HOW CAN ONE possibly summarize a portion of one’s life? Those first warm breaths of African air as I stepped off the plane at Cape Town International. The stern-faced mustachioed driver who drove me to Stellenbosch, the town that became my home, on my first day on the African continent. My strongest memory is just pure sunlight. I had flown down from the deepest winter of the northern hemisphere, and the sun’s warm embrace was a welcome change. As we entered the valley of Stellenbosch, my solemn driver broke the silence and asked what business was taking me there. Learning that I came, at least in part, to study Afrikaans, his dour visage was suddenly enlivened, and he earnestly gave every assurance that I would enjoy myself in Stellenbosch immensely.

The town itself is handsome, full of white-washed walls and pleasant streets lined with old oak trees, some planted by that Dutch governor of old, Simon van der Stel. He gave the town both its name — Stellenbosch, van der Stel’s wood — and its other moniker, Eikestad, the city of oaks. The most remarkable feature of the town, however, is the beautiful range of mountains that flank it on either side. My window happened to look out on Stellenbosch mountain itself, and I admit a certain territorial feeling towards that berg has formed through the several mornings, noons, and nights it has stood watch over me.

But pleasures though there are in Stellenbosch — a stroll the Botanical Gardens, a pint at De Akker, dinner at Cognito where they know my “usual” Tanqueray-and-tonic — even more awaits the Stellenboscher who ventures further afield. I went as far as Lüderitz in Namibia, one of the furthest extremities of the old German empire. But nearby Cape Town itself provides enough to keep the ardent traveller intrigued. Table Mountain, whose looming presence over the city frames the moederstad perfectly. Further along to the pleasant sands of Clifton’s beaches, the port of Simon’s Town, and down to the end of the Cape itself — the end of Africa, where two oceans meet.

And across False Bay to Rooiels and Betty’s Bay, to the Kogelberg reserve where the hiker’s efforts are rewarded by the seclusion of a splendid little swimming hole. Floating to and fro in the little river pond, being sung to by fair Finnish maidens — there are worse ways to spend a summer’s afternoon. But it’s also glorious to be alone in Kogelberg; to hear the silence of the dead summer, outstretched arms floating along, grazing the tall grass and the heather beside the way. The open, breezy country and the quieter nooks lodged between, whose heat betrays their stillness of air. Barely any sound but the crunch of foot upon path, the wind rustling through the plants, and the odd chirp of insect here and there.

And where else? To Wupperthal, where the barefoot coloured children play happily in the eucalyptus-lined street leading to the old Rhenish mission. To Kakamas, where the farmer invites us to lunch with his family, and guides us around just a few of his 600,000 acres. To Hermanus, spending two glorious hours clearing invasive plant species from a field before breakfast — that damned Ficus rubiginosa! To Greyton for a winter’s lunch beside the fireplace, and to Genadendal, the “valley of Grace”, the queen of the Moravian missions.

And with whom? Ah, the easy acquaintances of a university town. Friends from class, friends from the pub, friends from the bistro, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends, who all end up as friends. To the beach on Friday? The cinema tonight? The pub quiz on Tuesday? A coffee tomorrow afternoon?

The people, more than anything, make the deepest impression — both the South Africans and my fellow travellers. Good times shared and conversations enjoyed. Some surprising friendships spring forth from the unlikeliest of places and the most scant of connections. And stories are shared of varying experiences. Poor Ralf almost getting done in by that hippo in the Kalahari! The intervarsity match — another victory for die Maties. And the second test match against the Lions — Morne Steyn, that kick! A genial cup of tea in a well-kept house in Oranjezicht as the resident explains how many times she’s been burgled. The Kayamandi girl whose father disappeared long ago, whose stepfather abuses her every night, and whose mother is entrapped into acquiescence by poverty. A student dies from swine flu — a first in South Africa. Another is murdered by the obsessed friend of her older brother. The police beat the suspect so badly he cannot appear in court. The headline in the Eikestadnuus proclaims “Vyfteen weeks, vyfteen moorde” — fifteen weeks, fifteen murders in this pleasant little corner of the Cape. The latest exhausted statement from Kapt. Aubrey Marais of the Stellenbosch police. An email from the university rector: male students are reminded not to allow girls to walk home unaccompanied at night. In the face of all this, ordinary lives continue unintimidated.

This country has a tendency to seep into the veins, to get under people’s skin. There is no brief affair with South Africa. Her own sons and daughters dot the globe — thousands are in London alone — but they earn their keep abroad while they yearn for the land they left. (“They just miss having servants” half-jokes the farmer’s wife.) Some do leave forever, but many more come home after a few years. My time is up, I leave South Africa today, but I can’t help but think the affair is not over, even if it only continues from afar. It is difficult to escape the lure of this deeply troubled, deeply blessed land.

