A Bosman Companion: from Abjaterskop to Zwingli

By Craig MacKenzie

Herman Charles Bosman is one of South Africa’s best-known authors and story-tellers, and his creation Oom Schalk Lourens, an old Boer farmer, is undoubtedly one of the best-loved characters in South African literature. This very handy reference work on all aspects of Bosman’s life and work consists of short, informative, alphabetically arranged entries. Entries on his life (childhood, studies, the murder of his step-brother, prison, family, lovers, wives, friends, work associates, etc.) are interleaved with entries on his work (characters in stories, short plot summaries of each story, explanations to non-Afrikaans readers of all Afrikaans terms, etc) and on prominent critics and dramatists of Bosman’s work.The book includes photographs, maps, illustrations from the magazines in which his stories appeared, a chronology (with major events in SA history and key events in Bosman’s life and work), a classified contents list, and a bibliography of all Bosman’s works (first publications).Also included is an 8 page colour section of Bosman’s paintings and drawings. Discovered by Craig MacKenzie while doing research on Bosman at the Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, Bosman’s art has never been published before and is one of the least-known aspects of his life and work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Human & Rousseau
• Release date: Nov 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9780798159142

Book preview

A Bosman Companion

Craig MacKenzie and Tim Sandham

Human & Rousseau

Acknowledgments: The authors are grateful to the following people for valuable assistance with various aspects of the book: Gerhard Burger, Angus Douglas, Thulani Maseko, Koos Olivier, Mark Sandham, Caroline Sillman and Egbert and Santa van Bart.

HCB Title page.tif

Bosman in 1931 (photo: Eli Weinberg)

A Note to the Reader

The purpose of this companion is to be a comprehensive guide to Herman Charles Bosman’s life and works, and to people and places associated with him. It grew out of conversations between the authors about the kinds of questions posed to us by the audiences to which we give Bosman-related talks, plays and presentations.

We have attempted to provide a brief description of, and illustrative extract from, every single one of Bosman’s hundreds of stories, sketches, essays and novels. We have also included photographs and illustrations to provide the kind of detail and interest words simply cannot, and the reader’s attention is also drawn to the detailed maps at the end of the book.

There is also a Classified Contents List at the end of the book as a ‘quick index’: the reader can see at a glance which aspects of Bosman’s life are covered, for example, without needing to trawl through the entire alphabetical listing. A chronology has been provided in order to place Bosman’s life and work in an illuminating context.

In the interests of economy and focus, we have restricted our entries to items of interest and pertinence to Bosman and his world.

The Companion has five main kinds of entries:

1. Biographical entries on HCB, e.g. education (school)

2. People (fictional and historical)

Fictional (characters in HCB’s work), e.g. Bekker, Oupa (Sarel)

Historical (people who knew HCB or who have had something to do with his life and work), e.g. Bernstein, Edgar (1912–74)

3. References to stories/texts, e.g. In the Withaak’s Shade (MR: 34)

4. Places (known by HCB or in some way connected to him) e.g. Heimweeberg (Afr.)

5. Unusual/distinctive language, e.g. gramadoelas (Afr. slang)

The standard reference is to the 14 volumes of the Anniversary Edition of Herman Charles Bosman (1997-2005), and these references occur at the end of many of the entries. In the interests of economy, the page numbers that follow such references indicate the first page of the item only.

Certain words and phrases occur repeatedly throughout Bosman’s stories, and we do not therefore provide references to all such instances. One or two illustrative examples from the works have to suffice.

Words that appear in small caps (e.g. ‘Zeerust’ under ‘Heimweeberg’) indicate to the reader that an entry under that word also appears in the Companion. If the word appears more than once in a particular entry, only the first instance of it is rendered in small caps.

As is standard practice, items that begin with the articles ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’ are placed alphabetically according to the next word in the title: thus The Red Coat can be found under "Red Coat, The. However, Afrikaans titles or items are all placed alphabetically under ‘die’: Die Rooibaadjie".

Abbreviations

The Anniversary Edition of Herman Charles Bosman (1997–2005) is the standard reference:

CJ = A Cask of Jerepigo

CSJ = Cold Stone Jug

H = Homecoming

IT = Idle Talk

JN = Jacaranda in the Night

L&O = My Life and Opinions

MR = Mafeking Road and Other Stories

OTS = Old Transvaal Stories

S&H = Seed-time and Harvest and Other Stories

UD = Unto Dust and Other Stories

VS = Verborge Skatte

W = Willemsdorp

WS = Wild Seed

YB = Young Bosman

Frequently cited secondary works:

BtL = Between the Lines (Rosenberg, 2005)

HCB = Herman Charles Bosman (ed. Gray, 1986)

IB = The Illustrated Bosman (1985)

IKH = Herman Charles Bosman as I Knew Him (Sachs, 1974)

LS = Life Sentence (Gray, 2005)

RB = Remembering Bosman (ed. Gray, 2008)

(See Bibliography for full details of these texts.)

