Haggard stands at the fountainhead and nexus of what I call “exotic adventure fiction.” Such fiction moves beyond the sort of stories told up until that time —adventures of pirates, cowboys, swashbucklers, explorers and whatnot — and adds something extra, something over the top, something truly exotic. One strand leads to tales of Indiana Jones, another to James Bond, another leads to John Carter or Tarzan… and another leads to Conan of Cimmeria. Haggard looms titanically behind all of that.
— Deuce Richardson, Forefathers of Sword and Sorcery: H. Rider Haggard
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H. Rider Haggard, an Englishman who had worked for several years in Natal in southern Africa, created one of the the quintessential Frontier Partisan heroes of fiction — white hunter and adventurer Allan Quatermain, hero of King Solomon’s Mines and a whole series of what Deuce Richardson calls “exotic adventure fiction.” A hunter of wild game and hidden treasures; a “Man Who Knows Indians” (or, rather, African tribesmen); an English gentleman by heritage and termperament, yet one who sought out the wild places of the earth to wander.
Haggard’s writings whispered like a seductress into the ear of an American frontiersman named Frederick Russell Burnham, calling, calling, calling him to Africa. Burnham had hunted commercially, cowboy’d, and prospected in the Arizona Territory in the 1880s, when it was still the dark and bloody ground of Apache warriors, outlaws and feudists. He had developed a lifelong wanderlust, combined with a lust for mineral riches. It was not greed for wealth that drove Burnham; he was addicted to the potent drug of the treasure hunt, and by the 1880s, there was no frontier that beckoned the treasure hunter more seductively than Africa.
Frederick Russell Burnham.
Burnham thought he had escaped the siren’s call of the Dark Continent, which had sounded in his ears since his youth — but he had not. He wrote:
“After my marriage in 1884, I believed that the beckoning spirits of Africa would fade away and no longer haunt me, but softly as the falling dew, they kept returning… In the end I allowed myself to share with my wife the music they poured into my ears by night and often by day. Their magic won my wife completely, until in January, 1893, together we set out to make our dreams come true.”
The inimitable Frontier Partisan Frederick Russell Burnham.
The Burnhams’ African dreams would plunge them into a nightmare of war and personal tragedy — but Africa would never entirely be purged from the scout’s bloodstream.
In his biography of Burnham, A Splendid Savage, Steve Kemper notes that:
Several springs fed those dreams. Burnham was captivated by H. Rider Haggard’s best-selling African adventure tales, particularly King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and Allan Quatermain (1887). Quatermain, the hero of these exotic romances, is an educated Englishman and a sharpshooting outdoorsman who detests cities and prefers the rough life of Africa — a man after Burnham’s own heart.
The quest for treasure in King Solomon’s Mines was surely a heady draught for the mineral-obsessed Burnham. Again, Kemper:
Haggard’s tales also intensified Burnham’s gold fever. King Solomon’s mines posed the intriguing notion that the biblical land of Ophir, whose gold and silver mines had enriched Solomon, could be rediscovered in the interior of southern Africa.
The connection to the lost mines of Solomon might be fanciful, but the continent’s mineral wealth was proving very real…
King Solomon’s Mines by Don Maitz.
The conduit between myth and legend and real life adventure was wide open and flowing in both directions in late 19th century southern Africa. Burnham would explore the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, which at that time were believed by white explorers to be evidence of a lost white tribe’s sojourn in the African interior. “Lost cities” would become a trope of pulp fiction through the first half of the 20th Century.
African hunters informed the fiction of Haggard and others — who in turn self-consciously sought to model themselves after heroes such as Quatermain. Academician Andrew Offenburger, in his tome Frontiers in the Gilded Age: Adventure, Capitalism & Dispossession from Southern Africa to the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands, 1880-1917, rather sniffily observes Burnham’s “immersion in romanticized frontier literature” and his yearning to “embody … fictional characters like Quatermain.”
Of course, men have aspired to emulate heroes of legend from time immemorial, and Haggard’s ability to accesses and update heroic archetypes for a Victorian audience (and beyond) speaks to the abiding power of heroic myth, despite the efforts of academics to demystify, debunk, and undermine that power.
Burnham was certainly not in any way abashed at his conscious desire to connect himself with Haggard’s tales. He and his wife Blanche named their daughter Nada after the titular Nada the Lily, the Zulu protagonist of Haggard’s 1892 novel.
Nada was the first white child born in Bulawayo, Rhodesia, in May 1894. She died of fever and starvation during the Siege of Bulawayo two years later, in the 1896 Matabele Uprising.
While Burnham fought against Ndebele (Matabele) insurgents, his daughter died in Bulawayo.
