When, on October 11th, 1899, shortly before 5 o'clock in the afternoon,
martial law was proclaimed throughout the Transvaal and Orange Free State,
South Africa, and after the great exodus of British subjects had taken
place, there remained in Pretoria, where the principal events recorded here
took place, a harmonious community of Boers and sympathisers, who for eight
months enjoyed the novel advantage of Boer freedom under Boer martial law.
The remaining English residents were few in number, and kept, to all
appearance, "strictly neutral," until the morning of June 5th, 1900, when
the British troops poured into the capital.
The two people chiefly concerned in this story, mother and daughter, lived
in Sunnyside, a south-eastern suburb of Pretoria, on a large and beautiful
old property, appropriately called Harmony, one of the oldest estates in the
capital.
This historical place consisted of a simple, comfortable farm-house, with a
rambling garden—a romantic spot, and an ideal setting for the adventures and
enterprises here recorded.
At
the time our story opens, the owner, Mrs. van Warmelo, was living alone on
it with her daughter, Hansie, a girl of twenty-two, the diarist referred to
in the Introduction.
The other members of the family, though they took no part in those events of
the war which took place within the capital, were so closely connected with
the principal figures in this book that their introduction will be necessary
here.
The family consisted of five, two daughters and three sons. The elder
daughter was married and was living at Wynberg near Cape Town, the younger,
as we have seen, was with her mother in Pretoria during the war, while of
the sons, two, the eldest and the youngest, Dietlof and Fritz, were on
commando, having left the capital with the first contingent of volunteers on
September 28th.
The third brother, Willem, who had been studying in Holland when the war
broke out, had, with his mother's knowledge and permission, given up his
nearly completed studies and had come to South Africa, to take part in the
deadly struggle in which his fellow-countrymen were engaged.
In
order to achieve his purpose, he had taken the only route open to him, the
eastern route through Delagoa Bay, and had joined his brothers in the field,
after a brief sojourn with his mother and sister at Harmony.
Considering the circumstances under which he had joined the Boer forces and
the sacrifice he had made for love of fatherland, it was particularly sad
that he should have been made a prisoner at the last great fight at the
Tugela, the battle of Pieter's Height in Natal, on February 27th, after a
very short experience of commando life.
He
was lodged in the Maritzburg jail at this time, where things would have gone
hard with him, but for the loving-kindness of his cousin, Miss Berning, now
Lady Bale, who frequently visited him with her sister, and provided him with
baskets of fruit and other delicacies, which helped greatly to brighten the
long months of his imprisonment.
Later on, through the influence of his brother-in-law, Mr. Henry Cloete, of
"Alphen," Wynberg, he was released on parole, and allowed to return to
Holland to complete his studies. His name therefore will no more appear in
these pages.
He
was "out of action" once and for all, and could not be made use of, even
when, later on, through the development of the events with which this book
deals, his services were most required by his mother and sister.
The other two brothers, as we have said, had left Pretoria with the first
volunteers.
It
is strange that the first blood shed in that terrible war should have been
that of a young Boer accidentally shot by a comrade.
As
a train, laden with its burden of brave and hopeful burghers, steamed slowly
through the cutting on the south-eastern side of Pretoria, volleys of
farewell shots were fired.
It
is customary to extract the bullets from the cartridges on such occasions,
but one of the burghers must have omitted to do this, with the result that
the bullet, rebounding from the rocks, penetrated a carriage window, and
seriously wounded one of the occupants.
Was this event prophetic of a later development of the war, when, as we
shall see, Boer shed the blood of brother Boer in the formation of the
National Scouts Corps?
Mrs. van Warmelo was a "voor-trekker," a pioneer, in every sense of the
word. As a girl of fourteen she had left Natal with her parents and had
"trekked," with other families, through the wild waste of country, into the
unknown and barbaric regions in which she was destined to spend her youth.
She had watched the growth of a new country, the building up of a new race.
She had known all the hardships and dangers of life in an unsettled and
uncivilised land, had been through a number of Kaffir wars and could speak,
through personal experience, of many adventures with savage foes and wild
beasts. Her children knew her stories by heart, and it is not to be wondered
at that they grew up with the love of adventure strong in them. And above
all things, they grew up with a strong love for the strange, rich, wild
country for which their forefathers had fought and suffered.
