Operation in Nursing Home — “Ayesha” — H. R. H. often asked which he thinks best passages in his works — An answer to the question — Member of Royal Commission on Coast Erosion — Lloyd George — Afforestation added to the reference — Scheme presented to Government — Dropped — King Edward’s funeral — H. R. H. undertook a report for Salvation Army — Regeneration — General William Booth — His death — H. R. H. wrote pamphlet for Archbishop Benson — “Rural Denmark” — The Development Board — Notes of interview with Lloyd George — Knighthood conferred — Offered seat on Dominions Royal Commission — Egypt Again — “Marie” — Dedicated to Sir Henry Bulwer — End of Chronicle of H. R. H.
In the intervals of all this Commission business I retired for a month or five weeks into a nursing home to undergo an operation which the effects of my long journey made necessary.
Never shall I forget that place! — the lodging-house-like little drawing-room where patients were received, and where I had to wait in my dressing-gown while my room was made ready for the operation; the dreadful noise caused by the carriages of theatre-goers returning home at night or by the rattle of the mail-carts over the stone-paved road; the continual operations; the occasional rush of the nurses when it was announced that a patient was passing away; and so forth.
I had never taken a major anaesthetic before, and I must say I did not find the process pleasant. I can still see the face of my friend Dr. Lyne Stivens, and the jovial, rubicund countenance of the late Professor Rose, bending over me as through a mist, both grown so strangely solemn, and feel the grip of my hand tightening upon that of the nurse which afterwards it proved almost impossible to free.
Then came the whirling pit and the blackness. I suppose that it was like death, only I hope that death is not quite so dark!
From this blackness I awoke in a state of utter intoxication to find the nurses of the establishment gathered round me with sheets of paper and the familiar, hateful autograph books in which, even in that place and hour, they insisted I should write. Heaven knows what I set down therein: I imagine they must have been foolish words, which mayhap one day will be brought up against me.
Another question: Why cannot the public authorities establish really suitable nursing homes for paying patients? This would be a great boon to thousands, and, I should imagine, self-supporting.
However, of one of these nurses at any rate, a widow, I have grateful recollections. I amused myself, and, I trust, her, by reading “Ayesha” aloud to her during my long wakeful hours — for she was a night nurse.
This book “Ayesha,” which was published while I was in the nursing home, is a sequel to “She,” which, in obedience to my original plan, I had deliberately waited for twenty years to write. As is almost always the case, it suffered somewhat from this fact, at any rate at the hands of those critics with whom it is an article of faith to declare that no sequel can be good. Still, I have met and heard from many people who like “Ayesha” better than they do “She.”
Lang was very doubtful about this book. He wrote:
You may think me a hound, but I only found out as I went to bed last night that “Ayesha” was in the drawing-room. Awfully good of you to make me such a nice dedication, grammar right too, which I name because in a very jolly book egalement dedie to me the grammar is wrong, but I could not point that out to the author.
I am almost afraid to read “She,” as at 61,00000 one has no longer the joyous credulity of forty, and even your imagination is out of the fifth form. However, plenty of boys are about, and I hope they will be victims of the enchantress. . . .
I was therefore correspondingly relieved, believing as I do that Lang’s judgment on imaginative fiction was the soundest of any man of his time, and knowing his habit of declaring the faith that was in him without fear, favour, or prejudice, when on the following day I received another note in which he said:
It is all right: I am Thrilled: so much obliged. I thought I was too Old, but the Eternal Boy is still on the job. Unluckily I think the dam reviewers never were boys — most of them the Editor’s nieces. May it be done into Thibetan. Dolmen business in Chapter I all right!
