The postmaster,Heer Klein,and his old Pylades,Heer Ley,are great cronies of mine -stout old greybeards,toddling down the hill together.I sometimes go and sit on the stoep with the two old bachelors,and they take it as a great compliment;and Heer Klein gave me my letters all decked with flowers,and wished 'Vrolyke tydings,Mevrouw,'most heartily.He has also made his tributary mail-cart Hottentots bring from various higher mountain ranges the beautiful everlasting flowers,which will make pretty wreaths for J-.When I went to his house to thank him,I found a handsome Malay,with a basket of 'Klipkaus',a shell-fish much esteemed here.Old Klein told me they were sent him by a Malay who was born in his father's house,a slave,and had been HIS 'BOY'and play-fellow.Now,the slave is far richer than the old young master,and no waggon comes without a little gift -oranges,fish,&c.-for 'Wilhem'.When Klein goes to Capetown,the old Malay seats him in a grand chair and sits on a little wooden stool at his feet;Klein begs him,as 'Huisheer',to sit properly;but,'Neen Wilhem,Ik zal niet;ik kan niet vergeten.''Good boy!'said old Klein;'good people the Malays.'It is a relief,after the horrors one has heard of Dutch cruelty,to see such an 'idyllisches Verhaltniss'.I have heard other instances of the same fidelity from Malays,but they were utterly unappreciated,and only told to prove the excellence of slavery,and 'how well the rascals must have been off'.
I have fallen in love with a Hottentot baby here.Her mother is all black,with a broad face and soft spaniel eyes,and the father is Bastaard;but the baby (a girl,nine months old),has walked out of one of Leonardo da Vinci's pictures.I never saw so beautiful a child.She has huge eyes with the spiritual look he gives to them,and is exquisite in every way.When the Hottentot blood is handsome,it is beautiful;there is a delicacy and softness about some of the women which is very pretty,and the eyes are those of a GOOD dog.Most of them are hideous,and nearly all drink;but they are very clean and honest.Their cottages are far superior in cleanliness to anything out of England,except in picked places,like some parts of Belgium;and they wash as much as they can,with the bad water-supply,and the English outcry if they strip out of doors to bathe.Compared to French peasants,they are very clean indeed,and even the children are far more decent and cleanly in their habits than those of France.The woman who comes here to clean and scour is a model of neatness in her work and her person (quite black),but she gets helplessly drunk as soon as she has a penny to buy a glass of wine;for a penny,a half-pint tumbler of very strong and remarkably nasty wine is sold at the canteens.
I have many more 'humours'to tell,but A-can show you all the long story I have written.I hope it does not seem very stale and DECIES REPETITA.All being new and curious to the eye here,one becomes long-winded about mere trifles.
One small thing more.The first few shillings that a coloured woman has to spend on her cottage go in -what do you think?-Agrand toilet table of worked muslin over pink,all set out with little 'OBJETS'-such as they are:if there is nothing else,there is that here,as at Capetown,and all along to Simon's Bay.
Now,what is the use or comfort of a DUCHESSE to a Hottentot family?I shall never see those toilets again without thinking of Hottentots -what a baroque association of ideas!I intend,in a day or two,to go over to 'Gnadenthal',the Moravian missionary station,founded in 1736-the 'bluhende Gemeinde von Hottentoten'.
How little did I think to see it,when we smiled at the phrase in old Mr.Steinkopf's sermon years ago in London!The MISSIONARIZEDHottentots are not,as it is said,thought well of -being even tipsier than the rest;but I may see a full-blood one,and even a true Bosjesman,which is worth a couple of hours'drive;and the place is said to be beautiful.
This climate is evidently a styptic of great power,I shall write a few lines to the LANCET about Caledon and its hot baths -'Bad Caledon',as the Germans at Houw Hoek call it.The baths do not concern me,as they are chalybeate;but they seem very effectual in many cases.Yet English people never come here;they stay at Capetown,which must be a furnace now,or at Wynberg,which is damp and chill (comparatively);at most,they get to Stellenbosch.Imean visitors,not settlers;THEY are everywhere.I look the colour of a Hottentot.Now I MUST leave off.
Your most affectionate L.D.G.
