Iras: A Mystery (1896) by Theo Douglas [H.D. Everett] 

In the late 19th c., at the height of British colonialism, the theme of the Egyptian mummy was very popular in English fiction. In fact this was a form of reverse colonialism: "intrusive, exploitative actions perpetrated by British colonialists invited reciprocal mental and physical invasions from the female colonized subject," as it is stated in the academic literature. It was a way to show the anxiety felt by Victorian England regarding its colonial subjects (this is also beautifully explored in the novel The Hidden Force by the Dutch author Couperus, regarding the former Dutch colony of Indonesia). Some of the most extreme expressions of this topic in England are novels like The Beetle by Richard Marsh, or Pharos, The Egyptian by Guy Boothby. Iras: A Mystery is a much more soft and even tender evocation of the same subject, perhaps because it was written by a woman.

Theo Douglas was the pseudonym of H.S. Everett (1851-1923). Born as Henrietta Dorothy Huskisson in Gillingham in Kent into a military family, aged 18 she married solicitor Isaac Edward Everett. She began writing in 1896 at the age of forty-four and from then until 1920 she published 22 books under the pseudonym Theo Douglas. Although she also wrote historical novels, at least half of Everett's novels were based on fantasy and supernatural themes. 

That is also the case with the present novel, Iras: A Mystery (1896). The Egyptologist Ralph Lavenham is back in London after many years working in Egypt, but is still continuing his investigations into Egyptian antiquities. In order to study mummification techniques, he asks an associate in Egypt to provide him (illegally) with a completely intact mummy. He is living in rented rooms, but these include a studio where he has space to unwrap the new mummy, so that his artist friend Knollys can make exact drawings. But already before the new mummy arrives he has some strange experiences: he now and then sees an ancient Egyptian man who regards him with a threatening look in his eyes. This apparition appears at a party in a salon, but also outside in town; when he follows it, it disappears into the crowd.

Then the mummy arrives - making Ralph's landlady angry, as she doesn't fancy having a dead body in her house. At night, when he is alone, Ralph unwraps the mummy - he already has been told it is the body of a female. To his surprise, the body has not been mummified but only wrapped up, and when he takes those wraps away he causes a beautiful woman to awaken from suspended animation. She just swings a supple, blank arm out of her sarcophagus, and sighs when she sees Ralph: "My Master!"

If life would be that easy, it might become boring - but we probably have to do here with the "Sleeping Beauty" syndrome - the man that wakes her up from her death trance is the one she will love till the end of her days.

So the two fall in love, and this is described in a tasteful way. But the landlady is an obstacle on the road to happiness, so Ralph buys some warm clothes for the woman he has decided to call "Iras" and leaves with her for Scotland, to obtain an on the spot marriage by declaration. After that, they keep traveling in Scotland, although it is the wrong season, and finally they end up in a terrible snowstorm. 

 

By then, the Egyptian who has appeared to Ralph and who seems to be an angry discarded suitor of the mummified lady, makes more appearances and each time manages to steal one of the seven amulets fastened to Iras' necklace. Each time, she looses some of her vital force and in the end will revert to being a mummy again...  

Although the tale contains a lot of mambo-jumbo, the love story is remarkably pure and of an ethereal beauty...  And the possibility that Ralph has hallucinated everything remains an open possibility, so also the scientifically minded (among whom myself) can be happy. The novel has been described as a strange blending of psychology and Egyptology, but above all it is a wonderful love story.

Iras: A Mystery is in the public domain and available at Google Books.