BOOK: Evelyn Waugh, "A Tourist in Africa"

The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh. Volume 25: A Tourist in Africa. Ed. by Patrick R. Query. Oxford University Press, 2021. 9780198735311. lxxiv + 234 pp.

Some books get written because the author was moved by the mysterious impulses of creative genius, because his heart was bursting with feelings that he had to put on paper, because he felt an urge to communicate some deep insight into the human condition...

Some books, however, get written because the author desperately wanted to get away from English weather for one or two winter months (not that there's anything wrong with that!). The present work, Waugh's A Tourist in Africa, falls into the latter camp. As explained in the editor's introduction (which is a bit shorter here than in the other Waugh volumes I've read recently, but it's extremely interesting), he often tried to cover the expenses of his travels not only by writing books about them but also by getting himself assigned as a reporter or something of that sort (p. xxvii); but for A Tourist in Africa, his agent made an arrangement with a shipping company that was willing to give Waugh a free first-class ticket in exchange for writing a book about his journey that would “stimulate interest in Africa on the part of the travelling public” (p. xxviii).

On the one hand, this looks awfully meretricious to someone like me, who am still somewhat inclined to think of writers, and artists in general, as romantic geniuses inspired by something transcendent; on the other hand, it is downright touching that a company was willing to spend so lavishly on a writer when they couldn't expect his book to stimulate their business in any but the most indirect fashion. There's no way a business would be that generous today. Besides, the book is far from being a crass advertisement for the Union-Castle shipping line. They gave Waugh a free hand in writing the book, requested some really minor changes in the most hesitant and deferential manner (pp. xxxi–xxxv), and in the end he didn't even make all of those changes, only some of them.

Looking back, it is clear that what really destroyed their business model was the growth of air travel, and there was nothing that Waugh's book could do to stop that (although he does grumble here and there about how unpleasant it is to travel on a plane (pp. 11, 103) — no doubt a genuine sentiment on his part, one that did not need to be stimulated by money from a shipping company :]).

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Since I read another travel book by Waugh recently, Ninety-Two Days (about his travels in British Guyana and Brazil in 1933), it is naturally tempting to compare the two. The most obvious difference is that in Ninety-Two Days, Waugh was a young man and his travels were arduous and somewhat adventurous, while in A Tourist in Africa (based on a journey made in early 1959), he is very much an old one and his travels prioritize comfort and luxury rather than adventure. There is no bushwhacking here, no complicated arrangements for expeditions on horseback or on foot; he is a passenger aboard ship, plane, train or sometimes car, he stays in hotels or sometimes with friends, everything has been pre-arranged for him.

In fact I was suprised that he should feel and act that old at 55, which is not considered such a very advanced age nowadays; but I guess it was different in his day. He complains of being “hard of hearing and stiff in the joints” (p. 4). And to some extent the grumpy old man may have been a persona that he was deliberately putting on (apparently he “had felt himself to be old for some years” by then, and “ ‘made a pantomime of being an old man’, including brandishing his famous ear-trumpet”; p. 138).

When you consider that even his march through the Guyanan wilderness was not really rich in excitement, it is hardly surprising that his tourist trip across East Africa was still less so. But his strength, both in Ninety-Two Days and here in A Tourist in Africa, lies in the fact that he often manages to make even mundane observations seem interesting, and better yet, to take a break from describing the direct experiences from his comparatively uneventful journeys, and allows himself to wander off on a tangent, often something having to do with the history or sometimes politics of the places he was travelling through. These I invariably found interesting and informative, and often also insightful; they constituted my favourite parts of both books, and fortunately they are scattered thickly throughout both.

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The first chapter is not about Africa at all, but about Genoa, where Waugh did some sightseeing in the company of an old friend before embarking on his ship (most passengers embarked in London, however; p. 12). My only complaint here is that at times his tone begins to sound a little too much like a tourist guidebook, but fortunately that problem largely disappears in later chapters. Apparently Genoa was noted for its cemetery (p. 6). Waugh reached Genoa by train across France, which gives him the opportunity for some nice vignettes of railway officials and fellow passengers (pp. 4–5).

