Chapter 9
1
(p.93)
Unlimited
Loo: Loo, a game for five or more players, became popular in England starting in the seventeenth century. There were two forms. In the quiet domestic game called Limited Loo, the money added to the pool was a modest and fixed amount; Limited Loo is mentioned in some Jane Austen novels, including
Pride and Prejudice.
In Unlimited Loo, the amount of the pool can increase rapidly, leading to great wins and great losses in a short time. It may have been this version of the game that Alexander Pope cited in his poem ”The Rape of the Lock” (1712) (canto 3): “Ev’n mighty Pam [the Jack], that Kings and Queens o’erthrew / And mow’d down armies in the fights of Lu.”
2
(p. 95)
a splendid tiger-skin karross:
In southern Africa, a
karross
(or kaross) is a sleeveless cloak made of sheepskin or other animal hide, with the hair left on.
Karross
is also used to describe leopard-skin cloaks worn by tribal chiefs. The etymology of the word is uncertain; it may be related to the Dutch word
kuras
or the English
cuirass
(a protective breastplate).
Chapter 10
1
(p. 103)
the Amazulu:
The original name for the Zulu people,
amaZulu
means “the people of heaven.”
2
(p. 108)
kerries:
More often spelled
kierie,
this Afrikaans word describes a club used in battle. Along with spear, bow, and arrows, the kierie was part of Zulu tribal regalia. A knobkerrie—in Afrikaans
knopkierie—joined knop
(“knob”) to
kierie
(“club”) to describe a shorter, knobbed club made of wood; Zulu warriors battered enemies with these clubs at close range or, if farther away, threw them.
3
(p. 110)
a black Madame Defarge:
A character in Charles Dickens’s A
Tale of Two Cities
(1859), Madame Defarge sits knitting in her wine shop, consumed with hatred for the French aristocracy, upon whom she wreaks vengeance.
Chapter 11
1
(p. 122)
Arthur’s appeal to the ruffians:
In act 4, scene 1 of Shakespeare’s
King John,
the title character conspires with a chamberlain to murder a young prince and sends two ruffians to burn out the boy’s eyes with red-hot irons. Prince Arthur pleads persuasively, and they do not blind him: “Will you put out mine eyes? / These eyes that never did nor never shall / So much as frown on you.” Charles Dickens, in chapter 14 of A
Child’s History of England
(1851-1853), also addressed the subject:
Then, the King took secret counsel with the worst of his nobles how the Prince was to be got rid of. Some said, ‘Put out his eyes and keep him in prison.’... King John, feeling that in any case, whatever was done afterwards, it would be a satisfaction to his mind to have those handsome eyes burnt out that had looked at him so proudly while his own royal eyes were blinking at the stone floor, sent certain ruffians to Falaise to blind the boy with red-hot irons. But Arthur so pathetically entreated them, and shed such piteous tears, and so appealed to HUBERT DE BOURG (or BURGH), the warden of the castle, who had a love for him, and was an honourable, tender man, that Hubert could not bear it. To his eternal honour he prevented the torture from being performed, and, at his own risk, sent the savages away.
Chapter 12
1
(p. 128)
“Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed”:
The British nursery song “Oh, what have you got for dinner, Mrs. Bond?” contains the lines:
There’s beef in the larder, and ducks in the pond;
Dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come to be killed,
For you must be stuffed and my customers filled!
Dylan Thomas memorably used this old song in his “play for voices”
Under Milk Wood
(1954), in which a loft hawk calls, “dilly dilly, come and be killed.” C. S. Lewis, near the end of his essay “On Obstinacy in Belief,” (reprinted in
The World’s Last Night, and Other Essays,
New York: Harcourt, 1960) points out the flaws in ungrounded faith: “The ducks who come to the call ‘Dilly, dilly, come and be killed’ have confidence in the farmer’s wife.”
Chapter 13
1
(p. 135)
gatling:
In 1862, inspired by the American Civil War, the North Carolina-born gun maker Richard Jordan Gatling (1818-1903) patented a mechanical gun with multiple barrels on a revolving frame that could fire hundreds of rounds per minute. By 1882 a newer model could fire up to 1,200 rounds per minute. The Gatling gun plays a role in Mark Twain’s A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
(1889), in which the narrator Hank Morgan invents his own Gatling gun, which shoots out money.
