Remittance men at home in Africa

Many young men from Britain came to the colonies for many different reasons. In the final part of the series, Catherine and Michael Greenham reveal aspects of the lives of remittance men, the empire’s outcasts, as well as its second sons, who were often superfluous in the mother country, some of whom became the big-game hunters of Africa

IT WAS a bright and cloudless Thursday morning in 1931. The rainy season was over and the early morning sky was slowly turning a deep African blue in the breathlessness of that time of day.

The pilot buttoned his helmet and wrapped his flying coat around him. He climbed into the cockpit of his custard-yellow Gipsy Moth while his young passenger removed the chocks, swung the propeller and quickly climbed aboard. Engine roaring, pilot and crew waved to the handful of people who had come to say goodbye, there in a remote airstrip cut through the bush.

The biplane gathered speed and was soon airborne, the wind rushing through the struts playing little tunes. It circled the airstrip twice and then turned towards Nairobi.

While it was climbing the engine suddenly cut and, for a moment, it seemed as if the Gipsy Moth was suspended in the air by invisible cords, suspended until they snapped and the little plane plummeted to Earth, exploding in a fireball.

The pilot had been the son of the 13th Earl of Winchilsea. He had made a name for himself as one of Africa’s top big-game hunters. His mother had been the daughter of a British admiral. But he was not their first son, he was not the heir. He was the spare and like so many “second sons” he had come to Africa to take up her challenge and to make his mark on the world, a mark very different to one he would have made had he remained in England.

Africa was full of second sons. Africa was also full of remittance men. A remittance man was an emigrant usually from a wealthy family in Britain who had disgraced himself and was “exiled” to one of the colonies where he received a monthly remittance or payment on the basis that he stayed in that colony.

There were many ways in which this disgrace could come about. The usual causes were drug, alcohol or gambling problems. It was felt that the remittance man represented the utter failure of elite British masculinity to function in the modern world.

This is apparent in Evelyn Waugh’s novel, Brideshead Revisited, set in the 1930s. One of the characters, Sebastian, the second son of Lord Marchmain, develops an incurable drinking problem and ends up in Morocco as a remittance man. In Following the Equator, Mark Twain met remittance men en route to Durban.

“It was the remittance man’s custom to pay his month’s board and lodging straight away – a duty which his landlord did not allow him to forget – then spree away the rest of his money in a single night, then brood and mope and grieve in idleness till the next remittance came. It is a pathetic life.”

Durban was an ideal place for remittance men. The climate was perfect and it was certainly remote enough to be out of the way of the families that had exiled them. Here they could be out of sight and out of mind, making their once-a-month trip to the bank to collect that remittance and starting the cycle all over again.

In Durban, there were lots of suitable boarding houses to choose from and, if their remittances were sufficient, they could stay in a hotel and be free of the interference of the notoriously watchful landlady.

Hotels like The Ocean View, nicely out of the way in Musgrave Road or the Queens Bridge Hotel, just on the other side of the Mgeni River, could be ideal. Both had wellstocked bars and well-oiled patrons, the right combination for the remittance man.

Remittance men could be included in the list of the lost sons of empire. They would have received little sympathy then, their feelings of abandonment, isolation and intense loneliness left uncounselled as they drifted further and further down the slope of despair to ill health and early death.

In Natal and the Zulu Country, Bulpin writes of an interesting character by the name of Charles Hamilton who arrived in Durban in 1864. He experienced problems with his remittances and resorted at one stage to making pork sausages using the trade name Mrs Hamilton’s Sausages. His adventures led him down the South Coast.

“He found a chain of Englishmen settled there all living in crude little huts and shelters, but all exceedingly hospitable. It was a lazy, detached life that they led. Hamilton recommended it to younger sons and literary gentlemen with large families.”

He then went a step further and dressed in animal skins, living in a hut allocated to him by the chief. Bulpin describes how for 10 months Hamilton danced and drank beer and feasted on venison until eventually he grew tired of it, dressed himself again “like a Christian” and went back to making sausages and collecting his remittance.

While some second sons were remittance men, most were not. Most found futures in their careers and went into the army, the ministry, business, politics or became adventurers.

The Honourable William Henry Drummond, the big-game hunter who killed the man-eater that had terrorised villagers in Zululand in 1870, was the second son of 7th Viscount Strathallan. Like all younger sons of aristocrats, the law of primogeniture meant that the eldest son inherited the estate, leaving the others to find their own fortunes. As a sop, however, they were given the title of “The Honourable”.

Drummond was not just interested in big-game hunting. He also had a great interest in natural history. Having kept a journal, he used that as the basis for a book and upon his return to Britain in March 1875 had it published under the title The Large Game and Natural History of South and South-East Africa (Edinburgh, 1875). It dealt mainly with hunting large mammals and game birds and was not primarily a zoological work.

However, Drummond did read a paper before the Zoological Society of London in February 1876. He also made a valuable contribution to the recording of life at the time by editing a large volume of articles by David Leslie primarily on African languages and customs.

Drummond was one of the first to warn against the indiscriminate slaughter of game and how, if left unchecked, numbers would dwindle to almost nothing and some species would become extinct. He was not wrong.

When the Anglo-Zulu War broke out in 1879, Drummond, always an adventurer at heart, joined the staff of the British General, Lord Chelmsford, as interpreter, guide and adviser on Zulu customs. Chelmsford grossly underestimated the capabilities of the Zulu forces and experienced some embarrassing and horrendous defeats like Isandlwana and Hlobane. British successes occurred when the Zulus attacked British forces occupying defensive positions like Rorke’s Drift and Kambula.

Chelmsford, having heard his advisers including Drummond, knew he had to defeat the Zulus in the open. At the Battle of Ulundi, a British force swollen with reinforcements, formed a hollow square, wagon laagers and trenches being forbidden.

