WCP5538

[1]

24. xii [18]95

My dear Sir

Many thanks for your friendly epistle of Nov. 5. It is good hearing that you are enlarging the temperate house: is it too much to hope that the C.B.S.,¹ and a Juctrix[?] plantarum[?]² as well as Leonum[?],³ will have a good show therein. I am pleased to see from the Bot. Mag.⁴ that you have been successful with the Hianthes[?].⁵ I sent a considerable supply, commercially, to Vilmon⁶ in the same year you had it, but to my disgust the continental gardens did not seem to care to grow it although the Gard. Church[?]⁷ made a sort of sketch to show what is was like from a drawing which cost me a pound sterling.

I have received a few more fine Anacampseros² plants and shall devote them to the next issue of Exsiccata,³ if it ever gets under weigh. I think I shall issue 50 ^nos. only by way of not keeping them hanging about so long and waiting for the leisure that comes not.

Just as you please about the newspaper para, on the[2] Cape Grd. Herbarium.⁴ It is practically correct, and only wanting in proportions. but then when you find out what curious sorts of people act as journalists in the third rate press, the only wonder is that anything beyond mere news gets into their columns.

We have just escaped a blunder of the first magnitude. A certain man (as the parable, say) one English,¹¹ who had made heaps of money on the Rand in gold shares, finding himself out of ^the Society he coveted in your metropolitan village of London, determined to come back to the scene of his successes, buy a fine estate and pose as a local magnate like the Rudds,⁵ the Joels,⁶ Stubens,¹⁴ & in a smaller way like Barney⁷ himself. He offered to buy Constantia;⁸ offered it is said £20,000 & flourished another £5000 if necessary. Well it is a fact that the powers that be wavered. Our man thought is a fine thing to make £15,000 clear profit at a swoop, and it was all but done. However there were several people who thought it a shame to barter away the first success that they had pulled off these last 3 years, to say nothing of the place being a sort of antique bit of olden time, to the first lucky stockbroker that came by, stinking of money. And so it came to pass that with wonderful unanimity the newspapers, especially the Dutch Bondbyan[?]⁹ "Ons Land",¹⁰ went for them straight, and the uncrowned[3] king of Dutcherey here, J. H.

Hofmeyr,¹¹ sent a message to ask "what were the government's intentions regarding the rumoured sale of Constantia? That was quite enough. They dropped it like a hot potato, and one inspired para in the faithful times deplored that Ons Land should have nothing better to do have [two words illeg.] mans[?] nests[?] &c. &c all is well that ends well — but it was intended to sell Constantia all the same. Mr Rhodes¹² knew nothing of it, and said some very sharp things on the subject when it came to his knowledge. Are we not a curious people?

We have another card for next year. Certain experiments of 2 years standing since, have shown that the once dreary wastes of the Cape Flats¹³ will grow table grapes up certain sorts excellency, with special chemical material treatments. Of course the physical character of the soil precludes fears of the wily phylloxera,¹⁴ and we hope to see the vine covering a good part of area of districts nearly worthless sand. We are not yet ready to make our plans public, but the experimental vintage is coming on finely. When that is exploited we shall have more to say.

I am tempted to "send you a card!" — Can anything be more childish? But a friend in Zululand sent me a card of his doing, representing a group of the nicest little brown insinbis,²³ with nothings[?] on, a very little, and I have had it copied. Colour does for clothes out here, you know, and they are innocent little brownies after all.[4]

Wallace,²⁴ the Edinbro' man, is sending his galleys of proof to be faked. We were not much struck with his abilities when he was her, and I rather think he failed to adapt his Scottish love of crops & cropping to the conditions. But it is for our interest to keep him as far as we can, and he has had an immense amount of suppetenda. I have a strong suspicion that he has handed his notes & dates over to some scribe to write up into 'Edinbro' English, with the shalls & wills all wrong, and the adverbs wandering about aimlessly. However that may be, I am grievously disappointed with the sheets submitted, and propose writing him a chapter on the Cape as a field for fruit growing [one word illeg.] effort. The mischief is — one's own personality or personal equation is apt to be affected. It flows our and like the ointment on Aaron's head¹⁵ & descends to the hem of your literary[?] garments, if you have any personality worth speaking of. And then the apple cart is upset. But I mean to try. It is pitiful to see the Boer M.L.As²⁶ preventing emigration of capable small opportunists lest they should find themselves elbowed out of their own markets. And at the same time they look on complacently at German & Polish Jews coming here at the rate of a thousand a week — none of them produces, all consumes & scrambles for the dollars. When do you ever see a Jew with his coat off, or with a shovel or a pick on his land? Certainly not in this country.

I intend to take that article of his[?] at the Cape which you were to so good as to take over in the K. Bulletin²⁷ two years ago & expand it into 20 or 25 pp. on condition of no word being altered and no trace of authorship escaping.

Time then only to wish you a very happy new year, lots of work, and time to do it in. Is not that a fair foundation for happiness.

Faithfully | P MacOwen [signature]