The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories

by Herman Charles Bosman

  But with Marie Dupreez it was different.

  Marie Dupreez, after she came back from Europe, spoke a great deal about how unhappy a person with a sensitive nature could be over certain aspects of life in the Marico.

  We were not unwilling to agree with her.

  “When I woke up that morning at Nietverdiend,” Willie Prins­loo said to Marie during a party at the Dupreez homestead, “and I found that I couldn’t inspan my oxen because during the night the Mlapi kaffirs had stolen my trek-chain – well, to a person with a sensitive nature, I can’t tell you how unhappy I felt about the Marico.”

  Marie said that was the sort of thing that made her ill, almost.

  “It’s always the same kind of conversation that you have to listen to, day in and day out,” Marie Dupreez said. “A farmer outspans his oxen for the night. And next morning, when he has to move on, the kaffirs have stolen his trek-chain. I don’t know how often I have heard that same story. Why can’t something different ever happen? Why can’t a kaffir think of stealing something else, for a change?”

  “Yes,” Jurie Bekker interjected, quickly, “why can’t they steal a clown, say?”

  Thereupon Marie explained that it was not a clown that had got stolen in that Italian song that she sang in the schoolroom, but a girl who had belonged to a clown. And so several of us said, speaking at the same time, that she couldn’t have been much of a girl, anyway, belonging to a clown. We said we might be behind the times and so forth, here in the Bushveld, but we had seen clowns in the circus in Zeerust, and we could imagine what a clown’s girl must be like, with her nose painted all red.

  I must admit, however, that we men enjoyed Marie’s wild talk. We preferred it to her singing, anyway. And the women also listened quite indulgently.

  Shortly afterwards Marie Dupreez made a remark that hurt me, a little.

  “People here in the Marico say all the same things over and over again,” Marie announced. “Nobody ever says anything new. You all talk just like the people in Oom Schalk Lourens’s stories. Whenever we have visitors it’s always the same thing. If it’s a husband and wife, it will be the man who first starts talking. And he’ll say that his Afrikaner cattle are in a bad way with the heart-water. Even though he drives his cattle straight out on to the veld with the first frost, and he keeps to regular seven-day dipping, he just can’t get rid of the heart-water ticks.”

  Marie Dupreez paused. None of us said anything, at first. I only know that for myself I thought this much: I thought that, even though I dip my cattle only when the Government inspector from Onderstepoort is in the neighbourhood, I still lose just as many Afrikaner beasts from the heart-water as any of the farmers hereabouts who go in for the seven-day dipping.

  “They should dip the Onderstepoort inspector every seven days,” Jurie Bekker called out suddenly, expressing all our feelings.

  “And they should drive the Onderstepoort inspector straight out on to the veld first with the first frost,” Willie Prinsloo added.

  We got pretty worked up, I can tell you.

  “And it’s the same with the women,” Marie Dupreez went on. “Do they ever discuss books or fashion or music? No. They also talk just like those simple Boer women that Oom Schalk Lourens’s head is so full of. They talk about the amount of Kalahari sand that the Indian in the store at Ramoutsa mixed with the last bag of yellow sugar they bought off him. You know, I have heard that same thing so often, I am surprised that there is any sand at all left in the Kalahari desert, the way that Indian uses it all up.”

  Those of us who were in the Dupreez voorkamer that evening, in spite of our amusement, also felt sad at the thought of how Marie Dupreez had altered from her natural self, like a seedling that has been transplanted too often in different kinds of soil.

  But we felt that Marie should not be blamed too much. For one thing, her mother had been taught at that women’s college at the Cape. And her father had also got his native knowledge of the soil pretty mixed up, in his own way. It was said that he was by now even trying to find diamonds in the turfgrond on his farm. I could just imagine how that must be clogging up his sieves.

  “One thing I am glad about, though,” Marie said after a pause, “is that since my return from Europe I have not yet come across a Marico girl who wears a selon’s rose in her hair to make herself look more attractive to a young man – as happens time after time in Oom Schalk’s stories.”

  This remark of Marie’s gave a new turn to the conversation, and I felt relieved. For a moment I had feared that Marie Dupreez was also becoming addicted to the kind of Bushveld conversation that she complained about, and that she, too, was beginning to say the same thing over and over again.