On July 4, this “living laager” of 5 000 men made its measured advance across the plain. The 15 000-strong Zulu army attacked only to be met with withering fire from rifles, artillery and Gatling guns. It was a hopeless cause.

Somewhere in the chaos of the fighting a Zulu marksman scanned the battlefield looking for a target. By chance, Drummond appeared in his sights and the marksman squeezed the trigger.

Like the man-eater of Zululand he had killed, Drummond in turn fell fighting. For him it was a noble death. British literature and poetry at the time glorified men like Drummond whose death epitomised the sacrifice of the second son, another addition to the list of lost sons of the empire.

Perhaps Africa’s best known second son was the Honourable Denys Finch Hatton (1887–1931). He was the third son of an Earl and arrived in British East Africa (Kenya) in 1911 and initially lived a nomadic life, hunting big game. In 1925 Finch Hatton became a professional safari guide. His most notable guests were the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) and his brother Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, in 1928. According to Finch Hatton’s biographer, one of the biggest challenges for the Prince of Wales’s private secretary was keeping the safari on schedule, which was usually thwarted “by the prince leaping into bed or the nearest bush with any woman who came to hand”. Finch Hatton would, in other circumstances, have gone through life more or less unnoticed but for one thing. He was the lover of one of the greatest storytellers, Baroness Karen von Blixen.

Her book, Out of Africa, is in the top 100 non-fiction books of all time and was written under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen. In 1985, the epic romantic drama film Out of Africa was released starring Robert Redford as Finch Hatton and Meryl Streep as the baroness.

The combination of the most beautiful African scenery and the romance between the two made it the winner of seven Academy Awards including best picture. Sitting on the veranda of her farmhouse with the danger of hunting over for the moment, the enigmatic Denys would recite poetry, read from his favourite literary works and play records on his gramophone.

Perhaps the most beautiful scenes were when they took to the air in his custard-yellow Gipsy Moth. As she said in her book, when flying with the eagles over the Ngong Hills: “Denys cut the engine in mid-air, and as he did so, I heard the eagle screech”.

But Denys Finch Hatton had one last flight to make on March 14, 1931. Karen felt sure he would arrive soon and listened intently for the sound of his engine. But it never came. Another second son would not make it home to England. The aristocrat of leonine nonchalance, a nomad best known for being a lover of interesting women who achieved little and everything, one of the greatest of the lost sons of empire, was buried at their favourite picnic site on a hill not far from the farm.

In one of the most moving cinematic funeral scenes imaginable, Karen speaks slowly of her enigmatic lover and says: “He brought us joy and we loved him well. He was not ours. He was not mine.”

She returned to her native Denmark, never again visiting Africa. Some time later she received a letter from a friend in Kenya.

“The Masai have reported to the District Commissioner at Ngong that many times, at sunrise and sunset, they have seen lions on Finch Hatton’s grave in the hills. A lion and a lioness have come there, and stood, or lain, on the grave for a long time.”

Catherine Greenham is a teacher and published author of the novel, Rebellion. Michael Greenham is a chartered accountant and lecturer. Together they have a great interest in history, particularly Durban history. They have a large collection of books on history and English literature as well as old Durban postcards which they use to illustrate their articles

Lions on Denys Finch Hatton’s grave. The Masai reported that many times at sunrise and sunset they saw lions near the grave, sometimes a lion and lioness would stand or lie on it for some time before moving off. Where the lions had lain had been one of Denys and Karen’s favourite picnic sites.

The Ocean View Hotel was in Musgrave Road, Durban. It was built in the late 1890s and was altered and enlarged over the years before it was finally demolished circa 2 000. Up on the Berea, it was a little out of the way and provided a peaceful environment for its residents, including the occasional remittance man.

Brown’s Special Scotch Whisky advertised on a late Victorian poster – the abuse of alcohol was as much a problem then as it is now.

The Remittance man… who has “lost his boots”, literally. Paid to stay away, most drank themselves to an early death.

The custard-yellow Gipsy Moth belonging to Denys Finch Hatton is represented in this picture. The plane was burnt beyond recognition in a crash that killed Finch Hatton and his passenger in 1931.

One of the many “cures” for alcohol addiction at the time – Tawny Cocaine Port Wine from Dr Harold Boggs.

The Honourable William Henry Drummond – trader, hunter, soldier and civil servant, was the second son of the 7th Viscount Strathallan and his wife Christina. Much of his hunting was in Zululand, where he also served during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.

Karen von Blixen’s farmhouse outside Nairobi in Kenya. She and Denys Finch Hatton sat on this veranda playing records on his gramophone.

The Honourable Denys Finch Hatton (1887-1931) was the third son of an English aristocrat, a big-game hunter and the lover of Baroness Karen von Blixen who immortalised him in her autobiographical book, Out of Africa.

Baroness Karen von Blixen (née Dinesen; 1885-1962) was a Danish author, coffee farmer and lover of Denys Finch Hatton. Blixen is best known for Out of Africa, her account of her life while living in Kenya.

The painting From a distant land by David Davies (1889: oil on canvas) portrays the loneliness that could face those far from home in the colonies. Isolated or not, some took on big challenges, revelling in the wide-open spaces and making names for themselves often as hunters of big game, while others sat back and absorbed the comfort the bottle provided.

The Battle of Ulundi during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 – oil on canvas by French artist, Adolphe Yvon (18171893) painted circa 1880. It was here that Drummond, the man who killed the Zululand man-eater, was killed in action.

Drummond wrote a book about his many adventures in Zululand on his return to Britain in March 1875 which he called The Large Game and Natural History of South and South-East Africa.