A Bosman Companion. Craig Mackenzie

      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