Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis Part 21

The Boers outplay them in intelligence every day. The whole army is officered by one cla.s.s and that the dull one. It is like the House of Peers. You would not believe the mistakes they make, the awful way in which they sacrifice the lives of officers and men. And they let the Boers escape. I watched the Boers for four hours the other day escaping after the battle of Pieters and I asked, not because I wanted them captured but just as a military proposition "Why don't you send out your cavalry and light artillery and take those wagons?" The staff officer giggled and said "They might kill us." I don't know what he meant; neither did he. However, I'm sick of it but there's nothing else to talk of. I hate all the people about me and this dirty town and I wish I was back. And I'm going too. I'll have started by the time you get this.

I mean to cut out of this soon but don't imagine I'm in any danger.

I'm taking d---d good care to keep out of danger. No one is more determined on that than I am. Dear Mother, this is such a dull letter but you must forgive me. I was never so homesick and bored in my life.

It will be better when I go out tomorrow in my green tent and leave this beastly hole. I like the tent life, and the horses and being clean. I've really starved here for four days and haven't had a clean thing on me. G.o.d bless you all and dear Nora G.o.d bless her and Chas and the Lone Fisherman.

d.i.c.k.

Outside Ladysmith.

5th March, 1900.

DEAREST MOTHER:

I was a brute to write as I did last night. But I was so blue in that miserable town!!! It was so foul and dirty. The town smelt as bad as Johnstown. My room in the so called hotel stunk, the dirt was all over the floor and the servants had to be paid to do everything even to bring you a towel--and then I had no place to write or be alone, and nothing to eat-- The poor souls at my table who had been in the siege, when they got a little bit of sugar or a can of condensed milk would carry it off from the table as though it were a diamond diadem-- I did the same thing myself for I couldn't eat what they gave me and so I corrupted the canteen dealer and bought tin things-- I've really never wanted tobacco so much and food as I have here--to give away I mean, for it was something wonderful to see what it meant to them. Three troopers came into the dining room yesterday and asked if they could buy some tea and were turned out so rudely that it seemed to hurt them much more than the fact that they were hungry: I followed them out and begged them to come back to my verandah and have tea with me but they at first would not because they knew I had witnessed what had happened in the hotel. They belonged to a very good regiment and they had been starved for four months. But in spite of their independence I got them to my porch. I had just purchased at awful prices a few delicacies like sugar and tobacco, marmalade and a bottle of whiskey. So I gave them to them and I never enjoyed anything so much-- The poor yellow faced skeletons ate in absolute silence still fighting with their pride until I told them I was an American and was a canteen contractor's friend-- Then I gave them segars and it was too pitiful-- In our column, if you give a man something extra he says a lot and swears it's the best drink or the best segar or that you're the best chap he ever met-- Just as I say it to them when they give me things. But these starved bodies tried to be very polite and conversational on every subject except food--when I offered them the segars which could only be got then at a dollar twenty-five a piece (they had not cost me that as I had bought them in Cape Town for two cents apiece!) What has Dad to say to that for economy? They accepted them quite as though it was in Havana--and then leaned back and went off into opium dreams-- Imagine the first segar after three months. I am out here now on a bluff, with two trees in front and great hills with names historical of the siege of Ladysmith--names which I refuse to learn or remember--I am perfectly comfortable and were it not for Cecil perfectly content-- If she were only here it would be perfectly magnificent-- I have a retinue that would do credit to the Warringtons in the Virginians-- Three Kaffir boys who refuse to yield to my sense of the picturesque and go naked like their less effete brothers, two oxen and three ponies, a little puppy I found starved in Ladysmith and fed on compressed beef tablets.

