After the Raid, faithful to his usual tactics of making
others responsible for his own misdeeds, Cecil Rhodes grew to hate with
ferocity all those whose silence and quiet disapproval reminded him of the
fatal error into which he had been led. He was loud in his expressions of
resentment against Mr. Schreiner and the other members of the Afrikander
party who had not been able to conceal from him their indignation at his
conduct on the memorable occasion which ruined his own political life. They
had compelled him—one judged by his demeanour—to resign his office of Prime
Minister at the very time when he was about to transform it into something
far more important—to use it as the stepping-stone to future grandeurs of
which he already dreamt, although he had so far refrained from speaking
about them to others. Curious to say, however, he never blamed the authors
of this political mistake, and never, in public at least, reproached Jameson
for the disaster he had brought upon him.
What his secret thoughts were on this subject it is
easy to guess. Circumstances used to occur now and then when a stray word
spoken on impulse allowed one to discern that he deplored the moment of
weakness into which he had been inveigled. For instance, during a
dinner-party at Groote Schuur, when talking about the state of things
prevailing in Johannesburg just before the war, he mentioned the names of
five Reformers who, after the Raid, had been condemned to death by President
Kruger, and added that he had paid their fine of twenty-five thousand pounds
each. "Yes," he continued, with a certain grim accent of satire in his
voice, "I paid £25,000 for each of these gentlemen." And when one of his
guests tactlessly remarked, "But surely you need not have done so, Mr.
Rhodes? It was tacitly admitting that you had been a party to their
enterprise!" he retorted immediately, "And if I choose to allow the world to
think that such was the case, what business is it of yours?" I thought the
man was going to drop under the table, so utterly flabbergasted did he look.
It is, of course, extremely difficult to know what was
the actual part played by Rhodes in the Raid. He carried that secret to the
grave, and it is not likely that his accomplices will ever reveal their own
share in the responsibility for that wild adventure. My impression is that
the idea of the Raid was started among the entourage of Rhodes and spoken of
before him at length. He would listen in silence, as was his wont when he
wished to establish the fact that he had nothing to do with a thing that had
been submitted to him. Thus the Raid was tacitly encouraged by him, without
his ever having pronounced himself either for or against it.
Rhodes was an extremely able politician, and a
far-seeing one into the bargain. He would never have committed himself into
an open approval of an attempt which he knew perfectly well involved the
rights of nations. On the other hand, he would have welcomed any
circumstance which would result in the overthrow of the Transvaal Republic
by friends of his. His former successes, and especially the facility with
which had been carried out the attachment of Rhodesia to the British Empire,
had refracted his vision, and he refused—or failed—to see the difficulties
which he might encounter if he wanted to proceed for the second time on an
operation of the same kind.
On the other hand, he was worried by his friends to
allow them to take decisive action, and was told that everyone in England
would approve of his initiative in taking upon himself the responsibility of
a step, out of which could only accrue solid advantage for the Mother
Country.
Rhodes had been too long away from England, and his
sojourns there during the ten years or so immediately preceding 1895 had
been far too short for him to have been able to come to a proper
appreciation of the importance of public opinion in Great Britain, or of
those principles in matters of Government which no sound English politician
will ever dare to put aside if he wishes to retain his hold. He failed to
understand and to appreciate the narrow limit which must not be overstepped;
he forgot that when one wants to perform an act open to certain
well-defined objections there must be a great aim in order eventually to
explain and excuse the doing of it. The Raid had no such aim. No one made a
mistake as to that point when passing judgment upon the Raid. The motives
were too sordid, too mean, for anyone to do aught else but pass a sweeping
condemnation upon the whole business.
If he did not, Rhodes ought to have known that the
public would most certainly pass this verdict on so dark and shameful an
adventure, one that harmed England's prestige in South Africa far more than
ever did the Boer War. But though perhaps he realised beforehand that this
would be the verdict, he only felt a vague apprehension, more as a fancy
than from any real sense of impending danger. He had grown so used to see
success attend his every step that his imagination refused to admit the
possibility of defeat.
As for the people who engaged in the senseless
adventure, their motives had none of the lofty ideals which influenced
Rhodes himself. They simply wanted to obtain possession of the gold fields
of the Transvaal and to oust the rightful owners. President Kruger
represented an obstacle that had to be removed, and so they proceeded upon
their mad quest without regard as to the possible consequences. Still less
did they reflect that in his case they had not to deal with a native chief
whose voice of protest had no chance to be heard, but with a very cute and
determined man who had means at his disposal not only to defend himself,
but also to appeal to European judgment to adjudge an unjustifiable
aggression.
