The Bishop's Lady

The Bishop's Lady by Thelma Gutsche

Lore and legend, known to few, surround the name of Sophy Gray, wife of Robert Gray, first Bishop of Cape Town. Her shadowy figure backs the Bishop in the great issues of his day but little emerges of a dynamic woman who contributed as much if not more, than him to a developing nation. In The Bishop's Lady, the blue-blooded Sophia Wharton Myddleton stands revealed as one of the most singular characters in South African history.

Architect, accountant, managing director of a vast business, graceful hostess and accomplished calligraphist, Sophy Gray actively participated in the determining events of the most formative 25 years of her adopted country.

Her life was replete with sensational incidents. Its course ranges from feats of horsemanship to crinolined climbs in the Congo Caves; from the deathbed scenes of John Montagu and Justice Benedictus Watermeyer to the near-fatal afflictions of the Bishop himself; from friendships with Gladstone, Sir Harry and Lady Smith, the scandal-smeared Lady Grey, wife of Sir George Grey, and many historic notabilities to dealing with the fantastic philanthropist, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, David Livingstone, the martyred Mackenzie, the swarthy John Rex of Knysna, the indefatigably pedestrian nathaniel Merriman, the Harrington's of Portland, the Duthies of Belvidere, Sandilli and his sons, even Nogquase herself.

The book is a fitting tribute to an unsung heroine who died a noble and agonised death at Bishop's Court near Cape Town.

Extract from the book dust cover.

Thelma Gutsche

The comment most often made on Thelma Gutsche's biographical work is that she causes the subject to "come alive".

This characteristic derives not only from the hard and tedious work of deep research but also from a gift for empathy - for identifying herself with the person concerned and actively participating in actions, motives and emotions. It is enhanced by a punctilious addiction to factual accuracy and a firsthand knowledge of most of the terrain described.

For The Bishop's Lady, Dr Gutsch retraced almost all the routes ridden by Sophy Gray in South Africa. Many of them have disappeared or been replaced by national roads but her presence may still be felt along the old upper and lower roads between George and Knysna, the old Montagu, Prince Alfred's Fransch Hoek, Garcia and other Passes, Seven Weeks and Meiring's Poorts, the Queen's Road to Fort Beaufort the five mile gravel road to Belmont outside Graham's Town where she rode break-neck to save Heavyside's life and in many other evocative places.

Biography brings a writer into very close association with a personality. Dr Gutsche says of Sophy Gray that she has seldom encountered a more impressive or congenial character - "someone who I should have given a great deal to meet". Of her many other works - No Ordinary Women, Old Gold, The Microcosm, A very Smart Medal, etc - she considers The Bishop's Lady the most rewarding in the light it casts on an unrecorded but powerful figure in a specially significant aspect of South African history.

Extract from the book dust cover.