Customer Reviews

Bertram Mitford's The Sign of the Spider

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I have been a Bertram Mitford fan for a number of years. Of the four African adventure novels that I have read by him, "The Sign of the Spider" is my favorite.

Mitford was a contemporary of the much more famous H. Rider Haggard, and like Haggard wrote stories of adventure set in the colonial days of south Africa. He often mixed in supernatural/fantasy elements, also like Haggard. But he was far from being a mere Haggard imitator, as many of the "Lost Race" writers of the era were. Mitford was original and had his own voice. His world view and fictional approach were very different from Haggard's. H. Rider Haggard was at heart a Romanticist, and he had an endless faith in the dignity and ethical superiority of the Englishman. To Haggard, colonialism conferred blessings on the native Africans, and English colonial policy was based upon philanthropy and motivated by the noble cause of elevating the natives to a state of enlightened Christian civilization. Mitford, on the other hand, was a realist and even a naturalist. Mitford's focus charactors are often self-serving scoundrels with no reservations about straying beyond the boundaries of the law into criminal activities. Stanninghame, the protagonist of "the Sign of the Spider", abandons his family in England, and has no qualms about joining up with a slaving party after arriving in Africa and finding little success in legitimate commercial ventures. No Haggard hero would ever dream of such a thing. Likewise, to Mitford English colonial policy was based solely on mercantile gain and it ruthlessly exploited the native population. Making money and exerting control were the primary objectives of the British colonial presence. In this respect Mitford's approach was much more modern than Haggard's, and since Mitford is a highly talented story teller, it is surprising he has not found a larger contemporary following.

The Sign of the Spider is a grand action adventure story incorporating well-developed, if often amoral, characters. The worshippers of the spider are an intriguing, well-realized lost race, and Stanninghame's final encounter with the giant Spider God with hideous death hanging in one balance and escape with a fortune of uncut diamonds hanging in the other is a scene that can stand in power and intensity beside Frodo's fight with Shelob or the epic battle scenes in "King Solomon's Mines". The book is highly recommended for fans of the rich fin de siecle fantasy/adventure tradition.

By the way, Mitford's earlier novel "The Weird of Deadly Hollow", a book about a horrible murder and an even more horrible revenge, is the grimmest book I have ever read. In "The Sign of the Spider", Mitford manages a happy ending - of sorts.

Laurence Stanninghame is one of the most complex heroes I've encountered in Victorian fiction - a rogue and a cynic with noble qualities. We first meet him as a gentleman living in genteel poverty in the London suburbs, burdened with a shrewish wife, three children and a rapidly shrinking bank account. His only assets are hunting skills, reckless courage and nerves of steel. So he ships out to Johannesburg to seek his fortune, or die doing it.

In South Africa our hero does two despicable things. He gets involved with a beautiful young woman in Johannesburg without mentioning the wife and kids in London. And he turns slave trader up country to repair his finances. Somehow, despite this unworthy conduct, Stanninghame continues to engage our interest. His fearlessness, thoroughbred manners, caustic humor and iron self-control are seductive.

The action revolves around Stanninghame's horrific adventures in the miasmic African forests and the plains that are home to the People of the Spider. Ingenious twists of plot and Fate kept me glued to my armchair.

Bertram Mitford's depictions of cannibalism, tribal warfare, ritual sacrifice and slave raids are shockingly graphic for a late Victorian writer. An aristocratic colonial with broad life experience, Mitford spoke Zulu and once served with the frontier mounted police. As a popular fiction writer he was an important contributor to the high romance of Africa.

The Sign of the Spider was first published in 1896 to great success. The introduction, which I suggest reading after the book, goes deep into some fascinating theories on the symbolism of the spider and the behavior of the characters in terms of fin de siècle racism and imperialism.

So while at first I groaned at the imperfections of the hero, I was all the more intrigued by the ways in which he (somewhat) redeemed himself. The Sign of the Spider is a product of the politics and attitudes of its times. But it also transcends those attitudes in some ways.

This is a book worth reading. I recommend it to readers who might enjoy a good strong mix of adventure, history, love and moral ironies.

The Sign of the Spider is really two books: a wordy late Victorian romance novel, which bloats the early part, and a fun adventure cryptozoology yarn in the latter part. The 'hero', really an anti-hero, doesn't really make us yearn to follow his activities, as much as we want, rather desperately after a while, someone more Indiana Jones-like that we can root for. All in all, the style and padding make this only a modest read. Too bad too.