Charles Walter Boyd

“ On 1 April 1880 the Rhodes group had established themselves as the De Beers Mining Company, with a capital of 200,000l., while in the same year the Bamato Mining Company was formed to work the richest claims in Kimberley mine.
But Rhodes's ambitions were from the first other than commercial. During 1875 he spent eight months m a solitary journey on foot or ox- wagon through Bechuanaland and the Transvaal. The experience helped to shape his aims. He found the country to be not merely of agricultural and of great mineral value, but also beautiful and healthy. ”

“ The ideas and dexterities which most cultivated men of affairs have about them, as it were ready made, were not his. His temperament was unequal, almost incalculable, combining extreme naivete and simplicity with strokes of amazing and unexpected shrewdness. ”

“ The Transvaal, while refusing customs and railway union with the Cape, on which Rhodes counted to smooth the way to federation, and seeking, though vainly, from President Brand an alliance defensive and offensive with the Orange Free State, had given German capitalists an exclusive right to construct railways within the republic, at a sensible cost to British prestige. ”

“ In November 1873 his mother died, the only human being with whom he is known at any time to have regularly corresponded. Early in the new year he caught a chill while rowing ; a specialist found both the heart and the lungs affected, and entered against his name in his case book 'Not six months to live.' His Oxford career was thus interupted, but it was not closed. He returned to South Africa and Kimberley, where his lungs soon ceased to trouble him ; henceforth, indeed, his heart caused him his only physical anxiety, and that was never cured. ”

“ When settled at Kimberley, Beit made the acquaintance of Cecil John Rhodes [q. v. Suppl. II] , and while close business relations followed he felt the full force of Rhodes's personality. Yielding to its fascination, he became his intimate friend, accepting his ideas and aspirations with enthusiasm. He soon joined Rhodes on the board of the original De Beers Diamond Company (founded in 1880) and played an important part in Rhodes's great scheme of the amalgamation of the chief diamond mines of Kimberley as De Beers Consolidated Mines. ”

“ A federation of South Africa under British rule, with Cape Dutch assent, was always before his eyes. Just before leaving to graduate at Oxford in 1881 Rhodes had entered public life in South Africa. In 1880 the Act for absorbing Griqualand West in the Cape Colony created two electoral divisions at Kimberley and Barkly West. As one of two members for Barkly West, Rhodes was elected in 1880 and took his seat in the Cape legislature next year. ”

“ But his chief stroke was made in 1891, when he revisited South Africa and illustrated his characteristic perception of possibilities. Adopting the suggestion, in face of much expert scepticism, that it might be possible not only to work the outcrop but to strike the slanting reef by deep level shafts, at some distance away from the outcrop, he evolved, and devoted capital to testing, the Great Deep Level scheme. Beit was the first to recognise the importance of employing first-class mining engineers. ”

“ He revisited Europe early next year, and then arranged to carry the African telegraphic land line through to Egypt, discussing the project with the German Emperor in Berlin and forming a highly favourable impression of the Kaiser. In the Cape general election of the same year and in the succeeding session he made some fine speeches which were loudly applauded, but his own action had for the time shattered the scheme of a Federal Union of South Africa, which was always his great objective. ”

“ If they obtain a charter from the secretary of state, they could annex a portion of territory in Central Africa, raise and maintain a standing army, and undertake warlike operations.' Such was the corporation — the largest in the world — of which Rhodes found himself the master at thirty-six. At the same time Rhodes acquired large stakes in the gold mines of the Rand on the discovery of a reef there. His partner, Mr. Rudd, proceeded from Kimberley and obtained on their joint behalf interests in a gold-mining corporation which was soon known as the Consolidated Goldfields of South Africa. ”

“ His political activities were soon concentrated on that northern expansion which formed a great part of his completed work. The Cape Colony was then bounded on the north by the Orange River, beyond which lay Bechuanaland, of vast extent and the only avenue to the coveted northern territories which were the objective alike of Rhodes and of the Transvaal Boers. By the Pretoria Convention of 1881 the westward expansion of the Transvaal was limited to a line east of the trade routes from Bechuanaland. ”

“ An active sympathy with every form of suffering and an ardent belief in great causes led him to distribute vast sums of money, but his benefactions were always made privately with rare self-effacement. ”

“ No 'standard' or adequate biography of Rhodes has yet appeared. Sir Thomas Fuller's Cecil Rhodes: a Monograph and a Reminiscence (1910) is the most considerable study of the man and his career, and is a balanced and informed appreciation. The Life by Sir Lewis Michell, Rhodes's banker and one of his trustees (2 vols. 1910) , though painstaking, does not exhaust the authorities accessible, and is not authorised by the Rhodes trustees. ”

“ BEIT, ALFRED (1853–1906) , financier and benefactor, born at Hamburg on 15 Feb. 1853, was eldest son of Siegfried and Laura Beit. The father was a merchant belonging to a well-known Hamburg family, Jewish by race, Lutheran by religion. 'I was one of the poor Beits of Hamburg,' the son once said, implying that another branch was better off than his own. ”

“ Rhodes's energetic interest in the organisation of the Chartered Company was not diminished by his other activities. By arrangement with the Cape government the British South Africa Company undertook the construction of a railway line northwards from Kimberley to Fourteen Streams, then subsequently to the British Bechuanaland border and on to Vryburg. ”

“ Jameson, who was acting as administrator of the South Africa Company, placed an armed force of 500 men. Meanwhile Rhodes gave money and arms and lent his influence to the movement within the Transvaal ; Jameson hovering on the border was in close concert with the leaders of the reform party. The movement hung fire. The form of government which was to replace Cruger's rule was undetermined. On 27 December Jameson on his sole authority precipitated the crisis by crossing the Transvaal border with an armed force. ”

“ With their aid he proved the scheme to be practicable, and to its success the subsequent prosperity of the Rand is chiefly due. In the whole deep level system Beit's firm were forerunners and creators; other firms followed later in their footsteps.
Beit was deeply interested in the scheme of northern expansion which Rhodes had formed early in his South African career. On the formation (24 Oct. 1889) of the British South Africa Company for the administration of the extensive territory afterwards known as Rhodesia, Beit became an original director. ”

“ James Rose-Innes during the litigation with shareholders which followed, 'no company has had such power as this. They-are not confined to Africa ; they are authorised to take any steps for the good government of any country. ”

“ Rhodes University at Grahamstown received 25,000l., Rhodes Memorial Fund 10,000l., and the Union Jack Club, London, 10,000l. Funds for benefactions in the Transvaal, in Kimberley, and the Cape Colony were also established. Two sums of 20,000l. were left to his executors for distribution to the charities of London and Hamburg respectively. Finally 1,200,000l. passed to trustees for the extension of railway and telegraph communication in South Africa, with a view to forwarding the enterprise known as the Cape to Cairo railway. With admirable sagacity Beit made his public bequests elastic. ”

“ In selecting the scholars his trustees were enjoined to consider not only the scholastic attainments of candidates but their athletic capacity and moral force. One hundred thousand pounds was left to his old college. Oriel, and his land near Bulawayo and Salisbury was left to provide a university for the people of Rhodesia. Rhodes appointed among others as trustees for the execution of his will Lord Rosebery, lately prime minister of England, Lord Milner, then high commissioner of South Africa, Dr. ”