This dissertation has been 65—13,300 microfilmed exactly as received
WYLY, Jr., Ralph Donald, 1932- THE TRAVEL BOOKS OF NORMAN DOUGLAS.
The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1965 Language and Literature, modern
University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE TRAVEL BOOKS OF NORMAN DOUGLAS
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio S tate U niversity
3y Ralph Donald Wyly, Jr., B.A., M.A.
The Ohio S tate U niversity 1965
Approved
Adviser artment of English VITA
I, Ralph Donald Wyly, Jr., was born on June 8, 1932 In
Washington, D.C. I received my secondary and high school education in St. Petersburg and Jacksonville, Florida. I received my 6.A. and
M.A. degrees from Florida State University in 1955 and 1957. With the exception of a year at the University of Illinois, my Ph.D. studies have been undertaken at The Ohio State University, from
1959 to 1965. In 1963-196^ I lived in Europe, studying one year at the University of Rome on a grant from the Italian Foreign Ministry.
i i TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION...... 1
Chapter I . THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE TRAVEL BOOKS...... 9
I I . THE ORIGINS OF THE TRAVEL BOOKS: DOUGLAS AND SOUTH ITALY...... 2k
I I I . THE PROBLEM OF FORM...... k6
IV. THE ASSOCIATIONAL UNIT...... 65
V. THE STYLE OF THE TRAVEL BOOKS...... 91
VI. THE EXTERIOR VOYAGE...... 137 V II. THE INTERIOR VOYAGE...... 171
V III. CONCLUSION...... 195
BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 200
i l l INTRODUCTION
Norman Douglas1 reputation has sadly declined from what It was in 1927 when E. M. Forster considered him "one of our foremost w rite rs ,to the miniscule footnote in Baugh's Literary History of
England. Several explanations for this precipitate decline have been offered: that Douglas failed to follow the successful South Wind with another South Wind: that he failed to present a "creative" vision of life to an age that had turned away from actualities; and that he failed to adopt any of the techniques of the twentieth- century literary practitioner—unorthodox point of view, distorted time and chronological sequences, and elaborate symbolism—all necessary to an author's reputation.^ There is doubtless some truth to these explanations. Xh addition, a fourth was advanced by
H. H. Tomlinson in his study of Douglas written in 1931 * for the handwriting was already on the wall. Tomlinson thought that Douglas had been neglected as a creative writer because critics could not label him, that is, place him in any of the accepted genres, despite the fact that Douglas had written five full-length travel books, of which Old Calabria is probably one of the best in our language.
Tomlinson, I feel, has best accounted for Douglas' problematic status in twentieth-century literature. Because critics, in sur veying the literature of the past half century, have seen Douglas as a novelist, they have neglected or misunderstood his merits as
1 a writer. The reputations of Swift and Fielding would also suffer if we insisted on evaluating them as poets and dramatists. Although
Douglas rightfully deserves mention as a novelist, he merits full consideration only as a travel writer. Those readers, personal friends, generally, who have bothered to peruse his books carefully are unanimous in pointing out that as a travel writer, and only as a travel writer, he excelled. Comptom Mackenzie, Constantine
Fitzgibbon, Richard Aldington, Cyril Connolly, V. S. Pritchett,
R. M. Dawkins, H. M. Tomlinson, John Davenport, Ian Greenlees, and
Lionel Trilling all concur that Douglas 3 best writing is in his travel books, and not, for example, in the much better known South
Wind, unique though that book may be. Classifying Douglas as a travel writer will not of course automatically restore his lost prestige as an author. Such a step, however, makes possible a fair evaluation because it accepts Douglas where he was strongest. In deed, Douglas must not be evaluated for what he was only secondarily: a novelist, a literary critic, an essayist, or a historian.
