Part 20 (1/2)

CECIL RHODES

COLONIST

The Rhodes falish yeohteenth century they had held land in North London Cecil's father was vicar of Bishop's Stortford, a quiet country town in Hertfordshi+re on the Essex border; he was a man of ift of preaching ten- Of his eldest sons, Herbert went to Winchester, Frank to Eton; Cecil, the fifth son, born on July 5, 1853, was kept at home He had part of his education at the local Grae from his father himself The shrewd Vicar soon saw that his fifth son was not fitted for the ordinary routine of professional life at hoe of seventeen he was sent out to visit his brother Herbert, who had eood-bye to his native land for the first time in 1870, and thus early elected to be a citizen of the Greater Britain beyond the seas

[Illustration: CECIL RHODES

Fro by G F Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]

The brothers had certain points of reseinal and adventurous; but they had marked differences The elder was a wanderer pure and simple, a lover of sport and of novelty He could follow a new track with all the ardour of a pioneer; he could not sit down and develop the wealth which he had opened up The ement of the Natal cotton farhteen years old, who noted every detail, and studied his crops, his workame and adventure It was this spirit which led Herbert ard in 1871, arants into the diamond fields: before the end of the year Cecil followed and soon took over and developed his brother's claireat affection for one another and fitted in together without jealousy Each lived his own life and followed his own bent As Kimberley was the first field in which Cecil showed his abilities, it is worth while to try to picture the scene It remained a centre of interest to him for thirty years, the scene of many troubles and of many triumphs

'The New Rush', as Kimberley was called in 1872, was a chaos of tents and rubbish heaps seen through a haze of dust--a heterogeneous collection of tents, wagons, native kraals and debris heaps, each set doith cheerful irresponsibility and indifference to order The funnel of blue clay so productive of diamonds had been found on a bit of the bare Griqualand Veld, es, with no charm of woodland or river scenery Here in the years to corow deeper and deeper, as the partitions fell in between the sht up their neighbours' plots Here the debris heaps were to grow higher and higher, as , or new machinery arrived, as the buckets plied more rapidly on the network of ropes overhead In the early 'seventies there were few signs of thesewas in the rough--but they were no doubt already existing in the brain of 'a tall fair boy, blue eyed and with so flannels of the school playing-field, somewhat shrunken with strenuous rather than effectual washi+ngs, that still left the colour of the red veld dust'

Here Cecil Rhodes lived for the greater part of ten years, finding tieneral, aloof fro here and there the foundations of a friendshi+p which was to bear fruit hereafter Rudd,[60]

of the Matabeleland concessions, caold fields, the co-founder of the Chartered Coh one whose name was to be linked still more closely with that of Rhodes Leander Starr Jareat capacity for self-devotion, and with unshakeable firmness of will, was noenty-five years old Rhodes and he soon drew closely together and for years they were living under one roof While his casual and rather overbearing enius for friendshi+p with the few; and it was such hts, and reconciled his of the mines

[Note 60: C D Rudd (1844-96), educated at Harrow and Ca, 1853; died in London, 1906]

But his life at this time had other phases Not the least wonderful chapter in it was the series of visits which he paid to Oxford between 1873 and 1881 The at camp does not seem likely to draw a man towards acadereat power of absorbing hi himself beyond the interests of the moment Seven times he found opportunity to tear hi and to keep ter i, still less the love of games, which drew hi his ti and polo, he was hbours by nocturnal practising of the horn The examinations in the schools, and the more popular athletic contests, knew little of hiher side of hisas coress; and no one who knew him well in later life could doubt that the traditions of Oxford had deeply influenced his s he was by nature reticent, and was often ed

Between the years 1878 and 1888 le between hiun with s claie work, the introduction of better machinery It attractedof the first De Beers Company, named after a Boer who had owned the land on which the mine lay It culerous co of shares in his rival's coareat corporation of De Beers Consolidated mines The masterful will of Rhodes dictated the ter very extensive power to the Directorate for the using of their funds He was already laying his foundations, though few could then have guessed what imperial as to be done with the a downthe aht in better ement

Above all, it curtailed the output of diamonds and so kept up the market price in Europe and elsewhere Many people refused to believe that Rhodes could have outmanoeuvred adishonourable means But there is no doubt that it was th of hich decides the issue at the critical ainst hiy in the pursuit of 'filthy lucre' We must remember that Rhodes hi ideas if you haven't the money to carry them out?' We ree that the ideas were always foremost, the money a mere instrument to realize them The story was told to Edmund Garrett by one of Rhodes's old Ki years, deep in the sordid details of aamation, Rhodes (”always a bit of a crank”) suddenly put his hand over a great piece of No Man's Africa on the map and said, ”Look here: all that British--that is my dream”'[63]

[Note 62: Barney Barnato, born in Houndsditch, 1852; died at sea, 1897]

[Note 63: Perhaps the best character sketch of Rhodes is that printed as an appendix to Sir E T Cook's _Life of Edmund Garrett_ (Edward Arnold, 1909) Garrett's career as journalist and politician in South Africa was terle was over, Rhodes had embarked on new courses which were to carry hian to take shape when Griqualand was created a British province in 1880 Two electoral divisions were formed, Kimberley and Barkly West; and it was for the latter that Rhodes first took his seat in the Cape Parliament in 1880, a seat which he retained till his death The Pri, a politician with experience but few ideas,a policy

Rhodes was at first reticent about his own projects, and spent his ti the proble the Boers If these friendshi+ps were obscured later by political quarrels, there is no reason to suspect their genuineness His syun in 1872, when he h the Northern Transvaal, and it lasted through life He was interested in far, he liked natural s One of the closest observers of his character said that to see the true Rhodes youas the supre that he so ardently desired as friendly relations between British and Dutch, a real union of the races, a South African nation It was for this that he worked so long with Jan Hofmeyr, leader of the Cape Dutch, and earned so hted politicians of Cape Town

Hof of the Dutch character and a great power of influencing men; but this was not done by parliamentary eloquence By one satirist he was called 'the captain who never appeared on the bridge'; by another he was nicknamed 'the Mole', because his activity could only be conjectured from the tracks which he left behind him A third name current in Cape Town, 'the Blind Man,' was an ironical tribute to his exceptional astuteness in politics His organ was 'the Afrikander Bond', a society forricultural, partly for political purposes, a creature which like a cha peacefully beside British politicians, at other tiitation

He certainly had no enthusias, but he probably realized the freedom which the Colony enjoyed under it, and was clear of all disloyalty to the Crown The policy dearest to the farmers of the Afrikander Bond was the protective systericultural produce If Rhodes would support this, he ive him a free hand in his plans for expansion towards the North; and this was needed, because the proble and his party were blind to its ilance at the nineteenth-century map will show that the territories of the Dutch Republic, lying on the less barren side of the continent, tended to block the extension of Cape Colony and Natal towards the north, the more so as the Boers from time to time sent out fresh swarms ard and encroached on native territory in Bechuanaland The Germans did not annex Namaqualand till 1885, but already their interest in this district was beco evident to close observers Rhodes's h-lying healthy inland regions to the north by the British race under the British flag

But in those days, when Whitehall was asleep and officials in Cape Toere indifferent, Rhodes saw that his best chance was to convert the Dutch in the Colony He hoped to make them realize that, if they supported hih Cape Tohich otherould go eastward through Portuguese channels The building of railways, the settlelish would share alike, were practical questions which enuine in his desire to see both races going forward together 'Equal rights for every civilized man south of the Za