Chapter 14
1
(p. 145)
the three Romans:
The allusion is to legendary heroes of ancient Rome. According to the historian Livy, Horatius Cocles (“Horatio the one-eyed”) and two companions defended the Sublician bridge against an army of Etruscans led by Lars Porsena, while the Roman army hastily destroyed the bridge. Having succeeded, Horatius jumped into the River Tiber and swam to shore safely:
Tum
Cocles
Tiberine pater inquit te sancte precor haec arma et hunc militem propitio flumine accipias
(“Then Cocles shouted, ‘Father Tiber, I respectfully beg you to receive these arms and this soldier in a benevolent flood’ ”) (Livy,
History of Rome,
2:10). Thomas Macaulay, in his
Lays of Ancient Rome
(1842), translated the same words in quatrain form, in stanza 59 of “Horatius: A Lay Made about the Year of the City CCCLX”:
“Oh, Tiber! father Tiber!
To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman’s life, a Roman’s arms,
Take thou in charge this day!”
2
(p. 149)
as I think the “Ingoldsby Legends” beautifully puts it:
In fact, the lines are from canto 6, stanza 34 of the long poem
Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field
(1808), by Sir Walter Scott:
The stubborn spearmen still made good
Their dark impenetrable wood,
Each stepping where his comrade stood,
The instant that he fell.
The historical battle of Flodden (1513), which pitted Scotland against England, was won by England with heavy losses on both sides. The same canto of Scott’s work contains the famous lines: “O, what a tangled web we weave, / When first we practise to deceive!
(Marmion,
canto 6, stanza 17). Once again Quatermain refers to his favorite ”Ingoldsby Legends” (see note 2 for chapter 1).
3
(p.152)
“fallen from
his high
estate”:
The quotation is from the poem “Alexander’s Feast,” by British poet John Dryden (1631-1700), describing King Darius defeated by Alexander the Great and forsaken by his people:
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And welt’ring in his blood;
Deserted, at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed;
On the bare earth expos’d he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes (lines 77-83).
Chapter 15
1
(p. 160)
“Of farewells to the dying/ And mournings for the dead”:
From the poem “Resignation,” by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). The entire quatrain reads:
The air is full of farewells to the dying,
And mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted! (lines 5-8).
The reference to Rachel is taken from the biblical book of Jeremiah, in which Rachel mourns for her children (Jeremiah 31:15). This indirect biblical allusion fits Haggard’s characterization of Quatermain as knowing only two books, the Bible and
The Ingoldsby Legends
(see note 2 for chapter 1).
Chapter 16
1
(p. 174)
“Lead on, Macduff”:
This is a common misquotation of “Lay on, Macduff,” from the last scene of Shakespeare’s
Macbeth,
when Macbeth and his enemy Macduff are fighting. Macduff gives Macbeth a chance to surrender, but Macbeth refuses: “Lay on, Macduff; / And damned be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!”’ (act 5, scene 8). “Lay on” meant to attack.
2
(p. 176)
Hamilton Tighe:
From “The Legend of Hamilton Tighe” in
The Ingoldsby Legends
(see note 2 for chapter 1). Tighe was a murdered sailor whose ghost appeared, holding his head in his lap, much to the dismay of his killer, a sailor named Hairy-faced Dick (who “hath a swarthy hue, / Between a gingerbread-nut and a Jew”).
Chapter 17
1
(p. 182)
great throne of ivory:
King Solomon’s ornate throne is described in the Old Testament (1 Kings 10:18-20 and 2 Chronicles 9:17-20).
2
(p. 182)
Martini-Henry ammunition boxes:
Martini-Henry breech-loading rifles were used by British soldiers in many Victorian wars and are now avidly collected and reproduced (see
www.martinihenry.com
and
www.users.bigpond.com/digger18/main.htm
).
Also see Dennis Lewis’s book
Martini-Henry .450 Rifles & Carbines
(Latham, NY: Excalibur, 1996).
