H. Rider Haggard is not usually thought of as a monster writer, and for the most part that reputation is sound. He loved to write of hunting lions or elephants, of Zulu impis and the splendor of forgotten ages. But occasionally he spiced things up with a monster. And when he did, he did so very well.
Allan Quatermain (1887) was the sequel to King Solomon’s Mines (1885). the book was designed to show how Allan met his end. Something I think Haggard regretted afterward since the character was so popular. It’s a great lost race novel with Allan and his usual crew of buddies going in search of white Africans, the Zu-Vendi. On the way there, they encounter giant crabs on the river:
…The gloom was so intense that we could scarcely see the way to cut our food and convey it to our mouths. Still we got on pretty well, till I happened to look behind me—my attention being attracted by a noise of something crawling over the stones, and perceived sitting upon a rock in my immediate rear a huge species of black freshwater crab, only it was five times the size of any crab I ever saw. This hideous and loathsome-looking animal had projecting eyes that seemed to glare at one, very long and flexible antennae or feelers, and gigantic claws. Nor was I especially favoured with its company. From every quarter dozens of these horrid brutes were creeping up, drawn, I suppose, by the smell of the food, from between the round stones and out of holes in the precipice. Some were already quite close to us. I stared quite fascinated by the unusual sight, and as I did so I saw one of the beasts stretch out its huge claw and give the unsuspecting Good such a nip behind that he jumped up with a howl, and set the ‘wild echoes flying’ in sober earnest. Just then, too, another, a very large one, got hold of Alphonse’s leg, and declined to part with it, and, as may be imagined, a considerable scene ensued. Umslopogaas took his axe and cracked the shell of one with the flat of it, whereon it set up a horrid screaming which the echoes multiplied a thousandfold, and began to foam at the mouth, a proceeding that drew hundreds more of its friends out of unsuspected holes and corners. Those on the spot perceiving that the animal was hurt fell upon it like creditors on a bankrupt, and literally rent it limb from limb with their huge pincers and devoured it, using their claws to convey the fragments to their mouths. Seizing whatever weapons were handy, such as stones or paddles, we commenced a war upon the monsters—whose numbers were increasing by leaps and bounds, and whose stench was overpowering. So fast as we cracked their armour others seized the injured ones and devoured them, foaming at the mouth, and screaming as they did so. Nor did the brutes stop at that. When they could they nipped hold of us—and awful nips they were—or tried to steal the meat. One enormous fellow got hold of the swan we had skinned and began to drag it off. Instantly a score of others flung themselves upon the prey, and then began a ghastly and disgusting scene. How the monsters foamed and screamed, and rent the flesh, and each other! It was a sickening and unnatural sight, and one that will haunt all who saw it till their dying day—enacted as it was in the deep, oppressive gloom, and set to the unceasing music of the many-toned nerve-shaking echoes. Strange as it may seem to say so, there was something so shockingly human about these fiendish creatures—it was as though all the most evil passions and desires of man had got into the shell of a magnified crab and gone mad. They were so dreadfully courageous and intelligent, and they looked as if they understood. The whole scene might have furnished material for another canto of Dante’s ‘Inferno’, as Curtis said. (Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard)
“Alan’s Wife” (1889) is a short story about Allan’s first wife. Later he would write Marie (1912) about his second wife and have to do some backtracking. In this first romance, we get the sinister woman who was raised by baboons, Hendrika. Once human she has becomes something else:
By the fire, and in such a position that the light fell full upon her face, and engaged in cooking something in a rough pot shaped from wood, sat the Baboon-woman, Hendrika. She was clothed in baboon skins, and her face had been rubbed with some dark stain, which was, however, wearing off it. In the intervals of her cooking she would turn on Stella her wild eyes, in which glared visible madness, with an expression of tenderness that amounted to worship. Then she would stare at the child and gnash her teeth as though with hate. Clearly she was jealous of it. Round the entrance arch of the cave peeped and peered the heads of many baboons. Presently Hendrika made a sign to one of them; apparently she did not speak, or rather grunt, in order not to wake Stella. The brute hopped forward, and she gave it a second rude wooden pot which was lying by her. It took it and went. The last thing that I saw, as the vision slowly vanished from the pool, was the dim shadow of the baboon returning with the pot full of water. (“Alan’s Wife” by H. Rider Haggard)
Nada the Lily (1892) is not a novel about Allan Quatermain but his best friend, Umslopagaas. Like his friend, Umslopagaas has a tragic love story behind him before all those famous adventures. His lost girl is Nada the Lily. The novel has some strange magic in it (making it more fantasy than historical at times) and features the ghost wolves, a pack of killers that work for Umslopagaas:
So I climbed up the steep rock, where little bushes grow like hair on the arms of a man, till at last I came to the knees of the stone Witch, which are the space before the cave. I lifted my head over the brink of the rock and looked, and I tell you, Umslopogaas, my blood ran cold and my heart turned to water, for there, before the cave, rolled wolves, many and great. Some slept and growled in their sleep, some gnawed at the skulls of dead game, some sat up like dogs and their tongues hung from their grinning jaws. I looked, I saw, and beyond I discovered the mouth of the cave, where the bones of the boy should be. But I had no wish to come there, being afraid of the wolves, for now I knew that these were the ghosts who live upon the mountain. So I bethought me that I would fly, and turned to go. And, Umslopogaas, even as I turned, the great club Watcher of the Fords swung round and smote me on the back with such a blow as a man smites upon a coward. Now whether this was by chance or whether the Watcher would shame him who bore it, say you, for I do not know. At the least, shame entered into me. Should I go back to be mocked by the people of the kraal and by the old woman? And if I wished to go, should I not be killed by the ghosts at night in the forest? Nay, it was better to die in the jaws of the wolves, and at once.
Heu Heu, or The Monster (1924) is a later adventure featuring Allan and Hans the Hottentot. Stories of a super-gorilla are suggested by the statue:
Imagine a monster double life size—that is to say, eleven or twelve feet high—brilliantly portrayed in the best ochres of which these Bushmen have always had the secret, namely, white, red, black, and yellow, and with eyes formed apparently of polished lumps of rock crystal. Imagine this thing as a huge ape to which the biggest gorilla would be but a child, and yet not an ape but a man, and yet not a man, but a fiend.
It was covered with hair like an ape, long gray hair that grew in tufts. It had a great, red, bushy beard like a man; its limbs were tremendous, the arms being of abnormal length like to the arms of a gorilla, but, mark this, it had no fingers, only a great claw where the thumb should be. The rest of the hand was all grown together into one piece like a duck’s foot, although what should have been the finger part was flexible and could grip like fingers, as shall be seen.
Haggard wrote many novels that suggested at otherworldly times and places. His three novels of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, Ayesha, the time traveling Allan and The Ancient Allan and Allan and The Ice-Gods, plus The Wanderer’s Necklace, Morning Star, the Quatermain adventure The Holy Flower, all had elements of the fantastic in them. This is why many of these appeared in Famous Fantastic Mysteries in th1940s and 50s, with illustrations by Lawrence and Virgil Finlay. Filled with amazing scenes of times unimaginable, they did not go in big for monsters on every page.
