Thornton Arnott Lewes to GHL, Wakkerstroom, 12 October 1868
Title
Thornton Arnott Lewes to GHL, Wakkerstroom, 12 October 1868
Title
Thornton Arnott Lewes to GHL, Wakkerstroom, 12 October 1868
Sender
Thornton Arnott Lewes
Recipient
M
Date(s)
- 1868-10-12
Place
Wakkerstroom
Letter Content
Thornton Arnott Lewes to GHL, Wakkerstroom, 12 October 1868
MS: Yale.
Fall of the Assagai Nr Wakkerstroom | October 12. 1868.
Dear Pater
You will doubtless be surprised at not having heard from either of us before, as I promised to write when we came back from our buffalo hunt in the Amaswazi country, but when we came back we heard on the road of a speculation, which had all the elements of success and which if carried out, would have made writing unnecessary. You would have seen me walk into the Priory to communicate viva voce, what this letter must now do. This speculation was as follows: When we went in hunting we took as waggon driver and companion interpreter etc. a young Dutchman named Christian Duprez. In the hunting veldt, we dropped across an old Kaffir of his, who had just come from the country of a friend of his, a chief named Maguta, who having lots of ivory and no blankets wanted to exchange the former for the latter, and had told this Kaffir (Zwartland by name) to go to the white man's country and get some man to fetch blankets to exchange for his ivory at the rate of 1 blanket (value 12/-) for 1 elephant tusk (value from £15 to 50). We of course jumped at the opportunity; directly we got home on the 5th of July, I rode down to Ladismith to see about getting the requisite blankets, and when I had got them, we went down in the waggon and fetched them. Then on the 9th of September we started, taking Zwartland for guide. Everything went well, till we got to the Amaswazi capital, where we first heard that 3 months before somebody had gone in to Maguta's for ivory; this rather frightened us, but Kaffirs are such horrid liars, that we only half believed it, and pushed onto the next Kraal, where we heard that the white man had gone to hunt, and that his waggon was standing this side of the first big river, the Umcomogazi. This reassured us. Bertie and Christian Zwartland and another of our Kaffirs and 3 that we hired at the Kraal, started each with a bundle of blankets for Maguta's leaving me to take charge of the waggon. We could not take the waggon any further or we should have lost the oxen by the tsetse or poisonous fly. Guess my disgust and astonishment upon seeing them, after 5 days absence return with the blankets! They had gone onto the Umcomogazi, where they found the waggon of the white men, who turned out to be 2 young fellows from Natal, who, we knew, were aware of the existence of the ivory, and had been aware of it for the last 3 years, without ever making any attempt to get it. Now curiously enough they had slipped away out of Natal without even their nearest neighbours, even their very brother knowing that they were gone, so quiet had they kept it, so that our intense astonishment upon finding the men, we believed snug at home, on ahead of us may easier be fancied than described.
The consequence is that instead of having money in our pockets, to enable me to go to England as we had intended, why, I will tell you farther on, we are on our last legs. Our hunting trip was a failure, we had heavy expenses, and the buffalo skins we got fetched literally nothing, and the consequences of the trip: 9 days trekking with the oxen through a country without a mouthful of grass, were that a lot of our oxen died from exhaustion. Not daunted by this, having the ivory in view we scraped together every head of cattle we could muster, sold them at a fearful sacrifice: oxen that had cost us £6.10, and £5, for £3 each etc. etc. merely to raise the wind, and to enable us to get sufficient credit, so that by paying part cash and getting the remainder on credit, we obtained the necessary blankets, beads etc. necessary for the Kaffirs and our outfit for ourselves. Besides this, there was our driver Christian who had told us about the ivory, and to whom we were going to give a share, which we changed to giving him £15 per month, as he is poor, has a wife and family to keep and preferred a small certainty to a large uncertainty, although the chances were every way in favour of success. So that what with Kaffirs we hired etc. etc. our expenses have been very heavy. We therefore write now to ask you to lend us £200, for one year. It is not that our debts amount to that, about £120 or £130 would cover them, but to enable us once more to start, cash in hand, we should like a surplus.
The fact is this: Zwartland has gone to Maguta's to tell him that he has behaved very badly, sending him to fetch white men, and then trading his ivory away with other people, that we shall be in again in the beginning of May (the elephant country where Maguta lives is uninhabitable by white men from November to May owing to the fever) and that he is to keep all the ivory his hunters shoot for us. We have also hired Kaffir hunters to shoot elephants for us during the summer, supplying them with guns, powder, bullets and caps, so that when we go in again, we shall find a lot of ivory ready for us.
Our plan is therefore to start again from here on the 20th of April, get to Magutas, trade what ivory he has, collect what our hunters have got, hire a lot more, about 20 Kaffir hunters, and stay in ourselves shooting elephants and hippopotomuses till August, when the grass between Maguta's and our farm will be good and the oxen be able to trek.