PERCHED AMID THE bluegum trees on the slopes of Devil’s Peak in Cape Town is the memorial to one of the most brilliant & cunning men the world has ever produced. Cecil John Rhodes may have been born in Bishop’s Stortford, England, but his worldly glories all emanated from the Cape of Good Hope, and so it’s appropriate that his memorial stands here in Cape Town. His first commercial enterprise in South Africa was founding the Rhodes Fruit Farms (now Rhodes Food Group) which still exist on the road from Stellenbosch to Franschhoek, and has since expanded throughout the Western Cape, and to the Transvaal and Swaziland. But it was his creation of the diamond monopoly De Beers out of the Kimberley mines that made him one of the wealthiest men in the world. Ten years after being elected to the Cape Parliament, he was made Prime Minister of the Cape in 1890, but his catastrophic and illegal attempt to seize the independent Transvaal in 1895 forced his resignation from politics in disgrace. (more…)

I attended Orthodox Divine Liturgy yesterday at the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas, about a 20-minute walk from Central Station. The liturgy was mostly in Dutch. The church is a former Franciscan priory church. A parishioner, a Dutch convert, told me that in Holland you are either a Protestant Calvinist, a Catholic Calvinist, or an atheist Calvinist. He was pretty sure that most of the (tiny) Orthodox minority were Calvinists, too.

From 1912 to 1957, South Africa’s military was called the Union Defence Force (the Union in question being the Union of South Africa, the other USA). The Nationalist government renamed it the South African Defence Force (Suid-Afrikaanse Weermag) in 1957, prior to the declaration of the Republic of South Africa in 1961. After the introduction of universal suffrage in 1994, the SADF was merged with the MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s terror branch) and APLA (Azanian People’s Liberation Army, the terrorist wing of the Pan-Africanist Congress), as well as the Self-Protection Units of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party, into the South African National Defense Force (SANDF, or SANDEF), which remains the name of the country’s armed forces today.

Founded in 1592, the University of Dublin is the youngest of the ancient universities of Britain. (It’s ten years younger than the next youngest, Edinburgh, and nearly five-hundred years younger than the oldest, Oxford). On Archiseek, an Irish internet forum dedicated to architecture, there is a user named ‘grahamh’ who posts, from time to time, photographs he has taken from around the fair city of Dublin, of which those presented here are a selection. The University of Dublin is much more commonly known as Trinity College, Dublin, as the university has just the one college, unlike the multi-collegiate universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and elsewhere. (more…)

Blessed Emperor Charles’s two homecomings to Hungary after the overthrow of the Hapsburgs are worthy of the greatest spy novels, except they are fact: the hushed secrecy and underground preparations, the airplane contracted under a false name, the disguises used to sneak over borders. In his first attempt, Charles — the Apostolic King of Hungary — made it all the way to Budapest, only to be persuaded to return to exile by the self-appointed regent, Admiral Horthy (a naval commander in what, by then, was a land-locked country).

The King’s second attempt to reclaim his power was much more considered and deliberate, and he spent some time securing a loyal power base of local nobility before pressing on to Budapest by armoured railway train. The King’s force made it to just outside of the Hungarian capital before they were overwhelmed by troops loyal to Horthy — who, in order to maintain their loyalty, neglected to inform the soldiers and officers that the “rebels” they were fighting were actually those of their King and Queen.

Along his path to the capital, the King was greeted by fervent crowds, and stopped at least twice to review small detachments of troops and to show himself in person to his loyal Hungarian subjects. The King had returned, but sadly not for long. After the failure of this second attempt, the Allied powers refused to allow the Imperial & Royal family to remain in mainland Europe, and exiled them to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where the Emperor-King grew ill and eventually died. He is entombed on the island today — a source of great pride, I am told, to the Madeirans.

Elsewhere: Miracle Attributed to Blessed Charles (Norumbega)

Winter in the Western Cape is relatively mild: grey days of pouring rain when the clouds veil Stellenbosch mountain, coupled with beautiful sunny afternoons best spent having a coffee with a friend at a sidewalk cafe.

Today is one of the grey days, however, in which one hopes to leave the house as little as possible (provided, that is, one is already adequately supplied with enough tea and books to last the day).

My little flat is in an old Dutch townhouse in the middle of town, one which the arbitrary modernisers neglected to supply with an alternative source of heat when they foolishly removed the iron stoves and blocked all the fireplaces.