Haggard, who had met and befriended Burnham in London in 1895, was deeply touched by the tragic death of the two-year-old. He dedicated The Wizard (1896) to her memory:
“To the Memory of the Child: Nada Burnham, who ‘bound all to her’ and, while her father cut his way through the hordes of the Ingobo Regiment, perished of the hardships of war at Buluwayo on 19 May 1896, I dedicate these tales — and more particularly the last, that of a Faith which triumphed over savagery and death.”
He would dedicate two more novels to Nada as well — Elissa: The Doom of Zimbabwe (1899), and Black Heart and White Heart: A Zulu Idyll (1900).
Haggard and Burnham would remain friends for life. On a 1905 visit to Burnham’s Pasadena, California, home, Haggard fired the scout’s imagination with a proposal to follow up on an apparently reliable report of a cache of Montezuma’s treasure located deep in the Mexican jungle. How could either man resist a venture that so closely emulated one of Haggard’s own tales? Haggard and Burnham enlisted the legendary mining engineer and “Cowboy Capitalist” John Hays Hammond in the project, but the Mexican adventure got shunted aside by other endeavors in Burnham’s never-ending quest to find his El Dorado.
Burnham would eventually find himself in Mexico — but rather than seeking Montezuma’s lost gold, he would work on a land development and irrigation project in the Yaqui Valley. Haggard was an investor.
*
Deuce Richardson acknowledges the profound influence of H. Rider Haggard on Texas pulpster Robert E. Howard:
…we know that Robert E. Howard named HRH among his “favorite authors.” The volumes of Haggard in Howard’s personal library that were recorded or have survived until today probably represent a fraction of the HRH that Bob actually read. In the early twentieth century, Haggard’s fiction was ubiquitous, appearing in pulps as well as being bought by public libraries. I’ve only read around twenty of Haggard’s novels and I’ve spotted an astonishing number of elements from them that REH likely borrowed.
There is no evidence that I am aware of that Howard knew of Frederick Russell Burnham’s exploits — but REH would certainly have found the American frontiersman a simpatico spirit. In fact, whether there is a direct connection or not, I posit that Howard’s adventurer Francis Xavier Gordon — El Borak — is poured out of the Burnham mold. Both are American frontiersmen of the desert Southwest roaming the wild hinterlands of Britain’s wide-flung Empire; they are compactly-built men with profound capacity for physical endurance and preternaturally attuned senses…
From Blood of the Gods:
The American was not a large man, but he was square- shouldered and deep-chested, with corded sinews and steely nerves which had been tempered and honed by the tooth-and-nail struggle for survival in the wild outlands of the world. His black eyes gleamed in the starlight like those of some untamed son of the wilderness.
El Borak by Tim Bradstreet.
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“Burnham in real life is more interesting than any of my heroes of romance!”
— Sir H. Rider Haggard
Burnham would eventually find riches — in oil rather than gold and diamonds. He wrote one of the classics of Frontier Partisan literature in his memoir Scouting on Two Continents. It is true, as Offenburger asserts, that Burnham self-consciously sought to cast himself in the mold of Hunter Quatermain and other scouts and hunters of old. While the academic world tends to denigrate the aspiration to the heroic, especially in an imperial context, we here at Frontier Partisans celebrate it as essential to culture and manhood. And thus we tip our hats to Haggard and Burnham, and drink to the shades of men who bestrode the frontier between myth and history as titans.
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ADDENDUM: John Maddox Roberts sent out a crack team of scouts to locate Burnham’s Pasadena home. They got it done in a day.
My guys located Burnham’s digs at 500 South Rafael Avenue in San Rafael Heights in Pasadena. The house is still there, still palatial, and they even got a photo of its den with Burnham’s African souvenirs decorating it. Didn’t I tell you these guys know their stuff? Incidentally, Arroyo Seco is where the Rose Bowl is located, and the Linda Vista neighborhood directly overlooks the Rose Bowl.
And Zillow has a picture. Frederick Russell Burnham and H. Rider Haggard slept here…. The nerd cup runneth over…
Matthew says
Great piece Jim.
I would heartily recommend to anyone A Splendid Savage the biography of Burnham. I also thought that Burnham was a lot like El Borak.
I’m a big Haggard fan. Most people know She and his Allan Quatermaine series. However, I also really like his novel People of the Mist. It follows the whole Hero’s Quest structure about a pair of Englishmen who leave for Africa in search of the fortune to by back their family estate. I would also recommend Haggard’s viking novel Eric Brighteyes. As has been pointed out by others, Haggard was really into the Northern Thing. Eric Brighteyes is also one of the earliest fantasy novels (People of the Mist also had minor supernatural element in a prophecy.)
