Roughing it – 1820 settlers in their own words by Ralph Goldswain: a book review

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Roughing it – 1820 settlers in their own words
By Ralph Goldswain

Tafelberg
ISBN: 9780624076865

One would have to sit and wonder who was roughing it more: the 1820 settlers that came to the shores of the Eastern Cape from England, and who started their lives here living in tents, and called their way of existence at the time “roughing it”; or Mark Twain, writing about his experiences in Humboldt, Nevada, in search of silver, in his 1872 book entitled Roughing it (selling 75 000 copies within a year of its publication). At the end of reading accounts about both, let the reader decide! However, it is outside the scope of this review to look at Twain ─ instead, it takes a look at Goldswain.

The author of Roughing it, Ralph Goldswain grew up in East London, where he attended Selbourne College and Rhodes University, after which he came to Cape Town to teach, and then proceeded to the UK to teach there. He holds two master’s degrees, one from the University of London, and the other from the University of East Anglia. He is a prolific short story writer, and his stories have been published in both the UK and the USA. Ralph Goldswain is the great-great-grandson of Jeremiah Goldswain, who came as a sawyer in the 1820 settler party from England to Grahamstown, and who penned a diary/chronicle (with a strong ability to narrate). It was eventually published as The chronicle of Jeremiah Goldswain in 2014, edited by Ralph Goldswain. It is likely that, from this editing project, Goldswain was prompted to produce Roughing it. He clearly developed a strong fascination with the actions and achievements of his ancestor, resulting in his studies on him.

Front cover of The chronicle of Jeremiah Goldswain (30° South Publishers, 2014), edited by Ralph Goldswain. For a review of it by historian John Tosh, go to http://www.brucedennill.co.za/ralph-goldswain-the-chronicle-of-jeremiah-goldswain-1820-settler/.

Ralph Goldswain, the author of Roughing it. The photograph was downloaded from https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/472748171005685760/ewZfpvrZ_400x400.jpeg
on 30 January 2017.

The term “roughing it” supposedly originated in the tent city at Algoa Bay as the newcomers arrived. The conditions could not have been glamorous. From there, they were sent to different parts of Albany in the Eastern Cape (in the Grahamstown area), although several of the parties ventured further afield, eastward, along the coast and in the direction of East London, as economic opportunities presented themselves. The city of East London, established in 1872, was eventually founded by one of the settlers, John Baillie, because he noticed that the place’s landscape and setting would produce a good river harbour for the region. It was here that Ralph Goldswain’s ancestors eventually moved, “to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by the fast-growing new town”. However, Roughing it limits itself to the first three years of arrival as the 1820 inhabitants voyaged across the seas, from the homes that now lay behind them, to their new place of abode in South Africa. It is about the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations of these experiences, told through the voices of the new arrivals, covering the years 1820–1823.

In Roughing it, Goldswain has taken a completely new angle on the history of the immigrants who came from Britain to South Africa in 1820, commonly referred to as “the 1820 settlers”. The sources which have been consulted and studied in the British Library (mostly) include copies of journals, documents and letters written by the settlers. Whilst it would have been considered mostly a nice new place to come to, for many it was “the most miserable country in the world”. The reader gets to hear the voices directly and find out why the new residents felt the way they did. The book has no real historical context for the consequences for the local inhabitants who were there at the time, or for the socio-political structures of southern African society, or for post-apartheid South Africa. Says Goldswain, “The settlement of some 4 000 Britons on the frontier, and the tragic and violent conflict that took place in that region for more than a century, contributed significantly to the creation of the fault line that has been painful for South Africans for two centuries, and that looks as though it will never be repaired.” By admission, Goldswain says, “I haven’t addressed that issue in telling the story.”

Goldswain, the writer “telling the story” from the point of view of the settlers, attempts to capture the moments as the settlers lived them. So Roughing it is not to be seen as a history book, “but rather a story, where the reader can understand the settlers’ journey, struggles and emotions by reading their own writing”. According to Goldswain, the people themselves can never capture or write this history – they are in it; they do not have the perspective required for this. They live the moment, unaware of what the next moment will bring, doing the best they can under trying circumstances. Initially, the conditions were just too harsh; the settlers lived in such a way that they had to “take root or die” (the words of one of the settlers, Henry Hare Dugmore). But we as readers can listen to their stories to formulate our ideas about their existence, as it was then. This is how Goldswain sees his book.

Goldswain explains that his book differs from those written by Victorian historians Theal and Cory, about the settlers and their lives in the Eastern Cape at the time. Theirs have a different purpose, a different era in which they wrote with a different outcome. They wrote in Victorian times, when the perceptions of historians were different. For Goldswain, Cory’s account of the 1820 settlers as heroes is misguided. By admission, there were heroic deeds performed by the settlers, but, as farmers coming to a new place at a specific time, they did what all farmers do: battle against the elements and farm the land. What Goldswain surely means, is that the settlers arrived as a group translocating in order to start afresh, making a living rather than seeking to come and conquer new territory, as in the stories of epics.

