Empire_ What Ruling the World Did to the British - Jeremy Paxman [107]
The true importance of the siege of Mafeking to the British was less what it was than what it represented. B-P was an inspirational siege commander and a clever tactician, deceiving the watching Boers by having his men appear to lay minefields or move around as if they were negotiating (non-existent) barbed-wire fences. He turned the railway workshops over to production of guns. He made a point of appearing unflappable, even as shells whistled over his head into the town – ‘A second shell sang a little nearer and raised clouds of dust not two hundred yards away,’ said a witness. ‘The colonel closed the book which he had been reading, and, marking the place, rose quietly, whistling to himself, as is his habit, and as a third shell wrecked a couple of outstanding buildings, said “You had better come inside.” ’ When his jaunty dispatches, the most famous of which was boiled down by his signaller to ‘All well. Four hours’ bombardment. One dog killed,’ appeared in the London newspapers B-P became a hero in the Nelson mould. His initials, claimed the drum-bangers at home, stood for ‘British Pluck’.
Like many empire heroes, it sounds as if Baden-Powell might have been born for extreme adversity. The burden was not shared evenly, of course. Everyone went hungry, but the whites got much better rations than the black people, and in his subsequent accounts of the siege B-P hardly mentioned the Africans’ big contribution to Mafeking’s survival. But he was in his element and the embattled little community provided a stage – both metaphorical and literal – for his indefatigable cheeriness and vanity. B-P designed Mafeking banknotes and his head replaced that of the queen on postage stamps. The tedium of month after month under siege was eased by his encouragement of concerts, plays, cricket matches, gymkhanas and flower shows. At concerts he would appear on stage in fancy dress and sing in a silly voice. Were there occasions when his audiences wondered whether it might not be preferable to go over to the Boers than to sit through another of his hilarious monologues, practical jokes or imitations of birdsong?
Eventually, a relief column reached the town and Mafeking joined the list of ‘scrapes’ in which the British delight. When news of the relief of the town reached Britain, a new verb entered the English language. To ‘maffick’ meant to join the crowds of thousands who took to the streets in uproarious celebration, waving Union flags and carrying pictures of B-P in his broad-brimmed hat.
Mother, may I go and maffick,
Tear around and hinder traffic?
as Saki’s couplet put it. Military parades swaggered in front of Queen Victoria. Portly mayors of industrial cities made thunderous speeches about the superiority of British values. Hotels printed their menus on khaki paper, adorned with photos of B-P on the cover. Fireworks were lit (the finale of the display in Twickenham was a blazing likeness of B-P). In Dover a mob wrecked the offices of a member of the local chamber of commerce, because they had decided he was ‘pro-Boer’. Much drink was taken. In St Paul’s Cathedral Canon Henry Scott Holland preached that, like Lucknow, the name Mafeking would thrill Englishmen’s hearts for many a long year, proving their tenacity, pluck and refusal to know when they were beaten.
When Baden-Powell returned to England he did so as a hero, garlanded with praise even from the worst poet in Scottish literature, William Topaz McGonagall:
Oh! think of them living on brawn extracted from horse hides,
While the inhuman Boers