  Several women started talking, after that, about how hard it was to get flowers to grow in the Marico, on account of the prolonged droughts. The most they could hope for was to keep a bush of selon’s roses alive near the kitchen door. It was a flower that seemed, if anything, to thrive on harsh sunlight and soapy dishwater and Marico earth, the women said.

  Some time later we learnt that Theunis Dupreez, Marie’s father, was giving up active farming, because of his rheumatics. We said, of course, that we knew how he had got his rheumatics. Through having spent so much time in all kinds of weather, we said, walking about the vlei in search of a new kind of sticky soil to put through his sieves.

  Consequently, Theunis Dupreez engaged a young fellow, Joac­h­em Bonthuys, to come and work on his farm as a bywoner. Joachem was a nephew of Philippus Bonthuys, and I was at the post office when he arrived at Drogedal, on the lorry from Zeerust, with Theunis Dupreez and his daughter, Marie, there to meet him.

  Joachem Bonthuys’s appearance was not very prepossessing, I thought. He shook hands somewhat awkwardly with the farmers who had come to meet the lorry to collect their milk-cans. Joachem did not seem to have much to say for himself, either, until Theunis Dupreez, his new employer, asked him what his journey up from Zeerust had been like.

  “The veld is dry all the way,” he replied. “And I’ve never seen so much heart-water in Afrikaner herds. They should dip their cattle every seven days.”

  Joachem Bonthuys spoke at great length, then, and I could not help smiling to myself when I saw Marie Dupreez turn away. In that moment my feelings also grew warmer towards Joachem. I felt that, at all events, he was not the kind of young man who would go and sing foreign songs under a respectable Boer girl’s window.

  All this brings me back to what I was saying about an old song and an old story. For it was quite a while before I again had occasion to visit the Dupreez farm. And when I sat smoking on the stoep with Theunis Dupreez it was just like an old story to hear him talk about his rheumatics.

  Marie came out on to the stoep with a tray to bring us our coffee. – Yes, you’ve heard all that before, the same sort of thing. The same stoep. The same tray. – And for that reason, when she held the glass bowl out towards me, Marie Dupreez apologised for the yellow sugar.

  “It’s full of Kalahari sand, Oom Schalk,” she said. “It’s that Indian at Ramoutsa.”

  And when she turned to go back into the kitchen, leaving the two old men to their stories, it was not difficult for me to guess who the young man was for whom she was wearing a selon’s rose pinned in her dark hair.

  Bosman’s Illustrators

  Abe Berry (1911–1992) was a distinguished cartoonist and a lifelong friend of Herman Charles Bosman. A staunch opponent of the National Party regime, he did many satirical cartoons of prominent members of the party, but also found time to depict life in South Africa’s rural areas, and often undertook considerable research before attempting to draw cartoons that had a strong historical resonance. His ‘Canterberry Tales’ (after Chaucer) and ‘Berry Tapestry’ (after the Bayeux Tapestry) illustrations are examples of this. Some of his satirical cartoons were collected in Abe Berry’s South Africa and How It Works (1980). A skilled watercolourist, his drawings and paintings of ‘old Johannesburg’ appeared in Abe Berr
y’s Johannesburg (1982). He also has the distinction of having been featured in Punch magazine no fewer than ten times. His illustrations of Bosman’s stories appeared in On Parade (1948–1951) and Trek (1949), and one of his cartoons of Bosman addressing a riotous meeting on the City Hall steps has been preserved.

  Wilfrid L. W. Cross emerged as a political cartoonist in the late 1930s. Having trained as a civil engineer and architectural draughtsman, he moved into the world of commercial art and broadcasting. He worked chiefly for The Rand Daily Mail and later for The Forum. When Bosman returned from London in 1940 the two both contributed to The Forum, and also worked together on The Sunday Express – Bosman as a chief sub and Cross as the paper’s weekly political cartoonist. He is the most prolific illustrator of Bosman’s Oom Schalk Lourens stories, contributing a dozen works to The South African Opinion between 1935 and 1945. His iconic, cubist-influenced image of two men sitting around a camp-fire on the veld (for “Starlight on the Veld”, The South African Opinion, January 1946) was to feature on the dust-jacket of the first edition of Mafeking Road in 1947. Of his work Bosman wrote in one of his art criticism columns: “He is charged with individuality, with the underlying bitterness of one who, clutching at a star, has found in the end fantasy.”

