Pukka sahib
AUBERON WAUGEI
The Prevalence of Witches Aubrey Menen (Chatto and Windus, The Landmark Library 25s) The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (Part Two) Paule Marshall (Longman 35s) Just in time for those who have a last minute Christmas present to buy, the Landmark Library have reprinted Aubrey Menen's masterpiece which first appeared in 1947 and which seems to have grown funnier and more topical with every year which has passed since then.
The Landmark Library have also pro- duced a new edition of The Brothers, L. A.
G. Strong's torrid thriller set in Scotland. at the same price. I merely mention this, because it seems to me that Chatto and Win- dus need a pat on their backs for reissuing books which are still in copyright and which might otherwise never be bought. Older SPECTATOR readers will also be grateful, feel- ing that people don't write books like that nowadays etc. But anyone who missed The Prevalence of Witches on its first time round, or who liked it at the time but finds that his copy has been stolen by hooligans, should run to the nearest bookshop immediately because it is undoubtedly one of the most en- joyable novels written since the war.
The story is set in a remote and backward corner of India during what must have been the last days of British rule, although there is no mention of anything so vulgar as in- dependence. The inhabitants of Limbo are hopelessly indolent, happy, superstitious etc. Ignorant, drunk, prone to hideous death etc in the best comic tradition of English letters. But the book concerns itself with the highly topical question of the extent to which it is desirable to graft European standards of Government and morality on the peoples of the underdeveloped world. Since, scattered among the jokes, Mr Menen talks more sense on this tedious subject than anyone I have ever read, it would be tempting to recommend his novel to all those good peo- ple who work for UNESCO, the Race Relations Board, the Ministry of Overseas Development—indeed to almost every bore in England. But as seven-eighths of the novel's excellence would be wasted on them, and as there must be a limited number of volumes printed, I shall refrain.
An aboriginal Limbodian is arrested for, murdering his wife's lover. His defence is that the fellow was a witch. His story con- vinces the British Political Agent, the British Education Officer and another Englishman staying in the neighbourhood but fails to convince the supercilious Indian judge, Mr Bose, who has given up Hinduism as an idle superstition and become a life-subscriber to the Rationalist Press Association:
"Mr Bose," said Bay, sitting heavily back upon his statue, "do you mean to tell me you have abandoned the metaphysical subtleties, the spiritual maturities, the scope, the depth and insight of the Brahmin faith for a subscription to a crank society. What do you get in return for your sacrifice?"
"I get their quarterly post-free and the Annual. The Annual comes once a year," the Judge added, to make himself clear.'
Haunted by the fear that their aborigine will hang, the British Political Agent imports a bogus Swami to work miracles and thus convince the New Statesman-reading judge
of the prevalence of witches. The tale ends happily, but the appearance of our Political Agent's wife at the end must confirm many people in the belief that it was the British habit of sending out wives which lost us the Empire. If the men in our army and Indian Civil SerNice had married natives instead of saving themselves for the fat white women whom nobody loves, India would still be pink on the map and Enoch Powell would be Viceroy.
Reduced to a few lines, the plot might read as a crude farce along the lines of Carry on up the Khyber, starring Peter Sellers as the Indian sub-continent, Ian Carmichael as the British Raj and Michael Crawford as Queen Victoria. Such a misunderstanding can only be remedied by reading the book. Apart from anything else, it is the most instructive novel I have ever read, and should therefore appeal to readers in search of self-im- provement. Mr Menen is plainly a person of liberal education and wide reading; he scat- ters the fruits of his erudition blithely. In the course of his characters' dialogue, we learn about Chateaubriand's travels in America. about Honoria (Sister of Valentinian nt) and her marriage to Attila the Hun, about Eudoxia (Valentinian's wife) and her rela- tionship with Genseric the vandal, about the cause of Erasmus's lifelong rheumatism, how St Thomas More taught his daughter Greek, as well as an untruthful and malicious account of the great Duke of Alva's expedition to the Low Countries on behalf of the Holy Inquisition. He further reminds us that Lord Tennyson induced mystical experiences by repeating his own name, that translucency marks the at- tainment of a high degree of religious abstraction among Buddhists . . . all for the same price which one pays to wallow through the self-pity of pedestrian. uneducated middle-class housewives.
On top of this, Mr Menen introduces some pretty paradoxical theories on political science, but in such a way as to make them a pleasure to read: 'It is a fundamental prin- ciple of society that you cannot have ex- ceptional men at the top'; "It is not that we do not want to hear the truth . . . but we arc so sunk in lies that we regard the truth as an entertainment, a titillation to our appetite for further and more monstrous falsehoods.'
Society, suggests Mr Menen, drives its ex- ceptional, its first-rate men int6 such ac- tivities as writing novels. Only bores and brutes become Prime Minister. So well does he write, that he makes the reader feel that he. too. belongs to the select company of the truly first rate—reading, enjoying, even reviewing the novels of Aubrey Menen.
Miss Marshall's novel has not progressed much, since last week, I am sorry to say. We are still waiting for the characters who have been sniffing around each other to take a more purposeful interest. I shall send in another report in two hundred pages' time. Meanwhile, we must be grateful that a few people are still prepared to write full-length Victorian novels, even if they inevitably have to be about the social embarrassments etc of being a black person in the modern world. This would be a first-class present for the sort of people who live alone throughout the year, whom one only sees at Christmastime. Whoever they are, they will be a mine of interesting information on the problems of the Caribbean when next you meet, and it should result in some stimulating and well- informed conversations this time next year.
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