Auberon Waugh on a thoroughly good read
On the few occasions in the past when I have described a book as being a good read, I intended this to mean that I enjoyed read- ing it. This, it seems to me, is as much as one can reasonably expeot from a novel. Perhaps it would be even higher praise to say that it was a very good read or an ex- cellent read, but superlatives nowadays con- vey very little more than the unadorned adjective. I mention this linguistic peculiarity because it has come to my attention that there are circles in London with pretensions to the smart, the literary, the intellectual, where to describe a book in this way is to suggest it is suitable only for nannies, kitchen maids and distressed gentlefolk. That, then, is not my intention when I say that Dr Wilson's new book may not be much good for opening tins of Polish sauerkraut, but it is a thoroughly good read. It is also the first book in my reviewing experience which has impelled me to turn back after 318 pages and start again at the beginning to see if the story really held together as well as I thought it did.
If the English were given to lionising their writers, John' Rowan Wilson would deserve to be a lion of the first order. He tells his story with modesty, precision and extraordinary skill both in holding his readers' interest and in involving their emotions. Above all, he writes with a calm, mature intelligence which permeates the entire book and never threatens to become exhibitionist, or glib, or even self-conscious. What more can anyone want? Why is Dr Wilson not tipped for literary prizes? Why does his name not spring to people's lips at literary conferences? True, his present book has very few jokes in it, but that is scarcely a disqualification. True, also, he does not sign round-robins to the Times, or sit on Labour party platforms, divorce his wife in sordid circumstances or give evidence at pornographic trials, but one cannot feed the paranoia which already exists in every writer's breast to the extent of pretending that these things really count. No, the only possible reason for Dr Wilson's disqualifica- tion from the tight, excitable circles of sub- literary London is that he is a very good writer.
Barrington was plainly inspired by jour- nalistic attempts to discredit the good name of Dr Albert Schweitzer. A lawyer is asked to investigate the career of an imaginary British Schweitzer to discover if there is any foundation to posthumous libels being spread around by Carlos Markham, a jour- nalist of the debunking sort. The book ex- plores. the motives—or more accurately the inlpulses--of a man who chooses to spend his life founding a hospital colony in Central Africa. The narrative of Barrington's career is skilfully reconstructed from the journal of his first wife, Joan, a Hampstead liberal who was bitterly unhappy in Central Africa; from the testimony of his assistant in the hospital, Dr Adams; from the views of an American executive who administered the charitable trust which supported him; and finally frOm the evidence of his second wife. By the end, the reader feels that he knows everything there is to be known about Dr Barrington. Dr Wilson's extraordinary skill is in showing how meaningless are the ques- tions asked on the dustcover: 'Was Barring- ton a hero or as fraud, a man of saintly compassion or a ruthless egoist enslaved by his own arrogant ambition?'
The study is far deeper and far more serious than anything suggested by these journalistic questions. The answer, of course, is that Barrington was neither of these• things, nor does the novel rely for its sus- pense on the suggestion that he might be. Barrington's unpredictability is fairly mea- surable, and is fax too obviously leading to `his own destruction' for anyone to suppose that his showmanship is anything but genuine. The book's main purpose is to describe the career of an extraordinary and complicated man. It would fail, as a novel, if its protagonist failed to engage our sym- pathies since the book is entirely about him. Speaking for myself, I can only say that Dr Wilson succeeded in engaging my sympa- thies. His book made a lasting impression.
Barrington comes to London as an awk- ward, working-class medical research assis- tant from the North. He marries a gentle, liberal, middle-class wife, then throws up his job when he discovers himself becoming emotionally involved with a dog he is vivi- secting. He falls in love with Africa, sets up a hospital there which is later burned down, probably by Luako tribesmen who want it in their territory. Then he sets up his famous colony at Kalundani in Luako territory, in- corporating a hospital, leper colony and, later, a model farmery. His first wife dies and he marries a second, bossier one, who up. sets everyone at Kalundani. His fund-raising trips in Europe and America allow him to expand the hospital endlessly but he never makes much effort to shake the Luako out of their idle, feckless ways, and is criticised for this, but it transpires that a large part of his reason for coming to Africa was that he rejected Western technological capitalism. He also rejects Rousseau's concept of the noble savage on medical and hygienic grounds, so is a right old mess, ideologically speaking. The book ends when his hospital is blown up—him with it—by the rival Sosi- mas, intent on massacring the Luakos, to which end they are assisted by the Ameri- cans, the British and the Russians. Readers of the SPECTATOR may feel that they have visited this particular area before.
But no summary can do justice to Dr Wilson's enormous skill in telling the tale. His brief biography does not reveal whether or not he has ever been to Africa. If he has not, one can only praise him for an extra- ordinary feat of imagination, in addition to all the intelligent hard work which has plainly gone into this book. Once or twice one was unhappy—do boiled plantains really taste like potatoes? Not to my idea. Nor would genuine African hands talk with quite such despondency about the hopelessness of the African races. There is a kind of divine optimism which Africans somehow commu- nicate nicate to those who live among them in any except the most straightforward master-ser- vant relationship. But Dr Wilson chronicles one particular aspect of the African• predica- ment, seen from intelligent and humane European eyes, as completely as it can be chronicled. One feels he could have done as well with any other subject.
Obviously, it is no part of a reviewer's job to suggest future subjects to the author under review, but I should have thought that he could write an excellent novel if he subjected his fictional debunking journalist, Carlos Markham, to the same treatment as Barrington. Whatever he does, I shall look forward to it keenly.
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