VICTORIAN CULTURE AND COLONISATION
by Val Sterley
Curator, Macrorie House Museum
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VICTORIAN CULTURE AND COLONISATION |
“When Queen Victoria began her reign the map of Africa presented in the centre a great blank, representing an area as large as Australia. Africa used to be called the ‘Dark Continent’, from our ignorance of its interior, but thanks to the heroic enterprise of many explorers, of different nationalities, the darkness has to a great extent been dispelled, and the blanks on the map of Africa have been gradually filled in.” So wrote Rev. C.S. Dawe, B.A. about 1897. Of course most of the blank on the map was to be filled in with the pink of Great Britain!
It is always easy, with the cushions of years, to reinvent British colonisation to fit current trends. The idea of rather indolent even arrogant colonials lolling around, served hand and foot by numerous servants, is a popular one. The Colonists were, of course, products of the Victorian era, with all its foibles, mannerisms, insecurities and affectations. Rampant patriotism was the order of the day but the harsh, brutal reality of war was glossed over and sentimentalised.
We perceive Colonial Victorian houses as verandah-cool, high ceilinged, smelling of lavender, potpourri and furniture polish. The `broekie-lace’ railings would most probably have been painted a sickly green (thus giving the impression they have been made of copper or bronze and having a patina - wrought iron, brought out as ballast in ships, was thought rather common). Enter through the tinted-glass front door into the encaustic-tiled hall. Here, a hallstand, with silver salver to receive visiting cards, also holds hats; bowlers, toppers, bonnets. into the parlour where our modern version of Victoriana a-la Laura Ashley or Biggie Best would greet us. It would be well to pause here and consider that one of the favourite flowers of the Victorian era was the fuchsia, with its colouring of purple and vivid pink, a colour scheme which was emulated in many parlours. When towards the end of the 19th century, aniline dyes were discovered, colour arrived! it was thought quite fashionable to wear an orange dress with green frill!
The colonial Victorians, as the Zulu of that period, were very close-knit family units. Mama produced her offspring in the bedroom upstairs, where also, more often than not, her life was cut short in so doing. Grandma and Grandpa grew old and infirm and eventually died in the house. Mourning rituals were many and prolonged. But it is an undeniable fact that the Victorians handled bereavement better than we do today.
That the Victorian Colonials were eurocentric, perhaps snobbish, definitely elitist, goes without saying. That they felt they were bringing the very best in culture, religion and moral values to the underdeveloped parts of the world is undeniably true. If these lofty and oft times pretentious ideals were perceived to be officious they were nevertheless executed with indisputable fervour.
Although clothed in religion, the high moral values of the times were questionable. The Victorians lived in a world dominated by a vengeful God who would bestow upon them brimstone and fire should they stray from the straight and narrow! An era that could wrap table and piano legs with frilled covers that men may not harbor ‘certain’ ideas is incredible, to say the least. The habit of dressing small boys exactly as girls and the encouraging of toddlers to walk instead of crawl (most frightful to see one’s child grovelling on the floor like a beast!) today would amount to child abuse!
The music and drama of the Victorians also give us great opportunity to lampoon them. The dastardly villain, the simpering maid, the drunken husband. When we hear such pieces played on the pianoforte as “Warblings at Eve”, “Silent Thoughts” and “The Holy City” which are technically simple, we nevertheless often find them strangely evocative.
Colonial settlers were of an adventurous breed for the very measure of leaving the safe shores of England for a new and, widely perceived, savage land, was an act of faith. Whatever the mettle from which they were forged when they came to Africa it must have been tempered and strengthened on the anvil of their adversities.
Let us read, first hand, some of the concepts of a lady coming to the infant colony of Natal (From A Year’s housekeeping in South Africa by Lady Barker 1877):
"When one first arrives one is told, as a frightful piece of intelligence, that there are 300,000 Kafirs in Natal and only 17,000 whites. The next remark is that immigration is the cure for all evils of the country, and that we want more white people. Now it seems to me that is just what we don’t want, - at least white people of what are called the lower classes. Of course every colony is the better for the introduction of skilled labour and intelligence of every kind, no matter how impecunious it may be. But the first thing a white person of any class at all does here, is to set up Kafirs under him, whom he knocks about as much as he dares, complaining all the time of their ignorance and stupidity. Every-body turns at once into a master and an independent gentleman with black servants under him, and the result is that it is impossible to get the simplest thing properly done, for the white people are too fine, and the black ones too ignorant or too lazy. Then there is an outcry at the chronic state of muddle and discomfort we all live in. English servants directly expect two or three Kafirs under them to do their work, and really no one except ladies and gentlemen, seem to do anything, save by deputy. Now if we were only to import a small number of teachers and trained artisans of the highest procurable degree of efficiency, we could establish training schools in connection with the missions which are scattered all over the country, and which have been doing immense amount of good silently all these years. (In many circles this declaration could cause great controversy! V.S.) In this way we might gradually use up the material we have all ready to our hand in these swarming black people; and it appears to me as if it would be more likely to succeed than bringing in shiploads of ignorant, idle whites into the colony. There is no doubt about it, Natal will never be an attractive country to European immigrants, and if it is not to be fairly crowded out of the list of progressive English colonies by its black population, we must devise some scheme for bringing them into the great brotherhood of civilisation. They are undoubtedly an intelligent people, good- humoured and easy to manage...”
Makes you think doesn’t it? Then Lady Barker speaks again...
“Natal is not a nice country, for women at all events, to walk about in; you have to keep religiously to the road or track; for woe be to the rash person who ventures on the grass, though from repeated burnings all about these hills it is quite short. There is a risk of your treading on a snake, and a certainty of your treading on a frog. You will find your legs covered with small and pertinacious ticks, who have apparently taken a “header” into your flesh, and made up their minds to die sooner than let go... Then there are myriads of burrs, which cling to you in green- and brown scales of roughness, and fringe your petticoats with sticky little lumps...”
However Lady Barker ends her book thus:
“I declare I have not said anything about the weather for a long time. I cannot finish more appropriately than by one of my little meteorological reports. The skies are trying to remember how to rain. We have every now and then a cold grey day - a day which is my particular delight, it is so like an English one. Then rain, more or less heavy, and an attempt at a thunderstorm. The intervening days are brightly glaring and exceedingly hot. Everything is bursting hurriedly and luxuriantly into bloom. Every brough of my scraggy rose-bushes thickly covered with buds which grow into splendid roses after every shower. The young oaks are a mass of tender luxuriant green, and even the unpoetical bluegums try hard to assume a fresh spring tint. The fruit-trees look like large bouquets of pink blossom, and the loquat trees afford good sport in climbing and stone-throwing amid their cluster of yellow plums. On the veldt (sic) the lilies are pushing up their green sheaths and white and scarlet cups through the yet hard ground, and the black hill slopes are turning a vivid green, and the weeds are springing up in millions all over my field-like flower-beds. Spring is always lovely everywhere, but nowhere is it lovelier than fair Natal !”
So Africa eventually weaves its spell and the Colonials are absorbed into its very fabric, although never quite losing their longing for the ‘old country’ until it is submerged during succeeding generations. We may parody the Victorian Colonials but those days are remembered with ever increasing nostalgia. Regardless of how we view them, even from our advanced technological era, there is one thing we must never forget and that is whoever we are and wherever we were born our not too distant ancestors were the ambiguous Victorians !
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