• PEPYSIAN PERCEPTIONS OF THE CAPE 1798-1828, selections from the Western Cape diaries of Samuel Eusebius Hudson, with a preface by the late Robert Carl-Heinz Shell

PEPYSIAN PERCEPTIONS OF THE CAPE 1798-1828, selections from the Western Cape diaries of Samuel Eusebius Hudson, with a preface by the late Robert Carl-Heinz Shell

: Hudson (E.) ed.

R 570.00
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268pp., b/w & colour illus., hardback, d.w., HiPSA Third Series No. 6, Cape Town, 2024

ISBN: 9781990981401

 

The diarist Samuel Eusebius Hudson (1764–1828) arrived at the Cape in May 1797 as footman to the Cape Colony’s first British Secretary, Andrew Barnard and his wife Lady Anne Barnard. He had been exiled from England because of an adulterous affair with Lady Anne’s sister, Lady Elizabeth Hardwicke.

Later he worked in the Customs Department. When the colony reverted to Dutch rule in 1803 he opened a hotel on Cape Town’s Keizersgracht. After the colony’s recapture by 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. On his return to the Cape in 1814, his attempts at farming and trading in the Eastern Cape forced him into bankruptcy. He moved back to Cape Town and eked out a living as an artist, copyist and teacher of art until his death. Most of his abundant archive of manuscripts are held in the Western Cape Archives and Record Service.

Edward Hudson, a relative of Samuel Eusebius Hudson, has written several journal articles and co-edited the publication of one of Hudson’s novels. He is working on a biography of Hudson and an electronic edition of the complete text of his diaries.