H. R. H. appointed Master of the High Court at age of twenty-one — Boers very litigious — Fleeced by lawyers — H. R. H. reforms practice and taxes bills — Much opposition — H. R. H. supported by Judge Kotze — Boer revolt expected — Zulu War threatened — H. R. H. builds house with Cochrane — Jess’s cottage — Sir Bartle Frere — Zulu War — Isandhlwana — Shepstone returns home — Treated shabbily by Government — H. R. H. joins Pretoria Horse — Elected Adjutant — Ordered to Zululand — Orders countermanded — Regiment to defend Pretoria against possible Boer revolt — H. R. H. sent in command of detachment to watch force of 3000 Boers — Exciting incidents but war postponed — Sir Bartle Frere at Pretoria — Estimate of his character — Anthony Trollope — Journeys on circuit with Judge Kotze — Herd of blesbuck — Pretoria Horse disbanded — H. R. H. resigns Mastership of High Court — Buys farm in Natal with Cochrane to breed ostriches.
Not very long after the Annexation the Master and Registrar of the High Court died, and after some reflection the Government appointed me to act in his place. It is not strange that they should have hesitated, seeing that I was barely twenty-one years of age and had received no legal training. Moreover in those days the office was one of great importance.
To put it mildly, the lawyers who frequented the Transvaal courts were not the most eminent of their tribe. Indeed some of them had come thither because of difficulties that had attended their careers in other lands. Thus one of them was reported to have committed a murder and to have fled from the arm of justice. Another subsequently became notorious in connection with the treatment of the loyal prisoners at the siege of Potchefstroom. He was fond of music, and it is said that before two of these unfortunate men were executed, or rather murdered, he took them into a church and soothed their feelings by playing the “Dead March in Saul” over them. He, by the way, was the original of my character of Frank Muller in “Jess.” Even those of the band who had nothing against them were tainted by a common fame: they all overcharged. It was frequently their practice to open their bill of costs with an item of fifty guineas set down as “retaining fee,” and this although they were not advocates but attorneys who were allowed to plead.
In those days the Boers were extraordinarily litigious; it was not infrequent for them to spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds over the question of the ownership of a piece of land that was worth little. So it came about that before the Annexation they were most mercilessly fleeced by the lawyers into whose hands they fell. This was the situation which I was called upon to face. Also as Master I held another important office, that of the official Guardian of the estates of all the orphans in the Transvaal.
I entered on my duties with fear and trembling, but very soon grasped the essential facts of the case. One of the first bills that was laid before me was for 600 pounds. I taxed it down by one-half. Then, either over this or some other bill, the row began. The lawyers petitioned against me without avail. They appealed against my decision to the High Court, again without avail, for Mr. Justice Kotze supported me. For a whole day was that bill argued in court, with the result that I was ultimately ordered to restore an amount of, I think, six and eightpence!
Considerable percentage fees were payable to Government on these taxed bills, and for a while I trusted to those who presented the bills to hand over these sums to the Treasury. By an accident I discovered that this was not always done. So I invented a system of stamps which had to be affixed to the bill before I signed it. In short the struggle was long and arduous, but in the end I won the day, with the result that I and my flock became the best of friends. I think that when I left them they were sincerely sorry. I remember that in one case, a very important divorce action which occupied the court for more than a week, the petition was dismissed not because the adultery was not proved but on the ground of collusion. Of this collusion the parties were innocent, but the evidence showed that the petitioner’s solicitor had actually drafted some of the pleas for the defendant’s solicitor and in other ways had been the source of the said collusion, thus causing his client to lose the case. On this ground I disallowed all his bill of costs, except the out-of-pocket expenses. No appeal was entered against this decision.
Of the surviving letters which I sent home at this period of my life several deal with my appointment to the office of Master and Registrar of the Transvaal High Court, and others with public affairs. From these I quote some extracts.
Pretoria: Dec. 18, 1877.
