A Woman's Part in a Revolution Part 4

Six months later, the four princ.i.p.al leaders were tried and sentenced to be hanged by their necks until they were dead, by a judge _brought from a neighbouring Republic, the Orange Free State_, for that purpose.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: This list was used as a roll-call a week later in the arrest of the Sixty-four members.]

[Footnote 4: Abbreviated term for South African police.]

[Footnote 5: The following cablegram will show that there were very substantial grounds for the rumour:--

'Sir Hercules Robinson (Pretoria) to Mr. Chamberlain.--8th January--No. 3. Since my telegram No. 1 of this morning matters have not been going so smoothly. When the Executive Council met I received a message that only 1,814 rifles and three Maxim guns had been surrendered, which the Government of the South African Republic did not consider a fulfilment of the ultimatum, and orders would be immediately issued to a Commando to attack Johannesburg. I at once replied that the ultimatum required the surrender of guns and ammunition for which no permit of importation had been obtained, and that onus rested with the Transvaal Government to show that guns and ammunition were concealed for which no permit had been issued. If before this was done any hostile step were taken against Johannesburg I should consider it a violation of the undertaking for which I had made myself personally responsible to the people of Johannesburg, and I should leave the issue in the hands of Her Majesty's Government ...']

IV

SUNDAY, JANUARY 12.--Mr. and Mrs. Perkins called this morning to advise Betty's not going immediately to Pretoria, as was her intention. Mr. Perkins said that the Boer feeling was very bitter, and foreign women were insulted in the streets. Advocate Wessels has also written to me, insisting upon my waiting two or three days, as my presence in Pretoria could do no good, and might prejudice my husband's cause. A little trunk was packed and sent to my husband last night. I got out of bed to superintend, and felt tragically tender as I watched the things laid in. A fresh suit of clothes, some personal and bed linen, towels, shoes, family photographs, flea powder, ginger-snaps, beef essence, soap, my little down pillow, and his beloved and well-read Shakespeare. I was able to sit up for an hour this afternoon to receive Sir Sydney s.h.i.+ppard, Mr. Seymour Fort, and Mr. Manion.

Yesterday the Governor of Natal, Sir Walter Hely Hutchinson, started for Pretoria to confer with the High Commissioner in regard to the transport of Dr. Jameson and his men through Natal. They are to be handed over to the English Government.

Search parties of mounted Boers are going about looking for hidden guns. The Robinson Mine seems to be the spot most suspected.

Yesterday's 'Volksstem'--a Government organ--recalled to the minds of the Boers the Slachter Nek affair of eighty years ago--a story of Boers hung by Englishmen for their insistence in punis.h.i.+ng a negro slave according to established custom. What a cruel sinister suggestion underlies this![6]

Keen resentment is felt here against the young German Emperor and his indiscreet message to Kruger. I never dreamed years ago, when I used to see him, a tall, slender-legged boy in Berlin, that in maturity I should have so strong a desire to chastise him. England has commissioned a Flying Squadron, and the forces at Cape Town are to be strongly augmented.

JANUARY 13.--Mr. Manion showed me to-day a cable from the United States Secretary of State, Mr. Olney. 'Take instant measures to protect John Hays Hammond, and see that he has fair play.' It brought such a feeling of confidence and comfort! All he wants _is_ fair play, and I pray to G.o.d that he may be protected until he gets it.

Many business meetings had to be postponed to-day on account of the large number of influential men in jail. I hear from Mr. ---- that on Thursday and Friday it was most difficult to keep the Boers from storming the town. President Kruger dissuaded them by promising each a new suit of clothes. These they have since been seen carrying, tied to the cantle of their saddles.

Feeling is strong and bitter against the leaders; they are held responsible for all the trouble brought about by the Jameson invasion.

Commandant Cronje's Burgher force paraded the street this morning--they are the men who captured Jameson. Jameson is the G.o.d of the hour, and Johannesburg resented the intrusion; but for the sake of their hero, still in the power of the Government, there was no indication of intolerance beyond a few audible sarcasms; remarks which were answered in kind by the Burghers.

Betty says they were an interesting-looking body of men; strong-framed, heavy-featured, with long unkempt hair and beards. They rode s.h.a.ggy, moth-eaten-looking little ponies, each man with a bundle of hay bound to his saddle and a sausage in his wallet. Fathers among them as hale as the brawny sons by their sides. They looked capable of any amount of fatigue.

Numbers of stray dogs and cats attest the many deserted homes.