I call her Ladysmith and she sleeps beside my cot and in my lap when I am reading--I have also a beautiful tent with tape window panes, ventilators, pockets inside, doors that loop up and red k.n.o.bs; also, it is green so that the ants won't eat it. Also two tables, two chairs, a bath tub, two lanterns, and a cape cart--and a folding bed-- In Cuba I had two saddle bags and was just as clean and just as happy. One boy does nothing but polish my boots and gaiters and harness, so that I look as well as the officers who are not much good at anything but that. I must tell you what I think is the saddest story of the siege-- They could not feed the horses, so they kept part of them for scouting, part to eat and drove 3,000 of them towards the Boers. Being, well trained cavalry horses, they did not know how to eat gra.s.s, so at bugle call the whole 3,000 came trotting back again and sentries were placed at every street to stampede them back into the veldt-- One horse from one battery met out in the prairie another horse that had been its gun mate in an artillery regiment five years before in India and the two poor things came galloping back side by side and pa.s.sed the sentries and into the lines and drew up beside their battery. Another horse found its rider acting as sentry and when the man tried to drive it away it thought he was playing with it and kept coming back and finally the man brought it in to the colonel and cried and asked if it might have half of his rations of corn. Good night and G.o.d bless you all with all my love.

d.i.c.k.

March 15th, 1900.

DEAR MOTHER:

I am on my way back to Cape Town. This seemed better than staying with Buller who will not move for two or three weeks. I shall either go straight up to Roberts, or we will return to London. I have seen the relief of Ladysmith and got a very good idea of it all, and I do not know but what I shall quit now. I started in too late to do much with it and as it is I have seen a great deal. It is neither an interesting country nor an interesting war. But I don't have to stay here to oblige anybody. If I do go up to Roberts it will only be to stay for three weeks at the most and only then if there is fighting. I won't go if he is resting as Buller is. So this will explain why we start home so soon. I am very glad I came. I would have been very sorry always if I had not, but my heart is not in it as, of course, it was in our war. Sometimes they fight all day using seven or eight regiments and kill a terrible lot of fine soldiers and capture forty Boer farmers and two women. It is not the kind of war I care to report. "Nor mean to!"

I cannot make a book out of what little I've seen but I will come out about even. It has been very rough on Cecil. Today I went to the Maine and asked Lady Randolph to give me a lift down to Cape Town as the ship gets there two days ahead of the Castle Steamer. So, they were apparently very glad to have me and I am going on Sat.u.r.day. I like it on the ship where I have been spending the day as it is fun taking care of the wounded and listening to their stories. I am to write an article for her next Anglo Saxon magazine on the Pa.s.sing of the War Correspondent. The idea is that he must either disappear altogether like the Vivandiere or be allowed to do his work. As it is now the Government forces him upon the Generals against their will and so they get back by taking it out of him. Either they should persuade the Government that their objections to him are weighty and suppress him altogether, or recognize him as a part of the outfit. I don't much care which as I certainly would never again go with an English army. I am sorry the letters home have been so dull but I have had rather hard luck straight through, and the distances are so very great and the time spent in covering them seems very wasteful. I shall be glad I saw it because it is the biggest thing as to scale that I ever saw of the sort, and I could not have afforded to have missed being in it. It is the first big modern war and all the conditions and weapons are new. I don't think the English have learned anything by it, because the fault lies entirely with their officers who are all or nearly all of one cla.s.s.

d.i.c.k.

March 25th, 1900.

Cape Town.

This is just to explain our plans and as they take a bit of explaining this is meant for the Houses of Clark and of Davis. So, pa.s.s it on-- After Ladysmith was relieved Buller decided he would not move for a month, so I came back to join Roberts. I could not do that on first arriving because there was a Mail man with him. I meant to do it later as a Herald man, and to let The Mail go. But on arriving here, having spent a week in coming and having sold all my outfit at a loss, I found that Roberts did not intend to move for three weeks either. So I decided I had seen enough to justify my returning. There were other reasons, the chief one being that the English irritated me and I had so little sympathy with them that I could not write with any pleasure of their work. My sporting blood refused to boil at the spectacle of such a monster Empire getting the worst of it from an untrained band of farmers-- I found I admired the farmers. So we decided to chuck it and go to London. I would not have missed it for anything. I would never have been satisfied, if we had not come. I have seen much of the country and the people, and of the army and its wonderful organization and discipline. I enjoyed two battles--and the relief of Ladysmith is one of the things to have seen, almost the best, if not the best.