My dearest Mother, — . . . Our chief excitement just now is the Zulu business. It is to be hoped that the Chief will stave it off till April, because the horse-sickness would render all cavalry useless at this time of year. I do not suppose that the Home Government will help, though perhaps they may, the Conservatives being in. If we have to fight by ourselves it will doubtless be at great risk and cost of life. You see, unless public opinion presses, the Home Government is always glad to set a thing of the sort down as a scare, and to let “those troublesome fellows settle it somehow.” But I do not think that this is a matter that can be settled without an appeal to arms and one last struggle between the white and the black races. That it will be a terrible fight there is no doubt; the Zulus are brave men, as reckless about death as any Turk. They are panting for war, for they have not “washed their spears” since the battle of the Tugela in 1856, when the two brothers fought for the throne, and when the killed on one side alone amounted to 9000 men. They will come now to drive the white men back into the “Black Water,” or to break their power, and die in the attempt.
I think I told you that their plan of battle is to engage us in the open for three days and three nights. They say they intend to begin by firing three rounds and then charge in from every side. It will be a magnificent sight to see about twenty thousand of those fellows sweeping down, but perhaps more picturesque than pleasant. However, I have little doubt but that we shall beat them. Besides the thing may blow over. I am going to volunteer this afternoon. . . . I see that Sir Henry is getting unpopular in Natal. All the papers are pitching into him for being too “timid and cautious.” He will be in a terrible way about this Zulu business . . . .
P.S. — I have just “taken the shilling” as a cavalry volunteer.
Pretoria: Feb. 11, 1878.
My dearest Mother, — . . . We are rather in a state of excitement (as usual), as the Boers are making some decided manifestations against us, and even talking of summoning the Volksraad. They think because we are quiet we are afraid. I should not at all wonder if we had a row, and in many ways it would not be a bad thing. Paul Kruger when he came back was entirely with us, but since his return has become intimidated by the blood-and-thunder party and now declares that he considers himself to be still Vice–President of the country. There are some very amusing stories told of him whilst in London: when asked what made the greatest impression on him there, he replied the big horses in the carts, and Lord Carnarvon’s butler! “He was a ‘mooi carle’” (beautiful fellow).
Pretoria: March 4, 1878.
My dearest Mother, — . . . At home you seem rather alarmed about the state of affairs here, and it is not altogether reassuring. The Zulu business hangs fire, but that cloud will surely burst. Luckily the action Sir Henry Bulwer has taken has thrown much of the future responsibility on his shoulders. . . . It is not for a moment to be supposed that Cetewayo will be bound by any decree given against him. . . . Our most pressing danger now is the Boers. They really seem to mean business this time. From every direction we hear of their preparations, etc. According to the latest news they are coming in on the 16th inst., or else on the 5th of April, five thousand strong, to demand back the Government. This of course will be refused. Then they are going to try to rush the camp and powder magazine and, I suppose, burn the town. I am still sceptical about it: not that I doubt that they would like to do it. I dare say they will be tempted by the small number of troops here (we have only 250 men). . . . I am one of the marked men who are to be instantly hung on account of that Secocoeni article I wrote. Some spiteful brute translated it into Dutch with comments and published it in the local papers. The Boers are furious; there are two things they cannot bear — the truth and ridicule. . . . It is precious little I care about them and their threats. . . . The abuse showered on the heads of the unfortunate English officials here is something simply awful. You would not know me again if you could see me as I appear in the Volkstemm leaders. However, it amuses them and does not hurt us. We only hope that when the Chief comes back (we expect him next Monday) he will take strong measures. He has been too lenient, and consequently they have blackguarded him up hill and down dale.
P.S. I have a pleasing duty to perform early tomorrow — go and see a man executed.
Very well do I remember the experience alluded to in this postscript. The individual referred to was a Kaffir chief of high blood, I think the Swazi who was responsible for the killing of Mr. Bell in order to avoid the payment of taxes. I cannot recall his name. He was a most dignified and gentlemanlike person. At the execution the interpreter asked him if he had anything to say before he died. He began to repeat his version of the affair with which we were already acquainted, and on being stopped, remarked, “I have spoken; I am ready.”
In the grey morning light he was then led to the scaffold erected in the prison yard. He walked to it and examined the noose and other arrangements. The executioner proved to be hopelessly drunk; a black Christian preacher wearing a battered tall hat prayed over the doomed man. The High Sheriff, Juta, overcome by the spectacle, retired into a corner of the yard, where he was violently ill. The thing had to be done, and between the drunken executioner and an overcome High Sheriff it devolved upon me. So I stood over that executioner and forced him to perform his office. Thus died this brave Swazi gentleman.
