“Eric Brighteyes” — Dedicated to the Empress Frederick — Correspondence with her — Lang’s letters about Eric — Letters from R. L. S. — Poem by him — “Beatrice” — Marie Corelli — Lady Florence Dixie — Cordy Jeaffreson again — Criticism of “Beatrice” — “Nada the Lily” — “Epic of a dying people” — Last letters from Sir Theophilus Shepstone — Dedication of “Nada” to him — Vale, Sompseu, Vale — Savile Club — Sir Ian Hamilton — His experiences at Majuba — Rudyard Kipling — Sir Henry Thompson — Michael Fairless at Bungay — Sir E. W. Budge — His anecdotes.

I began to write “Eric Brighteyes,” the saga which was the result of my visit to Iceland, on August 29, 1888, as the manuscript shows, and I finished it on Christmas Day, 1888. It was dedicated to the late Empress Frederick, under the circumstances which are shown in the following correspondence.

My brother William wrote to me from the British embassy at Athens, where I think he was First Secretary at the time, on October 30, 1889:

It may interest you to hear that the Empress Frederick told me the other night that the last pleasure that her husband had on earth was reading your books, which he continued to do through his last days, and that he used to express the hope that he might live to make your acquaintance. I replied that I knew the pleasure that it would give you to know you had soothed the dying moments of such a man, whereupon she begged me to write and tell you. She was very much affected in speaking of this and of her husband, and I had subsequently a very interesting conversation with her about him and the rest of her family. . . . You will be glad to hear that the Prince of Wales and his family read “Cleopatra” on their way out here, and think it your best book.

On December 3, 1889, I wrote to the Empress as follows:

Madam, — My brother has written to me from Athens, saying that your Majesty is disposed to honour me by accepting the dedication of my romance, “Eric Brighteyes.”

In a letter to him — which I believe your Majesty has seen — I have set out the reasons which caused me to make this offer. Therefore I will not trouble your Majesty by repeating them any further than to say how deeply honoured I shall be should you finally decide to accept my dedication.

I now enclose for your Majesty’s consideration that which I have written to this end. Should I be so fortunate as to win approval for my draft dedication, would it be too much to ask that one of the enclosed copies may be returned to me signed by your Majesty’s hand, or that a written approval may be conveyed to me in some other way? I ask this in order to protect myself from any possible future charge of having presumed to write what I have written without full permission.

Next comes a letter from the Empress to my brother William.

Naples, Grand Hotel: December 13, 1889.

The Empress Frederick has received a few days ago a letter from Mr. Haggard’s brother on the subject of the dedication of his romance, “Eric Brighteyes.”

The Empress will have the greatest pleasure in accepting the dedication, and begs Mr. Haggard to tell his brother so, and also to convey her grateful thanks to him in her name, for his letter and for the drafts of his dedication, to which the Empress would suggest a small alteration, which has been inserted in one copy.

It is indeed true that the Emperor Frederick while at San Remo — during those months of anxiety, of alternate hopes and fears, which he bore with a fortitude, patience and gentleness never to be forgotten — found great pleasure in reading Mr. Rider Haggard’s books. He as well as the Empress especially admired “Jess,” of which she read out a great part to him aloud. How pleasant were the hours so spent — and how bitter it is to look back on the last happiness of days never to return — can easily be imagined.

Mr. Rider Haggard says in his letter that he leaves for Greece on the 13th: so the Empress sends this on to Athens. The Empress hopes the slight change she suggests in one passage of the dedication — which she thinks charming — will not annoy the author, and she is anxiously looking forward to reading the book itself, which will now have a special interest for her! The Empress regrets exceedingly that Mr. Haggard’s brother was not at Athens during her stay there, and that she thus lost the pleasure of making his acquaintance, but hopes she may be more fortunate another time.

On January 19, 1890, the Empress sent me a registered holograph letter from Berlin, which is now bound up with the manuscript of the book. it runs as follows:

The Empress Frederick thanks Mr. Rider Haggard for his letter of the 27th December, and greatly regrets the long delay in answering.

Mr. R. Haggard no doubt has heard of the sad circumstances which caused so hurried a departure from Rome. Since arriving here many unavoidable duties have completely taken up the Empress’s time.