Apart from all these considerations, which ought to
have been seriously taken into account by Doctor Jameson and his companions,
the whole expedition was planned in a stupid, careless manner. No wonder
that it immediately came to grief. It is probable that if Rhodes had entered
into its details and allowed others to consult him, matters might have taken
a different turn. But, as I have already shown, he preferred to be able to
say at a given moment that he had known nothing about it. At least, this
must have been what he meant to do. But events proved too strong for him.
The fiasco was too complete for Rhodes to escape from its responsibilities,
though it must be conceded that he never tried to do so once the storm
burst. He faced the music bravely enough, perhaps because of the knowledge
that no denial would be believed, perhaps also because all the instincts of
his, after all, great nature caused him to come forward to take his share in
the disgrace of the whole deplorable affair.
Whether he forgave Doctor Jameson for this act of folly
remains a mystery. Personally I have always held that there must have un
cadavre entre eux. No friendship could account for the strange relations
which existed between these two men, one of whom had done so much to harm
the other. At first it would have seemed as if an individual of the
character of Cecil Rhodes would never have brought himself to forgive his confederate for the clumsiness with which he had handled a matter upon which
the reputation of both of them depended, in the present as well as in the
future. But far from abandoning the friend who had brought him into such
trouble, he remained on the same terms of intimacy as before, with the
difference, perhaps, that he saw even more of him than before the Raid. It
seemed as if he wanted thus to affirm before the whole world his faith in
the man through whom his whole political career had been wrecked.
The attitude of Rhodes toward Jameson was commented
upon far and wide. The Dutch party in Cape Town saw in it a mere act of
bravado into which they read an acknowledgment that, strong as was the
Colossus, he was too weak to tell his accomplices to withdraw from public
sight until the ever-increasing difficulties with the Transvaal—which became
more and more acute after the Raid—had been settled in some way or other
between President Kruger and the British Government. Instead of this Rhodes
seemed to take a particular pleasure in parading the trust he declared he
had in Doctor Jameson, and to consult him publicly upon almost all the
political questions which were submitted to him for consideration. This did
not mean that he followed the advice which he received, because, so far as I
was able to observe, this was seldom the case.
To add to the contrariness of the situation, Rhodes
always seemed more glad than anything else if he heard someone make an
ill-natured remark about the Doctor, or when anything particularly
disagreeable occurred to the latter. An ironic smile used to light up
Rhodes' face and a sarcastic chuckle be heard. But still, whenever one
attempted to explain to him that the Raid had been an unforgivable piece of
imprudence, or hazarded that Jameson had never been properly punished for
it, Rhodes invariably took the part of this friend of his younger days, and
would never acknowledge that Doctor Jim's desire to enter public life as a
member of the Cape Parliament ought not to be gratified.
On his side, Doctor Jameson was determined that the
opportunity to do so should be offered to him, and he used Rhodes' influence
in order to obtain election. He knew very well that without it his
candidature would have no chance.
Later on, when judging the events which preceded the
last two years of Rhodes' life, many people expressed the opinion that
Jameson, being a physician of unusual ability, was perfectly well aware that
his friend was not destined to live to a very old age, and therefore wished
to obtain from him while he could all the political support he required to
establish his career as the statesman he fully believed he was. In fact,
Doctor Jameson had made up his mind to outlive the odium of the Raid, and to
become rehabilitated in public opinion to the extent of being allowed to
take up the leadership of the party which had once owned Rhodes as its
chief. By a strange freak of Providence, helped no doubt by an iron will and
opportunities made the most of, Jameson, who had been the great culprit in
the mad adventure of the Raid, became the foremost man in Cape Colony for a
brief period after the war, while Rhodes, who had been his victim, bore the
full consequences of his weakness in having permitted himself to be
persuaded to look through his fingers on the enterprise.
Rhodes never recovered any real political influence,
was distrusted by English and Dutch alike, looked upon with caution by the
Cape Government, and with suspicion even among his followers. The poor man
had no friends worthy of the name, and those upon whom he relied the most
were the first to betray his confidence. Unfortunately for himself, he had a
profound contempt for humanity, and imagined himself capable of controlling
all those whom he had elected to rule. He imagined he could turn and twist
anyone according to his own impulses. In support of this assertion let me
relate an incident in which I played a part.
