By Sir H. Rider Haggard
1926
Chapter XIII
I used to know a good many interesting people during those years when I lived in London.
Lord Goschen, then Mr. Goschen, dined with me at a dinner I gave at the Savile Club, and we always remained friendly till his death. He was a most able and agreeable man; also there was something rather attractive about the low, husky voice in which he addressed one, his head held slightly forward as though he wished to be very confidential. Besides a number of literary men, Mr. Balfour was my guest at that dinner, and I think Lord Lytton also. I remember that it was a most pleasant feast, at which seventeen or eighteen people were present, and one that, to my great relief, went off without a hitch.
It was Lang who introduced me to Mr. Balfour. Of this circumstance I was reminded the other day when I met Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in- Chief of the British forces in the Mediterranean stations, on the Orient liner /Otway/ when I was returning from Egypt (April 1912). He asked me if I remembered a little dinner that Lang gave at the Oxford and Cambridge Club somewhere about 1886 or 1887, at which Balfour, he, and I were the only guests. Then it all came back to me. Lang asked me to meet Mr. Balfour because he knew that already I wished to escape from novel-writing and re-enter the public service, a matter in which he thought Mr. Balfour might be of assistance. Ian Hamilton, his cousin, he asked because he had escaped from Majuba, and I also knew a great deal about Majuba.
By the way, General Hamilton, whom I had not met from that day to this, gave me, while we were on the ship together, a long and full account of his experiences and sufferings in that dreadful rout; but as these tally very closely with what I have written in this book and elsewhere, I will not repeat them in all their painful detail. He was shot through the wrist and struck on the head with splinters of stone. The Boers dismissed him, telling him that he would "probably die." He passed a night in the cold, and, had it not been for a kindly Boer who found him and bound up his wrist--I think he said with a piece of tin for a splint--he would probably have perished. That Boer, Sir Ian Hamilton--who, by the way, is now the only officer in the British Army who was present at Majuba--met at Bloemfontein the other day. Naturally they were the best of friends, and Sir Ian has sent him a souvenir of the event. Finally, as he lay unable to move, he was found by a British search-party and taken back to camp, where in due course he recovered.
I see that in "Cetywayo and his White Neighbours" I stated that Majuba was attacked by two or three hundred Boers, adding that I did not believe the story which the Boers told me, that they rushed the mountain with not more than a hundred men--a version which subsequently I adopted in "Jess." Sir Ian told me, however, that the smaller figure was quite correct. He even put it somewhat lower. A dreadful story, in truth!
Talking of the Boer War reminds me of Sir Redvers Buller. I knew him and his wife, Lady Audrey, very well. We used to dine at their house, where we met a number of distinguished people, among whom I remember Lord Coleridge, the Chief Justice. He was a brilliant conversationalist with a marvellous memory. I have heard him tell story after story without stopping, till at length I began to hope that the stock was running low. Sir Redvers was always very kind to me, but he was not a man to cross in argument. Once, at his own table, I heard him differ from the late Lord Justice Bowen in a way that made me glad that I was not Lord Justice Bowen. What struck me was the extraordinary patience with which the Judge submitted to the scolding. He must have had a very sweet nature; indeed I always thought that this was so.
It was about this time that I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, who had recently arrived in England, I suppose from India. He was then a young fellow about five-and-twenty, and in appearance and manner very much what he is to-day. I cannot recall under what circumstance we first met. Perhaps it was at a dinner-party I gave at my house, 24 Redcliffe Square, to some literary friends. I remember that Kipling arrived late and explained the reason by pointing to a cut upon his temple. Whilst he was driving towards my house his hansom collided with a van in Piccadilly, and there was a smash in which he had a narrow escape. From that time forward we have always liked each other, perhaps because on many, though not on all, matters we find no point of difference.
Chapter XVII
Some years before this time my brother Alfred conceived the plan of obtaining some great concession of land and minerals from Lobengula. He was, I recollect, angry with me because I would not enter into his scheme with enthusiasm, and I think has never quite forgiven me my backwardness. But I knew a good deal about the Matabele; also I held that Lobengula would never grant him what he wanted unless it was wrung from him by force of arms. Indeed I am convinced to this day that no one except Cecil Rhodes, with his vast command of money, could have dispossessed this tyrant and annexed those great territories.
