The Great White Chief — Robert M. MacDonald, Blackie & Son (1908)

Opening

The dedication page reads: TO / ADMIRAL MORESBY / BY ONE WHO HAS FOLLOWED IN HIS FOOTSTEPS. Four lines. No name. No elaboration. Admiral John Moresby (1830–1922) was the Royal Navy officer who had explored and charted the coast of New Guinea in 1873, naming the harbour that would become Port Moresby after his father. By 1908, when this book was published, Moresby was seventy-eight years old and had been Admiral since 1879. Robert M. MacDonald had followed in his footsteps in a rather more literal sense than most writers dedicating a book to a famous predecessor — the preface makes clear that MacDonald himself had been in New Guinea, that the characters are real, and that the incidents are not imaginary.

The Book

The Great White Chief: A Story of Adventure in Unknown New Guinea was published by Blackie and Son, Limited, London, Glasgow, Dublin, and Bombay, in 1908. It was illustrated by W. Rainey, R.I. and simultaneously copyrighted in the United States of America by Blackie & Son, Limited, as stated on the title verso. The book was reprinted at least once — a later edition (c.1927) is recorded by the National Library of New Zealand. [web:896] The National Library of Australia holds a copy of the first edition (1908). [web:892]

The binding is khaki-brown cloth with a full-colour pictorial design on the front board: a crouching Papuan figure, barefoot, afro-haired, wearing a necklace, leaning over a fire — the cover artist's signature reads Massée or Massig in the lower left corner of the vignette, within a black-ruled rectangular border. The title and subtitle appear in gilt above: THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF / A TALE OF ADVENTURE IN UNKNOWN NEW GUINEA / BY ROBERT M. MACDONALD. The spine carries gilt lettering GREAT WHITE CHIEF / ROBERT M. MACDONALD with a second pictorial design: a European man in a bush hat carrying a rifle. The page edges are stained green. The head of the spine is worn with cloth splitting at the top joint. The title page reads: The / Great White Chief / A Story of Adventure in Unknown / New Guinea / By / Robert M. MacDonald / Illustrated by W. Rainey, R.I. / Blackie and Son, Limited / London Glasgow Dublin Bombay / 1908.

The Preface

The preface (pp. vii–viii), signed Robert M. MacDonald, is one of the most revealing prefaces in the Edwardian boys'-adventure genre. MacDonald opens by insisting: This is a story, but the characters are real, and the incidents not imaginary. At the present moment, the comrades round whose adventures the tale is woven, are scattered throughout our Empire's far-flung outposts. For them, crowded cities can never be abiding-places, nor the conventionalities of civilization anything but irksome. He then imagines his former comrades reading the book by a camp-fire in the ice-bound Arctic Circle or by the "smoke" in some tropical jungle, and ventriloquises their anticipated complaints: "Who would have thought that —— would ever come down to writing books? He never could tell a yarn like some of us; an', anyhow, why has he missed out the best parts? Why doesn't he tell about Mac runnin' away with the tapu priest of that tribe we fell in with over in German territory? An' why doesn't he give the story of how Doc bluffed a whole tribe of cannibals himself? an' how the Chief was the first man in the big Mount Scratchley Bush?" He closes by admitting to his comrades that he does not claim to possess the trained literary skill the work requires, but that those for whom this book is written will not judge his work harshly; and for others, as you know, he does not care. [web:892]

The Contents

The volume runs to at least 345 pages plus a Prologue, organised as a Prologue and seventeen chapters:

Prologue: The Mad Mamoose (p. 1)
I. The Accident at Tilbury Docks (p. 11)
II. The Mysterious Opals (p. 27)
III. A World Wanderer (p. 46)
IV. In the Heart of the Unknown (p. 60)
V. A Strange Feast (p. 84)
VI. The Storm (p. 106)
VII. Brother Wanderers (p. 130)
VIII. The Water Spirits and the Full-Moon Feast (p. 146)
IX. In the Tugeri Stronghold (p. 167)
X. Among the Gods of their Ancestors (p. 186)
XI. On the Borders of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land (p. 201)
XII. How the Mountain People met the Tugeris (p. 220)
XIII. The Passage of the Silent Priests (p. 249)
XIV. The Balance of Life and Death (p. 273)
XV. What happened at the Weighing, and after (p. 300)
XVI. Darling Bill takes a Hand in the Game (p. 324)
XVII. Comrades All (p. 345)

The narrative moves from Tilbury Docks on the Thames to the interior of British New Guinea, engaging with the Tugeri people (a Papuan people of the southern coast known to colonial administrators for headhunting raids) and crossing into German New Guinea — Kaiser Wilhelm's Land as named in Chapter XI — on the northern side of the island. [web:893][web:897]

List of Illustrations

Eight full-page black-and-white plates by W. Rainey, R.I., plus one folding map: [web:900]

The Chief tries to bring his Special Trick into Play — Frontispiece (facing p. 279)
Harry saves Coolgardie Bill (p. 75)
"His Hands rudely fastened around the Mamoose's Throat" (p. 103)
"A Black Wall shot from Overhead and fell around them" (p. 163)
Doc and Harry in the Tapu House (p. 196)
"No one heeded the Shot, and the Battle proceeded" (p. 237)
"To his Surprise he went flying halfway across the Apartment" (p. 291)
On the Great Balance of Life and Death (p. 306)
Map of Part of British New Guinea (p. 88)