Mr. R. Haggard will understand this all the better as he and his family have so recently sustained a sad loss of the same kind — for which the Empress takes this opportunity of offering her sincere condolences. The Empress encloses the printed draft of the dedication with a suggestion for a slight alteration; and begs Mr. R. Haggard to accept her best thanks for the copy of “Jess” and the collection of stories just published, which she is looking forward to reading when she has a little leisure.

With this letter are two copies of the dedication, annotated in the hand of the Empress, for it seems that it was sent to her twice before it was finally settled as it appears in the book. A few years later, when I was at Homburg for my health, the Empress Frederick asked me to lunch, and I had a long and interesting conversation with her. As I kept no notes, however, I forget its details. She impressed me as a singularly charming and able lady.

“Eric” commended itself very much to Lang. Here is the first thing I can find about it in his letters.

“Eric” begins A1. I don’t know what about the public, but I love a saga but even too well, especially if it be a bloody one delicately narrated, or a very affectionate thing indeed but brutally set down, as Shakespeare says. I have only read Chapter I, but it’s the jockey for me.

P.S. — I have read four chapters, including Golden Falls. I think it is the best thing you have done, but of course I am saga-fain! I didn’t think anyone could do it.

Next letter, dated Saturday.

I have got Eric into Swanhild’s toils, and I don’t think I have come to a dull page yet. I don’t want to flatter, but it literally surprises me that anyone should write such a story nowadays. Charles Kingsley would have spoiled it by maundering and philosophising. I have hardly seen a line which is not in keeping yet. Also the plot is a good natural plot and the characters, except Gudruda, sympathetic. I think she might be a little less feminine and ill-willy. As literature I really think it is a masterpiece so far as I have gone. I’d almost as soon have expected more Homer as more saga. I don’t think much of the boy who can lay it down till it is finished; women of course can’t be expected to care for it. Surely it should come out before the “Bow,” which is such a flukey thing, whereas, whatever reviews and people may say, “Eric” is full of the best qualities of poetic [? word doubtful] fiction.

Next letter, undated.

The more I consider “Eric,” the more I think that except “Cleopatra,” which you can’t keep back, I’d publish no novel before “Eric.” It is so very much the best of the lot in all ways. Probably you don’t agree, and the public probably won’t stop to consider, but it is. I’d like to suggest one or two remarks for a preface — if any. The discovery of the dead mother and the dialogue with the Carline struck me very much. Clearly Swanhild needed no witchcraft, and as certainly her natural magic would have been interpreted so — at the time and much later. Perhaps the final bust-up might be less heavy in the supernatural, but more distinctly represented as the vision of fay men — subjective. Oddly enough, I found a Zulu parallel today: “I have made me a mat of men to lie on,” says the Zulu berserk when he had killed twenty and the assegais in his body were “like reeds in a marsh.” He is in Callaway. . . . It is worth an infinite number of Cleopatras, partly because you are at home in the North. I wouldn’t let anyone peddle it about, or show people, but stick to someone like Longman, if it were mine.

And again:

I suppose Ingram must see it,17, but I wish it could appear tomorrow in a book. Comparisons are odious, and I understand your preferring “Cleopatra.” People inevitably prefer what gives them most serious labour. But it’s a natural gift that really does the trick. I bet a pound George Eliot preferred “Romola” and “Daniel Deronda” to “Scenes of Clerical Life.” I have a hideous conscience which knows that a ballad or a leading article are the best things I’ve done, though I’d prefer to prefer “Helen of Troy.” But she’s a bandbox.

17 From the Illustrated London News. — Ed.

The last letter that I can find of Lang’s which has to do with “Eric Brighteyes” was evidently written in answer to one from myself in which I must have shown depression at certain criticisms that he made verbally or otherwise upon the book.