Pretoria: Sunday, March 31, 1878.
My dear Father, — Very many thanks for your long and kind letter of 20th Feb. 1878 and all the advice it contained. With what you say I to a very great extent agree. I had some idea of shifting, but recent events have considerably altered my plans. I think that unless something unexpected occurs I am now certain of the Master and Registrarship here, which will be worth 400 pounds a year — with a probable increase of pay in two or three years. It will also make me a head of Department, which at the age of twenty-one is not so bad. However, experience has taught me that it is foolish to count one’s chickens before they are hatched, so as I have not actually been appointed the less said about it at present the better. Even supposing I do not get it I am not sure that I should change unless I got the offer of something very good. This is a new country where there are very few above me, and a country which must become rich and rising — also the climate is good. However, I shall of course be guided by circumstances, and if I should do so I am sure you will understand that it will be because I thought it on the whole best.
Of course the lawyers are making a desperate stand against my appointment, but with very little effect. It does not at all suit their book. They want to get in a man of the old clique who would not be above a “consideration.” When first I acted one of them tried it on indirectly with me, wanted to pay me double fees for some Commissioner’s work, but I think I rather startled him.
The next letter runs as follows:
Pretoria: April 7, 1878.
My dear Father, — I have to tell you what I am sure you will be glad to hear, namely, that I have won the day with reference to my appointment as Master and Registrar. I have seen H.E.‘s minute to Sec. to Govt., so I am certain about it now. The last question has also been settled in my favour, i.e. whether I was to receive 300 or 400 pounds per annum. I believe I am by far the youngest head of Department in South Africa. I have also the satisfaction of knowing that my promotion has not been due to any favouritism. My connection with the Chief has been against me rather than otherwise, because people in his position are very slow about doing anything that can be construed into favouritism. He was good enough, I believe, to speak very kindly about me when he settled the matter of my appointment this morning, saying that “he thought very highly of me and was sure that I should rise.” This turn of affairs to a great extent settles the question of my going anywhere else. I am very glad to have got the better of those lawyers who petitioned against me, and also to have held the office so much to the satisfaction of the Government as to justify them in appointing so young a man. When I began to act eight months since I had not the slightest knowledge of my work, a good deal of which is of course technical, and what is more there were no records, no books, indeed nothing from which I could form an idea of it, nor had I anyone to teach me. In addition I had to deal with a lot of gentlemen whose paths were the paths of self-seeking, who did their utmost to throw obstacles in my way. These difficulties I have, I am glad to say, to a great extent overcome, and I intend to make myself thoroughly master of my position. Of course the very fact of my rapid rise will make me additional enemies, especially the five or six disappointed candidates, but I don’t mind that . . . .
Pretoria, Transvaal: June 2, 1878.
My dear Father, — . . . I could not help being a little amused at the alarm everybody seems to be in at home about us here. The crisis which frightened you and which was really alarming at the time has long since passed, and I remain unhung. [I cannot remember to what crisis this refers. — H. R. H.] There is however a still blacker cloud over us now. Sir Garnet’s famous thunder-cloud of thirty thousand armed Zulus is, I think, really going to burst at last. It must come some time, so I think it may as well come now. We shall have to fight like rats in a corner, but we shall lick them and there will be an end of it. I do not think a Zulu war will be a long one: they will not hide in kloofs and mountains, but come into the open and fight it out.
In a letter I got from you nearly a year ago you said that if I wanted 500 pounds and the trustees would consent, you thought it might be advanced to me. If you still think so, and it could be done without inconvenience to anybody, it would be useful to me now to invest. I would guarantee 6 per cent. on it. Of course I only ask for it if it can be done without hampering you or my mother. I am going, as I told you, to build a nice house with Cochrane. In a place of this sort it is a great thing to have a pleasant home, and it will also be a very sound investment. I have bought two acres at the top end of the town for this purpose, where land will soon become very valuable . . . .