I did not know Cecil Rhodes in Africa, where we never crossed each other's paths; indeed I think he arrived there only towards the end of my time. We first met in London, I believe somewhere about the year 1888, when I was asked to meet him at the National Liberal Club. At that time he was little known; I do not think that I had ever heard of him before. He impressed me a good deal, and I remember his explaining to me in great detail the provisions of a measure he was introducing into the Cape Parliament--I think it was the Glen Grey Act--in such detail, indeed, that I lost the thread of the thing and grew bewildered. Rhodes could rarely be persuaded to write a letter, but my recollection is that he could talk at a great pace when he was in the mood.
When he was in England, just before the Jameson Raid, I saw Rhodes several times, for it was then that the African people were anxious that I should stand for Parliament. I remember going to breakfast with him at the Burlington Hotel. He was then at the height of his success, and the scene was very curious. Already before breakfast a number of people, some of them well known, who were not asked to that meal, were waiting about in ante-rooms on the chance of getting a word with or favour from the great man. It reminded me of a picture I have seen of Dr. Johnson and others hanging about in the vestibule of, I think, Lord Chesterfield's apartment for a like object. There was the same air of patient expectancy upon their faces. In a china bowl on a table I observed a great accumulation of unopened letters, most of which had a kind of society look about them; probably they were invitations and so forth. It was, I have understood, one of the habits of the Rhodes entourage not to trouble to open letters that came by post. Unless these were of known importance they only attended to those that were sent by hand, or to telegrams, and the replies were generally verbal or telegraphic. Perhaps this was owing to press of business, or perhaps to a pose, or to a combination of both.
The last time that I ever saw Rhodes must have been about a year later, probably when he was in England after the Jameson Raid affair. I went to call on him on some matter--I entirely forget what it was-- at the Burlington Hotel, and found him alone. We talked for a long while, though again I forget the subject of our conversation. What I remember is the appearance of the man as he paced restlessly up and down the long room like a lion in a cage, throwing out his words in jerky, isolated sentences, and in a curious high voice that sometimes almost attained to a falsetto. He gave me the idea of being in a very nervous state, as I dare say was the case.
His was one of those big, mixed natures of which it is extremely difficult to form a just opinion. My own, for what it is worth, is that he loved his country and desired above all things to advance her interests; also that he was personally very ambitious. He set great ends before himself and went to work to attain them at any cost. To begin with, he saw that money was necessary, so he rubbed shoulders with speculators, with Jews, with anybody who was useful, and by means of this deal or that deal made the money, not for its own sake, but that he might use it to fulfil the purposes of his busy and far- reaching brain. He outwitted Kruger; he destroyed the Matabele; he seized the vast territories of Rhodesia, and persuaded the British public to find him the gold wherewith to finance them, most of which the British public has, I imagine, lost. But the Empire has gained, for Rhodesia does not run away, like the capital, in over-financed and unremunerative companies. One day it may be a great asset of the Crown, if the Imperial possessions hold together.
It would almost seem as though Rhodes was one of those men who have been and still are raised up by that Power, of the existence of which he seems to have been dubious, to fulfil certain designs of Its own. There have been a good many with somewhat similar characteristics. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Chaka, come to my mind as I write. Roosevelt, though his is a finer mind, may or may not prove another: at the moment it rather looks as though his cards were played; but who knows?
Had it not been for Rhodes I incline to the belief that the Germans would have taken Rhodesia, perhaps after a preliminary occupation by the Boers. That danger, I think, was present to his thoughts and was one of the reasons which induced him to strike, and strike hard, caring nothing for the blood that splashed up from the blow. In the same way he wished to seize the Transvaal by a coup de main, or rather a coup d'epee, but here he miscalculated the strength of the opposing forces. Or perhaps, as he himself said, Jameson--whom I also knew and who possesses, I think, in some ways a higher nature than did Rhodes--upset his "apple-cart." At least, whatever his faults, he was a great figure in his generation, and his name must always be remembered if only by that of the vast territory he seized, which he still surveys from his tomb-eyrie on the Matoppos.