The Illustrator

William Rainey, R.I., R.B.A., R.O.I. (21 July 1852 – 24 January 1936) was born in Kennington, London, the third son of George Rainey, surgeon and lecturer at St Thomas's Hospital. [web:887] He studied at South Kensington School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, and was a landscape and figure painter in watercolours as well as a prolific book illustrator, noted for his delicate brush strokes. He won medals for watercolour at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1893) and the Paris Exhibition (1900), was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (R.I.) in 1901, and to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (R.O.I.) in 1932. He also exhibited two works at the Franco-British Exhibition in 1908 — the same year this volume appeared. [web:890]

Rainey illustrated numerous books including works by G. A. Henty, Charles Dickens (David Copperfield), Charles Kingsley, and William Makepeace Thackeray, and was a regular contributor to The Boy's Own Paper, Punch, The Strand Magazine, The Illustrated London News, The Graphic, Good Words, Chums, Young England, and many others. [web:887][web:894] His original illustrations and two watercolours are held at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Maritime Museum, London. [web:894] He died at Grand Parade, Eastbourne, on 24 January 1936, aged 83. His son Victor Thomas Rainey (1898–1917) was killed in the First World War.

The Dedication: Admiral Moresby

Admiral John Moresby (15 March 1830 – 12 July 1922) was born at Allerford, Somerset, the second surviving son of Admiral Fairfax Moresby (1786–1877). He entered the Royal Navy and rose to command H.M.S. Basilisk on the Australia Station, during which commission (1871–1874) he surveyed and charted the southern and south-eastern coast of New Guinea, discovering and naming the harbour he called Port Moresby after his father, and claiming the region for Britain at Possession Island. [web:895][web:899] He published his memoir Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea and the D'Entrecasteaux Islands (1876). He was promoted to Admiral in 1879 and lived until 1922, dying aged 92. Port Moresby remains the capital of Papua New Guinea to this day. MacDonald's dedication — by one who has followed in his footsteps — is a serious claim of geographic and experiential continuity, not a literary convention.

The Author

Robert M. MacDonald is an obscure figure for whom no biographical entry has been traced in standard reference works. What the book itself establishes is precise and unusual: he had personal experience of the interior of New Guinea; he had worked alongside identifiable comrades (Mac, Doc, Fat Jack, Coolgardie Bill, Darling Bill) whose real names he declines to use; he had been in both British New Guinea (the southern territory administered from Port Moresby) and in German territory (Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, the north-eastern quarter of the island, administered by the German New Guinea Company and formally a German imperial protectorate 1884–1914); [web:893] and he had been in the Mount Scratchley bush — a high peak in the central Owen Stanley Range. He was, on the internal evidence, a colonial adventurer, probably a prospector or administrator, who wrote this single book as a fictionalised account of his actual experiences. No further publications by him are known. His preface's tone — brusque, self-deprecating, and uninterested in literary reputation — is consistent with this reading.

The Inscription

The front free endpaper carries a gift inscription in a neat Edwardian cursive hand: From Uncle Ernest & Auntie Here [Hene? / Here?] / Xmas 1918. Pasted below the inscription is a small paper label: Nº 41 Plaskey (or Plasker — the surname is partially legible). The inscription places this copy as a Christmas gift in 1918 — the last Christmas of the First World War, the Armistice having been signed on 11 November 1918. Whoever received it from Uncle Ernest and Auntie Here was evidently child or teenager, and the book was already ten years old.

The Publisher

Blackie and Son, Limited published The Great White Chief simultaneously in London, Glasgow, Dublin, and Bombay — their standard four-city imprint for this period. The US copyright registration (Copyrighted in the United States, America by Blackie & Son, Limited), printed on the title verso, reflects Blackie's active marketing of their adventure fiction into the North American market. Blackie's boys' adventure list at this period was among the strongest in London publishing, dominated by G. A. Henty's sixty-plus novels and continued by successors including MacDonald. The list was illustrated throughout by William Rainey, who worked for Blackie from the 1880s onward alongside his magazine work.

The Setting: New Guinea in 1908

The island of New Guinea in 1908 was divided between three colonial powers. The western half was Dutch New Guinea, administered by the Netherlands. The south-eastern quarter was British New Guinea, administered since 1906 as the Territory of Papua under Australian administration following the Papua Act. The north-eastern quarter was German New Guinea — Kaiser-Wilhelmsland — a German imperial protectorate since 1884. [web:897] The Tugeri people, who appear prominently in the novel (Chapters IX, XII), were a Papuan people of the southern coast known to Dutch and British colonial administrators for systematic headhunting raids across wide distances. Mount Scratchley, mentioned in the preface as the location of one unwritten adventure, is a high peak in the Owen Stanley Range in the central spine of New Guinea. The folding map of Part of British New Guinea (p. 88) reflects the political geography MacDonald's characters navigate.

Bibliographic Details

Author: Robert M. MacDonald

Illustrator: W. Rainey, R.I. (William Rainey, 1852–1936)

Publisher: Blackie and Son, Limited, London, Glasgow, Dublin, Bombay

Date: 1908 (first edition); later impression c.1927 recorded

US copyright: Copyrighted in the United States, America by Blackie & Son, Limited

Dedication: To Admiral Moresby, by one who has followed in his footsteps

Inscription: From Uncle Ernest & Auntie Here, Xmas 1918 — front free endpaper; label Nº 41 Plaskey

Binding: Khaki-brown pictorial cloth, full-colour cover design (front), gilt spine design; green-stained page edges

Cover artist: Signed Massée (or similar) on front board vignette

Format: Hardback, 345+ pp; Prologue + 17 chapters

Illustrations: 8 full-page black-and-white plates by W. Rainey + folding map of Part of British New Guinea (p. 88)

Condition: Spine head worn, cloth splitting at top joint