• 2 My English translation from French: “Je suis de ceux qui pensent que les conditions narratives prés (...)

“I am among those who think that the conditions of narrative preside over all acts of comprehension, not only on the historical level but on the level of perception too […].” (Eco np)2

• 3 Sir Henry Ernest Bulwer (1836-1914) had recently been appointed lieutenant-governor of Natal. He wa (...)
• 4 Sir Theophilus Shepstone (1817-1893) was Secretary of Native Affairs in Natal from 1856 to 1876.
• 5 Sompseu means “father of the nation” (Haggard Diary 8).
• 6 Haggard was going to come back again as a commissioner for the British Empire for a short time in 1 (...)
• 7 For details about Haggard’s impressions of this period see Coan, “When I was concerned with great m (...)
• 8 Fred B. Finney (1840-1888) worked as an administrator and border agent and as an interpreter. He ac (...)

1H. Rider Haggard wrote his first African romance King Solomon’s Mines in 1885, one year after the Berlin Conference formalised the Scramble for Africa and legitimated the major European powers and the United States in the acceleration of the politics of colonial expansion they had been following for centuries. Britain obviously wanted to get her share in the process and as Lord Rosebery, British foreign secretary, declared in 1893, “we have to consider that countries must be developed by ourselves or some other nation” (Bongie, Exotic Memories 18, quoted by Libby 3). Hence, when Haggard arrived in Durban at the age of 19 in 1875 to work as an aide-de-camp for the lieutenant-governor of Natal, Sir Henry Bulwer3, he experienced this period of growing interest for African territories. He even took part in the process of territorial appropriation as he happened to be the one to raise the British flag for the annexation of the Transvaal in May 1877. With Bulwer he travelled through Natal and took every possible opportunity to enjoy wild life, hunting and riding. He attended many Zulu ceremonies. Among them, in May 1876, he was particularly impressed by a Zulu war dance. He eventually published an article entitled “A Zulu war dance” in The Gentleman’s Magazine in July 1877. Then, he decided to work for Theophilus Shepstone4 who had moved from England to The Cape at the age of three and had already spent forty years there. He was very influential, spoke several tribal languages and was considered as “an old Africa hand” (Pocock 18). Haggard regarded him as his mentor and described him as “the most interesting man of all whom I came into contact in Natal ... who afterwards became my beloved chief and friend … notwithstanding the wide difference of years ... I refer to Sir Theophilus Shepstone, or Sompseu5 (sic) as he was called by all the natives throughout South Africa” (Haggard The Days vol. 1 68, quoted by Coan When I was 24 n. 52) and he dedicated Nada the Lily (1892) to him. The dedication opens up with these words “Sompseu: For I will call you by the name that for fifty years has been honoured by every tribe between Zambesi and Cape Agulbas - I greet you!”6. Thanks to his position as Shepstone’s attaché, Haggard met many important people and learnt a great deal from them7. He mainly travelled with Fred B. Finney8 and Melmoth Osborn, two great specialists of Zulu culture. In his autobiography Haggard remembers this expedition in these terms:

• 9 “His superior was the High School judge of Pretoria, John Kotze. He was only 27 while Haggard was 2 (...)

6We have mentioned that Haggard was born in a period of intense colonial expansion and his father had in mind that he should make a career in the Foreign Office. Haggard was sent to London to Scoones to prepare the examination for the Foreign Office (Haggard The Days chap 1 np). But after eighteen months his father changed his mind and sent his eighth son to South Africa. Haggard had no other choice than to start from scratch as he oversaw the catering arrangements, an unpaid post. However, he did quite well and on 1 June 1877 he was appointed Clerk to the Executive Council9 and he even became the youngest Master and Registrar of the High Court after his predecessor accidentally died.

• 10 You can still visit the place. It has been turned into “Haggards Hilldrop B&B”. A representation of (...)
• 11 He was knighted in 1912. In February 1917, he was elected vice-president of the Royal Colonial Inst (...)

7The road could have been paved for Haggard and he could have made a career in the Colonial Office like most members of his family. Indeed, his mother had lived in India as his father was a civil servant there and his brothers made careers in the Army, the Royal Navy, the Diplomatic Corps, the Indian Civil Service, and the Colonial Service (Manthorpe 19). Instead, he decided to resign from the colonial service and started raising ostriches in a place called Hilldrop near Newcastle (today in KwaZuluNatal)10. For most observers, his personal role in the annexation of Transvaal, combined with the fact that he was knighted for his service for the Empire11, were probably significant enough elements to associate his name with Imperialism. But a closer look at the different reports and articles he wrote after each mission and a focus on his fiction from the South African angle shows that Haggard was an “imperialist of a different kind”.

