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THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
die. Otherwise it is plain that I should never have started on
that journey. With this surety in my heart – it was with me for
weeks before we sailed – the parting was bitter indeed. The
boy was to stay with friends, the Gosses. I bade him good-bye
and tore myself away. I returned after some hours. A chance,
I forget what, had prevented the servant, a tall dark woman
whose name is lost to me, from starting with him to Delamere
Crescent till later than was expected. He was still in my study –
about to go. Once more I went through that agony of a separation which I knew to be the last. With a cheerful face I kissed
him – I remember how he fl ung his arms about my neck – in
a cheerful voice I blessed him and bade him farewell, promising to write. Then he went through the door and it was fi nished. I think I wept.
I said nothing of this secret foreknowledge of mine, nor did
I attempt to turn from the road that I had chosen because I was
aware of what awaited me thereon. Only I made every possible
preparation for my death – even to sealing up all important
papers in a despatch-box and depositing them in Messrs. Gosling’s Bank, where I knew they would be at once available.
But alas! my spirit saw imperfectly. Or perhaps know-
ing only that Death stood between us, I jumped to the conclusion that it was on me of an older generation that his hand
would fall, on me who was about to undertake a journey which
I guessed to be dangerous, including as it did a visit to the ruins of Palenque, whither at the time few travellers ventured. It
never occurred to me that he was waiting for my son.
About six weeks later – for I may as well tell the story
out and be done with it – that hand fell. My presentiments
had returned to me with terrible strength and persistence.
391
H. RIDER HAGGARD
One Sunday morning in the Jebbs’ house in Mexico City, as
we were preparing to go to church, they were fulfi lled. Mrs.
Jebb called us to their bedroom. She had a paper in her hand.
“Something is wrong with one of your children,” she said brokenly. “Which?” I asked, aware that this meant death, no less,
and waited. “Jock,” was the reply, and the dreadful telegram,
our fi rst intimation of his illness, was read. It said that he had
“passed away peacefully” some few hours before. There were
no details or explanations.
Then in truth I descended into hell. Of the suffering of the
poor mother I will not speak. They belong to her alone.
I can see the room now. Jebb weeping by the unmade bed,
the used basins – all, all. And in the midst of it myself – with
a broken heart! Were I a living man when these words are
read – why, it would be wrong that I should rend the veil, I
who never speak of this matter, who never even let that dear
name pass my lips. But they will not be read till I, too, am gone
and have learned whatever there is to know. Perhaps also the
tale has its lessons. At any rate it is a page in my history that
cannot be omitted, though it be torn from the living heart and,
some may think, too sad to dwell on.
This morning, not an hour since, I stood by my son’s grave
and read what I had carved upon his cross: “I shall go to him.”
Now that I am growing old these words are full of comfort
and meaning to me. Soon, after all these long years of separation, I shall go to him and put my faith to proof. If it be true,
as I believe, then surely my spirit will fi nd his spirit, though it
must search from world to world. If, with all earth’s suffering
millions, I am deluded, then let the same everlasting darkness
be our bed and canopy.
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THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
On my return from Mexico I wrote a romance called “Montezuma’s Daughter.” In this tale the teller loses his children,
and I put into his mouth what myself I felt. Here are the words:
I cannot better them after all these years, and they are as true
to me now as they were then.
Ah! we think much of the sorrows of our youth, and should
a sweetheart give us the go-by, we fi ll the world with moans
and swear that it holds no comfort for us. But when we bend
our heads before the shrouded shape of some lost child, then
it is that for the fi rst time we learn how terrible grief can be.
Time, they tell us, will bring consolation; but it is false; for
such sorrow time has no salves. I say it who am old – as they
are so shall they be. There is no hope but faith, there is no
comfort save in the truth that love which might have withered
on the earth grows fastest in the tomb, to fl ower gloriously in
heaven; that no love indeed can be perfect till God sanctifi es
and completes it with His seal of death.
I wrote just now that, for reasons I hope to set out later
in this book, I believed my faith, which amongst other things
promises reunion of the death-divided, to be a true faith. Indeed, if it be otherwise, what a hell is this in which we live.
Thrusting from the memory all other trials and sorrows, not
for any fi nite earthly life that could be promised me would I
endure again from year to year the agony I have suffered on
the one count of this bereavement, which is after all, so common and everyday a thing. If ever, in some dread hour, faith
in all its forms should be proved a dream and mockery, surely
in the same hour will sound the death-knell of all that is best
in the educated world. Brutes which guess of nothing better
393
H. RIDER HAGGARD
can live happy till the butcher fi nds them: men who believe
can endure till God consoles or calls them. But will the muchdeveloped man whose heart-strings, like those of the Aeolian
harp, must thrill and sob in every wind of pain – will he continue to endure if once he is assured that beneath the precipice
from which he will presently be hurled there is – Nothing?
