Lady Anne Barnard

I have been reading The Cape Journals of Lady Anne Barnard, 1797–1798, edited and published in 1994 for the Van Riebeeck Society (second series, no. 24) by A. M. Lewin Robinson, assisted by Margaret Lenta and Dorothy Driver. Lady Anne comes across as a cheerful, intelligent, well-read, certainly fearless, and shrewd if decidedly condescending and above all loquacious observer of Dutch society at the Cape. Her arrival coincided with the moment when Britain had not yet resolved to hold onto it permanently. Instead, she appears to have been happy enough to remain for as long as was necessary to dissuade the French from helping themselves, and, as the events of the past 110 years amply demonstrate, paid little heed to the consequences of shutting out, or, at least, not accommodating the Boers. Acting as a quasi-official hostess to the new stop-gap governor, Lord Macartney (he of the famous embassy to China, 1792–1794)—her husband, Andrew Barnard, was Lord Macartney’s colonial secretary—Lady Anne moved with ease through Cape society. Certainly she and I are in perfect agreement about the impressiveness of the topography. “The Table Mountain in Africa,” she wrote, “is, as a mountain, what St. Peters is, as a Church, ...the King of Prussia as a General... or Pitt as a Statesman, with this difference only, that it will stand the test of time better than St. Peters...the King...or the Minister...They will all in its course prove themselves to be the ‘baseless fabric’ of visions which have left scarcely the wra[c]ks of their existence but the World must open its mouth in one great Yawn ere it can so swallow itself up as to leave ‘no part behind’ of the immense mass of stone which rises perpendicular here before our eyes, loading poor Mother Earth who groans, but bears it without floundering. [p. 218]” It is impossible not to like a diarist who sews the seeds of perpetual confusion by deploying so many sets of her own, brightly sequential ellipses, and, also, incidentally, trusts her readers to pick up with ease the reference to Prospero’s marvelous “baseless fabric” speech in Act IV, sc. i of The Tempest. Lady Anne was inclined at first to regard the local Dutch population as a kind of interesting but very exotic zoological species. Perhaps the funniest passage concerns the ball given by the acting governor, General Sir James Craig, to Lord Macartney shortly after Lady Anne’s arrival at the Cape:

The Hall of reception here, which was decorated with Orange Trees on the plan of my little Vauxhall [Gardens] seemed to have devoured all the accommodations of the house, so that had Lord Macartney brought a Wife and Family with him he could not have known where to put them. The Ball room, generally used as an eating room was covered with paper a deep Orange colour, in compliment I suppose to their Prince [the Stadholder]—Indian flowers and Parrots covered it all over which no quantity of candles could have brightened. When we entered it we found it lined with two rows of Ladies, all tolerably well dressed and all “mad in white Muslin.”...

The reference this time is to The Critic, a play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1779) Act II, sc. i, where the heroine and her confidante appear respectively “mad in white satin” and “mad in white linen.” She resumed:

...I had expected to find them handsomer but here was no real beauty to be seen…no countenance…no manner…no graces…no charms…tho’ plenty of good looks & the freshness of health with a vulgar smartness accompanying it which spoke the torch of Prometheus which animated them to be made of mutton tail. They danced without halting a moment and in a sort of pit a pat tingling little Step which they have probably learnt from some beauty on her way to Bengal—upon the whole, they were such Women as were to be found in a Country Town at an assize Ball, a great way from the Capital, and saying so I do not think I disparage their appearance. What they want most is shoulders—and softness of manners—the term “a Dutch doll” was quite explained to me when I saw their make and recollected the dolls—but what is most exceptionable about them is their teeth—and the size of their feet. A Tradesman in London hearing they were very large sent a Box of Shoes on Speculation which almost put the colony in a blaze so angry were the fair ones—but day by day, a pair were sent for by a Slave in the dark till at last the shoes vanished. Mrs. Baungardt…tells this Story of the immense size of the Shoes whenever she can, her foot is pretty and her white Satin Slipper a handsome one—“Sure you do not think my voot so fery large do you Sur?” [p. 197]

