Title:      The Days of My Life Volume I (1926)
Author:     Sir H. Rider Haggard
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      The Days of My Life Volume I (1926)
Author:     Sir H. Rider Haggard





                         THE DAYS OF MY LIFE

                               VOLUME I

                           AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

                                  BY

                         SIR H. RIDER HAGGARD



                              EDITED BY

                            C. J. LONGMAN



                              DEDICATION

  I dedicate this record of my days to my dear Wife and to the
  memory of our son whom now I seek

                                                H. Rider Haggard

  Midnight
  White Sunday
  1912



                               PREFACE

Henry Rider Haggard was born on June 22, 1856, and died on May 14,
1925. The present work covers the first fifty-six years of his life,
commencing with his earliest recollections and ending on September 25,
1912. On that day he wrote to me: "I have just written the last word
of 'The Days of My Life,' and thankful I am to have done with that
book. Whenever I can find time and opportunity I wish to add 'A Note
on Religion,' which, when done, if ever, I will send to you." This
"note" he sent me on January 24, 1913. By his wish the entire MS. was
sealed up and put away in Messrs. Longman's safe, and was seen no more
till after his death, when it was opened by me in the presence of one
of his executors.

Rider Haggard entered on the serious business of life at an early age.
He sailed for South Africa in July 1875, when he was only just
nineteen, on the staff of Sir Henry Bulwer, the newly appointed
Governor of Natal. Eighteen months later he was attached to the
special mission to the Transvaal, led by Sir Theophilus Shepstone,
which resulted in the annexation of the Transvaal to Great Britain on
April 12, 1877. Shortly after the annexation the Master and Registrar
of the High Court at Pretoria died, and Haggard was appointed as
Acting Master when he was barely twenty-one, an age at which his
contemporaries in England were undergraduates at college. This
provisional appointment was confirmed a year later.

It can hardly be doubted that this early initiation into affairs had
an effect in moulding Rider Haggard's character, and that effect would
not be diminished by the tragic nature of the events which quickly
followed, with which he was closely connected--Isandlwana, Majuba, and
the Retrocession of the Transvaal.

In consequence of the Retrocession he returned to England in the
autumn of 1881. His African career was ended, he had a young wife and
child, and he still had his way to make in the world. His six years of
Africa had, however, not only given him a knowledge of the world and a
self-reliance rare in so young a man, but had also enabled him to
acquire an intimate knowledge of the history and characteristics of
the Native Races, which he was subsequently able to turn to good
account.

From the circumstances of his early life he was thrown much into the
company of men older than himself, and he had a singular gift of
winning not only their confidence, but their love. The happy relations
which he was able to establish with his superiors in the Government
service are an example of this, and it was a faculty which never left
him.

This autobiography deals not only with Haggard's life in South Africa,
and with his literary career, but also with an aspect of his many
activities which is less familiar to those who knew him mainly as a
writer of romances. He was always dominated by a strong sense of duty,
and by an ardent patriotism, and the direction in which he thought
that he could best serve his country was in an attempt to arrest the
rapidly growing migration of population from the country districts to
the slums of the towns. He thought that a healthy, contented, and
prosperous rural population was the greatest asset that a country
could possess, and this work will show with what ardour and energy he
devoted himself to the furtherance of this object, and to the
prosperity of agriculture generally. He journeyed through twenty-seven
countries examining the condition of agriculture, and published the
results of this survey in his book "Rural England." This undertaking
he described as "the heaviest labour of all my laborious life."
Besides this he travelled through the United States and to Canada as a
Commissioner appointed by the Colonial Office, to report to the
Secretary of State on the Labour Colonies instituted by the Salvation
Army. He also served on Royal Commissions which involved much labour
and long journeys. If to give unsparingly of one's time and abilities
to the service of one's fellow-men, without hope of reward, is to be a
philanthropist, surely Rider Haggard deserved that honoured name. But,
like many another man who devotes his time to work of this character,
he was much discouraged and disappointed because his labours were not
crowned by immediate results. Nevertheless, it is probable that the
causes for which he worked will, in the long run, triumph, and the
work which he gave so unsparingly will not be wasted.

I undertook the preparation of this work for the press because my
friend, Rider Haggard, wished me to do so. I hope I have not bungled
or failed in the execution of this labour of love. I wish especially
to express my gratitude to Miss Hector, who acted as Sir Rider's
secretary for thirty-four years, up to the time of his death, for
reading the proofs and for her unfailing kindness and help in many
ways.

My thanks are also due to various gentlemen for permission to print
letters: viz. the Father Superior of Mount Saint Bernard's Abbey for
several letters from the late Brother Basil; Mr. E. F. Benson for an
extract from a letter of Archbishop Benson; the executors of Sir
Walter Besant; Mr. Bramwell Booth, General of the Salvation Army, for
letters from himself and from General William Booth; the Earl of
Carnarvon for a letter from his grandfather; the Rt. Hon. Winston
Churchill for a letter from himself, and one from Lady Leslie; Lady
Clarke for a letter from Sir Marshal Clarke; the executors of Miss
Marie Corelli; Sir Douglas Dixie, Bart., for a letter from the late
Lady Florence Dixie; Lady Gwendolen Elveden for one from the late Earl
of Onslow; Sir Bartle Frere for a letter from his father; Sir Edmund
Gosse; Earl Grey for letters from his father; the Viscountess Harcourt
for letters from the late Viscount Harcourt; Mrs. Hanbury for a letter
from the late Rt. Hon. R. W. Hanbury; the executors of the late W. E.
Henley; Mr. H. C. L. Holden for a letter from Dr. Holden; Messrs.
Hutchinson and Co., Ltd., for a letter from Messrs. Hurst and
Blackett; the executors of the late Mr. J. Cordy Jeaffreson; Mr.
Rudyard Kipling; Chief Justice J. K. Kotze; Mrs. Andrew Lang for many
letters from her husband; Sir Oliver Lodge; the Hon. Mrs. A.
Lyttleton; the executors of the late Sir Melmoth Obsorn; Mr. Lloyd
Osbourne for five letters and an unpublished poem by R. L. Stevenson;
Messrs. G. Routledge and Sons, Ltd., for a letter from Mr. Trubner;
the executors of the late President Roosevelt; Colonel Walter
Shepstone for letters from his father, Sir Theophilus Shepstone; Miss
Townsend for a letter from her father, Mr. Meredith Townsend; Mr.
Evelyn Wrench for extracts from the /Spectator/. I have also to
express my thanks to the following gentlemen for kindly reading and
consenting to the publication of passages referring to them: Sir E.
Wallis Budge, Major Burnham, The Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd George, and Mr.
Thomas Hardy, O.M.

July 1926.                                              C. J. Longman.



                             INTRODUCTION

A while ago, it may have been a year or more, the telephone in this
house rang and down the mysterious wire--for notwithstanding a
thousand explanations, what is more mysterious than a telephone wire,
except a telephone without one?--came an excited inquiry from a London
press agency, as to whether I were dead.

Miss Hector, my secretary, answered that to the best of her knowledge
and belief I was out walking on my farm in an average state of health.
Explanations followed; diversified by telegrams from the Authors'
Society and others interested in the continuance or the cessation of
my terrestrial life. From these it appeared that, like a sudden wind
upon the sea, a rumour had sprung up to the effect that I had vanished
from the world.

It was a false rumour, but the day must come, when or how I know not,
since Providence in its mercy hides this ultimate issue from our eyes,
on which it will be true, and like the storm that I hear raving
outside the windows as I write, the elemental forces which are about
every one of us will sweep me away as they brought me here and my
place will know me no more.

Before this event happens to me, this common, everyday event which
excites so little surprise even among those who knew us and yet,
whatever his degree or lack of faith, is so important to the
individual concerned, shall overtake me, before I too, like the
countless millions who have gone before, put on the Purple and have my
part in the majesty of Death, it has entered into my mind that I
desire to set down, while I still have my full faculties, certain of
my own experiences of life.

I have met many men, I have seen many lands, I have known many
emotions--all of them, I think, except that of hate; I have played
many parts. From all this sum of things, tangible or intangible,
hidden now in the heart and the memory, some essence may perhaps be
pressed which is worthy of preservation, some picture painted at which
eyes unborn may be glad to look. At least, such is my hope.

It is of course impossible for anyone, yes, even for a nun in a
convent, to set down life's every detail for the world to stare at,
unless indeed such a person were prepared to order the resulting book
to be buried for--let us say--five hundred years. Could such a work be
written by a hand adequate to the task, its interest as a human
document would be supreme. Also it would be beautiful in the sense
that the naked truth is always beautiful, even when it tells of evil.
Yet I believe that it will never be written. For were the writer mean
enough to draw the veil from the failings of others, he would
certainly keep it wrapped about his own. Only one man, so far as my
knowledge goes, has set down the absolute verity about himself, and it
is certain that he did not intend that it should come to the printing-
press. I refer to Samuel Pepys.

Still an enormous amount remains of which a man may write without
injuring or hurting the feelings of anyone, and by aid of my memory
that, although weak enough in many ways, is strong and clear where
essentials are concerned, and of the correspondence which, as it
chances, I have preserved for years, with some of this matter I
propose to deal. After all, a man of normal ability and observation
who has touched life at many points, cannot pass fifty-five years in
the world without learning much, some of which may prove of use to
others, and if he dies leaving his experience unrecorded, then like
water thrown upon sand it sinks into the grave with him and there is
wasted.

Such are the considerations that lead me to attempt this task.

I suppose that before considering it further the first question that I
should ask myself and try to answer is, not to what extent I have
achieved success, but by how much I have escaped failure in the world.
No positive reply seems possible to this query until I have been dead
a good many years, for in such matters time is the only true judge.
Yet that final verdict is capable of a certain amount of intelligent,
though possibly erroneous anticipation.

Although all my life I have been more or less connected with the Law,
for which I have a natural liking, first as the Master of a High Court
and subsequently in the modest but I trust useful office of the
Chairman of a Bench of Magistrates, I have done nothing at all at my
profession at the Bar. In an unfortunate hour, considered from this
point of view, I employed my somewhat ample leisure in chambers in
writing "King Solomon's Mines." That, metaphorically, settled my legal
hash. Had it not been for "King Solomon's Mines," if even in
imagination I may dwell upon such splendour, I might possibly have sat
some day where sits my old friend and instructor, Sir Henry Bargrave
Deane, as a judge of the Court of Probate and Divorce, in which I
proposed to practise like my great-uncle, Doctor John Haggard, famous
for his Reports, before me.

Well do I remember how, when one day I was seated in this Division
watching a case or devilling for somebody, I unconsciously inscribed
my name on the nice white blotting-paper before me. Presently from
behind me I heard a whisper from some solicitor--I think that was his
calling--whom business had brought to the Court:

"Are you Rider Haggard, the man who wrote 'King Solomon's Mines'?" he
said, staring at the tell-tale blotting-paper.

I intimated that such was really my name.

"Then, confound you! Sir, you kept me up till three o'clock this
morning. But what are you doing here in a wig and gown--what are you
doing here?"

Very soon I found cause to echo the question and to answer it in the
words, "No good." The British solicitor, and indeed the British
client, cannot be induced to put confidence in anyone who has become
well known as an author. If he has confined his attention to the
writing of law-books, he may be tolerated, though hardly, but if his
efforts have been on the imaginative side of literature, then for that
man they have no use. That such a person should combine gifts of
imagination with forensic aptitude and sound legal knowledge is to
them a thing past all belief.

A page or so back I said that my experience might possibly be of use
to others, and already the suggestion seems in the way of proof. If
what I write should prevent even one young barrister who hopes to make
a mark in his profession, from being beguiled into the fatal paths of
authorship, I shall not have laboured in vain.

Next, I have never been able to gratify a very earnest ambition of my
younger years, namely, to enter Parliament and shine as a statesman.
Once I tried: it was at the 1895 election, and I almost carried one of
the most difficult seats in England. But almost is not quite, and the
awful expense attendant upon contesting a seat in Parliament (in a
county division it costs, or used to cost, over 2000 pounds) showed me
clearly that, unless they happen to be Labour members, such a career
is only open to rich men. Also I came to understand that it would be
practically impossible for me both to earn a living by the writing of
books and to plunge eagerly into Parliamentary work, as I know well
that I should have done. Even if I could have found the time by
writing in the mornings--which, where imaginative effort is concerned,
has always been distasteful to me--my health would never have borne
the double strain.

So that dream had to be abandoned, for which I am sorry. Indeed, a
legislative career is about the only one of which the doors are not
shut to the writer of fiction, as is proved by many instances, notably
that of Disraeli.

Thus it cames about that on these lines I have failed to make any
mark. Fate has shut those doors in my face. The truth is that "man
knoweth not his own way": he must go where his destiny leads him.
Either so or he is afloat upon an ocean of chance, driven hither and
thither by its waves, till at length his frail bark is overset or
sinks worn out. This, however, I do not believe. If everything else in
the universe is governed by law, why should the lot of man alone be
excepted from the workings of law?