As a travel writer, rather than a novelist, Douglas repays study for several reasons. First, the travel books are interesting for what they tell us of the traveler-author, Norman Douglas. Travel books are often close to autobiography, and Douglas' perhaps more so than is usually the case. His last two travel books, Alone and
Together, are genuine "autobiographical excursions," as Douglas sub titled his official autobiography, Looking Back. Douglas was a fascinating man who knew what he wanted out of life. Few men, one suspects, have been more confidently independent of their times, or lived more freely than Douglas. In 1928, D. H. Lawrence observed that he had known only two men who had accepted life without reservation, his own father and Norman Douglas 2 "Nothing else but the joy of life had concerned them. Douglas * .1oie de vivre tinges the pages of his tra v e l books, e sp e c ia lly ftlowa- and marks him as an unm istakable
"character," an eccentric who may amuse or infuriate, but who never bores. Douglas thus belongs in that small group of men who have managed to express in words their unfeigned delight at being alive.
One thinks of Pepys and Boswell. It is possible that Douglas will eventually be valued as a writer of autobiography; if so, his repu tation will stand primarily on his travel books.
The travel books are also worth careful study for their style.
Constantine Fitzgibbon*s judgment that Douglas' five travel books
"would assure his fame as one of the great writers of English prose" is patently an exaggeration, and typical of the praise Douglas' friends have heaped on his books, praise which has done him more harm than good.** Yet there is much to admire about Douglas' style.
Frequently, his prose takes on a rare conversational quality that marks it as genuinely distinctive, while at other times, he achieves a Joycean virtuosity in the handling of words, without any sacrifice of clarity. Part of the excellence of Douglas' style is that generally it serves larger ends, that of revealing a complex and many-sided world in the earlier travel books, and that of expressing the personality of the author himself in the later books. Because I
b
Douglas' excellence as a stylist has been neither seriously questioned nor examined, I have discussed the style of the travel books at some length, with especial emphasis on Its growth and change.
Finally, Douglas' travel books are worth studying as travel books, as interesting records of trips and excursions into lands
Interesting in themselves. Calabria, the Vorarlberg, Tunis, all are fascinating regions, particularly when seen through the eye of such an individual as Norman Douglas. One is struck by the odd facts Douglas uncovers of Calabria, or his native Thuringen, or Capri; Old Calabria itself is so rich in detail that several readings are necessary before one "grasps" the book. In particular, one is impressed by the way
Douglas has immersed himself in the past of the places he describes, and made that past come alive, as it does at Saracen Ducera, or
HLumenegg, or Taranto. In short, the travel books of Douglas can be read and studied for the satisfaction they give an inquiring mind.
In the first brief chapter, I have attempted to disentangle the chronology of Douglas' travel books. Much of the disorganized nature of Siren Land and Old Calabria is due to the way Douglas assembled these books out of material written at different periods. The second chapter relates Douglas' early travel books to his biography and his readings. Old Calabria is seen as being influenced by earlier travel writers on Calabria, while Siren Land is the direct result of Douglas* studies on the present and past of Capri. The third chapter evaluates
Douglas' approach to the travel book as a whole, and attempts to explain why, after failing to organize the early travel books, he was able to achieve a sense of organic unity in Alone and Together. The fourth chapter examines the individual chapter or unit as a carefully constructed associational sequence. The fifth chapter traces in some length the change in Douglas' style from the rich formality of Siren
Land to the conversational ease of Alone. The six th chapter comments on Douglas' interpretation of the world about him, that is, the world of the first three travel books. The final chapter studies the auto biographical elements in Douglas' last two travel books. Throughout my study, I have been guided by the thesis that as Douglas changed and matured as a man, so the travel books changed and matured with him.
Since Old Calabria and Alone are easily the finest of Douglas' five travel books, I have centered my discussion when possible on these two books. Ify discussion of Fountains. the weakest of the travel books, is minimal, and One Day, little more than a pamphlet, has not been considered at all.