It is also impossible not to be charmed by a diarist who urges upon her readers this curious line on “no real beauty” but “plenty of good looks,” to say nothing of those shoulders, the teeth, and, above all, the feet. Lady Anne has a tendency to keep coming back to the feet, right the way through her account. Upon bidding farewell to the Cape, for example, she arranged to dispense with various unnecessary belongings. “I had some neat Shoes tho’ large which I meant for Miss Slaber,” she writes, “[yet] they were too small, but her Sister in law said she was sure they would fit her. So on she forced them and I saw the Shoes were ‘lost muttons’...” I like that choice of words: forced, which manages to indicate that, large as they were, the shoes were still too small for Miss Slaber’s sister-in-law, to which the only added thought is this: What, then, were they doing in Lady Anne’s wardrobe? As with the feet, from time to time Lady Anne returned to the issue of the teeth when she remarked about another “vrow” that she had “tolerable good teeth, a very rare thing to be seen as the women here as I have before mentioned lose the front ones entirely when they pass 30, and they have no idea of supplying them.” Bearing in mind that this is an eighteenth-century Englishwoman writing, the impression is a disturbing one, but I do not myself recall noticing when I was in Cape Town and Johannesburg last year whether Afrikaner ladies are challenged in the shoulder department or if they have especially large feet—modern dentistry has presumably fixed up the teeth—so I very much fear that on my next and subsequent visits to South Africa I may find it sorely tempting to look rather more closely.

Table Mountain

At the summit of Table Mountain, 3,563 precipitious feet above sea level, there is a small plaque affixed to a stone wall that carries the inscription “Great are the works of the Lord,” Psalm 111:2a (RSV). I daresay a suitable response might be “O God, thou knowest my foolishness,” Psalm 69:5a (KJV). True, from here you grasp the full splendor of the Western Cape—the rampart-like formation of the Tafelberg itself, as narrow as it is preposterously high, and the scale of Duiwels Kop (Devil’s Peak) adjacent; the puniness of Signal Hill, and the stunning spectacle of the Twelve Apostles, which Jan van Riebeeck first named the Gevelbergen, invoking the supremely Dutch analogy of gables. This spectacular chain of mountains tumbles southwards to the Cape of Good Hope. However, Table Mountain is fearfully exposed, and long stretches of extremely low parapet beckon playful toddlers to opt for the fast way down. On the whole, for me it was not so much a Caspar David Friedrich moment as an Edvard Munch. Perhaps this is evidence of the strengthening grip of middle age. There is also the tafelkloot or “tablecloth.” This remarkable cloud from time to time forms over the length of Table Mountain and spills over the edge before dissipating, the product of moisture thrown upwards by a brisk southeaster. The French called it la perruque, the wig, which is better because it takes account of the billows, swirls, and curls. According to legend, the tablecloth was the product of a long pipe-smoking contest between the Devil and a Dutch pirate called Jan van Hunks. The cloud, it is said, serves to remind the Devil of Van Hunks’s victory—but innumerable later events suggest that it was the other way around.

Groot Constantia again

A bright but unflattering sidelight is shed by Captain Robert Percival upon the production, sale, and distribution of the fabled vin de Constance in the neighborhood of Groot Constantia. Captain Percival’s An Account of the Cape of Good Hope (London: C. and R. Baldwin, 1804) was reviewed by “Muir”—paraphrased really—in the Monthly Review in February the following year (pp. 130–143). According to Muir,

“The inferiority of most Cape wines to those of Europe proceeds from no inherent defect in the grapes, but from the slovenly practices of keeping them too near the surface of the ground, mixing both leaves and foot-stalks in the wine-press to increase the quantity of juice, pulling the fruit in an unripe state, checking the fermentation, and employing sulphur and sugar of lead for the purpose of fining. The remarks, however, apply not to the celebrated Constantia wine, concerning which our author has favoured us with some interesting information. The beautiful little village of Constantia and its vine plantations, with the Table Mountain, are considered as the principal objects of curiosity at the Cape:

‘Round the vineyards, dwelling houses, and offices, are pleasant groves of silver-tree, besides oak, elms, and other smaller plants, which completely shelter it in every direction, and hide it from the view till you wind round the hill, and come quite close to it. There are two distinct and separate plantations of vines here, each of a different colour and quality, though both are called Constantia wines. The first farm, called Great Constantia, produces the red wine of that name; and at Lesser Constantia, in its vicinity, the white is made. The farm, which alone produces this richly flavoured wine, belongs to a Dutchman, Mynheer Pluter [sic, his name was Hendrik Cloete] and has been long in his family [sic, the property changed hands twice in 1778, when Mr. Cloete’s father bought it, barely twenty-five years earlier]…

‘The quantity of wine made on the farms of Constantia, on an average, is about seventy-five leagers a year, each leager containing upwards of one hundred and fifty gallons of our measure. It is a sweet, heavy, and luscious wine, not fit to be drunk in any quantity, but chiefly suited to a dessert, as a couple of glasses are quite as much as one would desire to drink at a time. It is even here excessively dear and difficult to be procured, and must be often bespoke a considerable time. The captains of vessels touching here, who have wished to procure a quantity of it, have been frequently obliged to contract for it a year or two before the wine was made.