One lives and learns. We should have done this now, only we were too late in the season and these Natal men have got all the hunting Kaffirs for the season. However next year we shall take good care to be in before them. In the first place we are much nearer, in the second they don't know that we know anything about the ivory.
You will now understand what we want the balance of the £200 for, to get blankets, powder, lead, guns, and provisions for the 4 months. If therefore you can oblige us with the loan we shall be very much obliged indeed, as it will be a great help, and we will repay it when we come back from our great trip next year.
So much for that: the next I am sorry to say is again a demand for money but of such vital importance that I do not hesitate in applying to you. I had hoped to have been able to come home to England with the proceeds of the trip but "l'homme propose et Dieu dispose." The fact is this, that with this stone in the kidney and other internal complications, for there is something serious besides the stone, I am gradually wasting away. I eat almost nothing, nothing but delicacies tempt me, and those we can't afford. I can't do a stroke of work of any sort, I can hardly stoop to touch the ground, I can't sit up for half an hour, all I can do is lie down, then get up and walk about for half an hour, then lie down again. Every evening about sundown when the paroxysms come on, I can hardly turn myself over, and if I want to sit up, I must push myself up with my hands, from my shoulder blades downwards I am powerless; and I have a sort of shooting compression of the chest, which makes breathing difficult, and makes me shout with pain. And as this lasts usually for 2 to 3 hours, and sometimes there is more or less pain all night long, so that I get no sleep, and sometimes I have slight attacks in the day time -- you can fancy that my life is not a pleasant one. In fact if I were 50 instead of 24, I should have quietly walked some fine day over our waterfall; but while there is youth there is hope; and I hope and trust that a trip to England, to consult one or two of the best doctors may do me good; the change and sea voyage would probably do me good, but at any rate I should like to know from the best medical authorities, whether any thing can be done for me, whether I am to remain a cripple all my life, in short, what my future is to be. I know this trip, seeing physicians etc, perhaps undergoing some operation will cost a great deal of money, but -- que voulez vous. It is my last chance in life, and you are the only person I can apply to, so I don't hesitate to make the application. Bertie, who would write but that he is laid up with rheumatic toothache (all his teeth are rotting away as Lintol predicted) is entirely of the same opinion as myself, for I am no earthly good on the farm as I am, I only take a deal of waiting on.
Hoping to hear from you at once, with love to Mutter, Grandmamma and everybody else, I remain, Dear Pater 820
Your affectionate Son
Thornton A. Lewes.
MS: Yale.
Fall of the Assagai Nr Wakkerstroom | October 12. 1868.
Dear Pater
You will doubtless be surprised at not having heard from either of us before, as I promised to write when we came back from our buffalo hunt in the Amaswazi country, but when we came back we heard on the road of a speculation, which had all the elements of success and which if carried out, would have made writing unnecessary. You would have seen me walk into the Priory to communicate viva voce, what this letter must now do. This speculation was as follows: When we went in hunting we took as waggon driver and companion interpreter etc. a young Dutchman named Christian Duprez. In the hunting veldt, we dropped across an old Kaffir of his, who had just come from the country of a friend of his, a chief named Maguta, who having lots of ivory and no blankets wanted to exchange the former for the latter, and had told this Kaffir (Zwartland by name) to go to the white man's country and get some man to fetch blankets to exchange for his ivory at the rate of 1 blanket (value 12/-) for 1 elephant tusk (value from £15 to 50). We of course jumped at the opportunity; directly we got home on the 5th of July, I rode down to Ladismith to see about getting the requisite blankets, and when I had got them, we went down in the waggon and fetched them. Then on the 9th of September we started, taking Zwartland for guide. Everything went well, till we got to the Amaswazi capital, where we first heard that 3 months before somebody had gone in to Maguta's for ivory; this rather frightened us, but Kaffirs are such horrid liars, that we only half believed it, and pushed onto the next Kraal, where we heard that the white man had gone to hunt, and that his waggon was standing this side of the first big river, the Umcomogazi. This reassured us. Bertie and Christian Zwartland and another of our Kaffirs and 3 that we hired at the Kraal, started each with a bundle of blankets for Maguta's leaving me to take charge of the waggon. We could not take the waggon any further or we should have lost the oxen by the tsetse or poisonous fly. Guess my disgust and astonishment upon seeing them, after 5 days absence return with the blankets! They had gone onto the Umcomogazi, where they found the waggon of the white men, who turned out to be 2 young fellows from Natal, who, we knew, were aware of the existence of the ivory, and had been aware of it for the last 3 years, without ever making any attempt to get it. Now curiously enough they had slipped away out of Natal without even their nearest neighbours, even their very brother knowing that they were gone, so quiet had they kept it, so that our intense astonishment upon finding the men, we believed snug at home, on ahead of us may easier be fancied than described.