He was happy to see that the city had recovered well from wartime destruction: the Italians “do not, as do those in authority in England, regard the destruction of a good building as a welcome opportunity to erect something really ugly in its place. They set to work patiently exercising the arts of their ancestors.” (P. 7.) There are little asides like this scattered throughout the book; you can see that Waugh is not keen on modernity. And since neither am I, I invariably found it enjoyable to tag along on his journey. (E.g. he regrets the “influence of Corbusier which pervades the modern east” on p. 23, and the clearing of Zanzibar's old town on pp. 34–5. In Tanganyika, “[t]he Public Works Department is engaged on replacing the spacious and cool houses which the Germans built for their officials with the cramped, concrete structures which are mysteriously preferred by the authorities in Dar”; p. 53.)

His ship took him through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea. They made a stop in Aden (in present-day Yemen), where Waugh remarks on how much the place had changed since his previous visit more than twenty years before (p. 15). He would make similar remarks several more times later in the journey. Exotic locations that used to have an individual character of their own were beginning to modernize and lose their individuality in the process. I can only imagine how miserable he would be today, when that process had gone several steps further in the same direction.

True to his crusty old man persona, he grumbles about the sartorial habits of his fellow tourists: “I in my humble way have suffered for decency. I have worn starched shirts at Christmas dinners in both Zanzibar and Georgetown, British Guiana; but these young people must be almost naked in order to lie in deck-chairs in the shade.” (P. 17.) :)) Paradoxically, although I never liked to dress up myself, I somehow miss the times when people used to wear three-piece suits everywhere. (Later, in Zanzibar, he grumbles about the “shameless” French tourists who “parade the bazaar in ‘Bikini’ bathing dresses” :)); p. 34. — “I wonder how much the loss of European prestige in hot countries is connected with the craven preference for comfort over dignity”, p. 40.)

Apparently the ship had a well-stocked library, and Waugh found plenty of time to read (p. 12). He treats us to an assortment of interesting tidbits* from a book titled Stars and Stripes in Africa (by Eric Rosenthal, 1938; pp. 17–18), about achievements of Americans on that continent (some of dubious veracity). This was quite interesting; but, at the same time, you can't help wondering if he's merely trying to pad out the book, which is short enough anyway (about 100 pages in the present edition).

[*For example, apparently around 1900 several U.S. states offered land “to solve the problem of the Boers by wholesale evacuation” (p. 18).]

They had a five-day stop at Mombasa, Kenya, giving him the time to do some sightseeing in that country; he visited the ruins of Gedi (a medieval Arab city; p. 29) and drove to the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro (pp. 30–31).

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His voyage ended in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanganyika (present-day Tanzania). He spent the next month or so travelling, partly by train, partly by car and partly by plane, across Tanganyika and the two Rhodesias (present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe), before finally taking a plane to Cape Town where he boarded the ship that took him home to England. Some of the places he visited were the typical things that you would expect a tourist to visit — e.g. the ruins of Great Zimbabwe (p. 77) — but really the best parts of the book are about the less obvious things he saw and visited, and luckily there are plenty of those.

There's an interesting section on a failed project, set up by the British government some ten years earlier, to grow peanuts in Tanganyika. The government in question was a Labour one, and Waugh never misses an opportunity to complain about Labour governments; but at least he admits that “[t]he aim was benevolent” (p. 51). And although he is hardly the sort of person that would be keen on decolonization, he admits that “if the Groundnuts Scheme had been conceived and executed by natives, everyone would point to it as incontrovertible evidence that they were unfit to manage their own affairs.” (P. 66. So it's not so much that he has such a high opinion of the natives, as that he has such a low opinion of modern-day big governments. This is not the only remark along those lines in the book.)

