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The Bearded Patriarch, Billali, Confides in Holly, the Hirsute Narrator-Protagonist

“Thou seest, my son, the Baboon,” he said, in a sad voice, “I spake the truth to thee, for here is yet one foot remaining. Take it, my son, and gaze upon it.”

I took this cold fragment of mortality in my hand and looked at it in the light of the lamp with feelings which I cannot describe, so mixed up were they between astonishment, fear, and fascination. It was light, much lighter I should say than it had been in the living state, and the flesh to all appearance was still flesh, though about it there clung a faintly aromatic odour. For the rest it was not shrunk or shrivelled, or even black and unsightly, like the flesh of Egyptian mummies, but plump and fair, and, except where it had been slightly burnt, perfect as on the day of death — a very triumph of embalming.

Poor little foot! I set it down upon the stone bench where it had lain for so many thousand years, and wondered whose was the beauty that it had upborne through the pomp and pageantry of a forgotten civilisation — first as a merry child’s, then as a blushing maid’s, and lastly as a perfect woman’s. Through what halls of Life had its soft step echoed, and in the end, with what courage had it trodden down the dusty ways of Death! To whose side had it stolen in the hush of night when the black slave slept upon the marble floor, and who had listened for its stealing? Shapely little foot! Well might it have been set upon the proud neck of a conqueror bent at last to woman’s beauty, and well might the lips of nobles and of kings have been pressed upon its jewelled whiteness. [Chapter IX, "A Little Foot," 470; in the 1887 volume, pp. 109-110]

Commentary: The Patriarchal Billali — Ayesha's Governor for the Amahagger Household

The adventurers are captured by a party of fifty light-skinned natives after their voyage upriver, and are taken inland under the commend of a bearded patriarch in a long, white robe who calls himself "Billali," and who identifies himself as "father" or the Queen's chief administrator for a "family" of seven thousand tribesmen:

“Who is ‘She-who-must-be-obeyed’?” I asked, curiously.

The old man glanced at the bearers, and then answered, with a little smile that somehow sent my blood to my heart —

“Surely, my stranger son, thou wilt learn soon enough, if it be her pleasure to see thee at all in the flesh.”

“In the flesh?” I answered. “What may my father wish to convey?”

But the old man only laughed a dreadful laugh, and made no reply.

“What is the name of my father’s people?” I asked.

“The name of my people is Amahagger” (the People of the Rocks).

“And if a son might ask, what is the name of my father?”

“My name is Billali.”

“And whither go we, my father?”

“That shalt thou see," and at a sign from him his bearers started forward at a run till they reached the litter in which Job was reposing (with one leg hanging over the side). Apparently, however, he could not make much out of Job, for presently I saw his bearers trot forward to Leo’s litter. [Chapter VI, "An Early Christian Ceremony," 88 in the 1888 volume edition]

The original serial title is somewhat lengthier than that in the volume: “I took this cold fragment of mortality in my hand, and looked at it in the light of the lamp with feelings which I cannot describe.” The equivalent plate in the British first edition of 1888 is simply entitled Holly and Billali.

At the violent climax of the cannibals' feast in Chapter VIII, in the nick of time at the instalment's curtain Billali, having just returned from informing the Queen of their arrival, commands that the Amahagger release the captives. Now, in this tranquil scene in the Europeans' private cave afterwards, Billali in Chapter IX confides in Holly about a preserved or curiously embalmed female corpse that he used to visit in this very antechamber. Suspecting that her adolescent son had developed an unhealthy fascination with the beautiful corpse, Billali's mother had burned it. The immolation left behind only a comely foot untouched. Thus, the moment that Johnson has realised is, of course, signalled by Holly's studying the tiny foot, and by the open Gladstone bag at his feet, a somewhat incongruous detail whose mention concludes the episode: "I wrapped up this relic of the past in the remnants of the old linen rag which had evidently formed a portion of its owner’s grave-clothes, for it was partially burnt, and put it away in my Gladstone bag — a strange combination, I thought" (110).

The bearded Amahagger patriarch appears in two subsequent serial illustrations, “Behold the House of She-who-must-be-obeyed,” said Billali. “Had ever such a queen such a throne before?” “It is wonderful, my father,” I answered (6 November 1886), and “As we were returning Billali met us” (11 December 1886).

Bibliography

Haggard, H. Rider. "SHE:" A History of Adventure. Illustrated by E. K. Johnson. The Graphic Magazine, Vols. XXXIV and XXXV. 2 October 1886 to 8 January 1887.

Haggard, H. Rider. SHE: A History of Adventure. Illustrated by E. K. Johnson. New York: Harper & Bros., 1887.

Haggard, H. Rider. She: A History of Adventure.  Illustrated by Maurice Greiffenhagen and Charles H. M. Kerr. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1888, rpt. 1927.

"Johnson, Edward Killingworth." Haynes Fine Art. Web. Accessed 8 April 2025. https://www.haynesfineart.com/artists/edward-killingworth-johnson-uk

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