This site is full of FREE ebooks - Project Gutenberg Australia
Title: The Days of My Life Volume II (1926)
Author: Sir H. Rider Haggard
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0300141.txt
Edition: 1
Language: English
Character set encoding: Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit
Date first posted: February 2003
Date most recently updated: February 2003
This eBook was produced by: John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
and Dagny, dagnypg@yahoo.com
Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.
This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook
Title: The Days of My Life Volume II (1926)
Author: Sir H. Rider Haggard
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
VOLUME II
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BY
SIR H. RIDER HAGGARD
EDITED BY
C. J. LONGMAN
THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
CHAPTER XIII
"ERIC BRIGHTEYES" AND "NADA THE LILY"
"Eric Brighteyes"--Dedicated to the Empress Frederick--
Correspondence with her--Lang's letters about Eric--Letters from
R. L. S.--Poem by him--"Beatrice"--Marie Corelli--Lady Florence
Dixie--Cordy Jeaffreson again--Criticism of "Beatrice"--"Nada the
Lily"--"Epic of a dying people"--Last letters from Sir Theophilus
Shepstone--Dedication of "Nada" to him--/Vale/, Sompseu, /Vale/--
Savile Club--Sir Ian Hamilton--His experiences at Majuba--Rudyard
Kipling--Sir Henry Thompson--Michael Fairless at Bungay--Sir E. W.
Budge--His anecdotes.
I began to write "Eric Brighteyes," the saga which was the result of
my visit to Iceland, on August 29, 1888, as the manuscript shows, and
I finished it on Christmas Day, 1888. It was dedicated to the late
Empress Frederick, under the circumstances which are shown in the
following correspondence.
My brother William wrote to me from the British embassy at Athens,
where I think he was First Secretary at the time, on October 30, 1889:
It may interest you to hear that the Empress Frederick told me the
other night that the last pleasure that her husband had on earth
was reading your books, which he continued to do through his last
days, and that he used to express the hope that he might live to
make your acquaintance. I replied that I knew the pleasure that it
would give you to know you had soothed the dying moments of such a
man, whereupon she begged me to write and tell you. She was very
much affected in speaking of this and of her husband, and I had
subsequently a very interesting conversation with her about him
and the rest of her family. . . . You will be glad to hear that
the Prince of Wales and his family read "Cleopatra" on their way
out here, and think it your best book.
On December 3, 1889, I wrote to the Empress as follows:
Madam,--My brother has written to me from Athens, saying that your
Majesty is disposed to honour me by accepting the dedication of my
romance, "Eric Brighteyes."
In a letter to him--which I believe your Majesty has seen--I have
set out the reasons which caused me to make this offer. Therefore
I will not trouble your Majesty by repeating them any further than
to say how deeply honoured I shall be should you finally decide to
accept my dedication.
I now enclose for your Majesty's consideration that which I have
written to this end. Should I be so fortunate as to win approval
for my draft dedication, would it be too much to ask that one of
the enclosed copies may be returned to me signed by your Majesty's
hand, or that a /written/ approval may be conveyed to me in some
other way? I ask this in order to protect myself from any possible
future charge of having presumed to write what I have written
without full permission.
Next comes a letter from the Empress to my brother William.
Naples, Grand Hotel: December 13, 1889.
The Empress Frederick has received a few days ago a letter from
Mr. Haggard's brother on the subject of the dedication of his
romance, "Eric Brighteyes."
The Empress will have the greatest pleasure in accepting the
dedication, and begs Mr. Haggard to tell his brother so, and also
to convey her grateful thanks to him in her name, for his letter
and for the drafts of his dedication, to which the Empress would
suggest a small alteration, which has been inserted in one copy.
It is indeed true that the Emperor Frederick while at San Remo--
during those months of anxiety, of alternate hopes and fears,
which he bore with a fortitude, patience and gentleness never to
be forgotten--found great pleasure in reading Mr. Rider Haggard's
books. He as well as the Empress especially admired "Jess," of
which she read out a great part to him aloud. How pleasant were
the hours so spent--and how bitter it is to look back on the last
happiness of days never to return--can easily be imagined.
Mr. Rider Haggard says in his letter that he leaves for Greece on
the 13th: so the Empress sends this on to Athens. The Empress
hopes the slight change she suggests in one passage of the
dedication--which she thinks charming--will not annoy the author,
and she is anxiously looking forward to reading the book itself,
which will now have a special interest for her! The Empress
regrets exceedingly that Mr. Haggard's brother was not at Athens
during her stay there, and that she thus lost the pleasure of
making his acquaintance, but hopes she may be more fortunate
another time.
On January 19, 1890, the Empress sent me a registered holograph letter
from Berlin, which is now bound up with the manuscript of the book. it
runs as follows:
The Empress Frederick thanks Mr. Rider Haggard for his letter of
the 27th December, and greatly regrets the long delay in
answering.
Mr. R. Haggard no doubt has heard of the sad circumstances which
caused so hurried a departure from Rome. Since arriving here many
unavoidable duties have completely taken up the Empress's time.
Mr. R. Haggard will understand this all the better as he and his
family have so recently sustained a sad loss of the same kind--for
which the Empress takes this opportunity of offering her sincere
condolences. The Empress encloses the printed draft of the
dedication with a suggestion for a slight alteration; and begs Mr.
R. Haggard to accept her best thanks for the copy of "Jess" and
the collection of stories just published, which she is looking
forward to reading when she has a little leisure.
With this letter are two copies of the dedication, annotated in the
hand of the Empress, for it seems that it was sent to her twice before
it was finally settled as it appears in the book. A few years later,
when I was at Homburg for my health, the Empress Frederick asked me to
lunch, and I had a long and interesting conversation with her. As I
kept no notes, however, I forget its details. She impressed me as a
singularly charming and able lady.
"Eric" commended itself very much to Lang. Here is the first thing I
can find about it in his letters.
"Eric" begins A1. I don't know what about the public, but I love a
saga but even too well, especially if it be a bloody one
delicately narrated, or a very affectionate thing indeed but
brutally set down, as Shakespeare says. I have only read Chapter
I, but it's the jockey for me.
P.S.--I have read four chapters, including Golden Falls. I think
it is the best thing you have done, but of course I am saga-fain!
I didn't think anyone could do it.
Next letter, dated Saturday.
I have got Eric into Swanhild's toils, and I don't think I have
come to a dull page yet. I don't want to flatter, but it literally
surprises me that anyone should write such a story nowadays.
Charles Kingsley would have spoiled it by maundering and
philosophising. I have hardly seen a line which is not in keeping
yet. Also the plot is a good natural plot and the characters,
except Gudruda, sympathetic. I think /she/ might be a little less
feminine and ill-willy. As literature I really think it is a
masterpiece so far as I have gone. I'd almost as soon have
expected more Homer as more saga. I don't think much of the boy
who can lay it down till it is finished; women of course can't be
expected to care for it. Surely it should come out before the
"Bow," which is such a flukey thing, whereas, whatever reviews and
people may say, "Eric" is full of the best qualities of poetic [?
word doubtful] fiction.
Next letter, undated.
The more I consider "Eric," the more I think that except
"Cleopatra," which you can't keep back, I'd publish no novel
before "Eric." It is so very much the best of the lot in all ways.
Probably you don't agree, and the public probably won't stop to
consider, but /it is/. I'd like to suggest one or two remarks for
a preface--if any. The discovery of the dead mother and the
dialogue with the Carline struck me very much. Clearly Swanhild
/needed/ no witchcraft, and as certainly her natural magic would
have been interpreted so--at the time and much later. Perhaps the
final bust-up might be less heavy in the supernatural, but more
distinctly represented as the vision of fay men--subjective. Oddly
enough, I found a Zulu parallel to-day: "I have made me a mat of
men to lie on," says the Zulu berserk when he had killed twenty
and the assegais in his body were "like reeds in a marsh." He is
in Callaway. . . . It is worth an infinite number of Cleopatras,
partly because you are at home in the North. I wouldn't let anyone
peddle it about, or show people, but stick to someone like
Longman, if it were mine.
And again:
I suppose Ingram must see it,[*], but I wish it could appear
to-morrow in a book. Comparisons are odious, and I understand your
preferring "Cleopatra." People inevitably prefer what gives them
most serious labour. But it's a natural gift that really does the
trick. I bet a pound George Eliot preferred "Romola" and "Daniel
Deronda" to "Scenes of Clerical Life." I have a hideous conscience
which knows that a ballad or a leading article are the best things
I've done, though I'd prefer to prefer "Helen of Troy." But she's
a bandbox.
[*] From the /Illustrated London News/.--Ed.
The last letter that I can find of Lang's which has to do with "Eric
Brighteyes" was evidently written in answer to one from myself in
which I must have shown depression at certain criticisms that he made
verbally or otherwise upon the book.
Bosh! It is a rattling good story! But I am trying to read it as
critically as I can, and I am rather fresh from saga-reading. This
makes me see more clearly than other people the immense difficulty
in combining a saga with a story of love, which, except in the
"Volsunga," where the man was one of the foremost geniuses in the
world, they never attempted. Other people won't read it like that,
and it is not right that it should be read in that way. Done in my
way it would be rather pedantry than literature, but I am a born
pedant. It is chock full of things nobody else could have done:
indeed nobody else could have done any of it. The Saevuna part is
excellent: I only doubted whether, for effect, her cursing speech
should not be terser. I never read the very end, as it had
affected me quite enough before I came to that. The scene on
shipboard is not too like the Wanderer bit [in "The World's
Desire"--H. R. H.], because it is worked out and credible. The
cloak, however, would suffice and be all right, without the
replacing of the bonds, which, under the cloak, would be needless.
The other bit, the seduction, is all right in itself: but it is
one of the passages which the sages would have slurred, as not
interesting to their bloodthirsty public. I think it may be none
the worse for what you have done to it. Don't "time heart" about
it because of my pedantries. It is because it is /good/ that I
want it to be best. Skallagrim is always worth his weight in
wadmal, whatever wadmal may be. The death of Groa fetches me less,
I don't know why. However, if you once don't think well of it, in
the nature of man it is certain to be more excellent, just as one
always did well in examinations where one despaired. It is a queer
fact, but it is so. The style is capital, but I rather think that
of "Nada" is still better. I hope I shall live to review it, or
rather that I shall review it if I live. For heaven's sake, don't
be disgusted with it, or me because I look at it through a
microscope. If I didn't my looking at it would be of little use.
None of my things are worth the lens, and the trouble, so I don't.
Yours ever,
A. Lang.
"Eric" came out in due course, and did well enough. Indeed as a book
it found, and still continues to find, a considerable body of readers.
My recollection is, however, that it was reviewed simply as a rather
spirited and sanguinary tale. Lang was quite right. The gentlemen who
dispense praise and blame to us poor authors have not, for the most
part, made a study of the sagas or investigated the lands where these
were enacted. I wonder if it has ever occurred to the average reader
how much the writer of a book which he looks at for an hour or two and
throws aside must sometimes need to know, and what long months or
years of preparation that knowledge has cost him? Probably not. My
extended experience of the average reader is that he thinks the author
produces these little things in his leisure moments, say when he, the
reader, would be smoking his cigarettes, and this without the
slightest effort.
To return to "The World's Desire." This work also came out in due
course, and was violently attacked: so I gather from Lang's letters,
for I have none of the reviews. All that I remember about them is the
effort of its assailants to discriminate between that part of the work
which was written by Lang and that part which was written by myself--
an effort, I may add, that invariably failed. However, all these
things have long gone by, and the book remains and--is read, by some
with enthusiasm.
Here is another note from Lang from Scotland, headed Ravensheugh,
Selkirk, Friday.
Stevenson says he is "thrilled and chilled" by Meriamun. He thinks
much of it "too steep," bars Od(ysseus) killing so many enemies--
exactly what Longinus says of Homer--and fears Meriamun is likely
to play down Helen. He is kind enough to say "the style is all
right," and adds a poem on Odysseus. I'll send you the letter
presently.
I suppose that Lang did send this letter, and that I returned it to
him. I believe that subsequently he lost both the letter and the poem.
Luckily, however, I took the trouble to keep a copy of the latter, and
here it is.
1.
Awdawcious Odyshes,
Your conduc' is vicious,
Your tale is suspicious
An' queer.
Ye ancient sea-roamer,
Ye dour auld beach-comber,
Frae Haggard to Homer
Ye veer.
2.
Sic veerin' and steerin'!
What port are ye neerin'
As frae Egypt to Erin
Ye gang?
Ye ancient auld blackguard,
Just see whaur ye're staggered
From Homer to Haggard
And Lang!
3.
In stunt and in strife
To gang seeking a wife--
At your time o' life
It was wrang.
An' see! Fresh afflictions
Into Haggard's descriptions
An' the plagues o' the Egyptians
Ye sprang!
