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Natal Society Foundation - John Conyngham

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298 pages

English

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In 1977, when John Conyngham was twenty-three, the sugar farm of his childhood and youth was sold. Driven by a sense of loss, he wrote his acclaimed novel The Arrowing of the Cane. Now, decades later, he returns to where his story began, to capture a world before it fades forever. Hazara is a lyrical memoir of a family and a farm. It is about a homestead in a park-like garden among cane fields, within sight of the Indian Ocean. It is about sons fighting in wars and daughters nursing in military hospitals. It is about tennis parties, and drinks on the veranda. It is about people who love Africa but know they don't fully belong.

After their marriage in 1924, a young couple named Mia and James settle on the Natal coast, just south of the Zululand border, intending to establish themselves and start a family. Before long they name their farm Hazara, after James's former regiment in the British Indian Army. Like other planters scattered across the countryside, they socialise with neighbours and have visitors to stay in their house with its view eastwards to the Indian Ocean. Then, after a chain of fateful occurrences, into this isolated world of sugar-cane farming, with its horse riding and games of tennis and charades, there arrives from England a girl named Anne. In World War II, James serves in North Africa while Mia and Anne remain on the farm and like other wives and daughters provide a surrogate home for Royal Navy sailors whose ships are undergoing repairs in Durban harbour. Later, back to Natal from flying operations with the Royal Air Force returns a young pilot named Mick, with a family story of his own. He and Anne meet and marry, and over decades transform Hazara into a model estate, but a political showdown is looming and their future seems increasingly uncertain. In the tradition of elegiac memoirs such as Karen Blixen's Out of Africa, about Anglo-Kenya, and David Thomson's Woodbrook, about Anglo-Ireland, onto this rural template John Conyngham stitches a lyrical and multi-layered tapestry of Anglo-South African life, with its interwoven destinies shot through with imperial associations, and its divided loyalties and love of the land, to catch a world before it slips from memory.

Sujets

Out of Africa

Autobiography

Memoir

Biography

Philosophy

Lettres et linguistique

Philosophers

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Publié par	Natal Society Foundation
Date de parution	16 décembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781991225689
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	23 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 2,1200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