Rhodes had his weaknesses, like other men. A few years ago I was staying with Lord Carrington, now the Marquis of Lincolnshire. He told me a little story with reference to Rhodes' declaration, which Lord Carrington said he had often made, to the effect that he would accept no title or favour from Royalty. They were both of them commanded to Windsor at the same time, and Lord Carrington gave me a lively description of the intense amusement of the company when the late Queen came down to dinner and in a very marked manner asked one of the gentlemen-in-waiting whether he had been careful to see that the "Right Honourable gentleman," pointing to Cecil Rhodes, had been made comfortable in every way, thereby indicating the conferring of a Privy Councillorship upon him, which he had not refused.
....
About this time I made the acquaintance of one of the most interesting of all my friends, Major F. R. Burnham, D.S.O., concerning whom and whose career I should like to say a few words. Burnham is an American, born among the Indians on the frontiers of Minnesota in 1861, and one of the best specimens of that great people whom I have ever met. Indeed, taking him altogether, I am not sure that when the circumstances of his upbringing and life are considered, he is not the most remarkable man whom it has been my privilege to know. He belongs to the seventh generation of pioneers, as his family went to America from England in 1635.
In personal appearance he is small and quiet-mannered, with steady, grey-blue eyes that have in them a far-away look such as those acquire whose occupation has caused them to watch continually at sea or on great plains. He does not smoke, fearing, as he told me, lest it should injure the acuteness of his sense of smell, and he drinks less liquid perhaps than anyone else. One wineglass of water, or perhaps claret, is the amount he will consume during a long meal. He has trained himself to this abstinence in order that, when scouting or travelling where there is no water, he may still be able to exist, with the result that on one occasion at least he survived when all or nearly all of his companions died, I think in the deserts of Arizona. He is not at all communicative; indeed I remember his telling me that I was one of the very few people to whom he had imparted any information concerning his many adventures.
When he was in England Charles Longman was very anxious that he should write his Life, but although he offered him a handsome sum on account and, to my knowledge, Burnham at the time was not too well supplied with money, in spite of my entreaties and offers of assistance, this, to my lasting regret, he absolutely refused to do. Therefore, if he still lives, as I believe to be the case--although somewhat to my surprise I have heard nothing from him for the last three or four years--when he dies the record of all his extraordinary adventures, of which he has experienced more in fact than Allan Quatermain himself in fiction, will, I fear, perish with him. Of those adventures, of course, I can only repeat a few specimens from memory, as he has told them to me walking about the land or sitting together over the fire in this house.
His first recollection is of being carried away by his mother when the savage Indians attacked the place where they lived, somewhere on the Mexican border. He was then about three years old, and at last his mother, unable to bear him any farther, hid him in a shock of maize, telling him that he must keep quite silent. From between the stalks of the maize presently he saw the pursuing Indians pass. Next day his mother returned and rescued him.
Later on, as a married man, he found his way with some members of his family to Rhodesia, attracted by the magic name of Cecil Rhodes, and took part in the settlement of that colony. Prospecting and the management of mines were their occupations. Here his little girl was born, the first white child that saw the light in Buluwayo. He named her Nada after the heroine of my Zulu tale. Poor infant, she did not live long, as the following dedication to one of my stories shows:
To the Memory of the Child
NADA BURNHAM
who "bound all to her" and, while her father cut his way through the hordes of the Ingubu Regiment, perished of the hardships of war at Buluwayo on May 22nd, 1896, I dedicate this tale of Faith triumphant over savagery and death.
Burnham was with Wilson when he was wiped out on the banks of the Shangani, together with all his companions, except Burnham himself and his brother-in-law, Ingram, who had been sent back to try to bring help from the column. All that tale I have told in the "Red True Story Book" (Longmans), so I need not repeat it here. I shall never forget Burnham's account of how he tracked the missing men in the darkness, by feeling the spoor with his fingers and by smell, or of how, still in the darkness, he counted the Matabele impi as they passed him close enough to touch them.
Subsequently Burnham took service as a scout under our flag in the Boer War. Indeed I believe that Lord Roberts cabled to him in the Klondike. Here many things befell him. Thus he was out scouting from Headquarters at the time of the Sannah's Post affair, saw the Boers post their ambuscade, saw the British walking into the trap. He rode to a hill and, with a large red pocket-handkerchief which he always carried, tried to signal to them to keep back. But nobody would take the slightest notice of his signals. Even the Boers were puzzled by so barefaced a performance, and for quite a long while did not interfere with him. So the catastrophe occurred--because it was nobody's business to take notice of Burnham's signals! Ultimately some Boers rode out and made him a prisoner. They led him to a stone-walled cattle kraal where a number of them were ensconced, whence he saw everything.