3
(p. 183)
Monte Christo:
This is the anglicized spelling of the protagonist’s name in Alexandre Dumas’s popular novel
The Count of Monte Cristo
(1844), in which Edmond Dantès, unjustly imprisoned, is told of treasure left on the Island of Monte Cristo. Dantès eventually escapes prison, locates the treasure, takes the title count of Monte Cristo, and buys a house in the wealthy Paris suburb of Auteuil. From there he focuses on taking revenge against his past abusers.
Chapter 18
1
(p. 188)
a fleet of ironclads:
In 1822 French general Henri J. Paixhans suggested that the French navy build ironclad ships. In 1859 France launched the first ironclad warship,
Gloire.
Ironclad warships became more visible during the American Civil War, when in 1862 the battle of Hampton Roads between USS
Monitor
and CSS
Virginia
was the first-ever between ironclad vessels. In terms of cost, according to the Web site of the Vicksburg National Military Park (
www.nps.gov/vick/visctr/sitebltn/age_iron.htm
) the ironclad USS
Cairo
commissioned in 1862, cost $101,000 to build. The
Monitor,
also commissioned in 1862, cost $195,000. The “fleet of ironclads” Quatermain mentions could thus easily have cost more than a million dollars in nineteenth-century currency.
2
(p. 193)
that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick:
From the Old Testament book of Proverbs 13:12: “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life” (KJV). In this context “hope deferred” refers to the continuing suspense and difficulties experienced by Quatermain and his friends. The implicit mention of the biblical tree of life from the book of Genesis suggests a lost Eden, like Africa itself.
3
(p. 194)
African Styx:
In Greek mythology, the Styx River surrounded Hades (Hell); it is mentioned in Homer’s
Iliad
and
Odyssey
and much later literature. Haggard’s metaphor of an African Styx is complex, since the river in question will return Quatermain and crew to modern urban civilization, rather than to Hell. However, in the ethos of many Victorian travelers, there are many similarities between the two places.
Chapter 19
1
(p. 198)
“Open Sesame”:
The phrase is the password that opens a cave of treasures in the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” from
The Thousand and One Nights.
Haggard would have known
The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments
(the work’s alternate name) in the celebrated Victorian translation (1885-1888) by Sir Richard Burton. In the story, Ali Baba’s brother Kasim forgets the magic words and tries “Open, Barley!” without success, followed by “the names of all manner of grains save sesame.” According to one etymology, the term “Open, Sesame” is inspired by the way sesame seeds pop open easily when ripe.
2
(p. 203)
wandered out like Hagar into the desert:
In the Old Testament book of Genesis 16:1-16, Hagar is the Egyptian maid of Sarah, the prophet Abraham’s wife. Sarah is sterile and arranges for Hagar to bear her husband a son, Ishmael. Hagar and Ishmael are sent into the wilderness, where they are protected by God. Mention of this biblical story of redemption after wanderings seems fitting near the end of the adventures described in
King Solomon’s Mines.
Inspired by King Solomon’s Mines
Lost World and Lost Race Literature
Not only was
King Solomon’s Mines
(1885) a popular success upon its initial publication in England; it also helped inspire a new genre of writing. Along with its sequel
Allan Quatermain
(1887) and the mythical She:
A History of Adventure
(1887),
King Solomon’s Mines
inaugurated the flowering of what are known as Lost World and Lost Race novels. Haggard himself wrote fourteen Quatermain novels and forty-five other books before his death in 1925.
Lost World and Lost Race novels depict Europeans in conflict with foreign people and unknown, dangerous environments. Nineteenth-century British imperialism whetted the reading public’s appetite for these books, creating curiosity about the exotic nations their country was colonizing. Vividly written accounts set in Africa, India, and other lands real and imagined, Lost World and Lost Race novels range from high-minded critiques of British imperialism to swashbuckling tales. They continue to be read today.
In Haggard’s
Nada the Lily
(1892), the Zulu hero Umslopogaas lives with a wolf pack. Rudyard Kipling said that this book inspired his two
Jungle Books
(1894, 1895), which Kipling set in the wilds of India, where he was born. Brought together by a shared interest in the legacy of colonialism, Kipling and Haggard became good friends. Kipling helped Haggard brainstorm plots for
When the World Shook
(1919) and the posthumously published
Allan and the Ice-Gods
(1927).