General abbreviations:

Afr. = Afrikaans

BCE = Before the Common Era

CE = Common Era

Dut. = Dutch

Eng. = English

Fr. = French

Ger. = German

HCB = Herman Charles Bosman

HRHRC = Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (at the University of Texas at Austin)

Lat. = Latin

Lit. = literally

OSL = Oom Schalk Lourens

SA = South Africa

Chronology

1867 Discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West.

1870–71 Diamond rush to Kimberley.

1877 Proclamation of Transvaal as British Crown Colony.

1879 Anglo–Zulu War.

1880–81 First Anglo–Boer War.

1883 Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm published.

1886 Discovery of main gold reef on the Witwatersrand.

1890 Cecil Rhodes becomes Prime Minister of Cape.

1895 Dr Jameson launches raid into Transvaal.

1897 Annexation of Zululand to Natal.

1899–1902 Second Anglo–Boer War.

1899–1900 Sol Plaatje writes his diary recording events during the siege of Mafeking (eventually published as The Boer War Diary of Sol T. Plaatje in 1973).

1905 HCB born, 3 February, at Kuils River, near Cape Town, the first son of Elisa (née Malan), a teacher, and Jacobus Bosman, a mine labourer. A second son, Pierre, is born in 1906.

1907 J. Percy FitzPatrick’s Jock of the Bushveld published.

1910 Union of South Africa established.

1912 South African Native National Congress (SANNC) formed; Sol Plaatje is one of the founding members.

1913 Natives Land Act promulgated, in terms of which Africans are prohibited from owning land outside of designated reserves (7% of SA’s land area).

1914–18 First World War.

1916 The Bosman family moves to Potchefstroom, the Malan family’s home town. Sol Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa published.

1918 Jacobus Bosman finds a job on the Witwatersrand mines, and the family moves to Johannesburg. HCB is enrolled at Jeppe Central School.

1920, 21 HCB begins his sketches for The Sunday Times, and also publishes some material in The Jeppe High School Magazine.

1922 Matriculates from Houghton College after moving there from Jeppe High, where he has a chequered academic and disciplinary record. White miners strike; Rand Revolt.

1923 Registers at Wits University and the Normal College for teachers.

1924 Sarah Gertrude Millin’s God’s Step-Children published.

1925 HCB contributes various pieces to The Umpa. Jacobus Bosman dies in a mining accident; Elisa Bosman marries William Russell. Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka published in Sesotho (published in English translation in 1931); Pauline Smith’s The Little Karoo published.

1926 Marries Vera Sawyer in January; is posted two days thereafter to a small farm school at Zwingli. Publishes a sketch describing this in The Umpa (A Teacher in the Bushveld). The first issue of the literary review Voorslag appears under the editorship of Roy Campbell, William Plomer and Laurens van der Post; Plomer’s Turbott Wolfe and Pauline Smith’s The Beadle published.

July: Returns to the family home in Johannesburg for mid-year holidays; is evidently very unhappy about the atmosphere in the home and the relations between the Russells and the Bosmans. On the eve of his return a scuffle breaks out between Pierre and David, and HCB fires a shot into David Russell’s bedroom; David is killed instantly. Is arrested and appears in court on 11 and 15 November; is sentenced to death by hanging and taken to Pretoria Central Prison, where he is placed on death row.

1927 Jan: Is reprieved and sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour; this sentence is later reduced by half. Begins writing poetry and sketches in prison; some are published.

1929 The satirical journal The Sjambok appears under Stephen Black’s editorship; Deneys Reitz’s Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War published. HCB’s poem Perhaps Some Day appears in The Sjambok, 5 July 1929.

1930 31 May: HCB’s sketch In the Beginning appears in The Sjambok. Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago, the first full-length novel by a black South African writer in English, and Roy Campbell’s Adamastor published.

Sept: HCB released from Pretoria Central Prison.

Dec: The literary magazine The Touleier appears under the editorship of HCB and Aegidius Jean Blignaut. It carries HCB’s first Schalk Lourens story, Makapan’s Caves.