Bosh! It is a rattling good story! But I am trying to read it as critically as I can, and I am rather fresh from saga-reading. This makes me see more clearly than other people the immense difficulty in combining a saga with a story of love, which, except in the “Volsunga,” where the man was one of the foremost geniuses in the world, they never attempted. Other people won’t read it like that, and it is not right that it should be read in that way. Done in my way it would be rather pedantry than literature, but I am a born pedant. It is chock full of things nobody else could have done: indeed nobody else could have done any of it. The Saevuna part is excellent: I only doubted whether, for effect, her cursing speech should not be terser. I never read the very end, as it had affected me quite enough before I came to that. The scene on shipboard is not too like the Wanderer bit [in “The World’s Desire” — H. R. H.], because it is worked out and credible. The cloak, however, would suffice and be all right, without the replacing of the bonds, which, under the cloak, would be needless. The other bit, the seduction, is all right in itself: but it is one of the passages which the sages would have slurred, as not interesting to their bloodthirsty public. I think it may be none the worse for what you have done to it. Don’t “time heart” about it because of my pedantries. It is because it is good that I want it to be best. Skallagrim is always worth his weight in wadmal, whatever wadmal may be. The death of Groa fetches me less, I don’t know why. However, if you once don’t think well of it, in the nature of man it is certain to be more excellent, just as one always did well in examinations where one despaired. It is a queer fact, but it is so. The style is capital, but I rather think that of “Nada” is still better. I hope I shall live to review it, or rather that I shall review it if I live. For heaven’s sake, don’t be disgusted with it, or me because I look at it through a microscope. If I didn’t my looking at it would be of little use. None of my things are worth the lens, and the trouble, so I don’t.

Yours ever,
A. Lang.

“Eric” came out in due course, and did well enough. Indeed as a book it found, and still continues to find, a considerable body of readers. My recollection is, however, that it was reviewed simply as a rather spirited and sanguinary tale. Lang was quite right. The gentlemen who dispense praise and blame to us poor authors have not, for the most part, made a study of the sagas or investigated the lands where these were enacted. I wonder if it has ever occurred to the average reader how much the writer of a book which he looks at for an hour or two and throws aside must sometimes need to know, and what long months or years of preparation that knowledge has cost him? Probably not. My extended experience of the average reader is that he thinks the author produces these little things in his leisure moments, say when he, the reader, would be smoking his cigarettes, and this without the slightest effort.

To return to “The World’s Desire.” This work also came out in due course, and was violently attacked: so I gather from Lang’s letters, for I have none of the reviews. All that I remember about them is the effort of its assailants to discriminate between that part of the work which was written by Lang and that part which was written by myself — an effort, I may add, that invariably failed. However, all these things have long gone by, and the book remains and — is read, by some with enthusiasm.

Here is another note from Lang from Scotland, headed Ravensheugh, Selkirk, Friday.

Stevenson says he is “thrilled and chilled” by Meriamun. He thinks much of it “too steep,” bars Od(ysseus) killing so many enemies — exactly what Longinus says of Homer — and fears Meriamun is likely to play down Helen. He is kind enough to say “the style is all right,” and adds a poem on Odysseus. I’ll send you the letter presently.

I suppose that Lang did send this letter, and that I returned it to him. I believe that subsequently he lost both the letter and the poem. Luckily, however, I took the trouble to keep a copy of the latter, and here it is.
1.

Awdawcious Odyshes,

Your conduc’ is vicious,

Your tale is suspicious

???An’ queer.

Ye ancient sea-roamer,

Ye dour auld beach-comber,

Frae Haggard to Homer

???Ye veer.
2.

Sic veerin’ and steerin’!

What port are ye neerin’

As frae Egypt to Erin

???Ye gang?

Ye ancient auld blackguard,

Just see whaur ye’re staggered

From Homer to Haggard

???And Lang!
3.

In stunt and in strife

To gang seeking a wife —

At your time o’ life

???It was wrang.

An’ see! Fresh afflictions

Into Haggard’s descriptions

An’ the plagues o’ the Egyptians

???Ye sprang!
4.

The folk ye’re now in wi’

Are ill to begin wi’

Or to risk a hale skin wi’

???In breeks —

They’re blacker and hetter —

(Just ask your begetter)

And far frae bein’ better

???Than Greeks.
5.

Ther’s your Meriamun:

She’ll mebbe can gammon

That auld-furrand salmon

???Yoursel’;

An’ Moses and Aaron

Will gie ye your fairin’

Wi’ fire an’ het airn

???In Hell.

I refuse to continue longer. I had an excellent half-verse there, but couldn’t get the necessary pendant, and anyway there’s no end to such truck.

Yours,
R. L. S.