David Wrolson (Breaker Morant) says
I have to comment on any post involving Burnham. In my view, he is the quintessential Frontier Partisan. Have you read the second book that he wrote-“Taking Chances?” It jumps around a lot, but it is still Burnham
Looks like Peter Bowen’s “Yellowstone Kelly” series from your previous post is going to jump to the top of the stack. Looks good, thanks.
BTW-I just did a fun little riff on my “Through a Glass Darkly”-“Smoke of a Thousand Campfires” theme called “The Smell of Bathsheba’s Skin.”
Some might get a kick out of it.
https://thesmokeofathousandcampfires.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-smell-of-bathshebas-skin.html
The muse has not struck for awhile, but I had fun writing this one.
JimC says
I have read Taking Chances. Now I’m gonna g oread Smoke.
Keith West says
Great post, Jim. I definitely need to read more Haggard.
JimC says
Thx Keith.
Dave Allen says
In the long ago of my late teenage years I read King Solomon’s Mines and was so inspired that I spent half of one summer camped up in the sierras near Paradise Ca. looking for the lost twin of the Magalia nugget. Such is the pull that great adventure writing has on a soul with a bent towards spending time in the wildlands. As soon as this plague passes and our local library reopens I am going to raid it for as many Haggard works that are on the shelf.
JimC says
This is an excellent plan.
John Roberts says
I had no idea that Burnham lived in Pasadena. Any idea whereabouts? If it was anywhere near the Linda Vista neighborhood, it will make my day. By the way, as I type this there is snow falling outside my window. It was in the 70s yesterday and I’d put away my cold-weather duds. The New Mexico high desert is, as they say, “sudden country.”
JimC says
I’ll see if I can run that down.
David Wrolson (Breaker Morant) says
Doesn’t answer where he lived, but a quick look at the books showed he made his fortune in oil on Dominguez hill-12 miles south of downtown LA.
I will look a little more too. It was maybe a time when Pasadena was too rural to have neighborhoods as such?
David Wrolson (Breaker Morant) says
Looked at index in Splendid Savage. All references are just to “Pasadena” not to any neighborhoods or locations. He did fail as an orange grower there.
JimC says
It must have been next door to Paradise back then…
David Wrolson (Breaker Morant) says
Re-Pasadena as paradise.
I can’t remember if I ever posted this here or not, but my wife has a relative who graduated from Compton in 1956. She describes it as a beautiful place.
Now that the muse is biting on “Smoke”-I have to do “Mongols Attack China From the North”-“Jumping Bull”-and maybe a couple others.
Hat tip to Corb Lund “Horse Soldiers” and obviously, Patton.
John Roberts says
It sure was in the ’50s. I’ll ask my colleagues on the Noirish L.A. site. Some of them have encyclopedic knowledge of L.A. and its surroundings and access to obscure city directories. It’s the sort of mystery they love to solve.
David Wrolson (Breaker Morant) says
Just wrote my post on Burnham at “Thousand Campfires.” Hey, its on topic to this thread-LOL.
“The Smell of a Toddler’s Urine.”
https://thesmokeofathousandcampfires.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-smell-of-toddlers-urine.html
Dave Allen says
I bit at the Bathsheba post and enjoyed it but balking at the smell of a toddler’s urine! As an aside, your preference towards Uriah over David is one reason to go by the abbreviated. No one ever talks about King Dave
David Wrolson (Breaker Morant) says
>>>”I bit at the Bathsheba post and enjoyed it but balking at the smell of a toddler’s urine! As an aside, your preference towards Uriah over David is one reason to go by the abbreviated. No one ever talks about King Dave”<<<
I have always liked when girls (women) call me "Dave." Guys tend to call me "David."
When I started commenting here, I used the "Breaker Morant" handle as I had used it other places-but for obvious reasons it really is not good to use it here-so I am transitioning to my regular name
My funnest "David" story took place when I met 2 female high school classmates for lunch and both of them are married to "Davids." A large part of the conversation was spent in stipulating "My David." I joked that it sounded like they were fighting over me.
Not taking this too seriously, but I found another Burnham angle yesterday that I can work. Stay tuned for the "The Smell of Black Gold with a Tinge of Failure." BTW-The failure is on my part.
David Wrolson (Breaker Morant) says
John Roberts>>>”It sure was in the ’50s. I’ll ask my colleagues on the Noirish L.A. site. Some of them have encyclopedic knowledge of L.A. and its surroundings and access to obscure city directories. It’s the sort of mystery they love to solve.”<<<
Interesting mystery-even though, I don't have ties to the area. I found a possible answer in "Taking Chances."
Burnham says "Our home at that time was on the Arroyo Seco."
This is in a discussion about younger brother and seems to take place after Burnham had scouted against Apaches and done the range war thing in Arizona.
Take "Arroyo Seco" for what it is worth, but all the other street names and stuff that I found seem to be more the setting for his earlier adventures in Los Angeles.
