Three: Captain G. W. Le Sueur Des Fresnes, Royal Army Service Corps, late Private Secretary to Cecil Rhodes

British South Africa Company Medal 1890-97, reverse Mashonaland 1897, no clasp (Gordon Le Sueur Des Fresnes), unofficial (?) engraved naming; British War and Victory Medals (Capt.) the first with copy suspension and fire-damage, thus fine, the remainder good very fine (3) £400-500

Gordon William Le Sueur Des Fresnes was born in May 1874 and entered the Cape Civil Service after graduating from Cape University. Between 1893-96, he served in the Administrative Department of the Cape Colonial Office, and in 1897 he was appointed Personal Assistant to Cecil Rhodes and served on his Staff during the Mashonaland Rebellion of 1896-97.

Undoubtedly, too, he was present with Rhodes in Colonel Plumer’s attack on the Matabele on 5 July 1896, Rhodes 43rd birthday, arguably winning entitlement to the the Medal for Rhodesia 1896, even before his Mashonaland services are taken into account. In the action of 5 July, Rhodes was seen to ride ahead of Plumer’s cavalry and at one stage was almost cut off by the rebels, a bullet striking the ground under his horse. He afterwards told Des Fresnes that “it was a very near thing. I might have been hit in the stomach, which would have been very unpleasant, and I should have been very angry.”

Although he does not appear on any of the British South Africa Company’s medal rolls, Des Fresnes did make an application for the Medal as late as 1915, and surviving Rhodesian archives reveal a favourable response from the Commandant-General, dated March 1916: ‘I am, on the strength of enquiries made, satisfied that the two gentlemen [Des Fresnes and a Captain Lindmere] now applying for Medals are entitled to them’. The lateness of their claim might well account for the unusual style of engraved naming on the above described Medal.

More certain is the fact that Des Fresnes was ultimately a right hand man to Rhodes, becoming, as he did, one of the great man’s twelve “apostles”. Indeed such was the duration and closeness of Des Fresnes’ relationship with Rhodes, that he was able to publish, in 1913, Cecil Rhodes, The Man and His Work - an original 1913 edition is included in the Lot. His working papers from this biography are now held at Rhodes House Library, Oxford.

Other than his close proximity to Rhodes in the course of the rebellions of 1896-97, Des Fresnes witnessed many other important episodes in the course of his career. We find him greeting Rhodes on his triumphant return to Cape Town following the Jameson Raid inquiry in London, and again in early 1902, when, for the last time, he arrived at the Cape, amidst his ongoing legal wranglings with Princess Catherine Radziwell. Rhodes was by now an very sick man, Des Fresnes being visibly shaken at his appearance when he greeted him.

He was subsequently present for much of the last three weeks of Rhodes’ life, in the cottage at Muizenberg, noting that he had a strong desire to return to England to lay his bones to rest, ‘All species of animals, when they feel the end approaching, wish to go home to die, and so it was with Rhodes’. He was also present when Rhodes’ body arrived by train at Rondebosch station, the nearest point to his house, Groote Schuur, and recalled seeing the open coffin and standing around ‘as if dazed, until the dreary silence was broken by a woman’s sobs’. And over the following weekend at Groote Schuur, some 30,000 people visited the mortuary chamber to pay their last respects, Des Fresnes further noting that floral tributes arrived ‘by the ton’. Undoubtedly, too, he was present at Rhodes’ burial at Malindidzuma-Matabele, which place he had been shown by Rhodes in person at the time of the Mashonaland rebellion, the latter then telling him, “When I die, I mean to be buried here.”

Following the death of Rhodes, Des Fresnes appears to have transferred his interests to mining, but was resident back in England by the time of the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914. Unable to enlist on account of his age, he busied himself as a Special Constable on protection duties at Buckingham Palace and quickly attained the rank of Sub. Inspector. Then in June 1915, when the age limit was raised, he enlisted in the Army Service Corps and was immediately appointed to a commission. In January 1916, as a recently promoted Captain, he was injured in an accident at Bath, a Medical Board enquiry stating that he was knocked down by a motor car whilst marching at the head of a column of troops but, sufficiently recovered, he was embarked for German East Africa, arriving in that theatre of war in March 1916.

In seeking another appointment on his return to the U.K., Des Fresnes was able to cite a highly impressive list of potential referees: ‘If it is of any use I may say that I am well known to F.M. Lord Methuen, F.M. Lord French, Genl. Sir H. Plumer, Genl. Sir H. Baden-Powell, Genl. Walter Congreve, Genl. Courtney and Genl. Northey (who married a cousin of mine)’. Ill-health appears, however, to have blocked any further opportunity for active service.

Des Fresnes, an important witness to the life and times of Cecil Rhodes, died at Millbank Military Hospital on 20 March 1920.