Review
 Haggard, H Rider (2000) Diary of an African Journey: the
                       return of Rider Haggard Stephen Coan (ed).
                       Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press.
 Lindy Stiebel
Haggard scholarship appears to be undergoing something of a renaissance:
this year sees two important publications with Stephen Coan's edition of
Rider Haggard's Diary of an African Journey, and Laura Chrisman's book
Rereading the Imperial Romance (Clarendon Press) which looks at British
imperialism and South African resistance in Haggard, Schreiner and
Plaatje. This interest is possibly not surprising as Haggard, together with
some other writers of Empire, well fits the post-colonial preoccupation
with ambivalence and contradiction.
   Though Haggard is remembered for his African romances or adventure
stories, he himself valued his numerous writings on the land, on agriculture,
on projects to resettle the urban poor and returning soldiers on the land, far
more. From his first work specifically on the land, A Farmer's Year in
 1899, to A Gardener's Year in 1905 and his numerous, meticulously
researched reports on the state of rural England runs a concern with the
primacy of land in developing a people's character and, therefore, how an
exodus from the land bled away a nation's vitality. This concern forms a
serious counterpoint to Haggard's popular romances, though an appreciation
of, particularly African, land and landscape is never absent from his
fiction. During his 1905 visit to the United States as Government
Commissioner to investigate the feasibility of the Salvation Army's 'Labour
Colonies' as a model for British colonies, he lamented: 'It is a hard thing,
in the first place, to live down the reputation of being a writer of fiction...
Still, humbly, imperfectly, I did attempt it. I have not done much. Yet I have
done something' (1926, vol 2:265). Part of the 'something' that this best-
selling writer of farfetched tales set in exotic parts did in service to his
country was to serve on the Dominions Royal Commission after his
knighthood in 1912. The Commission's task was to report on the state of
TRANSFORMATION 44 (2000) ISSN 0258-7696


 Lindy Stiabel
various parts of the Empire including India, Ceylon, Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa and Canada. The Southern African leg of this trip in
 1914 forms the material for Diary of an African Journey and details both
the official business, and unofficial nostalgic, stops made by Haggard, his
wife, Louie, and daughter, Lilias, who accompanied him.
    Though some of Haggard's novels like King Solomon's Mines (1885),
She (1886) and Allan Quatermain (1887) have never been out of print, it
is noteworthy when a writer dead 75 years interests publishers enough to
secure a new first edition publication. This is the coup that Coan has
achieved and Haggard scholars shouldbe grateful to him (though Haggard's
engaging style and Coan's fascinating annotations will appeal to more than
just academics). For the past few decades, since Morton Cohen's first
biography of Haggard was published in 1960, researchers have had to
travel to the Norfolk Records Office in Norwich to read the typescript of
Haggard's 1914 diary of his African trip. Other copies are held by Cmdr
Mark Cheyne, Haggard's grandson in Norfolk, and in the Africana collection
of the late Frank Barlow in Stellenbosch, though the last item has only
recently come to light.
    The value of this publication lies not only in its being published for the
first time, but also in the 'new' photographs and maps with which Coan
accompanies the text, and most importantly, in Coan's extensive notes and
introduction which flesh out Haggard' s account: there are brief biographies
of men and women Haggard met on the trip, descriptions of places he
visited, the historical context of the Anglo-Zulu and Anglo-Boer battles
referred to by Haggard, translations of Zulu and Afrikaans words, modern
day spelling of place names, botanical details of vegetation remarked upon
by Haggard, ever the farmer, etc. Innovative, too, is Coan's division of
what in the typescript version is one long narrative into ten chapters
corresponding to progressive stages of the journey recorded in the diary -
from awaiting the Kinfaus Castle in Madeira at the beginning of the diary,
to revising his jottings aboard the Gaika off Suez at its end. Of historical
interest are the three Appendices attached by Coan to the diary entries: two
are newspaper articles by journalists covering Haggard's visit, whilst the
first contains Haggard's private musings sent to the Right Hon Lewis
Harcourt, Secretary of State to the Colonies, on Rhodesia:
        Only the passage of time, say, a hundred years, can tell us whether or
       no Rhodesia will make a good home for the descendants of the present
        settlers. The question is one much debated, and all that can be said is
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         that as yet it is impossible to speak of Rhodesia as a land suitable to the
         permanent establishment and reproduction of Europeans, as we do, let
         us say, of the Cape Peninsula or Natal. (Coan 2000:284)
  and on Zululand:
         At the present moment the Reverend J Dube, himself an educated Zulu
         with considerable power among his people and the President of the
         South African Native National Congress, is, I believe, on his way to
         England with a deputation to lay ahopeless petition before the King for
         the disallowal of the Natives Land act of 1913...they deserve every
         consideration, since their misfortunes have been many, and for their
         wrong-doings they have paid in tears and blood full measure and
         running over. (2000:305)
  These patronising but perceptive words, certainly for 1914 and from a
  member of a colonial commission, mark Haggard as one sensitive to issues
  of land and race in the far flung corners of an unraveling Empire. They also
  make this book of interest to us grappling with the very same issues today
  in sub-Saharan Africa. Coan is to be highly praised for seeing this last
  unpublished work of Haggard's into print, and for creating out of the raw
  diary material such an engaging and complete record of Haggard's 1914
  visit to Southern Africa.
  References
  Chrisman, L (2000) Rereading the Imperial Romance: British imperialism and
      South African resistance in Haggard, Schreiner and Plaatje. London: Clarendon
f     Press.
  Cohen, M (1960) Rider Haggard: his life and works. London: Hutchinson.
  Haggard, H R (1926) The Days of My Life. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green and
1     Co Ltd.
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