Post No. 12—Fifth Chapter, Part 1

The Writing of One Novel

The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life;

 Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fire

Copyright © 2012 by Thos. Kent Miller

All rights reserved

   [Note: These posts are sequential, each building on the previous. 

I suggest beginning at the beginning by scrolling down and clicking on "older posts" or by using the Blog Archive to the right to locate 

Post No. 1 in July.]

From The Ivory Child

—Hookway Cowles

From "Silver Blaze"

—Sidney Paget

 







The Fifth Chapter,
Part One

Post No. 12 focuses on the fifth chapter of The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life; Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fire, which is titled "Introduction by Allan Quatermain." This chapter is the first to be written in the voice of Allan Quatermain, whose memoir comprises the principal part of this book. Actually it is a tale told to Dr. Watson and Frederick Church and which Watson (nimble as he was in such matters) sets down on paper. It is also in this chapter that Quatermain introduces his man-servant,  Hans.

My assumption is that that readers of this blog have some background on Quatermain, just as they would have some on Sherlock Holmes. However, I include a few basic Quatermain facts in Note No. 1 below. Also it has been my intent that the assortment of Quatermain drawings I've included in these posts ought to convey a sense of the man.

My favorite character in the whole Quatermain universe is Hans the Hottentot. In fact, whatever else my novel is (and it is lots of things), it was a reason to resurrect the little Hottentot and throw a spotlight on this vastly important but vastly neglected literary character.

An Aside in the Form of Some Historical Perspective
Hans was of the indigenous ethnic group generally identified today as the Khoikhol [who were pastoralists, as opposed to the related group known as Bushmen who were hunter-gatherers—both groups speaking Khoi, a clicking language]. However, in Haggard's novels Hans was identified as a Hottentot [which some now consider a pejorative] and he was introduced in Marie in 1912 [actually written in 1909].  However, we can rest assured, I think, that Haggard didn't write the word "Hottentot" as a pejorative. Quatermain's respect for Hans [thus Haggard's] was far too detailed and important to allow for any intentionally dismissive or racially derogative appellations [see Note 2 below]. Furthermore, despite a number of illogical accusations of racism by uninformed critics, H. Rider Haggard was not in any way a bigot [see Note 3 below]. By the way, I imagine this drawing from the New York Public Library conveys an idea of Hans' appearance when he was aide-de-camp to Allan's father—when Allan was but a child.)

Drawing of a "Hottentot" 
carrying a gun. (1853)
New York Public Library

A Bit of Background Pertaining to the Birth of Hans

H. Rider Haggard began Allan Quatermain's career in 1885 with King Solomon's Mines . . . and then killed him off two years later in 1887 in Allan Quatermain. 1888 saw the publication of the first of the many "found" manuscripts that would constitute the remainder of Allan's opus—the novella Maiwa's Revenge, which was followed the next year (1889) by another novella Allan's Wife. (There were also three short stories published in this period.)

Then Haggard put Allan Quatermain on a shelf for 23 years!  During that period, Haggard wrote around 40 books (both fiction and nonfiction), but nothing involving Quatermain.

Then, from 1912 until his death in 1925, of his 18 published books, 10 were Allan Quatermain chapters. There was an excellent reason why Haggard resurrected Quatermain just then. Haggard's popularity (once immense) by 1910 had been in decline and his new books didn't sell nearly as well as his first romances. Thus, according to Haggard's biographers, his publishers began clamoring for more Quatermain books, as they felt that they were assured profits from such novels. Also, Haggard, whose financial obligations had been mounting for years at the same time his publishing royalties had been significantly declining, complied.

Of those ten new Quatermain books, six featured Hans: Marie, The Holy Flower (1915), The Ivory Child (1916), She and Allan (1921), Heu-Heu, or the Monster (1924), and The Treasure of the Lake (1926).

In any case, we see that Allan Quatermain as a character existed for a quarter of a century before Haggard found it necessary to invent Hans. (Actually, Haggard wrote Marie in 1909, though it was published three years later.) (And, yes, while it is true that a Hottentot named Hans did appear in the short story "Hunter Quatermain's Story" in 1885, that particular Hans died a terrible death in that story, and therefore could not have been the same Hans.)

Why, then, did Haggard create Hans? Foil, in the dramatic sense? Foil, in the design sense? Comic sidekick? Conscience? Voice of wisdom? Perhaps all of these. Here it is worth noting that, as a rule, artists have seemed to have avoided portraying Hans, and the topmost drawing above from The Ivory Child (with detail here) is the only illustration of the little Hottentot that I can locate.

Detail from The Ivory Child

—Hookway Cowles

Certainly, Hans was likely modeled on Haggard's South African Zulu servant Mazzoku during Haggard's attachment to the colonial government in the 1870s, which servant was devoted to Haggard and who saved Haggard's life by doggedly seeking the injured man in the wilderness when all others had given up the search as a lost cause.

From Diary of an African Journey: The Return of Rider Haggard
(New York University Press), edited by Stephen Coan

The fact remains, when Haggard created Hans for the novel Marie in 1909, whether he knew it or not, the bulk of Quatermain's adventures were still ahead of the great adventurer. That is, prior to 1909, Quatermain had had only four known adventures (as novels), but from 1909 on the character had 10 more adventures, six of which featured or "co-starred" Hans. In my view, by the time Haggard was writing Marie, he was aware (probably after thinking about it for a quarter of a century) that Quatermain's natural hard-edged pragmatism and skepticism needed to be tempered—in lieu of such other regulars as Captain Good and Henry Curtis whom he wouldn't even meet for decades. By giving Quatermain an apparently small, disreputable, no-account, profoundly superstitious, drunken, old companion, but one whom he'd known and loved since childhood, then every comment that the skeptic Quatermain made could in itself be questioned and commented on by a voice closer to the earth, that is, a voice closer to the conduit of fickle spiritual forces that Haggard knew all to well to be real. 