Mrs. van Warmelo was the eldest daughter of a family of sixteen. Her father,
Dietlof Siegfried Maré, for many years Landdrost of Zoutpansberg, that
northern territory of the Transvaal, was a direct descendant of the Huguenot
fugitives, and was a typical Frenchman, short of stature, dark, vivacious,
and exceedingly humorous, a man remembered by all who knew him for his great
hospitality and for the shrewd, quaint humour of his sayings.
Some years after their arrival in Zoutpansberg, Mrs. van Warmelo had married
a Hollander, a young minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. Of him it is not
necessary to speak in this book.
He
had taken his part in the first Anglo-Boer war and had passed away in
Heidelberg, Transvaal, leaving to the people of his adopted fatherland and
to his children a rich inheritance in the memory of a life spent in doing
noble deeds—a life of rare self-sacrifice.
His family had left Heidelberg a few years after his death, and had taken up
their abode in the capital in order to be near Mrs. van Warmelo's married
daughter, Mrs. Cloete, who then lived close to Harmony, in Sunnyside.
It
was a wild, romantic suburb in those days, being still almost entirely in
its natural state. Grass-covered hills, clumps of mimosa, and other wild
trees, with here and there an old homestead picturesquely situated in
isolated spots, were all there was to be seen.
Of
all the private properties in this suburb, Harmony was the most overgrown
and neglected when Mrs. van Warmelo first took possession of it.
It
was bounded at the lower, the western end, by the Aapies River, a harmless
rivulet in its normal state—almost dry, in fact, during the winter
season—but in flood a most dangerous and destructive element, overflowing
its banks and sweeping away every obstruction in its wild course.
The property was overgrown with rank vegetation and reminded one of the
impenetrable forest abode of the "Sleeping Beauty" of fairy-tale fame.
Friends wondered that Mrs. van Warmelo had the courage to live alone with
her daughter Hansie in such a wild and desolate spot, and they wondered
still more when they heard of the alarming experience the two ladies had the
very first night they spent in their new home.
On
their arrival, there were still workmen busy repairing the house, and Mrs.
van Warmelo pointed out to one of them that the skylight above the bathroom
door had not yet been put in. The man nailed a piece of canvas over it, with
the remark that that would do for the night, and that he would put in the
skylight on his return the next day. Mrs. van Warmelo was only half
satisfied, but left the matter there.
During the night one of her own servants, a sullen, treacherous-looking
native, recently in her employment, entered the bathroom by putting a ladder
against the door and tearing away the canvas from the skylight.
He
must then have unlocked the door on the inside, striking about a dozen
matches while he was in the room, and carried various portmanteaux out into
the garden, where he slashed them open at the sides and overhauled their
contents for money and valuables.
Early the next morning Mrs. van Warmelo was roused by old Anne Merriman, the
only woman servant on the place, who came in from the garden with articles
of wearing apparel which she had picked up under the trees, and which she
held up to the astonished gaze of her mistress. On investigating further,
they found the garden littered with articles of clothing, valuable
documents, and title-deeds, which the thief had thrown aside as worthless,
in his search for money.
The only things of value which he had taken with him were a set of pearl
ear-rings and brooch, and a beautiful lined "kaross," or rug, made of the
skins of wild South African animals. Nothing was seen of him again, but Mrs.
van Warmelo immediately got a revolver and kept watch for him, hoping, yet
fearing, that he would return for more plunder.
This was a sad beginning, and old Anne added to their fears by predicting
every imaginable calamity to the inhabitants of Harmony. She was gifted with
second-sight, so she said, and often saw a man in grey about the place; his
presence "boded no good," and old Anne soon after left the place, with many
warnings to her mistress to follow her example, before she could be
overtaken by disaster.
All this had taken place long before the war broke out. Harmony had in the
meantime been vastly improved, the dense undergrowth having been cut away,
and the row of enormous willow trees, with which the house was overshadowed,
having been removed, while large flower and vegetable gardens had been laid
out, where once a jungle-like growth of shrubs and rank grass had abounded.
