Edward Aveling (1897)
Source: The Social-Democrat, Vol. 1, No. 9, September 1897
Transcription: by Graham Seaman for MIA, July 2023
A curious change has, during the last few years, come over the literature dealing with Central and South Africa. The literature concerning Africa, until these last few years, almost entirely concerned itself with the geography of the continent and the ethnology of its aboriginal inhabitants, But now, in these last days of the capitalistic system, with its expiring convulsions that take the form of mad and often reckless dashes into the few territories still left unexploited and of infuriated grabs at the last fragments of the world market, the fin de siècle literature concerning Africa reflects, for the most part, the struggles of capitalists and the struggles of capitalistic nations with the forces of nature—the aboriginal Africans and one another.
The first book in English that really attracted the attention of English people to the problems presenting themselves and pressing for solution in South Africa was Olive Schreiners “Story of an African Farm.” This most remarkable book dealt, however, in the main with esthetic and moral problems rather than with immediately economic problems. The materialistic conception of history that we owe to Karl Marx has taught us that the ultimate basis of æsthetics and morals and a good many other things is the economic factor or factors. Olive Schreiner, recognising this, gives us now-a-days, instead of the prose poem “An African Farm” and the charming allegories in “Dreams,” the very pregnant pamphlet on South African affairs—which she wrote in collaboration with her husband—and her latest novel, “Peter Halket, Trooper.” Personally, I think it is to be regretted that the novel was not written in collaboration with her husband. A novel is one thing; an allegory is quite another thing. A hybrid between the two is an attempt to reconcile irreconcilables, and the attempt is foredoomed to failure. On the other hand, Mr. F. Reginald Statham’s “Mr. Magnus” is no allegory, and would be quite a novel, if it was not a novel with a purpose. Mr. Magnus, let me say at once, is Mr. Cecil Rhodes. In “Peter Halket,” also, Mr. Rhodes is the central figure. He is not attacked in either book. He is only described; and I doubt whether the people of to-morrow and the day after to-morrow, reading these descriptions, will believe that any more infamous, unscrupulous villain ever walked this earth. In both books the matter-of-fact portrayal of this horrible man is so matter of fact, so calm and temperate, so clearly accurate, that it is no wonder both books are suppressed in South Africa, where, as Mr. Statham says, “Mr. Magnus is the Government.”
Personally, again, I feel more than half angry that Olive Schreiner did not deal with the very practical question in South Africa practically instead of sentimentally. The vital mistake of “Peter Halket”—a mistake effecting its artistic value, scarcely less than its practical value—lies in the form in which the book is cast. Roughly speaking, the form adopted is that Peter Halket, an ordinary trooper, is encountered and talked at by Jesus Christ, redivivus in the nineteenth century, which is in no sense and cannot be in any sense, any more than the twentieth and succeeding centuries, an age where Christ is possible for good. It is bad enough to have the inartistic people dragging in Christ as a possible immediate factor in the evolution of to-day. But that Olive Schreiner, of all people in the world, once so great an artist, should have made this irretrievable blunder, is terrible. The blunder is of the same kind as that made by so many well meaning inartistic and uneconomic people who speak of the founder of the Christian religion as a Socialist. Until the capitalistic system had not only started, but got into full swing, both of which events certainly occurred some centuries after the time of Christ, Socialism was impossible, and Christ, through no fault of his own, could no more have been a Socialist than a Darwinian, or a believer or non-believer in Weissman's theory of the continuity of the germ plasm. Autres temps, autres moeurs,
On the other hand, Mr. Statham’s book, “Mr. Magnus,” goes the direct way to work. It deals with things, not dreams. It is infinitely the more valuable contribution of the two towards the understanding of the South African question.