J
OHN CONYNGHAM
HAZARA
‘Not only interesting, but moving as well’ — JEFF GUY
‘Beautifully written’ — GRAHAM LINSCOTT
In 1977, when John Conyngham was twenty-two, the sugar farm of his childhood and
youth was sold. Driven by a sense of loss, he wrote his acclaimed novel The Arrowing of the
Cane. Now, decades later, he returns to where his story began, to capture a world before HAZARA
it fades forever.
In the tradition of elegiac memoirs such as Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa, about Anglo- Elegy for an African FarmKenya, and David Thomson’s Woodbrook, about Anglo-Ireland, Hazara is a lyrical account
of an Anglo-South African family and its farm. It is about a homestead in a park-like
garden among cane ﬁ elds, within sight of the Indian Ocean. It is about sons ﬁ ghting in
wars and daughters nursing in military hospitals. It is about tennis parties, and drinks on
the veranda. It is about people who love Africa but know they don’t fully belong.
Praise for THE ARROWING OF THE CANE
‘Close to Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing and to Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist
in its exploration of one individual consciousness and its relationship with Africa, the Africa
which it loves but to which it doesn’t belong … as good and as skilful as either of those two
novels … the voice here is riveting, the observation exact, the writing as good as anything
which has come out of white South Africa.’
COLM TÓIBÍN Irish Sunday Independent Dublin
‘One of the most signiﬁ cant works to emerge from South Africa … Extremely well-written,
highly evocative, this novel captures the essence of our pathetic predicament.’
BERYL ROBERTS Sunday Times Johannesburg
‘Must rank amongst the ﬁ nest descriptive writing to come out of this country … this book
has captured much of the predicament of the English-speaking liberal as well as a ﬁ ne and
compelling spirit of place.’
HEATHER MACKIE Cape Times
‘Examines the white man’s burden without making heavy weather of it … all the more
accomplished for its painful ambivalence.
DAVID PROFUMO Daily Telegraph London
‘A book of great and ambitious richness in whose pages are the dark, mysterious rustlings of
seas of sugar ﬁ elds at night … it is one of the best South African novels I have read.’
NIGEL PENN Art, Design and Architecture
‘The Arrowing of the Cane has something of classic status in Natal terms.’
W.H. BIZLEY Natal University Focus
Occasional Publications of
the Natal Society Foundation JOHN CONYNGHAMPIETERMARITZBURG
9 780639 804033 JOMHAZARA
Occasional Publications of the Natal Society Foundation
PIETERMARITZBURG
2016John Conyngham was born in Durban
in 1954 and educated in South Africa,
England and Ireland. He is the author
of three novels, Te Arrowing of the
Cane, which was joint winner of the
AA Mutual-Ad Donker Vita Award
and winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize
and Sanlam Award, Te Desecration of
the Graves, which was shortlisted for
the M-Net Award, and Te Lostness
of Alice. Other than in South Africa,
his work has been published in the
United Kingdom and United States and
translated into a number of languages.
For thirty-one years he was a journalist
on Te Witness (formerly Te Natal
Witness) in Pietermaritzburg, and was
from 1994 to 2010 the newspaper’s
editor. He is a former Southern African
Poynter Fellow at the Poynter Institute
for Media Studies in St Petersburg,
Florida and Tomson Reuters Fellow at
Oxford University. He lives in Hilton,
KwaZulu-Natal.
Te front cover illustration is based on a watercolour painting ‘Cane
Lands Looking Towards Melmoth’ by Diamond Bozas (1993), courtesy
of the artist. Te photographic portraits are from the author’s collection.
Author photo: Heather Gourlay-Conyngham.HAZARA
Elegy for an African Farm
JOHN CONYNGHAM
Occasional Publications of the Natal Society Foundation
PIETERMARITZBURG
2016Hazara: Elegy for an African Farm
© John Conyngham 2016
Published in 2016 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa by the Trustees of The Natal Society
Foundation under its imprint ‘Occasional Publications of The Natal Society Foundation’.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, without permission from the publishers, the Trustees of The Natal
Society Foundation, P.O. Box 11093, Dorpspruit 3206, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
Natal Society Foundation website: http://www.natalia.org.za/
ISBN 978-0-6398040-3-3 (paperback)
Publishing manager: Peter Croeser
Editor: Christopher Merrett
Proofreader: Sally Hines
Indexer: Christopher Merrett
Maps: Marise Bauer of MDesign
Design and layout: Jo Marwick
This book was set in 11.5/15 pt Bembo, a classical serif typeface designed by Francesco
Grifo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, and frst used in 1495 for an essay, De Aetna, by
Italian Renaissance scholar and poet Pietro Bembo, after whom it is named. It was revived
and modifed in 1929 by Stanley Morison of the Monotype Corporation in London.For my mother and father, in memory,
and for my sisterCONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Author’s note xi
Names and places xv
Maps xvii
Prologue xxi
Part One: The story of James and Mia and their daughter Anne 1
Part Two: The story of John Deane and Anna and their children:
John Ely, Annie Bertha, Amy Blanche, Lewis, Dennis Bartle,
Alice Beryl, Beatrice Mary, Birdie and Dalton 79
Part Three: The story of Mick and Anne, and how they took over
Hazara from James and Mia 157
Epilogue 241
Glossary 245
Bibliography 247
Photographic sources 257
Index 259ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A book about people whose stories are largely unrecorded relies heavily
on the memories of those who were there, and on experts on various
byways of history. For these, and other reasons, I am indebted to Paul
Baillie, Anthony Balcomb, Marise Bauer, Diamond Bozas, Robert Ian
Caldwell, Maurice Calleja, Len Chiazzari, Patsy Cleworth, Stephen
Coan, Mark Coghlan, Tom Donovan, Jenny Duckworth, Luce Dunlop,
Anthony Durrant, Stephen Fenichell, Gerald Fitzpatrick, Suzanne Foster,
Geraldine Freese, Christopher Garnett, Brett Hendey, Nigel Hemming,
Sally Hines, Nan Keightley, Jimpy Kilburn, Adrian Koopman, Christine
Leighton, Sue Light, Richard Lister, Rory Lynsky, Masontaha Mahlatsi,
Gilbert Maingard, Beric, Monica and Lara Mansfeld, Jo Marwick,
Jonathan Moffatt, Redmond Orpen, Angus Petrie, Bruce
RookenSmith, Lieutenant Colonel Mario Schembri, Linda Searle, Graeme and
Paddy Shuker, Eshana Singh, Ralph and David Tanner, Jennifer Thorp,
Julian von Klemperer, and the late Bill Bizley, Désirée Martin, Pam
Weatherley, Clive Conyngham and Dennis ‘Pat’ Conyngham.
With his extensive knowledge of Natal and Zulu history, Jeff Guy
was an invaluable ally, scouring the manuscript in its latter stages and
suggesting numerous improvements. That his sudden death prevented
him from seeing it published I particularly regret.
I also owe a special debt to the chairman of the Natal Society
Foundation, Christopher Merrett, for his enduring faith in this
endeavour, and to its administrator, Peter Croeser, and their fellow
trustees, for underwriting it.
Thanks also to my family – Heather, Richard and Sarah – who directly
or indirectly made space for me while I pieced this story together.
J.H.C.
ixAuTHOR’S NOTE
This is not a political book, or even a conventional history, but simply
an impressionistic account of a farm and some of the people who lived
on it. Every character is the double of a real person, and every action is
rooted in fact, although assumptions have sometimes had to be made.
And because no piece of land or group of individuals exists in isolation,
it is also the story of a diaspora of men and women who were borne
across the globe on an imperial tide that has since receded. As a child and
youth I caught the era’s afterglow, as one sees at twilight the salmon-pink
suffusion of a sun that has already set.
xiHe alone is left to do the thinking. How will he keep them all in his
head, all the books, all the people, all the stories? And if he does not
remember them, who will?
— J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood
The question now inevitably asks itself, whether the lives of great men
only should be recorded. Is not anyone who has lived a life, and left
a record of that life, worthy of biography – the failures as well as the
successes, the humble as well as the illustrious? And what is greatness?
And what is smallness?
— Virginia Woolf, ‘The Art of Biography’NAMES AND PLACES
Zulu names in the English text have been spelt largely as they would
have by the characters in the story. Natal and Zululand, being at the
time separate regions, have been treated as such. While maps indicate the
Nonoti as a stream, then a river, for tidiness both descriptions have been
conf lated into the ‘Nonoti River’. T