M. C. (‘Mitzi’) Former lecturer in English at the University of South Africa. Wrote her doctoral study (1988), part of which deals with HCB’s Cold Stone Jug, on autobiographical responses to the experience of prison, and compiled Herman Charles Bosman: The Prose Juvenilia (1998).
Andrews, Lionel Carpenter who gets on the wrong side of his foreman Bert Parsons, but redeems himself and later gets promoted to foreman and sidekick when other contracts are won (JN: 31).
Andries A cripple who is in love with Heloise and seems to mind her teeth fetish only slightly less than David (YB: 59 “Heloise’s Teeth”).
Anglo–Boer War, First (1880–81) Sometimes called ‘Die Eerste Vryheidsoorlog’ (‘First War of Independence’) by Afrikaners, it was fought between Britain and the Transvaal Republic (ZAR), and was provoked by the British annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 by Theophilus Shepstone. The British garrisons at Potchefstroom and Pretoria were besieged, and in February 1881 a decisive battle was fought at Majuba in Natal, which the republican Afrikaners won. HCB dealt with the war in his stories “Yellow Moepels” and “The Red Coat”. See Rooinek and Other Boer War Stories, The.
Anglo–Boer War, Second/South African War (1899–1902) The second of the two wars fought between the South African Republics and Great Britain. Sometimes called ‘Die Tweede Vryheidsoorlog’ (‘Second War of Independence’) by Afrikaners, it was the costliest war fought by Britain until 1914. It is commonly considered to have been fought primarily for economic reasons (access by Britain to the Transvaal’s lucrative goldfields). The British expected a quick and easy war, and, indeed, the first, more conventional, stage of the war (the battle of the ‘big commandos’) was over fairly soon, with Pretoria being taken in June 1900. But the second phase, the so-called war of the ‘small commandos’, or guerrilla war, dragged on until May 1902, sucking in huge numbers of British men (450 000 in all) and amounts of matériel. Under their commander, Lord Kitchener, the British resorted to a ‘scorched earth’ policy, burning Boer farms and herding the women and children into concentration camps, a policy that resulted in nearly 30 000 civilian deaths and left permanent scars on the Afrikaner psyche. HCB featured the war extensively in his work, most notably in “Mafeking Road”, “The Traitor’s Wife”, “Peaches Ripening in the Sun” and “The Rooinek”. See Rooinek and Other Boer War Stories, The.
Aniescu, Gris Romanian-born SA citizen and dilettante; friend of Louis Wassenaar, and ‘student of legs’; aka Schtroppski (OTS: 90 “Louis Wassenaar”).
Annie (no surname given) Petrus Lemmer’s step-niece; outspoken, spunky young lady who holds her own when it comes to witty retorts during a Marico tale (S&H: 47 “Marico Moon”).
Anniversary Edition (of the Works of H. C. Bosman) Fourteen-volume series under the general co-editorship of Stephen Gray and Craig MacKenzie, produced between 1998 and 2005. The series was given this name because planning for it began in late 1997, the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Mafeking Road, and it was scheduled for completion in 2005, the centenary of HCB’s birth. The purpose of the series was to release all of HCB’s works in unabridged and uncensored versions, and the editing used original texts (some of them never before published). The series began with a completely re-edited Mafeking Road and Other Stories (1998) and Willemsdorp (1998). Other volumes in the series are Cold Stone Jug (1999) and Idle Talk: Voorkamer Stories (I) (1999), which put into print for the first time the first half of HCB’s ‘Voorkamer’ sequence, Jacaranda in the Night (2000) and Old Transvaal Stories (2000), which gathers together all the stories not written by HCB in series – that is, ‘non-Oom Schalk’, ‘non-Voorkamer’ stories. Verborge Skatte (2000; edited by Leon de Kock) gathers all of the stories HCB wrote in Afrikaans, together with his commentaries on Afrikaans literature. Seed-time and Harvest and Other Stories (2001) and Unto Dust and Other Stories (2002) are two further Oom Schalk Lourens collections that feature the remaining stories in this sequence; while A Cask of Jerepigo: Sketches and Essays (2002) and My Life and Opinions (2003) are two collections of HCB’s journalism – general and autobiographical, respectively. Young Bosman (2003) draws together HCB’s early writings, while Wild Seed (2004) is the most complete edition of HCB’s poetry to date. The Anniversary Edition was concluded with Homecoming: Voorkamer Stories (II) (2005).
