Oh for the burden of fame

Nobody talks of Laurens van der Post any more; he who walked with the Bushmen, storytellers to royalty – read Prince Charles, Mountbatten and high tea. The man’s second name was Jan. Just Jan.

Wickedpedia tells me: South African Afrikaner writer, farmer, soldier. That’s our Jan. Extraordinaire and a Sir. He started not rolling his arrrs and became political advisor to “British prime ministers, close friend of Prince Charles, godfather of Prince William, educator, journalist, humanitarian, philosopher, explorer and conservationist”. A mouthful. But still just Jan.

I wonder if he went, like me, barefoot. Or did he, like statesman and botanist Jan Smuts, at least peg his pants when he went bicycling into a black plague colony looking for rare plants around the centre for disease control just outside Joburg many moons ago.

But that’s the other Jan… Also extraordinaire if you consider the Brits loved him and his negotiating skills. I’m sure he rolled his arrs while talking peace with the Brits and Boers to end their war; the Irish; and even reconciliation with Germany at the Paris Peace Conference.

ALS READ: Diana trends as the world reacts to the Queen’s death

This Jan was a writer and reader: he read law at Cambridge; Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason the night before a raid to bring a British garrison to its knees and apparently wrote one solitary book, Walt Whitman: A Study in the Evolution of Personality.

Not so Afrikaans’ biggest poet, playwright and scholar NP van Wyk Louw: he was a prolific writer filling a bookcase with the weighty words we, at high school, had to dissect for an elusive distinction in our mother tongue. But I buried his biggest legacy – his daughter – last Saturday.

Looking at the big names among the mourners, I couldn’t help but wonder how on earth she handled the burden of his fame. And a burden it must’ve been.

She seldom spoke of him but no one could miss the original artwork that adorned his book flaps hanging life-size in the entrance hall of her home – the home she grew up in with him and his second wife; the blue heritage plaque at the gate warning you you are about to enter the hallowed hall.

Maybe by being a journo made it easier living only her words. Maybe because she was just a “Jan” – and loved kicking off her shoes…