When the Boer War showed symptoms of dragging on for a
longer time than expected, some Englishmen proposed that Rhodes should be
asked to stand again for Prime Minister, to do which he resolutely refused.
Opinions, however, were very much divided. Some people declared that he was
the only man capable of conciliating the Dutch and bringing the war to a
happy issue. Others asserted that his again taking up the reins of
Government would be considered by the Afrikander Bond—which was very
powerful at the time—as an unjustifiable provocation which would only
further embitter those who had never forgiven Rhodes for the Raid.
A member of the Upper House of Legislature, whom I used
to see often, and who was a strong partisan of Rhodes, determined to seek
advice outside the House, and went to see an important political personage
in Cape Town, one of those who frequented Groote Schuur and who posed as one
of the strongest advocates of Rhodes again becoming the head of the
Government presided over by Sir Alfred Milner. What was the surprise of my
friend when, instead of finding a sympathising auditor, he heard him say
that he considered that for the moment the return of Rhodes at the head of
affairs would only complicate matters; that it was still too soon after the
Raid; that his spirit of animosity in regard to certain people might not
help to smooth matters at such a critical juncture; and that, moreover,
Rhodes had grown very morose and tyrannical, and refused to brook any
contradiction. Coming from a man who had no reason to be friendly with
Rhodes, the remarks just reported would not have been important, but
proceeding from a personage who was continually flattering Rhodes, they
struck me as showing such considerable duplicity that I wrote warning Rhodes
not to attach too much importance to the protestations of devotion to his
person that the individual in question was perpetually pouring down upon
him. The reply which I received was absolutely characteristic: "Thanks for
your letter. Never mind what X― says. He is a harmless donkey who can always
make himself useful when required to do so."
The foregoing incident is enlightening as to the real
nature of Cecil Rhodes. His great mistake was precisely in this conviction
that he could order men at will, and that men would never betray him or
injure him by their false interpretation of the directions which it pleased
him to give them. He considered himself so entirely superior to the rest of
mankind that it never struck him that inferior beings could turn upon him
and rend him, or forget the obedience to his orders which he expected them
to observe. He did not appreciate people with independence, though he
admired them in those rare moments when he would condescend to be sincere
with himself and with others; but he preferred a great deal the miserable
creatures who always said "yes" to all his vagaries; who never dared to
criticise any of his instructions or to differ from any opinions which he
expressed. Sometimes he uttered these opinions with a brutality that did him
considerable harm, inasmuch as it could not fail to cause repugnance among
any who listened to him, but were not sufficiently acquainted with the
peculiarities of his character to discern that he wanted simply to scare his
audience, and that he did not mean one single word of the ferocious things
he said in those moments when he happened to be in a particularly perverse
mood, and when it pleased him to give a totally false impression of himself
and the nature of his convictions in political and public matters.
It must not be lost sight of when judging Mr. Rhodes
that he had been living for the best part of his life among people with whom
he could not have anything in common except the desire to make money in the
shortest time possible. He was by nature a thinker, a philosopher, a reader,
a man who belonged to the best class of students, those who understand that
one's mind wants continually improving and that it is apt to rust when not
kept active. His companions in those first years which followed upon his
arrival in South Africa would certainly not have appreciated any of the
books the reading of which constituted the solace of the young man who still
preserved in his mind the traditions of Oxford. They were his inferiors in
everything: intelligence, instruction, comprehension of those higher
problems of the soul and of the mind which always interested him even in the
most troubled and anxious moments of his life. He understood and realised
that this was the fact, and this did not tend to inspire him with esteem or
even with consideration for the people with whom he was compelled to live
and work.
Men like Barney Barnato, to mention only this one name
among the many, felt a kind of awe of Cecil Rhodes. This kind of thing,
going on as it did for years, was bound to give Rhodes a wrong idea as to
the faculty he had of bringing others to share his points of view, and he
became so accustomed to be considered always right that he felt surprised
and vexed whenever blind obedience was not given. Indeed, it so excited his
displeasure that he would at once plunge into a course of conduct which he
might never have adopted but for the fact that he had heard it condemned or
criticised.
