Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Maps
- Preface
- Author's Note
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Scotland: Border Farm to Literary Edinburgh (1789–1820)
- Part II The Cape Frontier: Pioneer, Settler Leader (1820–1821)
- Part III Cape Town and Genadendal: The Stand Against Power (1822–1825)
- Part IV The Frontier, Karroo: Rural Retreat and the ‘Great Cause’ (1825–1826)
- 12 Return to Glen Lynden
- 13 Karroo Turning Point
- 14 Last Months at Eildon
- 15 Return of the Settler
- Part V London Literary Life and The Anti-Slavery Campaign (1826–1833)
- Part VI Scotland and Highgate A Poet Returns to his Roots and Last Works (1830–1834)
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Return to Glen Lynden
from Part IV - The Frontier, Karroo: Rural Retreat and the ‘Great Cause’ (1825–1826)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Maps
- Preface
- Author's Note
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Scotland: Border Farm to Literary Edinburgh (1789–1820)
- Part II The Cape Frontier: Pioneer, Settler Leader (1820–1821)
- Part III Cape Town and Genadendal: The Stand Against Power (1822–1825)
- Part IV The Frontier, Karroo: Rural Retreat and the ‘Great Cause’ (1825–1826)
- 12 Return to Glen Lynden
- 13 Karroo Turning Point
- 14 Last Months at Eildon
- 15 Return of the Settler
- Part V London Literary Life and The Anti-Slavery Campaign (1826–1833)
- Part VI Scotland and Highgate A Poet Returns to his Roots and Last Works (1830–1834)
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Pringle wrote of his return to Glen Lynden (he called it that, though the name had not been gazetted and was later to refer only to the parish):
We had the satisfaction of finding our relatives in much more prosperous circumstances, as husbandmen, than any party of settlers that we had seen in Albany
He and Margaret found that their beehive hut was now the kitchen of the ‘commodious farm-cottage of stone and brick with a stone chimney’, the first built in the Baviaans River sub-district. He revelled in furnishing his hut near William's house, ‘putting my desk and table together and manufacturing bedsteads, chairs and cutty stools’, he told Fairbairn, adding, in his usual mock-boastful style:
My mechanical talents I am happy to say are still unsurpassed – and my cottage and furniture are the admiration of the Bavian's River. They even greatly surpass the grandeur and magnificence of my former state. Besides my own exquisite handiworks I even possess an iron bedstead and a cane bottomed sofa.
Though William had taken his place officially as leader of the settlement, Thomas seemed – perhaps due to William's ill-health – to have resumed his old role. His first surviving letter from Eildon was in reply to the Graaff-Reinet magistrate Stockenstrom on 9 May 1825, recording the three servants – Mortimer (long gone), Souness and Eckhorn – articled to party members, and stating that of the twenty, the seven males had paid deposits for a hundred acres (40.47 ha) each, the total now enlarged to some 8,000 morgen, an eighteenfold increase.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Thomas PringleSouth African pioneer, poet and abolitionist, pp. 147 - 153Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012