King Solomon's Mines (4 page)

No sooner had Haggard returned to England than he leapt into action to support England’s entry into World War I in 1914. During the war, he would travel again to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. By the war’s end his chronic bronchitis had developed into emphysema. By the mid-1920s he was fighting what he called in a diary entry “a losing battle with pain, weakness, and depression.” Operated on for an abscess, he did not recover, and he died on May 14, 1925. His grave is in Ditchingham, a small town in Norfolk, England, where he has been honored with a street named after him, Rider Haggard Way. In St. Mary’s Church, Ditchingham, a stained-glass window that pays tribute to Haggard includes images of his farm in South Africa and of the Egyptian pyramids. Carved in marble, above a vault containing his remains, are the words:

Later generations of readers have retained their affection for the author of
King Solomon’s Mines.
In
The Lost Childhood and Other Essays
(London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1951), the noted British novelist Graham Greene (1904-1991) praises the “poetic elements” of Haggard’s books, which according to Greene “live today with undiminished vitality.” The great British critic and literary historian George Saintsbury (1845-1933) ranked
King Solomon’s Mines
alongside
Treasure Island
and stated he wished he had written “the fight between Twala and Sir Henry.” Other adventure writers from Haggard’s era, including A. E. W. Mason, Stanley Mason, Anthony Hope-Hawkins, and H. B. Marriott-Watson are in the oubliettes of literary history, whereas Haggard’s best books have remained in print continuously since they first appeared.

King Solomon’s Mines
has been translated into African languages (among its dozens of foreign editions). Its Portuguese translation was done by the eminent novelist and short-story writer José Maria Eça de Queirós (1845-1900). Eça de Queirós was no slouch—Émile Zola called him “greater than Flaubert”—and by translating Haggard into Portuguese in 1891 (as
As Minas de Salomão),
he added to the European prestige of the book. Perhaps most curiously,
King Solomon’s Mines
has been abridged and edited for wide use not just as a text for learning English as a foreign language in Africa, China, and elsewhere, but also for young readers.

Authors as diverse as C. S. Lewis, D. H. Lawrence, and Gilbert Murray fell under the spell of Haggard’s adventure stories. Today, the British writer John Mortimer continues to pay wry tribute to Haggard in the popular series of mystery stories featuring a British barrister, Rumpole of the Bailey. The aging Rumpole refers to his daunting wife with affectionate irony as “She Who Must Be Obeyed,” a takeoff of Haggard’s She novels. Despite the unamusing ways in which parts of Haggard’s books have dated, most readers still feel affection for
King Solomon’s Mines
and
She.

Haggard did not single out Africans for despising, according to the informative
Rider Haggard and the Fiction of Empire,
by Wendy R. Katz. His other novels and private writings also express disdain for “Jews, communists, trade unionists, Irish, Quebecois, and Indian nationalists.” Jews and Communists, according to Katz, were the special targets of Haggard’s loathing, far more than any other category of people, and as he aged, the intensity of his hatred increased. Although not present in
King Solomon’s Mines,
Jews are portrayed unattractively in
She, The World’s Desire, The People of the Mist,
and others among Haggard’s novels. In later private writings, Haggard blamed the Russian Revolution on Jews, and after the Romanov family was killed by the revolutionary forces, Haggard noted with extreme bigotry in his diary for 1920: “The tendency of the Jew to torture before he kills is a curious indication of his character which apparently has not varied since the days of Pontius Pilate” (Katz, p. 150). Katz concludes that Haggard was “an imperial propagandist, a man who made use of every opportunity to advance matters relating to Empire.... Through his fiction, the ideas and attitudes that accrue to imperialism were conveyed almost effortlessly to the largely uncritical and accepting reader.... His fiction, only superficially innocuous, contributed generously to the process of shaping the imperial mentality” (p. 153).

One of the advantages of historical hindsight is that we may read
King Solomon’s Mines
today as a period piece, with a conscious awareness of its imperialist messages. No matter how much Haggard may seem to be a critic of Victorian society, in many ways
King Solomon’s Mines
at its most sincere reinforces the deepest beliefs of its day. Thus, when Sir Henry offers to Umbopa a cherished credo without a trace of irony and it is wholly accepted by the noble African, the words seem to come from Haggard’s own heart:

In this declaration, Haggard is close to Baden-Powell’s exhortations in his scouting guide, as well as literary friends like the poet William Ernest Henley (1849-1903). Henley’s most famous poem, “Invictus” (written in 1875), is a forthright assertion of Victorian self-possession: “It matters not how strait the gate, / How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul.”

Unlike the reader of 1885, we do not need to accept the underlying political, social, gender, and racial theories of
King Solomon’s Mines
as self-evident. Bolstered with recent publications by such excellent researchers as Stephen Coan, Gerald Monsman, and James Danly, among others (see “For Further Reading”), we may appreciate what is still effective and exciting in Haggard’s book, while discarding what is obsolete, or even potentially perilous.

 

Benjamin Ivry
is the author of biographies of Arthur Rimbaud (Absolute Press), Francis Poulenc (Phaidon), and Maurice Ravel (Welcome Rain Publishers). His poetry collection
Paradise for the Portuguese Queen
(Orehises) appeared in 1998. He has also translated many books from the French by such authors as André Gide, Jules Verne, and Balthus.