‘Under the Dutch government [to 1795] the farmer divided the produce into three parts; one-third he was obliged to furnish, at a certain price, to the Dutch East-India Company, who sent it to the government in Holland. Another proportion was furnished to certain of the inhabitants of Cape Town, chiefly the people in high office and power, at the same rate; and the remaining quantity he was at liberty to dispose of at what price he could to the passengers, and captains of ships of all nations. The price to strangers varied according to circumstances; when there was any deficiency in the produce of his farm, the price was always raised in proportion. The Dutch inhabitants in Cape Town, at whose houses and tables the passengers are accommodated, rarely ever produce a drop of this wine, except upon very extraordinary occasions. The Dutch indeed are sufficiently careful never to open a bottle of this valuable liquor at their tables, unless they perceive it may serve their own purposes. A rich Englishman who has made his fortune in India, and from whom they expect a handsome present of tea, sugar candy, or muslin, is honoured now and then with a bottle of Constantia at the dessert; but a British officer who is not supposed to be flush of money or valuable articles, except where he is a favourite with the lady of the house [!], may go without it all the time he remains here.

‘When a bottle of Constantia is to be bought at the Cape Town, which is but seldom the case, and even then it requires some management to procure it, it is never sold under a couple of dollars. But it generally happens that strangers, although they procure this prize, are still as far as ever from tasting real Constantia, as there is another kind of sweet, rich wine, which the Dutch frequently pass off for it.

‘One may fortunately, by dint of persuasion, get at the village of Constantia, from Mynheer Pluter [Cloete], a small cask containing about twenty gallons for ten or twelve pounds sterling; a stranger can seldom procure a larger quantity at the same time; indeed he must always be particularly recommended to take any quantity he can obtain, and also to prevent having the other heavy, sweet wine imposed upon him for Constantia. Mr. Pluter has a great number of visitors to his farm, who are equally attracted by the beauty of the place, and the desire of seeing the vine plantations, with the manner of making the wine. He is in every respect a complete Dutchman. For though used to such a variety of the first company, and gentlemen of high civil, and military situations, who always pay liberally, and whom it is strongly his interest to encourage to his farm by civility, and a suavity of manners, he is generally morose, uncouth, and churlish in his manners; and it is rare to see him in a good humor, though he gains a great profit by entertaining his occasional guests with his nectar. Money is the idol of the Dutch; yet they receive it without thanking those who bring it, or encouraging them to come again by civility and attention; and when they have once received their extravagant demand, they laugh at the folly of our countrymen for their indifference in parting with that money which is their own idol.

‘I was so unfortunate as not to find this gentleman in a good humor during the two or three visits I made to his farm, and could scarcely get a bottle of wine, or leave to look at his wine vaults and presses, not having brought any particular recommendation from his friends at the Cape, which from pride he regularly exacts. I relied however on what I knew of a Dutchman’s partiality for English customers; but on my requesting leave to see the place, he himself came out and informed me the gentleman was not at home. The other officers who were along with me, however, and who understood his disposition better, and the requisite management, got some of the slaves for a present to get us wine, and shew us the plantations and manner of manufacturing the grapes into wine; nor did we take the smallest notice of the owner’s surliness and boorish manners when we afterwards met him, but went on to satisfy our curiosity, and obtain the wine and information we wanted. If company arrives before he is dressed, and has got over his usual quantity of pipes and tobacco, he denies himself, and does not wish to admit them unless he is pretty sure of getting hard dollars; those perfectly acquainted with this, take care to let the slaves see the cash, on which he sends any quantity into an arbor in the garden, and when the bill is called, he charges two Spanish dollars a bottle, equal to 11s. 6d. British. Some allowances must certainly be made for Mynheer Pluter’s [Cloete’s] moroseness, as it is impossible for him at all times to attend to the reception of his visitors; some of whom by their teizing and forward loquacity, might render themselves extremely troublesome and disagreeable to his grave and solemn habits. His slaves are exceedingly attentive and communicative, when allowed to wait on and conduct strangers, finding it highly to their advantage, as they always get something for themselves.