If there could be any doubt whether “Mr. Magnus” is a work of art, there can be no question whatever as to it being a very human document. Under various noms de plume, more or less transparent, places and people, most of which have attained recently a world-wide and unpleasant notoriety, are described. Camberton is Kimberley, and in two or three pages its history is graphically told. Bergstadt is pretty nearly a German translation of Cape Town. The steamer in which Nellie crosses, the Dumbarton Towers, is one of the Castle Line, under the management of Sir Donald Currie, “Porters” is the Chartered Company, “Mr. Magnus” is Mr. Cecil Rhodes. Possibly in both these cases the author has completely changed the names with some dim idea of avoiding an action for libel. Benjie Benoni is not only by alliteration, but almost literally, Barney Barnato. Perhaps, in this case, the very thin nominal disguise is due to an appreciation of the apparently very genuine good nature of that second-class millionaire (Rhodes is a class by himself). At the time the book was written, the bloated corpse of the second-class millionaire was not yet floating face downwards in the Atlantic. “Beddings” is the notorious W. T. Stead. The summing-up of Stead by Rhodes, even if it is done in a sense at second hand by the author, is so acute and exhaustive that I quote it in full. “Beddings, you know, you couldn’t square him with a cheque. Besides, if you could, he'd want a devilish big one.”—“But how do you square him?”—“Why, flatter him up. It’s easy, and it’s cheap, Beddings thinks he’s an awfully great man; a sort of Pope God Almighty himself, as cocksure as infallibility can make him. So when I go to see Beddings I don’t talk about cheques or anything of that kind. Not a bit of it. That wouldn’t fetch him. No, I go and sit at his feet as if he were a sort of—. What was that fellow’s name that some one sat at the feet of ?”—None of the company seemed to know.—“Well, never mind. Names don’t matter. I go and sit at his feet, and listen to all his jaw, just as if it were gospel, and just put in a word now and then to show I’m on the same tack as himself, and then he feels as pleased and as happy as Punch, and thinks he's using me as an instrument for good, as the parsons say. I daresay he goes home and prays for me, damn him. Well, that’s how I square him. Damn it, you can square anyone if you only know how. There’s a good story I could tell you, if I chose, about how I squared the Prince of ——.” The Prince of —— is, of course, the Prince of Wales, who is, equally of course, one of the “very big people, very big people, indeed, who have by his aid been able to avoid very grave financial scandals.” The Attorney-General of the Cape Parliament is Mr. Schreiner. Redmanns, “those exalted people of whom it has been said that, when it suits their purpose, they make war to cease in all the world,” is a queer half-German, half-English adaptation for Rothschild. Hartman, “a dark complexioned, thin faced man with a gloomy expression of countenance, whom Mr. Clayton at once recognised, by the patch of white hair on the side of his head,” was the business factotum of the late Barney Barnato.
The appalling general atmosphere of Kimberley is most dolorously realised. To give the reader some idea of it I quote freely. “The merciless hours of work, twelve hours shifts, practically lengthened out to fourteen hours; the suppression of all freedom of opinion among those employed; the animal herding together of natives; the universal espionage over every man by his fellows; the atmosphere of theft and suspicion; the disregard, in the presence of the interests of the company, of every humane consideration; the terrorism kept up by sudden dismissals; the setting aside of legal obligations for the sake of mere greed; the brutal sentences inflicted on men trapped into the illegal possession of the precious products of the mine.” Here are passages bearing upon the almost impossibility of showing up the infamies and horrors of Kimberley. “No one in the employment of Porters ever knows from one day to another how long his employment will last. Porters never give any notice, never give any reason, and never give any character. .... There is enough to be ‘shown up,’ goodness knows; only the man who tries to do it runs risks which people in England have no notion of.” ... “Was it that poor Ray’s imprudent speeches, his hints about ‘showing up’ somebody or something had marked him out as a person to be got rid of in the interest of Porters?” It appears that Ray “knew something about the way in which a nigger convict—well, happened to die.” Here is a passage that will give some idea of the dirty work to be done in the interests of the Chartered Company. It is Philip Winter’s daily work. “Up at five every morning .... to arrive at his work at six. .... That consisted in sitting for twelve hours at a stretch from six to six in the early morning cold, in the crushing heat of the afterncon, in rain, or hail, or thunder and lightning, doing nothing, precluded by the most stringent rule from having in his possession a book or a newspaper, watching those wretched niggers as they turned over, and broke up, the clods of gravel, watching them like a hawk, lest one of them should, by some sudden sleight of hand or foot, appropriate one of the rubies of the great Mr. Magnus,”
Such a place as Kimberley, such a company as the Chartered Company, such a man as Rhodes, necessitates spies. “Yes, young Blain’s nothing else but a company's spy .... and when young Blain had got all out of Ray Wolston that he was likely to get, why, they just put that parcel of rubies in his pocket.”