• 12 Before writing Cetywayo, Haggard had become a freelance journalist, sending articles about Africa t (...)

8His first experience of South Africa urged him to write Cetywayo and his White Neighbours or Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal and the Transvaal (1882), which can be considered as the first clear indication of the impact of this first African stay (see Marie-Claude Barbier’s article in this volume). This essay marked the beginning of his fame as a specialist in South African issues12. His brother, Captain Andrew Haggard published an article entitled “Mr Rider Haggard in South Africa”, replying to some criticism on his brother’s authority on South African affairs. He wrote: “ May I first inform your critic who writes in no unfriendly manner, that it was not at all necessary for my brother to “ consult books” for the materials of any romance the scene of which was laid in South Africa. Young as he is still, no man knows more of South Africa, its geography and politics than Rider Haggard” (Haggard Andrew 13).

• 13 Haggard received letters of praise from Lord Carnarvon, Secretary of State for the Colonies and Ran (...)
• 14 Regarding his readership, he mentions in the preface to Nada the Lily (1892): “The author’s aim, mo (...)
• 15 “About Fiction” was published in the Contemporary Review in 1887, the same year as the article “Rea (...)
• 16 “[Shepstone’s] after-dinner anecdotes of frontier life on the Cape border and his numerous other na (...)
• 17 R.D. Mullen, Science Fiction Studies, vol. 5, Part 3, Nov. 1978.

9However, the essay’s reception was quite positive13 and it was reissued in 1899 before the Second Anglo-Boer war (Oct. 1899 -May 1902). But either because he wanted to enlarge his readership14 or because he was so enthralled by the South African landscapes and peoples he met, he decided to use a fictional form, imperial romance to convey a more personal message regarding imperialism. In an essay entitled “About Fiction”15, he declared himself a strong supporter of this genre and considered romance as being “like the passions, an innate quality of mankind” (Haggard About Fiction 172). Thus, he romanticized historical facts and “recycled” the numerous notes he had taken while listening to anecdotes from the people he met16 or from local people. For example, during his first stay in Natal he met Mazooku who became his servant and saved his life once, when Haggard was lost in the veldt at night during an expedition with Sir Bulwer (Coan 13). Mazooku appears under his own name in The Witch’s Head (1885). He remained faithful to Haggard and met him each time Haggard went back to South Africa. He gave Haggard his knobkerrie and Haggard always used it as a walking stick. Shepstone’s servant, Mhlophekazi, was the fictional Umslopogaas with his axe who appeared in Allan Quatermain (and Allan Quatermain’s stories) as well as in Nada the Lily. In The Witch's Head, Ernest Kershaw (Haggard’s alter ego) is accompanied by Mr Alston who is a fictionalised version of Melmoth Osborn. There are many similar examples of his fictional representations of local characters in his African romances17 and Manthorpe goes as far as to say that Haggard created the genre “faction” in which fictitious and factual characters mingle in historical stories (Manthorpe 22).

• 18 This type of story describing the encounter between “civilised people” and “savage people” in a dis (...)

10All these elements helped him to create most of his adventure stories. He wrote his first romance, King Solomon’s Mines only two years after he went back to England in 1881. It was an immediate success and was followed by She (1886) and Allan Quatermain (1887). He became a sort of master of lost-race tales18 and he was a pioneer in the sense that he was the first British writer to write a Zulu trilogy – Marie (1912), Child of Storm (1913) and Finished (1917) –, a story mainly focused on African characters with Zikali, the witch-doctor as a central figure.

• 19 See the map in King Solomon’s Mines, the sherd of Amenartas in She, etc.
• 20 See character of the warrior Umslopogaas in the cycle of Allan Quatermain, for example.
• 21 These magazines were also known as “penny dreadfuls” or “blood and thunders”. Baden Powell, the fou (...)