‘Mr. Pluter’s wine vaults are very extensive and neatly laid out, and every thing is in much better order than at any other wine farm I have seen. In the vaults and wine cellars of the merchants at Cape Town, the wine is kept in very large butts or vessels somewhat shaped like a hogshead, but the rotundity is vastly greater in proportion. Those vessels are made of mahogany, or a wood very much resembling it, very thick, highly polished, and kept clean as our dining tables; they are bound round with great brass hoops, and the edges are secured by the same metal, so that no accident or time can damage them. Each of those butts or reservoirs, which they call leagers, though an inapplicable term, as a leager is a measure of one hundred and fifty gallons, will contain from six to seven hundred gallons. The bung-holes are covered with plates of brass hasped down and locked; the cocks are also strong and large, with locks and keys to them, so that the slaves are prevented from embezzling any of the wine, as they are never opened but in presence of one of the proprietors. Some of these leagers are elegantly carved and ornamented with various figures.’”

Captain Percival’s low opinion of Mr. Cloete, and Mr. Cloete’s presumably of each and every officer of the Royal Navy who wished to buy a few bottles of fine Constantia, and to bribe his slaves, were no doubt thrown into high relief by the outcome of the Battle of Muizenberg of 1795, the subsequent demise of the Dutch administration of the Cape, and its replacement by the British—with a brief hiatus between 1803 and 1806, when, under the Treaty of Amiens, the British handed it back to the Batavian Republic. More generally the Dutch colonists could hardly have been expected to entertain uninvited representatives of the new regime with reckless extravagance, or to forfeit a ready supply of their precious Constantia at the obviously unprofitable navy discount. On the other hand, there can be no excuse for serving, and far less selling, counterfeit Constantia—klein or groot.

Bo-Kaap

Bo-Kaap is the largely Muslim district of inner Cape Town, built against the slopes of Signal Hill, which is still today largely populated by the descendants of former slaves of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie. It is often called the “Malay” quarter, but this is really a misnomer because the local community is far more ethnically diverse than that—and in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Dutch brought slaves from all over the Indian Ocean rim, and far beyond. It is a fascinating neighborhood.

There are still numerous small mosques, each with a particular ethnic or sectarian or local, even family or community affiliation: the shafee or “Indonesian” Auwal Mosque (1798); the Palm Tree or Jan Van Boughies Mosque in Long Street (1820); the Nurul Islam Mosque at 134 Buitengracht Street (1844); the Jamia or Queen Victoria Mosque in Lower Chiappini Street (1850); The Mosque of Imam Hadjie or Mosque Shafee in Upper Chiappini Street (1859); the Hanafee Mosque on the corner of Dorp and Long Streets (1881); the Boorhaanol Mosque in Longmarket Street (1884); the Quawatul Islam Mosque in Loop Street (1892); the Nurul Mohamadia Mosque in Vos Street (1899), and the Nurul Huda Mosque in Leeuwen Street (1958), among others.

It is often extremely difficult for the non-Muslim visitor fully to grasp the subtle differences between these various mosques, but the concept of the parish as distinct from the denomination certainly seems to help. Most are very small. The little row houses in surrounding streets are almost invariably painted bright, sometimes dazzling colours, wholly delightful. I was warned to be very careful walking around Cape Town, but I never once felt remotely threatened or uneasy in Bo-Kaap. The atmosphere was friendly, relaxed, even at times genuinely sleepy.

It is slightly unclear to me why Bo-Kaap escaped the shocking fate of District 6, but I suspect that even in the dark 1960s, the area was regarded as perhaps too difficult and expensive to demolish and reorganize, or even just possibly worthy of preservation as a kind of picturesque, certainly unthreatening remnant. In a way it is tempting to use Bo-Kaap as an imaginary framework with which to imagine what the messier, rowdier, more commercial, less candy-coloured streetscape of District 6 must have been like in its heyday.