  Donald Harris (b. 1924) studied art during World War Two at the Witwatersrand Technical College under Van Essche, where he met Ella Manson, Bosman’s second wife. After Bosman divorced Ella in 1944, Harris married her, and she became Harris’s chief artistic subject for the short period that the two were together. After Ella’s sudden death in 1945, Harris held an exhibition in Johannesburg at the Gallerie des Beaux Arts devoted almost entirely to drawings and paintings of her. Some years later, Harris remarried and left for Madeira. He illustrated the reprinted version of Bosman’s famous “Mafeking Road” for the December 1944 issue of The South African Opinion, and provided two pen-and-ink drawings for “The Wind in the Tree” (The South African Opinion, January 1945). Bosman wrote in a review column of a Harris show at Herman Wald’s studio in March 1946, “I am fairly certain that Mr Harris does his best work only when he retains and not when he suppresses his sense of humour.”

  John Halkett Jackson (1919–1981) grew up near Naboom­spruit in the former Northern Transvaal and began drawing scenes on his parents’ farm at an early age. He had no formal education, but demonstrated his artistic talent very early on, his political cartoons first appearing in the late 1930s. He served in North and East Africa during World War Two, providing humo­r­ous sketches of army life for The Nongqai. From 1945 he worked as a freelance artist, mainly for The Outspan, Lantern, Spotlight and Personality, the last of which featured his illustrations of some of Bosman’s posthumously published stories in the late 1960s.

  Albert Edward Mason (1895–1950) was born in Britain and trained as an artist at St. Martin’s Lane Academy and Birkbeck College, University of London. Apart from a period of service during the First World War in France, he lived in South Africa from 1914 onwards. He spent time on the diamond diggings in Kimberley between 1918 and 1920, but thereafter resided in Johan­nesburg. A retiring person by nature, he was chiefly a portrait and landscape painter, but also painted oils of Johannesburg’s mining activities in the 1930s and 40s. He was appointed to the staff of the newly established Witwatersrand Technical School of Art, where he taught Commercial Art and Poster design. His work was exhibited as part of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions in London both in 1939 and 1948. He provided striking illustrations of “The Rooinek”, which was originally published in two parts in The Touleier (January–February and March 1931). When he exhibited at Bothner’s Gallery in Johannesburg in 1945, Bosman wrote of him that “there is a lot about his work that entitles him to be regarded as one of the great painters of his time.”

  René Shapshak (1899–1988) was born in France and trained at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. He came to South Africa in the mid-1930s and was one of the founding members of the Transvaal Art Society. A well-known decorator, he is remembered primarily for his sculptures that were designed to give the mid-century SABC building in Commissioner Street, Johannesburg, its progressive art deco look. He was considered as one of the alternative artists to those sanctioned by the South African Association of Arts, together with other contributors to the post-war South African Opinion, on which he was a regular. He illustrated “Con­certinas and Confetti” for the April 1944 issue of The South African Opinion. In the 1940s and early 50s he provided training to a number of emerging black artists at his home in Yeoville, Johannes­burg. In 1953, with South Africa’s political situation worsening, he left the country for New York.

  Richard John Templeton Smith (b. 1947) was something of a teenage prodigy, his sharp-edged satirical caricatures first ap­pearing in 1966. Born in Scotland, he came to South Africa with his parents in 1958, and was educated at Queen’s College and Witwatersrand Technical College, where his cartoons appeared in the student publication Wits-Wits. He did freelance work in the late 1960s for The Sunday Express and The Star, before moving to London in 1970. Returning to South Africa in 1972, he produced cartoons for The Rand Daily Mail, The Sunday Tribune, The Financial Mail and The Sunday Express, where his illustrations for a series of republished Bosman stories appeared in 1979.

