She - H Rider Haggard

... I do not believe that either of us would really have left Ayesha even if some superior power had suddenly offered to convey us from these gloomy caves and set us down in Cambridge. We could no more have left her than a moth can leave the light that destroys it. We were like confirmed opium-eaters: in our moments of reason we well knew the deadly nature of our pursuit, but we certainly were not prepared to abandon its terrible delights.

She is the story of a quest, an adventure that began over two thousand years before the story begins. The story is told, in the form of a long manuscript, written by Ludwig Horace Holly, Cambridge scholar, & left in the care of an unnamed Editor. Holly, a man in his 40s & considered ugly by everyone, especially women, tells of the death of his friend Vincey twenty years before. When he knew he was dying, Vincey left Holly the guardianship of his five year old son, Leo, & a chest containing documents relating to an ancient family story. In a letter accompanying the chest, Vincey sets out his instructions for Leo's education, including learning Arabic & Greek, & instructs Holly to give Leo the trunk on his 25th birthday so that he can decide whether he wishes to take up the quest. Vincey claims to be the descendant of an Egyptian priest of Isis, a Greek called Kallikrates, & only his ill health prevented him from continuing on his journey to find the forgotten land his ancestor discovered.

That same night, Vincey dies. Holly becomes Leo's guardian, employs a young man, Job, to help him look after the boy & sets about fulfilling Vincey's instructions with regard to Leo's education. Leo grows up top be extraordinarily handsome, intelligent & kind. Holly grows to love Leo as a son &, on his 25th birthday, tells him of the chest & of his father's last instructions. In the chest, they find documents, papyri & a scarab, all telling an amazing story of Kallikrates & his love for a beautiful Egyptian princess, Amenartas. There is a forgotten land in the heart of Africa & a magnificent Queen, a white woman, "who is a magician having a knowledge of all things, and a life and loveliness that does not die" who rules over them. Many of Leo's ancestors tried to find this land & failed. Leo is determined to try himself & Holly & Job go with him.

Holly, Leo & Job set out for Africa. They have many adventures, including the sinking of the dhow they hire to take them up river. Fortunately, they were towing their own boat, with all their belongings already stowed on it & they escape drowning, along with just one of the African crew members, Mahomed. They find the rock, shaped like the head of an African, mentioned in the manuscript &, soon after, are approached by a group of tribesmen, speaking an Arabic dialect. The leader of the men, an old man called Billali, tells them that he has been commanded by his Queen, She-who-must-be-obeyed, to bring the strangers to her. She seems to know everything that happens within her lands & the three white men are well-treated on their journey.

The women of the tribe are in a privileged position, deciding for themselves who they will live with. Men are reduced to the position of vassals. A young woman, Ustane, embraces Leo & when he returns her embrace, he has become her lover. Unfortunately, Mahomed, being black, comes to a terrible end as the tribesmen, the Amahagger, decide that he's fair game after he rejects a woman's advances as She did not mention a black man in her commands. The battle that ensues leaves Leo badly wounded although Billali returns to prevent the deaths of the three men. The journey through forests & swamps finally ends in the cup of a volcanic plain where they discover the lost civilization described in the legend.

Holly is summoned to meet She & is presented with a tall woman, veiled in gauze. She is all-powerful, served only by mutes who cannot reveal anything & revered by the Amahagger over whom she has the power of life & death. Over the course of many conversations, She reveals her name, Ayesha, tells him of her powers & reveals that she has discovered the secret of eternal life. She has lived for over two thousand years, waiting for the love of her life to return to her. The story in the manuscript was true. Ayesha fell in love with Kallikrates & killed him in rage when he preferred Amenartas. She immediately regretted her actions & has waited, ever since, for his reincarnated self to return to her. Ayesha recognizes Leo as her lover, cures him of his wounds & proposes to keep him with her, giving him the gift of eternal life. Ayesha has also unveiled herself to Holly & he falls in love with her, as any man must. He wonders what Leo's reaction will be when he sees Ayesha's incredible beauty.