To date, Douglas has received scant critical attention. At present, there is only one full-length study, Ralph C. Idndeman's unpublished doctoral dissertation, "Norman Douglas: a Critical
Study," University of Pittsburgh, 1956. Idndeman's study is an odd combination of insight and factual error. Before Lindeman, Douglas was studied principally by personal friends, or enemies. Thus,
Nancy Cunard's Grand Man and Richard Aldington's Pinorman. both published in 195^» are tallyings of Douglas' virtues and sins; neither book offers much to the inquiring student. In the early
thirties, two close friends, the travel writer H. M. Tomlinson, and the Greek scholar R. M. Dawkins, wrote short, critical studies of
Douglas* Tomlinson's however is marred by his eagerness to exalt
Douglas at the expense of D. H. Lawrence, against whom he harbored an irrational animus. Dawkins' study apparently rests on the assumption that Douglas was one of the world's great writers.
Nither study is sufficiently objective to be of real value, although
Dawkins offers some interesting Insights. Douglas has also been neglected in scholarly journals. To date, only two serious, critical articles have appeared: Elizabeth Wheatley's "Norman
D ouglas," in The Sewanee Review. March 1932; and H„ T. W ebster's
"Norman Douglas: A Reconsideration," in SAQ. April 1950. In none of these few books or articles have Douglas' travel books been studied exclusively. 7
Textual Note
The titles of Douglas' books have been abbreviated throughout when accompanying footnotes in the text itself. I have employed the following abbreviations:
4. = Alone
£ = Fountains in the Sand
OC = Old Calabria
SL = S iren Land
T = Together
CMP = Caori; Materials for a Description of the Island
Exp.= Experiments
LH = Late Harvest
LB = Looking Back
I have used the following editions of Douglas' books:
Alone (London, 1921).
Fountains in the Sand (London, 1926).
Old Calabria (New York, 1956).
S iren Land (London, 1911).
Together (London, 1923). Caori: Materials for a Description of the Island (Florence, 1930).
Experiments (London, 1926).
Late Harvest (London, 19^*6) *
Looking Back (London, 193*0* 8
Footnotes
E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (New York, 1927), p. 107.
similar eclipse for similar reasons has overtaken a man to whom Douglas has frequently been compared, Anatole France. H. T. Webster has weighed the causes of the decline In Douglas' reputation In his article, "Norman Douglas: A Reconsideration," SAQ. XLTV (1950), pp. 226-236.
^Quoted in Richard Aldington, D. H. Lawrence (New York, 1950), P. 391.
^Constantine Fitzgibbon, Norman Douglas: A Pictorial Record (London, 1953), P. 10. CHAPTER I
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE TRAVEL BOOKS
The purpose of this brief outline is to establish as accurately as possible the dates of composition of Norman Douglas 1 five travel books.^ It is hoped that such an outline will clarify the general sequence of Douglas' travel writings and provide the necessary back ground for later chapters on his relations to earlier writers on
Calabria, on his organizational methods, and on his style. In addition, these pages correct various errors in the accepted dating of Douglas' travel books, since his critics have not always been accurate. A quotation from John Davenport may illustrate the generally lax approach to the Douglas chronology: "/pouglas/went down into Italy in early 1919 and began writing that most charming of his books Alone.A c tu a lly , Douglas had begun publishing Alone monthly in his friend Edward Hutton's Anglo-Italian Review, beginning in August 1918.3 In addition, Douglas himself says in Alone that certain passages were written in 1917 o r 1917- 1918.**
The following chronology is based primarily on Douglas' personal diaries and papers now in the possession of his literary executor,
Mr. Kenneth Macpherson of Rome, Italy.^ The diaries, which Douglas kept intact from 1907* h is 39th year, until 1952, the year of his death, lis t with scrupulous accuracy daily correspondence and places
9 10 v is ite d , while avoiding personal comment. O ccasionally, however, other data of a purely factual nature are recorded: bank accounts, addresses, books lent, dinner engagements, items to be taken on a trip, birthdays and what not. Of especial interest is a list in the
1911 Diary of chapter headings for a proposed book on Apulia-Calabria.
From this list, we learn that Old Calabria, as originally planned, differed substantially from the version published in 1915* For present purposes, the diaries are extremely valuable in dating his travel books, which are themselves records of the "places he visited."
