Days of My life, Volume II

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."