South African Memories: Social, Warlike & Sporting from Diaries Written at the TimeWilson, Sarah Isabella Augusta, Lady
History
South African Memories: Social, Warlike & Sporting from Diaries Written at the Time
Wilson, Sarah Isabella Augusta, Lady
South Africa -- Description and travel; South African War, 1899-1902 -- Personal narratives
rest, but all the while she cherished the wish to pay a visit to that
continent which had been the theatre of her great enterprise. At length,
in August, 1902, in the week following the coronation of Their
Majesties, we sailed together for Cape Town, a sea-voyage having been
recommended to her in view of her refusal to try any of the foreign
health-resorts, which might have effected a cure. By the death of her
father-in-law, my sister was then Lady Howe, but it will be with her old
name of Lady Georgiana Curzon or "Lady Georgie"--as she was known to her
intimates--that the task she achieved will ever be associated.
More than seven years had elapsed since my first visit, and nearly
twenty-six months from the time I had left South Africa in the July
following the termination of the Mafeking siege, when I found myself
back in the old familiar haunts. Groot Schuurr had never looked more
lovely than on the sunny September morning when we arrived there from
the mail-steamer, after a tedious and annoying delay in disembarking of
several hours, connected with permits under martial law. This delay was
rendered more aggravating by the fact that, on the very day of our
arrival,[43] the same law ceased to exist, and that our ship was the
last to have to submit to the ordeal. Many and sad were the changes that
had come to pass in the two years, and nowhere did they seem more
evident than when one crossed the threshold of Mr. Rhodes's home. The
central figure, so often referred to in the foregoing pages, was no
more, and one soon perceived that the void left by that giant spirit, so
inseparably connected with vast enterprises, could never be filled. This
was not merely apparent in the silent, echoing house, on the slopes of
the mountain he loved so well, in the circle of devoted friends and
adherents, who seemed left like sheep without a shepherd, but also in
the political arena, in the future prospects of that extensive Northern
Territory which he had practically discovered and opened up. It seemed
as if Providence had been very hard in allowing one individual to
acquire such vast influence, and to be possessed of so much genius, and
then not to permit the half-done task to be accomplished.
That this must also have been Mr. Rhodes's reflection was proved by the
pathetic words he so often repeated during his last illness: "So little
done, so much to do."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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