1931 The Touleier carries HCB’s second Schalk Lourens story, The Rooinek, in two parts (Jan–Feb and Mar). HCB and Blignaut launch The New L. S. D. following the death of Stephen Black in Aug. The launching of The New Sjambok by the pair follows. Various HCB stories, including In Church (2 Jan) and The Night-dress (13 Feb), appear in its pages. HCB’s poetry pamphlet The Blue Princess appears.

1932 HCB’s second and third small poetry collections, Mara and Rust, appear. HCB marries Ella Manson in Oct.

1933 Jesus: An Ode appears. The year also sees the appearance of two short-lived Bosman–Blignaut publications – Mompara and The Ringhals, which carries HCB’s story A Nun’s Passion: A Christmas Story, and lands the pair in court on charges of blasphemy.

1934 HCB and Ella leave for England, where they spend most of the next six years, with some visits to the continent. Veld Maiden, the first of a set of classic OSL stories HCB sends back from London over the next few years, appears in The South African Opinion in Dec.

1935 The South African Opinion carries The Music Maker in July, and Mafeking Road in Aug.

1936 HCB begins work at The Sunday Critic, a short-lived four-page tabloid. It carries some of his reviews and essays, as well as the lurid series Leader of Gunmen, featuring the gangster Claude Satang, which HCB intends ultimately to publish in novel form (nothing comes of this in the end).

1937 The Sunday Critic ceases publication in Feb. HCB goes into a lengthy creative hiatus.

1939–45 Second World War; the Bosmans are repatriated to SA in 1940.

1941–42 HCB publishes a number of journalistic pieces in various SA periodicals.

1943 Mar–Oct: Takes job as editor of The Zoutpansberg Review and Mining Journal in Pietersburg; this provides the setting for the novels Jacaranda in the Night and Willemsdorp; meets Helena Stegmann and begins relationship with her; is fired from The Zoutpansberg Review following a court appearance in Oct on charges of procuring an abortion; is later released after Helena drops charges; the Bosmans return to Johannesburg late in the year.

1944 HCB divorces Ella in Feb and marries Helena in Mar; takes on job as literary editor of relaunched South African Opinion. HCB begins the most productive period of his writing life: from this point on until his death he produces dozens of Schalk Lourens stories and scores of journalistic pieces.

1946 Peter Abrahams’s Mine Boy and Es’kia Mphahlele’s first collection, Man Must Live and Other Stories, published.

1947 Jacaranda in the Night and, later, Mafeking Road published.

1948 Begins publishing numerous Bushveld stories in the bilingual periodical On Parade; several stories appear in Afrikaans versions, sometimes before their appearance in English (the notable example here is Tot Stof). The Herenigde Nasionale Party (later Nasionale Party) wins general election with its policy of apartheid; Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country published.

1949 Cold Stone Jug and Veld-trails and Pavements published. Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act promulgated; Nadine Gordimer’s Face to Face, her first collection of short stories, published.

1950 On 15 Apr begins the Voorkamer sequence with The Budget; the series will run to 80 pieces in all. Immorality Act amended; Population Registration Act; Group Areas Act; Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing published; the stage show King Kong, with music by Todd Matshikiza, first performed. HCB begins work as proofreader for The Sunday Express.

1951 (March) First issue of Drum magazine appears in Cape Town as African Drum. 14 Oct: HCB dies of cardiac arrest at his home in Lombardy East. 19 Oct: His last Voorkamer piece, Homecoming, appears after his death.

1953 Bantu Education Act; South African Communist Party (SACP) formed underground.

1955 Sophiatown, a black ‘location’ north-west of Johannesburg, and the home or temporary abode of many artists and musicians, destroyed.

1956 ANC approves Freedom Charter; 20 000 women march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against the extension of the pass laws to women; Nadine Gordimer’s Six Feet of the Country published.

1957 Lionel Abrahams publishes his selection of HCB’s journalistic essays as A Cask of Jerepigo.

1959 Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) formed; Es’kia Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue published.

1960 Sharpeville massacre; State of Emergency declared; ANC and PAC banned; Douglas Livingstone’s first poetry collection, The Skull in the Mud, published.

1961 South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth and becomes a republic; ANC adopts armed struggle.

1963 Lionel Abrahams’s selection of HCB’s Bushveld stories appears as Unto Dust. Bloke Modisane’s autobiography, Blame Me on History, and Dennis Brutus’s poetry collection Sirens, Knuckles, Boots published.

1965 Abrahams’s perennial seller, Bosman at His Best, appears.

1966 Verwoerd assassinated; Vorster becomes Prime Minister; Sydney Clouts’s One Life, the only collection of poems to appear in his lifetime, published. District Six cleared and declared a white area. Like Sophiatown, District Six was the home or meeting place of numerous writers and musicians.