He also explains the absence of a female perspective in their histories, other than very limited accounts, as in the diary of Sophia Pigot and a handful of letters written by women. What has proved invaluable, however, are the perspectives of those on the voyage across the sea, and Sophia’s view on “lower orders” providing some information about the stratification of the society at the time. The result is that women in the story are mostly silent and “virtually invisible” in the 1820 accounts, other than some “brief patronising, patriarchal references to them in their husbands’ letters, journals and reminiscences”. This omission in the record, Goldswain explains, should not be seen as his unawareness of the important role played by 1820 settler women, but as that “their silence is just a phenomenon of their time”. Yet there are glimpses of women and their actions, such as in Wait’s party, or Sarah Allen on page 21. Page 3 of the preface explains certain challenges that women faced, and some of the tough tasks that they had to endure, such as slaughtering sheep.

According to Goldswain, the project failed when the floods came in 1823. In these three years, contact between the incoming settlers and the local inhabitants had been minimal. The colonial authorities had banned employment and trading. Furthermore, a large tract of no man’s land existed between the two groups. Matters took a different turn, however, after continual crop failure and floods set in. These caused the devastation of the region, and thus the notion of “frontier” changed from its original meaning. The locals and the newcomers started to trade among themselves. This forced the colonial authorities to consider new policies. The initial restrictions needed to be dropped so that the two groups, the settlers and the local inhabitants, could meet and trade with each other, leading to some prosperity for both groups. Goldswain explains that the wars that came between the white settlers and the local inhabitants from the 1830s, were driven by “political conflicts between the Cape government and the various Xhosa politicians”. It might be possible to consider the word “driven” to infer a catalyst, but, at the centre of the conflict, surely other factors would also need to be studied as part of the region’s complex history. However, one would need to examine the rich South African historiography for a fuller understanding of this.

Picture of Jeremiah Goldswain downloaded from http://www.grocotts.co.za/files/story_photos/1_1_13.website.jpg

After the preface by Ralph Goldswain (nine pages of contextualising the book), there are eight chapters that follow in the core of the book. Chapter 1, “Oh dreadful seasickness!”, in 32 pages tells of the conditions on the settler ships as they came across the seas from England to South Africa. Many interesting events are described: sexual high jinks, food disputes, fire hazards, ships colliding, drunken sailors, pirates, going off course, being attacked, crossing the equator and much more. Memory, entries in diaries and personalia feature in the text. Chapter 2, “Barren sand hills”, describes the arrival at the Cape, disembarking in Algoa Bay and the erecting of Canvas Town, the place where the immigrants roughed it as they took up their residence in their newly constructed homes – the trying period of their settlement in tents. One reads here of the safe arrival of the different parties, one under Pringle, another under John Baillie. Pringle’s accounts, especially, are of great importance, as he was highly literate. In addition, his collection of sketches and drawings provides an invaluable visual history of the time and place of the settlers. Here we get to read the accounts of Jeremiah Goldswain and the young Sarah Pigot. As the author emphasises, here, as in all the chapters, the voices of the settlers are the ones to come through in the text. Chapter 3, “A very beautiful country”, tells the story of the settlers leaving Algoa Bay for the interior, in the “train” of wagons. The medley of descriptions is wonderful to read: idyllic landscapes, impending danger, children at play, and the Pigots and the luxury with which this wealthy family travelled … (If so well off, why, in the first place, had they decided to leave their motherland for South Africa?)

Chapter 4, entitled “Damned old rogues”, tells the real story of in-fighting and dissatisfaction with the conditions, dispelling the romantic view of the settlers’ existence. Professor Winifred Maxwell, delivering an address in Grahamstown in 1970, explains how many of the settler parties had been attracted away from the region by the lucrative ivory trade. More than a dozen colour photographs of a wide range of scenes, ranging from pictures of the ships that came across from England, to maps, gardens, graves and houses, feature between pages 88 and 89. Dugmore’s words, “Take root or die”, make up the title for chapter 5. Coming to terms with a new life, planting crops, transport, building houses, crop failure, locusts, destitution, settler women’s experiences of the conditions, education and religion are topics that make up the chapter. Then comes chapter six and the great flood of 1823 – “The besom of destruction” – followed by the chapter on Governor Lord Charles Somerset’s autocratic behaviour, with the opening page featuring a copy of a scene from Thomas Pringle’s sketch entitled “African Sketches” (published in England in 1834).

“African Sketches” by Thomas Pringle, downloaded from
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/antiquarianauctions/main/1403518230_
PringleAfricanSketches.HRussell.2.jpg

The final chapter, “Something rich and strange”, finally appraises the venture and project of the 1820 settlers: the small group of 4 000 people “transformed this country out of all recognition”. I suppose one would need to know more about what the British High Commissioner to South Africa, Sir Arthur Snelling, delivering an address on the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the settlers, meant by “transformed”. This is a highly politically loaded term. The country was certainly never the same again.

The book is well illustrated, with sketches of personalia in sepia, which makes it effective (looks historical); is not indexed; and has an alphabetical bibliography of six pages, of which a number of entries are electronic sources, including genealogical references. Ralph Goldswain, in his work on Jeremiah Goldswain in The chronicle of Jeremiah Goldswain (2014), and now in Roughing it, has made a considerable contribution to South African settler historiography.

It’s almost sure that, by the time Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) arrived in South Africa on a visit in 1895–1896, the term “roughing it”, as he must have known it from the ’70s in the USA, had lost its original meaning. His train journey from Durban to Park Station in Johannesburg would have been far too comfortable. And the descendants of the original 1820 settlers had by now settled into a new abode, far from roughing it.

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