She is a story of adventure that Haggard wrote in the aftermath of the great success of King Solomon's Mines. He wrote it quickly, drawing again on his knowledge of Africa but this time, the story is much darker. I read King Solomon's Mines about five years ago & enjoyed it very much but I don't remember it being as gruesome & violent as She. There are some truly horrible scenes of violence (the favoured punishment of the Amahagger is hot-potting & it has nothing to do with a savoury stew) & the embalmed bodies of the ancestors are used as flaming torches during an entertainment. Holly & his companions are housed in caves once used as the burial places of the Amahagger & there are murals on the walls showing the embalming process. It's not for the squeamish.

There are also some very exciting scenes. At one point, Ayesha is leading Leo & Holly to the source of eternal life in a series of caves. They have to cross a chasm to a rock on the other side that sways in the howling wind on a thin plank. Even though I knew that Holly, at least, must survive as he's writing the story, I almost shut my eyes, as if I could see what was happening. That could have something to do with my fear of heights, but still! The journey back through the caves is even more perilous.

Holly is a very sympathetic narrator. He reminded me a little of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Dr Watson. Noble, decent, loyal & so very English, in the way of Victorian heroes. His solitary life is changed by Leo's arrival & his determination to carry out his friend's instructions leads him into great peril. He impresses Ayesha with his determination not to be cowed by her (he refuses to enter her presence crawling on his hands & knees) & they have many long conversations about the history of her people. I admit, some of these conversations were too long for me. Ayesha's slightly archaic speech may have been intended to reflect the Arabic dialect she spoke but these long passages slowed down the action. I suppose long expositions of history & customs are necessary in any novel about new worlds or dystopia but I was longing for some action, even though it might have made me feel slightly ill. The story of the quest & the adventures that attend it is very exciting, however, & make She well worth reading. If only I could have got Charles Aznavour (love the cheesy album covers) & Horace Rumpole (about 5 minutes in to this episode) out of my head while I was reading...

Mary Gaunt : independent colonial woman - Bronwen Hickman

Just over a year ago I read Kirkham's Find by Mary Gaunt, a book that had sat on my shelves for a very long time before I finally got around to reading it. I loved it & it was one of my Top 10 books last year. So, I was very pleased to discover that a biography of Mary Gaunt was about to be released. She led a very adventurous & unexpected life & I'm so glad I had the chance to find out more about her.

The character of Phoebe Marsden in Kirkham's Find owes quite a lot to her creator. Mary grew up in country Victoria, the daughter of William Gaunt, an Englishman who came out to try his luck in Victoria in the 1850s, & Elizabeth Palmer, an excellent horsewoman who had rather aristocratic views on the right way to live one's life. The Gaunts married in 1860 & Mary was born on the goldfields at Indigo in 1861 where her father was working as a Warden. He was employed by the Government to keep the peace & was later able to study law & became a solicitor.

Mary grew up as part of a large family & was one of the first women eligible to enrol at Melbourne University. Unfortunately her academic career only lasted one year as she found the course unsuitable & failed her exams. However, she was already writing & had some early success with stories & reviews published in the Melbourne newspapers. Soon she was writing novels to be serialised in the newspapers & planning a trip to England. Most Australian authors were published in England in the late 19th century & Mary set off with a letter of introduction from the Editor of The Australasian & a determination to forge a career for herself. At first, everything she wrote was returned. There seemed to be no market for Australian stories. Then, Mary retold a story she heard from her brother Guy, who was in the merchant navy. It was the exciting story of a trip by torpedo boat across the Atlantic. She signed it M Gaunt, hoping to be taken for a man, & the story was accepted & published in The English Illustrated Magazine. Mary kept writing, found an agent & returned to Australia having made a start on her career.