1969 Jan: First performance of Willem Prinsloo’s Peach Brandy, Percy Sieff’s adaptation for the stage of some HCB stories and extracts from Cold Stone Jug, in Cape Town. Nov: Patrick Mynhardt opens his one-man Bosman show, A Sip of Jerepigo, which runs for over three years, and is followed by various other one-man Bosman shows by Mynhardt, until his death in 2007. Athol Fugard’s Boesman and Lena published.

1971 Abrahams’s selections of HCB’s Voorkamer stories appear as Jurie Steyn’s Post Office and A Bekkersdal Marathon. Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali’s Sounds of a Cowhide Drum published.

1972 Mongane Serote’s Yakhal’inkomo published.

1973 Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead and Bessie Head’s A Question of Power published.

1974 Abrahams’s selection of HCB’s poetry appears as The Earth is Waiting. J. M. Coetzee’s Dusklands and Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist published.

1976 Sunflower to the Sun, Valerie Rosenberg’s biography of HCB’s life and work, the first full-length work on HCB, appears. The Soweto Uprising occurs; resistance becomes widespread and hundreds are killed; others go into exile. 1970s and 1980s poetry collections by Mafika Gwala, Oswald Mtshali, Mongane Serote, Sipho Sepamla, Ingoapele Madingoane, and others go on to reflect both a new urgency of tone and a more militant artistic agenda. Sipho Sepamla’s The Blues Is You in Me published.

1977 Willemsdorp appears, with some cuts to get round the censorship board. Steve Biko murdered in detention, sparking an international outcry.

1978 Ahmed Essop’s The Hajji and Other Stories published; the first issue of Staffrider, founded and edited by Mike Kirkwood, and espousing a workerist, egalitarian aesthetic, appears: it will go on to publish the work of Njabulo Ndebele, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, Miriam Tlali, Ahmed Essop, and Mothobi Mutloatse, among many others.

1979 Mtutuzeli Matshoba’s Call Me Not a Man published.

1980 Stephen Gray’s selection of HCB’s stories, Selected Stories, appears.

1981 HCB’s Collected Works appears in two volumes; this edition gathered all of the published HCB volumes to date, and was the most comprehensive gathering of his work at the time. Patrick Mynhardt releases his selection of Bosman favourites as The Bosman I Like. Mongane Serote’s To Every Birth Its Blood and Achmat Dangor’s Waiting for Leila published.

1982 Ruth First assassinated by parcel bomb in Maputo.

1983 Jeremy Cronin’s Inside and Njabulo Ndebele’s Fools and Other Stories published.

1985 Ellen Kuzwayo’s autobiography, Call Me Woman, published.

1989 P. W. Botha suffers stroke; F. W. de Klerk becomes State President; De Klerk meets Mandela for the first time; Ivan Vladislavi´c’s Missing Persons published.

1990 De Klerk unbans ANC, SACP and other opposition parties; Mandela’s unconditional release announced.

1991 De Klerk announces that all apartheid laws will be repealed; Mandela elected president of the ANC; Nadine Gordimer wins Nobel Prize for Literature.

1993 Mandela and De Klerk announced joint winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.

1994 First democratic elections held; Mandela becomes president; his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom published.

1996 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) begins hearings.

1998 Human & Rousseau begin releasing two volumes per year of the Anniversary Edition of Herman Charles Bosman, which will end in 2005, with all of his work released in 14 volumes. TRC report published; Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull published.

1999 Thabo Mbeki succeeds Mandela as president; J. M. Coetzee’s Booker-winning Disgrace published.

2003 J. M. Coetzee awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.

2005 To mark the centenary of HCB’s birth, Stephen Gray’s biography, Life Sentence: A Biography of Herman Charles Bosman, the most detailed and comprehensive examination of his life and work to date, is released. Valerie Rosenberg releases the third version of her biography, Herman Charles Bosman – Between the Lines. The 14-volume Anniversary Edition concludes with Homecoming: Voorkamer Stories (II).