I have often been asked, and have been careful never to answer the question, as to what I considered the best passages in my own humble writings. It is a very favourite query of the casual correspondent, from whom I receive, on an average, a letter a day, and sometimes many, many more. Now in acknowledgment of them all I reply — Ignosi’s chant in “King Solomon’s Mines,” as it appears in the later editions of that book (the same that Stevenson called “a very noble imitation”); the somewhat similar chant to the Sun in “Allan Quatermain”; the scene where Eric Brighteyes finds his mother dead — which Lang declared was “as good as Homer” — and the subsequent fight in the hall at Middlehof; the description of the wolves springing up at the dead body in the cave in “Nada the Lily”; the transformation in the chapter called “The Change” and “The Loosing of the Powers” in “Ayesha”; a speech made by the heroine Mameena as she dies, in an unpublished work called “Child of Storm,” with the rest of her death scene; the account of the passion of John and Jess as they swung together wrapt in each other’s arms in the sinking waggon on the waters of the flooded Vaal; and, oh! I know not what besides. When one has written some fifty books the memory is scarce equal to the task of searching for plums amidst the dough. Also, when one has found them, they seem on consideration to be but poor plums at best. Also one thinks differently of their relative merits or demerits at different times. For instance, how about “She’s” speech before she enters the fire? and the holding of the stair by old Umslopogaas? and the escape of the ship in “Fair Margaret”? or the battle of Crecy in “Red Eve”? If I am asked what book of mine I think the best as a whole, I answer that one, yet unpublished, to my mind is the most artistic. At any rate, to some extent, it satisfies my literary conscience. It is the book named “Child of Storm,” to which I have alluded above, and is a chapter in the history of “Allan Quatermain.” Of Allan, for obvious reasons, I can always write, and of Zulus, whose true inwardness I understand by the light of Nature, I can always write, and — well, the result pleases at least one reader — myself. Whether it will please others is a different matter.
So, at last I have tried to answer the inquiries of the all-pervading casual correspondent in a somewhat superficial fashion. To do so thoroughly would involve weeks of reading of much that I now forget.
When I escaped from that nursing home, very feeble and with much-shattered nerves, I went to stay with my friend Lyne Stivens to recuperate, and then for a day or two to Kipling’s. Here I remember we compounded the plot of “The Ghost Kings” together, writing down our ideas in alternate sentences upon the same sheet of foolscap.
Among my pleasantest recollections during the last few years are those of my visits to the Kiplings, and one that they paid me here, during which we discussed everything in heaven above and earth beneath. It is, I think, good for a man of rather solitary habits now and again to have the opportunity of familiar converse with a brilliant and creative mind. Also we do not fidget each other. Thus only last year Kipling informed me that he could work as well when I was sitting in the room as though he were alone, whereas generally the presence of another person while he was writing would drive him almost mad. He added that he supposed the explanation to be that we were both of a trade, and I dare say he is right. I imagine, however, that sympathy has much to do with the matter.
Of late years Kipling has been much attacked, a fate with which I was once most familiar, since at one time or the other it overtakes the majority of those who have met with any measure of literary, or indeed of other success — unless they happen to be Scotchmen, when they are sure of enthusiastic support from their compatriots always and everywhere. The English, it seems to me, lack this clan feeling, and are generally prepared to rend each other to pieces in all walks of life, perhaps because our race is of such mixed origin. In Kipling’s case some of these onslaughts are doubtless provoked by his strong party feeling and pronouncements, though the form they take is for the most part criticism of his work. Even on the supposition that this is not always of quite the same quality, such treatment strikes me as ungenerous. No man is continually at his best, and the writer of “Recessional” and other noble and beautiful things should be spared these scourgings. However, I have no doubt it will all come right in the end, and I hope that when this book is published he may be wearing the Order of Merit.
Nowadays everything is in extremes, and the over-praised of one year are the over-depreciated of the next, since, as much or more than most people, critics, or the papers that employ them, like to be in the fashion. It is fortunate that, however much it may be influenced at the time, the ultimate judgment lies with the general public, which, in the issue, is for the most part just. It is fortunate also that only a man’s best work will come before this final court, since in our crowded age the rest must soon evaporate.
The next important event that happened to me was my nomination in the year 1906 as a member of the Royal Commission on Coast Erosion. It happened thus. Seeing that such a Commission was to be appointed, I wrote to Mr. Lloyd George, who was then the President of the Board of Trade in the new Radical Government, explaining to him a method I had adopted of keeping back the sea by the planting of Marram grass. This plan had proved most successful so far as the frontage of my house, Kessingland Grange, near Lowestoft, was concerned, and I suggested that it might with advantage be more widely followed.