On a visit to friends in Warrnambool, Mary met Dr Hubert Miller. The original attraction may have been his beehives (she was keen to learn beekeeping) but Hubert pursued Mary & they were married in 1894. The Millers were very happy, although Hubert's mother lived with them & she disliked Mary, disapproving of everything she did. Mary refused to quarrel with her mother-in-law & spent a lot of time biting her tongue to keep the peace. Unfortunately only five years after they were married, Hubert's health failed. His behaviour grew erratic, then frightening as his mental health declined. He ended his life in an asylum, suffering from the effects of tertiary syphilis.

Mary had continued writing during her marriage but, after the sadness of Hubert's last months & his death, Mary wanted a fresh start. She was left with very little as Hubert had been unable to work for some time & she gave what was left to Hubert's mother. In 1901 Mary decided to leave Australia & return to London where she hoped to continue her career. Life in London in those early days was very hard.

Oh, the hopes of the aspirant for literary fame, and oh, the dreariness and the weariness of life for a woman poor and unknown in London! I lodged in two rooms in a dull and stony street. I had no one to speak to from morning to night, and I wrote and wrote and wrote stories that all came back to me... they were poor stuff, but how could anyone do good work who was sick and miserable, cold and lonely, with all the life crushed out of her by the grey skies and the drizzling rain?

Although that first year in London was probably the lowest point in Mary's life, she was about to embark on the most exciting part of her career. Mary always longed to travel & she was always ready for adventure. She had always wanted to see Africa, after reading about it as a child & her fascination with China began when she saw the Chinese miners on the goldfields of Ballarat when she was young. She began by collaborating with a young doctor, Thomas Tonkin, on a series of adventure novels set in Africa, on the Guinea Coast. Tonkin had been on a missionary expedition to Guinea & Mary could supply the plot. The stories were reasonably successful but only made Mary more determined to see the world herself.

Mary eventually financed the trip to Africa by writing a mystery serial for the Chicago Daily News. It was the beginning of years of adventure as Mary traveled to Africa & China, writing articles & stories based on her adventures to pay her way. She was a traveller rather than an explorer, staying with Colonial officials on her journeys rather than hacking her way through the jungle in a tweed skirt. However, she was unafraid by obstacles or dangers & reveled in new sights & meeting new people.

Mary was never a conventional woman & I love this story of her traveling by train near Brighton with two ladies who are determined to snub her attempts at conversation. After seeing a convoy of elephants & camels from a circus by the side of the road, the ladies are determined to ignore both the animals & Mary.

Those two ladies were a credit to the English nation. They bore themselves with the utmost propriety. What they thought of me I can only dimly guess, but they never even raised their eyes from their papers. Of course the train rushed on, the camels and elephants were left behind, and there was nothing to show that they had ever been there. Then I regret to state that I lay back and laughed til I cried, and whenever I felt a little better the sight of those two studious women solemnly reading their papers set me off again. When I got out at Hassocks they ... literally drew their skirts around them so that they should not touch mine and be contaminated as I passed.

Mary spent the last years of her life in Europe, never returning to Australia. At the age of sixty she made a trip to Jamaica, writing a book about her experiences which upset the expatriate community. For the last twenty years of her life, she lived in Bordighera, an Italian town very near the French border on the Riviera. There was a small community of expatriate Britons living there, including several writers, & Mary continued working on her stories using a lifetime of travel & experiences to furnish plot & incident. In June 1940 as Germany invaded France, the small British community in Bordighera was moved across the French border to Vence, a walled village in the mountains not far from Nice. There she lived until her death in January 1942.

Mary Gaunt lived a remarkable life for a woman of her time. She had a sense of adventure & a determination to live an independent life & she was able to realise her dreams. I loved reading about Mary's life & I can only hope that some of her novels may be reprinted one of these days. A few of her novels & collections of stories are available from Project Gutenberg but I would love to see an Australian publisher like Text Publishing add Mary Gaunt to their wonderful Australian Classics list.