However this may be, as heralds say in talking of a doubtful descent,
whether through appointment or accidentally, it has so come about
that, although I have done other things, I must earn my livelihood by
the pen. Now of this I should not have complained had I been in a
position to choose my own subjects. But unhappily those subjects which
attract me, such as agricultural and social research, are quite
unremunerative. Everybody talks of the resulting volumes, which
receive full and solemn review in all the newspapers, but very few
people buy them in these days. So far as I am aware, remunerative
books may be divided roughly into three classes: (1) School or
technical works, which must be purchased by scholars preparing for
examinations, or for the purposes of their profession; (2) religious
works, purchased by scholars preparing themselves for a prosperous
career in another world; and (3) works of fiction, purchased--or
rather borrowed from libraries (if they cost more than fourpence-
halfpenny[*])--by persons wishing to be amused. It has been my lot to
cater for the last of these three classes, and as there is other work
which I should have much preferred to do, I will not pretend that I
have found, or find, the occupation altogether congenial, perhaps
because at the bottom of my heart I share some of the British contempt
for the craft of story-writing.

[*] Written in 1911.--Ed.

I remember a few years ago discussing this matter fully with my friend
Mr. Rudyard Kipling, a most eminent practitioner of that craft, and
finding that our views upon it were very similar, if not identical. He
pointed out, I recollect, that all fiction is in its essence an appeal
to the emotions, and that this is not the highest class of appeal.
Here, however, we have a subject that might be argued interminably and
from many points of view, especially when we bear in mind that there
are various classes of imaginative literature. So far as I am
concerned the issue is that though I feel myself more strongly drawn
to other pursuits, such as administration or politics or even law, I
have been called upon to earn the bread of myself and others out of a
kind of by-product of my brain which chances to be saleable, namely,
the writing of fiction.

It is fortunate for writers that they do not depend wholly upon the
verdict of a hundred or so of contemporary critics. The history of
literature and art goes to show that contemporary criticism seldom
makes and never can destroy a reputation; in short, that Time is the
only true critic, and that its verdict is the one we have to fear. It
is in the light of this axiom that I proceed to consider my own humble
contributions to the sum of romantic literature. I can assure the
reader that I approach this not unamusing task without any prejudice
in my own favour. The test of work is whether it will or will not
live; whether it contains within itself the vital germ necessary to a
long-continued existence.

Now, although it may seem much to claim, my belief is that some of my
tales /will/ live. Possibly this belief is quite erroneous, in which
case in years to come I may be laughed at for its expression. It is
obvious also that a great deal of what I have written is doomed to
swift oblivion, since, even if it were all equally good, in the
crowded days that are to come, days even more crowded than our own,
posterity will not need much of the work of any individual. If he is
remembered at all it will be by but a few books. The present question
is, What chance have I of being so remembered, and I can only hope
that my belief in the vitality of at any rate some of my books may be
justified.

As it happens with reference to this question of the possible
endurance of my work, I am in the position of having a second string
to my bow. Years ago I turned my attention to agriculture and to all
the group of problems connected with the land. First I wrote "A
Farmer's Year." My object in compiling that record--which, if I live,
I hope to amplify some day by the addition of a second volume on the
same plan--was that in its pages future generations might see a
picture of the conditions under which agriculture was practised in
England at the end of the nineteenth century.

Afterwards I attempted something much more ambitious, namely, a full
account of agricultural and social researches carried out during the
years 1901 and 1902, which was published under the title of "Rural
England." To be frank, this description is perhaps a little too
inclusive, seeing that all England is not described in the
multitudinous pages of my book. It deals, however, with twenty-seven
counties and the Channel Islands, or one more than were treated of by
Arthur Young a century or so earlier. After this prolonged effort
exhaustion overtook me, and I retired to spend an arduous year or so
in classifying and writing down my experiences. Even now I have not
abandoned the hope of dealing with the remaining counties, and after
these with Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, but at my present age I feel
that it grows a little faint. The work is too tremendous and, I may
add, too costly, since what can be earned from the sale of such
volumes will not even suffice to pay their expenses and that of the
necessary journeys.

Still I hope that my work may help to show to posterity through the
mouths of many witnesses what was the state of the agriculture and the
farmers of England at the commencement of the twentieth century. I
trust, therefore, that should my novels be forgotten in the passage of
years, "Rural England" and my other books on agriculture may still
serve to keep my memory green.

Now I will close this introduction and get to my story. I fear that
the reader may think it all somewhat egotistical, but unfortunately
that is a fault inherent in an autobiography, and one without which it
would be more or less futile.

Ditchingham:
    August 10, 1911.





                         THE DAYS OF MY LIFE



                              CHAPTER I

                              CHILDHOOD

  Danish origin of the Haggards--Early history in Herts and Norfolk
  --H. R. H.'s father and mother--His birth at Bradenham, Norfolk--
  Early characteristics--First school--Garsington Rectory, Oxon, and
  Farmer Quatermain--Lively times at Dunkirk--Adventure at Treport--
  Cologne--His uncle Fowle.

There has always been a tradition in my family that we sprang from a
certain Sir Andrew Ogard, or Agard, or Haggard (I believe his name is
spelt in all three ways in a single contemporaneous document), a
Danish gentleman of the famous Guildenstjerne family whose seat was at
Aagaard in Jutland.

About a year ago I visited this place while I was making researches
for my book, "Rural Denmark." It is a wild, wind-swept plain dotted
with tumuli dating from unknown times. There by the old manor house
stand the moated ruins of the castle which was burnt in the Peasant's
War, I believe when Sir Andrew's elder brother was its lord. Here the
Guildenstjerne family remained for generations and in the neighbouring
church their arms, which are practically the same as those we bear
to-day, are everywhere to be seen.

This Sir Andrew was a very remarkable man. He appears to have come
from Denmark with nothing and to have died possessed of manors in
eleven English counties, besides much money and the Danish estate
which he seems to have inherited.[*] Also he distinguished himself
greatly in the French wars of the time of Henry VI, where he held high
command under the Duke of Bedford, whose executor he subsequently
became. Moreover, he did not neglect his spiritual welfare, since,
together with his father-in-law, Sir John Clifton, he erected one of
the towers of Wymondham Church, in which he is buried on the north
side of the high altar, and bequeathed to the said church "a piece of
the True Cross and a piece of the Thorns of the Crown."

[*] See Carthew's /History of West and East Bradenham/, pp. 87-89.

I regret to have to add that there is at present no actual proof of
the descent of my family from this Sir Andrew. Among the other manors
that he possessed, however, was that of Rye in Hertfordshire, where
our arms are still to be seen over the gateway of Rye House, which he
appears to have built, that afterwards became famous in connection
with the celebrated Rye House Plot.

The Haggard family reappears at Ware within a few miles of the Rye
House in the year 1561, in the person of a churchwarden and freeholder
of the town, which suggests that he was a citizen of some importance.
At Ware they remained for about 150 years. To this I can testify, for
once finding myself in that town with an hour to spare I went through
the registers, in which the name of Haggard occurs frequently. One
member of the family, I recollect, had caused a number of his children
to be baptised on the same day, Oct. 28, 1688, though whether this was
because he suddenly became reconciled to the Church after a period of
alienation, or is to be accounted for by a quarrel with the clergyman,
I cannot tell. Or had the civil wars anything to do with the matter?

Subsequently the family moved to Old Ford House, St. Mary Stratford-
le-Bow, where, I believe, they owned property which, if they had kept
it, would have made them very rich to-day.

I recollect my father telling me a story of how one of them, I think
it must have been John Haggard who died in 1776, my great, great,
great-grandfather, sold the Bow property and moved to Bennington in
Hertfordshire because of a burglary that took place at his house which
seems to have frightened him very much. His son, William Henry,
settled in Norwich, and is buried in St. John's Maddermarket in that
city. His only son, also named William Henry, my great-grandfather,
after living a while at Knebworth, Herts, bought Bradenham Hall in
this county of Norfolk. It would seem, oddly enough, that Bradenham
once belonged to old Sir Andrew Ogard, or Agard, in right of his wife,
but whether this circumstance had or had not anything to do with its
purchase by my great-grandfather I cannot say.

His son, William Haggard, like some others of the family, was
concerned in banking in Russia, and in 1816 married a Russian lady,
the eldest daughter and co-heiress of James Meybohm of St. Petersburg.
My father, William Meybohm Rider Haggard, was the eldest child of this
union. He was born at St. Petersburg April 19, 1817, and in 1844
married my mother, Ella, the elder daughter and co-heiress of Bazett
Doveton, of the Bombay Civil Service, who was born at Bombay in June
1819.

I am the eighth child of the family of ten--seven sons and three
daughters--who were born to my father and mother. As it chanced I
first saw the light (on June 22, 1856), not at Bradenham Hall, which
at the time was let, but at the Wood Farm on that property whither, on
her return from France, my mother retired to be confined. A few years
ago I visited the room in which the interesting event took place. It
is a typical farmhouse upper chamber, very pleasant in its way, and to
the fact of my appearance there I have always been inclined, rather
fancifully perhaps, to attribute the strong agricultural tastes which
I believe I alone of my family possess.

Here I will tell you a little story which shows how untrustworthy even
contemporary evidence may be. On the occasion of this visit I was
accompanied by a friend, Sir Frederick Wilson, and his niece, who were
anxious to see my birthplace. Now near to the Wood Farm at Bradenham
stands another farm, which for some unknown reason I had got into my
head to be the real spot, and as such I showed it to my friends. When
I had finished a farmer, the late James Adcock, who was standing by
and who remembered the event, ejaculated:

"What be you a-talking of, Mr. Rider? You weren't born there at all,
you were born yinder."

"Of course," I said, "I remember," and led the way to the Wood Farm
with every confidence, where I showed the window of the birth-chamber.

As I was doing so an old lady thrust her head out of the said window
and called out:

"Whatever be you a-talking of, Mr. Rider? You weren't born in this
'ere room, you were born in that room yinder."

Then amidst general laughter I retired discomfited. Such, I repeat, is
often the value of even contemporary evidence, although it is true
that in this case James Adcock and the old lady were the real
contemporary witnesses, since a man can scarcely be expected to
remember the room in which he was born.

It seems that I was a whimsical child. At least Hocking, my mother's
maid, a handsome, vigorous, black-eyed, raw-boned Cornishwoman who
spent most of her active life in the service of the family, informed
me in after years that nothing would induce me to go to sleep unless a
clean napkin in a certain way was placed under my head, which napkin I
called "an ear." To this day I have dim recollections of crying
bitterly until this "ear" was brought to me. Also I was stupid.
Indeed, although she always indignantly denied the story in after
years, I remember when I was about seven my dear mother declaring that
I was as heavy as lead in body and mind.

I fear that I was more or less of a dunderhead at lessons. Even my
letters presented difficulties to me, and I well recollect a few years
later being put through an examination by my future brother-in-law,
the Rev. Charles Maddison Green, with the object of ascertaining what
amount of knowledge I had acquired at a day school in London, where we
then were living at 24 Leinster Square.

The results of this examination were so appalling that when he was
apprised of them my indignant father burst into the room where I sat
resigned to fate, and, in a voice like to that of an angry bull,
roared out at me that I was "only fit to be a greengrocer." Even then
I wondered why this affront should be put upon a useful trade. After
the row was over I went for a walk with my brother Andrew who was two
years older than myself and who, it appeared, had assisted at my
discomfiture from behind a door. Just where Leinster Square opens into
a main street, I think it is Westbourne Grove--at any rate in those
days Whiteley had a single little shop not far off at which my mother
used to deal--there is, or was, a fruit and vegetable store with no
glass in the window. My brother stood contemplating it for a long
while. At last he said:

"I say, old fellow, when you become a greengrocer, I hope you'll let
me have oranges cheap!"

To this day I have never quite forgiven Andrew for that most heartless
remark.

After all it was not perhaps strange that I did not learn much at
these London day schools--for I went to two of them. The first I left
suddenly. It was managed by the head master and an usher whose names I
have long forgotten. The usher was a lanky, red-haired, pale-faced man
whom we all hated because of his violent temper and injustice. On one
occasion when his back was turned to the class to which I belonged,
that I presume was the lowest, I amused myself and my companions by
shaking my little fists at him, whereon they laughed. The usher
wheeled round and asked why we were laughing, when some mean boy piped
out:

"Please, sir, because Haggard is shaking his fists at you."

He called me to him and I perceived that he was trembling with rage.

"You young brute!" he said. "I'll see you in your grave before you
shake your fists at me again."