Knowing all they must be called upon to suffer at the best, will
he breed children, perhaps to see them thrown from the stark
cliff before his eyes and there to cease to be for ever? (The case
of France, where I believe faith grows very weak, seems to give
answer to this question. Yesterday I read that in that country during 1911 the deaths exceeded the births by over thirty
thousand. My conviction is that, unless faith returns to her in
some form, as a nation France is doomed. She will fall as Rome
fell, and from the same cause.)
In short, I hold that God and a belief in a future life where
there is no more pain and tears are wiped from off all faces are
necessities to civilised and thoughtful man, and that without
them, slowly perhaps, but surely, he will cease to be. He will
commit suicide when Fortune frowns, as did the Roman who
had outgrown his gods; he will refuse to propagate his kind, as
do the French. Why should he breed them to be the bread of
Death?
Such are the conclusions at which I have arrived after
many years of refl ection which began at the time of my great
grief. They may be right or they may be wrong; that the future history of the white races will reveal. At least I believe in
them. Nor do I believe alone. But yesterday I was speaking on
these matters to a bishop of the English Church, a very able
and enlightened man. I found that my views were his views,
394
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
and my conclusions his conclusions. Also he thought, as I do,
that many of our present troubles, industrial and other, arise
from the loss of faith among men. The feast of Life, such as it is,
is spread before their eyes. They would help themselves to the
meagre and bitter fare they see, and who can wonder? “Let us
eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
To return to the sorrow which gave rise to these refl ections.
I staggered from the room; I wrote a cable directing that the
burial should take place by the chancel door of Ditchingham
Church, where now he lies. Afterwards I took up a Bible and
opened it at hazard. The words that my eyes fell on were “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not.” The
strange chance seemed to cheer me a little. That afternoon I
went for a walk in the great avenue. Never shall I forget that
walk among the gay and fashionable Mexicans. I did not know
till then what a man can endure and live.
Now I have come to understand that this woe has two sides.
If he had lived who knows what might have chanced to him?
And the holy love which was between us, might it not have
faded after the fashion of this world? As things are it remains
an unchangeable, perfect, and eternal thing. Further, notwithstanding all, I am glad that he lived with us for those few years.
His sufferings were short; his little life was happy while it endured; he went, I believe, quite sinless from the world; and,
lastly, I believe that the soul which has been, is and will be.
1
As for myself, I was crushed; my nerves broke down entirely, and the rest of the Mexican visit, with its rough journeyings,
1
My son died suddenly of a perforating ulcer after an attack of
measles. Perhaps surgery could have saved him today. – H. R. H.
395
H. RIDER HAGGARD
is to me a kind of nightmare. Not for many years did I shake off
the effects of the shock; indeed I have never done so altogether.
It has left me with a heritage of apprehensions, not for myself
personally – I am content to take what comes – but for others. My health gave out. I left London, which I could no longer
bear, and hid myself away here in the country. The other day
I found a letter of this period, sent to me as an enclosure on
some matter, in which the writer speaks of me as being “quite
unapproachable since the death of his only son.” So, indeed, I
think I was. Moreover, at this time the infl uenza attacked me
again and again, and left me very weak.
We did not come home at once – what was the good of returning to the desolated home? Our boy had died in a strange
house and been brought to Ditchingham for burial. What was
the good of returning home? So there, far away, in due course
letters reached us with these dreadful details and heart-piercing messages of farewell.
And now I have done with this terrible episode and will
get me to my tale again. The wound has been seared by time –
few, perhaps none, would guess that it existed; but it will never heal. I think I may say that from then till now no day has
passed, and often no hour, when the thought of my lost boy
has not been present with me. I can only bow the head and
murmur, “God’s will be done!”
I remember reading in one of R. L. Stevenson’s published
letters, written after he had helped to nurse a sick child, that
nothing would induce him to become a father, for fear, I gathered, lest one day he might be called upon to nurse his own
sick child. I can well understand the effect of the experience
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THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
on a highly sensitive nature, and, as a matter of fact, he died
childless. Yet, as I read, I wondered what he would have felt
had such a lightning shaft as fell upon my head from heaven
smitten and shattered him.
Perhaps, being frail, he would have died. But I was tougher,
and lived on. More: I went among murderers and escaped; I
wandered into the fever lands, and never took it; the brute I
rode fell in a fl ooded river, and I did not drown; I was in peril
on the sea, and came safe to shore. It was decreed that I should
live on.