One or two more quotations bearing upon the utterly demoralising atmosphere of the place, where, “what seemed like the movements of life were merely the crawling processes of corruption.” As concerning freedom of voting, “‘It’s only my orders to vote at the election. See here!’ And he pulled out a small white card with a number printed on it in large black figures.”
Here are one or two notes bearing upon the administration of justice in Kimberley. The charges of illicit diamond buying are “tried in a court in which there is no jury, the president of which is usually a strong sympathiser with the policy of the great mining company, if not himself a shareholder therein .... By some curious and special perversion of the principles of English law in these cases, the accused, deprived of an appeal to the jury, is assumed to be guilty unless he can prove himself innocent. ... Conviction before this court was a moral certainty, and that conviction was usually followed by brutal sentences to penal servitude, carried out under heart-crushing conditions, for five, for seven, for ten, for even fourteen years .... Such a thing as an acquittal in that court was unknown. .... The accused had not the benefit of the doubt; it was the Court that had the benefit of the doubt. And which way did the sympathies of the Court lean? Always towards the interest of Porters, the interest of Mr. Magnus, and always against those who might be even under the suspicion of transgressing against those interests.”
“‘The law,’ Mr. Bodley explained, ‘was originally passed to protect the individual miner against the sharks who were always ready to prey upon the fruits of his industry.’ .... ‘The individual miner has absolutely disappeared.’ .... ‘The result is that this law, originally framed to protect the individual miner, has become capable of being a most frightful instrument for oppression in the hands of a corporation, which regards itself as above all law, and which, owing to the position which Mr. Magnus has attained, practically is so.’.... ‘If in its own interests the company known as Porters found it desirable to drive six coaches-and-four through the clear provisions of any Act of the Local Parliament, it would do so.’” Small wonder that living in Kimberley is, as one of the characters puts it, “like living in hell.”
The two most interesting personal sketches naturally are those of Benjie Benoni and Magnus. The former, i.e., Barney Barnato, seems really not to have been a bad sort of fellow. Starting life at Kimberley as a banjo player and conjuror, he “gradually developed into a force. And at last it came to this—that Benjie and Mr. Magnus stood over against each other as rival claimants for the supreme domination of the Camberton mine .... Either Benjie would swallow Mr. Magnus, or Mr. Magnus would swallow Benjie .... Mr. Magnus swallowed Benjie .... However, there were conditions .... Mr. Magnus was a member of the local parliament; Benjie should go there, too. Mr. Magnus was a member of the Camberton Club; Benjie should also belong to the Camberton Club.” Benoni appears to have been “this kind of man—if you was having a big deal with him up to a few hundreds of thousands or so, you’d have to be precious sharp to get the better of him, and he’d get the better of you if he could, even if you was his own brother. But where it’s a smaller matter—why, then I’ve known him to do kind things enough, The only thing is, he must be able to do it without any trouble. He doesn’t like taking trouble about anything .... He never kept an appointment in his life.” Very lifelike is the picture of the second-class millionaire receiving a stranger in his shirt and trousers, with a pair of richly embroidered braces dangling from the back buttons, walking about the room during the conversation with a large tumbler of soda and milk, or rocking the baby in its bassinette.
