South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
It is an enormous mansion, with an enormous garden. And it is approached
in front through a portico of most pretentious and unbecoming columns.
Nothing could be imagined less like Dutch grandeur or Dutch comfort. The
house, which might almost contain a regiment, certainly contained a
mystery which warranted enquiry. Then I was told the story. One of the
former great Governors, Lord Charles Somerset,--the greatest Governor
the Colony ever had as far as a bold idea of autocratic authority can
make a Governor great,--had wanted a shooting lodge under the mountains,
and had consequently caused the Drotsdy house at Worcester to be
built,--of course at the expense of the Crown. I can never reflect that
such glorious days have gone for ever without a soft regret. There was
something magnificent in those old, brave, unhidden official peculations
by the side of which the strict and straight-laced honesty of our
present Governors looks ugly and almost mean.
Worcester is a broad town with well arranged streets, not fully filled
up but still clean,--without that look of unkempt inchoation which is so
customary in Australian towns and in many of the young municipalities of
the United States. The churches among its buildings are
conspicuous,--those attracting the most notice being the Dutch Reformed
Church, that of the Church of England,--and a church for the use of the
natives in which the services are also in accordance with the Dutch
Reformed religion. The latter is by far the most remarkable, and belongs
to an Institution which, beyond even the large Drotsdy house, makes
Worcester peculiarly worth visiting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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