In writing a historical piece, at worst one is confronted by a set of facts that reveal little of the real person, their motivations and their personality. At best, only glimpses of the inner person will be exposed usually insufficient to no more than titillate.

The release of the book entitled Pepysian Perceptions of the Cape 1798 to 1828 has led to a numerous long-held assumptions being debunked in spite of previously being cast as immutable and indelible.

The blog will cover the extraordinary life of Samuel Eusebius Hudson as well as pealing back invalid assumptions of life in Port Elizabeth from 1810 to 1825.

Main picture:   Sketch of Samuel Eusebius Hudson by Lady Ann Barnard                                 

Opening the treasure chest
Like much of the history of Port Elizabeth, very little has survived to provide details of the people, their businesses and their day-to-day lives. Take Frederick Korsten as an example. In a review of my blog on him, I was yet again struck by the paucity of information especially regarding the sudden collapse of his business after 1819. After the review I had more questions than answers. This is not a phenomenon unique to the history of Port Elizabeth, rather it is a function of the arbitrariness with which information is recorded and preserved. Decades after the death of a loved one, many will regret not enquiring about an aspect of the other person’s life while they were still alive. It is only then that one realises what information is missing.

But sometimes good fortune strikes. After a despondent fruitless search for additional corroborating information, I came across an article entitled The Decline and Fall of Frederick Korsten by Edward Hudson. This was the veritable cornucopia of riches. The source of this invaluable information was the copious diaries of the author’s ancestor, Samuel Eusebius Hudson. Apparently, his diaries are being made available for the first time in published form. Not only does it highlight Korsten’s excessive optimism, but it also reveals his lack of detailed management of the businesses. Based upon this detailed information, I was able to draft a blog on Korsten’s business acumen

 Early life in England

Brief biography of Lady Hardwicke

Born to James Lindsay, 5th Earl of Balcarres and Anne Dalrymple, Hardwicke married Philip Yorke, 3rd Earl of Hardwicke, on 24 July 1782. She became Countess of Hardwicke in 1796 when her husband succeeded his uncle. The couple had eight children, four boys and four girls. All four boys died young. Hardwicke regularly wrote and produced plays and performances in Wimpole Hall, but she was very conservative in her views and saw this less as a profession of writing than an example of her duty as a mother and charitable lady. In 1831 she was involved in the Irish Distress Committee raising money to relieve the suffering of poor Irish people. With the permission of Queen Victoria, she published The Court of Oberon, which she had written in the 1790s. She also provided the illustrations for the book.

She died at age 94 at Tyttenhanger  House. She is buried in Chicheley Chapel in Wimpole, commemorated on the monument she had erected to the memory of her husband and sons. [Extract from Wikipedia]

In contrast with the royal, cultured, “upstairs” upbringing of Elizabeth, Samuel Hudson is listed as being the son of a lowly rural gravedigger, an occupation classified as “downstairs” in the vernacular, a far cry from Elizabeth’s upbringing. Aware of the harsh realities if the affair were unmasked, it must have been fleeting and surreptitious by nature. The magnet and the glue of their relationship must have required the pair to be kindred spirits.

The gravedigger turned writer
Despite being born as the son of a country gravedigger, Hudson was exceptionally well educated for a man of such modest origin. For this Hudson must thank a scholarly clergyman who had tutored him benevolently throughout his childhood. This injected in him a lifelong curiosity and evangelical faith which permeates his writings.

Apart from his copious diary entries, making him one of the earliest known novelists in South Africa, Hudson is also known for his essays on Cape Society.

End of the relationship
All good things must come to an end and so it happened with Hudson. Reality eclipsed desire. The reality in this case was banishment to the Cape in order to hush up his adulterous affair with Lady Anne’s youngest sister, Lady Elizabeth Hardwicke whose footman he had been from 1792 to 1796. Hudson arrived at the Cape on 5 May 1797 as the footman to the Cape Colony’s first British Secretary, Andrew Barnard and his wife, Lady Ann Barnard.