4.
The folk ye're now in wi'
Are ill to begin wi'
Or to risk a hale skin wi'
In breeks--
They're blacker and hetter--
(Just ask your begetter)
And far frae bein' better
Than Greeks.
5.
Ther's your /Meriamun/:
She'll mebbe can gammon
That auld-furrand salmon
Yoursel';
An' /Moses/ and /Aaron/
Will gie ye your fairin'
Wi' fire an' het airn
In Hell.
I refuse to continue longer. I had an excellent half-verse there,
but couldn't get the necessary pendant, and anyway there's no end
to such truck.
Yours,
R. L. S.
Now I will turn to my modern novel, "Beatrice." Oddly enough, Lang
liked it, although he says somewhere that he "infinitely prefers"
Umslopogaas and Skallagrim.
I have read your chapters of "Beatrice." /Sursum corda/: it moves,
it has /go/ and plenty of it. . . . I fear it is a deal more
popular line than "The World's Desire."
May 8th.
I have read "Beatrice," and if she interests the public as much as
she does me, she'll do. But I have marked it a good deal, and
would be glad to go through it with you, looking over the
scribbled suggestions. It is too late, but what a good character
some male Elizabeth would have been: nosing for dirt, scandal,
spite and lies. He might easily have been worked in, I think.
. . . They [i.e. the hero and heroine] are a good deal more in
love than Odysseus, Laertes' son, and Mrs. Menelaus! It is odd:
usually you "reflect" too much, and yet in this tale, I think, a
few extra reflections might have been in place. I feel a
Thackerayan desire to moralise.
Here is another allusion.
A letter I wrote anent B. was never posted. I said I did not quite
think Geoffrey gave the sense of power, etc.; and that his
rudeness to B. was overdone and cubbish, which you notice
yourself. I think, in volume shape, that might yet be amended.
Miss Marie Corelli writes on June 12, 1890:
If you are still in town, and you would favour me with a call on
Sunday afternoon next, about five o'clock, I should be so pleased
to renew the acquaintance made some months past, when your kindly
words made me feel more happy and encouraged me in my uphill
clamber! I saw you from the gallery at the Literary Fund Dinner,
and wished I had had the chance of speaking to you. Your book
"Beatrice" is /beautiful/--full of poetry and deep thought--but I
don't believe the public--that with obstinate pertinacity look to
you for a continuation /ad infinitum/ of "King Solomon's Mines"
and "She"--will appreciate it as they ought and as it deserves.
Whenever I see a /World/ and /Pall Mall Gazette/ vulgarly sneering
at a work of literature, I conclude that it /must/ be good--
exceptionally so!--and this is generally a correct estimate: it
certainly was so concerning "Beatrice."
Trusting you will come and see me (we are very quiet people and
don't give crushes!),
Believe me,
Very sincerely yours,
Marie Corelli.
Here is a letter from the late Lady Florence Dixie, whom I first met
years before in South Africa, which is interesting as showing that in
the year 1890 she held views that since then have become very common.
In short, she was a proto-suffragette.
You will, I hope, excuse this letter, and not misunderstand me in
what I say. I have just finished reading your "Beatrice," and have
put it down with a feeling that it is only another book in the
many which proclaims the rooted idea in men's minds that women are
born to suffer and work for men, to hide all their natural gifts
that man may rule alone.
Does it not strike you that Beatrice--if she had been given equal
chances with Geoffrey--would have made a name as great, aye,
greater than his? Yet because she is a woman you will give her no
such chance. You leave her to her useless, aimless, curtailed and
wretched life which ends in suicide. Think you not that Beatrice
in Geoffrey's shoes might have made a great name for good? Forgive
me--but as you /can/ write, why not use your pen to upraise woman,
to bid her become a useful member of society--the true companion
and co-mate of man, and they working together shall help to make
impossible such miserable victims of a false and unnatural
bringing up as Elizabeth and Lady Honoria? You hold such women up
to scorn. Yet are they the fruit of unnatural laws which men have
wrongfully imposed on womankind. Greatly and in many ways does
woman err in all paths of life--but is she entirely to blame? You
men have made her your plaything and slave: she is regarded more
in the light of a brood mare than anything else; and if within her
narrow sphere she errs, who is to blame? Not her, believe me, but
the false laws that made her what she is.
I have just published a new book, "Gloriana; or, The Revolution of
1900."
Will you give me the pleasure of accepting a copy if I send you
one? If you read it, you will not misunderstand this letter I
hope.
Believe me,
Sincerely yours,
Florence Dixie.
P.S.--I hope you will excuse me for sending you some papers which
will show you that there are some women, and men too, who feel
that the cruel position of woman is unbearable.
Alas! 1900 has come and gone years ago, and the Revolution is still to
seek. But perhaps it is at hand. At any rate Lady Florence strove
manfully for her cause in those early days, if in the circumstances
"manfully" is the right word to use.
I find a letter dealing with "Beatrice" from Cordy Jeaffreson, from
which I quote an extract:
. . . It is a fine, stirring, effective story; but with all its
power and dexterity it is not /the book/ which will determine your
eventual place in the annals of literature. You will write /that
book/ some ten years hence, when I shall be resting under the
violets; and when you are enjoying the fullness of your triumph,
you will perhaps give me a kindly thought and say, "The old man
was right." In a line, it is no small thing to have thrown off
"Beatrice," but you will do something much greater when "you've
come to forty year." The story strengthens my confidence in you,
though it falls short of all I hoped for you. This is /not/
damning with faint praise.
Ever yours,
J. C. J.
Alas! that wondrous work of fiction which Cordy Jeaffreson anticipated
never was and never will be written by me. Be it good or be it bad,
the best that I can do in the lines of romance and novel-writing is to
be found among the first dozen or so of the books that I wrote, say
between "King Solomon's Mines" and "Montezuma's Daughter." Also I
would add this. A man's mind does not always remain the same. People
are apt to say of any individual writer that he has gone off, whereas
the truth may be merely that he has changed, and that his abilities
are showing themselves in another form. Now, as it happens in my own
case, in the year 1891 I received a great shock; also subsequently for
a long period my health was bad. Although from necessity I went on
with the writing of stories, and do so still, it has not been with the
same zest. Active rather than imaginative life has appealed to me
more, and resulted in the production of such works as "Rural England,"
"A Farmer's Year," and others. Moreover, I have never really cared for
/novel/-writing: /romance/ has always made a greater appeal to me.
Here is a letter from Lang, to whom I had evidently shown that from
Mr. Jeaffreson which is quoted above.
I don't agree much with Jeaffreson. The book is a compromise, by
its nature, and rather contains good things than is very good, to
my taste, but it is only taste, not reason. Lord knows what you
may write, or anybody read, in ten years. More than sufficient to
the day is the evil thereof. The character of Geoffrey goes
against my grain, but what he should have been, to satisfy me, I
don't know.
I imagine you missed your tip, by not being born nine hundred
years ago. I might have been a monk of Ely, and you might have
flayed me and composed a saga at first hand. It would have been a
good saga, but I could not stand being flayed, I know. I am
worried and sad and seedy, and far from a successful
correspondent. . . . Jeaff. is very kind, however, though not a
prophet nor a critic, I think. The former quality is much better.
Some years after "Beatrice" was published I was horrified to receive
two anonymous or semi-anonymous letters from ladies who alleged that
their husbands, or the husbands of someone connected with them--one of
them a middle-aged clergyman--after reading "Beatrice," had made
advances to young ladies of that name; or perhaps the young ladies had
made advances to them which they more or less reciprocated--I forget
the exact facts. Also I heard that a gentleman and a lady had
practised the sleep-walking scene, with different results from those
recorded in the book. These stories troubled me so much--since I had
never dreamed of such an issue to a tale with a different moral--that
I wished to suppress the book, and wrote to Charles Longman suggesting
that this should be done; also I took counsel with Lang and other
friends. They thought me extremely foolish, and were rather indignant
about the business. Longman's views are expressed in such of his
letters as I can find dealing with the matter, only he added that,
even if there had been any reason for it, it was not possible to
suppress a book so widely known, especially after it had been pirated
in America. Lang's letters I have not time to find at present, but I
remember that they were to the same effect. Here are those from
Longman, or as much of them as is pertinent.
39 Paternoster Row:
November 28, 1894.
My dear Rider,--I will get hold of the /Saturday Review/ and
/Spectator/ reviews of "Beatrice." I have not heard anything from
Liverpool yet about that person, but I will let you hear as soon
as I can. I will not write fully yet on the subject, but I may say
that the idea that the character of Beatrice could lead someone
into vice is preposterous. Still less is the example of Bingham
likely to throw an unnatural glamour over seduction: in the first
place, he was man enough to resist temptation; in the next place,
both he and Beatrice were most unmercifully punished. Do not let
this matter worry you. I assure you there is nothing you need
regret.
Longman also wrote:
Christmas Day, 1894.
I like the Preface to "Beatrice" much better as amended. Lang is
quite right: your feelings in the matter did infinite credit to
your heart, but you disturbed yourself unnecessarily. I am glad we
inquired into that Liverpool story and pricked the bubble. I will
send you a review of the Preface. I return Lang's letter.
I have now found this letter of Lang's to which Longman refers. It is
dated from St. Andrews on December 20th, and begins:
You Confounded Ass. The thing is Rot. Don't take it /au serieux/.
At least that is how it strikes /me/. If you must say something,
say what I leave in. The novel seems to me perfectly devoid of
moral harm. There are sill hopes here that the Samoan story is a
lie [this refers to the death of Stevenson]. It has caused me
sincere grief, but, at fifty, one seems rather case-hardened.
However, don't /you/ go and leave the world before me. R. L. S.
had as much pluck, and as kind a heart, as any man that ever
lived, and extraordinary charm.
The "Liverpool story" to which Longman refers was, I believe, one of
those detailed in the anonymous letters. Evidently he caused it to be
inquired into and found that it was baseless.
The end of the matter was that I went through the tale carefully,
modified or removed certain passages that might be taken to suggest
that holy matrimony is not always perfect in its working, etc., and
wrote a short preface which may now be read in all the copies printed
since that date.
As I have said, the incident disturbed me a good deal, and more or
less set me against the writing of novels of modern life. It is very
well to talk about art with a large A, but I have always felt that the
author of books which go anywhere and everywhere has some
responsibilities. Therefore I have tried to avoid topics that might
inflame even minds which are very ready to be set on fire.
The charge has been brought against me that my pages have breathed
war. I admit it, and on this point am quite unrepentant. Personally I
may say that I have a perfect horror of war, and hope that I may not
live to see another in which my country is involved, for it seems to
me terrible that human beings should destroy each other, often enough
from motives that do not bear examination. Yet there is such a thing
as righteous war, and if my land were invaded I should think poorly of
anyone, myself included, who did not fight like a wild-cat. I am not
even sure that I would not poison the wells if I were unable to get
rid of the enemy in any other way. What is the difference between
killing a man with a drug and killing him with a bomb or by hunger and
thirst? Patriotism is the first duty, and the thing is to be rid of
him somehow and save your country. However, this is a question on
which I will not enter.
For the rest war brings forth many noble actions, and there can be no
harm in teaching the young that their hands were given to them to
defend their flag and their heads. If once a nation forgets to learn
that lesson it will very soon be called upon to write /Finis/ beneath
its history. I fear that we, or some of us, are in that way now--or so
I judge from the horror expressed upon every side at the doctrine that
men should not grudge a year or so of their lives to be spent in
learning the art of war. If God gave us our homes, I presume that He
meant for us to protect them!
I think that the next book I wrote after "Eric," or at any rate the
next that was printed, was "Nada the Lily," which I began upon June
27, 1889, and finished on January 15, 1890. It is pure Zulu story,
and, as I believe I have said, I consider it my best or one of my best
books. At any rate, the following letter from my friend Rudyard
Kipling seems to show that this story has one claim on the gratitude
of the world.
Vermont, U.S.A.:
October 20, 1895.
Dear Haggard,--Watt has just forwarded me a letter addressed to
/you/ from a bee-keeping man who wanted to quote something of a
jungle tale of mine. I dare say it didn't amuse you, but it made
me chuckle a little and reminded me, incidentally, that the man
was nearer the mark than he knew: for it was a chance sentence of
yours in "Nada the Lily" that started me off on a track that ended
in my writing a lot of wolf stories. You remember in your tale
where the wolves leaped up at the feet of a dead man sitting on a
rock? Somewhere on that page I got the notion. It's curious how
things come back again, isn't it? I meant to tell you when we met;
but I don't remember that I ever did.
Yours always sincerely,
Rudyard Kipling.
Here are some extracts from Lang's letters on the subject of "Nada."
April 20th.
