The picture that was always on the wall of Barty's bedroom, years after he passed on.
A simple water colour in an old frame, signed "from Zephyr".
Roses were a symbol of their marriage (Newspaper cutting, 1975 - Contributed - scroll down to end, below, first)
Saturday, September 22, 2012
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Edwin Allen (Barty) died on 9 June 1955, two days before his 82nd birthday.
He was buried in Butterworth cemetery.
His gravestone reads:
In Loving Memory of
my dear husband
Edwin Allen
born 11 June 1873 Died 9 June 1955
He Loved Jesus
(It is hard to read the middle word of the last line of the engraving, either way, He loved/lived Jesus!)
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He
Pioneered Transkei Fruit
Sacred bananas smuggled
EAST LONDON. – The first man to introduce
sub-tropical fruit into the Transkei has died at Manubi, near Butterworth, aged
81.
He was Mr. Ted Allen, one of the Transkei’s oldest
and best-known residents.
Mr. Allen, who died after a long illness, would have
been 82 this month.
He lived at Manubi Forest, where he was Postmaster,
for 50 years.
It is chiefly due to his early experiments that
sub-tropical fruit is grown extensively today along the coast region.
A
strange mission
A keen horticulturist, he wrote to many parts of the
world for plants and seeds, and gradually built up a successful garden of
exotic fruit and flowers in the heart of Manubi forest.
His interests brought him a strange mission some
years age when he was asked to take care of a rare banana plant.
A horticulturist had smuggled the plant out of
India, but heard that agents of a fanatical Indian sect, which regarded the
plant as sacred, were trailing him to South Africa.
Determined to keep the plant, he sent it to Mr.
Allen for safekeeping, since Indians were
not allowed into Transkei.
Yellow
cobra
Unafraid of revenge that might overtake him, Mr.
Allen watched the first bunch of fruit ripening.
Then came the day when he cut the oversized bunch.
As Mr. Allen staggered towards the house, the
bananas held on his shoulders, he called to his wife to come and see the prize.
She appeared and was immediately horrified to see a
large yellow cobra writhing out of the golden coloured fruit, a few inches from
her husband’s head.
She screamed and he threw down the “sacred” bananas.
The snake slithered away to safety.
Every morning of the 40 years of his married life,
till he became seriously ill, Mr. Allen presented his wife with a white and a
red rose.
He cultivated special rose trees to make this
possible, and explained the custom with the story of the day he proposed to his
wife.
He was afraid to ask the important question, so he
held out two roses. Beforehand he had decided that if she chose the white flower,
he would say nothing.
If she took the red one, he had a good chance and
would ask her to marry him.
She took both roses.
Besides being a naturalist, Mr. Allen was a poet and
writer, though he made little attempt to publish his work.
His family may publish his papers.
(Newspaper cutting of 1955, transcribed by David
Allen, grandson)
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Hand -written note from Barty to Meg on the occasion of their 40th wedding anniversary:
To Marguerite
on the 40th anniversary of our wedding day - 1911 to 1951
My wildest dreams in youth of bliss
Are thrice fulfilled, sweet Meg, in this:
That Romance in defying Time
Has banished Time and left thee mine.
(Signed) E Allen
25 September, 1951
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Roses
were a symbol of their marriage
(Newspaper cutting, 1975 - Contributed)
In a garden at Anerley, two rose bushes have been
planted recently, a pure white “Virgo”, and the beautiful res “Happiness”. They
have been presented, with a simple inscription ‘In Remembrance’ to a Pastor who
recently conducted a funeral at Butterworth. Behind the simple gesture lies a
romantic story that goes back four generations.
The tale began in Cape Town, where a bashful young
man, just about the turn of the century, fell deeply in love with a young lady.
Not knowing where he stood in her affections, he set about finding out, by
presenting her with two fine rosebuds – a red and white, and asking her to
choose the one she liked best. “For”, said he to himself “red stands for love,
and white for friendship only”. The lady looked at the buds and cried, “May I
have BOTH!”
Some weeks before the wedding, “Meg” was sent “home
to England” to stay with relatives. “Barty” arranged with a florist in London
to deliver to her a box containing one red rose and one white, so long as they
were parted.
The years passed, and a prosperous little fruit
farm-cum-forestry, with trading store and a post office on the Wild Coast was
the home of the happy couple and their four children. “Barty” grew a rose
garden, and every morning he could be seen among his roses, carefully selecting
two buds for his love – a daily gift that never became a bore, but was received
with the same delight she had displayed years before!
When “Barty” passed away, their children kept the
tradition going, and “Meg” was never seen without her red and white flowers,
pinned to her dress each morning. Red for love, and white for friendship.
A few weeks ago “Granny Meg” was buried near her
Transkei home. She’d spent two weeks in hospital, during which the Matron had
herself supervised the picking and arranging of the two roses on “Granny’s”
bedside table.
The tradition lives on in the family - to the fourth
generation, - the red and white roses symbolizing the sense of values, faith
and family devotion that holds them together. And who dares say that red and
white flowers are unlucky? Perhaps this tale will help to lay that little
ghost.
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