Then he doubled his own and, striking me first on one side of the head
and then on the other, knocked me all the way down the long room and
finally over a chair into a heap of slates in a corner, where I lay a
while almost senseless. I recovered and went home. Here my eldest
sister Ella, noticing my bruised and dazed condition, cross-examined
me until I told her the truth. An interview followed between my father
and the master of the school, which resulted in a dismissal of the
usher and my departure. Afterwards I met that usher in the Park
somewhere near the Row, and so great was my fear of him that I never
stopped running till I reached the Marble Arch.

After this my father sent me to a second day school where the pupils
were supposed to receive a sound business education.

Then came the examination that I have mentioned at the hands of my
brother-in-law. As a result I was despatched to the Rev. Mr. Graham,
who took in two or three small boys (at that time I must have been
nine or ten years of age) at Garsington Rectory near Oxford.

The Rectory, long ago pulled down, was a low grey house that once had
served as a place of refuge in time of plague for the Fellows of one
of the Oxford colleges. Twice, if not three times, in the course of my
after life I have revisited this spot; the last occasion being about
two years ago. Except that the Rectory has been rebuilt the place
remains just the same. There is the old seventeenth-century dovecote
and the shell of the ancient pollard elm, in the hollow trunk of which
I used to play with a child of my own age, Mrs. Graham's little sister
Blanche, who was as fair in colouring as one of her name should be. I
believe that she has now been dead many years.

Quite near to the Rectory and not far from the pretty church, through
the chancel door of which once I saw a donkey thrust its head and
burst into violent brays in the midst of Mr. Graham's sermon, stood a
farm-house. The farmer, a long, lank man who wore a smart frock, was
very kind to me--I found his grave in the churchyard when last I was
there. He was called Quatermain, a name that I used in "King Solomon's
Mines" and other books in after years. After looking at this farm and
the tree nearby which bore walnuts bigger and finer than any that grow
nowadays, I went to the new Rectory and there saw working in the
garden a tall, thin old man, who reminded me strangely of one whom I
remembered over thirty years before.

"Is your name Quatermain?" I asked.

He answered that it was. Further inquiry revealed the fact that he was
a younger brother of my old friend, whom I was able to describe to him
so accurately that he exclaimed in delight:

"That's him! Why, you /do/ bring him back from the dead, and he gone
so long no one don't think of him no more."

To this Garsington period of my childhood I find some allusions in
letters received from the wife of my tutor, Mrs. Graham. Like so many
ladies' epistles they are undated, but I gather from internal evidence
that they were written in the year 1886, a quarter of a century ago. I
quote only those passages which give Mrs. Graham's recollections of me
as I appeared to her in or about the year 1866. She says, talking of
one of my books, "I could scarcely realize that the little quiet
gentle boy who used to drive with me about the Garsington lanes could
have written such a very clever book." In this letter she adds an
amusing passage: "I was told the other day that you had never been
abroad yourself but had married a Zulu lady and got all your
information from her."

I suppose it was before I went to Mr. Graham's that we all migrated
abroad for a certain period. Probably this was in order that we might
economise, though what economy my father can have found in dragging a
tumultuous family about the Continent I cannot conceive. Or perhaps I
used to join them during the holidays.

One of the places in which we settled temporarily was Dunkirk, where
we used to have lively times. Several of my elder brothers,
particularly Jack and Andrew, and I, together with some other English
boys, among whom were the sons of the late Professor Andrew Crosse,
the scientist, formed ourselves into a band and fought the French boys
of a neighbouring lycee. These youths outnumbered us by far, but what
we lacked in numbers we made up for by the ferocity of our attack. One
of our stratagems was to stretch a rope across the street, over which
the little Frenchmen, as they gambolled joyously out of school,
tripped and tumbled. Then, from some neighbouring court where we lay
in wait, we raised our British war-cry and fell upon them. How those
battles raged! To this day I can hear the yells of "/Cochons
d'Anglais!/" and the answering shouts of "/Yah! Froggie, allez a votre
maman!/" as we hit and kicked and wallowed in the mire.

At last I think the police interfered on the complaints of parents,
and we were deprived of this particular joy.

Another foreign adventure that I remember, though I must have been
much older then, took place at Treport. There had been a great gale,
and notices were put up forbidding anyone to bathe because of the
dangerous current which set in during and after such storms. Needless
to say, I found in these notices a distinct incentive to disobedience.
Was a British boy to be deterred from bathing by French notices?
Never! So I took my younger brother Arthur, and going some way up the
beach, where I thought we should not be observed, we undressed and
plunged into the breakers. I had the sense, I recollect, to tell him
not to get out of his depth, but for my part I swam through or over
the enormous waves and disported myself beyond them. When I tried to
return, however, I found myself in difficulties. The current was
taking me out to sea. Oh! what a fight was that--had I not been a good
swimmer I could not have lived through it.

I set out for the shore husbanding my strength and got among the huge
rollers, fighting my way inch by inch against the tide or undertow. I
went under once and struggled up again. I went under a second time,
and, rising, once more faced that dreadful undertow. I was nearly
done, and seemed to make no progress at all. My brother Arthur was
within hailing distance of me, and I thought of calling to him. Then--
for my mind kept quite clear all this time--I reflected that as there
was no one within sight to whom he could go or shout for assistance,
he would certainly try to help me himself, with the result that we
should /both/ be drowned. So I held my tongue and fought on. Just as
everything was coming to an end--for the breakers broke over me
continually--my foot struck upon something, I suppose it was a point
of rock, and on this something I rested a while. Then, waiting a
favourable opportunity, I made a last desperate effort and struggled
to the shore, where I fell down exhausted.

As I lay there panting, some coastguards, or whatever they are called,
who had observed what was happening through their spy-glasses, arrived
at a run and very properly expressed their views in the most strenuous
language. Recovering myself at length I sat up and said in my best or
worst French:

"/Si je noye, qu'est ce que cela vous fait?/"

The answer, that even then struck me as very appropriate, was to the
effect that my individual fate did not matter twopence to them, but
"how about the reputation of Treport as a bathing-place?"

I do not recollect that I dilated upon this little adventure to my
relatives, and I am not sure that even my brother, who was four years
younger than myself, ever realised how serious had been the crisis.

I suppose that it must have been earlier than this--for as to all
these youthful experiences my memory is hazy--that we stayed for a
while at Coblentz. I remember being taken on a trip up the Rhine that
I might study the scenery, and retiring to the cabin to read a story-
book. Missing me, my father descended and dragged me out by the scruff
of the neck, exclaiming loudly, to the vast amusement of the other
passengers:

"I have paid five thalers for you to improve your mind by absorbing
the beauties of nature, and absorb them you shall!"

Of Coblentz I recall little except the different colours of the waters
of the Moselle and the Rhine. What remains fixed in my memory,
however, is the scene of our departure thence by boat. In those days
my father wore some false teeth, and, when the steamer was about to
start, it was discovered that these teeth were still reposing in a
glass upon his dressing-table a mile or more away.

A tumult followed and in the end Hocking, my mother's maid, whom I
have already mentioned, was despatched to fetch them in spite of the
remonstrances of the captain. Off she went like a racehorse, and then
ensued a most exciting time. The captain shouted and rang his bell,
the steam whistle blew, and my father shouted also, much more loudly
than the captain, whilst I and the remainder of the family giggled in
the background. A crisis supervened. The captain would wait no longer
and ordered the sailors to cast off. My father in commanding tones
ordered them to do nothing of the sort. The steam whistle sent up one
continual scream. At last the ropes were loosed, when suddenly
bounding down the street that led to the quay, her dress well above
her knees and waving the false teeth in her hand, appeared Hocking.
Then the captain and my father congratulated each other with a courtly
flourish, the latter arranged the false teeth in their proper home,
the boat started and peace reigned for a little while.

I think that it was at Cologne that we had a supper party, a
considerable affair--for wherever we went there seemed to be a large
number of people whom we knew. Among them was an aunt of mine, Mrs.
Fowle, my father's sister, who is still living to-day at a great age,
although her husband, the Rev. Mr. Fowle, who was then with her, has
long been dead. To her I am indebted for the following story of which
personally I have no recollection. It appears that when the
preliminary party or whatever it may have been was over, and at the
appointed time the company trooped in to supper, they were astonished
to find a single small boy, to wit myself, seated at the end of the
table and just finishing an excellent meal.

"Rider," said my father in tones of thunder, "what are you doing here?
Explain, sir! Explain!"

"Please, father," I answered in a mild voice, "I knew that when you
all came in there would be no room for me, so I had my supper first."

My uncle Fowle was a very humorous man, and the following is an
instance of his readiness. While in France an excited Frenchman rushed
up to him at a railway station ejaculating, "Mouton--Monsieur Moutain,
n'est-ce pas?"

"Non," replied my uncle quietly, "/Poulet, moi--Poulet!/"

When at last he was dying on a certain Christmas Eve, the servants
were sent for and filed past his bed bidding him farewell. When it
came to the cook's turn, that worthy person, losing her head in the
solemnity of the moment, bobbed a curtsey and said in a cheerful
voice:

"A merry Christmas to you, sir--I wish you a merry Christmas."

It is reported that a twinkle of the old humour came into my uncle's
eye, and a faint smile flickered on his face. The tale is of a sort
that he would have delighted to tell.

One more story:

Somewhere about the year 1868, my brother Andrew and I were staying at
Brinsop Rectory with my uncle and aunt Fowle. He was a generous man,
and, when we boys departed after such visits, used to present us with
what he called an "honorarium," or in other words a tip. On this
occasion, however, no "honorarium" was forthcoming, but in place of it
he gave us a sealed envelope which we were strictly charged not to
open until we reached a certain station on the line. To this day I can
see the pair of us fingering the envelope in the railway carriage in
the happy certainty that Uncle Fowle had surpassed himself by
presenting us with what the thin feel of the paper within assured us
was a 5 pound note!

The station was reached at last and we tore open the envelope. From it
emerged a sheet of blue paper on which were inscribed two texts, those
beginning with: "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?" and
"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." We stared at each
other blankly, for the state of our finances was such that we had
counted on that tip and did not quite appreciate this kind of holy
joke.

Oddly enough this piece of blue paper has chanced to survive all the
wanderings of my life; as I write I hold it in my hand. Would that I
had acted more closely upon the advice which it conveys!



                              CHAPTER II

                                YOUTH

  Bradenham Hall--Let to Nelson's sister--Mr. W. M. R. Haggard,
  father of H. R. H.--Chairman of Quarter Sessions--His factotum
  Samuel Adcock--Rows at Bradenham--Their comical side--Mrs. W. M.
  R. Haggard--Her beautiful character and poetic nature--Entrance
  examination for Army--Floored in Euclid--Hunting and shooting at
  Bradenham--Ipswich Grammar School--Fight with big boy--Dr. Holden,
  head master--Left Ipswich to cram for F.O. at Scoones'--Life in
  London--Spiritualist seances--First love affair--Left Scoones' for
  Natal on Sir Henry Bulwer's staff.

Bradenham Hall, in West Norfolk, is a beautifully situated and
comfortable red-brick house surrounded by woods. It was built about a
hundred and fifty years ago, and my family have resided there for four
generations. The only noteworthy piece of history connected with the
house is that it was hired by Mr. Bolton, the husband of Nelson's
sister, who on more than one occasion asked Lady Hamilton there to
stay with them. When I was a young fellow, I knew an old man in the
village called Canham who at that time was page boy at the Hall. He
remembered Lady Hamilton well, and when I asked him to describe her,
said "She waur a rare fine opstanding [here followed an outspoken and
opprobrious term], she waur!"

I may add that in my youth the glory of her ladyship's dresses was
still remembered in the village. After the battle of Trafalgar,
Nelson's personal belongings seem to have been sent from the /Victory/
to Bradenham. At any rate old Canham told me that it was his duty to
hang out certain of the Admiral's garments to air upon the lavender
bushes in the kitchen garden. A piece of furniture from his cabin now
stands in the room that Lady Hamilton occupied. Honoria, Canham
described as "a pale little slip of a thing."

Notwithstanding his somewhat frequent excursions abroad and certain
years that we spent at Leamington and in London when economy was the
order of the day, my father passed most of his life at Bradenham, to
which he was devotedly attached. He was a barrister, but I do not
think that he practised to any great extent, probably because he had
no need to do so. Still I have heard several amusing stories (they may
be apocryphal) concerning his appearance as an advocate. One of these
I remember; the others have escaped me. He was prosecuting a man for
stealing twelve hogs, and in addressing the jury did his best to bring
home to them the enormity of the defendant's crime.

"Gentleman of the Jury," he said, "think what this man has done. He
stole not one hog but twelve hogs, and not only twelve hogs but twelve
fat hogs, exactly the same number, Gentleman of the Jury, as I see in
the box before me!"

The story adds that the defendant was acquitted! However, my father
turned his legal lore to some practical use, for he became a Chairman
of Quarter Sessions for Norfolk, an office which he held till his
death over forty years later. He used to conduct the proceedings with
great dignity, to which his appearance--for he was a very handsome
man, better looking indeed than any of his sons--and his splendid
voice added not a little.