I read right through to Chaka's death. It is admirable, the epic
of a dying people, but it wants relief. Massacre palls. The old
boy (i.e. the narrator of the story, Mopo) would have given no
relief, naturally, but an idyll or two seem needed. The style is
as good as it can be, an invention. I think a word or two more in
the preface might be useful. I have made a slight suggestion or
so. I like "Eric" better, but this is perhaps more singular. How
any white man can have such a natural gift of savagery, I don't
know. The Wolves are astonishing.
Yours ever,
A. L.
The next letter is undated, but was probably written within a day or
two of that just quoted.
I've finished "Nada." If all the reviewers in the world denied it,
you can do the best sagas that have been done yet: except "Njala"
perhaps. Poor Nada! I hope it will be done into Zulu. The old wolf
Death-grip was a nice wolf.
May 13th.
Many thanks for the book. You know exactly what I think of "B."
["Beatrice"], but I like your /natural/ novels better a long way
than your modern ones at the best, which this probably is.
Beatrice is all right when anything flares up, and all right when
in the open air, but the Lady Honorias of this world are not in
your beat nor mine. . . . But, oh, how much I prefer Galazi and
Skallagrim to these moderns!
St. Andrews: January 18th.
I'll return "Nada" to-morrow. The Wolves are the best thing of
yours I know. Indeed the unity of tone and savagery throughout are
unique. But there will be rows about the endless massacres. I have
no doubt a Zulu epic would be like this, but reviewers are not
Zulus, worse luck. I think that it is excellent, and quite alone
in literature as a picture of a strange life. But one knows the
public. It is far more veracious than "Eric," and far less modern:
also far less rhetorical. Chaka is a masterpiece. But I am a voice
/clamantis in eremo/: people won't understand. The /realien/ are
awfully well done, no appearance of cram about them.
Lang was quite right about the reviewers. They for the most part, not
having mixed with savages, and never having heard of Chaka and only
dimly of the Zulus--for by this time our war with that people was
forgotten--saw little in the book except unnecessary bloodshed. But
there it is: a picture, as Lang says, "of a dying people." I hope that
hundreds of years hence the highly educated descendants of the Zulu
race may read it and learn therefrom something of the spirit of their
own savage ancestors.
I cannot find many letters about "Nada." Here, however, is one from
Charles Longman, dated May 14, 1890.
"Nada" strikes me with wonder and awe. It is in some ways the
greatest feat you have performed: I mean because you have
constructed a story in which the /dramatis personae/ are all
savages and yet you have kept the interest going throughout. There
will of course be a terrible outcry about gore. I never read such
a book. It is frightful, and the only justification for it is the
fact that it is history, not imagination. Wherever it is possible
I would tone down the effect rather than heighten it, so as to
avoid the charge of wallowing or gloating as far as possible. The
wolves and the wolf brethren are delightful; I wish you could have
given us more of them. I was very glad to meet our old friend
Umslopogaas as a boy.
These two letters are from Sir Theophilus Shepstone to whom the work
was dedicated. The first is headed Durban, Natal, August 18, 1891.
My dear Haggard,--I was very, /very/ glad to see your handwriting
again in a note addressed to me. For I know not how long past, I
have never thought of you without a pang of conscience; and I need
not say that I have often and often thought of you, and felt proud
of you, and rejoiced at your success.
The truth is that for a time I had always the intention in my mind
of writing to you, but I thought that a short note would not be
worth sending, so the doing of it was postponed from one time to
another until at last the difficulty became insuperable
apparently, for I could scarcely hope that after so long a silence
and seeming indifference any letter from me could be welcome. Your
kind note and still kinder proposal, however, clear all that
uncomfortable feeling away, and I am pleased accordingly to find
that after all you bear no ill-will. Of course I shall take it as
a great compliment and a gracious and christian way of turning the
other cheek to be smitten if you carry out your proposal to
dedicate your new Zulu novel to me. If I had known that you were
engaged upon such a work I might have helped you with materials.
. . . But when I saw that you were oscillating between the North
and South Poles, calling at Cairo and dallying a bit at the
Equator in your erratic course I concluded that your interest in
these parts had ceased. . . .
I have been for some time past very unwell, and two months ago
they sent me down here for change of air. I am not to go back till
the end of this month or the beginning of next. Meanwhile the
change is doing me great good, and I feel better and stronger than
I have felt for several years. I had begun to lose a great deal of
interest in passing events, and felt unable to enjoy much of life,
but all this has now changed for the better, I am glad to say.
. . . If ever you have a moment to spare I should be glad, so
glad, to hear how the friends are who were so kind to me at your
good old father's house. I am glad you had an opportunity of
talking to old Osborn. He is expected to arrive here in a day or
two, and I shall have the chance of hearing from him all about
you. I am very proud of my Transvaal colleagues; every one of them
has distinguished himself in one way or another. Captain James and
Fynney, poor fellows, have, as the Zulus say, "gone beyond." I
always feel indebted to you all for your loyal support and zealous
fellow-working in the Transvaal. This mail brought me with your
letter one from the editor of /Greater Britain/, calling my
attention to an article in the July number of that periodical
entitled "Many Lands, One People" and asking my views upon it. I
shall write him a very short answer, for I am sorry to say I am as
yet unable to see anything practical in the proposals of Imperial
Federation. I am afraid you will think me old-fashioned and
heterodox, but I cannot as yet see anything stronger than the bond
which ties the members of a family together. Love to you both from
yours always sincerely,
T. Shepstone.
In due course the dedication was finished and sent. Charles Longman
always thought it one of the best things I had ever written, and, when
I told him the other day that I was engaged upon this task, he
especially asked me to insert it here. Therefore I do so.
DEDICATION
Sompseu:
For I will call you by the name that for fifty years has been
honoured by every tribe between the Zambesi and Cape Agulhas,--I
greet you!
Sompseu, my father, I have written a book that tells of men and
matters of which you know the most of any who still look upon the
light; therefore, I set your name within that book and, such as it
is, I offer it to you.
If you knew not Chaka, you and he have seen the same suns shine,
you knew his brother Panda and his captains, and perhaps even that
very Mopo who tells this tale, his servant, who slew him with the
Princes. You have seen the circle of the witch-doctors and the
unconquerable Zulu impis rushing to war; you have crowned their
kings and shared their counsels, and with your son's blood you
have expiated a statesman's error and a general's fault.
Sompseu, a song has been sung in my ears of how first you mastered
this people of the Zulu. Is it not true, my father, that for long
hours you lay silent and alone, while three thousand warriors
shouted for your life? And when they grew weary, did you not stand
and say, pointing towards the ocean: "Kill me if you wish, men of
Cetywayo, but I tell you that for every drop of my blood a hundred
avengers shall rise from yonder sea!"
Then, so it was told me, the regiments turned staring towards the
Black Water, as though the day of Ulundi had already come and they
saw the white slayers creeping across the plains.
Thus, Sompseu, your name became great among the people of the
Zulu, as already it was great among many another tribe, and their
nobles did you homage, and they gave you the Bayete, the royal
salute, declaring by the mouth of their Council that in you dwelt
the spirit of Chaka.
Many years have gone by since then, and now you are old, my
father. It is many years even since I was a boy, and followed you
when you went up among the Boers and took their country for the
Queen.
Why did you do this, my father? I will answer, who know the truth.
You did it because, had it not been done, the Zulus would have
stamped out the Boers. Were not Cetywayo's impis gathered against
the land, and was it not because it became the Queen's land that
at your word he sent them murmuring to their kraals? To save
bloodshed you annexed the country beyond the Vaal. Perhaps it had
been better to leave it, since "Death chooses for himself," and
after all there was killing--of our own people, and with the
killing, shame. But in those days we did not guess what we should
live to see, and of Majuba we thought only as a little hill.
Enemies have borne false witness against you on this matter,
Sompseu, you who never erred except through over kindness. Yet
what does that avail? When you have "gone beyond" it will be
forgotten, since the sting of ingratitude passes and lies must
wither like the winter veldt. Only your name will not be
forgotten; as it was heard in life so it shall be heard in story,
and I pray that, however humbly, mine may pass down with it.
Chance has taken me by another path, and I must leave the ways of
action that I love and bury myself in books, but the old days and
friends are in my mind, nor while I have memory shall I forget
them and you.
Therefore, though it be for the last time, from far across the
seas I speak to you, and lifting my hand I give you your
"Sibonga"[*] and that royal salute, to which, now that its kings
are gone and the "People of Heaven" are no more a nation, with Her
Majesty you are alone entitled:
Bayete! Baba, Nkosi ya makosi!
Ngonyama! Indhlovu ai pendulwa!
Wen' o wa vela wasi pata!
Wen' o was hlul' izizwe zonke za patwa nguive!
Wa geina nge la Mabun' o wa ba hlul' u yedwa!
Umsizi we zintandane e zihlupekayo!
Si ya kuleka Baba!
Bayete, T'Sompseu![+]
and farewell!
H. Rider Haggard.
To Sir Theophilus Shepstone, K.C.M.G., Natal.
13th September 1891.
[*] Titles of praise.
[+] Bayete, Father, Chief of Chiefs!
Lion! Elephant that is not turned!
You who nursed us from of old!
You who overshadowed all peoples and took charge of them,
And ended by mastering the Boers with your single strength!
Help of the fatherless when in trouble!
Salutation to you, Father!
Bayete, O Sompseu!
Here is the touching letter in which Sir Theophilus acknowledges it.
It is bound up with the manuscript of "Nada," and is the last that I
ever received from him, for he died during the following year.
Durban, Natal: July 13, 1892.
My dear Haggard,--Your gift reached me when I was very seedy and
unable to do much in the writing way. I have come down here for
change from the cold of Maritzburg, and am much better.
I need not say how gratifying to me that gift was; nor how deeply
touching to me the kind words of the Dedication were. Indeed you
give far more credit than I am entitled to. Your kindly
expressions, however, vividly brought to mind a whole chapter of
the pleasant past between us, the exact counterpart of which will,
I suppose, never occur to any other two. I feel extremely grateful
to you for your affectionate remembrances, and for your plucky
avowal of them, for I do not think that at present it is
fashionable to look either upon myself or my work with much
approval.
I cannot, however, help thinking that if some of my views and
advice had been acted on we should have avoided both the national
disaster and disgrace that took place after the "pleasant past"
that you and I spent together in the Transvaal.
The Boers did not really want to fight, and we are always
pusillanimous enough before we make up our minds to begin, so we
did not want to fight either; but it appears that the Home
Government did want to undo the annexation. Nothing could have
been done more easily, or have looked more gracious to those
concerned. Why not have plainly told me their wish and authorised
me to carry it out? We should have parted with embraces and the
best of mutual good feeling; as it is we have earned the contempt
as well as the hatred of the Boers, and very much puzzled the
native races, who from considering us their staunchest and most
powerful protectors have come to look upon us as the most
unreliable of friends. And very good cause they have for their
change of view: look at the last twelve or fourteen years' history
of Zululand. But I did not want to go into polemics. As the Zulus
would say, it is only my way of thinking.
I hope the good little wife and all the children are well; my love
to her, please. I was much interested the other day by an account
of you all that appeared in the /Strand Magazine/, which someone
sent me from England. The pictures were, I thought, very good
indeed, and reminded me strongly of my visit to Ditchingham, when
I had the pleasure of spending a few days with you.
Please remember me kindly to all the members of your family. They
were all so extremely kind to me.
Yours affectionately,
T. Shepstone.
These were his last words to me--words which, I think, will be read
with interest in the future, seeing that they sum up his views of his
Transvaal policy as he held them just before his death. But I will not
attempt to reopen that matter, upon which I have already said my say.
/Vale/, Sompseu, /Vale!/
I used to know a good many interesting people during those years when
I lived in London.
Lord Goschen, then Mr. Goschen, dined with me at a dinner I gave at
the Savile Club, and we always remained friendly till his death. He
was a most able and agreeable man; also there was something rather
attractive about the low, husky voice in which he addressed one, his
head held slightly forward as though he wished to be very
confidential. Besides a number of literary men, Mr. Balfour was my
guest at that dinner, and I think Lord Lytton also. I remember that it
was a most pleasant feast, at which seventeen or eighteen people were
present, and one that, to my great relief, went off without a hitch.
It was Lang who introduced me to Mr. Balfour. Of this circumstance I
was reminded the other day when I met Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-
Chief of the British forces in the Mediterranean stations, on the
Orient liner /Otway/ when I was returning from Egypt (April 1912). He
asked me if I remembered a little dinner that Lang gave at the Oxford
and Cambridge Club somewhere about 1886 or 1887, at which Balfour, he,
and I were the only guests. Then it all came back to me. Lang asked me
to meet Mr. Balfour because he knew that already I wished to escape
from novel-writing and re-enter the public service, a matter in which
he thought Mr. Balfour might be of assistance. Ian Hamilton, his
cousin, he asked because he had escaped from Majuba, and I also knew a
great deal about Majuba.