It has been said that every rich man is generally
surrounded by parasites, and Cecil Rhodes was not spared this infliction.
Only in his case these parasites did not apply their strength to attacks
upon his purse; they exploited him for his influence, for the importance
which it gave them to be considered by the world as his friends, or even his
dependants. They appeared wherever he went, telling the general public that
their presence had been requested by the "Boss" in such warm terms that they
could not refuse. It was curious to watch this systematic chase which
followed him everywhere, even to England. Sometimes this persistency on the
part of persons whom he did not tolerate more than was absolutely necessary
bored him and put him out of patience; but most of the time he accepted it
as a necessary evil, and even felt flattered by it. He also liked to have
perpetually around him individuals whom he could bully to his heart's
content, who never resented an insult and never minded an insolence—and
Rhodes was often insolent.
Another singular feature in a character as complex as
it was interesting was the contempt in which he held all those who had risen
under his very eyes, from comparative or absolute poverty, to the status of
millionaires possessed of houses in Park Lane and shooting boxes in
Scotland. He liked to relate all that he knew about them, and sometimes even
to mention certain facts which the individuals themselves would probably
have preferred to be consigned to oblivion. But—and here comes the
singularity to which I have referred—Rhodes would not allow anyone else to
speak of these things, and he always took the part of his so-called friends
when outsiders hinted at dark episodes which did not admit of investigation.
He almost gave a certificate of good conduct to people whom he might have
been heard referring to a few hours before in a far more antagonistic spirit
than that displayed by those whom he so sharply contradicted.
I remember one amusing instance of the idiosyncrasy
referred to. There was in Johannesburg a man who, having arrived there with
twenty-five pounds in his pockets—as he liked to relate with evident pride
in the fact—had, in the course of two years, amassed together a fortune of
two millions sterling. One day during dinner at Groote Schuur he enlarged
upon the subject with such offensiveness that an English lady, newly arrived
in South Africa and not yet experienced in the things which at the time were
better left unsaid, was so annoyed at his persistency that she interrupted
the speaker with the remark:
"Well, if I were you, I would not be so eager to let
the world know that I had made two millions out of twenty-five pounds. It
sounds exactly like the story of the man who says that in order to catch a
train at six o'clock in the morning he gets up at ten minutes to six. You
know at once that he cannot possibly have washed, whilst your story shows
that you could not possibly have been honest."
I leave the reader to imagine the consternation
produced among those present by these words. But what were their feelings
when they heard Rhodes say in reply:
"Well, one does not always find water to wash in, and
at Kimberley this happened oftener than one imagines; as for being honest,
who cares for honesty nowadays?"
"Those who have not lived in South Africa, Mr. Rhodes,"
was the retort which silenced the Colossus.
This man of the get-rich-quick variety was one of those
who had mastered the difficult operation of passing off to others the mines
out of which he had already extracted most of the gold, an occupation which,
in the early Johannesburg days, had been a favourite one with many of the
inhabitants of this wonderful town. One must not forget that as soon as the
fame of the gold fields of the Transvaal began to spread adventurers
hastened there, together with a few honest pioneers, desirous of making a
fortune out of the riches of a soil which, especially in prospectuses
lavishly distributed on the London and Paris Stock Exchanges, was described
as a modern Golconda. Concessions were bought and sold, companies were
formed with a rapidity which savoured of the fabulous. Men made not only a
living, but also large profits, by reselling plots of ground which they had
bought but a few hours before, and one heard nothing but loud praises of
this or that mine that could be had for a song, "owing to family
circumstances" or other reasons which obliged their owner to part with it.
The individual who had boasted of the intelligent
manner with which he had transformed his twenty-five pounds into two solid
millions had, early in his career, invested some of his capital in one of
these mines. Its only merit was its high-sounding name. He tried for some
time without success to dispose of it. At last he happened to meet a
Frenchman, newly arrived in Johannesburg, who wanted to acquire some mining
property there with the view of forming a company. Our hero immediately
offered his own. The Frenchman responded to the appeal, but expressed the
desire to go down himself into the shaft to examine the property and get
some ore in order to test it before the purchase was completed. The
condition was agreed to with eagerness, and a few days later the victim and
his executioner proceeded together to the mine. The Frenchman went down
whilst Mr. X― remained above. He walked about with his hands in his pockets,
smoking cigarettes, the ashes of which he let fall with an apparent
negligence into the baskets of ore which were being sent up by the
Frenchman. When the latter came up, rather hot and dusty, the baskets were taken to Johannesburg and carefully examined: the ore was found to contain a
considerable quantity of gold. The mine was bought, and not one scrap of
gold was ever found in it. Mr. X― had provided himself with cigarettes made
for the purpose, which contained gold dust in lieu of tobacco, and the ashes
which he had dropped were in reality the precious metal, the presence of
which was to persuade the unfortunate Frenchman that he was buying a
property of considerable value. He paid for it something like two hundred
thousand pounds, whilst the fame of the man who had thus cleverly tricked
him spread far and wide.