According to Wikipedia, the Arroyo Seco goes through Pasadena.
OK, I am a nerd, I guess-LOL.
JimC says
Yes. Yes, you are. in good company here. My daughter’s words echoed through the state capitol of Texas as I freaked out over giant paintings of David Crockett and Houston confronting Santa Anna at San Jacinto: “You are SUCH a nerd!”
Hell yes.
John Roberts says
So far, my sources have tracked Burnham to3575 Griffith Park Blvd in the 1942 City Directory. It’s still a handsome residence. Still trying to track the Pasadena connection.
JimC says
That was fast. I swear, the Los Angeles area in that era was just about perfect. I’m gonna have to pop for Showtime and watch City of Angels. Cain’t help myself.
J.F. Bell says
Men who are wedded to numbers and statistics and rules often as not can’t abide the idea of the hero – any hero. It’s not a failure of dreams, I don’t think. A man can have plenty of aspirations go unfulfilled and still feel the draw to do outsized things against great adversity.
It’s the lack of dreams.
There’s a man (of a sort) who can’t imagine anything outside himself and may possess just enough awareness to realize he’s a small creature of no real import. Improvement is difficult. Dreams are costly. With a nudging he might give a good accounting of himself, but in the end it’s easier and markedly less risky to spit on those who went out and maybe fell short. He cannot himself be a success, but he can chronicle mistakes and negate the victories of others. In the end, he will have accomplished little to nothing – but in defense he has never committed the cardinal sin of failure.
The upper tiers of modern society hate the hero. Heroes are not terribly suited to working a productive 40-hour week, nor are they easily amused by canned entertainment or satisfied with drive-thru fare. They function poorly as parts of a corporate machine, and when a clean and well-ordered life is the ultimate goal they have no real place.
Which is fine until the lions or the barbarians or the invading armies arrive, at which point you need the slightly maladjusted bastard with the gleam in his eye and a good rifle and a near-suicidal lack of quit.
Of course, there remains the question of what to do with your heroes after the threat is gone. That the favored tack tends toward cutting down dead men incapable of their own defense in pursuit of one’s own righteousness does not bode well for society.
On the upside…if things get bad enough, we’ll probably eat the academics first.
JimC says
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I really enjoy your way with words.
J.F. Bell says
I’m honored to count you among my half-dozen fans.
Men of rare class and taste, I think.
JimC says
The honor is mine. Thank you.
John Roberts says
Got it! My guys located Burnham’s digs at 500 South Rafael Avenue in San Rafael Heights in Pasadena. The house is still there, still palatial, and they even got a photo of its den with Burnham’s African souvenirs decorating it. Didn’t I tell you these guys know their stuff? Incidentally, Arroyo Seco is where the Rose Bowl is located, and the Linda Vista neighborhood directly overlooks the Rose Bowl. My day is made!
JimC says
Well that’s fantastic. They do indeed know their stuff.
David Wrolson (Breaker Morant) says
Maybe we need to warn the owners of 500 South Rafael Avenue that there will be a steady stream of star-struck Frontier Partisans stopping by. Our own version of “Houses of the Stars.”
I just ordered John Hays Hammond’s 2-volume autobiography. Hammond was with Burnham on the oil field deal so there might be some good stuff there on Burnham outside of his more famous exploits. I am slowly building a collection of Burnham related materials.
Re-Great Zimbabwe.
Ron Thomson of Rhodesian Game Department fame has mentioned a couple of times so far in my reading of him that he thinks the Phoenicians built Great Zimbabwe. I am hoping for more in-depth thoughts on this from him, especially as his career takes him to that area. But, he may be a prisoner of his life and times on that idea.
JimC says
I quite enjoyed Charles van Onselen’s The Cowboy Capitalist: John Hays Hammond, The American West & the Jameson Raid in South Africa. Van Onselen is a brilliant researcher and writes well. He clearly doesn’t like Hammond much, which in the case actually adds to the fun. He puts the turd of the Jameson Raid squarely in Hammond’s pocket. He makes a good case.
Re: Great Zimbabwe — the Phoenician angle was official Rhodesian government policy. It was actually illegal to publish other theories. I love
Thomson, but I think that belief has been pretty thoroughly debunked.
The Plastic Yank says
I bought my copy of “Scouting on Two Continents” in bookshop in Burlington, VT in 1986 for about $2.00, it was as much as I could afford after selling my camera so I could buy breakfast. I was about to fly People’s Express to London an a near empty 747. From there I was following another book to the Fort de Nogent in Paris. That adventure ended too soon, but still have that $2.00 copy of Burnham. Follow the dream and as someone said, “…you will be happy at forty”. Or maybe that should be 60?
He was a great man who seized the moment in his time; very few do that in any time.
JimC says
Welcome to the campfire Yank.