South Africa a century ago; letters written from the Cape of Good Hope (1791-1801)

Preface

The letters which form this book were written by Lady Anne Barnard from Cape Colony to the first Viscount Melville, then the Right Honourable Henry Dundas, Secretary of State for War, Treasurer of the Navy, and President of the Board of Control in Pitt’s first Administration, during the earliest British occupation of South Africa, a century ago.

These letters remained among the archives at Melville Castle for a hundred years. They are now published by permission of the present Lord Melville, to whom the manuscripts belong. There is no need to dwell upon the peculiar fitness of their publication at the present time, when South African affairs loom large in men’s minds. But the circumstances under which they were written lend to them an especial interest. They are not merely the letters of a clever woman to her intimate friend, but those of the wife of the first Secretary of Cape Colony to the Secretary of State at home. Lord Melville was the Minister viii SOUTH AFRICA A CENTURY AGO

chiefly responsible for the annexation of Cape Colony by the English. Almost alone among British statesmen, he early recognised the importance of our keeping the Cape, not only because of its value as a station on the road to India, but because of the internal resources of the Colony and its great possibilities of development. He called the Cape his ‘favourite child,’ he watched over it with unflagging zeal, and he resigned office rather than be a party to its cession to the Dutch.^ He appointed Lord Macartney first Governor of Cape Colony, and Mr. Barnard, Lady Anne’s husband, Secretary. The charm, talent, and rare social qualities of Lady Anne Barnard led Lord Melville to give this appointment to her husband. The Governor’s wife (Lady Macartney) was not accompanying her husband ; the wife of the Secretary would therefore be the first lady of the Colony, and have to perform many of the social duties which usually fall to the lot of the Governor’s wife. Lady Anne was admirably fitted to fill such a position, and she enjoyed

‘ As a small illustration of this I may mention that in the library at Melville Castle there is an old volume entitled Walks and Sketches at the Cape of Good Hope, by Robert Temple, 1803. It is dedicated to the first Lord Melville, and in the dedication the writer says : ‘ I have been induced to request the permission of affixing your lordship’s name hereto, solely from the conviction that no man in Great Britain has paid so much attention to the affairs of the Cape, or has so intimate an acquaintance with every subject relative to that Colony, as your lordship.’

PREFACE

IX the friendship and confidence of the Secretary of State in no ordinary degree. Lord Melville charged her to conciliate the Dutch as much as possible, and to write to him freely about everything that occurred. These letters will show how well she fulfilled his wishes in both respects. They cover the period of the Administrations of the first two English Governors (Lord Macartney and Sir; George Yonge), and, in addition to giving vivid descriptions of South Africa at that time, they are full of shrewd observations and wise suggestions as to the government of the Colony, especially with regard to the treatment of the natives and the conciliation of the Dutch. The student of history will note, too, that many of the same problems presented themselves for solution a century ago in South Africa as present themselves to-day ; the same difficulties arose, and perhaps the same mistakes were committed on either side.

Lady Anne Barnard was also the authoress of that ever-popular ballad Auld Bohin Gray, and one of the best-known figures in the literary and social world of her day. Her fascinating personality is all too little known. I have therefore prefaced her ^ letters from South Africa with a brief memoir, and have incorporated in it certain other letters which she wrote from Ireland and elsewhere. They reveal, like everything else she wrote, the same sterling

X qualities — a keen perception, a liberal mind, a v/arm heart, and a magnetic gift of sympathy.

I take this opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness to Loed Melville not only for his permission to publish this correspondence, but for much valuable aid and kind encouragement. I have also to thank Mb. G. Fydell Eowley and Mbs. Atholl Fobbes for leave to reproduce the miniature of Lady Anne Barnard by Cosway as a frontispiece.

