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THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
doings some vague rumours may have reached him. If so, were
I to revisit Africa today, I have not the faintest doubt but that
he would reappear. I should go out of my hotel and see a greyheaded man squatted on the roadside who would arise, lift up
his arm, salute me, and say, “Inkoos Indanda, you are here; I
am here, come back to serve you.”
I have seen the thing done. As a young man Sir William
Sergeaunt was in South Africa – I forget how or when – and
then had a Zulu servant, a Mazook. He departed and thirty
years later returned. His Mazook appeared from some kraal, of
which he was then the head, and was with him during all his
stay. I saw him there.
Or if my Mazook should be dead, as well he may be, and if
there is any future for us mortals, and if Zulus and white men
go to the same place – as why should they not? – then I am
quite certain that when I reach that shore I shall see a squarefaced, dusky fi gure seated on it, and hear the words, “Inkoos
Indanda, here am I, Mazooku, who once was your man, waiting
to serve you.” For such is the nature of the poor despised Zulu,
at any rate towards him whom he may chance to love.
I do not know that I felt anything more in leaving Africa
than the saying of good-bye to this loving, half-wild man. I
remember that I made him some present when we parted – I
think it was a cow, but am not sure.
On Wednesday, the 31st of August, from the deck of
the Dunkeld, we saw the shores of Natal recede from our sight
for ever.
241
CHAPTER 9
On our return to England in the autumn of 1881 we went
to stay at Bradenham for a while and rested after our African
adventures. I do not remember anything that we did there, except that we were at the Sandringham ball. A note in my wife’s
diary mentions that the Princess, afterwards Queen Alexandra,
“looked lovely in pearl grey satin and was the prettiest woman
in the room with the exception of Lady Lonsdale.”
Before Christmas we moved to a furnished house at Norwood. Here, having all my way still to make in the world, I set
to work in earnest. First of all I entered myself at Lincoln’s
Inn, but found to my disgust that before I could do so I was
expected to pass an examination in Latin, English History and,
I think, Arithmetic. My Latin I had practically forgotten, and
my English History dates were somewhat to seek. I represented
to the Benchers that, after having fi lled the offi ce of Master of
the High Court of the Transvaal, this entrance examination
was perhaps superfl uous, but they were obdurate on the matter. So I set to work and, with the assistance of a crammer, in a
month learned more Latin than I had done all the time I was
at school; indeed, at the end of a few weeks I could read Caesar
fl uently and Virgil not so ill. The end of it was that I passed the
examination at the head of the batch who went up with me, or
so I was given to understand.
242
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
Another thing that I did was to write my fi rst book, “Cetewayo and his White Neighbours, or Remarks on Recent
Events in Zululand, Natal and the Transvaal.” It contained
about two hundred and fi fty closely printed pages in the fi rst
of its editions, and represented a great amount of labour. I was
determined that it should be accurate, and to ensure this I
purchased all the Blue-books dealing with the period of which
I was treating, and made precis of them, some of which I still
possess.
But it is one thing for an unknown person to write a book
of this character, and quite another for him to persuade anyone to publish it. I fi nd among my papers a pencil draft of a
letter which I sent to many publishers. It runs:
I write to inquire if you are inclined to undertake the
publication of a short work I am now fi nishing. It is the
result of some six years’ experience in South Africa in offi cial and private capacities, and contains amongst other
things a private history of the annexation of the Transvaal
which, as I was on Sir T. Shepstone’s staff at the time, I am
qualifi ed to write.
The parts of the book, however, which would, I think,
ensure the sale at the present moment, both here and in the
Colonies, are the chapters dealing with the proposed grant
of responsible government to Natal and the question of the
reinstatement of Cetewayo. As you are no doubt aware,
the ex-king will visit England very shortly, when I think
an opportunely published work on the subject would fi nd
a ready sale.
243
H. RIDER HAGGARD
The book is written in as interesting a style as I can command and would be published under my own name.
Awaiting the favour of a reply,
I am, etc.
Needless to say the reply always came, but notwithstanding the tempting bait of “the interesting style,” its character
may be guessed. Nobody wished to have anything to do either
with Cetewayo or his white neighbours.
At length I was faced with the alternative of putting the results of my labours into the fi re or of paying for their production
in book form. A letter from Trubner and Co., dated May 18, 1882,
informs me that my MS. will make a volume of three hundred
and twenty pages “like enclosed specimen,” and “if you will send
us a cheque for the sum of 50 pounds sterling we will undertake
to produce an edition of seven hundred and fi fty copies.”
