Fransjohan Pretorius
Professor Emeritus
Department of Historical and Heritage Studies
University of Pretoria
PART 1
Introduction
A happy family in a lovely big house
My earliest recollection is of our house in Heidelberg in the Transvaal. It was situated in the main road next to Mr Charles Schultz’s shop. He and his family had occupied the house before us. The front door had such a large keyhole that I could peer through it and see what was happening outside. I remember the day when I saw three young black boys, each about eight years old, romping about in the street. Their faces looked very odd to me: each had a mask on and I was very frightened of them and their antics.
To the left of the backdoor was a room in which a machine of some kind stood, apparently used to make lemonade. When the small bottles were held under the tap, a round, green marble popped up from the neck of the bottle, sealing the mouth.
When years later I told my mother about it, she was astonished because I could not have been two years old then – I am two years and four days older than my brother James and at that time he hadn’t been born.
Later we moved in to a new, big white house, right opposite the home of Mr Jimmy Russell. James was born here. I remember very well that it was in this house that, for the only time in my life, my father gave me a good hiding. It happened one morning before breakfast. I can still see the big table neatly set with all the chairs pushed under it. The early morning sun shone through the window and there in the middle stood a big glass sugar bowl shaped like a wineglass. On top of the glass lid was a round knob.
Dear me, I had such a craving for that delicious white sugar. I pulled a chair out, scrambled up, knelt on my knees on the table, and grabbed as much sugar as my small fat little hand could hold. Then I slid down and ran out through the backdoor to a little dam of water under a willow tree from which hung a swing. I lay on my stomach across the seat of the swing and licked the sugar from my hand. Suddenly someone grabbed me by my long bush of curly hair and dragged me back to the breakfast table. It was my older brother Neelsie, who had been sent to fetch me. Father lifted me over his knees, picked up my dress and gave me a sound walloping with his bare hand.
*
A few years later my younger sister, Johanna, died on 24 March 1893, aged nine months. I still remember the little corpse in a pretty white dress lying in a coffin in the sitting room. Ds Van Warmelo, our minister, visited us and I poured a cup of coffee into my tiny doll’s teacup and handed it to him. I was most upset and dismayed when he opened his mouth and popped the tiny cup and saucer into it.
When Ds Van Warmelo himself died his body was embalmed, and we children also went along to pay our respects; but all I could see were the soles of his two feet.
I went to school for the first time when I was six. All I remember about it is that my brother Gert held my left hand. We walked alongside old Mr Pistorius’s house, and I was very proud of my pretty velvet dress, golden yellow in colour with a long row of white buttons down the front.
I recall also the first Dutch Reformed Church in Heidelberg. It stood just to the left of the present church building. The pulpit had a long flight of steps on each side and once, during a bazaar, we little ones romped up the one side to the top and down the other.
My parents were great friends of the Russell family. James was born about the same time as Mrs Russell died in childbirth. Mother then breast-fed both children. As a result I was called Maggie after Mr Russell’s eldest daughter instead of Margaretha, the name I was baptised with. And instead of Jacobus, James was always called Jimmy, Mr Russell’s name.
I was born in 1886; James in 1888; Robert in 1890; Johanna in 1892; Helena (Dolly) in 1894; and Henrietta (Hettie) in 1895.
When Hettie was born we were living in a house on the bank of the Suikerbosrand River. The old house’s name was Nap. I remember the extensive gardens with many fruit trees and open spaces where we children played, especially on the river banks. There were long willow branches on which we swung daringly over the water. We took the greatest delight in stealing quinces from old Uncle Thomas Smit’s hedge. We used big, flat stones from the river to shred the skins, licking the tangy juice from our fingers.
In about 1896 my father bought a property from a Mr Foord. The sitting room was furnished with attractive and fashionable pieces of furniture which were imported from Germany.
We children rose at dawn, pulled off our pillowslips and walked to the kloof in the mountains. There we chased away the monkeys and then picked and ate the edible wild berries. The rest we took home in our pillowslips.
A Mr Rawlinson used to work in Mr Schultz’s shop, and every year, probably on my birthday, he gave me a beautiful doll. When I was older, his last present to me was a sewing basket with scissors, thimble and the rest.
My first recollection of our State President, Paul Kruger, is of him seated on an ox-wagon drawn up alongside the magistrate’s office. Behind him on the wagon stood artillerymen, all smartly dressed. I don’t remember what the occasion was but I had to climb up a short ladder onto the wagon to read out an address to him. When I finished he took me on his knee and gave me a kiss. I then had to make way for Martie Human, who pinned a buttonhole to his lapel. I climbed down the ladder with my back to the audience and even before I reached the ground my brother Neelsie lifted me off the ladder, saying, “Hurry up, all the people can see your panties!” What an anticlimax to my moment of glory.
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Much happened towards the end of 1896. There was a big Sunday School conference in Heidelberg. I still have a photograph of all the ministers and teachers which was taken on the steps of the church. Mother stands beside Mrs Louw, our minister’s wife. I read an address on behalf of the Sunday Schoolchildren, and had to stand on a little box in the pulpit. Afterwards we had a big picnic in the kloof. The children had to sing and march behind my brother Cornelis, who was carrying a flag. We still have the photograph taken that day. Ds Louw stands on one side holding a big bell. Behind, in the middle, is Cornelis holding the flag on which can clearly be seen the date inscribed “1896”. Next to him is Father, holding Dolly in his arms, and Mother. The rest of us children, Gert, myself, James and Robert, can be easily recognised.
About this time, we spent months rehearsing for a concert. We three eldest children, Cornelis, Gert and I (then aged ten), took part in many of the items. The most important was a play called “The Ice Maiden”, with musical accompaniment and singing, all naturally in High Dutch. The main roles were played by Ds Louw’s son Adriaan, who took the part of Prince Oscar, and I was his betrothed, Princess Irma. We sang about an Ice Queen who lived in the snowy mountains and who captured my prince. (My friend Elsie Cronjé played the role of the Ice Queen.) The prince and his hunting party (Cornelis and Gert were two of the hunters) went into the snowy mountains to hunt.
My pretty dress was made of red velvet with a long train trimmed with white satin. Two young pages carried the train behind me. My teacher, Miss Marie van Niekerk, combed my hair high up on my head where my crown was to be placed. She was later married to Gawie Cillié of Stellenbosch.
I and my retinue of young maidens knelt at the foot of the snowy mountains and sang:
O Ice Maiden and Queen, come!
Listen to our anxious prayer.
Descend into our midst
And bring your people here.
Bare our souls we strip.
Release the prisoner, our King,
From your relentless grip.
To his people give their King.
I