By the way, General Hamilton, whom I had not met from that day to
this, gave me, while we were on the ship together, a long and full
account of his experiences and sufferings in that dreadful rout; but
as these tally very closely with what I have written in this book and
elsewhere, I will not repeat them in all their painful detail. He was
shot through the wrist and struck on the head with splinters of stone.
The Boers dismissed him, telling him that he would "probably die." He
passed a night in the cold, and, had it not been for a kindly Boer who
found him and bound up his wrist--I think he said with a piece of tin
for a splint--he would probably have perished. That Boer, Sir Ian
Hamilton--who, by the way, is now the only officer in the British Army
who was present at Majuba--met at Bloemfontein the other day.
Naturally they were the best of friends, and Sir Ian has sent him a
souvenir of the event. Finally, as he lay unable to move, he was found
by a British search-party and taken back to camp, where in due course
he recovered.
I see that in "Cetywayo and his White Neighbours" I stated that Majuba
was attacked by two or three hundred Boers, adding that I did not
believe the story which the Boers told me, that they rushed the
mountain with not more than a hundred men--a version which
subsequently I adopted in "Jess." Sir Ian told me, however, that the
smaller figure was quite correct. He even put it somewhat lower. A
dreadful story, in truth!
Talking of the Boer War reminds me of Sir Redvers Buller. I knew him
and his wife, Lady Audrey, very well. We used to dine at their
house, where we met a number of distinguished people, among whom I
remember Lord Coleridge, the Chief Justice. He was a brilliant
conversationalist with a marvellous memory. I have heard him tell
story after story without stopping, till at length I began to hope
that the stock was running low. Sir Redvers was always very kind to
me, but he was not a man to cross in argument. Once, at his own table,
I heard him differ from the late Lord Justice Bowen in a way that made
me glad that I was not Lord Justice Bowen. What struck me was the
extraordinary patience with which the Judge submitted to the scolding.
He must have had a very sweet nature; indeed I always thought that
this was so.
It was about this time that I first made the acquaintance of Mr.
Rudyard Kipling, who had recently arrived in England, I suppose from
India. He was then a young fellow about five-and-twenty, and in
appearance and manner very much what he is to-day. I cannot recall
under what circumstance we first met. Perhaps it was at a dinner-party
I gave at my house, 24 Redcliffe Square, to some literary friends. I
remember that Kipling arrived late and explained the reason by
pointing to a cut upon his temple. Whilst he was driving towards my
house his hansom collided with a van in Piccadilly, and there was a
smash in which he had a narrow escape. From that time forward we have
always liked each other, perhaps because on many, though not on all,
matters we find no point of difference.
Another man very well known in his day with whom I was acquainted was
the great and accomplished doctor, Sir Henry Thompson, by birth an
East Anglian like myself. Once I was present at one of his famous
octave dinners. If I remember right, we were received in a room hung
round with beautiful pictures by Etty, as were others in the house. It
had a couch in it on which Sir Henry slept, or rather tried to sleep,
at nights. He suffered terribly from insomnia, and told me that one of
his plans to induce slumber was to count thousands of imaginary sheep
running through a phantom gate. Also he would rise and walk about the
streets to cause weariness.
A very interesting gentlemen whom I knew was the late Mr. Meredith
Townsend. He was one of the editors and part owner of the /Spectator/,
out of which journal he told me he drew a comfortable 5000 pounds a
year. His conversation was particularly delightful and informing,
especially when he spoke of India.
I have before me a letter that he wrote to me before I visited
Iceland, in which he says:
It would be worth living to read your account of a Berserk, a
white Umslopogaas, with a vein of pity in him for women only.
. . . You are aware that the Berserks when they left their Aryan
home on the northern slope of the Hindoo Koosh took with them hemp
and the dangerous knowledge of its quality of producing the
temporary fury of battle. The secret still remains in India, and
natives who mean killing swallow /bhang/.
I think that this hint gave me the idea of my Norse character,
Skallagrim. Mr. Townsend told me that he would live to be eighty,
which he did. I, he said, should die at sixty, as by then my highly
strung temperament would have worn me out. "/Quien sabe?/" as the
Mexicans say.
Another person whom I knew very well was Miss Marjorie Barber, who has
since become famous on the strength of her delicately written and
arresting booklet, "The Roadmender," which was published after her
death.
My intimacy with Marjorie was brought about by the fact that her
sister Agnes--a woman with as fine a literary sense and more all-
round ability, although circumstances and a family have allowed her
but little time to make use of them--became my sister-in-law as I have
said, and, before that event, for some years lived in our house. While
she was here, or shortly afterwards, Mrs. Barber, her mother, and
Marjorie came to live at Bungay, a mile away, so that I saw plenty of
the latter. She was a tall and pretty girl, very pleasant, very
witty--I think one of the most amusing afternoons I ever had in my
life I spent with her alone in the British Museum; it was our last
meeting, I believe--and with all the eccentricity that so usually
accompanies a touch of genius.
At the time of her residence in Bungay she was under the sway of a Low
Church mania, and used to appear dressed as a deaconess and with a
large Bible pressed against her middle. Nor was she above laughing at
herself when the ludicrous aspect of her get-up was pointed out to
her. Subsequently, with a swing of the mental pendulum she became
equally High Church, and modelled crucifixes and saints extremely
well. I think it was between these periods that she was with
difficulty restrained from starting off alone to become a missionary
in China. I remember well that when her sister Mabel, now also dead,
was informed of one of these phases she wrote back: "Oh! for goodness'
sake leave Marjorie alone, for if it wasn't that, it would be 'Captain
Happy Eliza' with a tambourine!"
In her later days, after her mother's death at Bungay, Marjorie met a
lady doctor who, I think, treated her for some illness. To this lady
and her husband she became so much attached that not only did she go
to live with them, but also formally adopted their family name and,
when she died, left them everything she possessed. I believe that
these adopted parents were very kind to her, and nursed her well
during her last painful and complicated illness, which I was told was
tuberculosis in its origin.
It was only during her last years that Marjorie took to writing,
which, seeing how great were her abilities in this direction, is
unfortunate. It is, however, quite possible, judging from what I know
of her disposition, that if she had begun earlier she would have
wearied of the business and cast it aside. As it was, she showed great
perseverance under distressing circumstances, for, when she became
unable to use her right hand, she taught herself to write with the
left and in all sorts of strange attitudes made necessary by her
complaint. Personally I prefer "Brother Hilarius" to all her few other
literary efforts, not excluding the much-praised "Roadmender," perhaps
because of its charming pictures of the scenery of this neighbourhood.
Marjorie had considerable psychic powers. Thus her sister Agnes told
me only the other day that she had actually known her, when lying
helpless in bed, to read a newly opened letter held in a person's hand
at the other end of a long room far beyond her reach of vision,
without, of course, any acquaintance with the contents of the letter.
Her sister told me also--she was present at the time--she believed
that she really died some days before the breath actually left her. In
this connection she exampled the conduct of a little dog in the house
--I think it was a fox-terrier--which was much attached to Marjorie
and for long weeks at a time could scarcely be got away from her
bedside. A few days before her actual breathing ceased, however, this
dog suddenly left the room, and could not by any means be prevailed
upon to return there. Such at least is the story as it came to me.
I am sorry not to have seen more of Marjorie during her last years,
but in truth she vanished away from kith and kin and friends.
Another of my early friends, who, I am glad to say, still survives, is
Dr. Wallis Budge,[*] the head of the Egyptian Department of the
British Museum, to whom not long ago I dedicated my book "Morning
Star," an attention that pleased him very much. I really think that
Budge is both the most industrious and the most learned man of my
acquaintance. How he can compass all the work he gets through--and
such work!--is to me one of the marvels of the age. As might be
expected, he is a great believer in the Old Egyptians; indeed, as I
told him not long ago, he has been so long of their company in spirit
that almost he has become one of them. Budge seems to be of opinion
that the ancient thinkers among this people discovered all that we can
learn of the mysteries which relate to the life of the soul, the
resurrection, etc. In times that passed away before history began--
when, as he says, men had leisure for reflection--they found out much
that we think now. Afterwards, he remarked to me, the medicine-man and
the paid priest arose and overlaid the truth with all the fantasies
and formulas and ridiculous details of symbolical worship which it was
to their advantage to imagine and maintain. If I understand him right,
he holds that religion pure and undefiled wells up spontaneously in
the heart of man, and that afterwards it is smothered, and even
killed, with the dross of ritual and controversy where professional
theologians pitch their camps.
There has been much talk of late of a painted board on which a face is
carved, which once rested on the mummy of a priestess of Amen who
lived about 1500 B.C. It has been supposed to bring misfortune to
those who had anything to do with it, or who even looked upon it.
One day in the autumn of 1889 a gentleman was shown into Dr. Budge's
room in the British Museum and, producing a photograph of the painted
board, asked him to tell what the object represented was. Budge saw at
once that it was an object of which the Museum had few examples, and
that it was in a good state of preservation, and also an antica of
considerable value. The visitor said, "Do you want it?" Budge said,
"Yes, but we have no money." Visitor: "I don't want money. I'll give
it to you." Budge: "Very handsome of you. Please give me your name and
address, and I will report your generous gift to the Trustees." The
visitor did so, but lingered, and after a time said, "Could you send
for it to-day?" There was difficulty, it then being three o'clock, in
getting a van and men, but they were got and sent for the board. The
visitor asked if he might remain till the board came, and Budge gave
him books to look at. In due course the board arrived and the men
brought it upstairs, and the visitor got up and thanked Budge
profusely. Said Budge, "The thanks are due to you from us." Whereupon
the visitor took Budge by the hand and said words to this effect:
"Thank God you have taken the damned thing! There is an evil spirit in
it which appears in its eyes. It was brought home by a friend of mine
who was travelling with Douglas Murray, and he lost all his money when
a bank in China broke, and his daughter died. I took the board into my
house. The eyes frightened my daughter into a sickness. I moved it to
another room, and it threw down a china cabinet and smashed a lot of
Sevres china in it. The cook saw it and fainted, and the other
servants saw flashes of fire come from the eyes, and ran away from the
house. A friend suggested the giving it to the Museum, and, thank God!
you have accepted it. I want no thanks. I shall be ever in your debt."
With these words he left the room and Budge saw him no more. The board
was put into the mummy room, and Douglas Murray and W. T. Stead came
and examined it and said it possessed psychic powers--that a soul in
torment was chained up in the board, and so on. All this got into the
papers, and much nonsense besides. Budge said that the board had given
them no trouble, and published it in one of his books.
A certain mummy had many weird stories attached to it. It was bought
by "Midge" Ingram of the /Illustrated London News/ and brought to
London. Budge was sent to report upon it by his chief, Dr. Birch, and
he said it belonged to the Ptolemaic Period and came from Akhmim in
Upper Egypt. Ingram bought it in Luxor, and was said to have carried
it off without paying what the native wanted for it. The native ran
after the boat along the bank for miles, and cursed Ingram with all
his might in the name of Allah. Among the inscriptions on the coffin
were extracts from a funerary work, and the copy of it in the British
Museum had a curse attached. The curse declared that the man who stole
the work, or burnt it, or buried it, or drowned it, should be blotted
out, his body and seed destroyed for ever, etc. During a shooting tour
in Somaliland Ingram shot at a huge she-elephant with buck-shot and
enraged the beast. He fired again, and the elephant pursued him among
the palms, and finally caught him with her trunk and lifted him into
the air and dashed him limb from limb. Then she found the trunk and
trod it with her feet to a pulp. Sir Henry Meux, who was of the party,
collected the remains, put them in a box and buried them, but a few
days later the box was washed out of its bed, and the party decided to
carry it to the sea-coast. Before Ingram left England he gave the
mummy--which he had agreed to sell to the British Museum--to Lady Meux
of Theobalds Park, who placed it in her Egyptian collection. There it
lay for several years, and Lady Meux used to go the museum every day
and pray by the side of the case containing it. Budge published a full
description of the mummy and coffin, and a splendid collotype
reproduction of the coffin, in the "Catalogue" of the Meux Collection
which he made for Lady Meux. The collection was bequeathed to the
British Museum by Lady Meux, but her conditions were such that the
proposed gift could not be accepted. The collection was then sold by
auction and dispersed.
I asked Budge if he believed in the efficacy of curses. He hesitated
to answer. At length he said that in the East men believed that curses
took effect, and that he had always avoided driving a native to curse
him. A curse launched into the air was bound to have an effect if
coupled with the name of God, either on the person cursed or on the
curser. Budge mentioned the case of Palmer, who cursed an Arab of
Sinai, and the natives turned the curse on him by throwing him and his
companions down a precipice, and they were dashed to pieces. Budge
added, "I have cursed the fathers and female ancestors of many a man,
but I have always feared to curse a man himself."
Two other stories of Budge's are worth preserving.
