Chapter 3.
"Two Pairs of Peepers": * A Psychological Study of the Passions behind the Literary Collaborations of the Period.
Introduction.
There were tensions in the romance genre between romance and realism on the one hand, and on the other the desire for what writers such as W E Henley claimed was the need for more psychological analysis and what Stevenson was striving to achieve in his masculine novels of action. The passions arising from this basic tension clouded the central issue in this debate, aspiring as it did to higher aims and values, a debate marked by a heated element which we will attempt to show was a screen for the bondings and collaborations behind the literary activities as a key symptom of the genre of imperial fiction.
Sigmund Freud has claimed, quoting for support of his argument Dr Morelli, (d. 1891) 1. that small pieces of evidence, such as the way in which an artist paints an ear lobe or a finger-tip, are highly important to the investigator who is seeking to build up the psychological 'persona' of the people in his investigation. He stressed the point that the rubbish tip can often produce secrets which the less observant person may have overlooked. This advice will be taken up because there is a strong possibility that the survey may reveal details of the relationships between several authors which have been disregarded until now.
We will argue, as cogently as is possible, that small pieces of evidence such as letters between writers, certain articles published in late nineteenth century periodicals, and references of dedications made to authors and the like, demonstrate a revealing picture of the passions behind the bondings which formed the key issue of the study of homosocial collaboration, which can then be built up and shown to be highly evident, although perhaps only dimly realised features of such collaboration until the present moment.
In Freudian psychology two or more people constitute a psychological group, "if they have set up the model object (leader), or both, and consequently have identified with each other." 2. This last definition will be taken as a basis for the social matches which were formed at meeting places such as the Savile club in Piccadilly, and which bondings featured so prominently in the period under investigation.
If sexuality is the basis of much of Freudian investigation, then we should also, perhaps, be advised to look at the psychological implications of the intensity of sex and the act of sex. If sex were only representative of the threnodic and erotic in man, were only the earthly reason for existence, as Leo N Tolstoy remarked, there would be a question mark over life itself:
"Observe that if the purpose of life is happiness, goodness, love or whatever, and if the goal of mankind is what it is stated to be by the prophets, that all men are to be united by love, that swords are to be beaten into ploughshares and all the rest of it, what prevents it from being attained? The passions do. Of all the passions it is sexual, carnal love that is the strongest, the most malignant and the most unyielding. It follows that if the passions are eliminated, and together with them this ultimate, strongest passion, carnal love, the goal of mankind will be attained and there will be no reason for it to live any longer. On the other hand, for as long as mankind endures, it will follow some ideal - not, needless to say, the ideal of pigs and rabbits, which is to reproduce themselves as abundantly as possible, nor that of monkeys and Parisians, which is to enjoy sexual pleasure with the greatest degree of refinement possible, but the ideal of goodness, goodness that is attained by means of abstinence and purity. Men have always striven for this ideal, and they continue to do so. But just look at the result.
The result is that carnal love has become safety valve. If the present generation of men hasn’t yet attained its goal, that's merely because it has passions, the strongest of which is the sexual one. And since that passion exists, a new generation also exists, and thus a possibility of the goal being attained in the next generation. If this generation doesn't manage to do it, there will always be another one to follow it, and so it will continue until the goal has been attained and men have been united with one another." 3
An awareness of the importance of sexual behaviour as the basis of much of men's actions was noted in the field of literature by Samuel Butler who, writing around 1879, drew his readers’ attention to the kind of renewed attitude that was beginning to emerge towards sex and sex matters where he wrote:
"I fancy that there is some truth in the view which is being put forward nowadays, that it is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our own lives and the lives of those who spring from us." 4.
In particular, it may be of advantage to make an intensive investigation of the psychology of Haggard's She - which demonstrates, according to Carl Jung, 5. an 'anima' - Haggard's concept of the feminine force in man. Man's anima was, as Jung demonstrated to an incredulous public, the collection of all the female characteristics within him, and in a Victorian setting which militated against the demonstration of these feminine forces, a man was in a perplexing quandary to know how to express them; the anima - the image a man throws onto a woman and then rejects, thereby falling out of love. This anima is, in Jung's hypothesis, synonymous with the life urge and forms a basis for his actions.
