On the move
Simon Jenkins Travels Jan Morris (Faber £4.50)
'I am a cultist of the genii loci,' writes Jan Morris, 'of those misty and marvellous spirits which are, I believe, literally conjured into being by the force of human experience.' The scene is the Capitol in Washington, where Miss Morris 'could almost see their vaporous trails circling the great dome or intercepting each other with comic gestures above the crowning figure of freedom.' I shall not forget Jan Morris's spirits, whether they are in Washington or Bath, medieval Alexandria or eighteenth-century Calcutta, Edinburgh or Hong Kong. They seem to flit through them all, evoking the supremacy of eternal places over transient mortals—of the topographer, in my opinion, over the mundane social historian.
Jan Morris is a great impressionist among travel writers. The sheer range of her voy aging round the world gives her judgments a comparative depth that few can match. This book is a collection of essays, some in themselves a series of sketches but all comprising a brilliant apologia for the compulsive traveller.
There is the fourteenth-century Ibn Batuta, tourist extraordinary to the King of Morocco, reaching Ceylon and Cathay to report back, with splendid acerbity, to his more sedentary master. There is William Hickey, East India Company soldier of for
tune, landing in the sweltering heat of a May day in Calcutta, to rise to fame in the nou veau riche society of nabob India. And, almost in the same frame is Jan Morris gazing out towards China from the Hong Kong border 'as though that silent landscape were calling me home.'
She is best when on the move, best when travelling apparently on her own and only a writer's notebook with which to share her thoughts and impressions. She is less good when staying too long, as I sense she did in Bath, where the idiosyncratic generalisations begin to lose their bite and her slightly square Englishness gets the better of her. Hence perhaps her strong distaste for Hong Kong.
Her most devastating piece is her account of a visit to Washington. Writers have never found it hard to be rude about Americans, at work or play, but Jan Morris is merciless.
There is the Washington hostess dropping names with a dull, meaningless thud; the FBI marksman proudly handing a child the mangled remains of a human-shaped target he has shot as part of a tour. Or best of all, Jan Morris saying 'Morning Senator !' on Capitol Hill to test the politicspeak. 'Hullo there young lady,' he gratifyingly replies, 'having fun ?' Even in her dislike of the place, the answer was clearly Yes.
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