When he was at Cambridge Dr. Peile of Christ's offered him an
exhibition if he would be examined in Assyrian, and as Budge's funds
were exiguous he was very anxious to get the exhibition. An examiner,
Professor Sayce of Oxford, was found to set the papers--four in all--
and the days for the examination were fixed. The night before the day
of the examination Budge dreamed a dream in which he saw himself
seated in a room that he had never seen before--a room rather like a
shed with a skylight in it. The tutor came in with a long envelope in
his hand, and took from it a batch of green papers, and gave one of
these to Budge for him to work at that morning. The tutor locked him
in and left him. When he looked at the paper he saw it contained
questions and extracts from bilingual Assyrian and Akkadian texts for
translation. The questions he could answer, but he could not translate
the texts, though he knew them by sight, and his emotions were so
great that he woke up in a fright. At length he fell asleep, but the
dream repeated itself twice, and he woke up in a greater fright than
before. He then got up--it was about 2 A.M.--went downstairs to his
room, lighted a fire, and, finding the texts in the second volume of
Rawlinson's great work, found the four texts and worked at them till
breakfast-time, when he was able to make passable renderings of them.
He went to College at nine, and was informed that there was no room in
the Hall, it being filled by a classical examination, and that he must
go into a side room near the kitchens. His tutor led him to the room,
which was the duplicate, skylight and all, of the one he had seen in
his dream. The tutor took from his breast pocket a long envelope, and
from it drew out several sheets of green paper similar to that of the
dream, and gave Budge the examination paper for that morning, saying
that it was green because Sayce, on account of delicate eyesight, was
obliged to use green paper when writing cuneiform. The tutor then
turned, said he would come back at twelve, and, going out, locked the
door behind him as Budge saw him do in the dream. When he sat down at
the table and looked at the paper he saw written on it the questions
and four pieces of text for translation, and the texts were line for
line those which he had seen in his dream. Surprise at his good
fortune prevented him from writing steadily, but at length he got to
work and had finished the paper before the tutor appeared and unlocked
the door at noon. The three other papers were easier, and Budge got
the exhibition--for him a very vital matter.
I asked Budge if he could explain the matter, or account for it in any
way, and he said, "No. My mother and maternal grandmother both had
dreams of this sort from time to time when they were in any kind of
difficulty, and in their dreams they were either shown what to do or
were in some way helped. Being very pious folk, they regarded these
dreams as the work of Divine Providence, who wished for some reason to
help them out of trouble or difficulty. For myself, I could never
imagine Providence troubling about any examination, but I was quite
overcome for a time with astonishment at my good luck."
There is one story. Let the reader make of it what he can, for it is
beyond my powers of interpretation.
In the second story Budge was only indirectly concerned. He was at
Cairo waiting for a boat to England, and he was wandering down Kamil
Street when two ladies, mother and daughter, stopped him and greeted
him with warmth and affection. They had been telegraphing to several
places in the Sudan to find him, and were glad to meet him. Budge had
known both mother and daughter for several years, and asked them if
they wanted to go to the Egyptian Museum. The daughter said "Yes." The
mother said "No," and then went on to tell him that she wanted to have
her fortune told by a really good Egyptian fortune-teller. There was
such a man in Cairo at the time, and Budge had talked astral lore and
zodiacal influences and such stuff with him, and went and found him
and introduced him to the lady. A retired quarter of a balcony was
found, and the three of them, Budge and the two women, sat on chairs,
while the native--a Parsi, by the way--squatted on the ground. Budge
told him that his gratuity would depend on the excellence of the
fortune he brought to the lady. He took out of his bosom a small brass
astrolabe--which Budge has to this day--and a turquoise tablet with
figures of the planets, etc., on it, when Budge said, "Put those away
and read the lady's fortune from her face." He put them away, and sat
and looked steadily into the lady's face. Presently he said, "Madame
is ---- years, ---- months, and ---- days old," and his statement was
correct. Next he said, "Madame has been ill since her husband died."
Budge did not know of the death, but the man was correct. After a
pause he said, "Madame drinks too much strong water." Budge was
furious, but the lady said, "It is true: I tried to drown my sorrow."
Another pause, and then, "Madame is thinking of making a contract
about a house. I see the house in a very large garden. Let not madame
take that house, for if she does she will lose money, will become ill
in it, very ill." Budge asked the lady of this was true, and she said,
"Yes; I have the lawyer's letter in my pocket," and produced it. At
this point Budge insisted on withdrawing out of earshot of the
conversation between the fortune-teller and the lady, and sat where he
could watch the proceedings. After a full half-hour the lady jumped up
from her chair, turned the contents of her money-bag into the man's
lap, and then rushed in almost speechless fury to where Budge was and
upbraided him and called him a false friend. She said words to this
effect: "You have told that man everything about my life, and you are
in league with him. You are both blackguards, and I will never speak
to you or see you again. That scoundrel has insulted me, and he dared
to tell me to watch my daughter, because she would poison me and kill
me. That shows what you are!" The lady rushed off to her rooms, and
Budge never saw her again.
The end of the story as Budge gave it to me is this: The lady took the
house, which was large and in a fashionable West End quarter, spent a
good deal of money on the lease and in furniture, and then fell
seriously ill. The illness increased, the doctors ordered her to the
seaside, and the house was sold at a great loss, and much of the
furniture. Her illness increased, and one night, when in acute pain,
she asked her daughter to give her a dose of medicine containing
morphia because she could not rest. The daughter took up the small
bottle which her mother pointed out to her and, seeing no instructions
written upon the label, poured the whole of its contents into a glass
and gave it to her. The sick lady, dazed with pain, took the glass and
drank all that was in it. She never spoke or moved again. Reports of
the proceedings which took place appeared in many papers, and the
absence of instructions on the label of the bottle was somehow
explained.
There is the story, and I leave the reader to ponder over it.[*]
[*] I have Sir E. W. Budge's permission to say that he has seen and
consents to the publication of the above stories.--Ed.
CHAPTER XIV
MEXICO
J. Gladwyn Jebb--His character--Mr. and Mrs. H. R. H. visit him in
Mexico--Death of their only son while absent--New York on way to
Mexico--Reports--Their loyalty to each other--Mexico City--Don
Anselmo--Golden Head of Montezuma--Treasure hunt--Zumpango--
Journey to silver mine--Chiapas--Vera Cruz--Frontera--Millions of
mosquitoes--A mule load of silver--Attempt of robbers to steal it
--Silver mine--Tarantulas--Mishap on journey back--Return to
England.
During the year 1889 I made the acquaintance of my late friend J.
Gladwyn Jebb, one of the most delightful persons whom I have ever
known. Some irony of fate brought it about that Jebb should devote his
life to the pursuit of mining and commercial ventures--a career for
which he was utterly unsuited. The result may be imagined: he worked
very hard in many evil climates, broke down his health, dissipated his
large private means in supporting unremunerative enterprises, and died
saddened and impoverished.
I have described his character in my introduction to "The Life and
Adventures of J. G. Jebb," by his widow, from which I quote a short
passage.
In the city of Mexico, where business men are--business men, he
was respected universally, and by the Indians he was adored. "He
is a good man, Jebb," said an honourable old Jewish trader of that
city to me--"a man among a thousand, whom I would trust anywhere.
See, I will prove it to you, /amigo/: he has lived in this town
doing business for years, yet, with all his opportunities, he
leaves it /poorer than he came here/. Did you ever hear the like
of that, /amigo/?"
Would that there existed more of such noble failures--the ignoble are
sufficiently abundant--for then the world might be cleaner than it is.
It matters little now: his day is done, and he has journeyed to that
wonderful Hereafter of which during life he had so clear a vision, and
that was so often the subject of his delightful and suggestive talk.
But his record remains, the record of a brave and generous man who, as
I firmly believe, never did, never even contemplated, a mean or
doubtful act. To those who knew him and have lost sight of him there
remain also a bright and chivalrous example and the memory of a most
perfect gentleman.
Unfortunately for myself, a connection in the City had introduced me
to certain Mexican enterprises in which he was concerned that in due
course absorbed no small sum out of my hard earnings. Also he
introduced me to Jebb, which good deed I set against the matter of the
unlucky investments.
Jebb urged me to come to Mexico and write a novel about Montezuma,
both of which things I did in due course; also as a bait he told me a
wonderful and, as I believe, perfectly true tale of hidden treasure
which we were to proceed to dig up together. Of this treasure I will
write hereafter.
Jebb and Mrs. Jebb returned to Mexico during the year 1890, where my
wife and I made arrangements to visit them at the commencement of
1891.
And now I come to a very sad and terrible event that pierced me with a
sudden thrust which has left my heart bleeding to this day. Yes, still
it bleeds, nor will the issue of its blood be stayed till, as he
passes by, I touch the healing robes of Death. I refer to the death of
my only son.
This child--he was just under ten when he died--possessed a nature of
singular sweetness, so sweet that its very existence should have and
indeed did warn me of what fate held in store for us. So far as my
experience goes, children who bring with them to the earth this
twilight glow of the bright day in which perchance they dwelt
elsewhere, who wear upon their brows this visible halo of an unnatural
charm and goodness, rarely remain to bless it long. That which sent
them forth soon calls them back again. And yet, could we but
understand, their short lives may not lack fruit. Through their
influence on others they may still work on the world they left.
My son Rider--he was by his own wish called Jock, to avoid confusion
between us--was such a child as this. I can never remember his doing
what he should not, save once when he teased his little sisters by
refusing to allow them to come out of a place where he had prisoned
them, and for his pains had the only scolding I ever gave him. Yet he
was no milksop or "mother's darling." He bore pain well, would ride
any horse on which he could climb, and even while he was still in
frocks I have known him attack with his little fists someone who made
pretence to strike me. He was an imaginative child. One example will
suffice. We left London on our holiday: it was the year in which I
wrote "Allan Quatermain." When we drove from the station to the farm
the full moon shone in the summer sky. "Look, dad," he said, pointing
to it, "there is God's lamp!"
The boy was beloved by everyone who knew him, and in turn loved all
about him, but especially his mother and myself. How much I, to whom
all my children are so dear, loved, or rather love, him I cannot tell.
He was my darling; for him I would gladly have laid down my life.
It is strange, but when I went to Mexico I knew, almost without doubt,
that in this world he and I would never see each other more. Only I
thought /it was I who was doomed to die/. Otherwise it is plain that I
should never have started on that journey. With this surety in my
heart--it was with me for weeks before we sailed--the parting was
bitter indeed. The boy was to stay with friends, the Gosses. I bade
him good-bye and tore myself away. I returned after some hours. A
chance, I forget what, had prevented the servant, a tall dark woman
whose name is lost to me, from starting with him to Delamere Crescent
till later than was expected. He was still in my study--about to go.
Once more I went through that agony of a separation which I knew to be
the last. With a cheerful face I kissed him--I remember how he flung
his arms about my neck--in a cheerful voice I blessed him and bade him
farewell, promising to write. Then he went through the door and it was
finished. I think I wept.
I said nothing of this secret foreknowledge of mine, nor did I attempt
to turn from the road that I had chosen because I was aware of what
awaited me thereon. Only I made every possible preparation for my
death--even to sealing up all important papers in a despatch-box and
depositing them in Messrs. Gosling's Bank, where I knew they would be
at once available.
But alas! my spirit saw imperfectly. Or perhaps /knowing/ only that
Death stood between us, I jumped to the conclusion that it was on me
of an older generation that his hand would fall, on me who was about
to undertake a journey which I guessed to be dangerous, including as
it did a visit to the ruins of Palenque, whither at the time few
travellers ventured. It never occurred to me that he was waiting for
my son.
About six weeks later--for I may as well tell the story out and be
done with it--that hand fell. My presentiments had returned to me with
terrible strength and persistence. One Sunday morning in the Jebbs'
house in Mexico City, as we were preparing to go to church, they were
fulfilled. Mrs. Jebb called us to their bedroom. She had a paper in
her hand. "Something is wrong with one of your children," she said
brokenly. "Which?" I asked, aware that this meant death, no less, and
waited. "Jock," was the reply, and the dreadful telegram, our first
intimation of his illness, was read. It said that he had "passed away
peacefully" some few hours before. There were no details or
explanations.
Then in truth I descended into hell. Of the suffering of the poor
mother I will not speak. They belong to her alone.
I can see the room now. Jebb weeping by the unmade bed, the used
basins--all, all. And in the midst of it myself--with a broken heart!
Were I a living man when these words are read--why, it would be wrong
that I should rend the veil, I who never speak of this matter, who
never even let that dear name pass my lips. But they will not be read
till I, too, am gone and have learned whatever there is to know.
Perhaps also the tale has its lessons. At any rate it is a page in my
history that cannot be omitted, though it be torn from the living
heart and, some may think, too sad to dwell on.