A

aardvark (Dut./Afr.) Lit. ‘earth pig’; also known as an antbear; a shy and solitary pig-like mammal; difficult to locate because of its secretive nocturnal behaviour and habit of digging burrows into the ground; feeds on termites (S&H: 74 The Story of Hester van Wyk; UD: 100 Oom Piet’s Party).

aasvoël (Afr.) Vulture; probably the Cape Vulture, Gypaetus barbatus (MR: 34 In the Withaak’s Shade; MR: 70 Makapan’s Caves; OTS: 50 The Heart of a Woman; S&H: 111 Cometh Comet).

abafazi’ nkulu le tshefu (Zulu) Lit. ‘the women large this poison’; HCB appears to be stringing together a set of Zulu words he is only partly familiar with, or he has perhaps simply made up a random ‘sentence’ from words he has (mis)overheard and has (mis)spelled phonetically. Perhaps the best sense that can be made of the words is ‘tall women are poison’ or ‘women are big poison’. In the context of the story (Louis Wassenaar eavesdropping on passers-by for inspiration to write a story) it is not of consequence. Wassenaar is reported to be simply unable to put the fragment to any creative use: Not much of a lead in that, either. Louis Wassenaar did not know any of the Bantu languages (OTS: 95 Louis Wassenaar).

abba A chimney that has been built on afterwards on the outside of a house (OTS: 34 A Tale Writ in Water; IT: 103 Stars in their Courses).

Abjaterskop (Afr.) Lit. ‘Rogue’s Head’; situated between the Dwarsberge and the Rant van Tweedepoort; at 1 378 m the highest peak in the region; portrayed by HCB as haunted. See Willem Prinsloo’s Peach Brandy; In the Withaak’s Shade; Maps.

Abrahams, Lionel (1928–2004) Poet, short-story writer, critic, editor, publisher. Born in Johannesburg and schooled at Damelin College, where he first encountered HCB, he graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1955. He was vigorous in his promotion of South African literature both through his own writings and through the editing and publishing of the writings of others. One of his most important contributions as an editor was to publish editions of the works of HCB, who was also his literary mentor for a short period. These include A Cask of Jerepigo (1957), Unto Dust (1963), Bosman at His Best: A Choice of Stories and Sketches (1965), Jurie Steyn’s Post Office and A Bekkersdal Marathon (both 1971; see Voorkamer Sequence), a collection of HCB’s poetry, The Earth is Waiting (1974), and The Collected Works of Herman Charles Bosman (1988). His most detailed biographical piece on HCB appeared as Mr Bosman: A Protégé’s Memoir in 2001 (reprinted in RB: 120-64). See appearance; teaching.

absinthe Anise-flavoured spirit with a high alcohol content; popular among the writers of Paris in the nineteenth century; banned in 1915 because of its supposed harmful effects (L&O: 97 Paris: Sidelights and Half-laughs).

Achilles Hero of the Trojan War in Greek mythology; half man and half god, his mother – in an attempt to make him invulnerable – dipped him in the river Styx as a baby, except for his heel where he was held, thus creating his one weak point (JN: 159).

Adonis(es) In Greek mythology Adonis was known for his exceptional beauty, which is why Venus fell for him; consequently, attractive and youthful young men are referred to as Adonises (CSJ: 90).

Aeolian harp Named for the Greek God of the wind, it is an instrument that produces sounds when the wind blows through it; it is a box with a soundboard and strings stretched across it, and placed in a window where the breeze can pass through it (CJ: 37 The Good Earth).

Aeschylus (524/525– c. 455/456 BCE) Greek writer of tragedies, one of the most famous being Seven against Thebes; contemporary of Euripides (VS: 173 Die Duistere Vers).

Affair at Ysterspruit, The (OTS: 39) A young schoolmaster in the Marico (a lightly fictionalised rendering of HCB himself) seeks and finds a story of Boer War bravery from Ouma Engelbrecht. A poignant story with a twist that reveals as much about the art of storytelling as it does about the bitterness caused by the Boer War. The schoolmaster prompts his informant (an old oom) to resume his tale – his words a slow and steady rumble and with the red dust of the road in their sound, almost – a tale of terror or of high romance or soft laughter. The story appeared in an earlier Afrikaans version as Die Voorval by Ijzerspruit (VS: 35).

African Magazine, The See Touleier, The.

Africana Museum (CJ: 58) Musings on the enduring quality of the Stone Age and its implements. Thought-provoking piece on what endures, along with praise for the noble savage. Some years later the Africana Museum was renamed Museum Africa and moved to the Market Theatre complex. Readers will be disappointed to find but a fraction of the riches described by HCB. ‘Stone has come to stay.’ And they were right. It stayed. It stayed a million years.

Afrikaans Stage, The (VS: 128) Article pointing out the increasing divide between cynical performers and uncritical theatre audiences largely due to – according to HCB – the lack of good Afrikaans plays.