11There is no denying that Haggard resorted to the conventions of this genre (verisimilitude – use of fictional artefacts such as maps or pot sherd19 – circular structure of the initiatory quest – departure/travel/return to departure place – stories of rivalry, binary oppositions between good and evil, civilised and savage peoples, masculine and feminine, usual trope of the “savages”’ credulity, romantic stereotype of the Noble Savage20). As Brantlinger puts it “Haggard created Zulu characters who are more complex and interesting than mere killing machines” and “with his African romances [he] produced a mythological history of that ‘nation’ [the Zulu nation] or ‘kingdom’” (Brantlinger 92). As a romancer, he is certainly different from G.A. Henty or F.B. Brereton who also wrote late Victorian imperial romances set in South Africa. However, because they were published in the same boys’ magazines (Boy’s Own Magazine, Boys of England, Boys of the Empire, for example21) they were easily assimilated to propaganda for the British Empire (see Brantlinger; Chrisman Imperial; Dixon; Mackenzie).

• 22 Brantlinger, Chap 4: Humanitarian Causes: Anti-slavery and Saving Aboriginals.
• 23 See Stiebel, Imagining Africa and the works of the feminist critics – Gilbert, Gubar, Low – about t (...)

12Haggard’s fiction reflected the imperialist discourse and echoed the various scientific theories of his time (they were obviously characterised by race-minded and misogynist attitudes as well as Eurocentrism), as his stories dealt with the adventures of white colonizers encountering primitive peoples in distant countries (see Brantlinger chap. 422). But they are “products of their time”. In other words, South Africa provided Haggard with the ideal frame to express his own voice. He did not do it in a straightforward manner; he invented different characters and imagined spectacular landscapes23 to convey his own doubts and questions regarding the imperial project. He introduced his readers to his favourite subjects: adventure, love, eternal life, the importance of nature and land, immortality, etc. In her article, “Hidden Meaning: Andrew Lang, H. Rider Haggard, Sigmund Freud, and Interpretation”, Katty Psomiades demonstrates that Haggard’s adventure stories are much more than mere adventure stories written to entertain young boys. For example, she shows that “[Haggard’s She ] can be read as a kind of microcosm of late-nineteenth century ideologies of race, gender and empire, its fantastic strangeness ultimately allied to the strangeness of the imperial project itself” (Psomiades np). She adds:

• 24 He has it noted by Kipling between brackets.

17In a long letter Haggard dictated to his friend Kipling two months before his death he declared: “I have done my best to serve my country to the full extent of my small opportunities which generally, I have had to make” (33). Being a reformer at heart, his role as a civil servant was not as successful as he would have liked. Haggard very often expressed this feeling while talking to some close friends. In this letter, he exclaims: “Lord! How officials hate the outsider with ideas”24. Coan gives another precise example of this reserved success regarding Haggard’s report to the Royal Colonial Institute, The After-war settlement and the Employment of Ex-servicemen (1916). It was indeed largely ignored although it was a very topical issue (33). It seems that Haggard’s only choice was to resort to fiction to reconcile those things which could not coexist and to make them coexist thanks to his imagination.

• 25 Quote from She (1886), p.175.

18Haggard’s love of South Africa is most probably connected to his love of land and nature. He inherited from his father, William Meybohm Haggard some “‘dynastic senses’: to leave a son and lands for him to inherit, to perpetuate his name, these were strong prepossessions with him” (Lilias Haggard 6 n.17 quoted by McClintock 234). In his autography published posthumously in 1925, Haggard wrote “My father was a typical squire of the old sort […]. He reigned at Bradenham like a king […]” (Haggard The Days vol.1 chap. 1 np) and he added “[…] my father, who had the passion of his generation for land, insisted upon investing most of her [Haggard’s mother’s] fortune in that security” (vol.1 chap.2 np). Indeed, William did not only communicate this attachment to the land to his son, Rider, he influenced all his sons. McClintock points out that:

• 26 He stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative candidate for a Norfolk constituency in the general elect (...)

19Haggard, for his part, was convinced that “imperialism should be in the hands of the landed gentry” (McClintock 247). His interest in agricultural matters even led him to stand as M.P for local elections, his motto being “Prosperity on the plough”26! But Haggard did not really get involved in politics.

• 27 The 2 volumes of Rural England were reissued in 2011 by Cambridge University Press,

20Haggard started publishing A Farmer’s Year, a day by day account of the year 1899 (Haggard Diary 18) the same year. Then, he published Rural England (1902). This project took him two years. He visited 26 counties accompanied by his friend A. Cochrane. Both interviewed “different authorities in rural life to enquire about the state of English agriculture and the reasons and remedies for the rural depopulation that appeared to be threatening its future”. As historian Mark Freeman puts it: “Rural England27 has become a standard source for historians in rural Life” (Freeman 209).

