Allan Quatermain

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For other persons named Allan Quartermain, see Allan Quartermain (disambiguation).
Allan Quartermain, having waited until the last minute, orders his men to fire in this illustration by Thure de Thulstrup from Maiwa's Revenge (1888).

Allan Quatermain is the protagonist of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines and its various sequels and prequels. Allan Quatermain was also the title of a book in this sequence.

Contents

[edit] History

Quatermain is an English-born professional big game hunter and occasional trader in southern Africa. He supports colonial efforts to spread civilization in the Dark Continent, and he also favours native Africans having a say in how their affairs are run. Quatermain is a quintessential imperial outdoorsman who finds English cities and climate unbearable, and thus prefers to spend most of his life in Africa, where he grew up under the care of his widower father, a Christian missionary. In the earliest-written novels native Africans refer to Quatermain as Macumazahn, meaning "Watcher-by-Night," a reference to his nocturnal habits and keen instincts. In later-written novels Macumazahn is said to be a short form of Macumazana, meaning "One who stands out." Quatermain is frequently accompanied by his native servant, the Hottentot Hans, a wise and caring family retainer from his youth whose sarcastic comments offer a sharp critique of European conventions. In his final adventures Quatermain is joined by two British companions, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good of the Royal Navy, and by his African friend Umslopogaas.

[edit] Series

Although some of Haggard's Quatermain novels stand alone, there are two important series. In Marie, Child of Storm and Finished Quatermain becomes ensnarled in the vengeance of Zikali, the dwarf wizard known as "The-thing-that-should-never-have-been-born" and "Opener-of-Roads." Zikali plots and finally achieves the overthrow of the Zulu royal House of Senzangakona, founded by Shaka and ending under Cetewayo (Haggard's questionable spelling of Zulu names is used here). These novels are prequels to the foundation series, King Solomon's Mines and Allan Quatermain, which describe Quatermain's discovery of vast wealth, his discontent with a life of ease, and his fatal return to Africa following the death of his son Harry.

[edit] Allan Quatermain (1887)

At the beginning of this adventure Quatermain has lost his only son and longs to get back into the wilderness. Having persuaded Sir Henry Curtis, Captain John Good, RN, and the Zulu chief Umslopogaas to accompany him they set out from the coast of east Africa into the territory of the Masai and while staying with a Scottish missionary are attacked by a group of these tribesmen whom they overcome with heroism. There follows a voyage by canoe along an underground river to a lake in the kingdom of Zu-Vendis on the other side of a range of mountains. The Zu-Vendi are a warlike white race entirely isolated from other African races and when Curtis and Quatermain's party arrives are ruled jointly by two sisters, Nyleptha and Sorais. The priests of the Zu-Vendi religion are hostile to the explorers but they are protected by the queens: however both fall passionately in love with Curtis and this together with the rejection by Sorais of the nobleman Nasta results in a civil war between them (Sorais and Nasta's forces against those of Nyleptha, Curtis and Quatermain). After a battle in which Queen Nyleptha's forces are outnumbered she is nevertheless victorious but then threatened by the treachery of the priests who plan to murder her in the palace. Umslopogaas and one loyal warrior manage to save her from this, killing Nasta and the chief priest Agon in the Fight on the Stairway. Sorais, defeated and jealous, takes her own life: Nyleptha and Curtis become King and Queen and Quatermain dies from a wound suffered in the battle.

[edit] Family

About Quatermain's family, little is written. He lives at Durban, in Natal, South Africa. He marries twice, but is quickly widowed both times. The printing of some of the memoirs in the series is entrusted to Quatermain's son, Harry, whose own death is heavily mourned in the opening of the novel Allan Quatermain. Harry Quatermain is a medical student who dies of smallpox while working in a hospital. Haggard did not write the Quatermain novels in chronological order and some details conflict. Quatermain's birth, age at the time of his marriages, and age at the time of his death cannot be reconciled to the apparent date of Harry's birth and age at death.

[edit] Appearance

Quatermain is small, wiry, and unattractive, with a beard and short hair that sticks up like bristles on a brush. His one skill and source of pride is his marksmanship, where he has no equal. Quatermain is aware that by exercising this skill as a professional hunter he has helped to destroy his only love, the wild free places of Africa. In old age he hunts without pleasure, having no other means of making a living.

[edit] Use of Quatermain in other works

The Allan Quatermain character has been expanded greatly by modern writers, this use is possibly due to Haggard's works passing into the public domain, much like Sherlock Holmes.

[edit] Quatermain in the works of Farmer, Power and Castelli

Quatermain was placed by science fiction writer Philip José Farmer as a member of the Wold Newton family. In the anthology Myths for the Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe, writer Brad Mengel speculated in an essay that Quatermain had a daughter who married a relation of Sherlock Holmes. Writer Dennis E. Power has also speculated in his unpublished story "The Judex Codex" that Quatermain had a daughter by Ayesha as well; this ably reconciled Quatermain's family tree with the Allan Quatermain comic book series created by Alfredo Castelli (which later morphed into the Martin Mystere series; Power's theories allowed Mystere and Allan Quatermain II to be identical first cousins without compromising any of the extant continuities).