On our arrival in New York on our way to Mexico, on January 10, 1891, I was seized upon by numbers of reporters. Now
the single reporter may be dealt with, preferably by making
him talk about himself, which is a subject far more interesting
to him than you are; or he may be persuaded to tell you about
the last person or subject upon which he has had to report.
Thus, on a subsequent occasion, a reporter came on board the
ship to see me before she reached her berth. Early as it was in
the morning, he had already been about his paper’s business,
attending the electrocution of two men in a prison! The sight
had impressed even his hardy nerves suffi ciently to make him
talk a great deal about it, describing all its details. Therefore
I was called upon to furnish him with but little information
about myself, though probably this was not a fact that weighed
on him when it came to the writing of the interview.
Another man, who caught me in a railway train, grew so
interested in talking of his own affairs that he never noticed
that the train had started till it was running at quite twenty
miles an hour. Then with a yell he rushed down the carriage
397
H. RIDER HAGGARD
and leapt out into the night. I have always wondered whether
he was killed or only broke his leg.
There is nothing that an American reporter will not do to
attain his ends. For instance, I have known them to break into
my room at midnight when I was in bed.
Once, when I was in America as a Commissioner, the reporter of a great paper did his best to make me express opinions on some important matter connected with the internal
policy of the United States. Naturally I declined, but this did
not prevent my alleged views upon the question from appearing everywhere. Then followed leading articles in some of the
best papers gravely lecturing me and pointing out how improper it was that one who had been received with so much
courtesy, and who occupied a diplomatic position, should publicly intervene in the domestic affairs of the country to which
he had been sent by his Government. A famous comic journal,
also, published a cartoon of me in a pulpit engaged in lecturing the American people.
Needless to say, I was extremely annoyed, but of redress
I could obtain none. Contradiction where the country is so
vast and newspapers are so many is hopeless. However, when
I was leaving New York another representative of the same
great paper came to interview me on the steamer, and to him
I expressed my feelings. He listened; then replied, with a
somewhat sickly smile, “Very annoying, Mr. Haggard, but I
guess it would be scarcely loyal of me to give our man away,
would it?”
Nothing could exceed the kindness with which we were
received in the United States – even the reporters were kind
398
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
till it came to cold print. Really I think that Americans are
the most hospitable people in the world. I will go further and
say that nobody is so nice or sympathetic or broad-minded or
desirous of all good as a really fi rst-class American, man or
woman. I remember that on the occasion of this visit we were
quite glad to escape from New York, where literally we were
being killed with kindness. To feast with some hospitable host
at every meal, from breakfast till a midnight supper, after a
week or so becomes more than the human frame can bear.
From New York we went to the beautiful city of New Orleans, where also we were widely entertained. One dinnerparty I shall never forget. Upon each napkin lay a little poem
anent something I had written. For instance, here is one which
evidently refers to “The World’s Desire”:
Upon thy breast the “bleeding Star” of love,
Etherealised, and freed from serpent taint,
Is all afi re, O burnished dove!
For whom men fail and faint!
Moreover in the middle of dinner someone – I think it was
our hostess – rose and read a poem at me. Though very kindly
meant, it was really most embarrassing, especially as I had no
poem ready with which to reply.
In New Orleans, amongst other places of much interest, I
was shown a park in which duels used to be fought in the early
days, and a graveyard where, because of the water in the soil,
the dead are buried in niches in the surrounding walls.
399
H. RIDER HAGGARD
Leaving that most hospitable city, we travelled on to El
Paso, then quite a small town on the Mexican border. I remember that on the train I fell into conversation with a gentleman who, much to my astonishment, informed me that in the
future we should telegraph through the air without the use
of any connecting wires, and furnished me with the details of
how this would be done. At the time I confess it occurred to me
that he was amusing himself by gammoning a stranger who
was known to write romances. Now, however, I see that at the
commencement of the year 1891 there was at any rate one
person who was very well acquainted with the system of wireless telegraphy which is now identifi ed with the name of Mr.
Marconi, then a lad of sixteen years of age.
There were at this time two railway lines running from the
States to Mexico City, and I recollect that we hesitated long
by which of them we should travel. Our choice was fortunate,
since the train which left on the same day by the other line
met with many adventures. Amongst other things it was twice
thrown off the rails by intelligent Mexicans actuated either by
spite or the hope of plunder, and some of its occupants were
killed. Mexico, even in those days, was a wonderful city of almost Parisian appearance; but I confess that what interested
me more than its tramways and fi ne modern buildings were
such relics of old Mexico as could be seen in the museum and
elsewhere, and the mighty volcano of Popocatepetl, which
the Aztecs feared and worshipped, towering to the skies. The
cathedral also, built by the early Spanish conquerors, is a remarkable church, though, owing to the rarity of the air at that
height above sea-level, I should not recommend any visitor
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