Most of us have inherited the voice though not to the same degree.
Indeed it has been a family characteristic for generations, and my
father told me that once as a young man he was recognised as a Haggard
by an old lady who had never seen him and did not know his name,
merely by the likeness of his voice to that of his great-grandfather
who had been her friend in youth. Never was there such a voice as my
father's; moreover he was wont to make use of it. It was a joke
concerning him, which I may have originated, that if he was in the
city of Norwich and anyone wished to discover his whereabouts, all
they needed to do was to stand in the market-place for a while to
listen. Here is a tale of that voice.

My youngest brother Arthur, now Major Haggard, had been lunching with
him at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall, and after luncheon
bade him farewell on the steps of the club and went his way, to Egypt,
I believe. Presently he heard a roar of "Arthur! Arthur!" and not
wishing to attract attention to himself, quickened his steps. It was
the very worst thing that he could do, for the roars redoubled. Arthur
began to run, people began to stare. Somebody cried "Stop thief!"
Arthur, now followed by a crowd in which a policeman had joined, ran
harder till he was brought to a stop by the sentry at Marlborough
House. Then he surrendered and was escorted by the crowd back to the
Oxford and Cambridge Club. As he approached, my father bellowed out:

"Don't forget to give my love to your mother."

Then amidst shouts of laughter he vanished into the club, and Arthur
departed to catch the train to Bradenham, /en route/ for Egypt.

My father was a typical squire of the old sort, a kind of Sir Roger de
Coverley. He reigned at Bradenham like a king, blowing everybody up
and making rows innumerable. Yet I do not think there was a more
popular man in the county of Norfolk. Even the servants, whom he rated
in a fashion that no servant would put up with nowadays, were fond of
him. He could send back the soup with a request to the cook to drink
it all herself, or some other infuriating message. He could pull at
the bells until feet of connecting wire hung limply down the wall, and
announce when whoever it was he wanted appeared that Thorpe Idiot
Asylum was her proper home, and so forth. Nobody seemed to mind in the
least. It was "only the Squire's way," they said.[*]

[*] No doubt some of the characteristics of Squire De la Molle and his
    factotum George in Sir Rider's Norfolk tale /Colonel Quaritch,
    V.C./, can be traced to Mr. W. M. R. Haggard and his servant Sam
    Adcock.--Ed.

It was the same with the outdoor men, especially with one Samuel
Adcock, his factotum, a stout, humorous person whose face was marked
all over with small-pox pits. About once a week Samuel was had in to
the vestibule and abused in a most straightforward fashion, but he
never seemed to mind.

"I believe, Samuel," roared my father at him in my hearing, "donkey as
you are, you think that no one can do anything except yourself."

"/Nor they can't, Squire,/" replied Samuel calmly, which closed the
conversation.

On another occasion there was a frantic row about a certain pheasant
which was supposed to have come to its end unlawfully. My father had
ordered this fowl to be stuffed that it might be produced in some
pending legal proceedings. Samuel, who I think at that time was head-
keeper and probably knew more about the pheasant's end than my father,
did not pay the slightest attention to these commands. Then came the
row.

"Don't you argue with me, sir," said my father to Samuel, who for the
last ten minutes had been sitting silent with his eyes fixed upon the
ceiling. "Answer me without further prevarication. Have you obeyed my
orders and had that pheasant stuffed?"

"Lor'! Squire," replied Samuel, "you stuffed it yourself a week ago!"

On inquiry it transpired that Samuel, to prevent further complications
and awkward questions, had prevailed upon the cook to roast that
pheasant and send it up for my parent's dinner. So the lawsuit was
dropped.

My father was a regular in attendance at church. We always sat in the
chancel on oak benches originally designed for the choir. If he
happened to be in time himself and other parishioners, such as the
farmers' daughters, happened to be late, his habit was, when he saw
them enter, to step into the middle of the nave, produce a very large
old watch which I now possess--for on his death-bed he told Hocking to
give it to me--and hold it aloft that the sinners as they walked up
the church might become aware of the enormity of their offence.

He always read the Lessons and read them very well. There were certain
chapters, however, those which are full of names both in the Old and
New Testaments, which were apt to cause difficulty. It was not that he
was unable to pronounce these names, for having been a fair scholar in
his youth he did this better than most. Yet when he had finished the
list it would occur to him that they might have been rendered more
satisfactorily. So he would go back to the beginning and read them all
through again.

At the conclusion of the service no one in the church ventured to stir
until he had walked down it slowly and taken up his position on a
certain spot in the porch. Here he stood and watched the congregation
emerge, counting them like sheep.

Notwithstanding his hot temper, foibles and tricks of manner, there
was something about him that made him extraordinarily popular, not
only as I have said in his household but in the outside world. Thus I
remember that once the Liberals (needless to say he was the strongest
of Conservatives) offered not to contest the division if he would
consent to represent it. This, however, with all the burden of his
large family on his back he could not afford to do. It is a pity, for
I am sure that his strong personality, backed as it was by remarkable
shrewdness, would have made him a great figure in the House of Commons
and one who would have been long remembered.

In many ways he was extraordinarily able, though, if one may say so of
a man who was so very much a man, his mind had certain feminine
characteristics that for aught I know may have come to him with his
Russian blood. Thus I do not think that he reasoned very much. He
jumped to conclusions as a woman does, and those conclusions, although
often exaggerated, were in essence very rarely wrong. Indeed I never
knew anyone who could form a more accurate judgement of a person of
either sex after a few minutes of conversation, or even at sight. He
seemed to have a certain power of summing up the true nature of man,
woman or child, though I am sure that he did not in the least know
upon what he based his estimate. It must not be supposed, however,
that he was by any means shallow or superficial. In any great event
his nature revealed an innate depth and dignity; all the noise that he
was so fond of making ceased and he became very quiet.

Nobody could be more absolutely delightful than my father when he
chose, and, /per contra/, I am bound to add that nobody could be more
disagreeable. His rows with his children were many, and often on his
part unjust. One of the causes of these outbreaks was that he seemed
unable to realise that children do not always remain children.

Once when I was a young man in Africa--it was just before I was
appointed Master of the High Court in the Transvaal--I was very
anxious to come home after several years' absence from England, on
"urgent private affairs." To be frank, I desired to bring a certain
love affair to a head by a formal engagement, which there was no doubt
I could have done at that time.

For certain reasons, however, it was impossible for me to get leave at
the moment. Yet the matter was one that would admit of no delay. In
this emergency I went to my chief, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, told him
how things stood and obtained a promise from him that if I resigned my
appointment in order to visit England, as it was necessary I should
do, he would make arrangements to ensure my reappointment either to
that or to some other billet on my return.

I suppose that I did not make all this quite clear in my letters home,
and almost certainly I did not explain why it was necessary for me to
come home. The result was that the day before I started, after I had
sent my luggage forward to Cape Town, I received a most painful letter
from my father. Evidently he thought or feared that I was abandoning a
good career in Africa and about to come back upon his hands. Although
it was far from the fact, this view may or may not have been
justified. What I hold even now was not justified was the harsh way in
which it was expressed. The words I have forgotten, for I destroyed
the letter many years ago, immediately upon its receipt, I think, but
the sting of them after so long an absence I remember well enough,
though some four-and-thirty years have passed since they were written,
a generation ago.

They hurt me so much that immediately after reading them I withdrew my
formal resignation and cancelled the passage I had taken in the post-
cart to Kimberley /en route/ for the Cape and England. As a result the
course of two lives was changed. The lady married someone else, with
results that were far from fortunate, and the effect upon myself was
not good. I know now that all was for the best so far as I am
concerned, and in these events I see the workings of the hand of
Destiny. Many, I am aware, will think this a hard saying, but from Job
down man has found it difficult to escape a certain faith in fatalism
which even St. Paul seems to have accepted.


  There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
  Rough-hew them how we will,


writes the inspired Shakespeare, and who shall deny that he writes
truth? The alternative would seem to be the acceptance of a doctrine
of blind chance which I confess I find hideous. Moreover, if it is to
prevail, how fearful are our human responsibilities. Because my dear
father, who had the interests of all his children so closely at heart,
wrote a sharp and testy letter, probably under the influence of some
other irritation of which I know nothing, is he to be saddled with the
weight of all the consequences of that letter? Or am I to be saddled
with those consequences because I was a high-spirited and sensitive
young man who took the letter too seriously? If we knew the answers to
these questions we should have solved the meaning of the secret of our
lives. But they are hidden by the blackness that walls us in, that
blackness in which the sphinx will speak at last--or stay for ever
silent.

Meanwhile the moral is that people should be careful of what they put
on paper. When we throw a stone into the sea, who knows where the
ripple ends?

To return--these rows at Bradenham, ninety-nine out of a hundred of
which meant nothing at all, had a very comical side to them. Perhaps
they sprang up at table on the occasion of an argument between my
father and one of his sons. Then he would rise majestically, announce
in solemn tones that he refused to be insulted in his own house, and
depart, banging the door loudly behind him. Across the hall he went
into the drawing-room and banged that door, out of the drawing-room
into the vestibule (here there are two doors, so the bang was double-
barrelled), through the vestibule into the garden, if the row was of
the first magnitude. If not he banged his way back into the dining-
room by the serving entrance, and very probably sat down again in
quite a sweet temper, the exercise having relieved his feelings.
Especially was this so if the offending son had banged /himself/ out
of the house by some other route.

Only the other day I examined those Bradenham doors and their hinges.
The workmanship of them is really wonderful. After half a century of
banging added to their ordinary wear, they are as good as when they
were made. We do not see such joinery nowadays.

Considered as a whole it would have been difficult to find a more
jovial party than we were at Bradenham in the days of my youth,
especially when my father was in a good mood. The noise of course was
tremendous, because everybody had plenty to say and was fully
determined that it should not be hidden from the world. In the midst
of all this hubbub sat my dearest mother--like an angel that had lost
her way and found herself in pandemonium. Not being blest with the
Haggard voice, though she had a very sweet one of her own, often and
often she was reduced to the necessity of signifying her wishes by
signs. Indeed it became a habit of hers, if she needed the salt or
anything else, to point to it, and beckon it towards her. One of her
daughters-in-law once asked my mother how on earth she made herself
heard in the midst of so much noise at table.

"My dear," she answered, "I /whisper/! When I whisper they all stop
talking, because they wonder what is the matter. Then I get my
chance."

Here I will try to give some description of this mother with whom we
were blest. Twenty-two years have passed since she left us, but I can
say honestly that every one of those years has brought me to a deeper
appreciation of her beautiful character. Indeed she seems to be much
nearer to me now that she is dead than she was while she still lived.
It is as though our intimacy and mutual understanding has grown in a
way as real as it is mysterious. Someone says that the dead are never
dead to us until they are forgotten, and if that be so, in my case my
mother lives indeed. No night goes by that I do not think of her and
pray that we may meet again to part no more. If our present positions
were reversed, this would please me, could I know of it, and so I
trust that this offering of a son's unalterable gratitude and
affection may please her, for after all such things are the most
fragrant flowers that we can lay upon the graves of our beloved. The
Protestant Faith seems vaguely to inculcate that we should not pray
for the dead. If so, I differ from the Protestant Faith, who hold that
we should not only pray for them but to them, that they will judge our
frailties with tenderness and will not forget us who do not forget
them. Even if the message is delivered only after ten thousand years,
it will still be a message that most of us would be glad to hear; and
if it is never delivered at all, still it will have been sent, and
what can man do more?

I know that my mother believed that such efforts are not in vain, for
she was filled with a very earnest faith. After her death, in the
drawer of her writing-table were found four lines, feebly inscribed in
pencil, which are believed to be the last words she wrote. They are
before me now and I transcribe them:


  Lo! in the shadowy valley here He stands:
    My soul pale sliding down Earth's icy slope
  Descends to meet Him, with beseeching hands
    Trembling with Fear--and yet upraised in Hope.


My mother was married when she was twenty-five years of age, and
children came in what ladies nowadays would consider superabundance.
The eldest, my sister Ella, was born in Rome in March 1845, while they
were still upon a marriage tour, and subsequently, in quick
succession, the others followed. The last of us, my brother Arthur,
appeared in November 1860--well do I remember my father in a flowered
dressing-gown telling us to be quiet because we had a little brother.
This allows nearly sixteen years between the eldest and the youngest,
including one who came into the world still-born. Although she had ten
children living, my mother never ceased to regret this boy, and I
remember her crying, when she pointed out to me where he was buried in
Bradenham churchyard.

My mother never was a beauty in the ordinary sense of the word, but in
youth, to judge by the pictures which I have seen of her (photographs
were not then known), she must have been very refined and charming in
appearance, and indeed remained so all her life. Her abilities were
great; taking her all in all she was perhaps the ablest woman whom I
have known, though she had no iron background to her character; for
that she was too gentle. Her bent no doubt was literary, and had
circumstances permitted I am sure she would have made a name in that
branch of art to which in the intervals of her crowded life she
gravitated by nature. Also she was a good musician, and drew well. Of
her mental abilities I have however spoken in a brief memoir which I
published as a preface to a new edition of my mother's poem, "Life and
its Author."