The most amusing part of the story consists in its
dénouement. The duped Frenchman, though full of wrath, was, nevertheless,
quite up to the game. He kept silence, but proceeded to form his company as
if nothing had been the matter. When it was about to be constituted and
registered, he asked Mr. X― to become one of its directors, a demand that
the latter could not very well refuse with decency. He therefore allowed his
name to figure among those of the members of the board, and he used his best
endeavours to push forward the shares of the concern of which he was
pompously described on the prospectus as having been once the happy owner.
As his name was one to conjure with the scrip went up to unheard-of prices,
when both he and his supposed victim, the Frenchman, realised and retired
from the venture, the richer by several hundreds of thousands of pounds.
History does not say what became of the shareholders. As for Mr. X―, he now
lives in Europe, and has still a reputation in South Africa.
This story is but one amongst hundreds, and it is
little wonder that, surrounded as he was with men who indulged in this
charming pastime of always trying to dupe their fellow creatures, Rhodes'
moral sense relaxed. It is only surprising that he kept about him so much
that was good and great, and that he did not succumb altogether to the
contamination which affected everything and everybody around him. Happily
for him he cherished his own ambitions, had his own dreams for companions,
his absorption in the great work he had undertaken; these things were his
salvation. Rhodesia became the principal field of Rhodes' activity, and the
care with which he fostered its prosperity kept him too busy and interested
to continue the quest for riches which had been his great, if not his
principal, occupation during the first years of his stay in South Africa.
Although Cecil Rhodes was so happily placed that he had
no need to bother over wealth, he was not so aloof to the glamour of
politics. He had always felt the irk of his retirement after the Raid, and
the hankering after a leading political position became more pronounced as
the episode which shut the Parliamentary door behind him after he had passed
through its portals faded in the mind of the people.
It was not surprising, therefore, to observe that
politics once more took the upper hand amidst his preoccupations. It was,
though, politics connected with the development of the country that bore his
name more than with the welfare of the Cape Colony or of the Transvaal. It
was only during the last two years of Rhodes' existence that his interest
revived in the places connected with his first successes in life. Rhodes had
been convinced that a war with the Boers would last only a matter of a few
weeks—three months, as he prophesied when it broke out—and he was equally
sure, though for what reason it is difficult to guess, that the war would
restore him to his former position and power. The illusion lingered long
enough to keep him in a state of excitement, during which, carried along by
his natural enthusiasm, he indulged in several unconsidered steps, and when
at last his hope was dispelled he accused everybody of being the cause of
his disappointment. Never for a moment would he admit that he could have
been mistaken, or that the war, which at a certain moment his intervention
might possibly have avoided, had been the consequence of the mischievous act
he had not prevented.
When the Bloemfontein Conference failed Rhodes was not
altogether displeased. He had felt the affront of not being asked to attend;
and, though his common sense told him that it would have been altogether out
of the question for him to take part in it, as this would have been
considered in the light of a personal insult by President Kruger, he would
have liked to have been consulted by Sir Alfred Milner, as well as by the
English Government, as to the course to be adopted during its
deliberations. He was fully persuaded in his own mind that Sir Alfred
Milner, being still a new arrival in South Africa, had not been able to
grasp its complicated problems, and so had not adopted the best means to
baffle the intrigues of President Kruger and the diplomacy of his clever
colleague, President Steyn. At every tale which reached Cecil Rhodes
concerning the difficulties encountered by Sir Alfred, he declared that he
was "glad to be out of this mess." Yet it was not difficult to see that he
passionately regretted not being allowed to watch from a seat at the council
table the vicissitudes of this last attempt by conference to smooth over
difficulties arising from the recklessness displayed by people in arrogantly
rushing matters that needed careful examination.
