I remember asking him how it came that he seldom showed the desire to go away somewhere quite alone, if even for a day or two, so as to remain really tete-a-tete with his own reflections.  His reply was most characteristic:  “What should I do with myself?  One must have people about to play cards in the evening.”  I might have added “and to flatter one,” but refrained.  This craving continually to have someone at hand to bully, scold, or to make use of, was certainly one of the failings of Rhodes’ powerful mind.  It also indicated in a way that thirst for power which never left him until the last moment of his life.  He had within him the weakness of those dethroned kings who, in exile, still like to have a Court about them and to travel in state.  Rhodes had a court, and also travelled with a suite who, under the pretence of being useful to him, effectually barred access to any stranger.  But for his entourage it is likely that Rhodes might have outlived the odium of the Raid.  But, as Mrs. van Koopman said to me, “What is the use of trying to help Rhodes when one is sure that he will never be allowed to perform all that he might promise?”

The winter which followed upon the relief of Kimberley Rhodes spent almost entirely at Groote Schuur, going to Rhodesia only in spring.  During these months negotiations between him and certain leaders of the Bond party went on almost uninterruptedly.  These were either conducted openly by people like Mr. David de Waal, or else through other channels when not entrusted to persons whom it would be relatively easy later on to disavow.  Once or twice these negotiations seemed to take a favourable turn at several points, but always at the last minute Rhodes withdrew under some pretext or other.  What he would have liked would have been to have, as it were, the Dutch party, the Bond, the English Colonists, the South African League, President Kruger, and the High Commissioner, all rolled into one, fall at his feet and implore him to save South Africa.  When he perceived that all these believed that there existed a possibility for matters to be settled without his intervention, he hated every man of them with a hatred such as only very absolute natures can feel.  To hear him express his disgust with the military authorities, abuse in turns Lord Roberts, whom he used to call an old man in his dotage, Lord Kitchener, who was a particular antipathy, the High Commissioner, the Government at home, and the Bond, was an education in itself.  He never hesitated before making use of an expression of a coarseness such as does not bear repeating, and in his private conversations he hurled insults at the heads of all.  It is therefore no wonder that the freedom of speech which Rhodes exercised at Groote Schuur added to the difficulties of a situation the brunt of which not he, but Sir Alfred Milner, had to bear.