One Good Quatermain Deserves a Half

I finished reading Allan Quatermain (1887) yesterday, H. Rider Haggard's sequel to his own King Solomon's Mines. I think Alan Moore had the right idea when he essentially painted this second book as partially fabricated by the "real" Quatermain of King Solomon's Mines. This second book is a sometimes engaging, occasionally thrilling, but ultimately light adventure compared to the complex wonder at work in the first book.

As I wrote in an earlier entry, when I was about a third of the way through the book, the best part is the beginning when Quatermain and his friends, Curtis and Good, are just setting off into the wilds of Africa. Their skirmishes with a group of deadly Masai hunters are genuinely enthralling. But the book loses momentum it never quite regains after the silly kidnapping plot--I thought of it again watching The Mandalorian last week in which the plot around an alien dinosaur absconding with a child was remarkably similar. At least in Allan Quatermain, it really was a kidnapping for ransom.

The bulk of the novel, the main plot, concerns a lost civilisation of white people somewhere in Africa called the Zu Vendi. This story is somewhat reminiscent of She, particularly since the Zu Vendi are ruled by Queens--two Queens, unlike She. But the Zu Vendi, aside from the fact that all the women normally wear clothing that exposes one breast, aren't nearly as interesting as the Amahaggar and the relationship between the two Queens with the Zu Vendi is not nearly as fascinating as the one between Ayesha and the Amahagger. She presents really thoughtful scenarios exploring methods of rulership, which is one reason the character of Ayesha comes off as so complex. The Zu Vendi are mainly civilised and the two Queens are neatly divided into a Good Queen and an Evil Queen.

Quatermain's friends, Curtis and Good, are also less interesting than they are in King Solomon's Mines. Though Good is occasionally entertaining due to his vanity in Allan Quatermain, though the fact that he's able to change into a full naval dress uniform after the group has gone through a perilous boat ride through lava heated caverns was a bit silly.

The only really interesting character is Umslopogaas, the Zulu warrior with the peculiar axe, who made any scene better whenever he was involved. Haggard knew what he had, I think, because he made Umslopogaas the hero of the book's satisfying climax.

A Hunter's Return

I've started reading Allan Quatermain, H. Rider Haggard's 1887 sequel to his King Solomon's Mines. So far I'm finding Allan Quatermain to be a pulpier fare but not bad.

The book begins with Allan mourning the death of his son. He's joined by his old friends from King Solomon's Mines, John Good and Sir Henry Curtis, who entice him to go on an adventure seeking a lost civilisation in Africa. So far, the best parts of the novel were the scenes following Quatermain and his companions through the wilderness as they're stalked by Masai warriors. Following this, Quatermain and his friends find a lavish, European style home run by a Scottish missionary called McKenzie. The comforts Quatermain finds there, along with a cowardly French cook, feel a bit disappointingly cartoonish. We meet McKenzie's perfect, innocent teenage daughter, Flossie, who in short order becomes a hostage of the Masai, mainly to provide an excuse for a great, bloody battle sequence.

Surely one of the most distinguished features of the novel is the introduction of Umslopogaas, Quartermain's friend and deadly Zulu prince. The description of Umslopogaas' axe is memorable in itself.

By a piece of grim humour, he had named this axe “Inkosi-kaas”, which is the Zulu word for chieftainess. For a long while I could not make out why he gave it such a name, and at last I asked him, when he informed me that the axe was very evidently feminine, because of her womanly habit of prying very deep into things, and that she was clearly a chieftainess because all men fell down before her, struck dumb at the sight of her beauty and power. In the same way he would consult “Inkosi-kaas” if in any dilemma; and when I asked him why he did so, he informed me it was because she must needs be wise, having “looked into so many people’s brains”.