• 28 See notes of Mr R. Haggard’s interview with General Booth, Nov. 7, 1901, (Haggard, Rural England, 4 (...)
• 29 About Haggard’s friendship with Roosevelt. (see also Stiebel Lives 201-203).
• 30 J. L. Dube (1871-1946). This South African Christian minister is now known as the first president o (...)
• 31 The Natives Land Act of 1913 defined less than one-tenth of South Africa as black “reserves” and pr (...)

21Another important element showing his involvement in agricultural and social matters is his collaboration with Charles Booth, an English Methodist preacher who founded the Salvation Army with his wife and became its first general. The interview Haggard had with General Booth on November 7, 1901 is reproduced in Rural England and it clearly shows that the two men agreed on the danger of industrialization and the primacy of land28. Their collaboration led Haggard to visit the United States in 1905 with the aim of adapting the system of the Salvation Army’s ‘Labour colonies’ to the British colonies. In the USA, Haggard met Theodore Roosevelt in the White House. The American president had read Rural England and shared Haggard’s views on agriculture29. He also met James Wilson, the Secretary for Agriculture to discuss the same subject (Haggard Diary 20). Afterwards, Haggard published The Poor and the Land: Report on the Salvation Army Colonies in the United States and at Hadleigh, England, with Scheme of National Land Settlement in 1905. Thus, it is not surprising that when Haggard visited Natal in 1914, he felt the need to meet John Langalibalele Dube30 to discuss the native and land issue because there was a strong opposition to The Natives Land Act of 191331. This interview is widely reported in his diary (chap. 8) and it really sheds a new light on Haggard’s love for Zulu people. We know Haggard had always been impressed by their culture and their beliefs (we will give precise examples in the next part to illustrate this point) but, this time, he finally decided to advocate their cause to the British government and he sent a letter to Lord Lewis Harcourt, Secretary of State for the Colonies, relating his observations during his visit to Rhodesia and Zululand. He notably stressed the paucity of cattle “[which had] resulted in considerable infant mortality, as for some years there [had] been and still [was] but little milk for the native children” (292). He goes on to explain that:

• 32 Today, the Science Fiction Encyclopaedia goes so far as to label King Solomon’s Mines and She “nove (...)
• 33 Lang called this genre or sub-genre “‘the new exotic literature’, of which M. Pierre Loti is the le (...)
• 34 See note 11 p. 6 of this paper: extract from the preface of Nada the Lily (1882).

24Here, Haggard overtly declares his wish to use his writing skills (“But of all this I hope to write in due course”) to communicate on this question. He did it taking many notes on small notebooks, writing articles, and essays and producing “‘ethnographic novels’32 which included the ‘manners and customs’ prototype of anthropological accounts” (Low quoted by Lewis 70). Analysing Nada the Lily from that angle, Lewis declares: “Haggard did not include the ‘manners and customs’ trope as a source of additional ethnic flavour; rather, the deep rhetorical structures of texts such as Nada the Lily ground the whole of the narrative in an anthropological worldview” (Lewis 70)33. Instead, right from the preface Haggard positions himself as a “transparent transmitter” of the Zulu culture to his fellow citizens34. She writes:

• 35 James Young Gibson (1857-1935) wrote The Story of the Zulus, London, 1903 (Haggard Diary 214 n. 16)

27During his second stay in Natal, Haggard clearly acts as an anthropologist trying to find local people and witnesses to talk to and trying to understand the different customs and rituals. His entry of April 23, 1914 is particularly dense when referring to local superstitions and ceremonies. Haggard first describes an indaba (a gathering) he attended with Mr Gibson, civil servant and magistrate35, and his faithful Zulu servant Mazooku. He mentions the different steps of the ceremony from the royal salute of Bayete to the concerns of each chief (their grief about the Tsetse fly sickness, “the new land law which prevents them from living on farms unless they pay rent in labour” (Haggard Diary 184) or the wild animals eating their crops) and he even quotes some of their comments taking an obvious pleasure in the description of their attire and the translation of their colourful language (185). He goes on to mention some anecdotes about the killing of two lions by “a small man named Funwayo” who stabbed them with his assegai. He concludes on this remark “Certainly these Zulus are brave men” (186). Then, he mentions two other stories (one of them dating back from Mpanda’s time) he heard from Mr Adam, whose father accompanied Livingstone on some of his expeditions (these stories are about witchcraft) as well as a visit of the site of the battle between Dinizulu (Cetywayo’s son) and Usibepu, providing historical comments. He eventually takes the opportunity of this visit to notice: “At any rate the story shews what strange beliefs the Zulus hold of things beyond those tangible on the earth, although they are supposed by ignorant persons to have ‘no religion’” (188).