In the Haggard canon, Harry Quatermain is an only child. After the younger Quatermain's death, his father laments that he is an old man "without a chick or child to comfort me." However, the expansion of Allan Quatermain's lineage by Castelli, Mengel, and Power, and of his longevity by Alan Moore, as noted below, were studiously researched and, regardless of the latter quote, do not in any significant way, contravene or diminish Haggard's work. A second theory was proposed by Wold Newton scribe Rick Lai in his essay "The Mystery of Harry Quatermain and Other Conundrums" in which he cited several discrepancies throughout the Haggard series regarding Quatermain's wives. In this essay Lai suggests that Allan's son Harry was born far too early to be the young man who died before "Allan Quatermain". Using Haggard's own time line, he suggests that Harry, son of Allan and Stella Quatermain, fathered a son, also named Harry, whom Allan Quatermain raised as his own.

It should be noted that though Philip José Farmer did add Quatermain to his Wold Newton family, he himself did not pen any theories regarding Allan's offspring, though Mengel's essay was authorized by Farmer, and the influence of his work on that of the other above-mentioned authors is certainly known and encouraged by Farmer.

[edit] Quatermain in the works of Moore and Miller

The character was used by writer Alan Moore and artist Kevin O'Neill in their series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which was adapted to film in 2003.

In 2005, the first true full literary continuation of Allan Quatermain (as opposed to both graphic novels and various insertions into alternate universes) was published by Wildside Press. It is The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life; Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fire by Thos. Kent Miller and adds chapters to the lives of both Quatermain and Sherlock Holmes. It is constructed as a Quatermain memoir and African adventure, as Haggard told all the Quatermain tales. Miller is also the author of Sherlock Holmes on the Roof of the World; Or, The Adventure of the Wayfaring God, a pastiche of H. Rider Haggard's She.

[edit] Film and television versions of the stories

The character of Allan Quatermain has been portrayed in film and television by Richard Chamberlain, John Colicos, Irene Handl, Sean Connery, Cedric Hardwicke, and Patrick Swayze. Stewart Granger also played Quatermain in the 1950 Hollywood film adaptation of King Solomon's Mines, which was directed by Compton Bennett. None of the above works portray Haggard's Quatermain accurately in age, appearance, or character. Some even give his name erroneously as "Quartermain." Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold is a film released in 1987 which is freely adapted from the plot of Haggard's 1887 novel. He was also featured in the The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

[edit] Influences

The real-life adventures of Frederick Courtney Selous, the famous British big game hunter and explorer of Colonial Africa, inspired Haggard to create the fictional Allan Quatermain character. Haggard was also heavily influenced by other larger-than-life adventurers he later met in Africa, most notably the American Scout Frederick Russell Burnham, by South Africa's vast mineral wealth, and by the ruin of ancient lost civilizations being uncovered in Africa, such as Great Zimbabwe. The beliefs and views of the fictional Quatermain are, however, those of Haggard himself. These include conventional Victorian assumptions concerning the superiority of the white race; an admiration for so-called "warrior races," such as the Zulu; a disdain for natives corrupted by white influences; and a general contempt for Afrikaners (Boers). But in other ways Haggard's views were advanced for his times. The first chapter of King Solomon's Mines contains an express denunciation of the use of the pejorative term "nigger." Quatermain frequently encounters natives who are more brave and wise than Europeans, and even women (black and white) who are smarter and emotionally stronger than men (though not necessarily as good; cf. the title character of "She"). Through the Quatermain novels and his other works, Haggard also expresses his own mysticism and interest in non-Christian concepts, particularly karma and reincarnation, though he expresses these concepts in such a way as to be compatible with the Christian faith.[1][2]

[edit] Books

Quatermain (with walking stick) following his men carrying ivory, in an illustration by Thure de Thulstrup of Haggard's novel Maiwa's Revenge (1888).

The books written by H. Rider Haggard relating to Allan Quatermain are:

  1. King Solomon's Mines (1885)
  2. Allan Quatermain (1887)
  3. Allan’s Wife (1887)
  4. Maiwa’s Revenge: or, The War of the Little Hand (1888)
  5. Marie (1912)
  6. Child of Storm (1913)
  7. The Holy Flower (1915)
  8. The Ivory Child (1916)
  9. Finished (1917)
  10. The Ancient Allan (1920)
  11. She and Allan (1920)
  12. Heu-heu: or, The Monster (1924)
  13. The Treasure of the Lake (1926)
  14. Allan and the Ice-gods (1927)
  15. Hunter Quatermain's Story: The Uncollected Adventures of Allan Quatermain (anthology: 2004)
    1. "Hunter Quatermain's Story" (first published in In a Good Cause, 1885)
    2. "Long Odds" (first published in Macmillan's Magazine February 1886)
    3. "A Tale of Three Lions" (first serialized in Atalanta Magazine, October-December 1887)

Books written by Alan Moore.

  1. "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I"
  2. "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II"
  3. "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier"
  4. "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century"

Book written by Thos. Kent Miller

  1. "The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life; Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fire"

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Mandiringana, E.; T. J. Stapleton (1998). "The Literary Legacy of Frederick Courteney Selous". History in Africa 25: 199–218. doi:10.2307/3172188. 
  2. ^ Pearson, Edmund Lester. "Theodore Roosevelt, Chapter XI: The Lion Hunter" (HTML). Humanities Web. http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=s&p=l&a=c&ID=1144&o=. Retrieved on 2006-12-18. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Quatermain"
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