I took up the axe and closely examined this formidable weapon. It was, as I have said, of the nature of a pole-axe. The haft, made out of an enormous rhinoceros horn, was three feet three inches long, about an inch and a quarter thick, and with a knob at the end as large as a Maltese orange, left there to prevent the hand from slipping. This horn haft, though so massive, was as flexible as cane, and practically unbreakable; but, to make assurance doubly sure, it was whipped round at intervals of a few inches with copper wire—all the parts where the hands grip being thus treated. Just above where the haft entered the head were scored a number of little nicks, each nick representing a man killed in battle with the weapon. The axe itself was made of the most beautiful steel, and apparently of European manufacture, though Umslopogaas did not know where it came from, having taken it from the hand of a chief he had killed in battle many years before. It was not very heavy, the head weighing two and a half pounds, as nearly as I could judge. The cutting part was slightly concave in shape—not convex, as is generally the case with savage battle-axes—and sharp as a razor, measuring five and three-quarter inches across the widest part. From the back of the axe sprang a stout spike four inches long, for the last two of which it was hollow, and shaped like a leather punch, with an opening for anything forced into the hollow at the punch end to be pushed out above—in fact, in this respect it exactly resembled a butcher’s pole-axe. It was with this punch end, as we afterwards discovered, that Umslopogaas usually struck when fighting, driving a neat round hole in his adversary’s skull, and only using the broad cutting edge for a circular sweep, or sometimes in a mêlée. I think he considered the punch a neater and more sportsmanlike tool, and it was from his habit of pecking at his enemy with it that he got his name of “Woodpecker”. Certainly in his hands it was a terribly efficient one.

Such was Umslopogaas’ axe, Inkosi-kaas, the most remarkable and fatal hand-to-hand weapon that I ever saw, and one which he cherished as much as his own life. It scarcely ever left his hand except when he was eating, and then he always sat with it under his leg.

I still can't upload files to my webspace so here's Dizzy Gillepsie:

On the Way to the Mines

Allan Quatermain calls himself timid and even a coward but that's somewhat contradicted by the fact that he leads the expedition of 1885's King Solomon's Mines across impassible deserts, through a lost civilisation, and finally into those dark and ancient mines of the title. It's a terrific and obviously influential adventure.

I'd heard it influenced Tolkien and it's very easy to see. Quatermain and his companions hire a man in Africa who turns out to secretly be the rightful king in exile of the secret Kukuana people, hidden across the desert. Allan and his companions receive indestructible chain mail shirts similar to the one of mithril Bilbo and Frodo wear. Of course, this all makes it sound a lot like Black Panther, too.

Like She, a big part of what makes King Solomon's Mines work is the narrator, in this case Allan Quatermain. He's natural and flawed, an unreliable narrator, at least in estimating himself. Author H. Rider Haggard never overplays it, though, allowing Allan to say something nice about himself now and then, as when he describes being able to go toe to toe with an enemy combatant in war before being knocked out like Bilbo in the battle at the end of The Hobbit.

Haggard does a masterful job building suspense around the politics of Kukuana and its sinister, imposter King Twala. When civil war erupts, Haggard's poetic language, and choice to make the Kukuana language translate as old-fashioned, courtly English, really gives it all a sense of epic proportions.

“Ah, these are men, indeed; they will conquer again,” called out Ignosi, who was grinding his teeth with excitement at my side. “See, it is done!”

Suddenly, like puffs of smoke from the mouth of a cannon, the attacking regiment broke away in flying groups, their white head-dresses streaming behind them in the wind, and left their opponents victors, indeed, but, alas! no more a regiment. Of the gallant triple line, which forty minutes before had gone into action three thousand strong, there remained at most some six hundred blood-spattered men; the rest were under foot. And yet they cheered and waved their spears in triumph, and then, instead of falling back upon us as we expected, they ran forward, for a hundred yards or so, after the flying groups of foemen, took possession of a rising knoll of ground, and, resuming their triple formation, formed a threefold ring around its base. And there, thanks be to Heaven, standing on the top of the mound for a minute, I saw Sir Henry, apparently unharmed, and with him our old friend Infadoos. Then Twala’s regiments rolled down upon the doomed band, and once more the battle closed in.