Lately a different fear has arisen, namely that processes of gentrification will eventually drive out the locals who have lived here in many cases since the mid-eighteenth century, in other words achieving by ordinary market forces (and neglect) what Apartheid entrusted to the Group Areas Act. What is especially intriguing is the persistence through the otherwise plain built environment of flourishes, arabesques, curly-cues, and hints toward gabling that you associate primarily with Cape Dutch and therefore VOC “style,” a sort of aesthetic Stockholm Syndrome, but maybe also a plucky sign of conquest also. It is impossible not to like Bo-Kaap.

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The spoons

Photograph courtesy of David Murray, www.leopardantiques.com

Before Groot Constantia I collided with Cape silver at the slave lodge, one of the oldest buildings in Cape Town, a difficult place.

The British dealt with it by rolling their government offices over the top, and later the Supreme Court. However, the record-keeping of the Dutch was so meticulous that the ghosts are chillingly present. Hundreds, thousands of names survive: Titus, Hannibal, Scipio, Moses, Solomon—choices closely allied to the naming of horses and other livestock. Fortune, Aap, Pattat, Pickle Herring, Dikbeen van de Kaap (literally thick-leg): gestures of contempt. A more systematic method gradually evolved, which at least provided Abram Solena van Java, Ticia van Mosambique, Jabinoe van Zanzibar, Nasfoe van Batavia, Claas van Malabar, Matombar van de Rio de la Goa, Cupido van Bengalen, Paria van Bali, Walale Jerrirano, and Maas van Nias the benefit of some vestigial memory of place, which leaves Angala, Thaviemma, Kafisie, Marimoreo, Schkanaljar, Onbelatie, Lubbert, Bappa Saeya, Sidie, Sabienpoin, Nareloe, Ontong, Fortamij, Tauhite, Oemar, Ringe, Baakka, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... How do you make sense of the grim legacy of this building, and the evidence it furnishes of global displacement, misery, and death?

Photograph courtesy of David Murray, www.leopardantiques.com

I suppose it is redemptive, in a way, to scramble upstairs and discover something wholly beautiful, but upon much reflection afterwards, of course there is in this a ghastly paradox. The same colonial society that was capable of inflicting such unthinkable suffering upon innocent people, upon entire communities, purely for the benefit of the shareholders of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, could at the very same time produce a species of object that attests to the remarkable aesthetic judgment of its silversmiths, their sensitivity, their instinct for volume, shape, balance, and perfect proportion—spoons!

Photograph courtesy of David Murray, www.leopardantiques.com

Until then I had been wondering where in the Cape I would find any really substantial evidence of the earliest colonists’ aesthetic engagement with their remarkable surroundings—taking into account the ferocious Protestantism they brought from Holland, and their nose for business. Upstairs at the slave lodge, of all places, the penny dropped.

Photograph courtesy of David Murray, www.leopardantiques.com

Here are glorious basting spoons (“druplepels”), serving spoons (“opskeplepels”), and teaspoons (“teelepels”) by Johannes Combrink (ca. 1781–1853), Willem Godfried Lotter (fl. 1770–1810), and Marthinus Keet (fl. 1819–1860); sauce ladels (“souslepels”); soup ladels (“soplepels”), and mustard spoons (“mosterdlepels”) by Frederik David Waldek (b. 1808), Cadier Abdol (fl. 1847–1854), Dominique Baudouin du Moulin (fl. 1822–1833), Johan Voigt (fl. 1783–1791), Lawrence Twentyman (fl. 1818–1832), and Jacobus Johannes Vos (fl. 1800), all brought from the collection of the South African National Gallery.

I suspect the plainness and the general schemata were imported from Georgian and Regency Liverpool, but the sensuousness of the bowls, their sculptural flair, their generosity without “fatness,” to say nothing of the harmony of each transition from bowl to stem, the shapeliness of the whole article, its simplicity and refinement, the avoidance of embellishment, and the mastery over form—these set the Cape silversmiths apart. By any measure these men were major artists, but—really, seriously—who were they?