Every officer and correspondent agrees that I got the pick of the fighting and the "best story." By the way, I beat all the London papers in getting out the news by one day. At least, so Pryor, The Mail manager tells me. The paper was very much pleased. We have now decided to come home by the East Coast. It was Cecil's idea and wish and I was only too glad to do it. She says we certainly will never come to this country again. G.o.d help us if we do--and that it would be criminal to spend seventeen blank days on the West coast when we could fill in the entire trip North on the East Coast at many ports. It is a rather complicated trip as one has to change frequently but it will be a great thing to have seen. Cecil has really seen nothing at Cape Town and on this trip she will be paid for all the boredom that has gone before. I have been over part of it and am sure. Durban alone is one of the most curious cities I ever saw. It is like the Midway at the Fair. I want her to have some fun out of this. She has been so unselfish and fine all through and I hope I can make the rest of the adventure to her liking-- It is sure to be for after Delagoa Bay it is all real Africa not the shoddy "colonial" shopkeepers' paradise that we have here. And we are going to stop off at Zanzibar for some time where we have letters to everybody and where Cecil is to draw the Sultan and I am to play him the "Typical Tune of Zanzibar." You will see by our route that we spend two days or a day at many places and so shall get a good idea of the country. The Konig is a 5,000 ton ship and we have two cabins-- From Port Said we will run up to Cairo to get a dinner and then over to Constantinople to see Lloyd Griscom and the city which Cecil has never visited. Then to Paris by way of the Orient Express. Then London and back with Charley to Aix. I feel sure that one more course there will cure my leg for always. As it is it has not touched me once even during the campaign when I was wet and had to climb hills, and at Ladysmith, where I had no food for a week. Of course, if we get tired on the way up we may go straight on from Port Said to Ma.r.s.eilles and so to London. It seems funny to look upon Port Said as being at home, but from this distance it seems as near New York as Boston-- You will get this when we reach Zanzibar or later and we will cable when we can.

d.i.c.k.

It was said at the time that Richard left the British forces because the censors would not permit him to send out the truth about Buller's advance, and that the English officials resented his going to report the war from the Boer side. The first statement my brother flatly denied, and the fact that it was through the direct intervention of Sir Alfred Milner, a.s.sisted by the efforts of our consul Adelbert S. Hay at Pretoria, that Richard was enabled to reach the Boer capital seems to prove the latter charge equally false. Although throughout the war my brother's sympathies were with the Boers, and in spite of the fact that the papers he represented wanted him to report the war from the Boer side, he persisted in going at first with the British forces. His reasons were that he wished to see a great army, with all modern equipment in action, and that practically all of his English friends were with the British army. "My only reason for leaving it", he wrote, "was the fact that I found myself facing a month of idleness. Had General Buller continued his advance immediately after his relief of Ladysmith I would have gone with his column and would probably have never seen a Boer, except a Boer prisoner."

Royal Hotel, Durban, Natal.

April 5th, 1900.

DEAR MOTHER:

We arrived here to-day and got off in a special tug together. We did the basket trick all right, although the next time it came down a swell raised the tug and fractured every one in the basket except Sangree and Rogers, the two New York correspondents who were hanging on by the upper edges. Cecil loved the place which is the Midway Plaisance of cities and we had a good lunch and managed to get into the hotel where there are over twenty cots in the reading room, and hall. The Commandant objected to our going to Praetoria and seemed inclined to refuse us pa.s.ses to leave Durban for Delagoa Bay. He also was rather fresh to Cecil, so I called him down very hard, and told him if he couldn't make up his mind whether we would go or not, I'd wire to some others who would help him to make up his mind quickly. He said I was at liberty to do that, so I went out and burned wires over all of South Africa. As he reads all the telegrams he naturally read mine and the next morning he was as humble and white as a head waiter. But by ten o'clock my wires began to bear fruit and he began to catch it. Milner wired him to send us on at once and apologized to us by another wire so all is well and we go vouched for by the High Commissioner.

d.i.c.k.

PRETORIA, May 18th, 1900.