H. Rider Haggard.
This house I built. We named it “The Palatial,” and it has since become well known as “Jess’s Cottage.” It was a funny little place consisting of two rooms, a kitchen, etc., and having a tin roof. I remember how tiny it looked when the foundations were dug out. I believe that it still stands in Pretoria. At any rate an illustration of it was published in the issue of South Africa dated February 4, 1911, but if it is really the same building it has been much added to and altered. The blue gums in the picture are undoubtedly those we planted; they are very big trees now, I am told. I suppose the vineyard we made in front of the house has vanished long ago, and indeed that streets run across its site.
The Cochrane alluded to in the letter is Mr. Arthur H. D. Cochrane, who came to the Transvaal with Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Sergeaunt, one of the Crown Agents, who was sent out by the Home Government to investigate its finances. We struck up a close friendship which has endured unimpaired through all the succeeding years. I am thankful to say he is still living, a man of almost exactly my own age.
During the period covered by these letters home I was overtaken by a very sore trouble. The love affair to which I have alluded earlier in this book unexpectedly developed, not at my instance, with the result that for some little space of time I imagined myself to be engaged and was proportionately happy. Then one day the mail cart arrived and all was over. It was a crushing blow, so crushing that at the time I should not have been sorry if I could have departed from the world. Its effects upon me also were very bad indeed, for it left me utterly reckless and unsettled. I cared not what I did or what became of me. Here I will leave this subject of which even now I find it painful to write, especially after a morning spent in the perusal of old letters, some of them indited by the dead.
In the autumn of 1878 Sir Bartle Frere, the High Commissioner for South Africa, had arrived in Natal; and towards the end of the year — I think it was in November — he issued his famous ultimatum to the Zulus.
Respecting Sir Bartle as I do, and agreeing with him generally as I do, and sympathising with him from the bottom of my heart as to the shameless treatment which he received from the British party politicians after his policy seemed to have failed and the British arms had suffered defeat, I still think, perhaps erroneously, that this ultimatum was a mistake. Although the argument is all on his side, I incline to the view that it would have been wiser to remonstrate with the Zulus and trust to the doctrine of chances — for this reason: neither Cetewayo nor his people wished to fight the English; had Cetewayo wished it he would have swept Natal from end to end after our defeat at Isandhlwana. But what I heard he said at the time was to this effect: “The English are attacking me in my country, and I will defend myself in my country. I will not send my impis to kill them in Natal, because I and those who went before me have always been good friends with the English.” So it came about that he forbade his generals to cross the boundary of Natal.
Whichever view may be right, the fact remains that the ultimatum was issued and from that moment war became inevitable. Our generals and soldiers entered on it with the lightest hearts; notwithstanding the difficulties and scarcity of transport they even took with them their cricketing outfit into Zululand. This I know, since I was commissioned to bring home a wicket that was found on the field of Isandhlwana, and return it to the headquarters of the regiment to which it belonged, to be kept as a relic. The disaster at Isandhlwana I for one expected. Indeed I remember writing to friends prophesying that it would occur, and their great astonishment when on the same day that they received the letter the telegraph brought the news of that great destruction. This far-sightedness, however, was not due to my own perspicacity, but to the training that I had received under those who knew the Zulus better than any other men in the world.
One of these, Mr. Osborn, who afterwards was appointed Resident in Zululand, was so disturbed by what he knew was coming that, after a good deal of reflection he wrote a solemn warning of what would occur to the troops if their plan of advance was persisted in, which warning he sent to Lord Chelmsford through the officer commanding at Pretoria. It was never even acknowledged. I think that I saw this letter, or, if I did not not, Osborn told me all about it.
The disaster at Isandhlwana occurred on January 22, 1879. A night or two before it happened a lady whom I knew in Pretoria dreamed a dream which she detailed to me on the following day. I am sorry to say that I cannot remember all this dream. What I recall of it is to the effect that she saw a great plain in Zululand on which English troops were camped. Snow began to fall on the plain, snow that was blood-red, till it buried it and the troops. Then the snow melted into rivers of blood.
The lady whom it visited was convinced that this dream portended some frightful massacre, but of course it may have sprung from the excited and fearful feeling in the air which naturally affected all who had relatives or friends at the front.
