Here is some pulp fiction from 1890s Africa! This is not a sentence you write every day. It is by Cynthia Stockley, whose VIRGINIA AMONG THE RHODESIANS I just read. I’d never heard of her, but she was a very successful Zimbabwean novelist of the nineteenth century, whose books got made into many silent films.
The story is straight up romantic melodrama, but I enjoyed it in anyway. Partly this is because is strong on plot, as melodrama must be. Partly because it is funny, which melodrama usually is not. At one point she is telling us about the very un-funny plan the white men are making to go and destroy Lobengula’s kraal. But here’s the elderly doctor, refusing to go: “He was not looking for any Lobengulas, he said. He had not lost any Matabele impis, so why should he go and search for them?”
But mostly I enjoyed it for a rare chance to learn about life in Zimbabwe in this period, by someone who was there. It all goes on: using anthills as ovens; marching once boots run out with your feet stuffed into wallets; and etc. I was struck by how the white Zimbabwean culture of that time seems pretty continuous with this one. There is still today a similar frontier spirit, I think, and a love of country. There are lots of sections dedicated to the beauty of the veldt, which if you are sad can make you happy, and if you are happy can make you sad. The ‘claw’ of the title is the claw of Africa, that would not let the main character (an American girl) leave, because she loved the place too much. Also very Zimbawean is that she never uses the term home (for either America or Zimbabwe) without quote marks around it. For some reason that really struck me.