Evelyn Waugh Has Described His Travel Books As a "Record of Certain
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CHAPTER - 2 MAN REDUCED TO A HANDFUL OF DUST Evelyn Waugh has described his travel books as a "record of certain Journeys, chosen for no better reason than that I needed noney at the tine of their conpletion" (7). This nay have been true of his Journeys to Ethiopia in 1930 and in 1935,or of yet another journey to Africa nuch later in 1959, but the same cannot be said of his journey to British Guiana and parts of Brazil in the winter of 1932. Actually, there is no evidence in Waugh's diaries or letters to explain why he decided to visit South America rather than any other place. Christopher Sykes, Waugh's friend and biographer, has noted that "an acute critic of Evelyn Waugh's work has suggested... a religious reason" (Sykes 182) — that Waugh wanted to see how Christianity had grown in remote places-- theological and ecclesiastical matters having been his interests since childhood, as is evident from a reading of his autobiography. Michael Davie, the editor of Waugh's diaries, suggests, on the other hand, that the journey "contains a hint of penance," and adds that "Waugh in the South American jungle inflicted discomfort and tedium upon himself in a way that was not normally part of his character" (Diaries 354). Davie has based his deduction on a diary entry of 4 December 1932, written while Waugh was en route to Georgetown, the capital of British Guiana. It is a brief three - word entry — "Heart of lead" (Diaries 356) — which speaks of his state of mind at that time. The "heart of lead" was obviously because of certain developments affecting his personal life. During the months 31 preceding his South American trip, Waugh had been leading some kind o-f a fast life. He was also "in the awkward position of being involved in two affairs of the heart” (Sykes 182). One of them concerned Lady Diana Cooper, a married woman and an actress. The other, "his most impassioned attachment" (Diaries 354), was his involvement with Teresa (Baby) Jungman. Waugh would have liked to marry her, but since both he and Teresa were Catholics, they could not marry as he had divorced his wife and the marriage had not yet been annulled. His escape to South America, therefore, could have been an attempt to avoid certain embarrassing situations. Yet another possibility has been hinted. Brazil, at that point of time, was in the news because of the return of an English expedition to that country. The expedition's mission had been to search for an explorer, Colonel P.H. Fawcett, who had disappeared in 1925 "while searching for an Inca city rumored to exist in the heart of Cthe Brazilian state of] Mato Grosso."^ Fawcett "was thought by some to have been made a prisoner of the 2 Indians." Peter Fleming (brother of Ian Fleming, the creator of ■James Bond' ), a well-known writer-explorer who was to publish the account of this expedition later in his Brazilian /^dv&i\,ture tl933), had accompanied the e>:peditian as a epecial correspondent of The Ti/n&s. Tho expedition had failed in its mission but it had been the subject of talk for quite some time. All this and the * A.S.G. Edwards," A Source for Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust,” Mod&rn Fiction Studies 22 (1976) : 24 3. ^ Frederick J. Stopp, Eu&Lyn Waugh : Portrait of an Artist (London ; Chapman and Hall, 1958) 136. 32 fact that South America was a "territory relatively untouched by the crowd of smart young men in the market for travel 1iterature, might have stimulated the wanderer in Waugh. Moreover, he had not undertaken any journey for more than two years after his return from Africa, and very likely "he felt a new stirring of wanderlust" (Sykes 182). Evelyn Waugh apparently meant this trip to be more in the nature of an expedition than a simple journey. This was evident from the elaborate arrangements he made in preparation for the journey. He bought a kit to meet the requirements of an expedition, and sought the advice of men with South American experience, one of them being Peter Fleming who advised him about the kind of equipment he needed for journey through forests. Waugh,eventua11y , left England for Georgetown on 2 December 1932 and reached his destination on 22 December. The period from 3 January 1933, when he started from Georgetown on his expedition, to 5 April 1933, when he left for home, makes up the ninety-two days' that he later adopted as the title of the travel book which contains the account of this journey. The expedition proper set off on 15 January 1933 from a place called Kurupukari, a district headquarter on the borders of British Guiana and Brazil. Waugh's destination was Boa Vista, a frontier town situated some forty miles within Brazil. Boa Vista, which in Portuguese means lovely view', had been described to ^ Martin Stannard, Evelyn W a u ^ h : Th& Early Y&cLrs (London : JM Dent, 1986) 307. 