Afrikaner/Afrikander Breed of cattle unique to SA; type of cattle used by migrant farmers to haul their wagons; were bred through careful selection by the original Dutch trekboers, choosing cattle with long horns and the distinct red colour peculiar to this breed; the breed’s lineage is via the indigenous Nguni cattle and its scientific name/ pedigree is Bos Indicus (as opposed to Bos Taurus, as European cattle are known) (S&H: 21 Veld Fire).

Afrikaner(s) See Boer(s).

Afternoon Ravishment One of the sketches in Romance: A Sequence.

Age of Reason Pamphlet criticising organised religion; written by Thomas Paine and published in three parts between 1794 and 1807 (VS: 177 Credo).

Agie At Naudé’s second cousin and husband of Seraphima; lit. ‘inquisitive one’; a mine shift boss like HCB’s father (H: 114 Kith and Kin).

agterryers (Afr.) Lit. ‘after/behind riders’; black labourers who were drafted into the Boer forces or joined voluntarily essentially to serve as a rear detachment – cooking, keeping fires going, maintaining the camp, etc.; there is continued debate as to how much fighting they did as well (MR: 74 Yellow Moepels; UD: 114 Funeral Earth; IT: 45 Ghost Trouble).

Akademie vir Kuns en Lettere HCB gets it wrong: the correct title is Die Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns, a body founded in 1909 to bring together the cultural forces of the Afrikaner (VS: 156 South African Literature).

alack and welladay Archaic terms expressing regret (CJ: 193 Out of the Past).

Alarm Clock (H: 70) At Naudé muses about mechanical inventions, which prompts Meneer Vermaak to give a lecture on China’s contribution to technology. Vague, meandering story that doesn’t make a clear point. ‘Ta-rêêê ta-ta-rê,’ the schoolmaster joined in enthusiastically, flinging an arm into the air. ‘That’s not the Fire Brigade song. It’s the Fire Song. It’s from the Valkyries.’

albatross Reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (IT: 82 Sea-colonels All).

Albertyn, Ina Screen playwright of Die Wildsboudjie (VS: 165 A Bushveld Film Comedy).

Alby Stewart (L&O: 74) A short report of a young criminal’s path to the gallows. A sensitive account of a serious matter; the similarity between Stewart’s and HCB’s circumstances is obvious. ‘Goodbye, Alby,’ said Father Ryan, ‘say a prayer for me when you get to Jesus.’ ‘Ah, Father,’ said Stewart with a smile, ‘I always knew you would bum something from me in the end.’

Alcoholic Remorse (H: 87) Jurie Steyn nurses a hangover while visitors remind him of his drunken misdeeds. Painfully accurate description of the distress and long-term consequences of alcohol abuse. ‘And then a shark came right into the café where I was sitting, and started chewing on my leg. Now, isn’t that silly?’

Alec the Ponce An imprisoned pimp who starts a minor demonstration by tossing his bread over the landing into the hall (CSJ: 67). Also the name of Polly’s pimp and abusive love interest (YB: 148 Street-woman: A Play in One Act).

Alice Rita’s sister; bribed by her father to break off relations with her lover Stephen the poet (YB: 52 Rita’s Marriage).

Alida Jurie Steyn’s black maid (H: 64: Sleepy Afternoon).

Almost Forgotten Stories (1979) Edited by Valerie Rosenberg, the compilation features many of the stories overlooked by Lionel Abrahams, HCB’s principal anthologist up to that point. At the time, this collection filled many of the gaps of the HCB canon, with many of the stories not being those from the major OSL and Voorkamer sequences, and being drawn from HRHRC manuscripts and published for the first time in book form.

Ananias A member of the early Christian church who conspired to deceive and was struck down (UD: 86 When the Heart is Eager).

Ander Man se Kind (Afr.) Lit. ‘Another Man’s Child’; scandalous play about sinful Johannesburg put on in the Marico by the actor Jacques le Français (IT: 91 Play within a Play).

Andersen, M. C. (‘Mitzi’) Former lecturer in English at the University of South Africa. Wrote her doctoral study (1988), part of which deals with HCB’s Cold Stone Jug, on autobiographical responses to the experience of prison, and compiled Herman Charles Bosman: The Prose Juvenilia (1998).

Andrews, Lionel Carpenter who gets on the wrong side of his foreman Bert Parsons, but redeems himself and later gets promoted to foreman and sidekick when other contracts are won (JN: 31).

Andries A cripple who is in love with Heloise and seems to mind her teeth fetish only slightly less than David (YB: 59 Heloise’s Teeth).