Mr. Lloyd George asked me to come to see him, which I did, with the result that ultimately I found myself a member of the Royal Commission whereof Lord Ashby St. Ledgers, then Mr. Ivor Guest, was the Chairman. Lord Ashby St. Ledgers was at the time quite a young man whom I liked very much, and with whom I got on extremely well; indeed he was always most kind and considerate to me. So far he has been extraordinarily fortunate in life, and I hope that his good chance may continue. Born to great wealth, while still young he finds himself a member of the Government, a Privy Councillor, and a peer in his own right without the necessity of waiting for his father’s title. Truly the ball is at his feet and, with his considerable business abilities, he should be able to kick it far, as I hope he may.
How strangely do the lots of men vary, especially in this old-established land! One toils all his life to attain in old age, or more probably not to attain at all, what another steps into from the beginning as a natural right and almost without effort on his part. One man misfortune follows fast and death follows faster; another seems to pass from childhood to a very distance grave without a heartache or a stumble; neither he nor those connected with him are called upon to face work, or want, or struggle, or to know any kind of human loss or suffering or anxiety of the soul — that is, so far as we can judge.
Almost am I inclined to think that the Prince Fortunatus of this character, of whom everybody will know several, must have behaved himself very well in a previous incarnation and now be reaping the harvest of reward. Or maybe — this is a more unpleasant idea — his good things are appointed to him here like those of Dives in the Bible, and — there are breakers ahead. Unless the world is regulated by pure chance, there must be some explanation of these startling differences of fate. Or perhaps the fortunate ones have their own bitternesses which are invisible to other eyes. Well, one may speculate on such problems, but to do the work that comes to one’s hand thoroughly, to thank God for and be content with what one has and to envy no man — these are the only real recipes for such satisfaction and happiness as are allowed to us in our mortal pilgrimage. Such, at least, is my attitude, though I must say I agree with Disraeli that life has more to offer to those who begin it with 3000 pounds a year, and with Becky Sharp who remarked safely that in these circumstances it was easier to be virtuous!
I worked hard on that Royal Commission. During the five years of its life, indeed, I only missed one day’s sitting, and that was because the steamer from Denmark could not get me there in time. Shortly after the commencement of its labours I was nominated the Chairman of the Unemployed Labour and Reclamation Committee, which involved a good deal of extra, but important and interesting, business. Also I was the Chairman of two of the tours that were made by committees of the Commission to inspect the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland, during which tours I am glad to say there were no differences of opinion or other troubles, such as have been known to arise on similar occasions.
When we had been sitting about a year, finding that there was not really very much in the Coast Erosion business, which had been somewhat exaggerated, Lord Ashby St. Ledgers and I approached Mr. Lloyd George one night at a dinner party and suggested that, as had been originally proposed, the question of Afforestation should be added to our Reference. This was done, and some experts in the matter were appointed to the Commission. After this we investigated that great subject with much zeal and, being pressed by the Government, presented an interim Report. It was drafted, with the assistance of course of our clever and industrious secretary, Mr. Grimshaw, of the Board of Trade, by the Chairman, Professor Somerville, and myself, quorum pars magna fuit my extremely able and learned friend, Professor Somerville. We presented a scheme for the consideration of the Government, under which, had it been adopted, enormous areas of waste or poor land in the United Kingdom would in due course have become forests of great value. Needless to say it was not adopted; it’s fate was the fate of my Land Settlement Report, minus the appointment of a Committee to “knock the bottom out of it.” The fact is that the venture was too sound and quiet to be undertaken by a Government of party men who look for immediate political reward rather than to the welfare of the country forty or fifty years hence, especially when, as was likewise the case in my Land Settlement Report, the immediate finding of large sums of money is involved.