Nevermind. A good jumper and a cup of rooibos will keep me warm as I make progress with Sassoon’s Memoirs. (more…)

AFTER AN ABSENCE of some years, Columbia University has returned the crosses to its official crown emblem. The crosses had been missing since March 2004, when they were replaced with trapezoidal lozenges, but the more historic cross design has quietly returned to favour as the Ivy League institution’s official symbol. Columbia was founded in 1784, but claims the earlier heritage of King’s College, founded in 1754 but exiled to Nova Scotia, where it now has university status, after the tumult of the American Revolution. A copper crown (right) was originally attached to the cupola of College Hall, King’s College’s home in the colonial city of New York. When Columbia was founded in 1784, a year after New York’s independence was recognized, the state legislature gave the property and endowment of King’s College to the new Columbia College, which was organized by the remaining non-Loyalist members of King’s College. (more…)

The Kingdom of the Netherlands has very kindly set up a website devoted to the four-hundredth anniversary of Hudson’s discovery of what is now New York. Hudson, though English, was in the service of the Dutch and it was the Netherlandic people who eventually got the place settled. Because of his Hollandic overseers, Henry Hudson’s Christian name is often romantically Dutched up to Hendrick — hence one of the local high schools in Westchester is called “Hendrick Hudson High School”.

THE CUSACKIAN DICTIONARY OF the English Language defines the word braai thusly: “braai; S.Afr. [Afrikaans, lit. ‘to grill’.] n. and v. trans. and intr.; An out-door meal at which meat is grilled by the heat emanating from the embers of burnt wood.” The uncultured observer, when informed of a braai, often incorrectly equates it with a barbecue. The chief difference between a barbecue and a braai is that a barbecue tends to use either propane gas or ready-made charcoals, while the laboursome but worthwhile burning of wood is necessary to a braai. (more…)

One of the better aspects of the job of Premier of the Western Cape is Leeuwenhof, the official residence that comes with the job. The estate on the slopes of Table Mountain dates from the days of the Dutch East India Company. That renowned governor of old, Simon van der Stel (after whom both Simonstad & Stellenbosch are named), granted the land to Guillaum Heems, a free burgher, to ‘clear, plant, plough, develop and work’. Heems christened the land Leeuwenhof — “Lions Court” — but sold it just two years later to Heinrich Bernhard Oldenland, Master Gardener of the Company’s Garden and Superintendent of Works for the Dutch East India Company.

Oldenland died just a few months after purchasing Leeuwenhof, and it passed into the hands of the fiscal Blesius, whose widow’s death put the estate under a series of masters until it was sold it for 14,000 guilders to Johan Christiaan Brasler, a Dane. Brasler enjoyed a good many years there in prosperity of late-eighteenth-century Cape Town, a period when the building of stately homes, townhouses, and government buildings became (as Cornelis de Jong put it at the time) “a passion, a craziness, a contagious madness that has infected nearly everyone”. This was the age of Thibault, Anreith, and Schutte — the true golden age of Cape Town’s stately finery. Inspired by the “madness” of which De Jong tells, the Dane Brasler converted the humble farmhouse of Leeuwenhof into the dignified abode we know today. (more…)

SYLDAVIA IS MY favourite country in the world. The buildings are old, the peasants are happy, and the king is ruling from his throne. Adding to my collection of Tintin books, the preponderance of which remain in New York, I know have three Afrikaans editions of Hergé’s works: Die Blou Lotus, Die Geheim van ‘De Eenhoorn’, and — my preferred among all the Tintin books — Koning Ottokar se Septer. Aside from Afrikaans, the rest of my copies are all either in French or English. I have a copy of the reprinted Tintin au Pays des Soviets and I just recently bought a copy of Tintin in the Congo, as I figured the European Union’s attempt to ban the book might make it harder to come by in years to come. I bought a copy of Le Sceptre d’Ottokar in a gas station in Brittany, one of the six special editions with a preface by Bernard Tordeur of the Hergé Foundation released in 1999/2000. Aside from Au Pays des Soviets & Le Sceptre, the only other French editions I have are L’Île Noire and Le Lotus bleu. (more…)

Looking down the Avenida de Mayo towards the Argentine Congress in the 1910s.

I can’t tell you how often I come across something and think to myself “I must ask Lumsden about that”, and then suddenly realise that no such thing is possible anymore. I only had the privilege of knowing this gentle giant of a man towards the end of his life, but am grateful even for that relatively short friendship. Below is the address given by Hugh Macpherson at the Thanksgiving Service for the Life of David Lumsden of Cushnie that took place at St. Mary’s Church, Cadogan St., London on Monday, 27th April 2009. May he rest in peace.