Now I will turn to my modern novel, “Beatrice.” Oddly enough, Lang liked it, although he says somewhere that he “infinitely prefers” Umslopogaas and Skallagrim.

I have read your chapters of “Beatrice.” Sursum corda: it moves, it has go and plenty of it. . . . I fear it is a deal more popular line than “The World’s Desire.”

May 8th.

I have read “Beatrice,” and if she interests the public as much as she does me, she’ll do. But I have marked it a good deal, and would be glad to go through it with you, looking over the scribbled suggestions. It is too late, but what a good character some male Elizabeth would have been: nosing for dirt, scandal, spite and lies. He might easily have been worked in, I think. . . . They [i.e. the hero and heroine] are a good deal more in love than Odysseus, Laertes’ son, and Mrs. Menelaus! It is odd: usually you “reflect” too much, and yet in this tale, I think, a few extra reflections might have been in place. I feel a Thackerayan desire to moralise.

Here is another allusion.

A letter I wrote anent B. was never posted. I said I did not quite think Geoffrey gave the sense of power, etc.; and that his rudeness to B. was overdone and cubbish, which you notice yourself. I think, in volume shape, that might yet be amended.

Miss Marie Corelli writes on June 12, 1890:

If you are still in town, and you would favour me with a call on Sunday afternoon next, about five o’clock, I should be so pleased to renew the acquaintance made some months past, when your kindly words made me feel more happy and encouraged me in my uphill clamber! I saw you from the gallery at the Literary Fund Dinner, and wished I had had the chance of speaking to you. Your book “Beatrice” is beautiful — full of poetry and deep thought — but I don’t believe the public — that with obstinate pertinacity look to you for a continuation ad infinitum of “King Solomon’s Mines” and “She” — will appreciate it as they ought and as it deserves. Whenever I see a World and Pall Mall Gazette vulgarly sneering at a work of literature, I conclude that it must be good — exceptionally so! — and this is generally a correct estimate: it certainly was so concerning “Beatrice.”

Trusting you will come and see me (we are very quiet people and don’t give crushes!),

Believe me,
Very sincerely yours,
Marie Corelli.

Here is a letter from the late Lady Florence Dixie, whom I first met years before in South Africa, which is interesting as showing that in the year 1890 she held views that since then have become very common. In short, she was a proto-suffragette.

You will, I hope, excuse this letter, and not misunderstand me in what I say. I have just finished reading your “Beatrice,” and have put it down with a feeling that it is only another book in the many which proclaims the rooted idea in men’s minds that women are born to suffer and work for men, to hide all their natural gifts that man may rule alone.

Does it not strike you that Beatrice — if she had been given equal chances with Geoffrey — would have made a name as great, aye, greater than his? Yet because she is a woman you will give her no such chance. You leave her to her useless, aimless, curtailed and wretched life which ends in suicide. Think you not that Beatrice in Geoffrey’s shoes might have made a great name for good? Forgive me — but as you can write, why not use your pen to upraise woman, to bid her become a useful member of society — the true companion and co-mate of man, and they working together shall help to make impossible such miserable victims of a false and unnatural bringing up as Elizabeth and Lady Honoria? You hold such women up to scorn. Yet are they the fruit of unnatural laws which men have wrongfully imposed on womankind. Greatly and in many ways does woman err in all paths of life — but is she entirely to blame? You men have made her your plaything and slave: she is regarded more in the light of a brood mare than anything else; and if within her narrow sphere she errs, who is to blame? Not her, believe me, but the false laws that made her what she is.

I have just published a new book, “Gloriana; or, The Revolution of 1900.”

Will you give me the pleasure of accepting a copy if I send you one? If you read it, you will not misunderstand this letter I hope.

Believe me,
Sincerely yours,
Florence Dixie.

P.S. — I hope you will excuse me for sending you some papers which will show you that there are some women, and men too, who feel that the cruel position of woman is unbearable.

Alas! 1900 has come and gone years ago, and the Revolution is still to seek. But perhaps it is at hand. At any rate Lady Florence strove manfully for her cause in those early days, if in the circumstances “manfully” is the right word to use.

