Four days after the close of the First World War, Haggard spent the afternoon in the study of Bateman's, Rudyard Kipling's house in Sussex, idly reminiscing with his old friend. Facing them, along one of the many bookshelves, ran a complete set of Stevenson's romances; to either side of the long writing desk, rested two cartographer's globes. Haggard was less intrigued by these familiar objects than he was by Kipling's mannerisms. ‘In one way he is a very curious man,’ he noted in his diary later.

With his fingers thus occupied, Kipling engaged Haggard in a hesitant tête-a-tête on the subject of their public reputations. He complained of isolation. ‘He is a very shy bird,’ Haggard observed,

The conversation thus noted down took place on Friday, 15 November 1918, by which time both Kipling and Haggard had a considerable body of work behind them, including nearly everything that could be classified as romances. True, the literary tide was turning against them. Even so, Kipling's complaint – or was it a boast? – seems odd. His view of himself, and by implication of Haggard, implies the existence of an establishment, recognizably ‘literary’ in atmosphere, from which they were by now excluded, a state of affairs which Kipling seems to contemplate with a mixture of resentment and satisfaction.