When the British were snared a Boer lad took some sighting shots at them, and at length said laconically, "Sechzen hondert!" whereon the Boers sighted their rifles to that range and began to use them with deadly effect. A whole battery of English guns opened fire upon this kraal. The air screamed with shells. Some fell short and exploded against the wall; some went high, some hit upon the top of the wall. The net result of that terrific bombardment was--one horse blown to bits. The practice was not bad, but those behind the wall remained quite comfortable.
When everything was over Burnham was taken off as a prisoner. A change of guard enabled him to pretend a wound, so he was placed on an ox- waggon. He sat on the fore-part of the waggon, and just before day the guards nodding in their saddles gave him the chance to drop down between the wheels, letting the waggon trek away over him. Then he rolled himself into a little gully near the road, and, as he dared not stand up, lay cooking there during the whole of the following day with the fierce sun beating on his back. When night came again he walked back to the English camp, a distance of nearly a hundred miles, and reported himself.
This exploit was equalled, if not surpassed, by one of my sons-in-law, Major Reginald Cheyne of the Indian Army. He was posted on a ridge with a few men in one of the affairs of this war when an overwhelming force of Boers opened fire on them. He held out until all but two of those with him were dead or wounded and the ammunition--even of the wounded--exhausted. Then, having been shot through the face behind the nose, in another part of the head, and also cut by a bullet all along the forehead, which caused the blood to flow down into his eyes and blind him, he surrendered. He was taken prisoner, and in this dreadful state carried off in a waggon. At night he pretended that it was necessary for him to retire. The Boer guard showed him his revolver, which he tapped significantly. Cheyne nodded and, taking his risks, made a bolt for it. In due course he, too, staggered into the British camp, where he recovered. I hope I have given the details right, but Cheyne, like Burnham, is not given to talking of such things. It was only after much urging on the part of my daughter that he told me the story, of which I had heard rumours from a brother officer, who spoke of him as "a hero." He was recommended, together with his Colonel, for a V.C. or a D.S.O.--I forget which--but, unfortunately for him, the Boers captured and burnt the despatch, so that nothing was known at home of his services until too late. However, they made him a brevet- major. Such are the fortunes of war.
After Pretoria was occupied Burnham was sent out to cut the railway line by which the Boers were retreating. He exploded part of his gun- cotton and destroyed the line, and then rode over a ridge--straight into a Boer bivouac! He turned his horse and, lying flat on the saddle, galloped off under a heavy fire. He thought he was safe, but the Boers had got his range against the skyline--it was night--and suddenly he remembered no more. When he came to himself the sun was shining, and he lay alone upon the veld. The horse was gone, where to he never learned. He felt himself all over and found that he had no wound, also that he was injured internally, probably owing to the horse falling on him when it was struck by a bullet. Near by was a little cattle or goat kraal, into which he crept and lay down. From this kraal he saw the Boers come and mend the line. When night fell again he crawled upon his hands and knees--he could not walk--down to the line and destroyed it afresh, for his gun-cotton cartridges remained in a bag upon his shoulders. I am not certain whether he did this once or twice. At any rate in the end, feeling that he was a dead man if he remained where he was, he tore up the bag, tied the sacking round his wrists and knees, and, thus protected against the stones and grass stumps, dragged himself out into the veld, where, by the mercy of Providence, an English patrol found him. It turned out that his stomach had been ruptured, and that, had it not been for his long abstinence from food, he must have expired. No treatment could possibly have been better for him, and as it was the break in the tissues found time to heal. In the end he recovered, though that was the last service which he did in South Africa. It was rewarded with a D.S.O. and the rank of major in the British Army. Lord Roberts gave him a remarkable letter of thanks and appreciation: it sets forth his admiration of Burnham's skill, endurance and ability in difficult scouting inside the lines of the enemy.