I find a letter dealing with “Beatrice” from Cordy Jeaffreson, from which I quote an extract:

. . . It is a fine, stirring, effective story; but with all its power and dexterity it is not the book which will determine your eventual place in the annals of literature. You will write that book some ten years hence, when I shall be resting under the violets; and when you are enjoying the fullness of your triumph, you will perhaps give me a kindly thought and say, “The old man was right.” In a line, it is no small thing to have thrown off “Beatrice,” but you will do something much greater when “you’ve come to forty year.” The story strengthens my confidence in you, though it falls short of all I hoped for you. This is not damning with faint praise.

Ever yours,
J. C. J.

Alas! that wondrous work of fiction which Cordy Jeaffreson anticipated never was and never will be written by me. Be it good or be it bad, the best that I can do in the lines of romance and novel-writing is to be found among the first dozen or so of the books that I wrote, say between “King Solomon’s Mines” and “Montezuma’s Daughter.” Also I would add this. A man’s mind does not always remain the same. People are apt to say of any individual writer that he has gone off, whereas the truth may be merely that he has changed, and that his abilities are showing themselves in another form. Now, as it happens in my own case, in the year 1891 I received a great shock; also subsequently for a long period my health was bad. Although from necessity I went on with the writing of stories, and do so still, it has not been with the same zest. Active rather than imaginative life has appealed to me more, and resulted in the production of such works as “Rural England,” “A Farmer’s Year,” and others. Moreover, I have never really cared for novel-writing: romance has always made a greater appeal to me.

Here is a letter from Lang, to whom I had evidently shown that from Mr. Jeaffreson which is quoted above.

I don’t agree much with Jeaffreson. The book is a compromise, by its nature, and rather contains good things than is very good, to my taste, but it is only taste, not reason. Lord knows what you may write, or anybody read, in ten years. More than sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. The character of Geoffrey goes against my grain, but what he should have been, to satisfy me, I don’t know.

I imagine you missed your tip, by not being born nine hundred years ago. I might have been a monk of Ely, and you might have flayed me and composed a saga at first hand. It would have been a good saga, but I could not stand being flayed, I know. I am worried and sad and seedy, and far from a successful correspondent. . . . Jeaff. is very kind, however, though not a prophet nor a critic, I think. The former quality is much better.

Some years after “Beatrice” was published I was horrified to receive two anonymous or semi-anonymous letters from ladies who alleged that their husbands, or the husbands of someone connected with them — one of them a middle-aged clergyman — after reading “Beatrice,” had made advances to young ladies of that name; or perhaps the young ladies had made advances to them which they more or less reciprocated — I forget the exact facts. Also I heard that a gentleman and a lady had practised the sleep-walking scene, with different results from those recorded in the book. These stories troubled me so much — since I had never dreamed of such an issue to a tale with a different moral — that I wished to suppress the book, and wrote to Charles Longman suggesting that this should be done; also I took counsel with Lang and other friends. They thought me extremely foolish, and were rather indignant about the business. Longman’s views are expressed in such of his letters as I can find dealing with the matter, only he added that, even if there had been any reason for it, it was not possible to suppress a book so widely known, especially after it had been pirated in America. Lang’s letters I have not time to find at present, but I remember that they were to the same effect. Here are those from Longman, or as much of them as is pertinent.

39 Paternoster Row:
November 28, 1894.

My dear Rider, — I will get hold of the Saturday Review and Spectator reviews of “Beatrice.” I have not heard anything from Liverpool yet about that person, but I will let you hear as soon as I can. I will not write fully yet on the subject, but I may say that the idea that the character of Beatrice could lead someone into vice is preposterous. Still less is the example of Bingham likely to throw an unnatural glamour over seduction: in the first place, he was man enough to resist temptation; in the next place, both he and Beatrice were most unmercifully punished. Do not let this matter worry you. I assure you there is nothing you need regret.

Longman also wrote:

Christmas Day, 1894.

I like the Preface to “Beatrice” much better as amended. Lang is quite right: your feelings in the matter did infinite credit to your heart, but you disturbed yourself unnecessarily. I am glad we inquired into that Liverpool story and pricked the bubble. I will send you a review of the Preface. I return Lang’s letter.