A stranger and more inexplicable occurrence happened to myself. On the morning of the 23rd of January, which was the day after the slaughter, I saw the Hottentot vrouw who washed our clothes in the garden of “The Palatial” and went out to speak to her. The fat old woman was in a great state of perturbation, and when I asked her what was the matter, she told me that terrible things had happened in Zululand; that the “rooibatjes,” that is, redcoats, lay upon the plain “like leaves under the trees in winter,” killed by Cetewayo. I inquired when the event had occurred, and she replied, on the previous day. I told her that she was speaking falsehoods, since even if it were so no horse could have brought the news over two hundred miles of veld in the course of a single night. She stuck to her story but refused to tell me how it had been learned by her, and we parted.
The old woman’s manner impressed me so much that I ordered a horse to be saddled and, riding down to the Government offices, repeated what I had heard to Mr. Osborn and others. They too said that it was not possible for the tidings to have come to Pretoria in the time. Still they were uneasy, thinking that something might have happened at an earlier date, and made inquiries without results. I believe it was twenty hours later that a man on an exhausted horse galloped into Pretoria with the evil news.
How did the old Hottentot woman learn the truth? It could not have been called from mountain-top to mountain-top after the Kaffir fashion, since the intervening country was high veld where there are no mountains. I have no explanation to offer, except that the natives have, or had, some almost telegraphic method of conveying news of important events of which the nature is quite unknown to us white men.
The consternation at Pretoria was very great, especially as the news reached us in a much-exaggerated form. No wonder that we were perturbed, since there were few who had not lost some that were dear to them. Thus one of Sir Theophilus’s sons was killed, and for a while he thought that three had gone. Afterwards his skeleton was recognised by some peculiarity connected with his teeth. Osborn had lost a son-inlaw, and so on. Personally I knew many of the officers of the 24th who fell, but the one I mourned most was the gallant Coghill, with whom I had become very friendly when he was at Pretoria as aide-decamp to Sir Arthur Cunynghame. He was a peculiarly light-hearted young man full of good stories, some of which I remember to this day.
As the reader will remember, he and Melville died back to back in a vain attempt to save the colours of the regiment, which colours were afterwards recovered from the bed of the river. I would refer any who are interested in this sad history to “The True Story Book,” published by Messrs. Longmans in 1893, where I have told the tale of Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift. That account may be taken as accurate, for two reasons: first, I was well acquainted with the circumstances at the time and saw many of those concerned in the matter, and, secondly, I sent the proofs to be checked by my friend Colonel Essex, who was one of the three or four officers in the camp who survived the disaster, as subsequently he did those of Laing’s Nek and Ingogo.
I remember that I asked Essex, a man with a charmed life if ever such a gift was granted, what he thought of during that terrible ride from the Place of the Little Hand to the Buffalo River. He told me that all he could remember was a kind of refrain which came into his mind. It ran, “Essex, you —— fool, you had a chance of a good billet at home, and now, Essex, you are going to be killed!” The story has a certain grim humour; also it shows how on desperate occasions, as I have noted more than once in life, the stunned intelligence takes refuge in little things. Everything else is beaten flat, like the sea beneath a tornado, leaving only such bubbles floating in the unnatural calm.
Not very long after this terrible event Sir Theophilus Shepstone was summoned home to confer with the Colonial Office respecting the affairs of the Transvaal, and well do I remember the sorrow with which we parted from him. I remember also that before this time, when all was going well, in the course of one of those intimate conversations to which he admitted me I congratulated him upon what then appeared to be his great success, and said that he seemed to have everything before him.
“No, my boy,” he answered, shaking his head sadly, “it has come to me too late in life,” and he turned away with a sigh.
As a matter of fact his success proved to be none at all, for he lived to see all his work undone within a year or two and to find himself thrown an offering to the Moloch of our party system, as did his contemporary, Sir Bartle Frere. And yet after all was it so? He did what was right, and he did it well. The exigencies of our home politics, stirred into action by the rebellion of the Boers, appeared to wreck his policy. At the cost of I know not how many English lives and of how much treasure, that policy was reversed: the country was given back. What ensued? A long period of turmoil and difficulties, and then a war which cost us twenty thousand more lives and two hundred and fifty millions more of treasure to bring about what was in practice the same state of affairs that Sir Theophilus Shepstone had established over twenty years before without the firing of a single shot. A little more wisdom, a little more firmness or foresight, and these events need never have occurred. They were one of Mr. Gladstone’s gifts to his country.