It may be possible to form a construct whereby Ayesha was Haggard’s anima, the caves of Kor were Africa, Holly was Haggard himself, and Job was the male companion that Haggard always sought in his fictional collaborations. Convenient as it was for Jung to use the novel She to form a case study, he was probably not examining the relationship or parallels of the story with the author. We may be able, nevertheless, to obtain some important enlightenment by bringing to our aid modem psycho-logical insight and understanding.
Ayesha, according to this pattern, could have been Haggard's first childhood love; she lives in an impenetrable dwelling or cave, just as the vagina is impenetrable for a young man bound by the social conventions of Victorian society, and Ayesha denotes the important sexual connotations of the repressed Victorian young person, according to Jung’s theory. And just as the heroine is tied to Haggard’s life, so the whole story expresses the essential qualities of Haggard’s character. The hero’s journey through the wilderness of Africa to find the origins of love and happiness in a cave is perhaps the expression of deep, subconscious wants and fears. It is possible to observe from Haggard’s background that the seeds of insecurity were sown by his father in his overbearing treatment and the rejection of his abilities. An example of this emotion is presented in the well documented study by Morton Cohen 6. where we learn that "his father heaped imprecation after imprecation upon him for his stupidity".
A necessary examination of the psychology of Haggard and others will follow which will help to elucidate an understanding of the psychological background of the co-writers who joined together in collaboration to work on their dreams of the romance form. In the case of writing these novels, it might be asked, what were the high toned literary flights of togetherness they embarked on? Were they attempts at fusion in mind and imagination? Were they founded on corporeal and fleshly couplings as well as on literary ones? And did they achieve much aside from worldly success in literature, producing their alluring romances in the arts and publishing, and meeting needs which admittedly were in existence? Or does the present writer have a predisposed set of ideas towards Freudian psychology which leads to the supposition that an arguably benign text is loaded with sexual images, and scarcely veiled homosexual innuendo? The answers to such soundings must come from an even closer examination of the fusions of which these novels were the result.
The relationship between Haggard and Kipling was not only based on a mutual admiration for each other’s work, but their activities at the Savile Club in 1891 where Haggard was one of Kipling's supporters for membership, were capable of a different interpretation from that usually put upon them. Haggard, it would appear, from a letter written by James to Stevenson, was an "immortal": who had been "killed'' by Kipling's arrival on the literary scene.
We'll tell you all about Rudyard Kipling - your nascent rival. He has killed one immortal Rider Haggard, the star of the hour, aged 24 and author of remarkable anglo-indian and extraordinarily observed barrack life - Tommy Atkins tales. 7.
Again, Rider Haggard's name was used by a brother of one of Kipling's barons, J K Stephen, doubling him together with Kipling in a piece of comic verse which asked if a time would not come: When the world shall cease to wonder At the genius of an ass And a boy's eccentric blunder Shall not bring success to pass:... When there stands a muzzled stripling, Mute beside a muzzled bore: When the Rudyards cease from kipling. And the Haggards ride no more?
Calling Kipling an ass and joining his name together with Haggard was bound to raise a number of eyebrows in the literary world, but the irony of such a play upon their names is that the relationship between Haggard and Kipling was brought it to the closer attention of the reading public. 8.
Haggard and Kipling spending the day at Batemans’ leads us to the testing hypothesis that theirs was the literature of dual production with a penchant for embarking on imaginary flights to "the light" together. On the 20th March, 1923, we have them seeing the light in each other’s eye, as if the imagination of the one lighted up the sky of the other: "...for in Kipling there is more light than in any other living man I know, the same sort of light that distinguished Lang when he dropped the shield of persiflage with which he hid his heart." 9.