DEAR DAD--AND OTHERS OF THE CLARK AND DAVIS FAMILIES:

I have not had time to write such a long letter as this one must be, as I have been working on my Ledger and Scribner stories.

Cecil and I started to the "front," which was then May 4th, at Brandfort with Captain Von Loosberg, a German baron who married in New Orleans and became an American citizen and who is now in command of Loosberg's Artillery in the Free State. The night we left, the English took Brandfort, so we decided to go only as far as Winburg. The next morning the train despatcher informed us Winburg was taken, so we decided to go to Smalldeel, but that went during the afternoon, so we stopped at Kronstad. From there, after a day's rest, we went to Ventersberg station, and rode across to Ventersberg town, about two hours away, and put up in Jones's Hotel. The next day we went down to the Boer laagers on the Sand river and met President Steyn on the way.

He got out of his Cape Cart and gave Cecil a rose and Loosberg his field gla.s.ses, which Cecil took from Loosberg in exchange for her own Zeiss gla.s.s, and he gave me a drink and an interview. He also gave us a letter to St. Reid, who had established an ambulance base on Cronje's farm, telling him to give Cecil something to sleep upon. The, Boers were very polite to Cecil and as she rode through the different camps every man took off his hat. We went back to Ventersberg that night and about two o'clock Cecil came to my room and woke me up with the intelligence that the British were only two hours away. She had heard the commandant informing the landlady, a grand low comedy character from Brooklyn, who had the room next to Cecil's. I interviewed the landlady who was sitting up in bed in curl papers, and with a Webley revolver. She was quite hysterical so I aroused Loosberg who was too sleepy to understand. The commandant could be heard in the distance offering his kingdom for a horse and a Cape cart. Cecil and I decided our horses were done up and that we were too ignorant of the trail to know where to run. So we decided to go to sleep. In the morning we confessed that each had been afraid the other would want to escape, and each wanted only to be allowed to go to sleep again. Loosberg's Cape Cart and five mules having arrived we packed our things on it and started again for the Sand River where we spent the night on Cronje's farm. Mrs. Cronje had taken away all the bedding but Dr. Reid gave Cecil his field mattress and I made one out of rugs and piano covers.

In the morning I found that the iron straps of the mattress had marked me for life like a grilled beefsteak. There were only Reid and his a.s.sistant surgeon in the farmhouse and they were greatly excited at having a woman to look after.

We bade farewell to Loosberg who had found his artillery push, and started off in his Cape Cart which he wished us to use and take back for him for safety to Del Hay at Pretoria. Our objective point was the railroad bridge over the sand. The Boers were on one bank, the British about seven miles back on the other, the trail ran along the British side of the river which was sad of it. However, we drove on, I riding and Cecil and Christian, the Kaffir, in the Cart. We saw no one for several hours except some Kaffir Kraals and we almost ran into two herds of deer. I counted twenty-six in one herd, they were about a quarter of a mile away. We came to a cross road and I decided to put back as we had lost track of the river and were bearing straight into the English lines. Just as we found the river again and had got across a drift cannon opened on our right. We then knew we were in between the Boers and the English but we had no other knowledge of our geographical position. Such being the case we decided to outspan and lunch. Out-spanning is setting the mules and horses at liberty, in-spanning trying to catch them again. It takes five minutes to out-span, and three hours to in-span. We had Armour's corned beef and Libby's canned bacon. Cecil cooked the bacon on a stick and we ate it with biscuits captured by our Boer friends at Cronje's farm from the English Tommies. About three o'clock we started off again, and were captured by three Boers. I was riding behind the cart and threw up my hands "that quick," but Cecil could not hear me yelling at her to stop on account of the noise of the cart. I knew if I rode after her they would shoot at me, and that if she didn't stop, as they were shouting at her to do, they would shoot her. Under these trying circ.u.mstances I sat still. It caused quite a coolness on Cecil's part. However the Boers could see I was trying to get her to halt so they only rode around and headed her off. We were so glad to see them that they could not be suspicious. Still, as we had come directly from the English lines they had doubts. We told them we had lost ourselves and the more they threatened to take us to the commandant the more satisfied we were. I insisted on taking photos of them reading Cecil's pa.s.sport.

