Stella Fregelius

The publication of Stella Fregelius: A Tale of Three Destinies appears on Haggard's timeline of works in 1903 – immediately after Pearl-Maiden (1903) and directly preceding The Brethren (1904). At the time of publishing, Haggard had returned from Africa and was heavily involved with the politics of agriculture reform and spent a lot of time focusing his writings on his observations and experiences while travelling across the rural UK[2] As Haggard points out in the author's note at the beginning of the text, he began writing the book around 1898, about 5 years before its release. Haggard also says that he had no intention of publishing the story at first, starting it "purely to please himself" and ultimately publishing it "in the hope that it may please some others".[3] While many of Haggard's novels take place in Africa, Stella Fregelius is one of Haggard's domestically set novels. Of the two basic types of novels he wrote, Haggard's African adventure novels were praised much more than his domestic romances.[2] Stella Fregelius, however, was met with widely positive reviews as its spiritual and philosophical content differed greatly from his other books in this category.

As the title suggests, Stella Fregelius: a Tale of Three Destinies is a story of the overlapping fates of three people in a northern coastal region of England. The story follows Morris Monk, an aspiring inventor, as he becomes engaged to his first cousin, Mary Porson, and soon complicates things by falling in love with the daughter of the new church rector, Stella Fregelius. As Morris has prior engagements in this lifetime, he and Stella dedicate their afterlives to one another in a spiritual marriage. Shortly after, Stella dies and Morris spends the next few years trying to contact her spirit before dying of exhaustion.

At the beginning of the story, Morris is toiling with his biggest invention: the aerophone. In a form that resembles the earliest phones, Morris designed the aerophone in an attempt to revolutionise the world of communication by allowing two people to speak to each other from miles apart. Morris spent six years on it before it worked. After its initial success, however, he could not repeat the results, so he spends the next two years trying to make the finishing touches. Meanwhile, Morris’ father, Colonel Monk, is struggling with the mortgage on the Monksland Estate. As a retired soldier who lost his wife years ago, Colonel Monk hardly even manages to pay the interest on his mortgages. To stabilise the situation, Mr. Porson, Morris' uncle and the Colonel's wealthy brother-in-law, takes over the debt as a creditor. The main conflict of the book arises when the Colonel suggests that Morris should marry a wealthy woman to help ease the financial burden. Morris shows no interest in females, being described as "afraid of women". His interest is piqued, however, when his father suggests marrying Mary Porson, Morris' first cousin. While Morris still is not very enthusiastic about the idea of being married, he realises how well he and his cousin get along. Seeing as she is very attractive, quite intelligent and extremely supportive of Morris’ endeavours as an inventor, Morris agrees to marry her if the Colonel can prove that she is interested.

The next day, Uncle Porson gives the Colonel's plan his full support. It is quickly revealed that Mary has been in love with Morris ever since she was young, and the union appears to be a perfect match. Morris proposes to Mary one night after a dinner party, and the two become engaged. At the dinner party beforehand, however, Mary hears tell of the new church rector's mysteriously beautiful daughter, Stella Fregelius. Immediately before agreeing to her marriage, Mary teases Morris by saying she hopes he does not end up being "taken possession of by some strange Stella coming out of nowhere". Uncle Porson soon runs into health problems and has a minor stroke. The doctors suggest that Uncle Porson should go to stay at his house in France to escape from England's cold and dreary climate, and the Monk and Porson duos leave immediately. Morris finds being away from his experiments in France to be a miserable experience, so Mary tells him to go home early and work on his aerophone until she and the others return for the wedding. Shortly after Morris returns to Monksland, a ship crashes into an infamously dangerous patch of rocks just outside town. The sailors from the ship bring Morris an unconscious man from the wreck, and as Morris treats him he soon finds out that the sailors deserted this man's daughter on the sinking ship. For reasons unknown even to Morris (perhaps the draw of Fate, as the book so frequently suggests), Morris sails out to the wreckage to save the girl. Somehow managing to find her and make the treacherous day-long journey back to land, Morris quickly learns that the incapacitated man in his house is the new rector, leaving the female to be none other than the fabled Stella Fregelius.

Morris takes in Mr. Fregelius and his daughter, allowing plenty of time for the reverend's slow recovery. While Mary and the others are away, Stella and Morris become very close. She is fascinated by the aerophone and spends hours helping Morris perfect it. Stella becomes the talk of the town when everyone hears her beautiful voice and remarkable looks in church one day. Mr. Layard, a rich little man from a town over, soon courts Stella to no avail. He and his jealous sister, Eliza, show nothing but contempt and jealousy toward her. Both bitter over the town's infatuation with her, the Layards set to work gossiping about Stella, telling everyone that she has become physically intimate with Morris, whose engagement to Mary is well known. Meanwhile, Uncle Porson falls ill in France and dies shortly after. To grieve, Mary spends an extra month there and the Colonel returns home without her. He soon catches wind of the Layards’ gossip and, while he knows there is no truth to these rumours, he does think the two have become too close and advises them to keep apart from each other. Stella tells the Colonel in confidence that she loves Morris and plans to move to London so as to not disturb Morris and Mary's arrangements.