W. H. WILKINS.

MEMOIE

MEMOIE

Ladt Anne Lindsay (by marriage Barnard) was the eldest child of James, fifth Earl of Balcarres, by his wife Anne Dalrymple, daughter of Sir Eobert Dalrymple, of Castletown. Both her parents were remarkable. Her father was a brave soldier and a learned and courteous gentleman. He had drawn his sword in the Stuart cause in the rising of 1715, but as the House of Hanover settled itself upon the throne he was too good a patriot not to sink faction for the good of his country, and he fought against its enemies under King George II. at the battle of Dettingen. He lived through troublous times. Bom the year after the abdication of King James II., he survived for about twenty years the last effort of the Stuarts to regain their hereditary kingdom in 1745. Branch after branch had been shorn away from his family, until at the time of his marriage Lord Balcarres was the chief of his clan and the last of his race. He was sixty years of age when he married Miss Dalrymple, a lady nearly forty years his

SOUTH ATKICA A CENTURY AGO junior, beautiful, clever, and endowed with an almost masculine strength of mind, though somewhat lacking in the feminine virtues of softness and charity.

Lady Anne, the first issue of this union, was born December 12, 1750, at Balcarres. Prince Charles Edward and the rising of ’45 were still fresh in men’s minds ; and when it was known that Lady Balcarres was like to be brought to bed, great things were expected of the probable heir of this ancient house. To quote Lady Anne’s own words ; ‘ There long existed a prophecy that the first child of the last descendant of the House of Balcarres was to restore the family of Stuart to those hereditary rights which the bigotry of James had deprived them of. The Jacobites seemed to have gained new life on the occasion ; the wizards and witches of the period found it in their books ; the devil had mentioned it to one or two of his particular friends ; old ladies had read it from the grounds of their coffee— no wonder that the event was welcomed with the gasp of expiring hope. Songs were made by exulting Tories, masses were offered up by good Catholics, who longed to see the Pope’s bull once more tossing his horns in the country. ... In due course of time the partisans of the “ Pretender,” the soothsayers, wizards, witches, the bards, fortune-tellers, and old ladies, were all in a group dismayed, disconcerted, and enraged to learn that Lady Balcarres was brought to bed of a daughter after all, absolutely but a daughter. . . . That child was the Anne Lindsay who now addresses you.’

Lady Anne was not destined to be for long the sole representative of the younger generation of the House of Balcarres, for within the next twelve years the Countess presented her lord with ten other children. To again quote Lady Anne : ' Our

excellent parents, having nothing else to do in the country, desisted not from their laudable aim of populating the castle of Balcarres, till their family consisted of eight boys and three girls. Such are the wonders (I speak to all old bachelors) produced by a life of temperance, with the blessing of God.’

Lady Anne was carefully, if somewhat strictly, brought up. Her mother was a martinet with her numerous brood, and ruled her children rather by fear than love, after the fashion of many parents in the eighteenth century. Lord Balcarres gave up the management of his family to his wife, except that when punishments were unduly severe and peccadilloes treated as crimes he would sometimes break in with a remonstrance : ‘ Odds fish, Madame ! you will break the spirits of my young troops ; I will not have it so.’ Lady Balcarres used to say that Anne was the most difficult to punish of all her children, since her shortcomings were not sufficient to earn her a whipping. Margaret, who was Lady Anne’s fav<»)urite sister, and two years younger, was of a much more high-spirited temperament and was generally in revolt and in disgrace. On one occasion Lady Margaret assembled the other children together, and proposed flight in consequence of the ‘ horrious ’ life they suffered at home. The proposal was carried with acclamation, and the six children set off forthwith, but their escape was retarded by little J ames, who was not yet breeched, and whom they had to carry in turns. They had not gone far when their flight was discovered by old Eobin Gray, the shepherd, who went to Lady Balcarres with the news : ‘ AH the young gentlemen and the young ladies and all the dogs are run away, my lady.’ The truants were soon captured and brought back, and the punishment of each this time was a dose of tincture of rhubarb in varying degree.

