Rider Haggard and the Fiction of Empire: A Critical Study of British Imperial Fiction by Wendy R. Katz

Abstract

R E V IE W S Wendy R. Katz, Rider Haggard and the Fiction of Empire: A Critical Study of British Imperial Fiction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). ix, 171. $29.95 (u-s-) In the early years of what we now call the modem age, as some writers eagerly confronted the challenge of creating a new kind of novel to reflect a world not merely changing, but throwing aside and replacing tradition, there were others who remained stalwart members of the old school. These included Galsworthy, Wells, Bennett, and Rider Haggard, and of them none — with the exception perhaps of Wells because of his science fiction — has remained a popular novelist today. But as Wendy Katz points out in the introduction of her work on Haggard, there lurks at the edge of consciousness, among child­ hood and adolescent memories for some, the ghost of Rider Haggard, and one need only name his most lingering work, King Solomon’s Mines, for that ghost to take a step forward. Katz includes, among several brief reminiscences concerning Haggard and the effect he had on past generations of British read­ ers, no less an author than Graham Greene, who confesses to having once considered a life in the colonies because of ‘“ that romantic tale of Allan Quatermain, Sir Henry Curtis, Captain Good, and, above all, the ancient witch Gagool.’ ” Long after the intensity of that romance has subsided, he adds, “ ‘the old African fixation remained.’ ” But what Katz goes on to remind us, in a timely and cogent work, is that Haggard was no mere adventurer of the Sir Walter Scott variety, nor a critical observer of the kind Greene himself later became, but a defender of the Em­ pire whose works — especially his South African novels — are the products of a racist whose life in Transvaal as a colonial administrator engendered those appalling sentiments and impelled him to create characters as prejudiced as himself. Haggard was as well, Katz notes, an anti-Semite who saw in the rising power of Mussolini and the fascists in Germany after W.W.I solutions to England’s post-war problems. E n g lish Studies in C anada, x v, 3, September 1989 What disturbs Katz most about this issue is that in spite of what she sees as irrefutable evidence supporting her observations critics, of whom there have been an increasing number in recent years, steadfastly ignore the entire subject. A perusal of recent works on this author reveals Katz’s accusations to be true: most do indeed either ignore Haggard’s imperialism and the effects of his beliefs — in white supremacy, for example — on his works, or in a few cases actually argue against their existence. What Katz wants to ensure is that imperialism and its attendant policies, based on exploitation and what she re­ fers to as racial integrity, are no longer ignored in Haggard’s works and, more importantly, that the relation clearly be established between those policies and Haggard himself, a man “completely in harmony” with British imperialist ideology. Indeed, writes Katz, any assessment of Haggard’s work that “fails to acknowledge its pervasive imperialism falls short of satisfactory” for the two are inseparable. And not to be ignored in considering this relationship is the fact that Haggard was perhaps the most successful and from that the most influential writer of his day. (Eventually knighted, he was a celebrity whose travels, activities and opinions were regularly recorded in various newspapers.) Because of this, Katz argues, he actually contributed to and in the late nine­ teenth century even helped establish an at the time burgeoning imperialist ideology by creating proselytizing heroes both popular and, like their author, convincing enough to be capable of swaying young minds to think like them. This is a provocative thesis, but one Katz meticulously and I think con­ vincingly develops. Although she confesses that it is not possible to present “a tidy picture” of the relationship between empire, Haggard, and his work, she insists that a full understanding of his fiction, and that of other imperialist writers of the day, is not possible without an awareness of how crucially and directly it was informed by...