It annoyed them that we refused to be serious, we a.s.sured them we had never met anyone we were so glad to see. They finally believed us, and our pa.s.sports which describe Cecil as my "frau," and artist of Harper's Weekly, an idea of Loosberg's. We all smoked and then shook hands and they went back to their positions. We next met Christian De Vet one of the two big generals who is a grand character. Nothing could match the wonderful picturesqueness of his camp spread out over the side of a hill with the bearded fine featured old Van Dyck and Hugonot heads under great sombreros. De Vet made us a long speech saying it was only to be expected that the Great Republic would send men to help the little Republics, but he had not hoped that the women would show their sympathy by coming too. All this with the most simple earnest courtesy. He said "No English woman would dare do what you are doing."

He showed us a farin house on a kopje about five miles off where he said we could get shelter and where we would be near the fighting on the morrow. We rode in the moonlight for some time but when we reached the house it was filthy and the people were in such terror that we decided to camp out in the veldt. We found a grove of trees near by and a stream of water running beside it so we made a fire there. We had only one biscuit left but several cans of bacon and tea. It was great fun and we sat up as late as we could around the fire on account of the cold. We could see the Boer fires in the moonlight on the hills and across the Sand, the English flashlights signalling all night. We put a rubber blanket on the gra.s.s and wrapped up in steamer rugs but both of us died several times of cold and even sitting on the fire failed to warm me. We were awakened out of a cold storage sort of sleep by pom-poms going off right over our They sounded just as disturbing I found from the rear as when you are in front of them.

They are the most effective of all the small guns for causing your nerves to riot. We climbed up the hill and saw the English coming in their usual solid formation stretching out for three miles. We went back and got the cart and drove to a nearer kopje, but just as we reached it the Boers abandoned it. Roberts's column was now much nearer. We then drove on still further in the direction of the bridge.

I kept telling Cecil that the firing was all from the Boers as I did not want Christian to bolt and run away with the cart and mules. But Cecil remembered the pictures in Harper's Weekly showing the shrapnel smoke making rings in the air and as she saw these floating over our head, she knew the English were firing on us, but said nothing for fear of scaring Christian. I had promised to get her under fire which was her one wish so I said that she was now well under fire for the first and the last time. To which she replied "Pshaw!" I never saw any one show such self possession. We halted the cart behind a deserted farm house, and saddled her pony. The sh.e.l.ls were now falling all over the shop, and I was scared to distraction. But she took about five minutes to see that her saddle was properly tightened and then we rode up to the hill. Again the Boers were leaving and only a few remained. They warned her to keep back but we dismounted and walked up to the hill.

It was a very hot place but Cecil was quite unmoved. We showed her the sh.e.l.ls striking back of her and around her but she refused to be impressed with the danger. She went among the Boers begging them to make a stand very quietly and like one man to another and they took it just in that way and said "But we are very tired. We have been driven back for three days. We are only a thousand, they are twenty thousand." Some of them only sat still too proud to run, too sick to fight! When the British got within five hundred yards of the artillery I told her she must run. At the same moment Botha's men a mile on our right broke away in a mad gallop, as though the lancers were after them. I finally got her on her pony and we raced for Ventersberg with Christian a good first. He had lost all desire to out-span.

At Ventersberg we found every one harnessing up in the street and abandoning everything. We again felt this untimely desire for food, and had lunch at Jones's hotel on sc.r.a.ps and Cecil went off to see if she could loot the cook, as everyone but her had left the hotel and as we needed one in Pretoria. A despatch-rider came running to me as I was smoking in the garden and shouted that the "Roinekes" were coming in force over the hill. I ran out in the street and saw their sh.e.l.ls falling all over the edge of the village. They were only a quarter of an hour behind us. I yelled for Cecil who was helping the looted cook pack up her own things and anyone else's she could find in a sheet. I gathered up a dog and a kitten Cecil wanted and left a note for the next English officer who occupied my room with the inscription "I'd leave my happy home for you." We then put the cook, the kitten, the dog and Cecil in the cart and I got on the horse and we let out for Kronstad at a gallop. We raced the thirty miles in five hours without one halt. That was not our cruelty to animals but Christian's who whenever I ordered him to halt and let us rest, yelled that the Englesses were after us and galloped on. The retreat was a terribly pathetic spectacle; for hours we pa.s.sed through group after group of the broken and dispirited Boers. At Kronstad President Steyn whom I went to see on arriving ordered a special car for me, and sent us off at once. We reached here the next morning, Christian arriving a day later having killed one mule and one pony in his eagerness to escape.