I have now found this letter of Lang’s to which Longman refers. It is dated from St. Andrews on December 20th, and begins:

You Confounded Ass. The thing is Rot. Don’t take it au serieux. At least that is how it strikes me. If you must say something, say what I leave in. The novel seems to me perfectly devoid of moral harm. There are sill hopes here that the Samoan story is a lie [this refers to the death of Stevenson]. It has caused me sincere grief, but, at fifty, one seems rather case-hardened. However, don’t you go and leave the world before me. R. L. S. had as much pluck, and as kind a heart, as any man that ever lived, and extraordinary charm.

The “Liverpool story” to which Longman refers was, I believe, one of those detailed in the anonymous letters. Evidently he caused it to be inquired into and found that it was baseless.

The end of the matter was that I went through the tale carefully, modified or removed certain passages that might be taken to suggest that holy matrimony is not always perfect in its working, etc., and wrote a short preface which may now be read in all the copies printed since that date.

As I have said, the incident disturbed me a good deal, and more or less set me against the writing of novels of modern life. It is very well to talk about art with a large A, but I have always felt that the author of books which go anywhere and everywhere has some responsibilities. Therefore I have tried to avoid topics that might inflame even minds which are very ready to be set on fire.

The charge has been brought against me that my pages have breathed war. I admit it, and on this point am quite unrepentant. Personally I may say that I have a perfect horror of war, and hope that I may not live to see another in which my country is involved, for it seems to me terrible that human beings should destroy each other, often enough from motives that do not bear examination. Yet there is such a thing as righteous war, and if my land were invaded I should think poorly of anyone, myself included, who did not fight like a wild-cat. I am not even sure that I would not poison the wells if I were unable to get rid of the enemy in any other way. What is the difference between killing a man with a drug and killing him with a bomb or by hunger and thirst? Patriotism is the first duty, and the thing is to be rid of him somehow and save your country. However, this is a question on which I will not enter.

For the rest war brings forth many noble actions, and there can be no harm in teaching the young that their hands were given to them to defend their flag and their heads. If once a nation forgets to learn that lesson it will very soon be called upon to write Finis beneath its history. I fear that we, or some of us, are in that way now — or so I judge from the horror expressed upon every side at the doctrine that men should not grudge a year or so of their lives to be spent in learning the art of war. If God gave us our homes, I presume that He meant for us to protect them!

I think that the next book I wrote after “Eric,” or at any rate the next that was printed, was “Nada the Lily,” which I began upon June 27, 1889, and finished on January 15, 1890. It is pure Zulu story, and, as I believe I have said, I consider it my best or one of my best books. At any rate, the following letter from my friend Rudyard Kipling seems to show that this story has one claim on the gratitude of the world.

Vermont, U.S.A.:
October 20, 1895.

Dear Haggard, — Watt has just forwarded me a letter addressed to you from a bee-keeping man who wanted to quote something of a jungle tale of mine. I dare say it didn’t amuse you, but it made me chuckle a little and reminded me, incidentally, that the man was nearer the mark than he knew: for it was a chance sentence of yours in “Nada the Lily” that started me off on a track that ended in my writing a lot of wolf stories. You remember in your tale where the wolves leaped up at the feet of a dead man sitting on a rock? Somewhere on that page I got the notion. It’s curious how things come back again, isn’t it? I meant to tell you when we met; but I don’t remember that I ever did.

Yours always sincerely,
Rudyard Kipling.

Here are some extracts from Lang’s letters on the subject of “Nada.”

April 20th.

I read right through to Chaka’s death. It is admirable, the epic of a dying people, but it wants relief. Massacre palls. The old boy (i.e. the narrator of the story, Mopo) would have given no relief, naturally, but an idyll or two seem needed. The style is as good as it can be, an invention. I think a word or two more in the preface might be useful. I have made a slight suggestion or so. I like “Eric” better, but this is perhaps more singular. How any white man can have such a natural gift of savagery, I don’t know. The Wolves are astonishing.

Yours ever,
A. L.

The next letter is undated, but was probably written within a day or two of that just quoted.

I’ve finished “Nada.” If all the reviewers in the world denied it, you can do the best sagas that have been done yet: except “Njala” perhaps. Poor Nada! I hope it will be done into Zulu. The old wolf Death-grip was a nice wolf.

May 13th.

Many thanks for the book. You know exactly what I think of “B.” [“Beatrice”], but I like your natural novels better a long way than yo............