Lady Anne was given a good education in keeping with her social position — in fact, rather in advance of it, as education for women was understood in that day — and as she grew up she showed signs that she had inherited a full share of the family talents. Her childhood was spent at Balcarres, but as she became older visits were frequently paid to Edinburgh, to the house of her grandmother, Lady Dalrymple, or to Sir Thomas Oughton’s country house outside the city. Lady Dalrymple, a clever old lady, was intimate with many of the most eminent Scotsmen of her time. Among her friends was David Hume, the historian, whom she had known from a child. Lady Anne mentions him in a letter which she wrote to her sister Margaret about this time from her grandmother’s house in Edinburgh. ‘ Dinners go on as usual,’ she wrote, ‘ which being monopolised by the divines, wits and writers of the present day, are not unjustly called “ the dinners of the eater ati ” by Lord Kellie, who laughs at his own pun until his face is purple. Our friend David Hume, along with his friend Principal Eobertson, continue to maintain their ground at these convivial meetings. To see the lion and the lamb lying down together, the deist and the doctor, is extraordinary ; it makes one hope that some day Hume will say to him, “Thou almost persuadest me to be a Christian.” He is a constant visitor of ours.’

When Lady Anne w’as in her twenty-first year her sister. Lady Margaret, was married to Mr. Alexander Fordyce, of Eoehampton. Lady Margaret’s charms and mental accomplishments were recorded by many of her admiring contemporaries.

Her beauty inspired Sheridan with the well-known lines :

Mark’d you her eye of heavenly blue,

Mark’d you her cheek of rosy hue ;

That eye in liquid circles roving,

That cheek abashed at man’s approving.

The one love’s arrows darting round,

The other blushing at the wound.

It was soon after her sister’s marriage, in 1771, that Lady Anne wrote the ballad which will ever remain her title to fame. Bereft of the companionship of her sister, she was driven back on her own resources, and her literary talents began to make themselves manifest. ‘ Kesiding,’ she says, ‘ in the solitude of the country, without other sources of entertainment but what I could draw from myself, I used to mount up to my little closet in the high winding staircase, which commanded the sea, the lake, the rocks, the birds, the beach, and with my pen in my hand and a few envelopes of old letters, which too often vanished afterwards, scribbled away poetically and in prose.’ It was on one of these occasions that ‘ Auld Eobin Gray ’ was written.^ For some unaccountable reason she never publicly acknowledged the authorship until 1823, two years

‘ The original text of Auld Robin Gray is given in an appendix to this memoir. Lady Anne wrote a sequel or continuation to it some years later, but, like many sequels, it is inferior to the original.

before her death ; indeed, it seems that she denied having WTitten it, for once when on a visit at Dalkeith, Lady Jane Scott, sister of the Duke of Buccleuch, said : ‘ You sing that song in a way that makes me sure it is your own writing.’ Lady Anne, according to her own statement, blushed scarlet, and denied it. ‘ Do not do so,’ said Lady Jane ; ‘ I will betray you unless you give me a copy of it.’ Lady Anne says : ‘ To convince her I was not the author, I gave her a copy, entreating her not to let anybody have it.’ But Lady Jane copied it for her friends, and soon the song got out into the w^orld, and became widely popular, though its authorship remained a disputed point.

A few years after Lord Balcarres died Lady Anne left Balcarres and w’ent to live in Edinburgh with her mother, the Dowager-Countess, who had taken a house there. In Edinburgh she mixed freely in the literary society for which the northern capital was famous. When Johnson came to Edinburgh in 1773 he was introduced to Lady Anne, who had gathered round her a numerous company of friends, including Hume, McKenzie, and Monboddo. It was probably about this time that she made the acquaintance of Henry Dundas, then a rising young Scottish politician, who had been appointed, at the age of twenty-four, Solicitor-

General for Scotland, and for whom his Edinburgh friends already predicted a brilliant career. Lady Anne had a great respect and affection for her mother, but she was not particularly happy with her, and after the death of Mr. Fordyce she went to London to reside with her widowed sister. Lady Margaret Fordyce, who had taken one of the smaller houses in Berkeley Square. There the two sisters lived together for many years. The beauty of Lady Margaret, and the charm and lively conversation of Lady Anne, ‘ one of the most fascinating women of her time,’ as a contemporary describes her, made them very popular, and their house became a social centre, and a favourite resort of some of the most famous literary and political men of the day. Pitt, Burke, Sheridan, Windham, and Dundas are a fe^ of those who were wont to avail themselves of the sisters’ simple yet charming hospitality ; the Prince of Wales was also one of their frequent guests, and his friendship with Lady Anne lasted all his life. They also enjoyed a considerable share of Court favour from King George and Queen Charlotte. * The Lindsay sisters,’ as they were called, occupied a unique position in the London society of their day.

