The Diary of Iris Vaughan “Pop had to go to Grahamstown with Mr. Jim for a case. He took me and Charles with. We started in a cape Cart at 1 oclock in the night to drive to Cookhouse to get the train. Mr. Sparks had a basket of food and we had one too. At Cookhouse we drank hot coffee and ate food out of the baskets. The stars were bright all night. Pop and Mr. Jim told us the names of many Big belt and little belt and the Cross. We came to Gt in the evening. It is a big station with lots of noise. Men were running up and down it shouting outside the train windows Boots to hell boots to hell. Why would they be shouting these swear words. Pop said No they are shouting Woods Hotel Woods hotel. The man of Woods took our port man toes and we got out and climbed in a buzz and drove in the streets all lit up with the gas lights like fairy lights on strings. Here in Gt is a museum. We saw stuffed elephants and lions and bucks the first time. We went to the Botanics garden and saw a fairy dell made by another man called Woods. It is called Woods Grotto with ferns and rocks and little water falls. It was lovely. We went to see Mr. Gowie who has a garden for selling. We also went to see the man who sells the pointer dogs. He buys the pups from us. We had our photos taken at a proper place. Charles had to stand behind the chair and behave. He did not get the chance to pull on my hair. There is a cathedrel here. It does not look up to much. Not for a cathedral. Not as nice as our Dutch church. We saw a new kind of cheese at our hotel called gorge and zola. It has worms in it. Mr. Sparks and Pop et of it. I had to get up and go out becos of the smell and the worms jumping. Even when I am old I will never eat of chees like that. Charles says he cant either. We bought a canary in a cage to take to Florence. We take it in turns to look after. In the train and in the cart it had to be covered with a cloth or it would die of fear. It sings.” “Mr. Jim” or “Mr Sparks” was Mr James Sparks, auctioneer as well as an agent-at-law and a sworn appraiser. He had a good general knowledge of the law. He was known as ‘Rooibaard’ for obvious reasons. So it is possible that this trip to Grahamstown by these two lawmen had something to do with the shooting incident we dealt with last night. The court at Grahamstown was the Eastern Cape District Court, equivalent to a Supreme Court, much higher than the court at Adelaide or Fort Beaufort. Never one to pass up an opportunity to give his children an interesting learning experience, Cecil opted to take Iris and Charles with him. Note Iris’ Afrikaans syntax in the second sentence: “He took me and Charles with”. It is one of many incidences where we see how deeply Iris’ English is influenced by Afrikaans, the language of her mother, Patty Vaughan. In 1902 the railway had not yet come to Adelaide, hence the drive to Cookhouse where, as we know from a previous post, the train ran to Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth. The stars she refers to in the night sky are Orion’s Belt and Scabbard, and the Southern Cross. Iris’ writing in this extract is dense, urgent, and full of short but vivid descriptions so typical of travelogues. She really does manage to capture Grahamstown’s highlights in very few but effectively chosen words. The lovely stone railway station (picture 1) was a busy place in those days, humming with activity. Today it is derelict and deserted, despite being a Provincial Heritage Site, as the trains stopped running in 2009. By now you will be familiar with the terms portmanteaus and buzz …. they came up in the Bedford extract. Grahamstown’s gas street lights, something Adelaide did not have, fascinated Iris and she thought them magical. Wood’s Hotel is apparently now the Crillion Conference Centre in Bathurst St, but I could find no photographs of it. The Albany Museum in Grahamstown is the oldest museum in South Africa, having been founded in 1855 (picture 2). The natural science collection that Iris and Charles were taken to was set up between 1889 and 1902, but a fire destroyed most of the exhibition material in 1942. The Botanical Gardens, now called the Makana Botanical Gardens, were established in 1853 and are the second oldest in South Africa (picture 3). “Woods Grotto” belonged to Mr John Edwin Wood (1829-1901), an architect and amateur botanist. His home ‘Fair View’ was set in a splendid garden that he called ‘The Grotto’. For many years he opened it to the public, and it must have been here that Iris visited with her father and brother. The house is now called ‘Crossways’ and is used as the residence for the headmaster at St Andrew’s College (picture 4). Messrs William and Charles Gowrie had several businesses in Grahamstown: they had a nursery in Bartholomew St and a florist business at Oaklands Park. It is apparent from these visits that Cecil Vaughan was a keen gardener. He also bred pointer dogs, as we have heard before, to indulge in his other hobby: hunting. Note how accurately Iris reports on all these people and places. She was less impressed with the Cathedral of St Michael & St George (picture 5; here the nave had not been completed) and it barely got a mention, dismissed in favour of Adelaide’s DRC! And touchingly, before they returned to Adelaide, they bought a canary for Florence, to make up for the fact that she had to remain behind at home. Don’t you just love Iris’ description of the gorgonzola cheese? I had always thought that the bit about the worms was a figment of her lively imagination; until I learnt that there is actually a version of gorgonzola called ‘Italian worm cheese’ (picture 6). This may well put you off your supper, or worse, but apparently the worm excrement enhances the flavour of the cheese! Imagine chomping on that!
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 20:58:22 +0000
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