And on another occasion, returning home from a visit to Batemans’, Haggard wrote in his diary a further reference to the "light" which Kipling exuded and the possession of a faculty which was for Haggard the gift of intelligence: "I never knew a man so full of ‘light’ as Kipling, nor anyone quite so quick at seizing and developing an idea. He has a marvelously fertile mind. We spent a most amusing two hours over the plot and I have brought home the results in several sheets of MS. written by him and myself." 10.
The point (about light) is of importance because it emphasizes that Haggard seemed to take his inspiration from the light that Kipling appeared to emanate. While he seemed to be stimulated electrically by Kipling, the "light" hypnotised Haggard, per-haps causing him to dance in its refracting rays. But, the use of the word ‘light’ implies more than just ideas; it meant they shared a complete cultural affinity - the whole philosophical basis of Kipling’s life and thought was a psychological model object (to use Freud’s terminology) to Haggard.
Haggard and Kipling’s relationship was close enough to allow the exchange of houses as well as visits for days on end. Haggard visited Batemans on a number of occasions, working on the drafts of Haggard’s novel "Murgh", whilst Kipling reciprocated with a visit paid by his family to Haggard’s house at Kessingland Grange near Lowestoft in Suffolk. 11. The Grange was a converted coastguard station, looking out at the sea on the cliffs. A remote place where two writers could work, it had an atmosphere of the sea and, evocative of the navy; also, a bust of Nelson, dated 1812, was prominent in one of the rooms. This figurine had been carved out of a beam for the flagship Victory. In a letter Kipling described the house "for all practical purposes the side of a ship. The garden runs about fifteen yards to the cliff - then the sea and all the drama of the skirts of war laid out before us." 12.
According to Morton Cohen, the most informative of the biographers of Haggard, it was "inevitable" that these writers, "drawn to a common centre from different poles, should be-come acquainted and their paths should cross frequently". We would suggest it was more than that, and that their common centre was a homosocial one. It is undoubtedly true that their meetings were frequent and it is also recorded that Kipling assisted in the work that Haggard was engaged in. Haggard’s notebooks show that Kipling often went over his work with the other writer. In one diary entry Haggard wrote, "We talked a great deal on many subjects, making plots for banks etc. He read me some of his plays and we discussed others." 13.
Haggard and Kipling had come together in 1889 and their relationship developed more rapidly after 1900. "But not until the war years'' Morton Cohen confirmed, "did a strong bond grow between the two". Kipling and Haggard became acquainted in London, a circle of friends having introduced Kipling to membership of the Savile club where he and Haggard met: I took to him at once," Kipling remembered, "he being the stamp adored by children and trusted by men at sight." The Savile club was in a state of heightened expectation when Kipling joined its ranks. John Addington Symonds wrote that, "the Savile was all on the qui vive about him, when l lunched there with Gosse. Rider Haggard appeared really aggrieved at a man with a double- barrelled name, odder than his own, coming up. Literally.'' 14.
Kipling helped with the drafts of Haggard's novels and Kipling confessed, too, that he took the idea for his Jungle Book from an inspiration which came to him on reading Haggard's novel, Nada the Lily:
"It chanced that l had written a tale about Indian Forestry work which included a boy who had been brought up by wolves. In the stillness, and suspense, of the winter of '92 some memory of the Masonic Lions of my childhood magazine, and a phrase from Nada the Lily combined with the echo of this tale. After blocking out the main idea in my head, the pen took charge, and I watched it begin to write stories about Mowgli and animals, which later grew into the Jungle Books." 15.
KIpling encouraged Haggard in his mature period in a letter dated January 28th, 1909: "Let's have more Murgh put in going order”
On one side of the Batemans' stationery can be seen an annotation from Haggard which confirms, in the most conclusive piece of literary evidence which this survey will produce for their collaboration, where it notes: "Batemans/Klplinlg's idea of Murgh, 5.10.08'.. 16.