With such opportunities Lady Anne, it may readily be believed, had many offers, some of them exceptionally good, hut she refused them all. The reason that she remained unwed all these years is ascribed by her nephew, Colonel Lindsay, to indecision (in other matters it seems to have formed no part of her character) and to a reluctance to leave her sister. But the ‘ Melville Letters,’ hitherto unpublished, afford, I think, a clue to the mystery. Lady Anne’s heart was really given to Henry Dundas, with whom, to the day of his death, she remained on terms of intimate friendship. Dundas w’as now one of the first statesmen of the day, the most powerful man in Scotland, the intimate friend and trusted lieutenant of Pitt, a great Parliamentary debater, and a successful Minister. His career excited the admiration of his friends, and of none more than Lady Anne. But though Dundas attained public greatness, he was unfortunate in his private relations. His beautiful first wife, daughter and heiress of David Eennie, of Melville Castle, deserted him for another man ; a divorce followed, and it was some years before Dundas took to himself another wife. In private life he was of a free and genial disposition, fond of ladies’ society, and during those years when his public career was at its zenith, but his domestic ' happiness broken up, he was a frequent and welcome guest at the sisters’ house in Berkeley Square. He sought eagerly the society of Lady Anne, taking her into his confidence, and talking to her unreservedly about political and private matters. Whether he ever contemplated marriage with her, or led her to believe that he did, it is impossible to say ; but it is certain that Lady Anne became very much attached to him. The news that he was going to marry Lady Jane Hope, the daughter of the second Earl of Hopetoun, must have come to her as a blow.

Whatever Lady Anne suffered, she kept her feelings to herself. She showed no disposition to wear the willow, and in 1793 astonished her friends by marrying Mr. Andrew Barnard, son of the Bishop of Limerick. The marriage, from a worldly point of view, could hardly be considered other than imprudent. Lady Anne was forty-three years of age, her husband was fifteen years her junior; he had been in the A.rmy ; he was good-looking, well-mannered, of moderate ability and amiable disposition. It is only fair to say that, despite the disparity of age, he made Lady Anne a very good husband, and she grew to be much attached to him. The problem of ways and means early presented itself. Barnard had a small patrimony and many debts ; Lady Anne had little or nothing. But she was always of a sanguine disposition, and she looked forward to obtaining for her husband a Government appointment of some kind through the influence of her highly placed friends. Her most intimate friend was Dundas, now Secretary for War, Treasurer of the Navy, and President of the Board of Control in Pitt’s First Administration, and to him she applied. A few months after her marriage she went to Ireland with her husband to make the acquaintance of his relatives, and from there we find her writing to Dundas :

‘ I have not forgotten, my dear friend, what you hinted to me in confidence respecting the possibility of Mr. Barnard deriving a benefit from a situation ostensibly given to another, and to be sure this would be a very eligible favour for our interests, and one I should most gratefully thank you for. But until this occurs, will you contrive to place him in any office, with no matter how little salary, where he might have something to do and prove himself useful ? He was pleased with your manner to him, and said he had never talked to a great man who had so much the power of making a man, who was asking a favour, feel at ease with him as yourself. If you could place him on your own Board, or anywhere where he might gain your friendship by ' deserving it, and by being connected with yourself, he would be glad. But I put the matter into your hands and leave it. You will find a mode of serving us ; the sooner you can do so in any shape the better.

