It was into the little world of Caledon and Simonstown and Worcester, drowsy, sun-steeped villages of the old colony—for Cape Town had little attraction for her and the climate proved unsuitable—that this rare and exquisite being descended. But the test of the true letter-writer, the letter-writer of genius, is the skill and ease with which he brings variety out of seeming monotony. The letters of Lady Duff Gordon answer this test. She had not been many days in the country before she had discovered (if she required to discover) the excellent principle: ‘Avoid _engelsche hoogmoedigheid_ in dealing with the Dutch’; and by the time she reaches Caledon she is on the best of terms with her new friends. ‘The postmaster, Heer Klein, and his old Pylades, Heer Ley, are great cronies of mine’—she writes—‘stout old grey-beards, 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.’ She has a keen eye for the fine shades of national character, and the modifications that spring from differences of upbringing: the English farmer, ‘educated in Belgium’, the young Dutch doctor with English manners, the German basket-maker’s wife in Cape Town. A whole chapter might be written on her friendship with the Malays, whose hearts she won as completely as she afterwards did those of their Mohammedan brothers in Egypt. Mr. Ian Colvin has since opened up afresh the field she was here almost the first to survey. In another direction, in her remarks on the Eastern Province Jew of 1860, Lady Duff Gordon has given us some notes which are of distinct value for social history. The following passage, for example, deserves to be quoted as a ‘point de repère’ in the evolution of a type. ‘These Colonial Jews’—says the writer—‘are a new _Erscheinung_ to me. They have the features of their race, but many of their peculiarities are gone. Mr. L—, who is very handsome and gentlemanly, eats ham and patronises a good breed of pigs on the “model farm” on which he spends his money. He is (he says) a thorough Jew in faith, and evidently in charitable works; but he wants to say his prayers in English and not to “dress himself up” in a veil and phylacteries for the purpose; and he and his wife talk of England as “home”, and care as much for Jerusalem as their neighbours. They have not forgotten the old persecutions, and are civil to the coloured people, and speak of them in quite a different tone from other English colonists. Moreover, they are far better mannered and more ‘human’, in the German sense of the word, in all respects; in short, less “colonial”.’ It was a lady of this party who described Prince Albert’s funeral to Lady Duff Gordon. ‘The people mourned for him’—she said—‘as much as for Hezekiah; and, indeed, he deserved it a great deal better.’