The Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal have a whiff of White Mischief about them; undulating happy valleys where white people linger on grand estates thinking of the Old Country, sipping G&Ts at sunset and assembling in resplendent drawing rooms for post prandials after much gossiping over dinner about the neighbouring farmers, the polo and the cricket. The boys all went to Michaelhouse or Hilton, the girls to St Anne’s; everybody knows somebody who knows everyone else, and family roots go deeper than the abundantly rich soil, from farm t0 farm and pretty English town to pretty English town. It’s a Little England in the former colony and, like much of England, is effortlessly beautiful.

It’s the sort of place where an American dentist with a South African wife and two or more strapping sons might look around and think, this is a fine place to build a hotel. Our émigré might name the hotel after himself and cannot be blamed for doing so, for he’s made it bold and imposing, built it of fine materials, and on a scale made to last. It is a hotel of definition and distinction, and seven decades later, even though the American and even his most famous son, whose name would become associated with fine hotels far from the Midlands, in the Karoo and even in the Boland, have now long since passed, the building still houses in its walls and halls the very stuff of which the Rawdon family built it.

It was only after checking into our room, and taking a walk through its reception rooms and corridors, that it dawned on me that I had been missing out on this for all of my life. It is the closest I have come in decades to stepping into one of the lovely old hotels of my youthful years during the annual escape from the desert’s edge. And it is still gloriously, delightfully, intact.

Residents-only hallway beyond reception at Rawdons, with chess table alcoves off to the left. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Until now I had only been in the Boars Head pub, where you can buy the premises’ famous craft beers on tap, which were being made long before craft beer became the thing that it is now, and in the Notties Brewery alongside. But in the rooms beyond, past reception and into the yellow-mellow antiquity of the place, you find the character that makes you realise in a wonderful moment: of course, this is where David Rawdon acquired that inimitable style of hotel for which he would be famous all of his life, from Rawdons in the Midlands to Lanzerac at Stellenbosch to the Drostdy at Graaff-Reinet and on, via The Marine in Hermanus, to The Lord Milner at Matjiesfontein. If you know and love the Lord Milner, you’ll want to visit Rawdons. I chided myself: how could I have waited so long to make this a hotel I have to go back to whenever I can, or can afford to, to breathe in the very essence of what an old hotel is and should be. And my next thought was: how sad that most hotels of the ilk have gone, but how happy that this one has survived so pleasingly intact.

Rawdons hotel near Nottingham Road and Balgowan in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

It’s an inspiring place and it sets the mind racing. You may wonder as you wander its halls: what white mischief has happened here? What trysts, what intrigue, what scurrilous affairs and cynical betrayals? What louches and wastrels, fops and rakes have scorned their way from room to bar and charmed some poor dupe out of money and reputation; what deals have been forged on cocked-eyed handshakes, what fortunes wagered on forked-tongue promises.

The lounge at Rawdons. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

There’s a clue as to the old-school air of the place on a blackboard outside the pub: “Only well-behaved kids allowed!! The rest will be made into pies!!” To the easily offended it may need to be explained that this is humour, and not to be taken offence at, but with the intention of imparting a message that your offspring should be kept in check, as earlier generations expected children to be. To the actual earlier generations, the blackboard would not have been necessary.

The pies are a thing at Rawdons, but without any actual children in them as far as we know. Nor four-and-twenty blackbirds, although you may be forgiven for expecting them to fly out on lifting the pastry lid. But you will find pork and ale in your Pickled Pig Pie, which I had to order; not to do so would be like going to Wimbledon and not having strawberries and cream, or to an English pub and not having fish and chips, at least once. So I did order it, with its thick and crusty pastry topping and fulsome and much-gravy’ed filling of tender pork.

We sat in one of these booths…

A dining booth beyond the Boars Head pub. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

… and started with trout paté, this being trout country as much as it is horse country, although I was happy to see that there was no horse on the menu. They’re ridden, not eaten, in these parts, unlike ill-behaved children. Rawdons being as properly old-fashioned as it is, there are garlic snails on the menu, complete with Joburg mom in the booth opposite muttering to her husband, “John, I’ve had them, I promised I’d try them once and I won’t be trying them again. The garlic sauce was nice.” Which sums up my own opinion of escargots: chewy things which are a nuisance while you’re trying to dip your bread into the garlic sauce. And no, I’m not in the habit of eavesdropping on other tables in restaurants but this was the gossipy old happy-valley Midlands, and sometimes one has to go with the flow. John loved his salmon mousse, by the way, although the youngest boy jabbered so much that I was tempted to call the waiter over and ask for one of the pies from the menu outside the pub. But he seemed a nice enough kid, so I thought better of it and opted for (what I hoped was) the pork pie instead.

Pickled pig pie, I think. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

The Kiddies’ Menu at Rawdons. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

While wondering what it must be like to be innocently enjoying (or not) your meal in a hotel on the way home to Joburg with not a clue that the man at the table opposite is a food writer with a good memory, I pondered on other hotel dining rooms where it is a joy to linger. The dining room at the Lord Milner with its central pillar just like another in Buckingham Palace, with David Rawdon on callipers walking from table to table not long before he would die, and me ordering the lamb chops with mint sauce, in the old-fashioned way now gone from there (bring it back!… must everything change!?); the baronial 17th century dining room riddled with antiquity and no nonsense Old-England charm at the Lygon Arms hotel at Broadway in the Cotswolds where I ate squab pigeon and partridge, but which a Google search now tells me now boasts “Tattersalls Brasserie” with a precious menu on which everything is “textures of”, emulsions and air-dried, and a bar and grill with no game birds on the menu at all (bring it back! must everything change!?); and the old Grill Room at the Mount Nelson hotel in Cape Town with its decades of stories and grand old dining with Crêpes Suzette flambéed at the table (bring it back! Must everything change!?).

The famous Boars Head bar. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

In Rawdons’ residents-only halls and corridors are Persian rugs and alcoves with chess tables; plush red sofas and chintz curtains; carved rhinos and iron fireplaces; brass lamps and statuettes of old colonial men. Below its thatched roofs are red-lanterned chandeliers and Tiffany lamps, portraits of old cricketers, and modern people who try to understand the old ways and wonder about their parents and their grandparents and what their lives must have been like. Who remember, suddenly, while strolling its hallways, an old Morris Minor that a long-dead uncle drove, or an aunt who went off to play bowls and came back a bit tipsy on Babycham, and who used words like deportment and bearing, chivalry and gallantry.

As we leave after breakfast next morning, I notice the smaller sign below the Boars Head entrance: “No booze cruises”, “No bulls parties”. Something of the older ways remains, and there’s a happy feeling in the car as we drive away with every intention of returning, with more family in tow. DM/TGIFood

Coda

On further investigation it transpires that the Lygon Arms is closed till further notice in accordance with Britain’s lockdown regulations. So no grouse, hare, squab pigeon, nor even latterday emulsions or textures of air dried hipster ingredients. If travel to it were permitted, affordable and sane, I’d support them whatever they’re serving.

Note: We paid our own way, in case you’re wondering.