as he had in Parliament he owed less to art than to nature, less to oratorical gifts than to force of character; but this brought him rapidly to the front. As early as 1884 he was in the Ministry, and despite his long absences over his northern work he was judged to be the only man who could become Prime Minister in the parliamentary crisis of 1890. There was, by that year, little question that he was the most influential man in South Africa. He had a large holding in the Transvaal goldfields, discovered in 1886; he was head of the great De Beers Corporation of Kimberley; and he was chairman of the newly-created Chartered Company. To many it seemed impossible that one man could combine these great financial interests with the position of First Minister of the Colony; but at least it was clear that the interests of the companies were subordinated to national aims, that the money which he obtained from mines was spent on imperial ends, and that his political position was never used for the promoting of financial objects.
[Note 65: _Cecil Rhodes: a Monograph and a Reminiscence_, by Sir Thomas Fuller (Longmans & Co., 1910)]