Monday, March 22, 2021

Pulp Fantasy Library: She

One might be tempted, when looking at the authors of Appendix N, to notice seeming gaps – writers one would have expected to have inspired Gary Gygax in his personal conception of fantasy. Clark Ashton Smith is probably the most common example of such an author, since so many people, myself included, have mistakenly assumed that the works of CAS appeared in that famed list. Another "missing" author is H. Rider Haggard, the 19th century English writer whose extremely popular adventure fiction contributed greatly to the "lost world" genre and influenced countless writers of the early 20th century, like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Abraham Merritt. 

While both Burroughs and Merritt figure prominently in Appendix N, Haggard is nowhere to be seen. I probably shouldn't be surprised. Like many authors, Haggard looms so large in the imagination of the first half of the 20th century that one sees his presumed presence everywhere. Robert E. Howard, for example, was an admirer of Haggard, and took up his theme of civilizational devolution with gusto. Thus, it's quite possible Gygax never read Haggard (or didn't think him significant enough to mention) and only came into contact with his ideas through intermediaries like Howard or Merritt. 

Among Haggard most well known and influential novels is She, first published in 1887, after being serialized between October 1886 and January 1887 in the pages of the illustrated newspaper, The Graphic. Like so many adventure novels of the time – and those later inspired by it, such as A Princess of Mars, among innumerable others – She is presented as a first-person account that has been edited by a third party for publication. The first-person account is that of Ludwig Horace Holly, a young professor at the University of Cambridge. Early in the novel, he describes himself as follows:

Most men of twenty-two are endowed at any rate with some share of the comeliness of youth, but to me even this was denied. Short, thick-set, and deep-chested almost to deformity, with long sinewy arms, heavy features, deep-set grey eyes, a low brow half overgrown with a mop of thick black hair, like a deserted clearing on which the forest had once more begun to encroach; such was my appearance nearly a quarter of a century ago, and such, with some modification, it is to this day. Like Cain, I was branded—branded by Nature with the stamp of abnormal ugliness, as I was gifted by Nature with iron and abnormal strength and considerable intellectual powers. So ugly was I that the spruce young men of my College, though they were proud enough of my feats of endurance and physical prowess, did not even care to be seen walking with me. Was it wonderful that I was misanthropic and sullen? Was it wonderful that I brooded and worked alone, and had no friends—at least, only one? I was set apart by Nature to live alone, and draw comfort from her breast, and hers only. Women hated the sight of me. 

The full passage goes at some length about Holly's ugliness, isolation, and misanthropy, which sets him apart not just from his fellow man but also from the caricatured expectations of fictional Victorian adventure novel protagonists. Far from being an ideal human specimen, he is, in his own words, a monster. 

One day, a colleague by the name of Vincey calls on Holly. Unlike Holly, Vincey is a very handsome man, but he is also dying and asks Holly to become the legal guardian of his five year-old son, Leo. Vincey has "never been able to bear to look upon," as his birth had cost him that of his wife. Vincey explains that he chosen Holly for this role because, after observing him for two years, has concluded that Holly is "hard and sound at core." He then explains that Leo is the

only representative of one of the most ancient families in the world, that is, so far as families can be traced. You will laugh at me when I say it, but one day it will be proved to you beyond a doubt, that my sixty-fifth or sixty-sixth lineal ancestor was an Egyptian priest of Isis, though he was himself of Grecian extraction, and was called Kallikrates. His father was one of the Greek mercenaries raised by Hak-Hor, a Mendesian Pharaoh of the twenty-ninth dynasty, and his grandfather or great-grandfather, I believe, was that very Kallikrates mentioned by Herodotus.

Holly accepts the task and is given a locked iron box that he is told not to open until Leo has reached the age of 25. Vincey also asks that Holly not send the boy to school but to instruct him at home. A day later, Vncey is found dead and Holly takes Leo into his home. For the next twenty years, Holly raises him and the two develop a fondness for one another akin to uncle and nephew. Leo grows into a handsome man looking like "a statue of the youthful Apollo." 

Upon his twenty-fifth birthday, Holly opens the box for Leo and finds inside a note from Vincey to his son, explaining more about his ancestry and his travels in the Middle East and Africa seeking "the Pillar of Life," a source of immortality. Also included is a series of ancient inscriptions that, when translated, tell the story of a sorceress in Africa who has discovered the Pillar and, thanks to it, has ruled in secret for millennia. Enraptured by what he has read, Leo vows to follow in his father's footsteps, asking Holly and Holly's servant, Job, to join him. Albeit reluctantly, Holly and Job agree to join him and they set off for Africa. 

Needless to say, their adventures are fraught with peril, starting with a shipwreck on the coast of east Africa. The trio survive, along with the Arab who captained their ill-fated vessel, and make their way on foot into the interior of the continent. There, they are captured by people called the Amhagger. whose ruler is a fearsome queen known simply as "She-who-must-be-obeyed." Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a novel filled with coincidence and happenstance, the queen turns out to be the legendary sorceress they were seeking – Ayesha, the titular She and perhaps the most fascinating character in the entire novel.

She is an immense, rambling work, but it benefits enormously from Haggard's energetic prose. The story it tells is preposterous on the face of it, but Haggard tells it with such straight-faced gusto that, like the best tall tales, it nevertheless has a ring of truth to it. More than that, it's one of the fountainheads from which so many later pulp fantasy stories flow. Familiarizing oneself with it and Haggard's other works is important, I think, for anyone who wants to understand the origins of the genre that gave birth to Dungeons & Dragons and roleplaying games more broadly. She's influence, though unacknowledged, remains powerful more than a century later.

