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This is a considerable volume, superbly produced, as Everyman books now are, with a good introduction by Nicholas Shakespeare. The irascible, rheumatic Waugh of the later years is in his twenties again, still jolly enough in Abyssinia at 32, saddened by the aftermath of Africa’s imperial carve-up at 55. But young or old, he can call upon unerring perception, an ear and eye for the absurd, and wit that transforms an often terrible world into a theatre of foolishness. No one of his time knew words as well as Evelyn Waugh, or used words’ magic to such effect. As in his novels, so in these travel memoirs it is this gift that illuminates, joyfully injects comedy, and long before their time sends political correctness and the cult of the ugly packing. The passing reflections that idleness nourishes are rarely less than sagacious; the bogus — a favourite word — is exposed, along with the varying disguises of corruption and avarice. Privacy is effectively guarded: on a long jaunt around the Mediterranean the tedium of solitude appeared to nag but in fact there was companionship, since the journey was almost a honeymoon. The fragility or otherwise of a marriage was no business of ours.
For all this, Waugh on his travels claimed no special importance, no place outside the hordes who travelled also. ‘The Englishman abroad …. likes to consider himself a traveller and not a tourist.’ This presumption — the hint of parity with jungle adventurers and the men of the South Pole — offended. Tourism as it is today was the child of the late 1920s, when the first of these travel collections was written, and a tourist was what Waugh considered himself to be. Dozing on the deck of the comfortable Stella Polaris, or pottering about on shore, England’s first novelist was one among many, even if the only one who collected eavesdroppings to such effect and delighted in the Neapolitan pimps. At Cana in Galilee a child offered wine jars for sale, ‘the authentic ones used in the miracle. If they were too big she had a smaller one indoors; yes, the smaller ones were authentic too.’ In Port Said a conjuror did tricks with live chickens. In Cairo the shrewd conclusion was reached that there were ‘few things more boring than the cult of mere antiquity’. In Venice it seemed an impertinence to point out its wonders to the educated reader. In Barcelona there was the glory of Gaudi.
Waugh lost his amateur status when he secured employment with a London newspaper and went to Abyssinia as a fully credited journalist assigned to cover the emperor’s coronation. There were forays in East and Central Africa, in British Guiana and Brazil, Morocco and the Arctic. He returned to Abyssinia in 1935 for the war and the Italian occupation. The tone is more professional now, but still there is the humour. Eccentrics are stalked, misanthropes pinned down.
The police chief in Addis Ababa, an officer of the old school and greatly given to the bottle, had a way of stuffing his nostrils with leaves, which ‘gave him a somewhat menacing aspect, but his intentions were genial’. The proprietor of the Splendide Hotel estimated that the less he gave his guests to eat the greater his profits would be:
He watched with sardonic amusement the crowds of dyspeptic journalists — many of them elderly men, of note in their own country — furtively carrying into his dining-room paper bags of fresh bread, tins of tuck and pocketsful of oranges and bananas, like little boys trooping in to tea at their private schools.
It would be impertinent, in turn, to assume that the educated reader is not already familiar with some at least of this book’s contents. But that should not be a reason for passing it by: visiting these places in this company is an even greater pleasure the second time.
Evelyn Waugh was born 100 years ago this month.
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