District 6

Distrik Ses, the sixth municipal district, was a busy, relatively cosmopolitan neighborhood of inner Cape Town, roughly bounded by the docks, the city, and the slopes of Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak. Generations of former slaves, “coloured” migrants, Malay and other Southeast Asian and indeed non-Asian Muslims, a fair number of Xhosa, a smattering of Afrikaners and other whites lived there in relative degrees of harmony, a fairly representative cross-section of the whole of South African society. In February 1966, under the notorious Group Areas Act (No. 41 of 1950), District 6 was declared whites-only, and forced removals were announced. Commencing two years later, and proceeding in well thought-out stages, by 1982 upwards of 60,000 people were removed to the desolate Cape flats, some fifteen miles away, and the entire locality bulldozed. Only places of worship were spared. Richmond, Arundel, Frere, Clifton, Ashley, Hanover, Tennant, Godfrey, Sidney, Ayre, Cannon, Clyde, Caledon, Queen, Phillip, Gray, Combrinck, and Pedersen Streets are no more. It is as if the whole of Carlton or Darlinghurst or Fortitude Valley had simply been obliterated. Today you may still make out quite clearly what was done, because there is a sizeable portion of absolutely vacant hillside right there in the middle of Cape Town, but a little ad hoc museum nearer the centre of the city has been salvaging the collective memory of those who once lived in District 6. A large map on the floor is gradually accumulating the marks and surprisingly detailed notes of hundreds of former residents. It is an immensely moving monument, because you may walk across it, gradually absorbing the many human dimensions of each and every pulverized street corner. Which alleys were one-way? Where did Mrs. Adams live, or Mr. and Mrs. Wessels, or Mrs. De la Cruz, or Dollie and Joe Buckingham, or E. Mosoet, or L. J. Williams, or Y. Abrahams, or Sarah Louw (Anderson), the Carrs, the Schroeders, or “Walker,” or “Patsy Harry (nee van Schoor, now living in Australia, born 11/11/54)”? Where were the fish and chip shop, the Cheltenham Hotel, or Globe Soft Furnishings, or the Sheik Jossai Primary School, or the Moravian Chapel? Exactly how many steps led up to the steep corner of Hanover Square? (Seven.) What was A. J. Parker’s five-digit telephone number at 48 Stone Street? Perhaps there is no better spot than this in which to begin to grasp the hopeless desolation of Apartheid.

Groot Constantia

The menu called it “the wine that seduced the crowned heads of Europe, consoled Napoleon in exile, and was featured in the novels of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Baudelaire [sic]. Produced from Muscat de Frontignan grapes, this is a bold, rich, honeyed wine without the botrytis usually found in this style...Former President Nelson Mandela has been known to enjoy this wine.” I copied it down in the dining car somewhere near Beaufort West, ordered a second glass, and made a mental note to go to Groot Constantia when at length I returned to Cape Town—and upon my return to New Haven, Connecticut, to check up on those wonderful but slightly improbable claims.

How delightful to discover that it is all quite true. Frederick the Great definitely drank it. So did King Louis-Philippe, the Prince Regent, King William IV, and Queen Victoria also. The order books have survived. Such was its fame, Constantia made it into successive editions of The Child’s Book of Knowledge (1828). On St. Helena Count de Las Cases supplied Bonaparte with “vin de Constance,” something that so irritated the Governor that the count was eventually ordered off the island. This cannot have led Jane Austen (in Sense and Sensibility, 1811) to make Mrs. Jennings recommend to the lovelorn Marianne Dashwood a glass of the finest old Constantia wine for “its healing powers on a disappointed heart.” (“My poor husband! how fond he was of it! Whenever he had a touch of his old cholicky gout, he said it did him more good than anything else in the world.” Elinor Dashwood drinks it instead.) I do wonder, though, if just conceivably De Las Cases actually got his bright idea from Mrs. Jennings, a suitably romantic twist in the otherwise hard-nosed commercial environment of the Cape.

In The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), “whenever the Reverend Septimus fell a-musing, his good mother took it to be an infallible sign that he ‘wanted support,’ the blooming old lady made all haste to the dining-room closet, to produce from it the support embodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-made biscuit,” definitely not a marie. In Les fleurs du mal, meanwhile (XXVI “Sed non satiata,” 1857), Baudelaire says he prefers the mouth of his lover over the fine vintages of Constantia, Nuits St. Georges, and opium: “Je prefere au constance, a l’opium, aux nuits, / L’elixir de ta bouche ou l’amour se pavane.” Too creepy.

The whole question is academic. The Klein Constantia that Frederick, Napoleon, Prinny, Louis-Philippe, Austen, Queen Victoria, Baudelaire, and Dickens knew, or thought they knew, was obliterated at the end of the nineteenth century by the scourges of, first, oïdium, swiftly followed by phylloxera. The wine we drink today is a reconstruction, though certainly a delicious one.