I sent the cheque, although at the time I could ill afford it, and
in due course the work appeared. On the whole it was extremely
well received by such papers as chose to review it seriously. Some
of these notices I still possess, favourable and unfavourable. One
from the Daily News, which comes under the latter category,
dated August 23, 1882, is amusing to read today. It is written in
the “high sarcastic” strain. Here is a sentence from it.
Mr. Haggard distrusts Cetewayo and is shocked at the notion of reinstating him on any terms. He is also shocked at
the “retrocession of the Transvaal” and thinks we have not yet
seen the end of the troubles in store for us, owing to our neglect to persevere in the work of exterminating the Boers, and
so forth. These views have already been pretty fully set forth –
so fully, in fact, that the necessity for a further exposition of
244
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
them at this time does not seem very obvious. The freshest, and
certainly the most amusing thing in Mr. Haggard’s book is his
solemn warning that our policy, which he is pleased to stigmatise as “sentimental,” may end in alienating the affections of
“the Colonists,” etc.
Here we see the party politics of the day at their best, or rather
at their worst. The late Lord Carnarvon, who, it may be remembered, was Colonial Secretary during most of the years when I
was intimately connected with South Africa, wrote to me:
“I am glad to fi nd that my view as regards the Transvaal
should be endorsed by one who had such good opportunities
of judging as yourself”; and again:
Private.
Dear Mr. Haggard, – I am very much obliged to you
for your extremely interesting book on Cetewayo. I have
been so engaged with the accumulations of eight months’
business and with all the hundred and one questions
which arise on our return to England that I have only been
able to look at those parts which most closely interested
me personally from their relation to events in which I was
myself concerned; but I read these with great satisfaction.
The English public was so deceived by misrepresentations
of the annexation of the Transvaal that the real history
was never understood; and the humiliating surrender of
it was accepted in partial ignorance at least of the facts.
A true statement of it is therefore very valuable, and I am
grateful to anyone who has the courage to say what really
did occur. It was as needless as it was discreditable; and
though the unexpected discovery of gold is solving many
245
H. RIDER HAGGARD
diffi culties, the unworthy nature of the cession has done
great mischief to all time. I hope I may have the opportunity of talking about this to you.
Believe me,
Very faithfully yours,
Carnarvon.
I gladly quote an extract from a letter written by Sir Marshal Clarke from Basutoland, since it tempers my criticisms of
Sir Hercules Robinson (Lord Rosmead), a gentleman of whom
I have the most kindly personal recollections. He says, referring to this book:
I don’t think you have done quite justice to Sir Hercules
Robinson. He appears to me to have been the right man for
the place and for the time. He is not a very popular Governor, but his opinions carry great weight here as well as at
home; he had a very diffi cult position at fi rst – one of his
principal diffi culties arose from the impossibility of foreseeing how far his views would be supported at home – and
while he appears to me to have acted with unswerving loyalty, his infl uence has done much to mitigate antipathies of
races and to maintain our character for fair dealing with
whites and blacks.
I also received letters from the late Lord Lytton, Lord Ran-
dolph Churchill, and others.
Except for any infl uence it may have had upon certain
leading minds and organs of opinion, the book at this time
proved a total failure. At this date (1883) an eager public had
246
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
absorbed one hundred and fi fty-four copies of the work. Say
Messrs. Trubner:
You will no doubt consider the account a most unsatisfactory one, as we do, seeing that we are out of pocket to
the extent of 82 pounds 15s., 5d. Against this, of course, we
hold the 50 pounds advanced by you, but we fear that we
are never likely to recover the balance, 32 pounds 15s. 5d.
As it happens, however, Messrs. Trubner did in the end recover their 32 pounds. When I became known through other
works of a different character the edition sold out. Perhaps the
public bought it thinking it was a novel; at any rate, I have
come across a letter from a melancholy youth who made that
mistake.
Since that time there have been other and cheaper editions,
and in 1899, at the time of the Boer War, that part of the book
that deals with the Transvaal was republished at one shilling
and sold to the extent of some thirty thousand copies.
To this day there is a certain demand for the book. That it
has already been extensively used by writers dealing with this
epoch of African affairs in works of reference and elsewhere I
have reason to know, although these have not always acknowledged the source of their information and judgments.