Furthermore, it was inevitably Hans who saved Quatermain, coaxed Quatermain, taught Quatermain, cajoled Quatermain, reasoned with him, humored him, prepared him, anticipated for him, loved him, tested him, reminded him . . . who was in all ways a shadow extension of Quatermain's personality . . . and without whom, Quatermain may not have survived the endless scrapes he got himself into.  In this light, Hans, in a literary sense, was just as important to Quatermain as Samwise Gamgee was to Frodo, as Frodo would never have succeeded in his mission if Sam hadn't propelled his friend forward over and over and kept him on his course, to the extent of carrying Frodo on his back up the side of Mount Doom!

In this spirit, I wanted to bring Hans back in my novel to explore this complicated relationship, and, frankly, I am more proud of my recreation of Hans than I am of any of my other writing. Naturally, then he is positively central to my follow-up novel Sherlock Holmes at the Dawn of Time; Or, The Adventure of the Star of Wonder, which I hope to publish in time for Christmas 2012, or shortly thereafter.

Post No. 13 will continue my discussion of the fifth chapter, "Introduction by Allan Quatermain"—focusing on Zikali, the dwarf witch doctor known as "The Opener of Roads," or, as King Shaka named him, "The Thing That Never Should Have Been Born."

[Note 1: H. Rider Haggard wrote in his autobiography The Days of My Life:  “ . . . I always find it easy to write of Allan Quatermain, who, after all, is only myself set in a variety of imagined situations, thinking my thoughts and looking at life through my eyes.” That said, Allan Quatermain was the prototype “great white hunter,” who in the early 1880s wrote the enduring memoir King Solomon’s Mines (published in 1885). It is his self-portrayal in that classic that propagated the likes of Jungle Jim, Ramar of the Jungle, and all those rifle-toting, safari-leading heroes such as Clark Gable in Mogambo, Gregory Peck in The Macomber Affair, John Wayne in Hatari, and even Pete Postlethwaite in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Ernie Hudson in Congo. During the period 1881 to 1884, mostly during his retirement at his estate, the Grange, in Yorkshire, England, he wrote and subsequently left behind (all except the last), the following works that constitute an informal autobiography: Allan’s Wife, Marie, Child of Storm, “A Tale of Three Lions,” Maiwa’s Revenge, “Hunter Quatermain’s Story,” “Long Odds,” The Holy Flower, Heu-Heu or the Monster, She and Allan, The Treasure of the Lake, The Ivory Child, Finished, “Megepa the Buck,” King Solomon’s Mines, The Ancient Allan, Allan and the Ice Gods, and Allan Quatermain.]

[Note 2: I have chosen to place here passages from two works that feature Hans, She and Allan and The Ivory Child, and which describe Hans in some detail not only in a physical manner but also in terms of his relationship to Quatermain.

She and Allan: “Hans, I should say, was that same Hottentot who had been the companion of most of my journeyings since my father’s day. He was with me when as a young fellow I accompanied Retief to Dingaan’s kraal, and like myself, escaped the massacre . . . .

“One good quality he had, however; no man was ever more faithful, and perhaps it would be true to say that neither man nor woman ever loved me, unworthy, quite so well.

“In appearance he rather resembled an antique and dilapidated baboon; his face was wrinkled like a dried nut and his quick little eyes were bloodshot. I never knew what his age was, any more than he did himself, but the years had left him tough as whipcord and absolutely untiring. Lastly he was perhaps the best hand at following a spoor that ever I knew and up to a hundred and fifty yards or so, a very deadly shot with a rifle . . . .”

The Ivory Child: “The truth is that after the death of Hans . . . there was no more spirit in me. For quite a long while I did not seem to care at all what happened to me or to anybody else. We buried him with honor and when the earth was thrown over his little yellow face I felt as though half my past had departed with him into that hole. Poor drunken old Hans, where in the world shall I find such another man as you were? Where in the world shall I find so much love as filled the cup of that strange heart of yours?

“I dare say it is a form of selfishness, but what everyman desires is something that cares for him alone, which is just why we are so fond of dogs. Now Hans was a dog with a human brain and he cared for me alone . . . . Now Hans never cared for any living creature, or for any human hope or object, as he cared for me. There was no man or woman whom he would not have cheated, or even murdered for my sake. There was no earthly advantage, down to that of life itself, that he  would  not . . . forgo for my sake . . . . That is love in excelsis, and the man who has succeeded in inspiring it in any creature, even in a low, bibulous, old Hottentot, may feel proud indeed. At least I am proud and as the years go by the pride  increases, as  the hope  grows  that  somewhere . . . I may find the light of Hans’s love burning like a beacon in the darkness, as he promised I should do, and that it may guide and warm my shivering, new-born soul before I dare the adventure of the Infinite.”]

[Note 3:  H. Rider Haggard in many of his African novels, especially in his Allan Quatermain stories and in NADA THE LILY (1892) conveys a sense of the Zulu empire in the early 1800s. Many readers and critics today may harp on perceived "PC" indiscretions, but that is hardly fair, as Haggard's works need to be viewed in the light and lens of the Victorian era when most of his stories were composed. Also his fiction was written in an era of the British Empire in transition, and there was much political passion both pro and con on the subject in the air at the time. Beyond that, Haggard was about as fair minded as a Victorian male could be at that time. One cannot in all fairness call him racist or sexist or imperialist or anti-imperialist. He was an entertainer who. like Arthur Conan Doyle, often also tried to present the sense of places far off in time and space. NADA THE LILY was notable because Haggard tried to recreate the rise and fall of the Zulu Empire completely from the point of view of a Zulu warrior—without a single European character in the main narrative.]