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. In the modern houses the stoep is a shady,
pillared, covered gallery, which in hot weather becomes the general
living-room of the family. Having built his house, Cecil Rhodes
employed agents to hunt up in Holland fine specimens of genuine old
Dutch furniture with which to plenish it. Some of these agents surely
exceeded their instructions in the matter of grandfather clocks. They
must have absolutely denuded the Low Countries of these useful
timepieces, for at every step at Groote Schuur a fresh solemn-faced
Dutch clock ticks gravely away, to remind one how time is passing.
Rhodes collected a very fine library, but he had a curious fad for
typewritten copies of his favourite books, which fill an entire
bookcase in the library. Rhodes paid an immense price for the splendid
set of seventeenth-century Brussels tapestries in the dining-room,
illustrating the "Discovery of Africa," and the magnificent Cordova
leather in the drawing-room must also have been a costly acquisition.
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