‘Patriotism is not enough’

The small oak casket rested on a cushion. White Madonna lilies lay on either side of the casket, which bore the inscription: “Emily Hobhouse. Died June 1926. Age 66 years”.

From all over South Africa, people, mostly women, came in silence to spend some time at the casket, and then left the church in Bloemfontein, where Emily’s ashes lay in state before the funeral that would take place the next day.

Towards the evening, a male guard of honour positioned themselves at the casket.

A small group of women held an all-night vigil in the church.

By half past eight the next morning, the day of Emily’s funeral on 27 October 1926, the church was already packed to capacity. While the funeral march played, six young girls in mauve dresses and veils walked in at half past nine and formed a guard of honour next to the funeral bier. As the Reverend John Daniël Kestell (also known as "Father" Kestell) started the service, the six girls kneeled reverently.

Emily Hobhouse died on the 9th of June in Kensington, London. Three days later, a service was held for her attendees by friends and family. It was her wish to be cremated. Soon afterwards, her family offered her ashes to South Africa, and her best friend, Tibbie Steyn, wife of the former president of the Orange Free State, immediately started to arrange a state funeral for her. Emily and Tibbie met during the Anglo-Boer War in Bloemfontein, and soon became friends.

At the time, it was the first in the country for a foreigner and a female to have a funeral. The wooden box was transported across the Atlantic Ocean aboard the City of Dunkirk.

After the service, the mourners set off in a long, silent procession, heading south out of the city. The doors of all shops and other enterprises in Bloemfontein were closed. Flags flew at half-mast.

Did you know that a huge procession of people walked from the church in Bloemfontein to the Women’s Monument during the state funeral of Emily Hobhouse on 27 October 1926?

The Free State capital had come to a standstill.

Heading the procession were hundreds of men on horseback who had been in the concentration camps as boys during the Anglo-Boer War, followed by an orchestra from the Department of Railways and Harbours.

Behind them came the funeral bier with the casket, carried by six girls. Then came 200 schoolgirls in mauve dresses, whose faces were covered by veils, and students in their togas.

Six girls wearing mauve dresses and veils carried the oaken casket with Emily’s ashes to the base of the Women’s Monument.

They were followed by 400 women delegates and other official guests, including administrators, judges, friends, and other interested individuals. The cars carried the guests of honour, and, finally, another group of men on horseback.

Thousands of people lined the streets up to the monument, about two miles outside the city. As the procession passed, they joined, heading to the Women’s Monument, where her ashes would be interred.

At the koppie at the monument, thousands of men, women and children had stood waiting since early that morning. Loudspeakers had been erected so that no one needed to miss out on any aspect of the proceedings. It is estimated more than 20, 000 were in attendance.

Did you know that about 20,000 people attended the funeral of Emily Hobhouse at the Women’s Monument in Bloemfontein on 27 October 1926?

The copies of newspapers that carried reports on this historic day were all sold out.

The six girls carried the bier to the base of the Women’s Monument, located in front of the high obelisk, where a niche had been prepared for the casket, directly below the sculpture group that Emily had helped design. The 200 girls came forward and solemnly laid their palm branches at the base of the monument.

The funeral procession arrives at the monument

The crowd sang Psalm 146:3, which was followed by a prayer, and a choir performedHandel’s “Largo”, after another service was held.

The statesman, general and close friend of Emily, Jan Smuts, was one of those who made a speech,said:

“The first impression [of Emily Hobhouse] is one of the power and profound influence of women in the affairs of the world. The life of Emily Hobhouse is a striking instance of this power. Here was a great war, in which hundreds of thousands of men were engaged, in which the greatest Empire on earth was exerting all its strength and force. And an unknown woman appears from nowhere and presses the right button, and the course of our own history in South Africa is permanently altered.

“For the future of South Africa, the whole meaning and significance of the Anglo-Boer War was permanently affected by this Englishwoman. And she becomes the great symbol of reconciliation between the closely kin people who should have never been enemies.

“How often in the great happenings of history a woman appears at the decisive moment, and in her weakness turns the flowing tide of events. It is the inner spiritual force in the world which comes to the surface in pain and anguish and sorrow. And once it appears, everything shrinks into insignificance before it. In the end, the spiritual values of life are supreme.

“My second thought takes me back to the words of another Englishwoman spoken in the Great War. I refer to Edith Cavell’s dying words before she was shot as a spy: “Patriotism is not enough.”

Who spoke at Emily’s funeral? One of the several speakers was Jan Smuts, a general, statesman and later chancellor of Cambridge.

After the speeches, the daughter of Johanna Osborne, head of Emily’s lacemaking school,released a flock of white doves as the casket with Emily’s ashes was placed in the niche.

Above the niche stood Anton van Wouw’s mournful figures from the scene that Emily had witnessed at the station in Springfontein in April 1901. This scene, became the inspiration for the three central figures of the monument:

“The mother neither moved nor wept. It was her only child. Dry-eyed but deathly white, she sat there motionless looking not at the child but far, far away into depths of grief beyond all tears. A friend stood behind her who called upon Heaven to witness this tragedy and others crouching on the ground around her wept freely,”’ Emily wrote in 1901.

After the crowd had sung Psalm 118:7, the mounted men gave the mourning salute.

“It was a great occasion. We buried her like a princess,” Smuts wrote afterwards to Emily’s beloved nephew, Oliver Hobhouse.

When visiting the Story of Emily, guests can also experience this event in the War Rooms.