THE BETHELL CASE.

Evening Star, Issue 7496, 14 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE BETHELL CASE.

THE BRITON, THE BOERS, AND THE BARALONG BRIDE. [From Our London Correspondent.] London, February 22. The decbion of Mr Justice Stirling in the famous Bethell case decided last week will doubtless be read with considerable interest in New Zea'and, where, I Imagine, more or les3 irregular marriases between Natives and Europeans are not unknown. Some of the legal papers do not, I notice, agree with the verdict, and seem to think it might be upset on appeal. Fortunately there hj no chance o' that, as the Bethell family have voluntarily offered to provide for their South African re'ative. The public first heard of young Mr Bethell at the time of his death. His fate was a sad one, and occasioned a good deal of sympathy. " He was," says the ' Daily Telegraph,' " a young ma*i of a good old Yorkshire family, who went out to South Africa in 1878, and was killed by some marauding Boers. At first he acted, in spite of his youth, as British Res/dent with a tribe in the interior called the Baralongs; when that appointment was cancelled he became a keeper of a rough store in the wilderness, and afterwards joined the Cape Mounted Police. How he came to be murdered it is not necessary to discuss now, but his untimely death was a great factor in the despatch of the English expedition which settled the affairs of Bechuanaland. It seems that Mr Bethell, when resident among the South African Baralongs, had little work to do, and thought that marriage with a.daughter of the land would be an agreeable way of employing his leisure. The chief of the Baralongs at that time was Montseoa, to whom Mr Bethell explained that he wanted to marry a Baralong woman. Montseoa, we may surmise, was a little astonkhed, and proceeded to inquire if Mr Bethell proposed to marry in a church, after the English fashion, or according to Native rites on such occasions. He was informed that Mr Bethell intended to do in Baralongia as the Baralorgs did—in other words, to conform to the local rites, which were of t,lmplß but rather barbaric order. The Baralong bridegroom first provides himself with an ox, a cow, a sheep, and a buck, and, having decapitated them, sends the heads as a prenuptial gift to his future father and mother-in-law. It seems quite beyond doubt that Mr Bethell performed these duties to admiration, and that he also obeyed another rule of Baralong etiquette appropriate to the occasion, in ploughing with his own hands the garden belonging to bis wife's mother. In fact, the marriage was, as Montseoa asserted, a perfectly good and valid one according to Baralong rites. A child was subsequently born, and the question which the English Court was called upon to determine was whether this African union could be called a Valid marriage in the English sense. In the will which Mr Bethell left he directed that, if a child were born to him it should be sent to school in England or in the Cape Colony, and that it should, if a male, enter the army as its profession in life. This seemed, at all events, to show that the father desired to recognise the child as his own ; and it was stated that, had the marriage been declared valid, this child of Teepoo's would be entitled to English estates of an annual value of LSOO. Fortunately Mr Justice Stirling has decided that this little Baralong half-caste is not to become an Endish landed proprietor. Mr BethelFs union"with Teepoo is now declared to have been a marriage only in the Baralong sense of the term, and not binding in English law. At the same time the Judge expressed a very natural hope that Mr Bethell's relatives would make adequate provision for the child of this romantic match. It is, of course, much to be regretted that a young Englishman should have allowed himself to become entangled in any such affair; its results were bad for himself, bad for the woman and her child j and undesirable in every way. Much allowance, however, must be made for the position ia which young Bethell found himself in a strange land, cut off from any but casual intercourse with men of his own color and race, and liviDg all the year round in a kind of banishment unrelieved by continuous employment. He refrained from informing his relatives at home of his extraordinary marriage, and he had never recognised Teepoo as bis wife to any of his friends. Moreover, there is no doubt that polygamy prevails in the tribe of the Baralongs, so that it is doubtful whether what English law would recognise as real marriage takes place there at all. When Harold Transome, in ' Felix Holt,' brought home from the East a little boy, the result of his union with a slave-girl, the fact was considered to be rather startling and not wholly satisfactory to his mother; but the legitimacy of the infant does not seem to have been disputed. The usual rule of English law is, of course, that a marriage in a foreign country which is valid according to the laws of that country is valid also in England, unless the English law has been in any way contravened. In this case there arises the further point, whether anything which can really be called law exists among the Baralongs. It has generally been considered that the rule applies only to civilised peoples, to nations which are inside the pale of international lew. The English Courts do not recognise a marriage which takes place before a Turkish Cadi, for example, in Constantinople or Alexandria, or in other places where English consuls are established, and where rights are granted by capitulations and treaties. In the same way, it is difficult to see how the unwritten code of a barbarous South African tribe can be recognised by an English tribunal. If Mr Bethell had been married in a church, or before the British representative with English rites, it would have been a different matter. Being at one time British Resident, he would, perhaps, have had to be married before himself, and to sign the register both as principal witness and chief actor. As the Judge said, i*, would no doubt have been awkward for Mr Bethell to have neglected to comply with the manners and customs of the Natives, inasmuch as he dwelt among them, and his wife was a near relative of the head man. This may account for his willingness to turn butcher for the nonce, and also to officiate as amateur gardener to his mother-in-law. The ancient and highly civilised Greeks used to sacrifice cattle at a marriage ; but it was the father of the bride, and not the bridegroom, who was expected to perform that disagreeable office. As for the marriage feast, that is a custom which is common to the Baralongs, to the British, and to all nations. The gifts which Mr Bethell presented, in strict conformity with the etiquette of the locality, to his father - in - law and mother - in - law look suspiciously like the purchase-money paid for their daughter ; in fact, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it would appear as if Teepoo had undoubtely been sold to the young Englishman. The cu3tom, however, of the oridegroom making presents to the bride's parents prevails very generally in uncivilised and also in some civilised communities. In more enlightened societies the exact reverse is the case. The father-in-law is expected to 'come down' with something handsome in the shape of a dowry; and his son-in-law would consider him exceedingly mean if ho had the ability to dower his daughter and yot refrained from doing so. Cynics niljjht say that the difference, between savages and oivilised custom in this rospoot avisos from the higher estimation in which barbarous parents hold their fomalo ohildrou. Tho savugo progenitor requires to bo generously compensated before lie will coustiut to parb with his daughter j