There was concerted collaboration with Kipling over the production of Allan and the Ice Gods, in February, 1922 when Haggard wrote on the reverse of a sheet of paper which had been used to sketch out the ideas for names for the characters: toying together with names for their creations in the world of Icelandic gods. Playing with names from Murgh through Murth , Murg and Morg appears as a most dilettantish occupation for two men together in a study in a sixteenth century mansion lost in the countryside, where women were excluded and when the only female to appear in the novel is a mythical goddess:
Synopsis of a story drawn up by Rudyard K and myself at Batemans (Feb. 1922) H Rider Haggard. 17.
This document appears to show that Haggard and Kipling were together at Batemans collaborating on Allan and the lce Gods when their intensity of togetherness reveals a compliment from Haggard so far reaching and outstandingly supportive of the other man:
"l have just returned from spending a most interesting day with the Kiplings at Batemans. As usual Kipling and l talked till we were tired about everything in heaven above and the earth beneath. Incidentally too we hammered out the skeleton plot for a romance l propose to write under some such title as Allan and the Ice Gods. 18.
Two writers working together on a novel and covering the whole philosophy of the two worlds of earth and heaven - a mighty undertaking for one author, let alone two. Again, this appears to be clear and authenticated evidence that, as late as 1922. Haggard and Kipling were continuing in a flurry of collaboration and co-authorship which was based on passionate thinking and masculine emotional togetherness.
Haggard's diary shows an ability to abide each other's presence without irritability or embarrassment. Haggard would sit and Kipling would write for days on end; as their togetherness increased their inhibitions in the writing trade melted like people's in the butter trade:
"On Sunday and Monday I sat in his study while he worked and after a while he got up and remarked to me that my presence did not bother him a bit; he supposed because we were two of a trade. 19.
A lengthy conversation with Kipling was all that was required to prove the depth of their sincerity and the interaction of their fulsome affair could go ahead founded on chats and musings in the study. Revealingly, Rider Haggard owned to his diary that: "…A long talk with Kipling is now one of the greatest pleasures I have left in life, but I don't think he talks like that with anyone else; indeed he said as much to me" 20.
Haggard was so fond of him that he dedicated The Way of the Spirit to Kipling with a note to the effect that they had both planned the outline of the novel together. The letter of dedication is dated August 14th, 1905:
"My dear Kipling - both of us believe that there are higher aims in life than the weaving of stories well or ill, and according to our separate occasions strive to fulfill this faith. Still, when we talked together of the plan of this tale, and when you read the written book your judgement thereof was such as all of us hope for from an honest and instructed friend - generally in vain.
So, as you found interest in it, l offer it to you, in token of much I cannot write. But you will understand 21.
One wonders what the content of the part of the book which he could not write would be.
Sexual co-partnership and an alternative writing of chapters were the hallmark of the balance of elemental forces which worked between Haggard and Lang. Apart from their frenetic collaboration on The World's Desire. Haggard and Lang had been in correspondence with each other since the date of the publication of The Witch's Head when, in a postscript, Lang recorded: "I am glad to take this opportunity of thanking you for the great pleasure The Witch's Head has given me. I have not read anything so got for a long time. 22.
One can visualise Haggard and Lang strolling along the leagues of long academy", as Haggard quoted it in a letter dated the 30th April, 1920. 23. while they discussed the merits of the works of art on display:
"Today I have been to the private view of the Royal Academy. The pictures seem much the same as they were five and thirty years ago when I used to look at them with Andrew Lang, trudging through the identical leagues of long Academy' as he called them."
With Lang and Haggard strolling together (arm in arm?) in an inspiring artistic atmosphere, with collaboration in mind, and the finery of the world of art on display, the concept of the emotionally heightened living of this coterie is not difficult to argue out.
When it came to the publication of King Solomon's Mines, Lang read the manuscript draft of the novel, and on its publication he wrote to Haggard acknowledging receipt of his reviewer's copy. The review which he wrote in the Saturday Review was highly complimentary, too much so for an ordinary view which is usually, on balance, incautious backbiting or arrogant nitpicking, and frankly cut-throat.