Also the inevitable critics arose. Gentlemen who thought that they ought to have been on the Commission, gentlemen who thought that they ought to have been called as witnesses, gentlemen who honestly disagreed, shouted aloud in the accustomed chorus, and in the end the thing was practically dropped. Which is a pity, for it would have worked well in the long run and proved of great benefit to the United Kingdom in those coming days when the timber supplies of the world will run short. Also it would have given a great deal of employment on land which now uses but little labour. However, I did not feel its failure in the same way as I had felt that of my one-man Report, since now I shared the responsibility with about a score of distinguished persons who had unanimously made our futile recommendations to the Crown. It was one more piece of, to all appearances, wasted work, that was all. I must say I do not wonder that many officials become slack and remain well content to do as little as they can, seeing what are the results which overtake those ardent spirits who show themselves guilty of trop de zele. Cold shoulders and rapped knuckles, these are their portion.
After the funeral of our Afforestation scheme we proceeded to examine more coasts. I wonder if there is a groin or an eroded beach on the shores of the United Kingdom that I have not seen and thoughtfully considered. Amongst other places we went to Ireland, where, as the Chairman of the Committee, I examined all the southern coasts of that beauteous isle; also a fine variety of inland swamps which it was thought possible to reclaim.
It was a very interesting experience because of the number and different classes of people with whom we came in contact as we journeyed from place to place in motor-cars.
I found the Irish the most charming and attractive people that I have ever met and the most incomprehensible. What rather disgusted me, however, was the mendicant attitude of mind which again and again I observed among those who gave evidence before us. They all wanted something out of the Government, and generally something for nothing. I remember growing enraged with one witness, a most shameless beggar, and saying to him, “The fact is, sir, that after the British Government has given you the horse, you expect that they should feed it also.”
“Shure, your Honour!” he answered, quite unperturbed, or words to that effect.
As I was dressing one morning at a Cork hotel, I received a telegram informing me that King Edward had died during the night. We did not leave Cork till ten or eleven o’clock, but up to that hour, although the news was well known, I saw no indication of public mourning. No bells were rung, and no flags flew at half-mast. This may have been mere carelessness, or it may have been — something else. That day, when stopping under a tree to shelter from a heavy shower, I fell into conversation with an Irish farmer of the humorous type, and told him the sad intelligence. He reflected for a moment, then said, “Is that so, your Honour? Well, he’s gone! Let’s thank God and the saints it isn’t us!”
On the other hand, the same tidings moved an old woman in a wretched shanty in Connemara literally to tears.
“And it’s dead he is,” she said to me. “Shure, he was a grand man! Never a week but he sent me five shillings with his own name to it.”
Further queries elicited the fact that this old lady believed that his late Majesty personally posted to her five shillings each Monday morning, which she drew at the Post Office in the shape of an Old Age Pension! Hence her loyal soul.
On my return to London I saw King Edward’s body lying in state in Westminster Hall, and afterwards watched the noble panorama of his funeral from the upper balcony of the Athenaeum. Thomas Hardy and I sat together; there were, I remember, but few in the club.
The great military pageant of the passing of the mortal remains of King Edward brought back to my mind that of the burial of Queen Victoria. This I saw from the house of one of the minor Canons, which was exactly opposite to the steps of the Chapel at Windsor. The sight of the gorgeous procession passing up those steps impressed itself very deeply on me. The bearers staggering under the weight of the massive leaden coffin that yet seemed so short, till once or twice I thought that they must fall; the cloaked King Edward walking immediately behind, followed by a galaxy of princes; the officer, or aide-decamp, who came to him, saluting, to make some report or ask some order, and received a nod in answer; the troops with arms reversed; the boom of the solemn guns; the silent, watching multitude; the bright sun gilding the wintry scene; the wind that tossed the plumes and draperies — all these and more made a picture never to be forgotten. And now, after a few brief years, the mourning monarch who formed its central, living figure passed by in another coffin, himself the mourned!
A few days after the funeral I met at dinner one of the physicians who attended the late King during his last illness. He told me that he did not think that His Majesty knew he was dying, and that no one informed him. He thought that the King believed that he would pull through, as he had often done before. When it was suggested to him that he had better not see people, he answered, “It amuses me,” and that he did not want any “fuss.” This doctor was of opinion that there was nothing in the story that the King had worried himself over the political situation, as he was “not that sort of man.” He died because his heart was worn out, for he had “warmed both hands at the fire of life.” He did not seem to be spiritually troubled in any way, though he kept “all the forms.” He added that on the day he died the King smoked a cigar.
