Evelyn in Ethiopia

Anthony Mockler

Remote People: A Report from Ethiopia and British Africa Evelyn Waugh (Duckworth £9.95; Penguin Travel Library £2.50) Waugh in Abyssinia Evelyn Waugh (Methuen £9.50)

Evelyn Waugh made three separate trips to Ethiopia. The first was a jaunt in the autumn of 1930 for Haile Selassie's coronation. Waugh was 27 years old, he had made his name with Vile Bodies Published that January, he was flying high as a fashionable columnist; and Douglas Woodruff, of the resonant Foreign and Imperial Department of the Times, man- aged to have him accredited to cover the celebrations. So, jaunting apart, this repre- sented for Waugh quite a chance to get into serious journalism and one that he seized upon. For there were advantages in the traditional anonymity of the Times. In less than a month Waugh had not only had 12 long dispatches printed in the Times 'From Our Special Correspondent' but had sent a further five to Lord Beaverbrook as the `Daily Express Special Correspondent' — a duplication of functions that would not Pass unnoticed nowadays. He found Ethiopia both picturesque and stimulating. He spent four weeks in Addis Ababa and Harar. Then he went on as an independent traveller to Aden, Zanzibar, Kenya, Dar- es-Salaam and the Belgian Congo — with comparatively short stays in each, return- ing to Europe in February 1931.

Remote People is a result of that journa- listic trip. It is a short book of about 175 Pages, with masterly descriptions both of the boredom of the tropics in general and of the horrors of that most horrible of all countries, the Belgian Congo, in particular

interludes entitled 'First Nightmare' and Second Nightmare' that must strike not Merely a chord but a whole symphony with

any journalist who has been there and who has suffered. Of the main text, the second half, entitled 'British Empire', is enthrall- trig on Aden which Waugh had expected to dislike but didn't.

But it is the first half, 'Ethiopian Empire', that makes the book worth re-

Printing and worth buying, as the most

vivid and convincing account ever written of the Emperor's coronation and, even

better, of a hilarious journey to the monas- tery of Debra Libanos in the company of the eccentric American Professor Thomas

Whittemore ('W' in the book). 'How to recapture, how retail, the crazy enchant- ment of those Ethiopian days?' Waugh had

asked. Triumphantly is the answer.

And of course he was to retail them even more triumphantly later in Black Mischief.

By 31 August 1931 he had finished Remote People and started immediately on Black 'Mischief which (despite his unconvincing

disclaimer in the preface to the 1962 reprint) is obviously modelled on Ethiopia with a touch of Zanzibar added. As Waugh noted, the Emperor Seth is not in any sense the Emperor Haile Selassie; all else apart, His late Majesty, though King of Kings, was not a Bachelor of Arts of the University of Oxford. But for Ethiopia addicts it might be mentioned that, apart from the well-known Sir Sidney Barton/Sir Samson Courteney pairing, the nightmar- ish Earl of Ngomo was clearly modelled, at least physically, on Ras Mulugueta, Ethiopia's Minister of War.

Five years later Waugh managed with considerable difficulty to get himself sent back to Addis Ababa to cover the lOoming Italo-Ethiopian war. The Times did not take him on again; they had in George Steer a much more energetic correspon- dent. Waugh represented Lord Rother- mere's pro-fascist Daily Mail; and between 24 August and 20 November 1935 he cabled back no less than 60 reports to his paper. But the 'crazy enchantment' had soured. He left as soon as he could. He had been commissioned by Tom Burns of Longmans, Green to write — for a lavish £950 advance — a book that he, on his return, wanted to call 'A Disappointing War'. Burns insisted on the much more fetching, if embarrassing, title of Waugh in Abyssinia. On his way back to England Waugh had, in January 1936, an off-the- record interview with the Duce in Rome. This encouraged him to return for a third — and last — visit in 1936, from 18 August to 7 September, to study the new Roman Empire. The Italian conquest was formally complete. No paper would commission him, so he went out at his own expense. He was granted an interview with the Viceroy, Marshal Graziani. 'I have seldom enjoyed an official interview more,' he wrote in the book. The psychopathic 'Butcher' Graziani was later responsible for the hysterical slaughter of thousands of Ethiopians. At

the time of Waugh's stay, leaders of the Ethiopian Resistance surrounded and for three days attacked Addis Ababa — an affair Waugh barely alludes to and took no trouble to investigate. But this final visit did lead to two dreadful chapters being added to the book — the ultimate, entitled `The Road', ends with a panegyric 'hymn' to the new Italian road-system and its 'inestimable gifts of fine workmanship and clear judgment — the two determining

qualities of the human spirit by which alone, under God, man grows and flourishes'. Ugh. 'I am usually regarded as an Italian spy,' he had on his second visit written to his wife Laura. Understandably. By 2 October he had finished Waugh in Abyssinia at Mells; by 15 October he had `made a very good start with the first pages' of what was to become Scoop.

The three middle chapters of Waugh in Abyssinia, describing his actual experi- ences as a frustrated war correspondent, are all right — until one reads his ungener- ous review in the Spectator of 23 January 1937 of George Steer's far better book, Caesar in Abyssinia. Steer had toured the Ogaden which Waugh, a totally unenter- prising journalist, had not even attempted to do. 'I am,' he wrote to Penelope Betjeman, 'a very bad journalist.' Only a shit could be good at this particular job,' he added. He may have felt pique at the fact that a better journalist had taken his place on the Times.

Waugh in Abyssinia's first chapter, a near-50-page Shavian 'Intelligent Woman's Guide to the Ethiopian Question' has been praised both by Waugh's biographer Christopher Sykes as 'the best chapter to be found in any of his travel books' and by the editor of his collected Essays, Articles and Reviews as 'widely admitted to be an excellent exposition of the historical and political factors involved in the dispute'. Let me state quite categorically that this first chapter is filled with howlers and is appallingly slanted. It is the worst chapter, because the most pretentious, in a pretty despicable book.

I hate to criticise Evelyn Waugh's writ- ing. It must seem presumptuous and feels like lese majeste against one who has given such great pleasure. But he was a rotten journalist (however good a reviewer and columnist) and not a good travel writer either — except when he was enthusiastic or amused, which was rarely. William Deedes in a recent Spectator Diary (30 March) has argued that Waugh in Abyssi- nia in particular ought not to have been reprinted in toto. I disagree. I think Mr Deedes ought to have mentioned that he

was a war correspondent himself in Addis

Ababa in 1935 for the Morning Post and therefore, in all probability, over-

sympathetic. But I agree with him that Methuen ought to have mentioned (and Duckworth and Penguin too) that Waugh had specifically stated that both these books (and two other early travel books) were 'out of print and will not be re- printed'. I imagine, however, that it is not the publishers but Waugh's literary heirs or trustees who took the decision.

What would however be much more fascinating and valuable would be for an enterprising publisher to assemble a com-

pendium of all Waugh's writings on Ethiopia — articles, books, letters, diaries and perhaps novels too -- with a critical commentary. This would tell us a lot about Waugh; and not a little, — despite these criticisms — about Ethiopia.