A Mahatma, as H. Rider Haggard explains in the first pages of this story, means “Great Souled,” and is a person with a sort of sixth sense or at least an ability to transcend the usual human’s sense of reality.
A hare, on the other hand, is a sort of rabbit.
The narrator starts by talking about Mahatmas and also some
passing acquaintance known as Jorsen. The narrator then U-turns into another
topic, of how his wife and daughter died and the shock and heartbreak
drove him to drink himself into a stupor and contemplate jumping into the
river.
Enter Jorsen, who appears at the narrator’s side and knows
the entire tragic tale. Jorsen mentions in passing that he knew the narrator in
a past life. The narrator’s friendship of Jorsen brings him back from the edge
of despair, followed by his studying of a pseudo-Eastern mysticism and a bunch
of talk about Pharoahs and kas. At
last is introduced a sort of limbo-world called the Great White Road, upon
which ghosts must travel on their way to the afterlife. In a dream or stupor or
some deep meditation, the narrator accesses this Great White Road and sees his
dead child. Attempts to repeat this meeting are in vain, although the narrator
meets many other spirits in subsequent visits to the Road.
“Not many people know even who or what a Mahatma is. The majority of those who change to have
heard the title are apt to confuse it with another, that of Mad Hatter.”
There a few references to Hatters throughout the book. This quotation is from the beginning of the
story. At the end the titular Hare mishears
the narrator and commits this very mistake, calling him Mr. Hatter. And one of
the narrator’s odd jobs that he takes on as he rebuilds his life under Jorsen’s
guidance is “editing a trade journal that has to do with haberdashery.” Now
anyone who’s gotten their hands on an annotated Alice in Wonderland may remember that the phrase “mad as a hatter” may
be linked to mercury poisoning that haberdashers were subjected to in the pursuit
of their trade. Since Alice was
written almost 50 years before Mahatma,
it may not be a coincidence that Haggard makes the connection with Mahatma
sounding like Mad Hatter, or that the other major character in the story is a Hare
(perhaps along the lines of the March Hare).
So much for the Mahatma. “Now comes the odd part of the
story.” (Because the previous section was as realistic as a Dali painting.) Whilst
in one of his visits to the Great White Road, the narrator encounters the ghost
of a hare. It sounds like the beginning of some dumb joke: “Why did the hare
cross the Great White Road?”
The Hare, ascertaining that the narrator is a live person
and not a fellow specter, decides that this is his chance to convey a message
back to the land of the living, and to the human population in particular. What follows is a long and depressing and gruesome
tale of how the hare’s family was systematically hunted down by humans for
sport. The Hare himself spent much of his life dodging dogs and bullets and
even became known as a sort of Moby-Dick of country huntsmen after escaping
their clutches several times.
As the Hare concludes his tale, the villain of his story,
the Red-Faced Man (the lord of the country estate that the Hare had lived on)
arrives, having accidentally died in the same final hullabaloo that had led the
Hare to his death. The Hare goes into a rage at the sight of the Man, and the
Man in turn reacts with surprise at the sentient animal. What follows is a long
dialog about whether the Man had any right to hunt and kill the Hare, whether
animals have feelings or souls, whether a Man’s birth into a certain social gives
him certain privileges, and whether ignorance of cruelty is an excuse.
Drawn to this book because it reminded me of the comic Archy and Mehitabel, I read the entire
story while waiting in the airport. This book started off as a sort of
exploration into the spiritualism that was in vogue during the
Victorian/Edwardian era, with such eminent figures as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
exploring the possibility of communicating beyond the grave or the existence of
fairies. The whole Great White Road segment reminded me of C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, which also explores
the possibilities of afterlife and shows that no matter what one’s status in
life, death makes equals of everyone. As
for the Hare’s story, it meanders around between Watership Down and The Tale
of Peter Rabbit in its dramatic presentation of the life of a prey animal,
and also presents some Black Beauty-quality
arguments against animal cruelty.
Whether the reader understands Haggard’s emphasis to be on
the metaphysical Mahatma section or
as an early PETA cry for animal rights in the Hare section, this was certainly an interesting, if psychedelic,
way to wait for an airplane.
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