Allan Quatermain - H Rider Haggard

Allan Quatermain is the sequel to King Solomon's Mines which I read last year. Quatermain is a big game hunter & explorer who gained great riches in the adventure of King Solomon’s Mines. Three years have passed, Allan’s son has just died, & he’s feeling sad, lonely & old as he contemplates the rest of his life. His companions from the earlier book - Sir Henry Curtis & Capt John Good - are bored with money & a quiet life. They want to return to Africa & Allan tells them of a fabled lost land inhabited by white men deep in the African jungle. They all decide this is the perfect antidote to their restlessness.

The adventure really begins once they reach Africa & team up with Umslopogaas, the Zulu warrior who was involved in the search for King Solomon's Mines. They are told that a man had stumbled into a mission station run by Mr Mackenzie on the Tana river near Mt Kenia, telling a story of this lost land of white men. He was treated well there for a time until the priests decided he was a devil & then he barely escaped with his life. He was at his last gasp by the time he found the mission & died soon after, leaving behind a beautiful sword, unlike any sword of European manufacture. Quatermain & the others go to Mackenzie’s mission & learn all they can about the mysterious traveller. The mission is almost a paradise on Earth. Perfect climate, gorgeous gardens & a kindly missionary & his family tending to the local people with kindness. The mission is well-defended from hostile tribespeople but it’s less safe outside the mission walls. Our heroes are involved in an exciting raid on a neighboring tribe to rescue young Flossie MacKenzie who has been kidnapped while out looking for a rare plant specimen. Haggard writes well, the action is rapid & full of tension as Quatermain & the others plan a pre-emptive attack to prevent Flossie’s execution.

All this is just the preliminary to the adventures on the way to this lost land, Zu-Vendis, which include a long, terrifying journey through an underground cavern over a volcanic core that threatens to boil them to death & an attack by a vast horde of giant black crabs. They finally come through the cavern into a vast lake where they find the lost land of Zu-Vendis. Here they make a bad beginning by killing some sacred hippopotami in an attempt to impress the locals with their superior weaponry. The people are much more impressed by Good appearing in his full dress uniform as a Commander of the Royal Navy. I have no idea how he managed to bring all his regalia along on such a journey when practically everything they owned was lost, stolen or abandoned at some point, but, an English gentleman of the navy obviously must have his priorities straight & it has the desired effect. They are welcomed more warmly after they rescue a young woman from death & they are soon installed at the court of the two beautiful sister Queens of the land, Nyleptha & Sorais. The all-powerful priests are not happy to see these strangers settle in for a long stay, charming the Queens & fascinating the locals. Curtis & Good soon find themselves falling in love with their beautiful royal hosts & the scene is set for civil war & treachery.

This is a rip-roaring adventure story but with a bit of a dull patch in the middle when our heroes get to Zu-Vendis & Allan spends far too long for my liking describing everything about this new civilization in great detail. King Solomon’s Mines was a shorter book & moved along at a cracking pace. Haggard apparently wrote it in 6 weeks. Allan Quatermain is still worth reading. Allan is a wonderful narrator & they have some very exciting adventures. I could forgive Haggard his little bit of sociological padding. Capuchin Classics have just reprinted Allan Quatermain. Capuchin are another wonderful small press bringing unjustly forgotten, out of print books back into circulation.

King Solomon’s Mines led me on a bit of a Boys’ Own Adventure reading path last year. I had read it as part of my 19th century reading group. It’s not a book I would ever have chosen myself, which is another good reason for me to belong to this group which has greatly widened my 19th century horizons. It was such a great read that I wanted more adventure & found myself reading The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, The 39 Steps & Greenmantle by John Buchan, Kidnapped & Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson. Although I’ve read a lot of Victorian & Edwardian fiction, I hadn’t read any of these before & it was a lot of fun. One of the joys of reading, for me, is this possibility of following up serendipitous tangents & paths. One book always does lead to another.