We are going back again as soon as Roberts reaches the Vaal. There there must be a stand. Love and best wishes to you all----

d.i.c.k.

June 8th, 1900.

On board the Kausler.

DEAR MOTHER:

We engaged our pa.s.sage on this ship some weeks ago not thinking we would have the English near Pretoria until August. But as it happened they came so near that we did not know whether or not to wait over and see them enter the capital. I decided not, first, because after that one event, there would be nothing for us to see or do. We could not leave until the 2nd of July and a month under British martial law was very distasteful to me. Besides I did not care much to see them enter, or to be forced to witness their rejoicing. As soon as we got under way and about half the distance to the coast, it is a two days' trip.

We heard so many rumors of Roberts's communication having been cut off and that the war was not over, that we thought perhaps we ought to go back-- As we have no news since except that the British are in Pretoria we still do not know what to think. Personally I am glad I came away as I can do just as much for the Boers at home now as there where the British censor would have shut me off from cabling and mails are so slow. With the local knowledge I have, I hope to keep at it until it is over. But when I consider the magnitude of the misrepresentation about the burghers I feel appalled at the idea of going up against it.

One is really afraid to tell all the truth about the Boer because no one would believe you-- It is almost better to go mildly and then you may have some chance. But personally I know no cla.s.s of men I admire as much or who to-day preserve the best and oldest ideas of charity, fairness and good-will to men.

d.i.c.k.

June 29th, 1900.

DEAR MOTHER:

We are now just off Crete, and our next sight of the blue land will be Europe. It means so many things; being alone with Cecil again, instead of on a raft touching elbows with so many strangers, and it means a shop where you can buy collars, and where they put starch in your linen. Also many beautiful ladies one does not know and men in evening dress one does not know and green tables covered with gold and little green and red bits of ivory where one pa.s.ses among the tables and wonders what they would think if they knew we two had found our greatest friends in the Boer farmers, in Dutch Station Masters who gave us a corner under the telegraph table in which to sleep, with Nelson who kept the Transvaal Steam Laundry, Col. Lynch of the steerage who comes to the dividing line to beg French books from Cecil, and that we had cooked our food on sticks, drunk out of the same cups with Kaffir servants and slept on the ground when there was frost on it. It will be so strange to find that there are millions of people who do not know Komali poort, who have thought of anything else except burghers and roor-i-neks-- It seems almost disloyal to the Boers to be glad to see newspapers only an hour old instead of six weeks old, and to welcome all the tyranny of collar b.u.t.tons, scarf pins, watch chains, walking sticks and gloves even. I love them both and I can hardly believe it is true that we are to go to a real hotel with a lift and a cha.s.seur, where you cannot smoke in the dining-room. As for Aix, that I cannot believe will ever happen-- It was just a part of one's honeymoon and I refuse to cheat myself into thinking that within a week I will be riding through the lanes of the little villages, drinking red wine at Burget, watching Chas spread cheese over great hunks of bread and listening to three bands at one time. And then the joy to follow of Home and America and all that is American. Even the Custom House holds nothing but joy for me--and then "mine own people!" It has been six weeks since we have heard from you or longer, nearly two months and how I miss you and want you. It will be a happy day when Dad meets me at the wharf and I can see his blue and white tie again and his dear face under the white hat--where you and Nora will be I cannot tell, but I will seek you out. We will be happy together--so happy-- It has been the longest separation we have known and such a lot of things have happened. It will be such peace to see you and hold you once again.

d.i.c.k.