Undiscovered Asia
News from Tartary. By Pater Fleming. (Cape. 12s. 6d.) News from Tartary is one of the rare books about which one can legitimately use the phrase " eagerly awaited." When, earl• last summer, a brief note in the Press told us that Mr. Fleming had appeared at Kashgar after seven months of unexplained absence, we could be pretty certain that he had done something interesting. Later, when his articles appeared in The Times, we realised how sensational his and his companion's achievement had been, but newspaper articles are far from being the best means of communicating a narrative of this kind ; they suggest, it is true, the main structure of a journey ; they place in all too great a prominence the dramatic incidents ; but they necessarily omit the day to day routine ; the delays and uncertainties, the minor vexations—whole drab, uneventful patches of sheer hard work and discomfort which form the very stuff of travel, of which Mr. Fleming's style and attitude make him the most felicitous of chroniclers.
Here at last we have the journey " in book form," and let me at once congratulate the publishers on that form. It is one of the best produced books, and certainly one of the cheapest that I have had the pleasure to handle. The photo- graphs with which it is extravagantly scattered are all admirable, many of them of very great beauty. There is even a comprehensive and, I think, quite superfluous index.
Superfluous because this is not a book that anyone will read as a definitive, scholarly treatise. Mr. Fleming is the first to admit that. " The world's stock of knowledge— geographical, ethnological, meteorological, what you will— " he says, " gained nothing from our journey." There are far easier paths by which to reach India than Mr. Fleming's route ; there are, in fact, none harder. Just as mountaineers will risk their lives to seek a peak easily ascended on the other side by funicular railway, Mr. Fleming undertook his stupendous journey for its own sake. Getting across country, overcoming difficulties that he has deliberately courted, ticking off the mileage stage by stage—these are clearly Mr. Fleming's primary interests ; there are other secondary interests of which he takes full advantage—some sport of a haphazard kind, some enchanting encounters with odd people on the road, the provision of intelligence which the Foreign Offices of more than one nation greatly coveted about the condition of a totally isolated province. This last was what Mr. Fleming's editor wanted ; it was what gave political importance to the trip ; but reading Mr. Fleming's narrative we cannot avoid the conviction that probably to him, certainly to his companion, it was a secondary aim.
The figures are startling. Mr. Fleming covered over three thousand miles, for the most part across ground that was both physically and politically unmapped ; he took seven months ; he spent £150. He and his Swiss heroine formed the sole constant constituent of the expedition. They changed animals and guides repeatedly ; they seldom had anything with them that could legitimately be called either a guard or a servant ; "they " lived on the country " in a way which will seem incredible to all ordinary travellers ; they were grotesquely under-equipped by all normal standards. When I read Mr. Fleming's catalogue of his outfit, I thought Of the immense crates of foodstuffs, medicine and ammunition, telescopes and camp furniture and tropical underwear which, shortly afterwards, were to be disembarked at Djibouti to support the special correspondents in the hotels of Addis Ababa and Harar. I cannot help flunking "that" Mr. Fleming was recklessly ascetic. He got through, as "we' "a11 know, but by a series of happy coincidences,' the failure of any one of which might have been fatal. Another two pack animals, another two men, another £100 would have been reasonable. He certainly had good reason at the outset to avoid attention ; if the Chinese authorities had guessed his ultimate destination he would never have been allowed W leave Lanchow, but later he found that his impoverished appearance told against him. More ingenuity in embarking stores would seem to me to bring the expeditiOn nearer the
requirements of theologically justifiable risk. -
. It is a radical disadvantage of a book of this -kind, which no literary skill can possibly disguise, that the reader knows it ended happily. It was the unique quality of Mr. Fleming's Brazilian Adventure that:- the reader-did. -tioti kliow• until the last pages who was going to win. Mr. Fleming assures us that he did not expect to get through ; we believe him but with the clear evidence of his success before us it is hard to share his anxiety. It is only after one has finished reading, and begins counting up his chances that one sees how preter- naturally consistent was his good luck. Nothing ever went seriously wrong. But Mr. Fleming had no reason to expect it.
There is no need at this stage of his career to comment on Mr. Fleming's literary style. It is as well known as any English writer's. He lacks poetry and aesthetic interest and he wisely never attempts to counterfeit them. It is rather better to be Doughty than Fleming, but it is a great deal better to be Fleming than a sham Doughty. He never allows himself a shoddy phrase ; he often achieves one of memorable wit and 'pungency. He has great Clarity in analysing a political situation. The situation in Sinkiang was so obscure before Mr. Fleming went there that most well-educated Englishmen failed to realise that there was any mystery. What Mr. Fleming found I leave to readers of his book. To me at least it was quite new and quite thrilling to learn that imperialistic expansion and the gas- bombing of savage peoples can be carried on by a Mandan as well as by a Fascist or Democratic State. I hope some of the English Socialists who can read, will read Mr. Fleming's chapters about Soviet penetration in Sinkiang.
I have only one complaint about Mr. Fleming's writing, and that a small one. I detect a note which at times rings rather pharisaical in Mr. Fleming's repeated protestations of honesty. Not once but again and again he pauses to remind us that a less austere and objective writer might have let himself go in an insincere purple patch. We who know and admire Mr. Fleming's work need no such reminder and I for one slightly resented it. EVELYN WAUGH.
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