Whilst I was still engaged upon this Commission I undertook another piece of work. One day General Booth sent an officer to me to ask if I would write a report upon the social efforts and institutions of the Salvation Army, for which it would be prepared to pay a fee, to be arranged. I answered that I had no time, and that in any case I would not touch their money. Ultimately, however, I made the time and undertook the task as a labour of love, on the condition that they should pay the out-of-pocket expenses. It took me about three months in all, including the travelling to various cities in England and Scotland, and as a result I published my book, “Regeneration,” of the copyright of which I made the Army a present. I do not suppose that this has proved a valuable gift, as, to find a large sale, such books must be of the ultra-“sensational” order, which mine was not.
I saw much of human misery in the course of that business, in which I was assisted by my friend, Mr. D. R. Daniel, one of the secretaries of the Royal Commission. But all of this is recorded in the pages of the book, so I need not dwell upon it here. I emerged from this work with a most whole-hearted admiration for the Salvation Army and its splendid, self-sacrificing labours among the lowest of the low. Its success with these, where so many have failed, remains something of a mystery to my mind, which I can only explain by a belief that it is aided through the agency of the Power above us. Nothing else will account for the transformations it effects in the natures of utterly degraded men and women. Long may it endure and prosper!
I have known General Booth for many years; my first interview with him, one of great interest, is printed verbatim in “Rural England.” We were always the best of friends, perhaps because I was never afraid of him, as seemed to be the case with so many of those by whom he was surrounded, and was always ready to give him a Roland for his Oliver in the way of what is known as chaff. I have seen him under sundry conditions, of which, perhaps, the funniest was the following. One day, after he had been holding a great meeting for City men in London, at which I was present, I took a gentleman to visit him who I thought might be able to help his cause. We found him at his office in Queen Victoria Street, stripped to his red Salvation jersey, streaming with perspiration, and very cross because his tea, or whatever the meal was called, was not ready. He was calling out, officers were flying here and there, some one was trying to soothe him, and so on. At length the meal arrived, consisting of a huge dish of mushrooms and a pot of strong tea. Contemplating this combination of fungi and tannin, I remarked that never before had I understood the height and depth and breadth of his faith in the heavenly protection.
This reminds me of a story which Captain Wright, a member of the Salvation Army who acted as one of my secretaries in America, told me of the General’s peculiar diet. Wright was travelling with him when he was tearing round the States preaching in the great cities. At that time his fancy was to eat two boiled Spanish onions before he went to rest, and it was Wright’s business to see that those onions were there. One unlucky night, however, after a particularly exhausting meeting they arrived at the hotel, where all the attendants had gone to bed, to find two very massive onions reposing on the plate as usual, but just as they had left, not the saucepan, but their mother earth!
Of the row that ensued the captain spoke to me in the hushed voice of awe.31
30 General Booth said to me — more than once: “Ah! but you would look grand in my uniform.” Whereto I would reply quite truly that I was not fit to wear that wedding garment, or words to that effect. — H. R. H.
The old General wrote as follows about my book, “Regeneration.” The letter is a very good specimen of his fine, bold handwriting, although at that time his sight was already feeble.
International Headquarters,
London, E.C.: December 10, 1910.
My dear Rider Haggard, — I have just read “Regeneration.” It is admirable. You have not only seen into the character and purpose of the work we are trying to do, with the insight of a true genius, but with the sympathy of a big and generous soul. From my heart I thank you.
May the blessing of the living God rest upon you, and on Mrs. Haggard and on your daughters, both for this life and the life to come.
Believe me,
Yours very sincerely,
William Booth.
Rider Haggard, Esq., J.P.
On May 20, 1912, the General wrote to me, saying that he was to undergo at once an operation for cataract on his remaining eye, one being already blind.
The signature to this touching letter, written just before his last illness, for death followed on the heels of that operation, is somewhat irregular, for then he was practically blind, but still in the old firm handwriting. Three months later to the day he died, and I received the following telegram, dated 21st August:
With deepest sorrow I have to announce the General laid down his sword at 10.15 last night. Pray for us.<............