This faithful but unpretending record
of a remarkable adventure
is hereby respectfully dedicated
by the narrator,
ALLAN QUATERMAIN,
to all the big and little boys
who read it.

NOW THAT THIS BOOK is printed, and about to be given to the world, the sense of its shortcomings, both in style and contents, weighs very heavily upon me. As regards the latter, I can only say that it does not pretend to be a full account of everything we did and saw. There are many things connected with our journey into Kukuanaland
¹
which I should have liked to dwell upon at length, and which have, as it is, been scarcely alluded to. Amongst these are the curious legends which I collected about the chain armour that saved us from destruction in the great battle of Loo, and also about the “silent ones” or colossi at the mouth of the stalactite cave. Again, if I had given way to my own impulses, I should have liked to go into the differences, some of which are to my mind very suggestive, between the Zulu and Kukuana dialects. Also a few pages might profitably have been given up to the consideration of the indigenous flora and fauna of Kukuanaland.
^a
Then there remains the most interesting subject—that, as it is, has only been incidentally alluded to—of the magnificent system of military organisation in force in that country, which is, in my opinion, much superior to that inaugurated by Chaka
²
in Zululand, inasmuch as it permits of even more rapid mobilisation, and does not necessitate the employment of the pernicious system of forced celibacy. And, lastly, I have scarcely touched on the domestic and family customs of the Kukuanas, many of which are exceedingly quaint, or on their proficiency in the art of smelting and welding metals. This last they carry to considerable perfection, of which a good example is to be seen in their “tollas,” or heavy throwing knives, the backs of these knives being made of hammered iron, and the edges of beautiful steel welded with great skill on to the iron backs. The fact of the matter is, that I thought (and so did Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good) that the best plan would be to tell the story in a plain, straightforward manner, and leave these matters to be dealt with subsequently in whatever way may ultimately appear to be desirable. In the meanwhile I shall, of course, be delighted to give any information in my power to anybody interested in such things.

And now it only remains for me to offer my apologies for my blunt way of writing. I can only say in excuse for it that I am more accustomed to handle a rifle than a pen, and cannot make any pretence to the grand literary flights and flourishes which I see in novels—for I sometimes like to read a novel. I suppose they—the flights and nourishes—are desirable, and I regret not being able to supply them; but at the same time I cannot help thinking that simple things are always the most impressive, and books are easier to understand when they are written in plain language, though I have perhaps no right to set up an opinion on such a matter. “A sharp spear,” runs the Kukuana saying, “needs no polish;” and on the same principle I venture to hope that a true story, however strange it may be, does not require to be decked out in fine words.

ALLAN QUATERMAIN.

IT Is A CURIOUS thing that at my age—fifty-five last birthday—I should find myself taking up a pen to try and write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have done it, if I ever come to the end of the trip! I have done a good many things in my life, which seems a long one to me, owing to my having begun so young, perhaps. At an age when other boys are at school, I was earning my living as a trader in the old Colony.
¹
I have been trading, hunting, fighting, or mining ever since. And yet it is only eight months ago that I made my pile. It is a big pile now I have got it—I don’t yet know how big—but I don’t think I would go through the last fifteen or sixteen months again for it; no, not if I knew that I should come out safe at the end, pile and all. But then I am a timid man, and don’t like violence, and am pretty sick of adventure. I wonder why I am going to write this book: it is not in my line. I am not a literary man, though very devoted to the Old Testament and also to the “Ingoldsby Legends.”
²
Let me try and set down my reasons, just to see if I have any.

First reason: Because Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good asked me to.

Second reason: Because I am laid up here at Durban with the pain and trouble in my left leg. Ever since that confounded lion got hold of me I have been liable to it, and its being rather bad just now makes me limp more than ever. There must be some poison in a lion’s teeth, otherwise how is it that when your wounds are healed they break out again, generally, mark you, at the same time of year that you got your mauling? It is a hard thing that when one has shot sixty-five lions as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don’t like that. This is by the way.

Third reason: Because I want my boy Harry, who is over there at the hospital in London studying to become a doctor, to have something to amuse him and keep him out of mischief for a week or so. Hospital work must sometimes pall and get rather dull, for even of cutting up dead bodies there must come satiety, and as this history won’t be dull, whatever else it may be, it may put a little life into things for a day or two while he is reading it.

Fourth reason and last: Because I am going to tell the strangest story that I know of. It may seem a queer thing to say that, especially considering that there is no woman in it—except Foulata. Stop, though! there is Gagaoola, if she was a woman and not a fiend. But she was a hundred at least, and therefore not marriageable, so I don’t count her. At any rate, I can safely say that there is not a petticoat in the whole history. Well I had better come to the yoke. It’s a stiff place, and I feel as though I were bogged up to the axle. But “sutjes, suties,”
^b
as the Boers say (I’m sure I don’t know how they spell it), softly does it. A strong team will come through at last, that is if they ain’t too poor. You will never do anything with poor oxen. Now to begin.