Burnham told me that during that war on many occasions he passed through the sentries of both the British and the Boer forces without being seen. Once he penetrated into a Boer camp and came to a waggon where a fat old Dutchman lay snoring. To the trek-tow were tied sixteen beautiful black oxen, no doubt that Dutchman's especial pride. With his knife he cut them loose and drove them away back into the British lines. Often, he told me, he had speculated as to what the old Boer said when he woke up and found them gone for ever. On another occasion when he was scouting he was absolutely surrounded by the Boers and could find no cover in which to hide. With the help of an old Kaffir blanket and a stick he made himself up as a beggar and limped away between them without even being questioned.
In all such matters he seems to possess a kind of sixth sense, evolved no doubt in the course of his long training in Indian warfare. He was one of the pioneers in the Klondike, whither he travelled across the winter snows on a sledge drawn by dogs, which for some weeks were his sole companions. These dogs he watched very closely, and as a result of his observations informed me that he was sure from their conduct at night that they possessed some elementary instinct of prayer. His reasons are too long to set out, but they were very striking.
In Rhodesia he discovered a large amount of treasure buried in one of the prehistoric ruins and old forts, with the skeletons of unknown ancients. I have a gold bead from it which he gave me, mounted as a pin; also some iron arrow-heads which he found amidst the bones, showing that these men died in an attack by enemies.
Such are a few of the incidents of Major Burnham's career. The reader might judge from them that he is a rough and uncultured man, but this is far from being the case. Like old Allan Quatermain, he is an extremely polished and thoughtful person, and one with an extraordinarily wide outlook on affairs in general. I remember, for instance, that he took a most lively interest in parish councils, their constitution and business. This, after all the vast issues of life and death in which he had been engaged for many years, struck me as strange--though, as we know, elephants are adepts at the picking up of pins.
When I was Commissioner in America in 1905 I stayed with the Burnhams at their charming house in Pasadena, Los Angeles. After I parted from them I travelled with another remarkable man, Mr. Hays Hammond--who was once condemned to death with Jameson at Pretoria--across America in his private car, and spoke with him of Burnham. Also I told him the strange tale of a certain odd gentleman of the name of Carmichael, now I believe long dead, who thought that he had discovered the secret of the hidden city of the Aztecs, that lies somewhere at the back of Chiapas, in which treasure to the value of three million sterling is supposed to have been concealed by Montezuma on the approach of the Spaniards.[*] Thinking, from the documentary evidence, that there was something in this tale, a friend and I furnished Carmichael with a moderate sum of money to enable him to locate the place. He set out, and after incredible hardships found the wrong city, or the wrong part of the right city, where his Indian carriers deserted him, leaving him suffering from fever to support life upon catfish, which he caught with a bent nail. Ultimately he was rescued and brought back to civilisation.
[*] This was the sacred treasure held by Montezuma as High Priest, which it took 1500 men to carry in bars of gold. It must not be mixed up with the private royal treasure whereof I have already spoken, that was buried by Guatemoc--also to save it from the Spaniards.--H. R. H.
Hays Hammond was so taken with this exciting narrative that he determined to send Burnham to look for the Aztec city, and telegraphed to him to come from San Francisco to New York to see him. Needless to say, Burnham was quite ready for the adventure, and followed me to England to get particulars, among other business. Whilst here a terrible thing befell him. He had taken a little villa on the Thames, where he was living with his wife and a fine little boy, the brother of the child Nada. One day the boy was missing. His body was found in the Thames. I was informed that when Burnham saw it he fell to the ground senseless as though he had been shot.
Afterwards he returned to America and started to look for the Aztec city, but was prevented from getting very far by a rebellion among the Indians. His last letter to me was written from that district some four years ago. I answered it, but since then have heard nothing from him. I do not think that he is dead, as such news would probably have reached me one way or another, or Hays Hammond would have mentioned it when I had a hurried interview with him at the time of the King's Coronation, which he attended as Special Ambassador from the United States. I conclude, therefore, that Burnham is probably now engaged in all the Mexican fighting that has ensued upon the deposition of President Diaz, which leaves him no time for correspondence; or perhaps he is disinterring the treasure from the hidden city! One day I hope that he will appear again and greet me in his quiet fashion as though we had parted but yesterday--I mean, of course, on this bank of the great "Divide."