I prefer owing to you than to any other person, because I can never cease to have for you sentiments which make the feeling of gratitude sit easy in my heart.’ ^

But good appointments, real or sinecure, even in those days, were not to be had for the asking, and though Dundas renewed his promise, no suitable vacancy occurred. In 1794, in consequence of a rumour that her powerful friend was about to retire from the Government, Lady Anne again wrote from Ireland to renew her request :

‘ On an occasion so important as this, I think it right for me to remind you of myself, depending on your kindness, so many proofs of which I have experienced on former occasions, and almost certain that distance would not make you forget the hearty assurance you gave me of assisting my husband. I have never teased you about it, because I committed my interests wholly into your hands, while I formed all my counsels here on the confidence I have in you, in consequence of what passed between you and me the last time I saw you, which I naturally repeated to Mr. Barnard. I prevailed on him to give up the Army, though considerable advantages were offered him by the Lord Lieutenant,

^ Letter from Lady Anne Barnard to the Eight Hon. Henry Dundas, St. Wolstan’s, near Dublin, December 10, 1793.

as be has been seventeen years in the Army, and has served many years abroad. I have also prevailed on him and his family to consent to our letting St. Wolstan’s for a term of years, almost the prettiest place in Ireland, but one which our income did not render it eligible to keep, and to have a house in London also. To indulge me these things have been done. Am I not therefore doubly bound, my dear friend, to use every exertion which zeal, duty, and gratitude can give, with a friend who has long been mine, who knows our situation, and who, I trust, will not on this occasion desert me, to replace to my husband the pleasures of which I have deprived him, to secure my own comfort amongst my own friends ? I throw myself on you with earnestness and hope ; you owe me some happiness, in truth you do. Pay me by making me the means of serving a man who has rebuilt in a considerable degree what tumbled to its foundation, who makes my happiness his study, and whose prospects in this country (Ireland) have been given up for me.’i

Still nothing was forthcoming, though Dundas ^ remained in office. In truth, Barnard, who had few qualifications, was not an easy man to fit with a

‘ Letter from Lady Anne Barnard to the Right Hon. Henry Dundas, St. Wolstan’s, near Dublin, March 10, 1794.

suitable appointment. After waiting another year, Lady Anne came over to England to see what pleading in person would do. She saw the powerful Minister ; Dundas had not forgotten, and renewed his promises. Lady Anne followed up the interview by writing him a still more strongly worded letter :

‘ Do not let me, my dear friend, return to Ireland dispirited, and have to tell the Bishop and Mrs. Barnard that the flattering hopes I gave them for their son, from the kind promises you made me previous to our marriage three years ago, have not been realised. I have explained myself fully to you, and refer to our conversation once again to implore you to ask your own heart whether you ought not to feel yourself doubly bound to make my situation comfortable, more than you are bound to any other woman in this world. To a man like you, generous as well as just, how many motives are there not in the strong, though defeated^ regards which have subsisted between us, for you to take my husband by the hand, and make me, through him, as happy as you can? To pay me all you have owed, and still owe me, you never can. But what you can you should do, and you have got before you the pleasure of obliging me. I have paid you tears of gratitude for the hearty manner in which you pledged yourself to serve us, and while I have any memory I must depend on your doing so, but hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’ ^

This last appeal had its effect. On the conquest of the Cape of Good Hope, the Home Government determined to send out Lord Macartney as Governor, and Dundas offered the appointment of Secretary of the Colony to Mr. Barnard, with a salary of 3,500^. a year. Barnard was delighted with the appointment, as he ought to have been, but Lady Anne demurred somewhat. The idea of banishment to an unknown land, as the Cape then was, rather frightened her ; she would have preferred, she told Dundas, a situation with less emolument nearer home, and she was not quite sure whether the post of Secretary was not one beneath Mr. Barnard’s acceptance ; or, rather, whether the position of Secretary’s wife was one suitable for her rank. All these doubts and fears she communicated by letter. Dundas answered her shortly, saying that it was the ‘ prettiest appointment in the world for any young fellow,’ and telling her that she must take that or nothing. He had some reason to be hurt, for he had given this appointment to Barnard, a young and untried man, solely because , of his goodwill for his wife. He had thoughtfully chosen it also because (as Lady Macartney was not

‘ Letter from Lady Anne Barnard to the Right Hon. Henry Dundas, London, April 30, 1796.

C going out to the Cape) Lady Anne would be able to play the part of first lady in the Colony and represent the Government, which he knew she would like. Lady Anne, fearing that she had offended her powerful friend, apologised with tears, and a reconciliation was effected between them. In March 1797 she and her husband left England with Lord Macartney for the Cape, where they arrived, on board the ‘ Trusty,’ on May 4, 1797, and took over the Government of the Colony.

