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Updated: June 25, 2025
Where the aridity is most noticeable is in the great oak and fir woods at Groote Schuur, the lordly pleasure-house which Cecil Rhodes built for himself at Rondebosch, under the slopes of the Devil's Peak. Here, under the trees, the ground is absolutely bare; not even the faintest sign of grass, not the smallest scrap of vegetation.
These utterances were made during those more or less hasty meals at the House of Parliament when the Premier's mind was really in the Legislative Hall nearby where he was fighting for his administrative life. It was far different out at Groote Schuur, the home of the Prime Minister, located in Rondebosch, a suburb about nine miles from Capetown.
I told him I proposed to go from Capetown to the Congo and possibly to Angola. His face lighted up. "Ah, yes," he said, "I have read all about those countries. I can see them before me in my mind's eye." One night at dinner at Groote Schuur we had sweet potatoes. He asked me if they were common in America.
On the back stoep, which is the Dutch word for porch, he sat for hours gazing at this mountain which like the man himself was invested with a spirit of immensity. It was a memorable experience to be at Groote Schuur with Smuts, who has lived to see the realization of the hope of Union which thrilled always in the heart of Cecil Rhodes.
He would have liked Sir Alfred Milner to beg of him as a favour to take the direction of public affairs, and he would have desired the whole of the Dutch party to come down in corpore to Groote Schuur, to implore him to become their leader and to fight not only for them but also for the rights of President Kruger, whom he professed to ridicule and despise, but to whom he had caused assurances of sympathy to be conveyed.
At Groote Schuur, the Rhodes house near Capetown, which he left as the permanent residence of the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, I saw a prized souvenir of the Matopos conferences with the Matabeles. On the wall in Rhodes' bedroom hangs the faded picture of an old and shriveled Matabele woman.
Then, before the afternoon shadows grow too long, we drive off to "Groote Schuur," the ancient granary of the first settlers, which is now turned into a roomy, comfortable country-house, perfect as a summer residence, and securely sheltered from the "sou'-easters."
The journey by train from Groote Schuur to the City takes about fifteen minutes; by motor about a quarter of that time. But war-work is a trifle different; we were three hours on the heavily laden transport wagons before we got to the transport Galway Castle. Many of us who have moved about a good deal and are fond of the sea were looking forward to that voyage.
A member of the Upper House of Legislature, whom I used to see often, and who was a strong partisan of Rhodes, determined to seek advice outside the House, and went to see an important political personage in Cape Town, one of those who frequented Groote Schuur and who posed as one of the strongest advocates of Rhodes again becoming the head of the Government presided over by Sir Alfred Milner.
Groote Schuur, the stately house built by Cecil Rhodes for himself, and by his will bequeathed as the official home of the Premier of South Africa, became very familiar to me. These modern adaptations of the Dutch Colonial style have one marked advantage over their originals. In the old houses the stoep is merely an uncovered terrace on which the house stands.
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