Show ENGLANDS ROMANCER A Glimpse of Rider Haggard at Home and in Society A LION IN LONDON SOCIETY An Interesting Review of the Famous Writer as Seen by au American Woman Etc Etc Copyrighted 18S8 Written for THE SUNDAY HERALD Last season the lion of London literary salons was Rider Haggard White the Pall Mall Gazette was daily printing several columns to prove to the world his plagiarism he was being feted at dinner and high tea There is a prevailing idea among the general public that the writer of She King Solomons Mines and Allan Quartermam mnst be one of those mysterious creatures living in a state of artificial exaltation and evolving those weird fancies from a chloralheated magination To realize the desperate fallacy of such a theory one needs to meet and observe a man who lends no external indications of importunate insight not one of those nervous fra gilo unearthly entities such a type as our Edgar Allan Poe Vividly furnishes I forth When I first met Mr Haggard I was most impressed with his simplicity of appearance his selfpoise and air of speechless selfappreciation I saw in a throng of three hundred authors a tall slender young man accepting the worship of a diety with scarcely a propitiatory pro-pitiatory smile He impressed me as one who had become familiar with applause ap-plause rather than gayety His figure is interesting and entirely wanting in eccentricity but not it is true wanting in a certain kind of distinction dis-tinction that is almost plainness He is a blonde type of man with a prevalence of those tints known as ashen A sallow colorless skin unlighted lighted by warmer hues hair darkened only by the mingling of the deeper drab shades and a dull blue eye which physicians are wont to associate with the anremic temperament His forehead fore-head is square and strong his lips firm his chin resistive and his eyes full of clear deep concentrative force An unemotional face implying none of the lighter tenderer moods a face utterly lacking in strong pigment but rich in puissance of modelling In stature symmetrical erect without pomposity a physical structure held together and given motive power by sinews of springwire expressing sturdiness en I durauce and elasticity His voice in speech is low measured and melodi iousHe He passes through a great drawing room in a mood of complete absorption and complete abstraction looking over the heads of people When he is in troduced to an hitherto unknown admirer ad-mirer and there is at all times a ga laxy of humbler satellites waiting to join the revolving circle and catch a I glint from his splendorwith a vague manner of wellbred ennui t he listens i to the fulsome and overfull allusions to i his books When he is in London he lives quietly in bachelor artlessness a figure at receptions banquets and lawn fetes yet never making his presence in great I throngs too cheap He belongs most preeminently to that easy and brilliant world from a social point of view knows as Upper Bohemia In social status Mr Haggard is not at the apex not one of those artists in the drama wielders of the brush spinners of verse who have sons at Eton houses in fash ionable quarters villas on the Thames a moor rich in grouse and a river abounding in salmon on the other side of the Tweed horses carriages visit inglists fine friends whatever in fact lends distinction and financial respectability respect-ability to life When he deigns to reveal himself in a London drawing room he is recognized and pointed out as Rider Haggard one who has become a personage by right of superior gifts and the important place he has suddenly leaped into among famous men of letters Never be it recorded to 1m honor has he suggested the exclamation Who is that erratic person He is a man without a personal per-sonal fad possessing a nature free from the taintof that pernicious species of grotesque advertising so generally resorted to by genius in these days when to wear the crown of eccentricity points the swiftest and surest method of pleasing the fancy and impressing the memory of society He has not appealed to the vision by cultivating the Whistler lock of hair sprouting like a silver feather amid dark tresses nor has he sought to create a sensation by endeavoring to give some professional beauty the golden key to those cipher blackletter inscriptions of Amenartas After the fashion of Oscar Wilde who made considerable reputa tion by teaching Mrs Langtry Greek before he founded the worship of the pining lily or the heroine herb He neither invites nor docs he cor dially entertain discussion of his theories and their successful results yet is not invincibly silent on the sub ject of himself Nor is he one of those who when once detached in conversa tion from his special subjects his methods his superior revelations and himself have nothing to say He places a fair estimate upon himself and his adorers pay homage accordingly Barely cordial to strangers he cannot be classed among those brilliant racon teurs whose epigrams we are wont to associate with the names of Fox Sheri dan and Dr Johnson in Londons social annals of the past and with Labouchero and Yates to day But when Mr Hag gard is the nucleus of an appreciative few at dinner he is a cornucopia teem ing with plums of curious anecdote These tales are reports of personal experience ex-perience gained in those bizarre coun tries where he has traveled and laid the groundwork of his romances Ho himself is as different from Sir Edwin Arnold Mr Browning or Philip Gilbert Hamerton as his work differs from the poignant paragraphs of those editors I have named He is not only a facile scribehe is a priest of mighty mysteries A writer by profession he is also a teacher and a preacher He is in literature what Edward BurneJones is in art His work is an evangelism which it is given only to a select minority minor-ity of initiated votaries of Oriental lore to understand aright Thero is a subtle symbolism in every romance he submits to the public How many of its readers read-ers I ask have penetrated the rare gospel gos-pel so dettly wrought out in She 1 Ho has been particularly fortunate in not having those domestic embarrassments embarrass-ments which handicap the most exaggerated exag-gerated genius in man or woman While Mr Haggards productions may appear inspirational and visionary to the superficial reader in reality they are the result of painstaking labor and studious research From early boy hood he possessed intuitive ken of eastern east-ern knowledge and the current circumstances circum-stances in which he soon found himself placed facilitated his studies of medi jeval dialects and the vast and secret traditions of Arabia He is a profound student of the Scriptures interpreting them in harmony with the teachings of Rabbinical wisdom Wizardlike he evolves unique and startling plots from the occult emblems engraved on the cartouchof Theban pcarafcsei Truly it may be said of him all time his hour and all place his workshop Whether he be walking riding in an omnibus or waiting in an underground railway station he seems oblivious of the external phases of life and is ever busy with the looms and the yarn from which he weaves his fantastic fabrics He carries a slender cane and switches aimlessly objects right and left as though the motor forces were stimulated stimu-lated with an energy in concurrence withhis unbridled conceits She is not a recent composition as many suppose But not until day before be-fore yesterday was popular taste in the least degree attuned to the reish of pabulum spiced with the secret forces which animate the world The dual personality the interminable chain of reincarnated good and evil the laws of reversion to typo and life the gift of life are precepts as old as the eternal hills and as fresh as the dawn I heard in conversation a lady object ob-ject to She on the ground of vulgarity vulgar-ity and when I asked her to point to those offensive passages which had failed to send an extra thrill of warmth to my face she explaited that there was too much stress laid on the physical beauty of the divine Ayesha That the description of that dazzling loveliness of brow throat and thieh strong in love sud in immortal youthwhich could have revolutionized society and changed the destiny of generations was a vicious vic-ious doctrine Still again I stood nigh when a worthy dowager remarked of the much discussed and insufficiently understood She What a lawless imagination the man possesses it is absurd I wonder if neither one of these well meaning persons had caught a ray of that higher morality those godlike truths which lie as an everlasting foundation for the emblematic eloquence elo-quence of every chapter Ye gods I and these are they who read and sit in judgment on Rider Haggard EMLY |