I think that the greatest of her gifts, however, was that of
conversation. No more charming companion could be imagined. Also she
had the art of drawing the best out of anyone with whom she might be
talking, as the sympathetic sometimes can do. In a minute or two she
would find which was his or her strongest point and to this turn the
conversation. Notwithstanding the tumultuous nature of her life, her
illnesses and other distractions, she contrived to read a great deal,
and to keep herself /au courant/ with all thought movements and the
political affairs of the day. Further she did her very best to teach
her numerous children the truths of religion, and to lead them into
the ways of righteousness and peace. I fear, however, that at times we
got beyond her. It is not easy for any woman to follow and direct all
the physical and mental developments of a huge and vigorous family who
are continually coming and going, first from schools and elsewhere,
and later from every quarter of the world.

She never complained, but I cannot think that the life she was called
upon to lead was very congenial to her. When young in India, where at
that time English ladies were rare, as was natural in the case of one
of her charm who was known also to be a considerable heiress, she was
much sought after and feted. Then she returned to England and married,
and for her the responsibilities of life began with a vengeance, to
cease no more until she died. These indeed were complicated by the
fact that a time came when she had to think a good deal about ways and
means, especially after my father, who had the passion of his
generation for land, insisted upon investing most of her fortune in
that security just at the commencement of its great fall in value. Her
various duties, including that of housekeeping, of which she was a
perfect mistress, left her scarcely an hour to follow her own literary
and artistic tastes. All she could do was to give a little attention
to gardening, to which she was devoted.

On the whole life at Bradenham must have been very dull for her,
especially after the London house was sold and she was settled there
more or less permanently. She used to describe to me the wearisome and
interminable local dinner-parties to which she was obliged to go in
her early married life. The men she met at them talked, she said,
chiefly about "roots," and for a long while she could not imagine what
these roots might be and why they were so interested in them, until at
length she discovered that they referred to mangold-wurzel and to
turnips, both as crops and as a shelter for the birds which they loved
to shoot. One good fortune she had, however: all her children survived
her, all were deeply attached to her, and, what is strange in so large
a family, none of them went to the bad.

Such was the circle in which I grew up. I think that on the whole I
was rather a quiet youth, at any rate by comparison. Certainly I was
very imaginative, although I kept my thoughts to myself, which I dare
say had a good deal to do with my reputation for stupidity. I believe
I was considered the dull boy of the family. Without doubt I was slow
at my lessons, chiefly because I was always thinking of something
else. Also to this day there are subjects at which I am extremely
stupid. Thus, although I rarely forget the substance of anything worth
remembering, never could or can I learn anything by heart, and for
this reason I have been obliged to abandon the active pursuit of
Masonry. Moreover all mathematics are absolutely abhorrent to me,
while as for Euclid it bored me so intensely that I do not think I
ever mastered the meaning of the stuff.

I think it is fortunate for me that I have never been called upon to
face the competitive examinations which are now so fashionable, and, I
will add, in my opinion in many ways so mischievous, for I greatly
doubt whether I should have succeeded in them. The only one for which
I ever entered was that for the Army, which about 1872 was more severe
than is now the case. Then I went up almost without preparation, not
because I wished to become a soldier but in order to keep a friend
company, and was duly floored by my old enemy, Euclid, for which I am
very thankful. Had I passed I might have gone on with the thing and by
now been a retired colonel with nothing to do, like so many whom I
know.

Of those early years at Bradenham few events stand out clearly in my
mind. One terrific night, however, when I was about nine years old, I
have never forgotten. I lay abed in the room called the Sandwich, and
for some reason or other could not sleep. Then it was that suddenly my
young intelligence for the first time grasped the meaning of death. It
came home to me that I too must die; that my body must be buried in
the ground and my spirit be hurried off to a terrible, unfamiliar land
which to most people was known as Hell. In those days it was common
for clergymen to talk a great deal about Hell, especially to the
young. It was an awful hour. I shivered, I prayed, I wept. I thought I
saw Death waiting for me by the library door. At last I went to sleep
to dream that I was already in this hell and that the peculiar form of
punishment allotted to me was to be continually eaten alive by rats!

Thus it was that I awoke out of childhood and came face to face with
the facts of destiny.

My other recollections are mostly of a sporting character. Like the
majority of country-bred boys I adored a gun. That given to me was a
single-barrelled muzzle-loader. With this weapon I went within an ace
of putting an end to my mortal career, contriving in some mysterious
way to let it off so that the charge just grazed my face. Also I
almost shot my brother Andrew through a fence which it was our habit
to hunt for rabbits, one of us on either side, with Jack, a dear
terrier dog, working the ditch in the middle.

I did terrible deeds with that gun. Once even, unable to find any
other game, I shot a missel-thrush on its nest, a crime that has
haunted me ever since. Also I poached a cock-pheasant, shooting it on
the wing through a thick oak tree so that it fell into a pool, whence
it was retrieved with difficulty. Also I killed a farmer's best-laying
duck. It was in the moat of the Castle Plantation, where I concluded
no respectable tame duck would be, and there it died, with results
almost as painful to me as to the duck, which was demonstrated to have
about a dozen eggs inside it.

Generally there was a horse or two at Bradenham on which we boys could
hunt. One was a mare called Rebecca, a very smart animal that belonged
more or less to my brother Bazett, which I overrode or lamed following
the hounds, a crime whereof I heard plenty afterwards. The mount that
most often fell to my lot, however, was a flea-bitten old grey called
Body-Snatcher, because of a string-halt so pronounced that, when he
came out of the stable he almost hit his hoof against his stomach. As
a matter of fact I discovered afterwards from some dealer that Body-
Snatcher had in his youth been a two-hundred-guinea horse. Meeting
with some accident, he was sold and put into a trap, which he upset,
killing one of the occupants, and finally was purchased by my father
for 15 pounds. But when he warmed to his work and the hounds were in
full cry, with a light weight like myself upon his back, there was
scarcely a horse in the county that could touch him over a stiff
fence. What his end was I cannot remember. Sometimes also my father
rode, though not in later years. I recall riding with him down some
lane out Swaffham way. Suddenly he turned to me and said, "When I am
dead, boy, you will remember these rides with me." And so I have.

After my time at Mr. Graham's, of whom I have spoken, came to an end,
how or when I do not know, the question arose as to where I should be
sent to school. All my five elder brothers, except Jack the sailor,
had the advantage of a public school education. William and Bazett
went to Winchester, and afterwards to Oxford and Cambridge
respectively; Alfred to Haileybury, Andrew to Westminster, and
subsequently my younger brother Arthur to Shrewsbury and Cambridge.
When it came to my turn, however, funds were running short, which is
scarcely to be wondered at, as my father has told me that about this
time the family bills for education came to 1200 pounds a year. Also,
as I was supposed to be not very bright, I dare say it was thought
that to send me to a public school would be to waste money. So it was
decreed that I should go to the Grammar School at Ipswich, which had
the advantages of being cheap and near at hand.

Never shall I forget my arrival at that educational establishment, to
which my father conducted me. We travelled /via/ Norwich, where he
bought me a hat. For some reason best known to himself, the head-gear
which he selected was such as is generally worn by a curate, being of
the ordinary clerical black felt and shape. In this weird head-dress I
was duly delivered at Ipswich Grammar School. As soon as my father had
tumultuously departed to catch his train, I was sent into the
playground, where I stood a forlorn and lanky figure. Presently a boy
came up and hit me in the face, saying:

"Phillips" (I think that was his name) "sends this to the new fellow
in a parson's hat."

This was too much for me, for underneath my placid exterior I had a
certain amount of spirit.

"Show me Phillips," I said, and a very big boy was pointed out to me.

I went up to him, made some appropriate repartee to his sarcasm about
my hat, and hit him in the face. Then followed a fight, of which, as
he was so much larger and stronger, of course I got the worst.
However, I gained the respect of my schoolfellows, and thenceforth my
clergyman's hat was tolerated until I managed to procure another.

I spent two or three years at Ipswich. At that time it was a rough
place, and there was much bullying of which the masters were not
aware. The best thing about the school was its head master, Dr.
Holden, with whom I became very friendly in after life when, as it
chanced, we lived almost next door to each other in Redcliffe Square.

He was a charming and a kindly gentleman, also one of the best
scholars of his age. But I do not think that the management of a
school like Ipswich was quite the task to which he was suited, and I
am sure that much went on there whereof he knew nothing.

The second master was a certain Dr. or Mr. Saunderson, an enormous man
physically, who was also a most excellent scholar. He was a gentleman
too, as the following story shows.

Once by some accident I wrote a really fine set of Latin verses. He
had me up and asked me where I had cribbed them. I told him that I had
not cribbed them at all. He answered that I was a liar, for he was
sure that there was no one in the school who could write such verses.
My recollection was that I proved to him that this was not the case
and that there the matter ended. It appears, however, as I learned a
few years ago on the occasion of my returning to Ipswich School to
take a leading part in the Speech-day functions, that the real
/finale/ was more dramatic. A gentleman who had been my classmate in
those far-off days informed me that when Mr. Saunderson discovered
that he had accused me falsely, he summoned the whole school and
offered me a public apology. From inquiries that I made there seems to
be no doubt that this really happened.

I did not distinguish myself in any way at Ipswich--I imagine for the
old reason that I was generally engaged in thinking of other things
than the lesson in hand. Moreover in those times boys did not receive
the individual attention that is given to them now, even in the Board
schools. The result was that the bent of such abilities as I may
possess was never discovered. On one occasion, however, I did triumph.

Mr. Saunderson offered a special prize to the boy who could write the
best descriptive essay on any subject that he might select. I chose
that of an operation in a hospital. I had never been in a hospital or
seen an operation, so any information I had upon the matter must have
come from reading. Still I beat all the other essayists hollow and won
the prize. This, as it chanced, I never received, for when I returned
to school after the holidays, Mr. Saunderson had forgotten all about
the matter, and I did not like to remind him of it.

I took my part in the school games and was elected captain of the
second football team, but did not stay long enough at Ipswich to get
into the first. Not much more returns to me about this period of my
life that is worthy of record. Although I believe that I was popular
among my schoolmates, who showed their affection by naming me "Nosey"
in allusion to the prominence of that organ on my undeveloped face, I
did not care for school, and found it monotonous, with the result that
my memories concerning it are somewhat of a blur.

I know of no more melancholy experience than to return to such a place
after the lapse of forty years or more, and look on the old familiar
things and find moving among them scarcely a living creature whom we
knew. I remember telling my audience on the occasion to which I have
alluded above, that to me the room seemed to be full of ghosts. Some
of the boys laughed, for they thought that I was joking, but a day may
come, say towards the year 1950, when they too will return and stand
as I did surveying an utterly alien crowd, and then, perhaps, they
will remember my words and understand their meaning. Some tradition of
me remained in the place, for one of the elder boys took me to the
room that was my study and showed me the first two initials of my
name, "H. R.," cut upon the mantelpiece. Although I was in a great
hurry to catch the train, I made shift to add the remaining "H."

There was a good deal of fighting at Ipswich, in which I took my
share. I remember being well licked by a boy who was aggrieved because
I had ducked him while we were swimming together in the river. When
his challenge to battle was accepted, and we came to fight it out, I
discovered that he was left-handed, which puzzled me altogether.
However, I fought on till my eyes were bunged up and we were
separated. One of the biggest boys of the school, a fine young man,
was a great bully and, unknown to the masters, used to cruelly
maltreat those who were smaller and weaker than himself. This lad
became a clergyman, and, as it happened, in after years I struck his
spoor in a very remote part of the world. He had been chaplain there,
and left no good name behind him. More years went by and I received a
letter from him, the gist of which was to ask me what land and climate
I could recommend to him to ensure a quick road to the devil. I think
I replied that West Africa seemed to fulfil all requirements, but
whether he ever reached either the first or the second destination I
do not know. Poor fellow! I am sorry for him. He was clever and
handsome, and might have found a better fate. I have heard, however,
that he made a disastrous marriage, which often takes men more quickly
to a bad end than does or did even the hinterland of West Africa.

While I was still at Ipswich I spent a summer holiday in Switzerland
when I was about sixteen, lodging with a foreign family in order to
improve my French. With the able assistance of the young ladies of the
house I acquired a good colloquial knowledge of that language in quite
a short time. I never saw any of them again. When my visit was over I
joined the rest of my family at Fluellen on the Lake of Lucerne.
Thence my brother Andrew and I walked to the top of the St. Gothard
Pass, there to bid farewell to our brother Alfred, who was crossing
the Alps in a diligence on his way to India at the commencement of his
career. We slept the night at some wayside inn. On the following
morning the pretty Swiss chambermaid, with whom we had made friends,
took us to a mortuary near by and, among a number of other such
gruesome relics, showed us the skull of her own father, which she
polished up affectionately with her apron.

