Description
The First South African – A.P. Cartwright
The Life and Times of Sir Percy FitzPatrick
James Peter FitzPatrick (who was later to re-christen himself Percy) was born in King William’s Town in 1862. He was the son of an Irish judge who had just been appointed to the Bench of the Cape Supreme Court. As a descendant of the FitzPatricks and the Fitzgeralds (his mother’s family), he was as Irish as it is possible to be but, from a very early age, he developed an intense love for the country of his birth and at a time when there were only Englishmen, “Africanders”, Free Staters, Natalians and Transvalers in the country he declared himself “a South African” and refused to be anything else.
Very few men in South Africa, or elsewhere for that matter, have had a more varied career than he had. He was successively a bank clerk in the Standard Bank, Cape Town, a digger at Pilgrim’s Rest, a storekeeper, a transport rider, editor of a newspaper, a partner in the most successful mining-finance company in the world, a member of Parliament, an author and a pioneer of the citrus industry.
By the time he was 35 he had written two of the most renowned bestsellers in the English language. The first of these was The Transvaal from Within, published in 1899, which sold some 200,000 copies. The second was jock of the Bushveld, first published in 1907 and still selling. Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, described this well-loved book as the best story about a dog ever published.
Here is the full story of this amazing man’s life with no detail of his triumphs and his personal sorrows omitted. It is written in a style worthy of the subject and it presents a portrait not only of a great South African but also of the age in which he lived. In its pages you will meet Paul Kruger, Lord Kitchener, Lord Milner, General Louis Botha, General Smuts, Cecil Rhodes, Dr. Jameson and many others — and see them as FitzPatrick saw them.