The record of Lady Anne’s life in South Africa is told in full in the letters which are published in this book, so we will not allude to it at length here. Her letters were all written to Dundas, and the fact that he tied them together and kept them carefully preserved among his most cherished papers at Melville Castle shows that the great Minister, through all his vicissitudes, kept a soft corner in his heart for Lady Anne.

On the cession of the Cape to the Dutch by the Peace of Amiens, Lady Anne came back to England in 1802 ; her husband followed her a few months later. Lady Anne tried hard to obtain for Barnard another Government appointment, but without success. The Pitt Ministry was come to an end ; her powerful friend, Dundas (now Lord Melville), had resigned office rather than be a party to the ignoble Peace, and Addington turned a deaf ear to her representations. Baffled in her endeavours, she went to Ireland, where a new vexation awaited her in the fact that her father-in-law, the Bishop of Limerick, who was now a widower, at the age of seventy-six, declared his intention of marrying a young girl. The scandal and annoyance this occasioned to his relatives may be imagined. After trying in vain to put matters right. Lady Anne went on to visit her brother-in-law and sister. Lord and Lady Hardwicke, at Dublin Castle.

Lord Hardwicke was then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and the time was critical. The Irish Catholics were indignant, and rightly, at the disappointment of their hopes of emancipation, which Pitt had promised to give them, but the King refused. The discontent which had brought about the Irish Eebellion of 1798 under Lord Edward FitzGerald was still rife, and the return to Ireland of exiles from France after the Peace of Amiens had enabled Napoleon to establish negotiations with the Irish malcontents. Fortunately, Napoleon and the French were now unpopular with the Irish Catholics on account of Napoleon’s treatment of the Pope, and the great body of them held aloof. A rising took place, but instead of being national it was confined to a small number of Protestant republicans, and hardly exceeded the proportions of a town riot. Emmett, the leader, was taken and executed. Lady Anne was staying at the Castle through this troublous time, and she wrote a letter to Lord Melville, from which we take the following extract :

‘ As I think that, retired as you are amongst your own mountains, surrounded by your own friends, your own faithful Highlanders, eating your own mutton and drinking your own ale, you will not be sorry to know what is going on in this agitated country, separated from our native land by so little, I take up my pen to give you, my dear friend, a little of such Irish news as is on the cards at present. Alas ! that I must write to you so much of trials, rebels, and matters of the baneful, alarming, and horrid kind, of which Ireland is full at present. I want to tell you, though, before I begin on these sad things, that Lord Hardwicke reviewed the different corps a few days ago, about five thousand, in the Phoenix Park. They made a very respectable appearance ; the commanding ofiicers all dined here afterwards in St. Patrick’s Hall, which, together with the good dinner and sumptuous service of plate, made also a very good appearance of a different sort.

‘ You will, I know, expect to hear something of the

MEMOm trials and executions of the poor, faulty, and deluded men, whose guilt cannot admit of doubt, which have been taking place. Several have been hanged in the eyes of a great concourse of people, who have shown no disposition to question or to rescue. There are, however, in spite of oneself, many circumstances which daily take place, while such solemn scenes are going forw^ard, to freeze the blood and sometimes to aw’aken pity for youth and talents so perverted. I refer especially to Emmett, the misguided leader of this unhappy matter. Emmett was the son of a physician, only twenty-three, as I believe, and of great, though perverted, talents. I must tell you of the reply of the young woman who was taken at the same time, and who wore green ribbons in her hat, the rebel colour. “ Why,” said the officer, is it that so pretty a young woman as you wear this object of sedition ? ” She coldly answered, “You can’t help the colour, do what you will ; it grows every day.” There is a very singular story in circulation here, which I fancy is not without foundation, that the daughter of Curran, the famous counsellor, was in correspondence with Emmett, and it is said that her loveletters found on him, mixed with politics, were fatal to him. No one believes that Curran, her father, knew of this correspondence ; he some time ago changed his doctrines, and declared himself loyal for