Anglo–Boer War, First (1880–81) Sometimes called ‘Die Eerste Vryheidsoorlog’ (‘First War of Independence’) by Afrikaners, it was fought between Britain and the Transvaal Republic (ZAR), and was provoked by the British annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 by Theophilus Shepstone. The British garrisons at Potchefstroom and Pretoria were besieged, and in February 1881 a decisive battle was fought at Majuba in Natal, which the republican Afrikaners won. HCB dealt with the war in his stories Yellow Moepels and The Red Coat. See Rooinek and Other Boer War Stories, The.

Anglo–Boer War, Second/South African War (1899–1902) The second of the two wars fought between the South African Republics and Great Britain. Sometimes called ‘Die Tweede Vryheidsoorlog’ (‘Second War of Independence’) by Afrikaners, it was the costliest war fought by Britain until 1914. It is commonly considered to have been fought primarily for economic reasons (access by Britain to the Transvaal’s lucrative goldfields). The British expected a quick and easy war, and, indeed, the first, more conventional, stage of the war (the battle of the ‘big commandos’) was over fairly soon, with Pretoria being taken in June 1900. But the second phase, the so-called war of the ‘small commandos’, or guerrilla war, dragged on until May 1902, sucking in huge numbers of British men (450 000 in all) and amounts of matériel. Under their commander, Lord Kitchener, the British resorted to a ‘scorched earth’ policy, burning Boer farms and herding the women and children into concentration camps, a policy that resulted in nearly 30 000 civilian deaths and left permanent scars on the Afrikaner psyche. HCB featured the war extensively in his work, most notably in Mafeking Road, The Traitor’s Wife, Peaches Ripening in the Sun and The Rooinek. See Rooinek and Other Boer War Stories, The.

Aniescu, Gris Romanian-born SA citizen and dilettante; friend of Louis Wassenaar, and ‘student of legs’; aka Schtroppski (OTS: 90 Louis Wassenaar).

Annie (no surname given) Petrus Lemmer’s step-niece; outspoken, spunky young lady who holds her own when it comes to witty retorts during a Marico tale (S&H: 47 Marico Moon).

Anniversary Edition (of the Works of H. C. Bosman) Fourteen-volume series under the general co-editorship of Stephen Gray and Craig MacKenzie, produced between 1998 and 2005. The series was given this name because planning for it began in late 1997, the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Mafeking Road, and it was scheduled for completion in 2005, the centenary of HCB’s birth. The purpose of the series was to release all of HCB’s works in unabridged and uncensored versions, and the editing used original texts (some of them never before published). The series began with a completely re-edited Mafeking Road and Other Stories (1998) and Willemsdorp (1998). Other volumes in the series are Cold Stone Jug (1999) and Idle Talk: Voorkamer Stories (I) (1999), which put into print for the first time the first half of HCB’s ‘Voorkamer’ sequence, Jacaranda in the Night (2000) and Old Transvaal Stories (2000), which gathers together all the stories not written by HCB in series – that is, ‘non-Oom Schalk’, ‘non-Voorkamer’ stories. Verborge Skatte (2000; edited by Leon de Kock) gathers all of the stories HCB wrote in Afrikaans, together with his commentaries on Afrikaans literature. Seed-time and Harvest and Other Stories (2001) and Unto Dust and Other Stories (2002) are two further Oom Schalk Lourens collections that feature the remaining stories in this sequence; while A Cask of Jerepigo: Sketches and Essays (2002) and My Life and Opinions (2003) are two collections of HCB’s journalism – general and autobiographical, respectively. Young Bosman (2003) draws together HCB’s early writings, while Wild Seed (2004) is the most complete edition of HCB’s poetry to date. The Anniversary Edition was concluded with Homecoming: Voorkamer Stories (II) (2005).

Anselm, Archbishop Archbishop of Canterbury in the eleventh century (IT: 45 Ghost Trouble).

antipassaat Anti-trade winds (IT: 143 Dreams of Rain).

antisyncline It is probable that HCB got this wrong by mixing up a geological term: a syncline is a curving fold in a rock formation that moves downward where the strata dip toward the centre of the geological structure; the opposite – where the rock formation curves upward – is called an anticline, not an antisyncline (W: 169).

Anxious to Hear (H: 38) A follow-on to Laugh, Clown, Laugh. Schoolmaster Vermaak goes off on a tangent about an archaeological find in the area while trying to avoid more weighty matters (i.e. his presumed relationship with Pauline Gerber). A wry look at early twentieth-century moral values. ‘Now, this Jurassic, that you’re talking about,’ Oupa Bekker asked the schoolmaster. ‘Has it got anything to do with Jurie Steyn?’