The act of examining his proofs was one on which Lang could obtain assistance from Haggard. A letter from Lang dated June 2nd, asking if his work could be padded out, stated:
"I send you five chapters of my romance"
Lang requested Haggard to send the work on to the publishers, if it was satisfactory, perhaps hoping for the assumed cachet of its provenance from Haggard's address:
Can I get any more flesh on the dry bonus's 24.
In a further revelatory instance of their cooperation, Lang wrote to Haggard informing him that he had incorporated some of his (haggard’s) ideas into the text, and asked for further assistance: "l’ve worked in your dodge in my fairy tale; its no more an extravaganza than anything you like... Could you read it when typewritten?" 25.
Lang wrote to his collaborator: "You have been more to me of what the dear friends of my youth were than any other man, and I take the chance to say it, though not given to speak of such matters. 26. Haggard echoed these sentiments, writing that he was "among men my best friend, perhaps, and the one with whom I was most entirely in tune". 27.
Lang and Haggard made gestures of support to each other in numerous letters. It is arguable that these contacts were the cause of Lang's widow, the author Mrs Lang, destroying her late husband's correspondence with such ''heart rending completeness'' that, according to Lang's biographer. Roger L Green, "she used to complain that her wrists ached for weeks and weeks after tearing up Andrew's paper's." 28. Before he died, Lang had asked his wife. Leonora Blanche Alleyne, who had written most of Lang's Fairy books, without accreditation being given to her by Lang, to give Haggard a sign of matrimony - a ring, which was to wed them in literary togetherness, and Haggard is pictured in plate photographs of the period wearing the Egyptian ring of Queen Tara, which he always wore from that day on.
Haggard tried to obtain Lang's help for further ventures in double writing. Lang's reply, obscurely half in French, was to be in the negative:
"Faire des objections c'est collaborer, but l don't think I could do more. Had I any ideas of Kor long ago? She I think, is not easily raised.''29.
Apart from the help which Haggard received from Lang in his drafting of She, Lang advised Haggard on his defence of the novel from the attacks in the press. On the construction which went into the writing of She Lang advised Haggard to "screw it a little tighter, and I think it is undeniably an artistic piece of work. … And I'd like if you don't mind to read over the early part with you." 30.
We have examined in Chapter 1 Lang and Haggard's cooperation over the heated, dreamlike adventure novel, The World's Desire, and it would appear evident that their period of intensive . collaboration resulted in their own worldly desires coming true upon the publication of the work in 1890. The World's Desire lifted Haggard and Lang on to a plain of cooperation which no other writing team in this survey had reached. Haggard wrote to Lang in 1907 recalling:
"l think you were a bit discouraged about The World's Desire because a lot of ignorant fools slated it, but in my opinion you were wrong. That work I believe will last." 31.
After The World's Desire was published, Lang acted as a sort of publisher's agent to Haggard. Lang read some of Haggard's works two or three times over, and was in letters to Haggard always "delighted to look over any proofs" He defended Haggard over charges of plagiarism of Kingsley's Hereward in his novel Eric: "Let me see the proofs, as two pairs of eyes are better than one." 32.
If two pairs of eyes were better than one. then two writers writing together could form a more far-sighted team to continue their fanciful expedition into literary togetherness, with publishers and agents only too ready to assist in ensuring that the imaginations of two co-authors were kept at work producing books; activity which was awarding financially as well as socially.
Stevenson showed a passion for Henley when he admired his work in outstandingly glowing terms, which surpassed all standard literary criticism which appeared in the reviews of the day, pointing to the fact that there was more than mere affection, more than the cold light of literary analysis behind the words appearing on the page:
Glad to hear Henley's prospects are fair: his new volume, The Song of the Sword, and Other Verses, is the work of a real poet. He is one of those who can make a noise of his own with words, and in whom experience strikes an individual note. There is perhaps no more genuine poet living... ...and in Henley - all these; a touch, a sense within sense, a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent beyond all definition. 33.