Alas, this great house of neighboring Groot Constantia burned to the ground in the 1920s, so it too is a reconstruction, but very effective and moving nonetheless. But for a grumpy alpha male baboon, I was quite alone there.

The well-proportioned rooms are kitted out with mostly Cape Dutch furnishings in yellowwood, beefwood, satinwood, Burmese teak, amboina, ebony, elmwood, mahogany, and stinkwood (I am not kidding), as well as various early colonial pictures that come from elsewhere, above all from the collection of Alfred de Pass.

And it is through the pictures that one question above all swims into vivid focus: How was it possible that a setting as physically spectacular as that of the Cape of Good Hope, and the incomparable profiles of Devil’s Peak, Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, Signal Hill, and the Twelve Apostles, consistently failed to lift the local landscape painters to more and better results? It seems almost perverse, but more often than not eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century views across Table Bay reduce these sublime features to the character of a lumpy hillock, or a small gravel quarry in Derbyshire. Even William Hodges seems to have had considerable trouble capturing the effect. Maybe that is the answer: Some places simply defy representation, unless you are Albert Bierstadt.

On the other hand, look at the glorious proportions and sculptural vigor of Groot Constantia. Not bad for a colonial farmhouse at the farthest edge of the globe. It is in places such as this that you discover what is surprisingly scarce in the Cape, namely an adequate receptacle of any sort of aesthetic excitement among the earliest colonists. Held in check by such austere forms of Protestantism as they brought with them from Holland, those industrious East India Company people seem to have channeled everything into built forms, mostly gables, perfectly-proportioned windows and shutters; Cape silver, and successive vintages of sweet Klein Constantia, thank goodness.

Egyptian geese

There is no need for an alarm clock in Cape Town. Egyptian geese do the job. Alopochen aegyptiacus is a noisy creature, and busy. A pair alighted in the Aleppo pine right outside my hotel window well before dawn on the first day, honking for South Africa. Later, in the Company Gardens, I watched with real admiration as a mother Egyptian goose herded her brood of fluffy goslings into the rose garden to demolish the iceberg patch, undeterred by baboons. But for me the Egyptian goose also rang a loud and persistent aesthetic bell. It is so obviously the same creature that found its way into the Old-Kingdom, fourth-dynasty mastaba of Nefer-maat (2613–2494 B.C.), who was a brother of the man responsible for building the great pyramid at Giza. After at least 45 centuries descendants of those famous “geese of Meidum” in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo are alive and well, and merrily shitting all over Cape Town.

The marie biscuit

Last week when I went to meet our extraordinarily hospitable colleagues at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, they gave me morning tea—proper tea out of a pot, sitting down at a table, with cups and saucers, and a generous plate of marie biscuits (rhymes with starry). I don’t think I’ve seen a marie biscuit since early childhood, and I immediately thought of Gran in Myamyn Street. It was quite eerie: the canonical key pattern around the edge; the lettering in the middle, “MARIE”; the pale colour; the dense composition, not too hard but definitely not crumbly; the comforting, non-assertive ur-biscuit flavor—all these seemed so familiar, so vividly the same. My own little madeleine moment. There are many remarkable things about the South African National Gallery, but my delightful reunion with the marie biscuit was a special bonus.

According to various sources, the marie biscuit was invented in London in 1874 by the firm of Peek Frean & Co. to commemorate the marriage of Queen Victoria’s second son, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, to H.I.&R.H. the Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia—and by that neat set of circumstances gained traction throughout the Empire. Peek Freans had earlier achieved success with their garibaldi biscuit (1861), but as far as I can recall only the marie was ever a middle-class morning-tea staple in the suburbs of Melbourne. Prior to my visit to Cape Town I was not aware that it enjoyed the same degree of prominence in South Africa—so I imagine the marie found its way onto the bridge tables of Hong Kong, the verandahs of Candy, Peshawar, and Nairobi, and I daresay into the better tea rooms of Halifax and Christchurch also. Splendid.

According to the South Australian Register (Saturday, November 22, 1919), “The Prices Regulation Commission on Friday approved tentatively of an increase of ½d. per lb. in the price of bush, coffee, and marie biscuits. The new prices are 7d., 9d., and 9½d. per lb. respectively, with transport added for the country districts. A further investigation will be made by the commission at a later date.” How sensible, and what better indication than this of the lasting importance of the marie biscuit (the costliest of the three) as a binding agent, both gastric and imperial.