  Reginald Turvey (1882–1968) was born on a farm in Lady­brand near the border of Lesotho (then Basutoland), the descendent of an original 1820 settler. His schooling at Grey College in Bloemfontein was interrupted when he was sent to London for art training in 1903, where he attended the Slade School of Art. He excelled early on at portrait painting, but also did striking landscapes in oils. After a short trip to Japan, he returned to South Africa in 1910 to work on the family farm. When his father died, Turvey went back to England, settling in St. Ives in 1917, where he worked successfully as an artist for the next twenty-three years. He joined the Bahá’í faith in 1935, a belief that he was to hold to (and that influenced his art) for the rest of his life. In 1940 he left war-time England once more for South Africa, where he exhibited and sold his work, his reputation as an artist growing steadily with the passing years. When he exhibited at the Constantia Gallery in 1947 Bosman commented that the “aspect of his work that interests me very strongly at the moment is related to his incursions into a fascinating world of his own, that is midway between fantasy and reality.” His numerous illustrations of Bos­man’s stories appeared in The South African Opinion in 1946, and a posthumous selection of his work, entitled Life and Art, was published in 1986.

  Maurice van Essche (1906–1977) was born in Antwerp and trained under Henri Matisse. He lived in South Africa from 1940 to 1971. He was a versatile painter of portraits, landscapes and still lifes, working in oil, gouache and watercolour. He lectured at the Witwatersrand Technical College between 1943 and 1945, where he occasionally employed Bosman’s second wife, Ella Manson, as a model, and in this way came to know of her husband’s work. He also taught at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts (University of Cape Town) between 1964 and 1970. From 1971 until his death he lived in Thonon, on Lake Geneva, France. His illustration of one of Bosman’s most famous stories, “In the Withaak’s Shade”, ap­peared in The South African Opinion in March 1945. He also illustrated “Camp-fires at Nagmaal” (The South African Opinion, June 1945), “Brown Mamba” (The South African Opinion, August 1945) and some of Bosman’s poetry. When Van Essche exhibited at Gerrit Bakker’s Constantia Gallery, Bosman enthused that he was “in a class considerably above the general run of painters who hold exhibitions.”

  Henry Edward Winder (1897–1982) was born in London. He served in the Home Counties Brigades in the First World War, but was badly wounded in 1916 and spent nearly three years in hospital. He later attended the Slade School of Art before moving to South Africa in 1920, where he worked on The Rand Daily Mail and The Sunday Times. In the 1930s he freelanced for The Outspan, The Nongqai and The Tatler. It was at this time that he was ap­proached by Bosman and Jean Blignaut (co-editors of the newly lau
nched The Touleier) to provide illustrations for their literary monthly. He duly provided a striking cover for the first issue, and also has the distinction of illustrating Bosman’s first Oom Schalk Lourens story, “Makapan’s Caves”, for the same issue of the magazine (December 1930). He went on to have a long and distinguished career, which included being commissioned to do anato­mical drawings for Professor Raymond Dart, the famous anato­mist and paleontologist based at the University of the Wit­watersrand.

  Notes on the Stories

  1. The Touleier Years (1930–31)

  When Bosman emerged from prison in September 1930 he recuperated for a month on his uncle’s farm at Bronkhorstspruit, east of Pretoria. Thereafter he moved back to Johannesburg, where he teamed up with John Webb and Aegidius Jean Blignaut to launch the monthly literary journal The Touleier. The first three issues of the periodical (December 1930, January–February 1931 and March 1931) contained Bosman’s first two Schalk Lourens stories, “Maka­pan’s Caves” and “The Rooinek” (in two instalments). Grandly conceived as a successor to the famous Campbell–­Plomer–Van der Post Voorslag of 1926, The Touleier was very much a showcase for Bosman’s burgeoning talent, and the first issue also contained reviews and a poem by him. After just five numbers, however, the periodical sank under the weight of its overheads and debts, but not before it had published another Oom Schalk classic, “The Gramophone” (in May 1931). Webb attempted to resuscitate the venture under the name The African Magazine, which duly carried Bosman’s “Karel Flysman” in its first and only number (in June 1931). In between The Touleier and The African Magazine, Bosman and Blignaut seized the opportunity occasioned by the demise of Stephen Black’s The Sjambok (and shortly thereafter of the man himself) to launch their New L. S. D. (‘Life, Sport and Drama’), named after another ill-fated Black periodical of 1913–14. The New L. S. D. carried two little-known Schalk Lourens stories, “Francina Malherbe” and “The Ramoutsa Road”, as well as the very sketchy “Veld Fire”, omitted here as it is not certain that Oom Schalk is the narrator.