The consequence is that instead of having money in our pockets, to enable me to go to England as we had intended, why, I will tell you farther on, we are on our last legs. Our hunting trip was a failure, we had heavy expenses, and the buffalo skins we got fetched literally nothing, and the consequences of the trip: 9 days trekking with the oxen through a country without a mouthful of grass, were that a lot of our oxen died from exhaustion. Not daunted by this, having the ivory in view we scraped together every head of cattle we could muster, sold them at a fearful sacrifice: oxen that had cost us £6.10, and £5, for £3 each etc. etc. merely to raise the wind, and to enable us to get sufficient credit, so that by paying part cash and getting the remainder on credit, we obtained the necessary blankets, beads etc. necessary for the Kaffirs and our outfit for ourselves. Besides this, there was our driver Christian who had told us about the ivory, and to whom we were going to give a share, which we changed to giving him £15 per month, as he is poor, has a wife and family to keep and preferred a small certainty to a large uncertainty, although the chances were every way in favour of success. So that what with Kaffirs we hired etc. etc. our expenses have been very heavy. We therefore write now to ask you to lend us £200, for one year. It is not that our debts amount to that, about £120 or £130 would cover them, but to enable us once more to start, cash in hand, we should like a surplus.
The fact is this: Zwartland has gone to Maguta's to tell him that he has behaved very badly, sending him to fetch white men, and then trading his ivory away with other people, that we shall be in again in the beginning of May (the elephant country where Maguta lives is uninhabitable by white men from November to May owing to the fever) and that he is to keep all the ivory his hunters shoot for us. We have also hired Kaffir hunters to shoot elephants for us during the summer, supplying them with guns, powder, bullets and caps, so that when we go in again, we shall find a lot of ivory ready for us.
Our plan is therefore to start again from here on the 20th of April, get to Magutas, trade what ivory he has, collect what our hunters have got, hire a lot more, about 20 Kaffir hunters, and stay in ourselves shooting elephants and hippopotomuses till August, when the grass between Maguta's and our farm will be good and the oxen be able to trek.
One lives and learns. We should have done this now, only we were too late in the season and these Natal men have got all the hunting Kaffirs for the season. However next year we shall take good care to be in before them. In the first place we are much nearer, in the second they don't know that we know anything about the ivory.
You will now understand what we want the balance of the £200 for, to get blankets, powder, lead, guns, and provisions for the 4 months. If therefore you can oblige us with the loan we shall be very much obliged indeed, as it will be a great help, and we will repay it when we come back from our great trip next year.
So much for that: the next I am sorry to say is again a demand for money but of such vital importance that I do not hesitate in applying to you. I had hoped to have been able to come home to England with the proceeds of the trip but "l'homme propose et Dieu dispose." The fact is this, that with this stone in the kidney and other internal complications, for there is something serious besides the stone, I am gradually wasting away. I eat almost nothing, nothing but delicacies tempt me, and those we can't afford. I can't do a stroke of work of any sort, I can hardly stoop to touch the ground, I can't sit up for half an hour, all I can do is lie down, then get up and walk about for half an hour, then lie down again. Every evening about sundown when the paroxysms come on, I can hardly turn myself over, and if I want to sit up, I must push myself up with my hands, from my shoulder blades downwards I am powerless; and I have a sort of shooting compression of the chest, which makes breathing difficult, and makes me shout with pain. And as this lasts usually for 2 to 3 hours, and sometimes there is more or less pain all night long, so that I get no sleep, and sometimes I have slight attacks in the day time -- you can fancy that my life is not a pleasant one. In fact if I were 50 instead of 24, I should have quietly walked some fine day over our waterfall; but while there is youth there is hope; and I hope and trust that a trip to England, to consult one or two of the best doctors may do me good; the change and sea voyage would probably do me good, but at any rate I should like to know from the best medical authorities, whether any thing can be done for me, whether I am to remain a cripple all my life, in short, what my future is to be. I know this trip, seeing physicians etc, perhaps undergoing some operation will cost a great deal of money, but -- que voulez vous. It is my last chance in life, and you are the only person I can apply to, so I don't hesitate to make the application. Bertie, who would write but that he is laid up with rheumatic toothache (all his teeth are rotting away as Lintol predicted) is entirely of the same opinion as myself, for I am no earthly good on the farm as I am, I only take a deal of waiting on.
Hoping to hear from you at once, with love to Mutter, Grandmamma and everybody else, I remain, Dear Pater 820
Your affectionate Son
Thornton A. Lewes.
Signature
Thornton A. Lewes.
Citation
Thornton Arnott Lewes, Thornton Arnott Lewes to GHL, Wakkerstroom, 12 October 1868, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/95625