Naturally, the most interesting figure is Rhodes; and perhaps the most interesting thing about him is his absolute brutality. “It was Mr. Magnus who had said that sooner than sacrifice a single grain of what he regarded as his own interests, he would see the grass growing in the streets of Camberton.” Here is a personal description of the man. “In general appearance a very ordinary-looking man, and still more ordinary-looking by reason of the cheap suit he was wearing. Broad in the shoulders and bull-necked, A face perfectly impassive, like a mask, the lowering brows leading down to an aquiline nose, and the nose leading down past tightly closed lips to a chin of massive firmness. But perhaps the most striking characteristics of his appearance were the unusual width between the ears, and the utter want of any trace of sympathetic feeling in the face.” “He is very clever at shirking responsibility.” “A kind of licensed law-breaker.” .... “The incarnation of unconditioned acquisitiveness.” Instead of soda and milk, apparently, Mr. Rhodes drinks, and drinks a great deal of, soda and brandy.
Some interesting light is thrown upon the nature of the receptions of, and ovations to, Mr. Rhodes. “Reaching the station about ten minutes before the train was due, he found an open landau standing outside. The horses had been taken out, and two or three men, whom Philip immediately recognised as employees of Porters, were engaged in making fast a stout rope to the front of the vehicle, while some eighty to a hundred men of the same type stood round. One of these latter clapped Philip on the shoulder as he passed.
“‘Come on, Winter,’ he exclaimed, ‘and help to drag the old —— to the devil.’
“When the great man arrived, he shook hands with two or three of them in an absent sort of way, and made not the slightest reply to inquiries after his health and his journey.” Tbe only remark he makes is, “Why the hell don’t the beggars start?” He is dragged off by his enthusiastic supporters, a short dialogue between two of whom, as they pull the carriage along, speaks volumes. “‘Look out!’ he said, ‘You nearly had the thing over!’ ‘And why shouldn’t I give both the —— a spill if I like?’ was the response.”
Here is an interesting passage bearing upon the raid upon the Transvaal. “You know that we are, in Camberton, only a few miles away from the borders of an independent State. Suppose important ruby mines were discovered in that State that seemed to threaten the existence of the monopoly maintained by Porters, and suppose Magnus, with the resources of Porters at his back, were to get up a bad feeling against the State, and were to organise a raid into it for the apparent purpose of gaining control over the newly-discovered mines—well, I think that in such a case as that, having regard to the fact that the people who mostly keep Magnus in office are closely related by blood to the population across the border. I think that in such a case as that, Magnus might find the end of his tether.” The cynical selfishness and brutality of Rhodes are strikingly shown in his flight when the terrible mine accident occurs, This is the note he leaves: “Have returned to Bergstad by special train. Send on my servant and luggage to-night.” “This was not the first time he had suddenly and unexpectedly left the place in which the foundations of his own fortunes had been laid.”
Finally, the condition of public opinion in Kimberley and in England is shown remorselessly by the author. “‘But surely there must be some check to all this from public opinion,’ suggested Mr. Clayton. Mr. Bodley laughed outright. ‘Public opinion!’ he exclaimed, ‘ why, there isn’t such a thing in the country!’” “‘Are you certain,’ asked Mr. Bodley, ‘that such an expedition as the raid would be condemned by public opinion in England? You have to allow something for the effect upon that public opinion of a steady and persistent misrepresentation of facts in this part of the world. Then remember who he has behind him. There are the Redmanns, for example, who govern public opinion in financial and journalistic circles more than ordinary people have any idea of. Then he has certain leading journals on his side, and that means a great deal. Then he has managed to rope in some of the religious lot—bishops who are as innocent of politics as babies, and whom he keeps in good humour with the idea that he is advancing the interests of the Church; men, too, like Beddings, who is said to derive his inspiration from spooks upon the hearth-rug. And then, it is said, that he has managed to make himself financially useful to some very big people, very big people, indeed, who have by his aid been able to avoid very grave financial scandals,’”
E. AVELING