• 36 It is, in fact, the ceremony of the ukubuyiasa (“bringing back”) which was held a year after the de (...)
• 37 The body of the dead soldiers are cleansed after a battle because “the Zulu does not like to touch (...)

28This example is only one indication of the numerous other notes on ceremonies (ceremony of “moving the spirit”36, “cleansing ceremony37” (Haggard Diary 195), performance by a witch-doctor (100), war dance (177), customs (the lobola, ilobolo translated as “bride wealth” or dowry, telepathy and hidden arts) (204), black and white medicine (205), description of the role of certain artefacts (Tshetsha’s necklace called Iziqu which can be compared to the Victoria Cross) (207, 240) etc.

• 38 See Zulu but also Matabele peoples.

29As we can see, even if Haggard’s approach regarding the Zulu is not scientific, it is quite pioneering for the time. He relies on first-hand material and observations and adapts these elements to a fictionalised form in order to make it popular and to convey a more humanitarian vision of “primitive peoples”38. Whether consciously or not, Haggard ‘uses’ fiction to deliver a personal message. In doing so, he subscribes to the conventions of imperial romance, while introducing his personal touch. He conveys his doubts and contradictions as well as his aspirations and fantasies. Gilles Teulié insists on Haggard’s idyllic vision of Zulu people. He explains that for Haggard, the Zulu warrior is the embodiment of the “Noble Savage”. This may sound stereotypical but, according to Haggard’s codes, it is an incredibly positive value which means that he lives in an Edenic paradise in harmony with his environment (Teulié Aux Origines 240).

• 39 KCL: Killie Campbell Library, see http://campbell.ukzn.ac.za/, accessed 27 July 2020.
• 40 “Finished’ is the name of the kraal (house) where Cetywayo’s dead body was found.
• 41 The Killie Campbell library is part of the University of KwaZuluNatal.
• 42 See John Wight on KCL: http://campbell.ukzn.ac.za/?q=node/24445, accessed 6 July 2020.
• 43 See Coan: https://www.news24.com/Archives/Witness/Preacher-teacher-writer-20150430, accessed 30 Jul (...)

30Haggard’s anthropological approach can be compared to James Stuart’s approach (Wright; Coan Diary 25). Like Haggard who was always eager to play a part in his country’s agenda, Stuart held magisterial posts in Natal from the 1880’s to 1912 and used his official position as well as his skills as a linguist to record as much information as possible about the Zulu. According to him, if the government had an understanding of Zulu history and culture, then the authorities might readjust their policies towards native peoples. As John Wright observes: “Of course now we see this idea as highly naïve. […] But Stuart was an idealist” (Wright quoted on KCL39). It is not surprising, then, to know that Haggard met Stuart in South Africa in 1912. They became close friends and travelled together through Zululand. Stuart worked as a technical adviser on aspects of Zulu culture for the staging of Mameena by Oscar Ashe in 1912 in London and Haggard used the information he gathered from him while touring Zululand in 1914 in the final volume of his Zulu trilogy, Finished40, published in 1916 (Coan Mameena 17-18). Today the Stuart archives can be consulted in the Killie Campbell library in Durban41.We can read on the library’s site that “Stuart was one of a small group of colonial officials concerned that black people were being understood by the Natal colonial government”42. Killie Campbell, founder of the library was part of this group. Thanks to the patience and tenacity of personalities like Stuart and Campbell anyone interested in the history of native peoples in South Africa can now consult what is considered to be the most valuable collection of African oral traditions in existence in Southern Africa. It appears that Haggard also left a legacy in South Africa. Indeed, Nada the Lily (1892) was translated in IsiZulu by F.L. Ntuli and J.L. Dube wrote its preface in 1963. There is no need to say that this collaboration between two great men, a British “imperialist” writer and a famous South African politician, educator and publisher is highly symbolical, as J.L. Dube was also the author of the first novel to have been written in IsiZulu, U-Jeqe, Insila ka Tshaka (Jeqe, the Body-servant of King Shaka). This novel has never been out of print43.