Much of the natural beauty still remained, however, and Harmony was a
favourite resort for many people in Pretoria. Young and old visited the
place, especially during the summer months when the garden was laden with
its wealth of fruit and flowers; and of these friends of the family many
figure in these pages, while some do not appear at all, having had no part
in the stirring events with which this book deals.
Amongst the most frequent visitors at Harmony were the Consul-General for
the Netherlands, Mr. Domela-Nieuwenhuis and his wife, and other members of
the Diplomatic Corps with their families.
These friendships had been formed before the war, and it was only natural
that they should have been strengthened and deepened by the trying
circumstances of the years during which the country was convulsed by such
unspeakable tragedies.
Although the position held by these men debarred them from taking any part
whatsoever in the events of the war, their sympathies were undoubtedly with
the people of South Africa. They suffered with and for their friends, and
they must frequently have been weighed down by a sense of their
powerlessness to alleviate the distress around them, which they were forced
to witness; but they were, without exception, men of high integrity, and
observed with strict honour the obligations laid upon them by their position
of trust.
Needless to say, they were not aware of the conspiracies which were carried
on at Harmony; to this day they are ignorant of the dangers to which the van
Warmelos were exposed and the hazardous nature of many of the enterprises in
which mother and daughter were engaged, and I look forward with delight to
the privilege of presenting each of these gentlemen with a copy of this
book, in which they will find so many revelations of an unexpected and
startling nature.
It
is not my intention to go into the details of the first encounters with the
enemy, nor to describe the siege-comedy of Mafeking, where Baden-Powell, as
principal actor, maintained a humorous correspondence with the Boers; nor of
Kimberley, where Cecil Rhodes said he felt as safe as in Piccadilly; nor of
Dundee, where the Boers were said to have found a large number of brand-new
side-saddles, originally destined to be used by British officers on arrival
at the capital, where they hoped to take the ladies of Pretoria riding, but
ultimately consigned to the flames by the indignant brothers and lovers of
those very ladies; nor of the fine linen, silver, cut-glass, and fingerbowls
found and destroyed by the Boers in the luxurious British camp at Dundee. I
shall not dwell upon the glorious victories of the first months, the capture
of armoured trains, the blowing up of bridges, the besieging of towns, the
arrival in Pretoria of the first British prisoners and the long sojourn of
British officers in captivity in the Model School—from where, incidentally,
Winston Churchill escaped in an ingenious way—and the crushing news of the
first Boer reverses at Dundee and Elandslaagte.
Are these historical events not fully recorded in other books, by other
writers more competent than myself?
A
three-volume book would hardly contain the experiences Hansie had, first in
the Volks Hospital in Pretoria and later in the State Girls' School, as
volunteer nurse, but I shall pass over the events of the first eight months
of war under Boer martial law and introduce my reader to that period in May
1900 shortly before the British took possession of the capital.
The two remaining brothers van Warmelo were at this time retreating with the
now completely demoralised Boer forces, before the terrific onslaughts made
upon them by the enemy.
Blow after blow was delivered by the English in quiet succession on their
forced march from Bloemfontein to Pretoria, and it was on May 25th that the
roar of Boer cannon reached the capital for the first time.
Looking south-east from Harmony, Mrs. and Miss van Warmelo were able to
watch the Boer commandos pouring into the town—straggling would be a better
word, for there was no one in command, and the weary men on their jaded
horses passed in groups of twos and threes, and in small contingents of from
fifty to a hundred.
Mrs. van Warmelo fully expected to see her sons among the number and made
preparations to welcome them, for under the roar of cannon the fatted turkey
had been killed and roasted and a large plum-pudding made.
Suddenly two men on horseback turned out of the wayside and rode straight up
to the gate.
"Perhaps these men are bringing us news of our boys," Mrs. van Warmelo said
to her daughter, who was watching them with anxiety at her heart.
The men dismounted at the gate and walked up to the two women, leading their
horses slowly over the grass.
No
one spoke until the men were a few yards off, when Hansie exclaimed, with
unbounded joy and relief, "Why, they are our boys!"