Apparently the Masai were employed to help suppress the Kikuyu rebels during the Mau Mau uprising: “The story is told that a patrol was sent out with orders to bring in any Kikuyu ‘arms’ they could find; next morning the commanding officer's tent was surrounded with a heap of severed limbs.” (P. 54.) :)))

Waugh's efforts to attend a Masai initiation ceremony failed spectacularly. He ended up with a driver that spoke only Swahili and had no idea where to go, and when they finally got to the correct location, it turned out that they had got the date wrong and the ceremony would not be taking place for another week (pp. 55–7).

“[K]eep away from hotels run by the British. We have no calling to this profession.” (P. 59. This is one of the passages that Waugh's sponsors, the Union-Castle shipping line, asked him to change, though they admitted that it “is probably very sound general advice” (p. xxxiii). :)) In the end, he kept it.)

Tanganyika used to be a German colony before the WW1, and Waugh visited one of the few Germans still remaining there (p. 63).

Upon entering North Rhodesia, he had to fill out forms which demanded a ludicrous amount of personal information: “the names, ages, sexes, dates and places of birth of children not accompanying me [. . .] What European languages could I write? The oddest demand was to state ‘sex of wife’.” (P. 69.) He has good fun imagining how the government's statisticians might deal with his form, nor does he miss the opportunity to make another barb against modern government: “Here fully displayed are the arts of modern government for which, it is popularly believed, the native races are not yet far enough advanced.” (P. 70.)

He visited the tobacco market at Salisbury (now Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe), which boasted an auctioneer “imported at great expense from New Orleans” (p. 74).

He is disappointed in trying to buy examples of native sculpture: “The savage African art of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which delighted the European and American connoisseurs of the 1920s, seems as dead as the civilized art of Europe.” (P. 80.) But he is impressed by the artwork done at a mission led by a Swiss architect/missionary: “entirely novel and entirely African” (p. 81); “Fr Groeber's achievement has been to make Africans do what none but Africans could have done and what no Africans in this huge region ever did before; to leave a church where they and their descendants can worship, which their descendants will cherish with the pride and awe with which we in Europe survey the edifices of our Middle Ages.” (P. 83.)

He has a fine mini-rant about the changes in terminology for various ethnic and racial groups. In Rhodesia, “a white American is classified as a European and a black American as an ‘alien native’. [. . .] I am told that in the U.S.A. one may say ‘negro’ but not ‘negress’. They like to be called ‘coloured’. But ‘coloured’ in most of Africa means mulatto.” (P. 85.) Etc., etc. In the manuscript he adds: “The rising tide of euphemism is everywhere eroding the sharp meaning of the language.” (P. 210.) And of course, things have only got worse since his time. Much of our society nowadays is in the grip of the woke cult, which is packed with people who spend much of their time trying to think of new ways to be offended and demanding that the rest of society change its vocabulary at their every whim. [By the way, a funny tidbit from the critical apparatus. After discussing a number of terms for blacks which were by then becoming offensive, Waugh sort of shrugs his shoulders and uses all of those terms in an epic, explosive conclusion: “Well, I don't suppose any blackamoors, niggers, Kaffirs, natives, Bantu or Africans will read this diary.” (P. 85.) According to the appendix (p. 211), this sentence was dropped from the American edition of the book :)))]

In another case of supporting the right thing for the wrong reason, he criticizes the ‘colour bar’, not because the latter is wrong and immoral per se, but because in order to make the colour bar work, they had to weaken the class barriers amongst the white people: “There are black porters in the larger shops [in Salisbury] and the white shop-girls are abominably rude to them. They are also rather rude to their white customer, for they are at pains to demonstrate that under God all white men were created equal. The well-paid plumber [in a manuscript he even wrote “over-paid”; p. 213] who comes out to work in a private house expects to sit down in the dining room with the family. He has a black, ill-paid assistant who squats outside. Here, as in England, the champions of the colour bar are the classes whose modest skills many negroes can master.” (P. 87. See also p.  213 for additional material from the manuscript version of this passage.)