At the top of the pass we met my brother and my father, who had
accompanied him so far. The diligence drove off, we shouting our
farewells, my father waving a tall white hat out of which, to the
amazement of the travellers, fell two towels and an assortment of
cabbage leaves and other greenery. It was like a conjuring trick. I
should explain that the day was hot, and my parent feared sunstroke.

I think that I remained at Ipswich for only one term after this trip
abroad. Then, in the following holidays, with characteristic
suddenness my father made up his mind that I was to leave, so Ipswich
knew me no more. It was at this period that my father determined that
I should go up for the Foreign Office, and, with a view to preparing
for the examination, I was sent to a private tutor in London, a French
professor who had married one of my sister's school-mistresses. He was
a charming man, and she was a charming woman, but, having married late
in life, they did not in the least assimilate. For one thing, his
religious views were what are called broad, whereas she belonged to
the Society of Plymouth Brethren, whose views are narrow. She told him
that he would go to hell. He intimated in reply that, if she were not
there, that fate would have its consolations. In short, the rows were
awful. I never knew a more ill-assorted pair. I think that I stopped
with these good people for about a year, imbibing some knowledge of
French literature, and incidentally of the tenets of the Plymouth
Brethren. Then my father announced that I was to go to Scoones, the
great crammer, and there make ready to face the Foreign Office
examination.

To this end, when I was just eighteen, I was put in lodgings alone in
London, entirely uncontrolled in any way. The first set of these
lodgings was somewhere near Westbourne Grove and kept by a young
widow. As they did not turn out respectable I was moved to others in
Davis Street, an excellent situation for a young gentleman about town.
Be it remembered that this happened at a time of life when youths
nowadays are either still at school or just gone up to College, where
they have the advantage of effective guidance and control for some
years. At this age I was thrown upon the world, as I remember when I
was a little lad my elder brothers threw me into the Rhine to teach me
to swim. After nearly drowning I learned to swim, and in a sense the
same may be said of my London life.

There is a kind Providence that helps some people through many
dangers, although unfortunately it seems to abandon others to their
fate. In my case it helped me through.

Among the risks I ran were those attendant upon spiritualism. Somehow
or other, I have not the faintest recollection how, I became a
frequent visitor at the house of old Lady Paulet, No. 20 Hanover
Square. She was a great spiritualist, and I used to attend her
seances. Undoubtedly very strange things happened at these seances
which I will not stop to describe. Among the other habitues of the
"circle" was Lady Caithness, who wore a necklace of enormous diamonds.
When the lights were turned down these diamonds were the last objects
visible. They gleamed alone, and seemed to be hung on air. On these
occasions a lady called Mrs. Guppy was the great medium. On Mrs. Guppy
I and a confederate used to play jokes. For instance, one of the
manifestations was that the table suddenly became covered with great
quantities of roses covered with dew. Off these roses my friend and I,
having unlinked our hands, broke a number of fat, hard buds and,
knowing where she was sitting, discharged them through the darkness
with all our strength straight at the head of Mrs. Guppy. Little
wonder that presently we heard that poor lady exclaim:

"Oh! the spirits are hurting me so."

I think it was Lady Caithness who made a somewhat similar remark when,
in the course of my investigation of certain phenomena that were
happening underneath the table in connection with some musical glasses
that seemed to be emitting their plaintive strains from between my
feet, I landed her a most severe kick upon the shins.

It was all very amusing, and would have done no harm had the business
stopped there. But it did not. Before I leave 20 Hanover Square,
however, I may mention that more than a quarter of a century
afterwards I revisited it under strangely different circumstances. The
house is now the home of various societies, and in the offices of one
of these societies I was called upon to preside as Chairman of the
Committee of the Society of Authors upon the occasion of a General
Meeting. Of course everything was changed, but it seemed to me that I
recognised the marble mantelpieces.

My acquaintance with Lady Paulet gave me the entree to the
spiritualistic society of the day. Perhaps some of them had hopes that
I might develop into a first-class medium. Among the seances that I
attended were some at a private house in Green Street. Here I
witnessed remarkable things. The medium was a young lady, not merely
in the conventional sense of the term, who evidently believed in her
mission and was not paid. She sank into a trance secured by many
tests, and "strange things happened" or seemed to happen. Thus, to
leave out the minor manifestations, two young women of great beauty--
or perhaps I should say young spirits--one dark and the other fair,
appeared in the lighted room. I conversed with and touched them both,
and noted that their flesh seemed to be firm but cold. I remember
that, being a forward youth of inquiring mind, I even asked the
prettier of the two to allow me to give her a kiss. She smiled but did
not seem to be at all annoyed, but I never got the kiss. I think she
remarked that it was not permissible.

She was draped in a kind of white garment which covered her head, and
I asked her to allow me to see her hair. She pushed up the white
drapery from her forehead, remarking sweetly that if I would look I
should see that she had no hair, and in fact she appeared to be quite
bald. A minute or two later, however, she had long and beautiful hair
which flowed all about her.

Afterwards either she or the other apparition remarked that she was
tired. Thereon her body seemed to shrink, with the result that, as her
head remained where it was, the neck elongated enormously, after the
fashion of Alice in Wonderland. Then she fell backwards and vanished
altogether.

To this day I wonder whether the whole thing was illusion, or, if not,
what it can have been. Of one thing I am certain--that spirits, as we
understand the term, had nothing to do with the matter. On the other
hand I do not believe that it was a case of trickery; rather I am
inclined to think that certain forces with which we are at present
unacquainted were set loose that produced phenomena which, perhaps,
had their real origin in our own minds, but nevertheless were true
phenomena.

Sometimes these phenomena were purely physical. Thus I and some other
of the Scoones students' arranged a seance at the house of the uncle
of one of them in St. James's Place, where no such thing had ever been
held before. The medium, a feeble little man, whose name, I think, was
Edwards, arrived and at the door was pounced upon by two of the
strongest young men present, who never let go of him until the end of
the proceedings. These were various and tumultuous. We sat in the
darkened dining-room round the massive table, which presently began to
skip like a lamp. Lights floated about the room, and with them a file
of /Morning Posts/ which normally reposed in a corner. Cold little
hands picked at the studs in our shirts, and the feather fans off the
mantelpiece floated to and fro, performing their natural office upon
our heated brows. Our host, Mr. Norris, whispered to me that he was
receiving these attentions.

"Catch hold of the thing," I said, letting go of his hand.

He did so and thrust his fingers through the leather loop of the fan.
Then followed a great struggle, for somebody or something located near
the ceiling strove to tear it away from him.

"Stick to it," I said, and there followed a crack.

"Confound them! they have broken my fan," said Mr. Norris, and passed
me the round and carved ivory handle, which I felt so distinctly that
I could have sworn that it was separated from the feather top. I gave
it back to him and he threw it down upon the table, remarking that as
the "spirits" had broken it they might as well mend it again. When the
light was turned on later there before him lay the fan--but unbroken
and even unruffled.

This was curious but by no means the cream of the proceedings. We
became aware that heavy articles were on the move, and the light
showed us that we were not mistaken. There in the centre of the
dining-table, piled one upon the other, like Ossa upon Pelion, were
the two massive dining-room arm-chairs, and on the top of these,
reaching nearly to the ceiling, appeared Mr. Norris's priceless china
candelabra.

How were those massive chairs, which it would have taken two skilled
and careful men to lift to that height, passed over our heads without
our knowing it and set one upon another? Even if the medium, who as I
have said was held by the two strongest of the sitters, friends of my
own who were above suspicion, were free, he could never have lifted
those chairs. Even if he had had a confederate they could never have
lifted them, and certainly could not have arranged the china upon the
top of the pile.

I gave it up then and, after assuring the reader that these things
happened exactly as stated, I give it up now. All I can do is to fall
back upon my hypothesis that some existent but unknown force was let
loose which produced these phenomena.

Whatever may be the true explanation, on one point I am quite sure,
namely that the whole business is mischievous and to be discouraged.
Bearing in mind its effect upon my own nerves, never would I allow any
young person over whom I had control to attend a seance. I am well
aware that there are many different grades of spiritualism. The name
covers such occurrences as I have described and the researches of wise
scientists like Sir Oliver Lodge. Lastly, there is an even higher
variant of preternatural experience to which it may be applied--I mean
that of the communion of the individual soul still resident on earth
with other souls that have passed from us; this, too, without the
intervention of any medium, but as it were face to face in those
surrounding solitudes that, unless we dream--as is possible, for the
nerves and the imagination play strange tricks--from time to time they
find the strength to travel.

In short, spiritualism should be left to the expert and earnest
investigator, or become the secret comfort of such few hearts as can
rise now and again beyond the world, making as it were their trial
flights towards that place where, as we hope, their rest remaineth. To
most people that door should remain sealed, for beyond it they will
find only what is harmful and unwholesome.

Since those days nearly forty years ago I have never attended a
seance, nor do I mean ever to do so more.

During this time that I was at Scoones' a great event happened. I fell
truly and earnestly in love. If all goes well, this, I suppose, is one
of the best things that can happen to a young fellow. It steadies him
and gives him an object in life: someone for whom to work. If all goes
ill, it is one of the worst, for then the reverse is apt to come
about. It unsteadies him, makes him reckless, and perhaps throws him
in the way of undesirable adventures. In my case, in the end all went
wrong, or seemed to do so at the time.

I was taken by a friend to a ball at Richmond; who gave it I have long
forgotten. There I saw a very beautiful young lady a few years older
than myself to whom I was instantly and overwhelmingly attracted. I
say beautiful advisedly, for to my mind she was one of the three
really lovely women whom I have seen in my life. The second was the
late Duchess of Leinster, and the third was a village girl at
Bradenham who was reported to be the daughter of a gentleman. She,
poor thing, died quite young.

At length the ball came to an end and I escorted this lady back to her
carriage--she was driving back to London alone--with the intelligent
object of ascertaining where she lived. In this, by the way, I failed;
either I did not catch the address or it was too vague and general.
Ultimately, however, I overcame that difficulty by a well-directed
inquiry at a butcher's shop in what I knew to be the neighbourhood. It
occurred to me that even goddesses must eat.

The reason that I mention this matter is that quite a curious
coincidence is connected with it. The house where the ball took place
had a garden in front, down which garden ran a carpeted path. At the
end of the path a great arch had been erected for the occasion, and
through this arch I followed the young lady. Some thirty-five years
later I was present at her death-bed--for happily I was able to be of
service to her in her later life--and subsequently, with my wife, who
had become her friend many years before, was one of the few mourners
at her funeral. At the church where this took place it is the custom
to carry out coffins through the big western door. As I followed hers
the general aspect of the arch of this door reminded me of something,
at the moment I could not remember what. Then it came back to me. It
was exactly like that other arch through which I had followed her to
her carriage on the night when first we met. Also, strangely different
as were the surroundings, there were accessories, floral and other,
that were similar in their general effect.

I think I was about a year and a half at Scoones', making many
friends, collecting many experiences and some knowledge of the world.
How much book knowledge I collected I do not know, nor whether I
should have passed for the Foreign Office if I had gone up. But it was
not fated that I should do so. In the summer vacation of 1875 I went
to join my family, whom, in the course of one of his continual
expeditions, my father had settled for a while at Tours. I travelled
/via/ Paris, which I found looking almost itself again. On the last
occasion that I had visited it the Column Vendome was lying shattered
on the ground, the public statues were splashed over with the lead of
bullets, and great burnt-out buildings stared at me emptily. I
remembered a young Frenchman whom I knew taking me to a spot backed by
a high wall where shortly before he had seen, I think he said, 300
Communists executed at once. He told me that the soldiers fired into
the moving heap until at length it grew still. On the wall were the
marks of their bullets.

At Tours I did not live with my family, but with an old French
professor and his wife--I think their name was Demeste--in order that
I might pursue my studies of the language.

Whilst I was at Tours, making expeditions with the others to see old
castles and so forth, my father saw in the /Times/, or heard
otherwise, that Sir Henry Bulwer had been appointed to the Lieutenant-
Governorship of Natal. Now my father was a man of ideas who never lost
a chance of finding an opening for one of his sons, and the Bulwers of
Heydon in Norfolk were, as it happened, old friends of our family. So
he wrote off at once and asked Sir Henry if he would take me with him
to Africa on his staff. Sir Henry assented, which was extremely kind
of him, as I do not remember that he had ever set eyes on me.

Accordingly in a week or two Scoones' and the Foreign Office had faded
into the past, and I reported myself to my future chief in London,
where he set me to work at once ordering wine and other stores to be
consumed at Government House in Natal.