Henley's relationship with Stevenson rests on a mutual fellow feeling which based itself on a bonding passion of extraordinary incandescence. John Connell, in his valuable study W E Henley, has perhaps best described the association which formed, in part in hospital between the twenty-three year old Stevenson and the twenty-four year old editor. After all, it was Lang who had said that Stevenson more than any man he had met was endowed with "the power of making other men fall in love with him". 34.
John Connell explains how the two men's relationship, the effect of hospitalisation on Henley, and the strangeness of Stevenson, by which is probably meant the difference created by his brilliance of mind, usually protected by what his biographer calls "a vast Scottish Stevensonian myth', has come to be seen as "the combination of the deliciously strange with the deliciously unexpected". By that he means, we suggest, that Henley and Stevenson were attracted to each other, as opposites often are, but it could also infer that they found in the lascivious bond which developed in each other the compatibility and harmony which they had sought but had not found in others until then.
Sessions with Henley were too strenuous for the weakly, consumptive Stevenson so they were "prohibited by the doctor as being too exciting", according to a note inserted by Fanny Osbourne in the Prefatory Note in Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case ofDr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. 35.
The love between Henley and Stevenson was of an intensive nature for a short period from 1870-1883. Henley referred to Stevenson as ‘dear lad', "You have Style, dear lad - the great quality", in his eulogy of Virginibus Puerisque, which had been dedicated to Henley, in the letter to Stevenson of April, 1881, he defended Stevenson, declaring "...by God, you've got it'' and "...you are a Stylist - or, to be more correct, a Master of Style." 36.
But the first seeds of disagreement of an all too protesting kind were sowed in September, 1892, when Henley wrote a letter to Charles Whibley about projected work on a joint project for An Anthology of English Prose. And towards the end of the letter which was to mark the beginning of the end of their rela- tionship, it seems that umbrage was to be taken where none was needed over the remarks Stevenson was to make in an article in Punch dated that same week:
"...Meanwhile a very charming and gen- erous appreciation from R L S. Did you see Punch this week? There’s something in it that, if I were a fool, I should resent as a personal at- tack." 37.
In the Pall Mall Gazette for December, 1901, as a result of Balfour’s Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, which he reviewed, Henley took an overview of his relationship with Stevenson, not allowing the record to pass all for honey: Henley’s grudge was pitted not so much against the pre-exodus Stevenson as against the post-Samoan Stevenson:
"For me there were two Stevensons: the Stevenson who went to America in ’87; and the Stevenson who never came back. The first I knew, and loved; the other I lost touch with, and, though I admired him, did not greatly esteem. My rela- tion with him was that of a man with a grievance; and for that reason, perhaps - that reason and 122 others - I am by no means disposed to take all Mr Balfour says .... .." 38.
and later the sweet words of rancour:
"If it convey the impression that I take a view of Stevenson which is my own, and which declines to be concemed with this Seraph in Choco- late, this barley sugar effigy of a real man; that the best and the most interesting part of Steven- son’s life will never get written - even by me; and that the Shorter Catechist of Vailima, how- ever brilliant and distinguished as a writer of sto- ries, however authorised and acceptable as a art- ist in morals, is not my old, riotous, intrepid, scomful Stevenson at all - suffice it will." 39.
Protesting too much, as Shakespeare has it is, arguably a symptom of the psychology of saying one thing whilst the real meaning of one’s words is otherwise and opposed to the ac- cepted norms of what the words themselves convey; a substitu- tional effect, so to say - in Henley’s case stating in an antagonis- tic way that Stevenson’s work was imperfect but actually carry- ing in his mind a sincere and genuine love for the man and his work:
"...he was, that is, incessantly and pas sionately interested in Stevenson. He could not be in the same room with a mirror but he must invite its confidences every time he passed it; to him there was nothing obvious in time and eternity, and the smallest of his discoveries, his most trivial apprehensions, were all by way of being revelations, and as revelations must be thrust upon the world; he was never so