33 him as ‘‘an important Brazilian town... a place of peculiar glamour-— dissipated and violent; a place where revolutions were plotted and political assassinations committed" (WGG 210). When, after an arduous journey, Waugh finally reached Boa Vista, he found it, to his utter shock, "a run-down hopeless wreck of a place" (Sykes 186). His original plan was to go by river to Manaos, the most important town in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, but as there was no prospect of a boat for weeks, he decided to return to Georgetown via a different route. So, like Peter Fleming's expedition, Waugh's journey, too, had its share of disappointment. However, the journey was not a total wash-out. It provided him with enough material to write a travel book, Nin&ty-Two Days, which was published in the spring of 1934, and also inspired the writing of a novel, A Handful of Dust, published in the same year. The writing of this novel has an interesting story to tell. Actually, Waugh had no plans this time, as he had at the start of his journey to Ethiopia earlier, of making use of his travel experiences to write a novel. It was his chance meeting with one Mr Christie, a religious man of highly eccentric nature, which served as a stimulant, first , to the writing of a short story, and then the novel, A HandfuL of Dus t. The account of Waugh's meeting with Mr Christie, a half-caste rancher, whom he met during his journey to Boa Vista, is rather sketchy in the diary, but it gets exhaustive treatment in the travel book, Nin&ty-Two Days, selections from which were 34 later incorporated in Wh&n the' Going was Good. Waugh had been told that Christie was "very old and very religious'" (WGG 217). Waugh found him reclining in a hammock, sipping cold water. He had "a long white moustache and a white woolly head" (WGG 218). When Waugh greeted him, "he smiled in a dreamy absent-minded manner and said, I was expecting you. I was warned in a vision of your approach" (WGG 218). He further told Waugh that he could always know the character of any visitor by the visions he had of them. Waugh could not resist asking how he had seen him. “ As a sweetly- tuned harmonium,' said Mr Christie politely" (WGG 218). At supper time Christie spoke about many more of his fantastic visions, about God, the end of the world, and the assembly of the elect in heaven. Waugh left Christie's ranch the next morning but could not leave behind the memory of Mr Christie, whose eccentricity had greatly fascinated him. As it was, Waugh himself possessed some streaks of madness which were to blow up in 1954 when his mind almost gave way. He was advised a change of climate and went on a journey to Ceylon. During the course of the voyage he suffered from hallucinations. He returned home and had himself treated. Later, he incorporated his strange experiences in his highly autobiographical novel, Th& Ordeal o/ Gilbert Fin/old (1957), which forms part of the present study. Suffice it to say here that, for some strange reasons, eccentricity and insanity held a peculiar fascination for him. The encounter with Mr Christie aroused the artist in Waugh. He visualized the immense comic possibilities a fictional 35 treatment of the subject could af-ford. He soon thought of a plot for a short story and completed it in two days. It had the title "The Man Who Liked Dickens," The story, when it was published later, had a resounding success in England and the United States. Sykes considers it “worthy of Maupassant or Somerset Maugham at their best" (Sykes 189). The story's plot revolves around a man trapped in a jungle, ending his days reading Dickens aloud to a lunatic who had made him his captive. Incidentally, the choice of Dickens's name in the title of the story was not haphazard. Waugh, a great admirer of Dickens, had been reading some of his works during the journey^as is evident from his diary entries of 27 February and 4 March 1933. Interestingly, Waugh's daughter, Margaret, has mentioned how, much later, Waugh used to read "aloud to us a great deal, mostly Dickens'" (Sykes 597). It is the above story which later became the basis for the novel A Handful of Dxtst (1934). In an article entitled "Fan- Fare," published in Lif& (8 April 1946), Waugh described how the novel came to be written about.