the civilised paterfamilias is so anxious to get the girls off his hands that he is actually willing to pay an otherwise eligible suitor for his trouble and cost of doing so. This is only the cold, heartless way in which the cynic would represent matters. As a fact,we know that the dowry which bridegrooms like to receive with their future wives does not at all imply that there is any lack of proper consideration for girls in English homes—quite the contrary. Stern parent* in our country often show the door to undesirable, albeit wealthy candidates for their daughter's hand ; and we very much doubt if the average Baralong sire would be equal to that amount of paternal self' sacrifice. The probability is that he would give away his girls to any suitor who> could afford to present him with the necessary amount of butcher's meat, and that theBaralong mother would be satisfied with » son-in-law destitute of every virtue men' tioned in the Ten Commandments, provided he was able to plough her garden satisfactorily. Such rites as those which seem to obtain in Baralong matrimonial engagements, certainly smack somewhatof savagery, until we begin to reflect how very odd some of the European accompaniments of a wedding would seem to the untutored inhabitant of Southern Africa. For example, what would he make of the shower of rice and the slippers thrown after the bridal carriage—a custom which ha» descended to us, in an altered form, from the Greeks, and which finds mention in Aristophanes? The trouble of legal docnmettts and marriage settlements would Mem a ' fond thing Vainly invented' to his mind ; and the kissing of the bride in the vestry by all her friends would be tare to fill him with the utmost astonishment. No doubt the practical moral to be deduced from this romantic story of real life is that young Englishmen in distant lands had better not wed barbarous maidens, whatever their personal charms, and Whether the etiquette of the neighborhood is Of is not complied with."