There's a similar anecdote concerning me as a four-year-old: we were visiting the Rhodes Memorial in Rondebosch, Cape Town, when I, I am told, amazed bystanders by asking my parents: ‘‘Is dit die oom wat nooit getrou het nie?” (‘‘Is this the man [literally ‘the uncle’] who never married?”).

That is an aspect specifically addressed in the Wikipedia entry for Cecil John Rhodes: ‘‘Rhodes never married, pleading ‘I have too much work on my hands’ and saying that he would not be a dutiful husband.”