Later he objects to apartheid for similarly classist reasons: “Apartheid is the creation of the Boers. It is the spirit of equalitarianism literally cracked. Stable and fruitful societies have always been elaborately graded. The idea of a classless society is so unnatural to man that his reason, in practice, cannot bear the strain. Those Afrikaaner youths [in a manuscript he adds: “with their bulging behinds” :)), p. 225] would claim equality with you, gentle reader. They regard themselves as being a cut above the bushmen. So they accept one huge cleavage in the social order and fantastically choose pigmentation as the determining factor. Cardinal Gracias and the Hottentot are equal on one side; you, gentle reader, and the white oaf on the other; and there is no passage across that preposterous frontier.” (Pp. 105–6.)

“Their monument is a massive erection of granite over thirty feet in height” (p. 95) :]

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All in all, I enjoyed this book a good deal; more than I had expected. Waugh comes across as a person who liked almost none of the many ways in which the world was changing around him (something I can very much sympathize with), but who reacted to that not with rage or bitterness but with a sort of bemused shaking of the head; he affects a near-permanent attitude of mildly sarcastic detachment, which makes for many funny and incisive remarks that were fun to read even if I disagree with his politics in many fundamental ways.

He clearly does not for a moment believe that governments, whether Labour ones back in England or Nationalist ones in the soon-to-be-decolonized African countries, can accomplish anything good by interfering in people's lives, and he consequently doesn't see any particularly urgent need for decolonization; but then those are the obvious and unsurprising opinions of someone for whom the status quo worked well enough. Commendably, he disapproves strongly of apartheid and racial segregation; but far from commendably, he does so because in his view it is class barriers rather than race barriers that need to be protected and maintained. And he downplays the problems of colonial police violence and racial discrimination by pointing out that plenty of police violence exists in independent India and plenty of racial discrimination in America (where apparently even the pet cemeteries were segregated; p. 106).

At any rate, I liked the fact that he managed to write a book about his travels through Africa on the cusp of decolonization without making politics the central subject of the book; in fact he deliberately pushes politics away from the centre when he concludes the book by saying: “I have had a happy two months and I won't let the weekly papers spoil them for me” (p. 106). This seems like an attitude worth imitating nowdays, when we have not only the papers but also the whole internet constantly preaching doom and gloom at us from every direction.

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In my previous two posts about Waugh books I complained that there was not much of interest in the appendices with variant readings from the manuscripts; this is not the case here, where I occasionally found interesting scraps of text there, and I mentioned some of them earlier in this post where suitable. Here's another one I liked (p. 151): “I have no wish to spend any time in the Union of South Africa. No country deserves the politicians it gets.” I always hated the old chestnut about every country getting the politicians it deserves, and I'm glad to see that he turned it around here. Of course I don't imagine that Waugh's opinion here actually agrees with mine; I simply think that every country deserves to have good politicians, while he probably means to say that he is a small-government conservative, because all politicians are inevitably bad and it's better to reduce the damage by making the politicians weak and few in number.

The editor's introduction and notes in the present volume are also quite interesting and not too long, and there are commendably few errors and misprints (but I loved “arachaeological” on p. 77). This was a fine book, and I'm looking forward to reading more volumes from this series.

ToRead:

• Maurice Baring: C (1924). Mentioned here on p. 113: “It focuses on upper-class European family life before the First World War, luxuriating in the opulence of an era nearing its violent conclusion.” Waugh praises Baring as “one of the most lovable of men” but complains about the “slap-dash” writing and numerous discrepancies in C (p. 13).
• Alec Waugh: The Loom of Youth. A “scandalous novel” (p. 115) by Evelyn Waugh's brother.
• E. M. Forster: Pharos and Pharillon. Mentioned here on p. 74; a “collection of essays on Alexandria, one of EW's favourite books” (p. 136).