Chapter 7
Conclusion
Haggard thought that “within a very short period of a man’s decease”[i] there would be no one interested in his books and papers. How wrong he was, for constant visits by many researchers to the Norfolk Registry Office to look at his MSS and to Norwich Museum to see his Egyptian artifacts, added by the antiquarian value of his editions in the thousands of pounds, and the extraordinary success of King Solomon's Mines, not counting the 83 million copies of She have confounded his pessimistic opinion. King Solomon's Mines appeared on the reading list for the present writer's GCE (sic) examinations in 1955 along with Buchan's The Forty Nine Steps and Prester John. His name is recorded on mountains and glaciers in Canada and plains in Australia, as well as in his home town of Bungay. His reputation, like that of Conrad, Kipling and others, is refreshed and retained by the existence of Appreciation Societies in the UK, Australia, Canada and elsewhere. His romances have entertained and thrilled readers for generation after generation.
Yet, as a squire and landowner, and ultimately as a wealthy writer, he was able to live the life of the intellect on a rural farm and to enjoy for most of his life a farmer’s daily existence, with visits to his flat in London and journeys abroad, and to combine his novel writing in his daily routines.
The ability to see into the recesses of Man’s soul, to find a vision of infinity and to weave it throughout his romances, along with the amazingly torrid output of text in the highest imaginative vein possible, are his greatest legacy.
His philosophy of life is beautifully set out in Moon of Israel where he opines on death:
"Death, O prince, is, I think, but a single step in the pylon stair which leads at last to the dizzy height whence we see the face of God and hear his voice tell us what and why we are.”
A not completely difficult philosophy, but expressed and shaped in unparalleled and amazingly expressive terms.
Haggard could not understand why critics like J M Barrie[i] did not rate him as highly as Stevenson, James, Conrad, his great friend Kipling or even Falkner, the author of Moonfleet,[ii] but, in my estimation, he stands as firmly in the pantheon of imaginative literature as any of his contemporaries. His characterisations are spotlessly wrought, his plots are firm and solid, his grasp of human understanding and of man’s place in the firmament is superior to a roll call of any other living writer, and I include Dickens in my sweep. Haggard repeated many myths that he researched in his wide travels. He had learned from Shepstone many of the stories of the Zulus, and even on his return to South Africa in the 1920s picked up more information, such as the Zulu national anthem, for his romances. Frederick Jackson, Lilth's brother, was also a valid source, for in his travels in Borneo in the far east he had learned many accounts of mythical tales which he passed on to Haggard. His visit to Egypt with Lillias furnished him with material, and Humphrey Carter's excavations provided much of the materia