JANUARY 15.--Every train brings women and children, hobby-horses and canary birds back to their homes in Johannesburg. Betty has returned, accompanied by Mr. Seymour Port, from Pretoria. She gives a very spirited account of her visit. Through Mr. Sauer, one of the advocates retained by the Reformers, a visiting permit was obtained. She and Mr.

Fort were obliged to wait several hours, in company with a crowd of wives, at the prison gates, under a broiling sun. All were loaded down with offerings.

Betty's own donation was several green-lined umbrellas (a G.o.d-send in a whitewashed court beat upon by a tropical sun). After being admitted each lady was taken into a private room and 'felt all over by a Boer woman,' who was so fat, Betty declares, 'she must have grown up in the room, as she could not possibly have got through the door, even sideways.'

In the prison court the prisoners were sitting about in great diversity of costume, pyjamas predominating. The weather was suffocatingly hot. To while away the tedious time some were playing marbles, others reading, and a few of the most active brains on the Rand were caught dozing at midday, in a strip of shadow the width of one's hand, the sole shade in the whole enclosure. Colonel Bettington sat on a bench near the entrance in a peculiar and striking costume which proved to be, to those who had courage to linger and a.n.a.lyse, pyjama drawers rolled to the knees, a crash towel draped with happy blending of coolness and perfect propriety around body, n.o.ble Bedouin arrangement of wet crash towel on head, single eyegla.s.s in eye, merry smile. Mr. Lace was the only one of the company who could suddenly have been set down in Piccadilly without confusion to himself and beholders. He wore a neat brown suit, pale pink s.h.i.+rt, and a _stylish_ straw sailor hat. The prisoners showed a touching interest, Betty says, in the distribution of their gifts. One husband asked his wife almost before she was within arm's length what she had brought him. She had brought him a box of Pasta Mack tabloids, and unfortunately there was not at that time a bath in the whole prison.

Another gentleman was presented with a Cologne spray. He was the envy of the jail; within twenty-four hours every Cologne spray in Pretoria was bought up and in the possession of the Reform Committee.

The four leaders are kept apart. After much ceremony my husband was allowed to see his sister at the door of the inner court where they are housed. Jameson and his men are in a tiny cottage by themselves, and no communication whatever is allowed between the prisoners.

Arrangements have been made with the authorities to allow food to be served to the Reformers from the Pretoria Club at the prisoners'

expense. The head jailer, Du Plessis, is a cousin of Kruger's. A ponderous man with a wild beard, a blood-shot eye, and a heavy voice.

He is said to have gone to the President several days after the arrest and said, 'Those men are not like us, they are gentlemen, and cannot stand such hards.h.i.+ps.' $250,000,000 are estimated as being represented by the men within the four walls of the Pretoria jail.

President Kruger suggests the adjournment of the Volksraad. Every one feels this to be a wise move while party spirit runs so high. The Hollanders in the Transvaal are much more rabid against the Reformers than the Boers.

Mr. Chamberlain has cabled to the High Commissioner respecting the leaders in the recent rising. He points out that their imprisonment may disorganise the mining industry, and inquires as to what will be the likely penalties.

America has asked Great Britain to protect Americans arrested in Johannesburg. I hear that a Burgher, who saw some of the great iron pipes of the Waterworks Company being put in the ground, reached Pretoria in a state of intense excitement, exclaiming that he had seen 'miles of big guns at Johannesburg.'

Mr. Andrew Trimble, chief detective and head of the Uitlander police, quitted Johannesburg the night of the arrest with much precipitation; unfortunately, before indeed he had filed away his most important private papers. Following his hasty flight his office was carefully guarded by Zarps; no one was allowed to enter--'Oh yes, the Kaffir boy might go in to clean up.' A good friend of Mr. Trimble's, with stern aspect, instructed the boy to make a 'good job' of the room and burn all the papers strewn over the floor and desks. This was faithfully done by the unconscious negro, to the entire satisfaction of all save the Zarps in charge.

It is said Dr. Jameson entered the Transvaal with his despatch-box filled with important papers in cypher, _and the cypher code with it_. I cannot believe this of any man in his sound senses.

The High Commissioner left Pretoria by special train yesterday. This was the man who offered his service as Mediator and was accepted by both Uitlander and Boer. To placate the Boer he refrained from visiting Dr. Jameson and his men imprisoned at Pretoria, nor did he permit Sir Jacobus de Wet to visit them. He never acquainted himself with the terms of Dr. Jameson's surrender. He commanded Johannesburg to disarm to appease the Boer, and this being successfully accomplished through the self-control of the Reform Committee, he departed with his gout and other belongings, leaving the unarmed betrayed Reformers to s.h.i.+ft for themselves. Was this being a Mediator?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: This affair was the result of an interference by the English. It arose out of the ill-treatment of a negro slave. The Boers resisted arrest, there was a clash of arms, and four of the Boers were hanged.]

