A pretty good collection of adventure fiction
 |
| H. Rider Haggard |
This is the seventh book I’ve read and reviewed in the ten-volume Stories by English Authors series, which was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. As the one-word subtitle of this volume indicates, all the stories included here are set in Africa. Before starting the book, I was worried I might be in for a lot of Dark Continent clichés and racial stereotypes, but for the most part my misgivings were unfounded. If anything, the natives suffer more from neglect than insult, as almost all the main characters in these stories are British. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the exotic locale, this collection is more focused on adventure fiction than the other volumes in this series, and that works to its advantage. This Africa volume is one of the best books that I’ve encountered yet in the Stories by English Authors series, perhaps second only to the volume on Germany and Northern Europe.
When you’re putting together a collection of short stories, you can’t ask for a much better lead-off hitter than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley” may not be one of his best efforts, but it’s still a cut above the usual fare one encounters in this series. Two British friends, down on their luck in South Africa, hear a legend about a demon with glowing eyes and decide to investigate. Conan Doyle is a master storyteller, even when the story is pretty thin, and this one certainly is. Faring better is another classic author of African adventure, H. Rider Haggard. His story “Long Odds” stars Allan Quartermain, the hero from King Solomon’s Mines. The aging adventurer relates a story of how he hunted down a family of lions as retribution for their having killed his oxen. This exciting hunting story may defy belief at times, but it’s great fun.
In “King Bemba’s Point” by J. Landers, a young Englishman goes to work as assistant to the factor at a southeast African trading post. This one follows a familiar formula and telegraphs its surprise ending far in advance, but the details are well executed, and it sufficiently entertains. Yet another good entry is William Charles Scully’s “Ghamba.” A young Englishman in South Africa strikes up a friendship with a rather creepy old native named Ghamba, who informs him of the whereabouts of a wanted criminal who is hiding in a mountain cave. The hero enlists his American friend to help him capture the villain for reward money. This story includes violence and elements of horror that push it into pulp fiction territory, making for a fun read.
After four strong entries the collection takes a turn for the worse with “Mary Musgrave,” an anonymous tale of a woman’s effect on a South African mining camp. After that, the final third of the volume is occupied by a twelve chapter novella, Gregorio, by Percy Hemingway. This is an operatic tragedy about a poverty-stricken Greek man in Alexandria, Egypt, who must resort to desperate measures to feed his wife and son. It’s a very engaging and well-structured narrative, but it’s depressingly bleak and far from politically correct in its racial characterizations. It is a work of middling literary quality that inspires mixed emotions.
Overall, the Stories by English Authors series has been disappointing, but this volume is actually pretty good. Anyone interested in vintage adventure fiction, particularly of the African variety, will find its contents decently entertaining.
Stories in this collection
The Mystery of Sasassa Valley by Arthur Conan Doyle
Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard
King Bemba’s Point by J. Landers
Ghamba by William Charles Scully
Mary Musgrave by Anonymous
Gregorio by Percy Hemingway
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R286O5I8CXYKQL/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Tragedy in Alexandria
Gregorio is a novella by English lawyer and author Percy Addleshaw, written under the pseudonym of Percy Hemingway. It was first published in 1895 in a collection of short fiction entitled Out of Egypt. Though the story takes place in Alexandria, Egypt, and features a Greek protagonist, it nevertheless is clearly written from a British point of view.
Gregorio is a poor man who struggles to find work and feed his family. Though he can’t scrape up enough coins to put bread into the mouths of his wife and son, all around him he sees British tourists and sailors flaunting their wealth in the hotels, nightclubs, and bordellos of Alexandria, which inspires in him an intense hatred for the English. Gregorio has borrowed money from a Jewish moneylender named Amos, who will no longer offer him credit and demands prompt payment. Unable to pay back the loan, and fearing that his young son will starve to death, Gregorio orders his wife Xantippe to work as a prostitute to save the family.
This is an engaging story that keeps you guessing, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. At times it seems as if everything will wrap up neatly in the end like an O. Henry tale, imparting some moral lesson, but the plot never goes where you want it to go. At first it seems like Hemingway is writing a social justice novel that invites the reader to sympathize with Gregorio’s abject poverty, but eventually he steers you in the direction of viewing the Greek as a despicable human being. The tone of the story feels a bit like a romantic opera with its exotic locale and the way in which, at the convenient drop of a hat, characters fall in love or become intent on murder in order to move the plot forward. On the other hand, in its brutal depiction of the seamier side of life it resembles grittier naturalistic novels like Frank Norris’s McTeague or Emile Zola’s La Bête Humaine (though it’s nowhere near as good as either one of those great works).
What you end up with is a book that’s depressing as hell and pretty racist. Amos is very much the stereotype of the “filthy Jew,” a baby-stealing usurer. The Arab and Greek characters are similarly portrayed in an unflattering light. I don’t expect political correctness from 19th-century European literature, so I wasn’t so much shocked or offended by the racial slurs as I just found them lazy from a literary standpoint. Even more galling is the lofty attitude Hemingway displays toward his own countrymen. Though none of the main characters are English, the author still manages to turn the story into a white savior narrative. If there’s a lesson to be learned from Gregorio, it’s that only an Englishmen can truly satisfy a woman, because there is something about the English nature that makes them unilaterally chivalrous, righteous, and gentlemanly.
Gregorio comes across as the product of an author who exhibits indications of talent but approaches his story from a naive and misguided perspective. This certainly isn’t a terrible piece of literature for its time, but it does inspire mixed emotions today.