Once at the Cape, he was soon given a job in the Customs Department which he held until the Colony reverted to Dutch rule in 1803. With his shopkeeper brother, Thomas, who had joined him in 1799, he opted to remain in the Cape during the Batavian interregnum (1803-1806)

Hudson opened a hotel on Cape Town’s Keisersgracht and contrary to his previous aversion to it, purchased slaves to staff it.    

After the recapture of the Cape by the British forces in 1806 and the arrival in 1807 of Lord Caledon – Lord Hardwicke’s future son-in-law – as Governor, Hudson sold up and returned to England. It is speculated that he had been summoned to assist in removing the illegitimate son from the Hardwicke succession. On returning to the Cape in 1814, he found that his brother, in financial straits, had committed suicide.

The Englishman, Samuel Hudson and the Dutchman, Frederick Korsten were business associates but after Korsten’s venture at Cradock Place, Korsten had relocated to the Eastern Cape where his talent for discerning business opportunities revealed itself in the form of an arable farm on the Gamtoos River. As the project manager, Korsten appointed his friend, the-54-year-old Samuel Eusebius Hudson. What the farm lacked was an irrigation system to water the fields. After no more than a cursory assessment of the length of the irrigation canal required, Korsten based the manning requirements on these almost arbitrary estimates, but totally under-estimated the length and difficulty of construction. Having no prior experience in farming and project management, Hudson was abandoned by Korsten at the Gamtoos River. It took the inexperienced Hudson six months to articulate to Korsten the reason for the lack of progress. It was chronic undermanning. Apart from a dearth of labourers, the quality and proficiency of the Scottish labourers hired from Benjamin Moodie proved to be unsuited to the task. To escape, many simply fled leaving Hudson chronically understaffed. In a fit of rage Korsten fired not only the absconded labourers but also those who remained on site. This setback was the least of Hudson’s concerns as the inspection of the mouth of the Gamtoos River from which Korsten planned to ship his produce to Cape Town revealed a greater concern. The greater obstacle was the fact that the mouth was blocked by a natural sand barrier.       

      

In spite of the double whammy, Korsten’s character would not let him concede defeat at this point. Even Hudson’s decision to forfeit his option to purchase a half-share in the farm and retreat to Cradock Place did not deflect Korsten. By now, at a cost of nearly RxD10,000, all that had been accomplished was the construction of a cottage and a hut and little more than a garden cultivated.

Instead of facing the facts and biting the bullet, he gave half of the property to his son-in-law John Damant in the forlorn hope that he and his brother could make a success of it. Hudson correctly predicted that the Damants who were gentlemen farmers from Norfolk were ill-prepared for the rigors of life in the Eastern Cape.  

Trading at Cradock Place
Next we find Hudson trading at Cradock Place presumably on the same basis as those who Korsten had set up in the various hamlets and towns in the Eastern Cape. With the economy in recession and Hudson’s health failing, his store failed in 1821. A further endeavour at Trading in 1822 was attempted but this time at Uitenhage with unfortunate results as Hudson was forced into bankruptcy after which he was compelled to relocate to Cape Town and rely on the generosity of friends for board and lodgings. From 1823 to 1826 he lived with the Heurtley family in Dorp Street and thereafter with the Sala family in Keerom Street. He eked out a bare subsistence as an artist, copyist and teacher of art while waiting in vain for his bankruptcy proceeding to be wound up so that he could return to England. It was not to be as he died as a pauper in Cape Town in September 1828

 Hudson’s legacy will be immeasurable as he bequeathed South Africa a treasure trove of information regarding life at the Cape. His insightful observations of not only social life but also societal norms will be picked over as the carrion of generations to come.  

Sources
The Decline and Fall of Frederick Korsten by E Hudson
Pepysian perceptions of the Cape 1798-1828: Selections from the Western Cape Diaries of Samuel Eusebius Hudson by Edward Hudson [Historical Publications of Southern Africa, Cape Town, 2024]
Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa vol. 73, no 2 (December 2019): 179-190
The main repository of Hudson’s diaries is the Western Cape Archives and Record Service