V

JANUARY 21.--The Burghers are disbanding and returning to their homes.

Trade is thoroughly unsettled, and business of every kind is in an unsatisfactory condition. Great disorder prevails in the town.

Scarcely a night but there is some sort of disturbance between citizens and police; the latter are mostly raw German recruits.

Dr. Jameson and his officers left Pretoria yesterday. Dr. Jameson looked very downcast, and sat gazing stolidly before him until the train started. They were cheered at many places along the route. The United States Government has thanked Mr. Chamberlain for his offer to protect Americans in the Transvaal.

All travellers coming into the country must submit to a rigorous personal search for firearms at Vereeniging. In one case even the infant of the party was overhauled for guns and ammunition before being handed over to the loving father, who had come down to meet his little family.

LATER.--I came up to Pretoria this afternoon with Betty and the sick nurse. We were stopped at the station while the officials examined our handbags for cannon. This delay would have been irritating, but the men were so universally good-natured--little dull-witted, with no appreciation of fitness, but good-natured. We drove at once to the Grand Hotel, and I went to bed that I might look rested when I saw my husband on the morrow. Lady de Wet and Dr. Messum, the prison physician, called to tell me the four men had been moved into the Jameson Cottage, but I was asleep, and not allowed to be roused. There is comfort in being this much nearer to my poor prisoner. The hotel is full of Reformers' wives, and there is much excitement and coming and going. We are warned to be cautious in what we say in public places, because of spies. Every woman has a nervous look on her face, and some of them shut the windows and doors before uttering even the most commonplace remarks.

Pretoria lies in a shallow basin in the heart of the hills--a fitting home for the Sleeping Princess. It is hushed and drowsy and overrun by a tangle of roses. Weeping willows edge the streets, which are wide and as neglected as a country road. Open gutters carry off, or rather contain, the sewage of the town. Its alt.i.tude is lower than that of Johannesburg, and the climate very relaxing. Every month or couple of months the town is full of stir and life. The Boers trek in from neighbouring farms with their long span of oxen, as many as eighteen and twenty being yoked to a wagon. They buy and sell, and partake of the Nacht Maal, or sacrament, laagered around the Dopper Church; and with their dogs, Kaffirs, and oxen make of that square a most unsavoury spot.

JANUARY 24.--I have been several times to the prison, and have seen my husband. He looks thin, but his face is much rested. He was greatly distressed on my first visit at the change in my appearance, which I declared was most ungrateful, as I had put on my best clothes for the occasion. His mouth showed a tendency to grow square at the corners; I had seen his children's do the same a thousand times in our nursery, and I turned away to conceal my emotion.

The leaders are still kept apart from the other Reformers, a chalked line showing the margin of their liberty. They are fairly comfortable in the Jameson Cottage. It contains two tiny rooms; in one all four sleep, and the other is used for a sitting-room. These are kept very clean and bright. Mr. Farrar is housekeeper, and 'tidies up' with such vigour that his three comrades threaten to give up their lodgings and decamp.

'Hang it all,' says Mr. Phillips, 'we never sit down to a meal that George does not begin to sweep the floor'; 'And he takes our cups away and begins was.h.i.+ng them before we've finished our coffee,' complains the Colonel. Mr. Farrar reproaches me for my husband's want of order.

He says I have not trained him at all, which is quite the truth. Each man has his chief treasures on a little shelf above his bed. The three husbands have photographs of wife and children; Colonel Rhodes, the bachelor, a sponge-bag and pin-cus.h.i.+on. Every day I find a short list of things which they want got for them. It is many a long year since they had such simple desires: bed-sheets and pillow-cases, a shade for their window, Dutch dictionary, and lead pencils.

JANUARY 25.--The Reformers, with the exceptions of Messrs. Lionel Phillips, George Farrar, Colonel Rhodes, John Hays Hammond, and Percy Fitzpatrick, are released to-day on bail of ten thousand dollars each. They are not permitted to leave Pretoria however.

JANUARY 27.--Dr. Jameson has sailed on the 'Victoria' for England. The Governor of Natal was hooted at Volksrust for congratulating President Kruger on his defeat of Jameson.