                             CHAPTER III

                                NATAL

  Leave for South Africa with Sir Henry Bulwer--Arrive Cape Town--
  Government House--Lady Barkly--Bishop Colenso--Go on to Durban--
  Then to Pietermaritzburg--Reception of Sir H. Bulwer there--Sir
  George Colley--Duties of H. R. H. at Government House--Buck-
  hunting--Journey up-country to Weenen--Zulu customs--Witch-finding
  --Pagate's kraal--Great native war-dance--Lost in bush--Saved by
  Kaffir--More about Bishop Colenso--Sir Theophilus Shepstone--His
  friendship for H. R. H.--His character and policy--Captain Cox.

Here I ought to say a few words about Sir Henry Bulwer, who, I am glad
to say, is still living, and whom I often meet at the Athenaeum Club.
Indeed, within the last few months he has read a book of mine named
"Marie" in proof, which book I have dedicated to him. I was anxious
that he should read it, for he is an old man, and who knows whether he
will be alive when it is published a year or so hence!

For Sir Henry Bulwer I have and always shall retain the greatest
affection and regard; indeed, he is my beau-ideal of what an English
gentleman should be. Also his kindness to me was great. When first I
know him some thirty-six years ago, he was about forty, and an
extremely able public servant, who had received his training in
various Colonial appointments. He was most painstaking and careful in
all his methods, but to me his weak point seemed to be that he always
saw so much of both sides of the case that he found it difficult to
make up his mind which of them he ought to follow.

My farewells were hurried. I find among the few documents that I have
preserved of this period one from my mother which is signed by all the
members of the family who were at Tours, wishing me good fortune and
good-bye. Also--and this is more valuable--there is a copy of some
verses which she addressed to me. These I quote below.


               TO MY SON RIDER

        (On leaving home. July 1875)

  And thus, my son, adown Life's vernal tide
    Light drifting, hast thou reached her troublous sea,
  Where never more thy bark may idly glide,
    But shape her course to gain the far To be!

  Rise to thy destiny! Awake thy powers!
    Mid throng of men enact the man's full part!
  No more with mists of doubt dim golden hours,
    But with strong Being fill thine eager heart!

  Nineteen short summers o'er thy youthful head
    Have shone and ripened as they flitted by:
  May their rich fruit o'er coming years be shed,
    And make God's gift of life a treasury.

  That Life is granted, not in Pleasure's round,
    Or even Love's sweet dream, to lapse content:
  Duty and Faith are words of solemn sound,
    And to their echoes must thy soul be bent.

  Conscience shall hallow all; grant noble aim,
    And firm resolve the paths of vice to shun;
  And haply, in reward, Love's lambent flame
    Through storms of life shall shine, like Earth's fair sun!

  But a few days: and far across the flood,
    To stranger lands with strangers wilt thou roam;
  Yet shall not absence loose the bonds of blood,
    Or still the voices of thy distant home.

  So, go thy way, my Child! I love thee well:
    /How/ well, no heart but mother's heart may know--
  Yet One loves better,--more than words can tell,--
    Then trust Him, now and evermore;--and go!

                                        Ella Haggard.
  July 16, 1875.


I think them beautiful lines. Moreover they are typical of the writer.


  Duty and Faith are words of solemn sound,


Well, duty and faith were the stars by which she guided her own life.

Of our voyage to Africa there is little to be said except that in
those days it was long. On arriving at Cape Town we went to Government
House, where we stayed for about a week with Lady Barkly.

Government House is, or was, a large, quaint old place--I have not
seen it from that day to this--which had the reputation of being
haunted by a certain Grey Lady who had lived there generations before
in the old Dutch days.

Since these chapters were written some letters of mind have been found
at Bradenham. From one of these, dealing with my arrival in South
Africa, I will quote some passages:


                                              Government House
                                         Cape Town: August 18, 1875.

  My dear Father,--You will see from the heading of my letter that I
  have arrived all safe at Cape Town. We have not made a very quick
  passage, nor yet a very slow one. . . . Among other things we got
  up a sort of penny reading on board, for which I wrote the
  Prologue. I also had a good deal of work to do, getting up all the
  Langalibalele case and extracting the pith from a mass of blue-
  books. It is not easy to get at the truth when it is hedged round
  by such a mass of contradictory evidence. However the whole affair
  is rather interesting, inasmuch as it gives you an idea of the
  tremendous state of ferment and excitement the Colony was and
  still is in. . . .

  We arrived here early yesterday morning, expecting to find Sir
  Garnet Wolseley waiting for us, but he has not yet returned from
  Natal, which is very awkward, as we do not know whether to wait
  for him or to go on and meet him there. . . .

  I am getting on all right, though my position is not an easy one.
  I find myself responsible for everything, and everybody comes and
  bothers me. However it all comes in the day's work. I don't know
  yet if I am private secretary, but I suppose I am as nobody else
  has appeared. I make a good many blunders, but still I think I get
  on very well on the whole. I expect I shall have a tremendous lot
  of work at Natal as the Chief told me that he was going to
  entertain a good deal, and all that will fall on my shoulders in
  addition to business. We are very good friends and shall, I think,
  continue to be so, as he is not a captious or changeable man.
  . . . Beaumont, who was secretary to Pine (the late Governor of
  Natal), puts me up to a lot of things; he is an excessively nice
  fellow and we are great allies. . . .

  The merchants of Cape Town give a ball to-morrow night to which I
  am invited. It will be a good opportunity of studying the Cape
  Town aristocracy. I have just returned from calling on the Bishop.
  The Barklys have a first-rate four-in-hand and we went through a
  beautiful country, so our drive was a pleasant one. I like the
  Bishop very much. He is a thorough specimen of muscular
  Christianity. . . . This continual influx of strangers has a very
  depressing effect. There is another big dinner on to-night, and
  there won't be a soul I know among them unless Beaumont comes,
  which I devoutly hope he will. All these new faces that you don't
  know make you think of the old ones that you do know. . . . I hope
  that you are quite well now, my dear Father, and that you do not
  miss me as much as I do you.

    I remain, with best love to all,
        Ever your most affectionate and dutiful son,
                H. Rider Haggard (or "Waggart" as they put my name
                        in the paper).

  My mother will pity me when I tell her that I've got to get
  servants. Where on earth am I to find servants, and who am I to
  ask about them?



Now before we go on to Natal where the real business of my life began,
I will stop for a moment to take stock of myself as I was in those
days at the age of nineteen.

I was a tall young fellow, quite six feet, and slight; blue-eyed,
brown-haired, fresh-complexioned, and not at all bad-looking. The
Zulus gave me the name of "Indanda," which meant, I believe, one who
is tall and pleasant-natured. Mentally I was impressionable, quick to
observe and learn whatever interested me, and could already hold my
own in conversation. Also, if necessary, I could make a public speech.
I was, however, subject to fits of depression and liable to take views
of things too serious and gloomy for my age--failings, I may add, that
I have never been able to shake off. Even then I had the habit of
looking beneath the surface of characters and events, and of trying to
get at their springs and causes. I liked to understand any country or
society in which I found myself. I despised those who merely floated
on the stream of life and never tried to dive into its depths. Yet in
some ways I think I was rather indolent, that is if the task in hand
bored me. I was ambitious and conscious of certain powers, but wanted
to climb the tree of success too quickly--a proceeding that generally
results in slips.

Further, my eldest sister, Ella (Mrs. Maddison Green), informed me
only a month or two ago that at this period I was conceited. Possibly
I may have been, for I had been living in a very forcing atmosphere
where I was made too much of by some of my elders.

Four or five days' steaming along the green and beautiful coasts of
south-eastern Africa, on which the great rollers break continually,
brought us to Port Natal. At that time the Durban harbour was not
sufficiently dredged to admit sea-going vessels, and I think we had
some difficulty in landing. There was a reception committee which
presented an address of welcome to the Lieutenant-Governor, and I
remember hurriedly copying his answer as the ship rolled off the
Point.

Sir Garnet Wolseley had been sent to Natal as temporary Governor to
settle certain matters connected with its constitution. I think that
at that time he had left the Colony himself, though of this I am not
quite sure, as I am unable to remember when I first spoke to him. In
after life I met him on several occasions. Especially do I remember a
long talk with him at a dinner-party at the house of the Bischoffheims
in London some time in the eighties. He was a small, bright-eyed,
quick-brained man who expressed his views upon the public matters of
the day with a fierceness and a vigour that were quite astonishing. We
sat together at the table after all the other guests had left to join
the ladies, and I reflected that he must have had singular confidence
in my character to say the things he did to me. However, it was
justified, for of course I never repeated a word.

Those of the Staff whom I recollect are, or were--for I think they are
now all dead--Lord Gifford, Colonel (afterwards Sir Henry)
Brackenbury, and Major (afterwards Sir William) Butler. Of these the
one who impressed himself most deeply upon my mind was Butler. He was
a most agreeable and sympathetic man, who took the trouble to talk a
good deal to me, although I was but a lad. I recall that with much
graphic detail he told me the story of how, when he was suffering from
fever, he was nearly thrown overboard as a dead man off the West Coast
of Africa, where he had been serving in the Ashanti Expedition.
Recently I have been reading his very interesting and remarkable
autobiography, in which I see he describes this incident.

Subsequently--but I think this was at Pietermaritzburg--I became well
acquainted with Colonel (afterwards Sir George) Colley. He stayed with
us at Government House and I remember a curious little incident
concerning him.

He was leaving Natal and wished to sell a shot-gun which I wished to
purchase, though I am not sure whether this was on my account or on
that of Sir Henry Bulwer. We had a difference of opinion as to the
price of the article. Finally I interviewed him one morning when he
was taking his bath, and he suggested that we should settle the matter
by tossing. This I did with a half-sovereign, he giving the call, but
who won I forget.

Of my last tragic meeting with poor Colley at the time of the first
Boer War I may speak later in this book.

After a short stay at Durban we proceeded to Maritzburg, the seat of
government, in some kind of a horse conveyance, as, except for a short
time on the coast, there was then no railway in Natal. In those days
it was a charming town of the ordinary Dutch character, with wide
streets bordered by sluits of running water and planted with gum
trees.

Of the year or so that I spent in Natal I have not much to say that is
worthy of record. The country impressed me enormously. Indeed, on the
whole I think it the most beautiful of any that I have seen in the
world, parts of Mexico alone excepted. The great plains rising by
steps to the Quathlamba or Drakensberg Mountains, the sparkling
torrential rivers, the sweeping thunderstorms, the grass-fires
creeping over the veld at night like snakes of living flame, the
glorious aspect of the heavens, now of a spotless blue, now charged
with the splendid and many-coloured lights of sunset, and now
sparkling with a myriad stars; the wine-like taste of the air upon the
plains, the beautiful flowers in the bush-clad kloofs or on the black
veld in spring--all these things impressed me, so much that were I to
live a thousand years I never should forget them.

Then there were the Zulu Kaffirs living in their kraals filled with
round beehive-like huts, bronze-coloured, noble-looking men and women
clad only in their /moochas/, whose herds of cattle wandered hither
and thither in charge of a little lad. From the beginning I was
attracted to these Zulus, and soon began to study their character and
their history.

I will quote from a letter to my mother dated Government House, Natal,
September 15, 1875.


  My dearest Mother,-- . . . You will by this time have got my
  letters from Durban and the Cape. We left Durban at 10 A.M. on the
  morning of the 1st September and came up the fifty-four miles over
  most tremendous hills in five and a half hours, going at full
  gallop all the way, in a four-horse wagonette. There were five of
  us, the Chief, Mr. Shepstone (Secretary for Native Affairs),
  Napier Broome (Colonial Secretary), Beaumont and myself. Some of
  the scenery was very fine, but we were so choked by the dust,
  which was so thick that you could not see the road beneath you,
  that we did not much enjoy it. Our guard of honour did not improve
  matters.

  When we got near Maritzburg crowds of people rode out to meet us,
  and we entered in grand style amidst loud hurrahs. We galloped up
  to Government House, where the regiment was drawn up on the lawn,
  and as soon as the carriage stopped the band struck up "God save
  the Queen" and salutes were fired from the fort. Then all the
  grandees of Maritzburg came forward and paid their respects to the
  Governor, and at last we were left alone to clean ourselves as
  best we could.

  The Government House is a very pretty building, not nearly so
  large as the Cape Government House, but far from small. I, who
  have to look after it, find it too large. I have a large bedroom
  upstairs and my office in the Executive Council chamber. The day
  after we arrived the swearing-in ceremony was held, in a room
  where the Legislative Council sit in the Public Offices building.
  It was a very swell ceremony indeed, and I had to go through an
  extraordinary amount of scraping and bowing, presenting and
  pocketing, or trying to pocket, enormous addresses, commissions,
  etc., etc. After it followed a levee, which tried my patience
  considerably, for these people came so thick and fast that I had
  no time to decipher their, for the most part, infamously written
  cards, so I had to shout out their names at haphazard. However,
  that came to an end too at last, and we drove off amidst loud
  hurrahs.

