Sir Henry Rider Haggard
King Solomon’s Mines
Like many of the geatest adventure stories,
King Solomon’s Mines is written in the first
person. Our hero, Allan Quartermain,
introduces himself as a gentleman-cum-rough
diamond…‘At an age when other boys are at
school I was earning my living as a trader in
the old Colony. I have been trading, hunting,
fighting or mining ever since.’
Within pages we are breathlessly
following Quartermain and his companions,
the comical, lovable, naval officer Captain
John Good (‘He was very neat and very
clean-shaved, and he always wore an eyeglass
in his right eye…he put it in his
trousers pocket when he went to bed,
together with his false teeth, of which he
had two beautiful sets’) and the valiant Sir
Henry Curtis (‘…perhaps the biggestchested
and longest-armed man I ever saw.
He had yellow hair, a thick yellow beard, and
large grey eyes set deep in his head. I never
saw a finer-looking man.’) on a daunting
quest for a long-lost diamond mine. Their
gruelling journey in all temperatures across
inhospitable, lion-infested bush and
mountain, desperately short of water and often starving, brings to mind the exploits of
today’s Special Forces making long escapes
from deep inside enemy lines.
The book is rich in characters. This tough
‘man’s world’ is softened by the presence of
the serene and beautiful Foulata, a Zulu girl
who becomes devoted to Captain Good. We
admire the honest, quiet Zulu Umbopa who
joins them as a tracker and are not at all
surprised when it transpires there is more to
this man than meets the eye. The writer’s
description of the ghastly Gagaoola, witch
and prophetess, reminds us of the most
frightening of children’s fairy tales…
‘…I observed the wizened monkey-like
figure creeping from the shadow of the hut.
It crept on all fours, but when it reached the
place where the king sat it rose upon its feet,
and…revealed a most extraordinary and
weird countenance – that of a woman of
great age so shrunken that in size it seemed
no larger than the face of a year-old child,
although made up of a number of deep and
yellow wrinkles. Set in these wrinkles was a
sunken slit, that represented the mouth…
the visage might have been taken for that of a sun-dried corpse had it not been for a pair
of large black eyes, full of fire and
intelligence, which gleamed and played
under the snow-white eyebrows, and the
projecting parchment-coloured skull, like
jewels in a charnel-house. As for the head
itself, it was perfectly bare, and yellow in
hue, while its wrinkled scalp moved and
contracted like the hood of a cobra…’
Reading the novel today one is struck by
a condescending attitude towards the native
African and certain other races. This was of
its time. After all, British Empire history, with
all its certainty of the innate superiority of
the white British and their culture, was never
more passionately respected than in the late
nineteenth century, and was indeed taught
in British schools until the 1960’s, when
many a church and Sunday School wall was
adorned with portraits of a rock star-like
platinum-blonde Jesus resting his hands
gently on the heads of adoring little children
of other races. Haggard’s more patronising
moments, though they grate, are however
leavened with some humanity and wit, and
often with admiration, though they would
not be written today.
‘…I knew the man Jim who was with
him. He was a Bechuana by birth, a good
hunter, and for a native a very clever man.’
The story takes us from England to
Natal, and on to the legendary lost mines set
in the mythical kingdom of Kukuanaland,
ruled by the fearsome Twala—‘husband of
a thousand wives…student of the Black
Arts, leader of a hundred thousand warriors,
Twala the One-eyed, the Black, the Terrible.’
We soon forget that this is fiction.
Haggard’s research and knowledge of Zulu
tribal custom, of flora and fauna, is
comprehensive. The tale unfolds realistically,
even when the plot verges on the
preposterous. It is a delicious idea that there
may be undiscovered lands and civilisations,
which we accept readily. The story builds
up, via twist after twist, to a massively
dramatic ending and the reader, having
finally escaped the frightening Kukuanaland
with the heroic Alan Quartermain, is almost
as relieved and happy as he when he
reports…
‘Above us were the blessed stars, and in
our nostrils was the sweet air.’
We can only agree with Sir Henry Curtis
when he writes to Quartermain at the end of
this thrilling adventure: ‘You have done your
day’s work.’
Sir Henry Rider Haggard was born in
1856. His mother was an amateur novelist
and his father a barrister and country gentleman. Henry was sent to Ipswich
Grammar School, before taking a post in
South Africa as secretary to Sir Henry Bulwer,
Governor of Natal. At the age of 22 he was
appointed Registrar of the Natal High Court,
at which time he fell in love with an African
woman, and became fascinated by Zulu
culture and traditions. He returned briefly to
England and married a Norfolk heiress,
Mariana Louisa Margitson, taking her back
to South Africa where they ran an ostrich
farm. Eventually, with the intention of
pursuing a career in the law, he moved back
to Norfolk with Mariana, and was called to
the bar at the age of 28.
Perhaps there was more of his mother in
him than his father, for it was not long
before he gave up his practice in order to
write novels of adventure and discovery. He
was excited by R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure
Island, published in 1883, and determined to
write an even better book. He believed a
good novel should flow fast from the pen of
the writer, and wrote King Solomon’s Mines
in less than a week. He became an expert
agriculturalist and, among the 40 books
which he wrote in a long career, were several
on farming. For his services to the British
Empire, both diplomatic and agricultural, he
was knighted in 1912 and awarded the
KCBE in 1919. He died in London in 1925.
Notes by Bill Homewood
The music on this recording is taken from the NAXOS and MARCO POLO catalogues
GOTTSCHALK A Night in the Tropics
8.559036
Hot Springs Music Festival / Richard Rosenberg
KING KONG Max Steiner’s film score
8.223763
Moscow Symphony Orchestra / William J Stromberg