With unkempt hair and long beards, covered with dust, tattered and weary, no
wonder mother and sister failed to recognise them at first!
When the first greetings were over, the young men gave what news they
could—stupefying news of the advance of the enemy in overwhelming numbers,
and of the flight and confusion of what remained of the Boer forces.
"What are you going to do?" their mother asked.
"Rest and feed our horses first of all, mother," Dietlof, the elder,
replied. "They are worn out and unfit for use. And when we have equipped
ourselves for whatever may be in store for us, we must join some small
commando and escape from the town. Little or no resistance is being offered
by our men, and it is evident that Pretoria will not be defended. All we can
do is to escape before the English take possession."
Mrs. van Warmelo then told her sons of the retreat of the President from the
capital, with the entire Government, by the eastern railway route.
The greatest consternation had been caused by this flight at first, but
subsequent events went to prove that this was the wisest course which could
have been pursued.
In
this decision the President had been urged by his wife, and Mrs. van Warmelo
went on to tell how the brave old lady had said to her in an expressive way,
on the occasion of her last visit at the President's house:
"My dear friend, do not fear. No Englishman will ever lay his hand on the
coat-tails of the President."
It
is quite impossible to describe the confusion that ensued during the next
few days.
No
one knew what to do; there were no organised Boer forces to join, there was
no one in command, and, after long deliberation, the two young men, urged by
mother and sister, came to the conclusion that, whatever other men might be
doing, their duty was to get out of Pretoria and join whatever band of
fighting burghers there might still be in the field.
The same spirit of determination not to fall into the hands of the enemy
while the Boer Government was free, and could continue organising the war,
prevailed amongst most of the men in Pretoria, and daily small parties could
be seen leaving the town, in carts, on horseback, on bicycles, and even on
foot. Where they were going and when they would return no one knew.
On
the morning of June 4th, the necessary preparations for the departure of the
young men having been made, as they were sitting at what proved to be their
last meal together for such long and terrible years, they were suddenly
startled by the sound of cannon-firing and the whistling of a shell through
the air.
They listened, speechless, as the shell burst on Schanskop Fort, on the
Sunnyside hill, just beyond Harmony, with an explosion that shook the house.
It
was followed by another and yet another.
So
little were the inhabitants of Pretoria prepared for this that everyone at
first thought that the shells were being fired, for some unaccountable
reason, by the Boers, from the Pretoria Forts, until a few of them burst so
close to the houses that the fragments of rock and shell fell like hail on
the iron roofs. The other members of the family followed Mrs. van Warmelo
into the garden: and when it became evident that the enemy was bombarding
the Pretoria Forts, the two young men immediately saddled their horses and
rode out in the direction in which they thought it most likely that some
resistance would be offered, after having advised their mother and sister to
flee to some place of refuge in the centre of the town.
There was no doubt that Harmony was directly in the line of fire, and as the
great shells went shrieking and hurtling through the air, the very earth
seemed to shake with the force of each explosion.
Mrs. van Warmelo hastily packed a few valuables into a hand-bag, and fled
into town with her daughter, leaving their dinner standing almost untouched
on the table. On their way to town, they found many terrified women and
children huddled under bridges for safety.
The bombardment continued all the afternoon, and ceased only when darkness
fell.
That night, when the van Warmelos returned to their deserted home, they
found the house still standing and no trace of the bombardment except pieces
of shell lying in the garden.
They were much surprised a few hours later, by the return of their two
warriors, weary and desperate after a hopeless attempt to keep back the
English with a handful of burghers, and the news they brought was to the
effect that Pretoria was to be surrendered to the enemy the next morning.
Once more they expressed their determination to escape to the Boer lines,
wherever they might be.
Only a few hours' rest for them that night and then they rode away at dawn,
in the Middelburg direction, on that dark and dreadful June 5th.
It
was Fritz's twenty-second birthday on that cruel mid-winter's morn, and when
Hansie saw him again he was a man of twenty-six, with the experiences and
suffering of a lifetime resting on his shoulders.
The fate of the two young men remained a mystery to their dear ones for many
months of agonising suspense, and they pass out of these pages for a time
while we turn our attention to the relation of events within the capital.
