When he was in the Cape Parliament Mr. Rhodes wore a hat which was so shabby that it became the subject of newspaper importance. When he is in Rhodesia he dons the oldest suit of clothing in his wardrobe, and follows the habits of the pioneers who are settling the country. He sleeps in a native kraal when he is not near a town, and eats of the same canned beef and crackers that his Chartered Company serves to its mounted police. When he is in that primeval country he despises ostentation and displays in his honour, and will travel fifty miles on horseback in an opposite direction in order to avoid a formal proceeding of any nature. Two years ago, when the railroad to Buluwayo, the capital of Rhodesia, was formally opened, Mr. Rhodes telegraphed his regrets, and intimated that he was ill. As a matter of fact he travelled night and day in order to escape to a place where telegrams and messages could not reach him. When his host suggested that he was missing many entertainments and the society of the most distinguished men of South Africa, Mr. Rhodes smiled and said: "For that reason I escaped."
Formality bores him, and he would rather live a month coatless and collarless in a native kraal with an old colony story-teller than spend half an hour at a state dinner in the governor's mansion. It is related in this connection that Mr. Rhodes was one of a distinguished party who attended the opening of a railroad extension near Cape Town. While the speeches were being made, and the chairman was trying to find him, Mr. Rhodes slipped quietly away, and was discovered discarding his clothing preparatory to enjoying a bath in a near-by creek.
Mr. Rhodes is unmarried, and throughout the country has the reputation of being an avowed hater of women. He believes that a woman is an impediment to a man's existence until he has attained the object and aim of his life, and has become deserving of luxuries. He not only believes in that himself, but takes advantage of every opportunity to impress the belief upon the minds of those around him. In the summer of 1897 a captain in the volunteer army, and one of his most faithful lieutenants in Mashonaland, asked Mr. Rhodes for a three months' leave of absence to go to Cape Colony. The captain had been through many native campaigns, and richly deserved a vacation, although that was not the real object of his request for leave. The man wanted to go to Cape Colony to marry, and by severe cross-examination Mr. Rhodes learned that such was the case.