This morning, not an hour since, I stood by my son's grave and read
what I had carved upon his cross: "I shall go to him." Now that I am
growing old these words are full of comfort and meaning to me. Soon,
after all these long years of separation, I shall go to him and put my
faith to proof. If it be true, as I believe, then surely my spirit
will find his spirit, though it must search from world to world. If,
with all earth's suffering millions, I am deluded, then let the same
everlasting darkness be our bed and canopy.
On my return from Mexico I wrote a romance called "Montezuma's
Daughter." In this tale the teller loses his children, and I put into
his mouth what myself I felt. Here are the words: I cannot better them
after all these years, and they are as true to me now as they were
then.
Ah! we think much of the sorrows of our youth, and should a
sweetheart give us the go-by, we fill the world with moans and
swear that it holds no comfort for us. But when we bend our heads
before the shrouded shape of some lost child, then it is that for
the first time we learn how terrible grief can be. Time, they tell
us, will bring consolation; but it is false; for such sorrow time
has no salves. I say it who am old--as they are so shall they be.
There is no hope but faith, there is no comfort save in the truth
that love which might have withered on the earth grows fastest in
the tomb, to flower gloriously in heaven; that no love indeed can
be perfect till God sanctifies and completes it with His seal of
death.
I wrote just now that, for reasons I hope to set out later in this
book, I believed my faith, which amongst other things promises reunion
of the death-divided, to be a true faith. Indeed, if it be otherwise,
what a hell is this in which we live. Thrusting from the memory all
other trials and sorrows, not for any finite earthly life that could
be promised me would I endure again from year to year the agony I have
suffered on the one count of this bereavement, which is after all, so
common and everyday a thing. If ever, in some dread hour, faith in all
its forms should be /proved/ a dream and mockery, surely in the same
hour will sound the death-knell of all that is best in the educated
world. Brutes which guess of nothing better can live happy till the
butcher finds them: men who believe can endure till God consoles or
calls them. But will the much-developed man whose heart-strings, like
those of the Aeolian harp, must thrill and sob in every wind of pain--
will /he/ continue to endure if once he is assured that beneath the
precipice from which he will presently be hurled there is--Nothing?
Knowing all they must be called upon to suffer at the best, will he
breed children, perhaps to see them thrown from the stark cliff before
his eyes and there to cease to be /for ever/? (The case of France,
where I believe faith grows very weak, seems to give answer to this
question. Yesterday I read that in that country during 1911 the deaths
exceeded the births by over thirty thousand. My conviction is that,
unless faith returns to her in some form, as a nation France is
doomed. She will fall as Rome fell, and from the same cause.)
In short, I hold that God and a belief in a future life where there is
no more pain and tears are wiped from off all faces are necessities to
civilised and thoughtful man, and that without them, slowly perhaps,
but surely, he will cease to be. He will commit suicide when Fortune
frowns, as did the Roman who had outgrown his gods; he will refuse to
propagate his kind, as do the French. Why should he breed them to be
the bread of Death?
Such are the conclusions at which I have arrived after many years of
reflection which began at the time of my great grief. They may be
right or they may be wrong; that the future history of the white races
will reveal. At least I believe in them. Nor do I believe alone. But
yesterday I was speaking on these matters to a bishop of the English
Church, a very able and enlightened man. I found that my views were
his views, and my conclusions his conclusions. Also he thought, as I
do, that many of our present troubles, industrial and other, arise
from the loss of faith among men. The feast of Life, such as it is, is
spread before their eyes. They would help themselves to the meagre and
bitter fare they see, and who can wonder? "Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die."
To return to the sorrow which gave rise to these reflections. I
staggered from the room; I wrote a cable directing that the burial
should take place by the chancel door of Ditchingham Church, where now
he lies. Afterwards I took up a Bible and opened it at hazard. The
words that my eyes fell on were "Suffer little children to come unto
me, and forbid them not." The strange chance seemed to cheer me a
little. That afternoon I went for a walk in the great avenue. Never
shall I forget that walk among the gay and fashionable Mexicans. I did
not know till then what a man can endure and live.
Now I have come to understand that this woe has two sides. If he had
lived who knows what might have chanced to him? And the holy love
which was between us, might it not have faded after the fashion of
this world? As things are it remains an unchangeable, perfect, and
eternal thing. Further, notwithstanding all, I am glad that he lived
with us for those few years. His sufferings were short; his little
life was happy while it endured; he went, I believe, quite sinless
from the world; and, lastly, I believe that the soul which has been,
is and will be.[*]
[*] My son died suddenly of a perforating ulcer after an attack of
measles. Perhaps surgery could have saved him to-day.--H. R. H.
As for myself, I was crushed; my nerves broke down entirely, and the
rest of the Mexican visit, with its rough journeyings, is to me a kind
of nightmare. Not for many years did I shake off the effects of the
shock; indeed I have never done so altogether. It has left me with a
heritage of apprehensions, not for myself personally--I am content to
take what comes--but for others. My health gave out. I left London,
which I could no longer bear, and hid myself away here in the country.
The other day I found a letter of this period, sent to me as an
enclosure on some matter, in which the writer speaks of me as being
"quite unapproachable since the death of his only son." So, indeed, I
think I was. Moreover, at this time the influenza attacked me again
and again, and left me very weak.
We did not come home at once--what was the good of returning to the
desolated home? Our boy had died in a strange house and been brought
to Ditchingham for burial. What was the good of returning home? So
there, far away, in due course letters reached us with these dreadful
details and heart-piercing messages of farewell.
And now I have done with this terrible episode and will get me to my
tale again. The wound has been seared by time--few, perhaps none,
would guess that it existed; but it will never heal. I think I may say
that from then till now no day has passed, and often no hour, when the
thought of my lost boy has not been present with me. I can only bow
the head and murmur, "God's will be done!"
I remember reading in one of R. L. Stevenson's published letters,
written after he had helped to nurse a sick child, that nothing would
induce him to become a father, for fear, I gathered, lest one day he
might be called upon to nurse his own sick child. I can well
understand the effect of the experience on a highly sensitive nature,
and, as a matter of fact, he died childless. Yet, as I read, I
wondered what he would have felt had such a lightning shaft as fell
upon my head from heaven smitten and shattered /him/.
Perhaps, being frail, he would have died. But I was tougher, and lived
on. More: I went among murderers and escaped; I wandered into the
fever lands, and never took it; the brute I rode fell in a flooded
river, and I did not drown; I was in peril on the sea, and came safe
to shore. It was decreed that I should live on.
On our arrival in New York on our way to Mexico, on January 10, 1891,
I was seized upon by numbers of reporters. Now the single reporter may
be dealt with, preferably by making him talk about himself, which is a
subject far more interesting to him than you are; or he may be
persuaded to tell you about the last person or subject upon which he
has had to report. Thus, on a subsequent occasion, a reporter came on
board the ship to see me before she reached her berth. Early as it was
in the morning, he had already been about his paper's business,
attending the electrocution of two men in a prison! The sight had
impressed even his hardy nerves sufficiently to make him talk a great
deal about it, describing all its details. Therefore I was called upon
to furnish him with but little information about myself, though
probably this was not a fact that weighed on him when it came to the
writing of the interview.
Another man, who caught me in a railway train, grew so interested in
talking of his own affairs that he never noticed that the train had
started till it was running at quite twenty miles an hour. Then with a
yell he rushed down the carriage and leapt out into the night. I have
always wondered whether he was killed or only broke his leg.
There is nothing that an American reporter will not do to attain his
ends. For instance, I have known them to break into my room at
midnight when I was in bed.
Once, when I was in America as a Commissioner, the reporter of a great
paper did his best to make me express opinions on some important
matter connected with the internal policy of the United States.
Naturally I declined, but this did not prevent my alleged views upon
the question from appearing everywhere. Then followed leading articles
in some of the best papers gravely lecturing me and pointing out how
improper it was that one who had been received with so much courtesy,
and who occupied a diplomatic position, should publicly intervene in
the domestic affairs of the country to which he had been sent by his
Government. A famous comic journal, also, published a cartoon of me in
a pulpit engaged in lecturing the American people.
Needless to say, I was extremely annoyed, but of redress I could
obtain none. Contradiction where the country is so vast and newspapers
are so many is hopeless. However, when I was leaving New York another
representative of the same great paper came to interview me on the
steamer, and to him I expressed my feelings. He listened; then
replied, with a somewhat sickly smile, "Very annoying, Mr. Haggard,
but I guess it would be scarcely loyal of me to give our man away,
would it?"
Nothing could exceed the kindness with which we were received in the
United States--even the reporters were kind till it came to cold
print. Really I think that Americans are the most hospitable people in
the world. I will go further and say that nobody is so nice or
sympathetic or broad-minded or desirous of all good as a really first-
class American, man or woman. I remember that on the occasion of this
visit we were quite glad to escape from New York, where literally we
were being killed with kindness. To feast with some hospitable host at
every meal, from breakfast till a midnight supper, after a week or so
becomes more than the human frame can bear.
From New York we went to the beautiful city of New Orleans, where also
we were widely entertained. One dinner-party I shall never forget.
Upon each napkin lay a little poem anent something I had written. For
instance, here is one which evidently refers to "The World's Desire":
Upon thy breast the /"bleeding Star" of love/,
Etherealised, and freed from /serpent/ taint,
Is all afire, O burnished dove!
For whom men fail and faint!
Moreover in the middle of dinner someone--I think it was our hostess--
rose and read a poem at me. Though very kindly meant, it was really
most embarrassing, especially as I had no poem ready with which to
reply.
In New Orleans, amongst other places of much interest, I was shown a
park in which duels used to be fought in the early days, and a
graveyard where, because of the water in the soil, the dead are buried
in niches in the surrounding walls.
Leaving that most hospitable city, we travelled on to El Paso, then
quite a small town on the Mexican border. I remember that on the train
I fell into conversation with a gentleman who, much to my
astonishment, informed me that in the future we should telegraph
through the air without the use of any connecting wires, and furnished
me with the details of how this would be done. At the time I confess
it occurred to me that he was amusing himself by gammoning a stranger
who was known to write romances. Now, however, I see that at the
commencement of the year 1891 there was at any rate one person who was
very well acquainted with the system of wireless telegraphy which is
now identified with the name of Mr. Marconi, then a lad of sixteen
years of age.
There were at this time two railway lines running from the States to
Mexico City, and I recollect that we hesitated long by which of them
we should travel. Our choice was fortunate, since the train which left
on the same day by the other line met with many adventures. Amongst
other things it was twice thrown off the rails by intelligent Mexicans
actuated either by spite or the hope of plunder, and some of its
occupants were killed. Mexico, even in those days, was a wonderful
city of almost Parisian appearance; but I confess that what interested
me more than its tramways and fine modern buildings were such relics
of old Mexico as could be seen in the museum and elsewhere, and the
mighty volcano of Popocatepetl, which the Aztecs feared and
worshipped, towering to the skies. The cathedral also, built by the
early Spanish conquerors, is a remarkable church, though, owing to the
rarity of the air at that height above sea-level, I should not
recommend any visitor who has doubts as to the condition of his heart
to follow our example and climb to the top of its tower.
I think I mentioned that the original cause of my visit to Mexico was
the tale of a certain treasure which appealed to all my romantic
instincts. This was the story so far as I can recollect it.
In Mexico Mr. Jebb knew a certain Cuban named Don Anselmo. This man,
who was a geologist, was prying about on the farther shore of Lake
Tezcuco, when a Mexican emerged from some bushes and remarked that he
saw that Anselmo knew the secret which he thought belonged to himself
alone. Anselmo, being no fool, pumped him, and out came the story. It
appears than an aged cacique confided to the Mexican the plans and
inventory of that portion of the treasure of the Aztecs which was
recaptured from the Spaniards in the disaster of the /Noche triste/.
This inventory set out a list of eighteen large jars of gold, either
in the form of ornaments or dust, several jars full of precious
stones, much arms and armour, also of gold, and lastly a great golden
head more than life-size, being a portrait of the Emperor Montezuma.
The plan showed where and how all this wealth had been disposed of in
a pit sixty feet deep, at the bottom of which was a great rock covered
with Aztec writing. The mouth of this pit was on the land where
Anselmo was pursuing his geological researches, and marked by two
ancient trees planted near to it by the Aztecs when they buried the
treasure.
The only stipulation made by the old cacique when he revealed the
secret, which came straight down to him from his forefather who had
helped Guatemoc to bury the treasure, was that it should never be
given up to Government or to any Spaniard.
Needless to say, the Mexican and Don Anselmo entered into a
partnership. Anselmo tried to raise funds to buy the property. Failing
in this, he got the leave of the proprietor to prospect for sulphur,
and, with some others, began to dig at the spot indicated on the plan.
