Described as Rather Plain
During a time when writers were expected to be full of eccentricities and were known to flaunt their artistic drama, Haggard stood out as the plain and simple man.
In a newspaper article published in 1888, a reporter gave his personal account of the writer:
“He is a man without a personal fad; possessing a nature free from the taint of that pernicious species of grotesque advertising, so generally reported 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.”
Haggard did not need the adoration of the crowds and he did nothing to make his physical appearances stand out. Instead, he relied on his writing to show the talent he possessed.
Of course, this does not mean the man was bland. In fact, he was anything but boring in his day to day life. [1]
Showed Little Promise
Perhaps Haggard’s seemingly plain personality stemmed from his childhood. After all, his father, a squire, felt that he showed no intellectual promise. Instead of planning for his son’s education, Haggard’s father felt that his son was only fit to be a green grocer.
When Haggard reached his teens, he decided to join the Army. He took the Army Entrance Exam and to no one’s surprise, he failed it.
However, Haggard refused to give up on his future. At nineteen he was awarded a post as staff for the Governor of Natal, a British colony in south-eastern Africa. By the time he reached his twenty-first birthday, he was appointed as Acting Master of Registrar of the High Court at Pretoria.
Haggard returned to England when he was twenty-six. He was called to the bar and began earning his living in legal matters. It was a far cry from his father’s earliest assumptions about his abilities to earn an educated living. [2]
Accused of Being Jack the Ripper
Americans fully embraced the writings of H. Rider Haggard, but since he was new to the literary scene in England he faced a number of bitter attacks.
In 1911 it was reported that Haggard had received numerous ugly letters from other literary men. In one letter, the other man accused Haggard of being Jack the Ripper:
“I remember a literary man writing to me, not merely accusing me of being the instigator of the crimes committed by another gentleman – Jack the Ripper – but of actually perpetrating them. Criticism we expect, but why, if a man writes a novel more or less successful, should he be accused of the crimes attributed, perhaps falsely, to the Ripper?”
Another man wrote Haggard and claimed there was nothing original in any of his stories. Everything Haggard had written, the man had found somewhere else. Haggard responded:
“I thought that in ‘She’ I had given the world something fairly new – if old – but not a bit. Do you remember a writer called Homer? He had a lady living in a cave that was the prototype of ‘She’.” [3]
Gentleman in Distress
In the early 1900s, Haggard visited the United States. During his visit, he asked to meet one of the local “tramps”. Harris Hammond, the person giving him a tour of the U.S., made a stop in one of the towns and brought a “hobo” to meet Haggard.
The man looked terrible, but on being introduced to Haggard, the homeless man said, “Rider Haggard! Why’ I’ve read all of your books, and loved every one of them.”
Over the next thirty minutes, Haggard sat and had a literary conversation with the homeless man. Afterwards, Haggard said to Hammond, “That fellow’s not a tramp. He’s a gentleman in distress.” [4]