19 comments:

  1. I don't think Burroughs' "A Princess of Mars" was inspired by "She".

    (The incomparable Dejah Thoris might have been inspired by some of the Apache women the young Burroughs saw during his brief stint at Fort Grant, in my opinion:

    "A never ending source of interest to me were the Apache scouts and their families. We saw little or nothing of their women, though several that I did see among the younger ones were really beautiful. Their figures and carriages were magnificent and the utter contempt in which they held the white soldier was illuminating, to say the least."

    ...but I digress).

    But La of Opar, High Priestess of the Flaming God (first encountered in "The Return of Tarzan") definitely owes her literary heritage to She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.

    Interestingly, I believe it's been said that C.S. Lewis was also influenced by "She" when he wrote of Jadis, the White Witch, in his Narnia stories, and even Tolkien is said to have been similarly influenced in his conception of Galadriel (although the latter connection is less obvious to me).

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    1. Another, different, example of Tolkien's debt to Haggard is in the way he describes overland travel; it's been some time since I've read either, but the way they both go about it is very similar

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  2. Haggard is indeed an underappreciated author in this day and age. I'm particularly baffled by the fairly large number of people I've run into over the years who refer to their wife or girlfriend as "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed" and yet have no idea where the term comes from. The first time it happened I didn't think much of it, but after more than a dozen times over 30+ years it's clear to me that our culture has co-opted it without giving the least recognition to Haggard's novel.

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    1. They may have gotten it, directly or indirectly, from John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey novels. Rumpole calls his wife She-who-must-be-obeyed (though not to her face). Mortimer no doubt knew where the name came from, but lots of his readers wouldn't. That's often how these things get passed on.

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    2. I've read Rumpole myself. I can say with certainty that at least six of the people who've used the phrase have not. At least two of them are actively boastful of not having read a book of any kind since graduating college in the 80s.

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    3. Rumpole of the Bailey as played by Leo McKern and broadcast on ITV in the UK during the 80s is where I first heard the saying. While I thought that it originated with John Mortimer putting the words into Rumpole's mouth, it now seems to be a reference to this book.

      Every day is a school day! A delight of this blog.

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    4. Virginia Woolf also used a modified version for Mrs. Ramsay from To the Lighthouse - "She Whose Wishes Must Be Obeyed" - but general consensus seems to be that Haggard originated the term.

      Digging deeper, there's also a statue in Washington DC named after She, which is a direct ref to the Haggard novel. It's - well, it's blue. Some modern (using the term loosely - it's from the mid-70s) art does nothing for me, and that's one of them.

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  3. Another book more then worth mentioning is Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth." It was first published twenty years before "She" and is (surprisingly) not mentioned in Appendix N. Mushroom forests, Underground Seas, dinosaurs in a lost land, ect. Verne was writing about that stuff before anyone else put it to pen and paper.

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  4. I love the novel She, and many of Haggard's works, like King Solomon's Mines and The People of the Mist. Great adventure stories with a touch of fantast about them. Haggard's writing style reminds me a bit of Tolkien's.

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  5. I love this book. That said, it might have been too much in the direction of "literature" to have been listed in Appendix N. After all, also absent from Appendix N are Dracula, Frankenstein, Poe, etc.

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  6. Holly's description of himself seems to exactly match the common image of the Neanderthal. I wonder if this was intentional; if he was supposed to be a throwback.

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  7. If you haven't read anything by Rider Haggard, you're missing out on a heck of a lot of fun. His books still entertain and have been an immense influence on writers such as Robert E. Howard. The famous scene in "Queen of the Black Coast" where Belit returns from death to protect Conan was inspired by a great passage in Haggard's book "The Ivory Child", an Allan Quatermain novel.

    I recommend you read anything of Sir H. Rider Haggard that you can get your hands on (he wrote dozens of books) but at the very least read SHE and King Solomon's Mines. They are at the root of the English tradition of Adventure novels and well worth your time.

    Great post!

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    1. Last I looked all his work was on Project Gutenberg, so reading him is just a download away and costs you nothing but time well-spent.

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  8. Worth reading, won't ever reread it. I think the overuse of coincidence prevented me from being immersed in the story.

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  9. I'm a big fan of Haggard...'She', in particular. Also quite fond of the 60s Hammer film, too. In fact, as a teen I was really into the Victorian 'Ripping Yarns'...Doyle, Kipling, Haggard...and combined with the release of the various Indiana Jones it probably had a greater influence on me than Star Wars or fantasy. To this day Pulp is my favourite genre.

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  10. There are a few movies based on She, as well. I've not seen the 60s film (nor its sequel, the impeccably-titled "The Vengeance of She"), but the 1984 film is the high-water mark of terrible 80s pop-fantasy films. Our heroes go by the names Tom, Dick, and Hari, and they have to save the world from the terrible Norks. It's awful, but can be a good time if you're in the right mood. And, charmingly, it does credit Haggard, even though there's no resemblance past the title.

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  11. The first movie adaptation came as early as 1935, titled simply "She" as well. I had the chance to endure the 1984 version, it's awful, and not in the funny way - even though the creators show off their literary credentials with a Yeats reference ("tread softly because you tread on my dreams"). Oh, all that class!

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  12. I read King Solomon's Mines a couple months ago and was duly very impressed. Haggard has a good eye for story and the weird "Seeking a lost race/civilization" addition in the "Creating an Adventure" section of B/X clearly takes inspiration from it.

    I have yet to read She, but it and Allan Quartermain are both on my shelf.

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  13. Haggard's "Allan and the Holy Flower" features the perfect iteration of an adventuring party in which the members have different backgrounds and complementary skills. There's Allan Quatermain of course, the leader and a crack shot. Hans the Khoikhoi tracker and all-around trickster. Mavovo the Zulu warrior and soothsayer who makes startlingly accurate predictions. There's even an overly-loquacious translator character who would give me C3PO vibes if he weren't something of a Lothario as well.

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