BURIED TOGETHER
Partner Leander Starr Jameson, buried together
Queer Places:
Rhodes Arts Complex, 1-3 South Rd, Bishop's Stortford CM23 3JG, Regno Unito
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
King Edward St, Oxford OX1 4HT, Regno Unito
Brown's Hotel, Albemarle St, Mayfair, London W1S 4BP, Regno Unito
Westminster Abbey, 20 Deans Yd, Westminster, London SW1P 3PA, Regno Unito
Malindidzimu Hill or World’s View, Matopo National Park, Zimbabwe
Cecil
John Rhodes PC (5 July 1853 – 26 March 1902)
was a British businessman, mining magnate and politician in southern
Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to
1896. An ardent believer in British imperialism, Rhodes and his British
South Africa Company founded the southern African territory of Rhodesia
(now Zimbabwe and Zambia), which the company named after him in 1895.
South Africa's Rhodes University is also named after him. Rhodes set up
the provisions of the Rhodes Scholarship, which is funded by his estate,
and put much effort towards his vision of a Cape to Cairo Railway
through British territory. Cecil Rhodes was part of the circle of Lord
Ronald Gower, and knew
Frank Hird as well as
John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, Gower's closest friend.
The son of a vicar, Rhodes grew up in Bishop's Stortford,
Hertfordshire, and was a sickly child. He was sent to South Africa by
his family when he was 17 years old in the hope that the climate might
improve his health. He entered the diamond trade at Kimberley in 1871,
when he was 18, and over the next two decades gained near-complete
domination of the world diamond market. His De Beers diamond company,
formed in 1888, retains its prominence into the 21st century. Rhodes
entered the Cape Parliament in 1880, and a decade later became Prime
Minister. After overseeing the formation of Rhodesia during the early
1890s, he was forced to resign as Prime Minister in 1896 after the
disastrous Jameson Raid, an unauthorised attack on Paul Kruger's South
African Republic (or Transvaal). After Rhodes's death in 1902, at the
age of 48, he was buried in the Matopos Hills in what is now Zimbabwe.
At the time of his death he was already a very controversial figure.[2]
One of Rhodes's primary motivators in politics and business was his
professed belief that the Anglo-Saxon race was, to quote his will, "the
first race in the world".
Under the reasoning that "the more of the world we inhabit the better it
is for the human race",
he advocated vigorous settler colonialism and ultimately a reformation
of the British Empire so that each component would be self-governing and
represented in a single parliament in London. Ambitions such as these,
juxtaposed with his policies regarding indigenous Africans in the Cape
Colony—describing the country's black population as largely "in a state
of barbarism",
he advocated their governance as a "subject race",
and was at the centre of moves to marginalise them politically—have led
recent critics to characterise him as a white supremacist and "an
architect of apartheid".
Westminster Abbey, London
Historian Richard A. McFarlane has called Rhodes "as integral a
participant in southern African and British imperial history as George
Washington or
Abraham Lincoln are in their respective eras in United States
history. Most histories of South Africa covering the last decades of the
nineteenth century are contributions to the historiography of Cecil
Rhodes." According to McFarlane, the aforementioned historiography "may
be divided into two broad categories: chauvinistic approval or utter
vilification".
Paul Maylam identifies three perspectives: works that attempt to either
venerate or debunk Rhodes, and "the intermediate view, according to
which Rhodes is not straightforwardly assessed as either hero or
villain".
Rhodes never married, pleading, "I have too much work on my hands"
and saying that he would not be a dutiful husband.
Some writers and academics[46]
have suggested that Rhodes may have been homosexual. The scholar Richard
Brown observed: "On the issue of Rhodes' sexuality... there is, once
again, simply not enough reliable evidence to reach firm, irrefutable
conclusions. It is inferred, but not proven, that Rhodes was homosexual
and it is assumed (but not proven) that his relationships with men were
sometimes physical. Neville Pickering is described as Rhodes' lover in
spite of the absence of decisive evidence."
Rhodes was close to Pickering; he returned from negotiations for
Pickering's 25th birthday in 1882. On that occasion, Rhodes drew up a
new will leaving his estate to Pickering.
Two years later, Pickering suffered a riding accident. Rhodes nursed
him faithfully for six weeks, refusing even to answer telegrams
concerning his business interests. Pickering died in Rhodes's arms, and
at his funeral, Rhodes was said to have wept with fervour.[46]
Brown comments: "there is still the simpler but major problem of the
extraordinarily thin evidence on which the conclusions about Rhodes are
reached. Rhodes himself left few details... Indeed, Rhodes is a
singularly difficult subject... since there exists little intimate
material – no diaries and few personal letters."
Pickering's successor was Henry Latham Currey, the son of an old
friend, who had become Rhodes's private secretary in 1884.[48]
When Currey became engaged in 1894, Rhodes was deeply mortified and
their relationship ended.
Rhodes also remained close to
Leander Starr Jameson after the two had met in Kimberley, where they
shared a bungalow. Jameson nursed Rhodes during his final illness, was a
trustee of his estate and residuary beneficiary of his will, which
allowed him to continue living in Rhodes' mansion after his death.
In the last years of his life, Rhodes was stalked by Polish princess
Catherine Radziwiłł, born Rzewuska, who had married into a noble Polish
family called Radziwiłł. Radziwiłł falsely claimed that she was engaged
to Rhodes, or that they were having an affair. She asked him to marry
her, but Rhodes refused. In reaction, she accused him of loan fraud. He
had to go to trial and testify against her accusation. She wrote a
biography of Rhodes called Cecil Rhodes: Man and Empire Maker.
Her accusations were eventually proven to be false.
Although Rhodes remained a leading figure in the politics of southern
Africa, especially during the Second Boer War, he was dogged by ill
health throughout his relatively short life.
He was sent to Natal aged 16 because it was believed the climate
might help problems with his heart. On returning to England in 1872 his
health again deteriorated with heart and lung problems, to the extent
that his doctor, Sir Morell Mackenzie, believed he would only survive
six months. He returned to Kimberley where his health improved. From age
40 his heart condition returned with increasing severity until his death
from heart failure in 1902, aged 48, at his seaside cottage in
Muizenberg.
Rhodes decreed in his will that he was to be buried in Matobo Hills.
After his death in the Cape in 1902, his body was transported by train
to Bulawayo. His burial was attended by Ndebele chiefs, who asked that
the firing party should not discharge their rifles as this would disturb
the spirits. Then, for the first time, they gave a white man the
Matabele royal salute, Bayete. Rhodes is buried alongside
Leander Starr Jameson and 34 British soldiers killed in the Shangani
Patrol.
Despite occasional efforts to return his body to the United Kingdom, his
grave remains there still, "part and parcel of the history of Zimbabwe"
and attracts thousands of visitors each year.
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
- Cecil
Rhodes - Wikipedia
- Homosexuals in History, A Study of Ambivalence in Society, Literature
and the Arts, by A.L. Rowse, 1977