Rider Haggard: King of the Exotic Adventure Story

 H. (Henry) Rider Haggard (1856-1925), along with Robert Louis Stevenson, and to a lesser extent R.M.Ballantyne, G.A.Henty, and some others, pretty much established the "Adventure Novel" over a hundred years ago. Everything since, from JRR Tolkien to David Drake, John Buchan to Ian Fleming, Edgar Rice Burroughs to Orson Scott Card, etc. (odd analogies on my part, but think about it...) has been influenced by this when a novel in whatever field of fantasy, science fiction, or the 'real life' of spying in exotic places has required a template. Haggard really was a true talent, and still bears up after all these years.

I have just finished King Solomon's Mines for the fifth or sixth time since first reading it at age 12 or so. And I can say it actually seems BETTER now than it did when I was in my 20's and 30's (I am now Allan Quatermain's age at the time he wrote up his adventures), although not striking with the great impact it did on first exposure. It is, first of all, a Ripping Yarn (like Star Wars), with lots of blood and gore and heroic adventure, and very little romantic distraction by extraneous love affairs with damsels in distress -- i.e. a great boys' book with a lot of violence (heads cut off, someone torn in half by an elephant, etc., coo-ul), triumph over extreme hardships, the treasure to be won at the end of the quest, really nasty bad people, and lots of bare-boobed girls à la National Geographic.

Second, it is well-written, if carelessly (e.g., crescent moons do not rise at sunset or rise at 10 PM the next night in the full state) -- descriptions are crisp and vivid, characters are clearly delineated although very archetypically as in a fairy tale or Knights of the Round Table story, there are some very funny comic relief scenes just at the right time, the language is not at all high flown or prosy... This book is a model on how to write such a book, if you will forgive me putting it that way.

Third, there is no Victorian prudery in it; the language is such that if you are old enough to know what is being said, you will know, if not it will pass over your head without your being distracted, no euphemisms or mincing around.

Finally, given the attitudes of the times, there is no racism to speak of (well, the evil king has fat negroid lips, whereas his brother the true king looks like Sidney Poitier). Haggard truly appreciated the African warrior society and culture, and sympathized with their tragic failure to cope with modern civilization.

All in all, this blew my mind on first reading, and still does in a way. It is pretty much the PERFECT adventure tale. Hollywood in its various movie versions never did justice to it -- somebody like John Huston, or the director of Zulu (Cy Endfield), should have had a go at it, Sean Connery as Curtis, Anthony Hopkins as Quatermain, Denzel Washington as Umbopa, Linda Hunt (in blackface) as Gagool, etc. Wow, that would have been a classic!

I will now have to try more Haggard to see if this judgement of him as a writer bears up or if KSM was just a one-off. Never liked She, but will give it another chance. The absolute best book of Haggard's, in my opinion, is Nada the Lily, a truly tragic epic patterned after the great and horrible King Chaka of the Zulus.

Haggard's agnostic and stoic philosophy, which I rather admire, is well summed up in the following passage from King Solomon's Mines. This is the night before one of the best battle scenes in literature (and of course the few negative critics of this book when it came out, as an instant best-seller, took him to task for his violence and pessimism).

    Quatermain and Sir Henry Curtis are surveying the sleeping soldiers under the moonlight:

    "How many of these do you suppose will be alive at this time tomorrow?" asked Sir Henry.

    I shook my head and looked again at the sleeping men, and to my tired and yet excited imagination it seemed as though death had already touched them. My mind's eye singled out those who were sealed to slaughter, and there rushed in upon my heart a great sense of the mystery of human life, and an overwhelming sorrow at its futility and sadness. Tonight these thousands slept their healthy sleep, tomorrow they, and many others with them, ourselves perhaps among them, would be stiffening in the cold; their wives would be widows, their children fatherless, and their place know them no more for ever. Only the old moon would shine serenely on, the night wind would stir the grasses, and the wide earth would take its happy rest even as it did aeons before these were, and will do aeons after they have been forgotten.

    Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is forgotten, indeed, but the breath he breathed yet stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited today; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he felt are our familiar friends--the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also!

    Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable and immortal elements of life, which, having once been, can never die, though they blend and change and change again forever.

It might be trite and glib, but I really like that. Don't you?

    However, the conversation continues, and points out the other aspect of this book -- the heroic Brits in the face of adversity:

    Quatermain: "...I very much doubt if one of us will be alive tomorrow night. We shall be attacked in overwhelming force, and it is exceedingly doubtful if we can hold this place."

    Sir Henry: "We'll give a good account of some of them, at any rate. Look here, Quatermain, the business is a nasty one, and one with which, properly speaking, we ought not be be mixed up, but we are in for it, so we must make the best of it. Speaking personally, I had rather be killed fighting than any other way. (...) But Fortune favours the brave, and we may succeed. Anyway, the slaughter will be awful, and as we have a reputation to keep up, we shall have to be in the thick of it."

    Sir Henry made this last remark in a mournful voice, but there was a gleam in his eye which belied it. I have a sort of idea that Sir Henry Curtis actually likes fighting.

OK, now we're back on track with the Ripping Yarn.

Be sure to give Rider Haggard a chance next time you see one of his books and are in the mood for a bang-up story.

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