She

When Vincey knows that he is dying, he asks his friend Horace Holly to become guardian to his young son, Leo, whose mother died in childbirth. Vincey also gives Holly an iron casket, extracting a promise that it is to be opened only when Leo reaches the age of twenty-five. It proves, Vincey says, that they can trace their lineage back to the Ancient Egyptians, and will offer Leo a quest so fabulous that it sounds almost fantastical; but Vincey assures Holly his own journeys to Africa have convinced him of its truth. And so Holly does as Vincey requests, learning to love and be loved by the young Leo, and educating him in the ancient languages, Greek, Hebrew and especially Arabic, as the elder Vincey had specified. Leo grows up tall, strong, brave and handsome (naturally), and when his twenty-fifth birthday arrives, they open the casket. Inside are documents telling the story of a long ago ancestor of Leo, Kallikrates, who was once loved by a powerful and immortal Queen. Kallikrates refused to return her love, remaining faithful to his wife, and so the Queen, in a fit of jealous rage, killed him. His wife escaped and soon bore a son, and left a challenge to him and all his descendants to seek revenge for Kallikrates’ death. Many have tried and failed, many more have done nothing except pass the challenge on to the next generation, and now, after two thousand years have passed, the quest becomes Leo’s. The casket also contains a potsherd – a piece of broken pottery – on which all of the descendants have in turn marked their name.

Holly thinks this is all nonsense, but Leo is determined to at least investigate and tempts Holly to join him with the prospect of some jolly big-game hunting as they travel into the African interior. Naturally this is irresistible, and so they set off accompanied by their servant, Job. They find the river referred to in the documents, and are promptly captured by members of the Amahaggar tribes, who have been told to expect their arrival and to bring them to She-who-must-be-obeyed, Ayesha, the white Queen who has ruled for thousands of years, while she waits for her lost love, Kallikrates, to be reincarnated and return to her…

Another really thrilling African adventure from Haggard, very well-written in adventure-story style – i.e., not too literary, fast-paced, full of action, with elements of fantasy and wonderful horror. (Of course it also has elements of racism, outdated attitudes a-plenty, and lots of killing of both wildlife and humans, but what else would you expect of a story from this era?)

Holly is our narrator, and there are lots of great descriptions of the natural world and of the customs of the Amahaggars, a tribe in which women have rights (to an extent) and choose their mates, though not for life. One beautiful young woman, Ustane, immediately chooses the golden-haired Adonis that is Leo, and quite frankly Leo doesn’t seem to mind this at all. But the tribe are not welcoming to strangers and have some particularly savage customs in how they deal with them, which I won’t go into because it would be a spoiler for one of the best horror scenes in the book!

Ayesha, usually called simply She, is a wonderful creation. Is she a proto-feminist? She is strong, intelligent and determined, and while she is cruel, she can explain her cruelty as convincingly as all the best dictators can. She is deeply interested in politics and the world, and immediately questions Holly as to what has happened in the last two thousand years. She is ambitious: as soon as her long wait for Kallikrates is over, she intends to leave this place and go into the wider world, where Holly fears she will soon replace even our own beloved Queen Victoria – who can stop an immortal ruler? Or is she a misogynistic realisation of male fear of powerful women? She is the ultimate temptress, enslaving any man to whom she reveals her beautiful face (and body – let’s not forget her body). She makes men weak, submissive, and takes away their free will. And even in her love she is cruel, as the original Kallikrates discovered. Or is she a representation of Victorian imperial anxiety – the fear that one day our vast colonies would become more powerful than the imperial centre, perhaps overthrow us, perhaps even invade and rule us in their turn? Is she a figure to be loved, or feared, or pitied? Perhaps all three.

She is, of course, white, which makes her somewhat problematic to modern eyes, ruling as she does over the savage African Amahaggars. It would be easy to say that she had to be white because Victorian sensibilities couldn’t have coped with Leo falling in love with a black woman. But remember Ustane – if Victorians didn’t have an issue with Leo indulging in a bit of hanky-panky with her (and Haggard makes it clear, in that Victorian way of saying without actually saying, that hanky-panky was indeed being indulged in) then why would they have had a problem with a black Ayesha? Or is hanky-panky OK, but marriage a no-no? Or is it more the idea of a black monarch that is the problem, rather than a black lover? Maybe it’s as simple as that Haggard’s ideal of female beauty happened to reflect the women of his own society. Whatever, it’s one of these colonial mindset things that we just have to be able to accept if we’re going to read these books, and in my opinion they’re well worth reading.

Thrilling action scenes, melodrama, exalted passion, some humour, occasional religious musings, a touch of fantasy and some great horror scenes – I loved it. For me, King Solomon’s Mines will always be his greatest story, and Gagool trumps Ayesha in terms of Terrifying Women, but I can quite see why many people rate this as his best. Best thing to do is read both!

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