But the very fact of their occurrence shows that Shepstone, on whose shoulders everything rested at the time, was right in his premises. He said in effect that the incorporation of the Transvaal in the Empire was an imperial necessity, and the issue has proved that he did not err. I say that the course of history has justified Sir Theophilus Shepstone and shown his opponents and detractors to be wrong, as in another case it has justified Charles Gordon and again proved those same opponents and detractors to be wrong. On their heads be all the wasted lives and wealth. I am sure that the future will declare that he was right in everything that he did, for if it was not so why is the Transvaal now a Province of the British Empire? Nothing can explain away the facts; they speak for themselves.
How shocking, how shameless was the treatment meted out to Shepstone personally — I presume for purely political reasons, since I cannot conceive that he had any individual enemies — is well shown by the following letter from him to me which through a pure accident chances to have been discovered by my brother, Sir William Haggard, amongst his own papers.
Pietermaritzburg, Natal:
July 6, 1884.
My dear Haggard, — I am afraid that I cannot take much credit to myself this time for giving you practical proof that I think of you by writing you a letter, for although I do as a matter of fact think of you both, almost as often as old Polly the parrot calls me a “very domde Boer,” an expression which you taught the bird and which it has not forgotten, yet this is essentially a selfish letter written with selfish ends; but let me assure you that it is nevertheless leavened, as strongly as ever, with the same old love.
The fact is that the Treasury at Home have made a fierce and ungenerous attack on my Transvaal accounts, and threaten to surcharge me with all items to the extent of several thousand pounds for which receipts or vouchers of some sort are not forthcoming. Among these are two small payments to you: one they call a gratuity of 25 pounds, an acknowledgment of your services to the mission for which you received no pay, and the other 20 pounds as compensation for a horse that died on your journey as Commissioner to Sikukuni; and I want you to be good enough to send a certificate acknowledging the payment of each of these items and stating that you signed a receipt for each when it was paid. They are under the impression that Colonel Brooke, who kept the accounts, never took care to get receipts: the fact being that he was most careful on this point; but that the vouchers and some of the accounts also were, most of them, lost during the siege of Pretoria.
The officers of the Treasury have reflected upon my personal honesty, and Mr. Courtney has amused himself by writing some facetious paragraphs; this has of course furnished more or less amusing reading for the society journals. The Colonial Office defended me very vigorously, but I have strongly resented such treatment and shown the injustice and untruthfulness of it, or any foundation for it, in a memo. to the Secretary of State. Meanwhile the Treasury withhold my pension.
This letter is horribly egotistical so far, but I could not help it, as I explained on the first page.
As things have turned out, it was a fortunate thing that you left this country when you did. Our condition as Englishmen, or rather the condition of our Government in regard to this country, reminds me strongly of the craven soldiers under Baker Pasha when they were beaten by the Arabs at Teb: they are described as meekly kneeling to meet their fate. That is exactly what the British Government have been doing, since Majuba, in Africa. The Boers have now taken possession of Central Zululand, and they are quite right to do so. The Government allowed anarchy to run rampant on their [the Boer’s] border; and then publicly declared in the House of Commons that they intended to leave the Zulus to settle their affairs in their own way, and they called in the Boers to settle them for them on the promise of giving them land. They have made the boy Dinizulu king, and have helped the Usutu party to destroy Sibelu, who was made independent by the British Government within boundaries formally assigned and pointed out to him. This was part of their bargain. Now they [i.e. the Boers] are negotiating for the land they are to get, and as the king’s party have got all they wanted to get out of the Boers, I shall not be surprised if some difficulty should arise between them. It was at one time feared that the Boers might not respect the Reserve, and so bring on a collision between them and the Government, and that would of course mean a very serious difficulty in the whole of South Africa; but I hope that there is no fear of this for the present at any rate.
Poor old Osborn seems to be quite worn out by all the worry that he has had ever since he left the Transvaal, and I do not wonder at it; he has not been allowed to rule, and yet has been required to interfere, so in the eyes of the Zulus, as indeed in those of everyone else, he is neither fish, flesh............