It is difficult to mark the passing of such a remarkable personality as David Lumsden. We have done with the requiems and the pibrochs and must now look forward to celebrate an extraordinary life lived to the full.

David was a man of many parts and passions. He was a renaissance man with a wide variety of interests, and if he did not know the answer to any particular question, he certainly knew where to look it up, and in a few days there would be an informative card in the post. He had a lively curiosity and sense of adventure.

Perhaps the ruling passion in his younger life was that of rowing. He rowed at Bedford School and when he went up to Jesus College Cambridge, he joined the boat club, eventually becoming Captain of Boats. There were, I think, eventually eight “oars” on the walls of his various houses. I think that David was one of the few people I know who went to Henley to actually watch the racing, and when one went into the trophy tent his name could be found on some of the trophys. The expedition to Henley was one of the fixed points of David’s year.

He travelled round the country rather like the “progress” of a monarch of old. This progress encompassed the Boat Race, Henley, the Royal Stuart Society Dinner, the Russian Ball, spring and autumn trips to Egypt, the Aboyne Games, the 1745 Commemoration, the Edinburgh Festival, and numerous balls and dinners, including of course the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks.

Rather like clubs, David and I had a “reciprocal” arrangement: When I was in Scotland I lodged with him, and when he was in London he lodged with me, and I can tell you that there were many times when I simply could not keep up with his social whirl, in fact once or twice I distinctly fell off! I remember one particularly splendid and bibulous dinner at the House of Lords at which we were decked in evening dress and clanking with all sorts of nonsense — after many attempts to hail a taxi, David turned and said to me “You know we are so drunk they won’t pick us up. We’ll have to stagger back.” And so we wound a very unsteady path back to Pimlico, shedding the odd miniature en route.

At Cambridge, David also formed a lasting friendship with Mgr. Alfred Gilbey, Catholic Chaplain to the University, who was to have a lasting influence on David’s faith and life, and, I think, introducing him to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, where he eventually became a Knight of Honour & Devotion.

David’s faith was an important part of his life. When he was in London he would attend this church on a Sunday morning to hear the 11.30 Latin Mass, which finished conveniently near to the opening time at one of his favourite watering holes in the Kings Road. (more…)

“… or some such thing.”

History has shown that good ideas often come from the humblest of sources. One such example, though regrettably one of a suggestion not put into practice, was a proposal submitted by D. M. Perceval, the humble clerk of the Advisory Council of the Cape of Good Hope colony in 1827 to his higher-ups in the Colonial Office in London. Perceval wrote to request an official seal for the British colony at the end of Africa, but he went a step further with his fairly normal request, extraordinarily suggesting that “the opportunity might be taken to erect [the Cape of Good Hope] into the Principality of South Africa, or some such thing, for the present name is really too absurd for the whole country.”

The title “Prince of South Africa” would have been part of the British Crown, and presumably available as a courtesy title for offspring, just as the eldest son is often (such as now) created Prince of Wales. Would the second son then be “Prince of South Africa”, or would the title stay with the Sovereign? “By the grace of God, King of Great Britain & Ireland, Emperor of India, Prince of South Africa, &c.” It does have a nice ring to it. (more…)

Ireland’s senate is a curious creature. Its first members were co-opted & appointed and these included seven peers, a dowager countess, and five baronets and knights, twenty-three Protestants, and a Jew. Among this cast of characters were W. B. Yeats, General Sir Bryan Mahon, and the physician-poet-author Oliver St. John Gogarty. In 1937, however, the Seanad Éireann took its current form, and since the abolition of the Bavarian upper house in 1999, the Seanad is (so far as my research can discover) the last corporately organised parliamentary body in Europe.

There are sixty members of the Irish senate, who are chosen by a variety of means. (more…)

Instagram: @andcusack

Most Recent Posts

• Amsterdam November 26, 2024
• Silver Jubilee November 21, 2024
• Articles of Note: 11 November 2024 November 11, 2024
• Why do you read? November 5, 2024
• India November 4, 2024

Most Recent Comments

• Peter Forster on The Catholic Apostolic Church, Edinburgh
• Andrew Cusack on Articles of Note: 11 November 2024
• L G Clark on Articles of Note: 11 November 2024
• L Gaylord Clark on Why do you read?
• Frédéric on Why do you read?
• Herbert Raubenheimer on University Nicknames in South Africa
• Arthur Black on The Situation at St Andrews
• K. Dontoh on An Aldermanian Skyscraper
• L G Clark on Equality
• B T Van Nostrand on Rough Notes of Kinderhook

Book Wishlist

Monthly Archives

Categories