All went well. The Mexican kept away native loungers by announcing
that devils dwelt in the hole. The pit was cleared out, and at the
depth of sixty feet was found the great stone, on which was cut an
owl, the crest or totem mark of Guatemoc. Unfortunately, just at this
time the excavators were advised that the property had been sold to a
new owner, who was coming to inspect it. All night long they worked
furiously at the stone, which at last they destroyed with dynamite. A
tunnel was revealed beyond, running at right angles into the side of
the hill, till some steps were reached that mounted upwards. On one of
these steps lay the copper head of a spear. At the top of them,
however, was a very solid wall of some hard material which had been
fused by heat.
The excavators retreated, baffled by the lack of time and this
impenetrable wall. They filled in the shaft, hurling down it the boles
of the two trees that Guatemoc had planted, and ran before the new
owner arrived, announcing that they had found no sulphur.
Ultimately Anselmo approached Mr. Jebb, who was known to have
influence with the member, or ex-member, of the Government who had
acquired the property. From him Jebb obtained permission to dig for
antiquities on his estate. I remember the arrival of the formal letter
of leave, but not what stipulations were made as to the disposal of
any articles that might be found. Full of hope that it would fall to
our lot to discover the golden head of Montezuma and the jars of
treasure and of jewels, with the help of Senor Anselmo we were making
our preparations once more to clear that shaft when the terrible news
of which I have spoken arrived. After its receipt I had no heart to
enter upon the adventure.
A year or so later Jebb returned to Mexico to find, I think, that the
Mexican concerned was dead and that Anselmo had vanished, none knew
where. It was suggested that he had been murdered by Indians who knew
that he held the secret of their ancient wealth. But whether this was
so or not I cannot say.
The site of the shaft is, I suppose, now lost, although of course some
of the peons that assisted in the clearing of the pit may remember its
whereabouts, if they still live. I understand, however, that only
Anselmo and the Mexican actually destroyed the covering stone engraved
with an owl and explored the passage and flight of steps beyond. The
peons probably thought that they were really digging for sulphur
without the permission of the proprietor of the land.
The story as it stands is, I admit, like most such stories, rather
vague, but for my part I believe, as did the late Mr. Jebb, that
Montezuma's treasure or a large part of it remains buried in this
place. That it is buried somewhere is not to be doubted, for the
Spaniards never recovered what was lost in the rout of the /Noche
triste/. Indeed, my impression is, although I cannot verify this
without rereading all the old chroniclers, that they put many Indians
to the torture, including Guatemoc himself, as I have described in
"Montezuma's Daughter," in order to force them to reveal its hiding-
place. However this may be, I doubt whether the golden head of
Montezuma and the jewels which he wore will ever again see the light
of day. The Aztecs buried them deeply, having time at their disposal;
no plough or surface excavation will reveal them, and the place of
their sepulture is lost. And this must anyhow be pleasing to the shade
of the heroic Guatemoc.
By a little stretch of the imagination one might almost fancy that
this hoard still lies under the protection of the evil Aztec gods, of
one of which I will now tell the story.
Shortly before I went to Mexico, in the course of some drainage works
which were then being begun at a distance from the city--I think the
place was called Zumpango, but of this I am not sure--a peculiarly
hideous idol was discovered. It was grey in colour, but, if I remember
rightly, more or less blotched with pink, and its head was sunk almost
between the shoulders, while I can only describe the face as devilish.
On its disinterment it is a fact that the Indians of the neighbourhood
identified it at once, by the tradition which had descended from
father to son among them, as a slaughter-idol of the Aztecs which had
been buried at this spot to save it from destruction by the Spaniards
in the time of Cortes, and there remained in seclusion until the year
1890. Its resurrection is said to have occasioned great excitement
among them.
One of the old chroniclers--I think it is Bernal Diaz--describes the
finding of the Place of Sacrifice over which this idol presided. If I
recollect aright he says that they saw a pole from the top of which
the idol itself had been removed, and that the said pole was built all
round with the skulls of human victims whose hearts had been torn out
as an offering to it. In short, the pedigree of the thing seems to be
well authenticated. As Mrs. Jebb describes in the Life of her husband,
Jebb, an ardent collector of curiosities, was very anxious to obtain
this blood-stained relic, which he offered to buy at no mean price.
The finder, however, could not be tempted to part with it, and there
the matter remained. One day, however, to Jebb's great astonishment,
the idol arrived on the back of a native, unaccompanied by any note or
word of explanation, and was deposited in his flat in the city of
Mexico, where he found it on his return home. When I visited him very
shortly afterwards one of the first things that I saw in the house was
this ill-omened effigy of Huitzilpotchli, or whatever god it
represented, grinning a welcome across the /patio/. Now by some
strange chance from that moment forward, as Mrs. Jebb tells,
everything went wrong with her husband's affairs. His health broke,
companies with which he was connected collapsed, mines proved
unpayable, and, lastly, he sold a reversionary interest in a
considerable sum for a third of its value on the very day before the
life-tenant died! Such were some, but by no means all, of the
catastrophes that overwhelmed him, which cause one to wonder for what
exact reason the finder had parted gratis with this peculiar treasure
for which shortly before he had refused good gold.
One of the places in which we stayed in Mexico was a huge /hacienda/
situated by a lake. This vast house had once been a monastery, and the
great chamber in which we slept was still hung round with the
portraits of ill-favoured abbots. A feature of the house consisted of
its almost endless cemented roofs, on which we used to walk. It was
tenanted by the two bachelor stewards of the great estate, who kept
mastiff dogs to guard them at night, friendly creatures enough when
once mutual confidence had been established. Altogether that
/hacienda/ was not a cheerful residence to my mind, although the wild-
fowl shooting on the lake was excellent and the farming operations
that were carried on interested me much.
Shortly after the receipt of the desolating news of which I have
written, in order to try to occupy our minds we made an expedition to
a place called Pinal among the mountains, where, with Mr. Jebb, we
were the guests of a gentleman named Stockdale who had charge of a
silver mine in which Jebb was interested. It was a spot of
extraordinary loveliness, with its deep valleys and pine-clad heights,
but the journey there on horseback was very rough. Sometimes the road
ran along the dry bed of a river, where the animals stumbled from
stone to stone, while at others it wended on the edge of precipices.
Down one of these precipices I nearly disappeared, for my horse, a
wooden brute, took the opportunity to fall at a spot where the two-
foot-wide path had been washed away by rain, in such a fashion that
his front legs were on one side of the gap and his hind part on the
other. How I escaped I am sure I do not know. Mr. Stockdale used to
gallop along these paths, although once he and his horse fell over the
edge and were saved only by being caught in the flat top of a thick
thorn tree. He laughed at my dislike of them. A while afterwards I
heard that he had fallen from such a path and been dashed to pieces.
He was a young Englishman of the best sort, one of that gallant breed
whose bones whiten every quarter of the earth.
The traveller on these mountain paths in Mexico will notice many
wooden crosses set up against the rocky walls. Each of these shows
that here a death has occurred, sometimes by accident, more frequently
by murder, which amongst these half-savage and half-bred people--the
product, many of them, of intercourse between the Spaniard and the
Indian--is or used to be of common occurrence. (Now I observe that
under the name of Revolution the Mexicans are butchering each other
wholesale in the hope of securing the plunder of the State, which has
grown wealthy under the rule of the fugitive Diaz.)
I remember that we reached Pinal on a Saturday, the night on which the
peons get drunk on /mescal/ and /aqua ardiente/ and fight over
gambling and women. On the Sunday morning I walked down the street of
the village, where I saw two men lying dead with blankets thrown over
them. A third, literally hacked to pieces by /machetes/, was seated in
a collapsed condition in a doorway, while the village barber tried to
sew up his hideous wounds. I do not know what became of him. Such was
the Mexico of those days.
One of the towns that we visited on this journey was a place named
Queretaro, with a /plaza/ where the band played, for all the Mexicans
are musical, and the young people walked about in the evening. I felt
so ill there that I thought I must be going to die; but a travelling
American doctor whom I met in the place, and who, good fellow that he
was, kindly examined me, told me that I was suffering from nothing
except shock to the nerves.
At Queretaro I was taken up a hill and shown the wall against which
the unhappy Emperor Maximilian had been butchered some five-and-twenty
years before. In this town, as in most others in Mexico, the church
bells seemed to ring continually, as I was informed, to frighten away
the devils, of whom there must in truth be many in that land--if
devils exist anywhere outside the human heart.
We made some part of the return journey from Pinal in a kind of
diligence that we hired. It was reported that brigands were active in
the country through which we had to pass, and therefore we were not
best pleased when a fat Mexican, who was convoying a huge mass of pure
silver from some mine, insisted upon joining our party. When asked why
he was so determined upon the point, he answered: "Oh! I have silver;
in front hide brigands. You are Englishmen, and /the English will
always fight!/" However, we saw nothing of these brigands, perhaps
because of the warlike reputation of our race.
On our return to Mexico City I undertook a longer journey to the State
of Chiapas, then rarely visited by Europeans, where Jebb was
interested in a certain mine, in which, to my sorrow, I had shares.
The original arrangement was that we were to have travelled to the
marvellous ruins of Palenque, which were built by some pre-Aztec race.
But this was given up for the same reason that we gave up digging for
Montezuma's treasure. In place of it it was settled that Jebb and I
should make the journey to the Chiapas mine and, returning thence at a
certain date, meet our wives on the New York steamer off the port of
Frontera, where she called, and thence proceed with them to the States
and England. Of course it miscarried, as most things do, or did, in
Mexico, as I shall tell presently. Indeed, as I can see now, the whole
expedition was of a somewhat crack-brained order, but at the time I
cared little what I did.
Jebb and I proceeded from Mexico to Vera Cruz by the wonderful railway
which winds from the 7000 feet high tableland, past the glorious
mountain of Orizaba to the coast. Then the train only ran in the
day-time in charge of an armed guard, for fear of brigands who could
be relied upon to throw it off the line at night. I recall one town or
village which we passed where there were, I think, thirteen churches
and twelve houses, or so I was told. The churches were said to have
all been built by successful brigand captains when they retired from
business in the neighbourhood in order to expiate their not
inconsiderable crimes. By the way, I think it was on my journey to
Pinal that I passed through a place of some size where we saw only a
few sullen old men and some women and children. The rest of the male
population had recently been killed out by the /rurales/, or mounted
guards, I forget for what cause. Indeed all my recollections of Mexico
are somewhat fragmentary, for at the time I made no notes of my
experiences, and after a lapse of over twenty years the memory is apt
to retain only such occurrences and scenes as struck it with peculiar
force.
At Vera Cruz, a beautiful but, at that time, unwholesome town, for
yellow fever was still prevalent there and the vultures were the chief
safeguards of the public health (they sat on the scavengers' carts as
these went their rounds), we caught the steamer which was to land us
at Frontera. I had left Mexico City with the worst cold I ever
experienced, contracted originally through my folly in opening the
window of a stifling Pullman car, not knowing that we were to run over
high mountains in the night. It was so bad that I had to pull my
eyelids open in the morning, and even my ears were stopped up; nor
could I shake it off in the piercing atmosphere of the central Mexican
tableland. The mild and beautiful climate of the coast, however, acted
on me like magic, and before I had been twenty hours at sea I was
almost well again.
On the day after leaving Vera Cruz we reached Frontera, at the mouth
of a great stream that I think was named the Tobasco River. Frontera
was a village with a long wide street of which the population appeared
to me to show many traces of white blood. It was a horrible hole. The
inn, if it could be so called, in which we slept, if I remember right,
stood partly on piles in the water like a lake dwelling; in the garden
or yard great hogs rummaged, while vultures sat upon the railing of
the verandah. Mosquitoes buzzed about by millions, and the face of the
boy who waited on us was covered with open sores, resulting, I was
told, from fever. Many of the children, also, were fever-stricken,
since here malaria seemed to have a favourite home. Only the great
river, with its palm-clad banks, was beautiful.
On the following day we started up this river, lying in a canoe towed
by a naphtha launch, in which canoe we slept, or tried to sleep, all
night. Never in all my life--no, not even at Tiberias on the Sea of
Galilee--did I meet with so many or such ferocious mosquitoes! I tied
my trousers and my sleeves round my ankles and wrists with string, but
they bit through the cloth, and when I looked in the morning where the
dogskin gloves ended on the wrists were great bracelets of white
bumps. Then there were little grey flies called /gehenn/, or some such
name, which were worse than the mosquitoes, since the effect of their
bites lasted for days, and, when one went ashore, /garrapatas/ or tiny
ticks that buried themselves in the flesh and, if removed, left their
heads behind them. Perhaps these were the greatest torments of the
three. Altogether the banks of the Tobasco River cannot be recommended
as a place of residence.
