The travel descriptions of a Scots woman not only opened up some “forgotten corners of the Cape” to many people but unintentionally saved Klippe Rivier, one of the finest historic houses in the Overberg, from total neglect, writes Annalize Mouton.

She’ll never make it. She’ll never make it,” quipped her neighbour’s young son, more to himself than anyone else, when he overheard fifty-five-year-old Molly D’Arcy Thompson telling his mother that she was off to Basutoland in her newly acquired Morris Minor 1000. She had only been driving for a short while and only short distances from Cape Town, the farthest at that stage being to Stellenbosch. But what the little lad did not know was that such words could never apply to Molly.

She not only made it, but lived to tell the tale and the tales of many other trips. Some she drove herself, some she did by boat, some in later years by aeroplane, bus, bicycle and some on foot. Lured by the excitement of the unknown and the unexpected, Molly not only travelled widely in her own country, Scotland and England, but also as an eighteen year old art student in France, as an auxiliary in the women’s services during World War II and then later in her adopted country, South Africa. “She travelled far from main roads… with mission doctors on their rounds, and in the country buses which slither along the muddy side roads of Zululand and Pondoland; she walked in the fields, and bicycled, stopping often to look and to paint,” wrote Prof Monica Hunter Wilson, internationally acclaimed anthropologist in the preface to Molly D’Arcy Thompson’s first book, Call the Wind published in 1972.

Molly journeyed “in a way most of us dream of doing, simply going off with her best of good companions, Liffey, a curly-haired black Irish spaniel. They travel to the forgotten corners… ” wrote Jeanne Heywood of the University of Cape Town in her foreword to Molly’s book Forgotten Corners of the Cape published in 1979. Having arrived they became part of their new world for a couple of weeks, “savouring its quality like connoisseurs, as they walk and listen and look.”

Molly sees the world through the eyes of a painter, a lover of food, music, and colour. She sees the rhythm and grace in the walk of the African country woman who walks as in Prof Wilson’s words as “no white woman, and no African girl who has grown up in town”. Molly has seen it. Molly sees with the wide-eyed wonderment of a young girl out on a walk with her father, ever fresh and young with the inquisitiveness and daring of youth yet old in wisdom and powers of observation. Ingrid Mennen, a friend of Molly, says that what struck her about Molly when they first met was her agelessness. An agelessness which has stayed with her even now at nearly ninety-seven, despite the unavoidable signs of old age and her recuperation from a hip operation. Could this be due to the fact, as she herself wrote at eighteen, that “in the midst of beauty time is not”? Because Molly has surrounded herself and filled her life and mind with beauty even while living through two major wars, her mother’s life-long illness and many upheavals in her own life. As a child, she and her younger sister, Barbara, would climb the pear trees in their garden in St Andrews to get a better view of the peonies growing underneath, and even today, though her body might not fully co-operate, Molly’s irrepressible spirit still climbs pear trees. It is this plucky spirit that leaps off the pages of her writing and entrances her readers.

Molly D’Arcy Thompson was born in Tay near Dundee, Scotland on 20 November 1908, the middle daughter of Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson and his wife, Maureen Drury. They later moved to St Andrews University, Edinburgh where her father was Professor of Natural History for more than sixty years. Sir D’Arcy Thompson was a Greek scholar, a naturalist and the first bio-mathematician. He wrote about 300 scientific articles and books and his best known work, On Growth and Form, is still prescribed reading for honours students, especially in architecture. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Sir D’Arcy’s mother was Fanny Gamgee, the daughter of the veterinary surgeon, Joseph Gamgee, who became known as “the father of modern veterinary practice”. Joseph Gamgee played a major role in the upbringing of his grandson since his mother, Fanny, died shortly after her son’s birth. Molly’s eldest sister, Ruth, has written the biographies of both their father and great-grandfather.

In the course of his work Sir D’Arcy travelled and lectured widely, both at home and abroad. Molly remembers well how they would all anxiously await the details of his trips upon his return, but to no avail. He would say absolutely nothing. But when the visitors, lots of them, came and asked questions regarding his trips, and as the family sort of lived in their big living room with its fireplace, ultimately they would hear all about the interesting people he met and the things he found exciting.

In 1927 eighteen-year-old Molly left her parents’ home in St Andrews, Scotland to study art with André Lhôte at his studio in Montparnasse, Paris, France. “Off on my travels!” reads the first entry in her diary which displays remarkable insights and observations for one so young. While in Paris she went to many exhibitions and galleries. It was the time of Matisse, Picasso and Cézanne. At an exhibition of Cézanne’s paintings she was “mesmerised and stood there for half a day”, Molly wrote.

It was also the time of Charlie Chaplin and Charles Lindbergh. Molly was at a Charlie Chaplin-show in Paris when Lindbergh arrived above the city safely! They all streamed out on the streets already crammed with people waiting to hear more news. “It really was a wonderful thing to do, sitting there motionless in the dark for hours on end listening to the incessant noise of the engines whirring onwards through unknown space.”

Molly later went back to France and worked for a time in a publicity studio there. She also studied at the Edinburgh College of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. In the UK she exhibited with the New English Arts Club and the London Group.

In 1948 after her father died, Molly, on her mother’s suggestion, came to South Africa to visit her cousins. After two years she went back to Scotland only to return to South Africa a year later in 1951, this time permanently. In 1953 she held her first exhibition of watercolours, “African paintings”, in the H A U M gallery in Cape Town after which Matthys Bokhorst wrote, “It is indeed remarkable how quickly this artist has grasped the essence of Native life, in which the time factor plays no part.”

This was followed up by many other exhibitions. Molly remembers how she was exhibiting in the small gallery at the South African Association of Arts Gallery, while Irma Stern dominated the large gallery. Deane Anderson in the Cape Argus of 5 February 1955 remarked on Molly’s work,“These pictures in pen and wash water colour or in oil paint floated on to paper in washes almost as translucent as water colour, certainly carry slightness and casualness to an extreme point… This quality of slightness… can suggest delicate and elusive moods and shades of character better than the most carefully laid wash or the most highly textured paint surface.”

Of this same exhibition Matthys Bokhorst wrote that since her first exhibition “this versatile Scots artist has become an inseparable part of the city’s artistic community, although at the same time she has travelled extensively and spend much time in the Native territories of Natal and the Transkei.

“The amazing feature of her first exhibition was the great ease with which the artist’s feminine intuition made her grasp the essence of Native life… her interpretations were correct, right from the beginning, but now her subject matter inspires her to such an extent, that her technical skill advances with rapid strides. …She uses all her means of expression sparingly. …Miss Thompson’s art is essentially static and contemplative… her mind goes out to the primitive mind, in time with the infinite.”

In 1960 Molly exhibited, according to F L Alexander, for many years art critic for Die Burger, “attractive oil paintings and lithographs in the hall of the S A Society of Arts. With this exhibition the artist enters on a new stage in her career. Her lightly sketched Basutoes or Zulus have become just as much a part of the landscape as the blossoms on the trees. Her work is light and utterly unproblematical, but it has none the less great charm. …The lighter the stroke of her brush, the better her work.”

Apart from her two travel books, Molly also wrote three books for children, Mopsy’s Story, Willie and his Friends and – what she termed her swansong at the age of eighty – Pogamiso’s Bicycle!

It is good that we look after our heritage and old buildings, but maybe it’s time that we in South Africa copy the Japanese and start honouring the living treasures in our midst. Molly D’Arcy Thompson would be a more than worthy recipient of such honour – an honour that is long overdue.

Some of Molly’s stories about her travels in South Africa will appear in future issues of Village Life.