Upon hearing all of this from the Colonel, Morris realises that he is also deeply in love with Stella. However, he realises his obligations to his family, and he knows he cannot be with her. The night before she plans to leave, the two of them secretly meet in the old abandoned church where Morris did his experiments. The two openly confess their love for each other and promise each other their souls in the afterlife in what Stella calls a "spiritual marriage". While Morris promises to fulfill his obligations to Mary and his family while on earth, he promises that his soul shall join with hers in the afterlife. Once Morris leaves, Stella cries herself unconscious in the church and awakes in the midst of a horrible storm. The church is flooded and her death of drowning is imminent. With her last moments, she picks up the church's aerophone and calls Morris to inform him of her impending death, promising him that she did not plan this as an attempt at suicide. Ironically, Stella's death indirectly causes the massive success of the aerophone as it had just been perfected a few days before, and Morris had to prove to the newspapers that he had heard what had happened from Stella by demonstrating his invention. When Mary returns, Morris tells her about everything, including his spiritual marriage to Stella. As an understanding person, Mary says that she will forgive him and thanks the Lord that nothing irreversible had been done with Stella. The wedding goes as planned, and they have two children.

Despite his massive wealth and scientific success, Morris remains melancholy and depressed for years after Stella's death. When he reads Stella's old diary and finds a part where she claims to have summoned her deceased sister through fasting and intense concentration, Morris becomes obsessed with trying to do the same with Stella. At the same time, one of his children falls ill so Mary is too distracted to notice the rapid weight loss and mental deterioration of Morris. He begins to hallucinate and experience premonitions of Stella's appearance, but always falls short of actually summoning her. One night, Morris finally succeeds. Whether or not this is real or a hallucination resulting from his induced insanity it is not revealed. But when Stella's ghost refuses to talk to Morris, he becomes obsessed with trying to make her do so. After re-summoning her multiple times, Mary catches him in the act one evening and, out of resignation, tells him that she forgives him as long as he promises to stop, even though she knows he will not be able to. The book ends when Morris summons her one last time and dies as a result.

As critics were quick to point out, Stella Fregelius does not follow Haggard's usual writing style or fall into his usual genre, adventure fiction.[8] His writing style is emotionally charged, as with his other romances, yet has a reflectiveness and long-running ponderous undercurrent that makes the overall tone of the book much softer of and contemplative than many of his others. Due in part to his tone, and in part to the lofty nature of the subjects which his characters ponder over, Stella Fregelius is considered one of Haggard's most openly philosophical pieces in regards to spiritual and intellectual matters.[8] While a small number of his more famous works, such as She, explore spiritual topics such as Buddhism and reincarnation, these are often smaller components of a larger narrative that serves as a more holistic commentary on social issues such as race and gender from an imperialistic point of view.[9] As a domestically set novel, Stella loses the imperialist context in a way that gives Haggard more personal freedom in crafting intellectual characters and placing them in a familiar setting with a slower plot that are more conducive to prolonged reflections on deeper thought. He explores with great depth many of the topics that he only touches in his more prominent works .[10] Modern literary critics have not paid enough attention to Stella Fregelius to nail it down into one specific subgenre, but it is widely labelled as being a part of the broader genre of domestic English romance, with roots in philosophical fiction and even a few elements of supernatural literature.

While some of Haggard's novels have seen immeasurable success, others have been met with harsh criticism, and still others had some contemporary success but were outshined by his more famous works in the long run. Stella Fregelius falls into the third category, as many of the British newspapers praised Haggard's efforts, but the book failed to achieve the widespread success of his others. At the time, however, Stella Fregelius surprised critics, as it was a departure from Haggard's normal style. Haggard acknowledges this fact in his author's note, and even apologises to readers for "his boldness in offering to them a modest story which is in no sense a romance of the character that perhaps they expect from him".[3] Many critics mentioned this preface in their reviews, noting how Haggard was accurate in saying that this story was different from his usual story but inaccurate in his assumption that he needed to apologise for it. For many, Stella Fregelius was a breath of fresh air, combining a love story with science and spiritual exploration in a narrative that fed readers' desire for thought rather than shallow plot. The lengthy story allowed Haggard to develop characters that a critic from The Athenaeum said, "reveals a subtler power of characterization that we have hitherto recognized in the author".[10] On the other hand, some critics complained that it was too long, saying that "the later chapters need compression".[11] Outside of the length of the novel's end, critics found few things to complain about regarding "Stella Fregelius". The general consensus among British periodicals was that "Stella Fregelius" was a refreshing departure from literary conventions that Haggard himself had helped establish. Many considered this book to be in the upper echelon of contemporary fiction, with the Saturday Review going so far as to say, "We call to mind nothing in fiction old or new that in the remotest degree resembles "Stella Fregelius"."[8]

The book Science-Fiction: The Early Years said about Stella Fregelius that it was "one of Haggard's better works". It added that "Stella is well conceived within the bounds of romantic fiction, and Morris Monk's father, the slippery Colonel Monk. C.B. is beautifully characterized".[12]

The book was adapted into a 1921 British film, Stella.[13]

• Complete book at Project Gutenberg
• Stella Fregelius public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Images and bibliographic information for various editions of Stella Fregelius at South Africa Books