In due course we arrived at a town called St. Juan Bautista, where we
stopped for a night or two with some Mexicans who had an interest in
the mine we were to visit. They were kind in their way, but what I
chiefly recollect about the place are the remains of an ox that had
been slaughtered within a yard or two of the verandah, just beyond a
beautiful Hibiscus bush in flower, and some soup composed apparently
of oil in which livid cockscombs bobbed up and down. Thence we
proceeded up the river in the naphtha launch, of which the machinery
continually broke down. This was the pleasantest part of the journey.
At length, leaving the launch, we came to a village of which the name
escapes me, a straggling place whereof the central street was paved
with rough cobbles. Here we slept in a house belonging to some lady
who was a great personage in the village, and beautifully situated
upon a cliff at the foot of which ran a sparkling river that reminded
me of a salmon stream in Scotland. Here also Jebb and I very narrowly
escaped being murdered. It came about thus:
We had in our charge a mule-load of silver of the value of three
thousand dollars, which we were conveying to a mine whither went more
bullion than ever came out of it. The knowledge of our possession of
this treasure came to the ears of the inhabitants of this place, among
whom were a goodly proportion of brigands and cut-throats and, as we
discovered afterwards, some of these made a plot to kill us and steal
the silver. It happened that Jebb and I were alone in the house of
which I have spoken, save, I think, for the widow lady and one or two
Indian servants who slept in a different part of the big place. Our
rooms (mine was half filled with Indian corn) were at either end of a
large eating-chamber which overlooked the valley. They were fitted
with latchless or broken French windows. The plan of attack was, as
someone confessed afterwards, to climb up a sloping wall built of
loose stones, kill us with /machetes/, find where the silver might be
(as a matter of fact it was under Jebb's bed) and retire with the
spoil. As police were lacking and our own folk were camped at a
distance, in the Mexico of those days this scheme seemed easy of
accomplishment, since two men surprised at night could not have done
much against a band of armed assassins.
About midnight an attempt was made to put it into operation. The
robbers arrived and began to climb the wall; afterwards we saw their
footprints on the mosses and the displaced stones. For some reason,
however, Jebb was suspicious and, when he was disturbed by the furious
barking of the dogs belonging to the house, he rose and went to the
boltless window, whence he overheard the thieves whispering together
at the bottom of the wall. I also was awakened by the barking of the
dogs, but, after making sure that my pistol was at hand under my
pillow, went to sleep again. For the rest of the story I will quote
what I wrote in my introduction to Mrs. Jebb's Life of her husband:
Retreating to the bed he [i.e. Jebb] seated himself on the edge of
it, holding a wax match in one hand and his long-barrelled Colt
cocked in the other. This was his plan: to wait till he heard the
thieves push open the French windows, then to strike the match
(for the night was pitch dark), and by its light to fire at them
over it before they could attack him.
For a long while he sat thus, and twice he heard the loose stones
dropping as his assailants began to climb up the wall beneath the
window; but on each occasion they were frightened by the clamour
of the dogs, which at length grew so loud that, thinking our
Indian servants, who slept at a distance from the house, would be
aroused, the thieves took to flight without the dollars, leaving
nothing but some footprints behind them.
"And why did you not come and wake me?" I asked when he had
finished his tale.
"Oh!" he answered, "I nearly did so, but I knew that you were very
tired; also there was no use in both of us handing in our checks;
for there were a dozen of those devils, and, had they got into the
room, they would have made a clean sweep of us."
I did not make any reply; but I remember thinking, and I still
think, that this conduct showed great courage and great
unselfishness on the part of Mr. Jebb. Most people would have
retreated at the first alarm; but this, with the utter
fearlessness which was one of his characteristics, he did not do,
since the dollars in his charge were too heavy to carry, and,
before men could be found to assist him, they would have been
secured by the robbers, who knew well where to look for them. In
the rare event, however, of the supply of personal pluck proving
equal to such an occasion, how many of us, for the reasons given,
having a well-armed white companion at hand, would have neglected
to summon him to take his part in the fray? A man must be very
brave and very unselfish indeed to choose to face a band of
Mexican cut-throats when a word would bring a comrade to his side.
I may add that his conduct was foolish as well as unselfish, since in
such a business two can fire quicker than one. Also the sound of his
first shot would of course have wakened me with the result that I
should have rushed, bewildered and unprepared, into the fray and
probably have been cut down before I understood the situation.
However, as it happened, we escaped, thanks to that noble animal, the
dog. So did the cold-blooded villains who had planned our murder in
order to enrich themselves.
What a land of bloodshed Mexico has been, is still, in this year of
revolution, and some prophetic spirit tempts me to add, shall be! The
curse of the bloody Aztec gods seems to rest upon its head. There,
from generation to generation, blood calls for blood. And yet, if only
it were inhabited by some righteous race, what a land it might be with
its richness and its beauty! For my part, I believe that it would be
well for it if it should pass into the power of the United States.
From this place of a forgotten name we proceeded to the mine on mules.
It was a fearful journey, but how long it took to accomplish I cannot
remember. For the first part of it the road, if it could be called a
road, consisted of a kind of corduroy of little ridges with mud-holes
of from one to three feet deep between them, which had been gradually
hollowed out by the feet of mules, the ridges being those portions of
the ground on which these did not tread. As heavy rains had fallen
and, indeed, were still falling, the pleasures of such a ride may well
be imagined. Once we stopped at a /hacienda/ where there was a cocoa
plantation that I was told produced a great deal of money in that
fertile soil. I shall never forget the place, or at least the
impression it produced upon me. In a long low room a fat half-breed,
its owner, was swinging in a hammock, or rather being swung by Indian
girls. Terrible stories were told of such men and their poor Indian
slaves in these remote places, for in practice slaves they still
remained, especially with reference to young women who grew up upon
their estates. Whether things have bettered since that day I do not
know, but, if certain works that I have read are true, I gather that
in such matters they remain much the same as they were two hundred
years ago.
After the corduroy road plains we passed into the mountains where, by
the hollowing action of water, the tracks had been reduced to a kind
of ditch floored with a butter of red clay. Here there were
precipices, along the edges of which we ambled. One spot remains
firmly fixed upon my mind. The path along the precipice had been
broken away and a new one made a little further up the hillside. When
we reached the place I tried to turn my mule to this upper path. But
the wooden-mouthed brute was of a different opinion. Baggage mules, I
should explain, always prefer the edge of a precipice, because their
burdens are less likely to be knocked by projecting rocks or other
mules. Therefore, this beast that I rode insisted upon taking the
lower path. The natural result followed: we began to descend the red
butter slide with great rapidity. There was neither time nor room to
dismount. All appeared to be over, since a few yards in front, the
path having, as I said, been washed away, was empty space. However,
just in time, the mule itself awoke to the situation. I presume that
its inherited experience told it that to be dashed to pieces is not
agreeable. At any rate it put on some kind of vacuum brake of its own,
with the result that we pulled up at the extremest edge of
nothingness; indeed, it seemed to me that when our slide came to its
end all the creature's four feet were gathered in a round that might
have been covered by a Mexican priest's hat. Afterwards that same
mule, the most incompetent surely of all its kind, fell with me in the
midst of a flooded river.
Another such river we were obliged to cross seated in a loop of string
which was slung upon a rope, quite an exciting mode of progression.
Upon the occasion of Mr. Jebb's previous visit to this mine either the
loop or the rope broke, and the cook who was making the journey went
to a watery grave.
We slept a night in a saw-mill that had been established by the mining
company upon the banks of a great river. I remember that at dawn I
went to bathe in this river, and was struck with the marvellous beauty
of the scene. The face of the water was covered with clouds of
floating mist, while above, rising in tiers from the steep banks of
the river, appeared the motionless, solemn trees. And then the
indescribable silence and the utter loneliness. The great primeval
forest beyond this river was very wonderful, at any rate to me who had
never seen its like. Here grew vast trees with rib-like roots that ran
far up the trunk, and between the trees impenetrable thickets of
Indian Shot--Canna, I think, is the right name--twenty feet and more
in height. When the Indians wish to grow a crop of maize they burn a
patch of this Canna scrub and sow the seed in the rich ash-fertilised
soil, where it bears abundantly.
These Indians of remoter Mexico are strange, sad creatures whose
demeanour suggests that the woes and wickedness heaped upon their
forefathers by the cruel Spaniards have never faded from the minds of
the descendants. In body they are handsome and often stately, but
their souls seem crushed. Now they, whose race once was free and
great, as the mighty ruins show, are but hewers of wood and drawers of
water whom the white man kills if they venture to cross his desire. On
the narrow mountain paths or in the depths of the vast forests the
traveller meets them toiling forward under the weight of some
tremendous load. Humbly the poor creatures, in whose veins perhaps
flows the blood of Montezuma, draw aside and stand resting on their
long sticks while the white lords pass. Then once more they begin
their patient journeyings.
By the way, I saw a very curious "mackintosh" in use among these
Chiapas Indians. It consisted of two huge leaves, I suppose of some
water plant, which were fastened together at the base, leaving a hole
for the wearer's head. These leaves, thus arranged, hung to below the
middle before and behind, and were impermeable even to the tropical
Mexican rain. A long line of men clad in them presented the strangest
of sights.
We arrived at the mine at last, and spent some days there. It was in
the charge of an English gentleman whose name I am sorry to say I have
quite forgotten, but who received us with much kindness. He had built
himself, or the company had built for him, a long low house with a
verandah and some spare rooms, in one of which I slept. After the
mosquito-haunted canoe and our nocturnal habitations, that clean
little room seemed an almost celestial abode. Tarantulas were very
plentiful about the house and, going to bed one night, I perceived a
specimen of inconceivable size--really it looked as large as a plate--
sitting on the ceiling immediately above my head, and shouted for
assistance. My host arrived and, after inspection of the monster,
exclaimed: "For goodness' sake don't touch it! That isn't a tarantula,
that's the chap who lives upon tarantulas!" I accepted the
explanation, but asked him to be good enough to remove this household
god to his own room.
While Jebb was engaged in the affairs of the mine I wandered about the
beautiful valley in which it was situated, collecting plants and
ferns. The vegetation here was truly wonderful, while palms and other
trees, covered with ferns and orchids to their crowns, presented a
lovely sight. Only, because of the snakes which were said to abound,
it was necessary to be very careful in gathering these floral
treasures. With much difficulty I succeeded in bringing a sackload of
roots to England, and in the greenhouses here still survive some of
the plants I collected in Mexico, though certain of the ferns grew so
enormous that they had to be given away. I lost that sack on an
American train, and was told by the conductor to go and look for it in
a very insufficiently lighted van, where presently I came to grief
over some hard object. It proved to be a coffined corpse which was
being "mailed" from one part of the States to another.
Our return journey to Frontera was quite as arduous as that of which I
have spoken, but in the end we arrived without having contracted fever
or met with any serious mishap. Here, however, we fell victims to
Mexican guile. The American steamer, with our wives and luggage on
board, was due to call on the following day, but some rascal at
Frontera who was agent for the line, and also owned a tub that plied
between that port and Vera Cruz, informed us that this she would not
do because of a "norther" that was coming up. Now a "norther" is a
very terrible gale which blows for days at a time in the Gulf of
Mexico, making it impossible for even the finest ship to approach
certain of the ports, and the agent swore that his telegraphic
information as to its arrival was correct. This, of course, meant that
we might look forward to, I think, another fortnight of the pleasures
of Frontera.
However, the agent was ready with a remedy. The tub I have mentioned
was sailing for Vera Cruz at once. It would, he said, get there before
the liner left, or, if not, it would signal to the liner to stop and
take us aboard. Only we must make up our minds instantly--within five
minutes. We fell into the trap, paid an expensive fare, and steamed
off in that dreadful ship. During the night we sighted the American
liner with our wives on board, making straight for Frontera! To
communicate with her was impossible; indeed, once he had us safe at
sea the captain laughed at the idea. On the following morning the
ladies arrived at Frontera, where they expected to meet us, but were
told by the consummate villain of an agent who had shipped us off in
his own boat on the previous day, that no Englishmen answering to our
description had been even heard of at Frontera. So they were forced to
proceed upon their journey in a state of some anxiety.
We also had anxieties, for the machinery of our tub broke down. There
for one whole night we rolled about off the coast of Mexico, sleeping,
or rather sitting, on the coils of rope upon the deck and waiting for
the promised "norther" which now showed every sign of arrival.
Fortunately, however, it did not develop until later, for, had it done
so, our ship in its disabled condition would in all probability have
gone to the bottom. By the following morning the engines were more or
less patched up, and we crept into Vera Cruz with no baggage except
the travel-stained garments in which we stood and the sack of fern
roots whereof I have spoken, for such spare clothes as we possessed
had been left behind.
The end of it was that we journeyed back to the City of Mexico, a
place that I had hoped never to see again, where we bought a few
necessaries and took the train to New York.
After five days of arduous travel, during which I suffered much from
headache, we reached that city to find that