Apollo The Greek sun god; son of Zeus and Leto (CJ: 103 Playing Sane).

appearance

He didn’t ever carry himself well, but I wouldn’t say he was a weedy-looking type. He was average in stature (Stanley Jackson, RB: 15). He was physically extremely attractive, his astonishing blue eyes scintillating with mischief, and glowing with intelligence. He must have made many a girl student miss a heartbeat (Sachs, IKH: 42). On my very first day [at college] I met Herman Bosman, whom I would describe as a very retiring student. He was very good looking – he was tall, over six feet, and very blond. Always he was most courteous (Serita Dales, RB: 21). This account has to be reconciled with HCB’s own statement on his height, when giving evidence in court after murdering David Russell: My height is 5’ 8" (L&O: 65). In Cold Stone Jug (192), he gives his suit measurements to the warder in the tailor shop: 24 inch (inside) leg (60 cm) and 33 inch long (outside leg? 82,5 cm). Lago Clifford was a fellow prisoner with HCB in 1928–29: [H]e has no trace whatever of any Colonial accent. His aspect is a bright and cheerful one; he has clear blue vital eyes (The Sjambok, 5 July 1929: 19). That his spoken English was uninflected by an Afrikaans accent was also attested to by schoolmate Stanley Jackson, who also remembered that HCB pronounced his name in the Anglicised way (‘Bozz-min’) (see Stanley Jackson interview, RB: 14). George Howard met him in his early thirties, and described him as a tallish, broad, blue-eyed young man, with a high forehead, thinning wild fair hair, knitted tie, wide black leather belt, a high merry laugh, large actor’s hands and a wide-brimmed hat, worn like a ship with a heavy list (RB: 32). His pupil, acolyte and, later, influential editor Lionel Abrahams remembers him as he was in his early forties: What caught the eye was probably his hat, the usual trilby or fedora of the 1940s, but worn tipped far to one side and forward, at an angle that expressed both jauntiness and a desire for concealment. Or it may have been the eager way he seemed to plunge into conversation with his wife while they walked, or the emphatic way he moved and gestured, or the rolled-up magazine he usually hugged under one arm (RB: 121). Abrahams also vividly recalls his mannerisms as a teacher: [T]he idiosyncratic play of his hands, presenting us with his words and intentions as though with conjured visible entities; the silvery-soft voice and strangely paced, hesitant speech with its rapid brief phrases punctuated by pauses, slow weighty emphases and sharp, appealing exclamations testing agreement (‘Hey? Hey!’) (RB: 121). See Dales, Serita.

Pic 1 HCB at 21.jpg

Bosman at 21 (NELM)

Pic 2 HCB in the 1930s by Eli Weinberg (NELM).jpg Pic 3 HCB in the 1940s (NELM).jpg

Bosman in his mid-twenties (Eli Weinberg), and early forties

Apuleius, Lucius Latin prose writer of Algerian descent most famous for his bawdy The Golden Ass, the only ancient novel to have survived in its entirety (CJ: 138 Talk of the Town; CSJ: 114). The novel deals with the protagonist’s search to find and practise magic (OTS: 90 Louis Wassenaar).

Aquinas, Thomas, St (c. 1226–74) Neapolitan philosopher and theologian; the leading figure in the school of Scholasticism; introduced Aristotelian principles into Christian theology (IT: 45 Ghost Trouble).

Areopagitica See Milton, John.

arrased Walls hung with decorated fabrics (CSJ: 163).

Arrival of Another Spring, The (L&O: 115) Lively editorial by HCB (The Zoutpansberg Review and Mining Journal, 17 September 1943) on spring. Acknowledging that while spring brings unstoppable rebirth, some practices, once dead, can never be revived.

arse Buttocks; rare four-letter word usage by HCB, though justified in the context of banter on a building site (JN: 43).

Art and Feudalism (CJ: 71) Essay on how art needs great disparities between rich and poor classes to be meaningful. Naïve view that the redeeming magic of art can only be found through hardship. And talking of trade unions, it seems to be that they do a lot to make workmen discontented, without doing anything to elevate them.

Art Criticism (IT: 123) The voorkamer crowd talk about fine art and changing fashions. Meandering discourse on the interpretation of art, containing some surrealistic flights of fancy.

Art Notes on Charlie Chaplin (CJ: 30) A retrospective look at the movies and career of Charlie Chaplin. A back-handed compliment to Chaplin’s genius upon the release of The Great Dictator, a satire on Hitler and Mussolini. HCB remarks that Chaplin rejected the Oscar/ Academy Award (CJ: 31); this is not true, what is true is that he did not think much of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but nonetheless received three Oscars in his lifetime. "And it seems