So it comes about that my only effort as an historian was
not made in vain, although at fi rst it seemed futile and fruitless enough. I may add that certain prophecies set down in its
pages in 1882 have since that time been remarkably fulfi lled.
If they [i.e. those who direct the destinies of the Empire] do
not [take certain steps alluded to above] it is now quite within
247
H. RIDER HAGGARD
the bounds of possibility that they may one day have to face a
fresh Transvaal rebellion, only on a ten times larger scale.
And again:
Unless they [i.e. South African problems] are treated with
more honest intelligence, and on a more settled plan than
it has hitherto been thought necessary to apply to them, the
British taxpayer will fi nd that he has by no means heard the
last of that country and its wars.
Some twenty years after I wrote these words England did
have to face a Transvaal war on a ten times larger scale, and
the British taxpayer did hear that he was called upon to pay a
bill of some three hundred millions sterling. Also about twenty
thousand of our countrymen, among them a young nephew of
my own, were summoned to lay down their lives on the African veld. Such was the cost to the Empire of the reversal of Sir
Theophilus Shepstone’s policy in the interests of an English
political party.
Whilst we were at Norwood a little incident occurred
which resulted in my becoming a writer of fi ction. At the
church which my wife and I attended we saw sitting near us
one Sunday a singularly beautiful and pure-faced young lady.
Afterwards we agreed that this semi-divine creature – on
whom to the best of my knowledge I have never set eyes again
from that day to this – ought to become the heroine of a novel.
So then and there we took paper, and each of us began to write
the said novel. I think that after she had completed two or
three folio sheets my wife ceased from her fi ctional labours.
But, growing interested, I continued mine, which resulted in
the story called “Dawn.”
248
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
Years afterwards, in 1894 indeed, on the occasion of the issue of one of the numerous editions of that tale, I inserted the
following little dedication:
AFTER MANY YEARS
I dedicate this my fi rst story
to
That Unknown Lady,
once seen, but unforgotten, the
mould and model of Angela,
the magic of whose face turned my mind
to the making of books.
Here I may as well tell the history of this book. Some of
it, or rather of the fi rst draft of it, I think I wrote at Norwood.
Towards Christmas of 1882 my wife and I made up our minds
to return to this house at Ditchingham, which was standing
empty and furnished, while I pursued my studies at the Bar.
Hither we came accordingly a little while before the birth of
my eldest daughter. She was named Angela after the heroine
of my novel, which shows that at this time it must either have
been written or well advanced.
There appear to be three drafts of this work, the fi rst of
which (incomplete) is named “Angela,” after the heroine; the
second, fi ve hundred and fi fty-four closely written foolscap
sheets long(!), estimated, I observe, upon the title-page to print
into about a thousand pages, called “There Remaineth a Rest”;
and the third, bound MS. (unnamed), four hundred and ninety-three foolscap sheets. The history of them is briefl y as follows. With pain and labour I wrote the work – fi ve hundred
and fi fty-four foolscap sheets do take some labour in the actual
249
H. RIDER HAGGARD
matter of calligraphy, without considering the mental effort.
Then I sent the result to sundry publishers – who they were I
entirely forget. Evidently, however, Smith and Elder must have
been one of them, as is shown by the allusion to James Payn in
a letter from the late Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson, which I shall presently quote.
These publishers, or their readers, had no great opinion of
“Angela” or “There Remaineth a Rest,” by whichever title it
was then called. After these rebuffs most people would have
put that mighty mass of manuscript into the fi re or an upstairs
cupboard. But I must have been a persistent young man thirty
years or so ago, and I did not take this course. On the contrary,
I consulted Mr. Trubner, with whom I had become personally
acquainted since the publication of “Cetewayo and his White
Neighbours.” Indeed he and I struck up some kind of a friendship, as is shown by the fact that he gave me his photograph
in a little olive-wood frame, which photograph has stood on
a shelf in my room from that day to this. It is a clever old face
which is pictured there, and he was a clever old man. He used
to tell me anecdotes in his queer, half-German talk about the
literary celebrities of bygone days, and I remember that his
description of George Eliot was extremely epigrammatic and
amusing. This, however, I will not repeat. He was good enough
to take some interest in the story, and to suggest that it should
be sent to the late Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson for his opinion. This
was done, and on April 27, 1883, Jeaffreson sent me his opinion, which is so thorough and able that I will quote from it,
merely omitting his detailed criticism of the work.
250
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