Anselm, Archbishop Archbishop of Canterbury in the eleventh century (IT: 45 “Ghost Trouble”).
antipassaat Anti-trade winds (IT: 143 “Dreams of Rain”).
antisyncline It is probable that HCB got this wrong by mixing up a geological term: a syncline is a curving fold in a rock formation that moves downward where the strata dip toward the centre of the geological structure; the opposite – where the rock formation curves upward – is called an anticline, not an antisyncline (W: 169).
“Anxious to Hear” (H: 38) A follow-on to “Laugh, Clown, Laugh”. Schoolmaster Vermaak goes off on a tangent about an archaeological find in the area while trying to avoid more weighty matters (i.e. his presumed relationship with Pauline Gerber). A wry look at early twentieth-century moral values. “‘Now, this Jurassic, that you’re talking about,’ Oupa Bekker asked the schoolmaster. ‘Has it got anything to do with Jurie Steyn?’”
Apollo The Greek sun god; son of Zeus and Leto (CJ: 103 “Playing Sane”).
appearance
“He didn’t ever carry himself well, but I wouldn’t say he was a weedy-looking type. He was average in stature” (Stanley Jackson, RB: 15). “He was physically extremely attractive, his astonishing blue eyes scintillating with mischief, and glowing with intelligence. He must have made many a girl student miss a heartbeat” (Sachs, IKH: 42). “On my very first day [at college] I met Herman Bosman, whom I would describe as a very retiring student. He was very good looking – he was tall, over six feet, and very blond. Always he was most courteous” (Serita Dales, RB: 21). This account has to be reconciled with HCB’s own statement on his height, when giving evidence in court after murdering David Russell: “My height is 5’ 8”” (L&O: 65). In Cold Stone Jug (192), he gives his suit measurements to the warder in the tailor shop: 24 inch (inside) leg (60 cm) and 33 inch long (outside leg? 82,5 cm). Lago Clifford was a fellow prisoner with HCB in 1928–29: “[H]e has no trace whatever of any Colonial accent. His aspect is a bright and cheerful one; he has clear blue vital eyes” (The Sjambok, 5 July 1929: 19). That his spoken English was uninflected by an Afrikaans accent was also attested to by schoolmate Stanley Jackson, who also remembered that HCB pronounced his name in the Anglicised way (‘Bozz-min’) (see Stanley Jackson interview, RB: 14). George Howard met him in his early thirties, and described him as a “tallish, broad, blue-eyed young man, with a high forehead, thinning wild fair hair, knitted tie, wide black leather belt, a high merry laugh, large actor’s hands and a wide-brimmed hat, worn like a ship with a heavy list” (RB: 32). His pupil, acolyte and, later, influential editor Lionel Abrahams remembers him as he was in his early forties: “What caught the eye was probably his hat, the usual trilby or fedora of the 1940s, but worn tipped far to one side and forward, at an angle that expressed both jauntiness and a desire for concealment. Or it may have been the eager way he seemed to plunge into conversation with his wife while they walked, or the emphatic way he moved and gestured, or the rolled-up magazine he usually hugged under one arm” (RB: 121). Abrahams also vividly recalls his mannerisms as a teacher: “[T]he idiosyncratic play of his hands, presenting us with his words and intentions as though with conjured visible entities; the silvery-soft voice and strangely paced, hesitant speech with its rapid brief phrases punctuated by pauses, slow weighty emphases and sharp, appealing exclamations testing agreement (‘Hey? Hey!’)” (RB: 121). See Dales, Serita.
Bosman at 21 (NELM)
