First white woman
Sir: Nicholas Coleridge has my sympathy and understanding (Diary, 7 November) in trying to deal with travel writers in the absence of the distinguished travel editor and publisher John Hatt.
The abundance of amateur travel writers appears to be a pox on all our publishing houses. My correspondents seem to follow political fashions. Some time ago the arti- cles came from the Horn of Africa, reveal- ing the beauty by the violence beside the cheerful tunes of the drums; up to a few months ago they came from Central Amer- ica, revealing the beauty by the violence beside the cheerful tunes of the marimba, more recently they have come from Tibet, revealing the beauty by the violence beside the cheerful colours of the monks' clo- thing. . . .
We cannot claim that we were not warned. In his book The Back Garden of Allah (John Murray, 1939) C.S. Jarvis described such travellers:
A Travel-monger is a male or female, clad in shorts, shirt, revolver and topee, who travels not for pleasure but for profit, and the `female of the species is more deadly than the male' because besides being very much in the trade she almost invariably suffers from what is known as the 'First White Woman' com- plex, and this is a most trying mental malady.
Andrew Graham-Yooll
Editor, South, 13th Floor, New Zealand House, Haymarket, London SW1
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