Dearest Sibyl,—
A steamer coming from the south to-day brought me your letter of last March! I had got several of your postcards showing yourself and Lady Landolphia in nurses’ uniform and with dreadful smiles of glittering teeth, and knew of course—heard, I mean—what you were doing for our men out in South Africa. The letter was sent on by my Agents; I expect it got hung up in the military censorship, and I must say I don’t blame them! Your unconscious criticisms of our generalship were pretty pungent. I wonder I got it at all. But better late than never! After I have read it a third time I shall burn it because there is one classical tag I never forget: Littera scripta manet.
I see by the London papers of September you are not only back in England—or rather Scotland—but entertaining as of yore at Glen Sporran. And playing with the same old toys! How indefatigable you are in your pursuit of power! How unwearied by the social routine, which would drive me into exile or into murder. I should end by killing the poor old fantoches—Vicky Long-i’-the-Tooth, Stacy Bream, and the others—I forget their names—the Right Honble. gentleman who spat like a cobra—only it was very kindly saliva, not at all venomous—and that moral enthusiast over the Empire—Albert Something. I see by the same paper he is now Lord Bewdly and has been uttering some beautiful sentiments over the results expected from the Boer War… You were Stellenbosched, and with reason, because your hospitals and convalescent homes were there (I see, by the bye, that Willowby Patterne, who came an awful cropper at Driefontein and generally misconducted himself, was also Stellenbosched by K. of K. I hope you did not foregather with him?) … Well, as I was saying, you were Stellenbosched and saw little of the horrors of War. But I did, and I used often to wish that Albert person could have been with me and seen the burning of the homesteads, the cutting down of the fruit-trees, the fugitive women and little children, the Boer boys of eleven and twelve dressed up for war like their fathers and elder brothers and fighting for their homes. I saw one of these boys—tousled yellow hair, nice grey eyes—in a buckskin suit much too big for him, laid out to die by the road-side, just after we had burnt his father’s home. I don’t suppose one of our chaps really set out to kill him. But there it was; he had been shot through the lungs and was gasping out his life, blood pouring out of his mouth at each gasp. And yet he tried to smile and said something in Dutch about his father being away… Upon my word I should have liked to get the Kaiser, old Kruger,—and—[#] all strung up together on the site of that farm. For they are the four men who together made this most unnecessary war. I know what lots of our Tommies said when they heard Kimberley was relieved!
[#] I shrink from perpetuating all Roger’s indiscretions and impulsive statements.—H.H.J.
As for me, I was laid out soon after with two bullets through my thigh. But for Yusuf Ali and Anshuro, my two Somalis; and equally but for a humane Boer (Colonel van Rensselaer), I should certainly have died. As it was, the haemorrhage was stopped and a German doctor at the field hospital nursed me through a bad attack of blood-poisoning. I shall never, of course, be quite the same man again; but I still feel as though there were a lot of push in me. Soon after my admission to the hospital at Lydenburg, the Boers evacuated the place and in course of time I was transported to Durban and invalided out of the army with the rank of Major. I had already got a D.S.O., so I can’t complain. I would fight any day for England against England’s enemies, but—however, no more grousing. Let’s hope a new order of things is going to set in. I certainly should like to cut my D.S.O. into three and give two equal bits to Ali and Anshuro. You’ve no idea what those Somali boys were in the matter of devotion, cheerfulness, astuteness! And yet they only served me for the ordinary coast wages; though of course I’m going to give them both a handsome donation when their time is up.
Well: here I am at a hospital once more. I must rest here and get my leg quite sound before I start for up-country. I have been here for a month, in telegraphic communication with Lucy and Maud, imploring them not to come down to the coast to meet me. Lucy, I fear, is far from strong; and Maud is simply indispensable to the carrying on of the work up there. She has shown herself as good as a man. The two Australians I put there have done their best, but they don’t get on at all well with the Germans. Their education has been very poor—I mean in book-learning—they are rattling good in settlers’ lore—and, of course, they utterly refuse to understand German and openly gibe at it. Their chief recommendation is that they are absolutely honest…
I lie here chafing and intensely anxious for my worst wound to heal. I am told I ought to be thankful to have made such a wonderful recovery. But I feel a month of Lucy’s care for me and the bracing air of Iraku would set me up altogether; and my mere presence at Magara put an end to all these misunderstandings and bitternesses.
The Schraeders were rather aghast at my bolt for South Africa last year; but stood it on the whole very well. Of course, I insisted on being reduced to a third of my pay whilst I was absent. I retained just enough salary to keep Lucy and Maud going, and maintain the household…
The whole German attitude over this war has been a curious one, and so have been its refractions on their attitude towards me. I hear that after my departure for the war a strong move was got up to oust me from the Managership. Now that I have returned wounded and a Major and a D.S.O. (that was given me the other day, for capturing Colonel Boshaert and three hundred men and a thousand cattle near Lydenburg—tell you all about it one day) they can’t say enough in my favour. I am almost threatened with a triumphal procession home… Engine from Tanga wreathed with palm fronds, etc. Fortunately the train will take me half the way back, and for the rest I can be carried in a Machila.
But there is little doubt that the mass of the Germans out here thought we were going to be gravelled by the Boers and that Germania would step into the shoes of Britannia. Undoubtedly the Kaiser for the past six years has been fishing in troubled waters, trying to connect up German South-West Africa with Boer territory, and planning to make Germany the dominant power in South Africa; or, at any rate, the honest broker between Boer and Briton…
Why the Dutch and the British should be as oil and water in South Africa and elsewhere, I can’t think. But they are. The Dutchman in Africa and Europe is just a rather finer built, better-looking Englishman or Scotchman; but in language, mentality and above all in a curiously hard attitude towards the Negro, he is Teutonic. The whole set of South Africa is towards Germany… That is why Rhodes lost his head…
P.S. See you next year or year after, as soon as ever I have got everything going here as it was before the war, and it is safe to come away. I must go on with this until I can retire with a competency.