  I am at last clear on one point: I am not private secretary. The
  Chief was talking the other night to Beaumont about me and told
  him he had a very good opinion of me and thought I should do very
  well, but that he had /always intended/ to have an older man to
  help him /at first/, though who it is going to be does not seem
  clear. He wants somebody who can go and talk to all these people
  as a man of their own standing, which I cannot do. He also wants
  someone who has some experience of this sort of work. I am not in
  the least disappointed; indeed now that I see something of the
  place, and of the turbulent character of its inhabitants, I should
  have much wondered if he had made a fellow young as I am private
  secretary. Putting the money out of the question I would
  infinitely rather be rid of the responsibility, at any rate at
  present. I am sorry, very sorry, still to be dependent on my
  father, but you may be sure, my dear Mother, that I will be as
  moderate as I can. At any rate I shall cost less than if I had
  been at home. I have now learnt Sir Henry's character pretty well.
  I know him to be a man of his word, therefore I am pretty well
  convinced that I shall be his private secretary sooner or later.
  . . . I continue to get on very well with him, indeed we are the
  best of friends, and I have many friendly jaws with him. I should
  rather like to know who No. 1 is going to be, but I don't think he
  knows himself; he is very reserved on these matters. . . .

  Of work I have plenty here, but my chief trouble is my
  housekeeping. I have all this large house entirely under me, and
  being new to it find it difficult work. I have often seen with
  amusement the look of anxiety on a hostess' face at a dinner-
  party, but, by Jove, I find it far from amusing now. Dinner days
  are black Mondays to me. Imagine my dismay the other day when the
  fish did not appear and when, on whispering a furious inquiry, I
  was told the cook had forgotten it! Servants are very difficult to
  get here, and one has to pay 5 pounds a month at the lowest.


The next surviving letter is dated February 14, 1876. It gives an
account of a buck hunt which is perhaps worth transcribing.


  To begin with, I am getting on all right and have quite got over
  all signs of liver since I got a horse. This place, if only you
  take exercise, is as healthy as England, but exercise is a /sina
  qua non/. I got out for a day's buck-hunting the other day to a
  place about twelve miles off, a farm of fertile plain (about
  12,000 acres). The owner of it, a very good fellow, is one of the
  few people who preserve their buck.

  The way you shoot is this: three or four guns on good horses ride
  over the plain about fifty yards apart. If an oribe gets up, you
  have to pull up and shoot off your horse's back, which is not very
  easy till you get used to it. Sometimes you run them as I did, but
  it wants a very swift horse. I had dropped a little behind the
  others, when in galloping up to join them my horse put its foot
  into a hole and came to the ground, sending me and my loaded gun
  on to my head some five or six yards further on. I had hardly come
  to my senses and caught my horse when I saw an oribe pass like a
  flash of light, taking great bounds. I turned and went away after
  him, and I must say I never had a more exciting ride in my life.
  Away we went like the wind, over hill and down dale, and very
  dangerous work it was, for being all through long grass the holes
  were hidden. Every now and then I felt my horse give a violent shy
  or a bound, and then I knew we had nearly got into some bottomless
  pit; if we had, going at that rate the horse would most likely
  have broken his legs or I my neck. And so on for about two miles,
  I gaining very slowly, but still gaining on the buck, when
  suddenly down he popped into a bush. It is curious how rarely one
  does the right thing at the right time. If I had done the right
  thing I should have got my buck--but I didn't. Instead of getting
  off and walking him up, I sent one barrel into the bush after him
  and gave him the other as he rose. By this means I hit him very
  hard but did not kill him. However, I made sure of him and struck
  the spurs into my horse to catch him. To my surprise he only gave
  a jump, and I found myself embedded in a bog whilst my wounded
  buck slowly vanished over a rise. I went back in a sweet temper,
  as you may imagine.

  We also hunt with hounds, and get very good runs sometimes. I
  very nearly lost my watch and chain in one the other day. I was
  tearing along at full gallop through the long grass when I thought
  I felt an extra weight at the end of my whip which was resting on
  the pommel of my saddle. I looked down and saw my watch and chain
  hanging to it. It was what one may call a lucky escape. . . .
  There is little news here of any sort. It is evidently thought in
  England that Froude made a fiasco of his mission, but I believe it
  was more the fault of the Home Government than his own. The only
  other thing is that some people fear resistance on the part of the
  Kaffirs when the time comes for the collection of the new hut tax,
  but I don't believe in it. . . .


In a letter dated Easter Sunday, 1876, there are some allusions to
Bishop Colenso and to the Zulu customs of the day which may be of
interest.


  There is but little news to tell, none indeed with the exception
  of the tragedy I mentioned in my letter to my father. Colenso
  preached a funeral sermon on him this morning, by far the finest I
  ever heard him preach. He was one of the Bishop's best friends,
  one who had stood by him when all deserted him. The Bishop quite
  broke down. I was sitting under him; all the last part of the
  sermon he was literally sobbing. It was touching to see stern-
  faced Colenso, whom nothing can move, so broken. He is a very
  strange man, but one you cannot but admire, with his intellect
  written on his face. I dare say that my father has met him in
  Norfolk, where he was a rector; he recognized my name the first
  time I saw him.

  We start for a trip up-country in three days' time; we shall be
  away until about the 22nd. We are going to explore Weenen or the
  Land of Weeping, so-called from the weeping of the women and
  children left alive after the great massacre of the Dutch.

  I saw a curious sight the other day, a witch dance. I cannot
  attempt to describe it, it is a weird sort of thing.

  The Chief Interpreter of the Colony told me that he was in
  Zululand some years ago and saw one of these witch-findings.
  "There," he said, "were collected some five thousand armed
  warriors in a circle, in the midst of which the witches [I should
  have said the witch-doctors] danced. Everyone was livid with fear,
  and with reason, for now and again one of these creatures would
  come crooning up to one of them and touch him, whereupon he was
  promptly put out of the world by a regiment of the king's guard."
  My friend interfered and nearly had his own neck broken for his
  trouble.


The Chief Interpreter alluded to must have been my friend Fynney, now
long dead, who was afterwards my colleague on the staff of Sir
Theophilus Shepstone. From him I gathered much information as to Zulu
customs and history which in subsequent days I made use of in "Nada
the Lily" and other books. There the reader may find a true account of
the doings of these awful witch-doctors. Often I have wondered whether
they are merely frauds or whether they do possess, at any rate in
certain instances, some share of occult power. Certainly I have known
them do the strangest things, especially in the way of discovering
lost cattle or other property. On the occasion of which I speak in the
letter I remember that the doctoress soon discovered an article I
thought was gone for ever.

I accompanied Sir Henry on a tour he made up-country and there saw a
great war-dance which was organised in his honour. I mention this
because the first thing I ever wrote for publication was a description
of this dance. I think that it appeared in the /Gentleman's Magazine/.

Among the new-found letters is one that tells of this war-dance. It is
headed Camp, Pagate's Location, May 13, 1876.


  . . . We have since my last letter home been trekking steadily on
  through the country in much the same way, except that we have left
  the plains and entered the mountainous bush-land, which, though
  the roads are terrible, is much pleasanter to travel through as it
  is more varied. Also you can make dives into the bush in search of
  a little shooting, though it is very necessary to take your
  bearings first. I neglected to do this the other day, and when I
  had been off the road five minutes I found I was utterly unable to
  find it again.

  When once you have lost your general direction you are done for. I
  wandered on and on till at length I saw three pretty, rustic-
  looking houses on a hill a couple of miles off, for which I was
  not sorry, for the evening was very gloomy and a cold east wind
  was driving down clouds and mists from the hill. Thither I and my
  tired horse and dogs clambered as best we could, now over masses
  of boulders, now through deep water-courses, till at last we came
  to the neighbourhood of the first house, just as night was setting
  in.

  As I approached I was struck by the stillness of the place, and
  drawing nearer yet I saw that brambles and thorns were mixed with
  the peaches and pomegranates of the garden, and that the fruit had
  not been plucked, but eaten away by birds; then I observed that
  the front door had fallen from its hinges. I rode in and found the
  place a picture of melancholy desertion. I went on to the next
  house and found it in the same condition, and the next to that
  also. I was now pretty well done, but as the prospect of sleeping
  in the bush or a deserted house was not pleasant I determined to
  make one more shot for the road. As soon as I had ridden over half
  a mile it came on to rain "cats and dogs," and I got ducked
  through and through. I turned to make for the houses as best I
  could through the dark, feeling uncommonly cold, when suddenly I
  stumbled upon a Kaffir coming through the bush. An angel could not
  have been more welcome.

  However there was a drawback. I knew no Kaffir, he knew no
  English. Luckily I did know the Kaffir name of Mr. Shepstone--
  "Sompseu"--which is known by every black in South Africa, and
  managed to make my friend understand that I was travelling with
  the "Mighty Hunter," also that there were four waggons. Now he had
  not seen these but had heard that they were in the neighbourhood,
  so following his unerring instinct he at once struck out for the
  high road from which I had wandered some five miles. Arrived
  there, he managed by the glimmer of the stars to find the track of
  the waggons, and having satisfied himself that they had passed,
  struck away again into the most awful places where anything but
  the Basuto pony I was riding must have come to grief.

  On we went for about eight miles till I began to think my friend
  was knocking under to the cold (a very little cold kills them) and
  making for his own kraal. However, to my astonishment he hit the
  track again and at length came safely to the waggons. I was not
  sorry to see them. I found the Governor in a dreadful state of
  alarm.

  Two days ago we went up to Pagate's kraal. He is a rather powerful
  chief under our protection, having some fifteen thousand people.
  It is a very good specimen of a chief's kraal. It stands on a high
  promontory that juts out and divides two enormous valleys at the
  bottom of one of which runs the Mooi River. The view is superb;
  two thousand feet below lies the plain encircled by tremendous
  hills bush-clad to the very top, while at the bottom flashes a
  streak of silver which is the river. There is little of what we
  admire in views in England, but Nature in her wild and rugged
  grandeur.

  His kraal is curious. In extent it covers about ten acres. First
  there is the outer fence, inside of which are the huts, and then a
  stronger inner one to hold the cattle in times of danger. The
  chief's kraal is at the top and fenced off.

  We went into the principal hut and partook of refreshments in the
  shape of Kaffir beer.

  Next morning Pagate gave a war dance, which is one of the most
  strange and savage sights I ever saw. It was not very large as
  they only had a day's notice to collect the warriors; however some
  five hundred turned up.

  The dance was held in front of our camp. First arrived a warrior
  herald dressed in his war-plumage, ox-tails round the shoulders
  and middle, a circlet of some long white hair round the right
  knee, a circlet round the head from which arose a solitary plume
  of the Kaffir crane; in one hand the large white ox-hide shield
  and in the other his assegais, which however were represented by
  long sticks, assegais not being allowed at these affairs.

  This gentleman was accompanied by a little old woman who rushed
  about shrieking like a wild thing. He sang the praises of his
  chief.

  "Pagate! Pagate is coming! Pagate the son of ---- who did ----,
  the son of ---- who did ----," and so on through some scores of
  generations.

  "Pagate's soldiers are coming! Pagate's soldiers who drink the
  blood of their enemies, who know how to kill! Pheasants for whom
  no other pheasant ever scratched" (i.e. who could look after
  themselves), and so on.

  Then he retired. Presently the warriors arrived in companies
  singing a sort of solemn chant. Each man was dressed in his
  fierce, fantastic war-dress. One half wore heron plumes, the rest
  long black plumes; each company had a leader and a separate
  pattern of shield. They formed themselves into a half-square
  looking very fierce and imposing. Each company as it arrived
  caught up the solemn war-chant, which was sung in perfect time and
  was the most impressive thing I ever heard.

  As the chief came up attended by his bodyguard it grew louder and
  louder, till it swelled to a regular paean, when the old man,
  fired with martial ardour, flung off the attendants who supported
  him, and forgetting his age and weakness ran to the head of his
  warriors. I shall never forget the sight.

  The Governor drew near and was met with the royal salute accorded
  only to Cetewayo, Mr. Shepstone and the Governor of Natal--in
  itself imposing when pronounced by a great number, "Bayete,
  Bayete!"

  The dance then commenced and was a wonderful performance. Company
  after company charged past looking for all the world like great
  fierce birds swooping on their prey. Assegais extended and shields
  on high, they flitted backwards and forwards, accompanying every
  moment with a shrill hiss something like the noise which thousands
  of angry snakes would make, only shriller, a sound impossible to
  describe but not easy to forget. It would vary:--now it is a troop
  of lions, now a pack of wild dogs hounding their prey to death.

  Then forth leaped warrior after warrior: advanced, challenged,
  leapt five feet into the air, was down, was up, was between his
  own legs, was anywhere and everywhere, and was met with this
  sibilating applause which rose and fell and rose again, but always
  in perfect time.

  By this time they were well excited; even