For example, the eleventh chapter of Alone, which begins with the words, "Siren-Land revisited," may be dated September 1919* rather than 1917 along with the major part of the book, since according to the diaries Douglas did not v isit the Naples region after the war until that date. In similar fashion, his ascent of Montalto, described in chapters JO and J2 of Old Calabria, may be dated with precision, 26 and 27 Nay 1912, a rather important fact, since in
Old Calabria Douglas leads the reader to believe that the book was based on a single, lengthy trip made in 1911
In addition, a series of letters to Douglas from his close friend, John Mavrogordato, who for some 25 years acted as a kind of literary agent and adviser to Douglas, have helped to clarify the rather tangled chronology of Alone, as well as shed light on a hitherto unsuspected early version of that book dating 1918* These letters are also now in the possession of Mr. Macpherson. The chronology of Douglas * travel books begins with Siren Land. published in July 1911. According to Douglas* Late Harvest (p. 74), i t was begun in May 1908 and fin ish ed sometime in 1909. The e a r lie s t diary reference to the completed manuscript does not occur until the
16th of April 1910 when Douglas wrote, "Duffield Siren Land Ms reg. H
A ctually, the s itu a tio n i s more complex. I t seems th a t ea rly in
1908, Douglas, pressed for money, hit upon the idea of writing a travel book on the Bay of Naples area.7 The choice o f lo c a le was obvious since he was an authority on the region, having written between 1904-1907 a series of learned, scholarly monographs about
Capri, the so-called "Capri Monographs." Eight of these had already been privately published by 1907* when Douglas was forced to dis continue the series because of financial problems. When he decided to write a book on the Naples region, he did not scruple to use these earlier monographs. Three of them became with minor alterations chapters three, four and seven of Siren Land. Probably yet un published monographs were also included, if one may judge from
Douglas' later comment that the publisher cut out seven chapters of the original twenty as being "remote from human interest," which 8 indeed the "Capri Monographs" are. Douglas' borrowings did not stop h e re . From h is a r tic le on Isch ia w ritte n in 1907 and published in 1909* he drew extensively.^ Finally, other chapters may have been written earlier, judging from Douglas' later remarks: "The first
chapter of Siren Land contains a precis. . . of what I raked to
gether /in 1896- 1898}concerning this 'Imp of the imagination1' /i.e .,
the Sirea/" (LB. p. 273 ). "The material of the sixth chapter of 12
Siren Land was gathered about the year 1902" (LH, p. 13). Conse quently, Douglas' a sse rtio n th a t he began Siren Land in May 1908 is
at best a half truth; at that date he began writing those sections which would fill out the extensive material lying at hand. In no
sense, then, does Siren Land represent an original, unified
composition.
The composition date of Douglas' second book, Fountains in the
Sand, published in 1912, presents no real difficulty. According to
Douglas himself, it was "written on the spot," that is, between
December 1909 and March 1910, when Douglas made h is most extended
visit to Tunisia (LH. p. 13). Douglas' Diary for 1910 refers only
twice to Fountains. On the first of January, he noted, "Gafsa
Monog"; the next reference does not occur until the fourth of
November when he w rote Mavrogordato asking fo r the retu rn o f the
"Tunis Ms," by which date it was presumably finished. The only
complication of its composition is suggested in one of the notes
Douglas furnished for McDonald's Bibliography: "The original version
of Fountains was in sixteen chapters and in other respects different
from the present one. There was a story running through it: a kind
of romance. I showed the thing in this fora to Joseph Conrad, who
read it carefully and then said: *What is that woman doing in here ?
Take her outt' Out she went, with all that belonged to her, and the
book became what it now is . . ." (p. 73). Douglas never clarified
what this romance may have been or in what other respects the
original manuscript differed from the published version. Douglas' third and finest travel book, Old Calabria, published in
1915, presents very real problems of chronology. Perhaps a direct frontal assault using the diaries is the simplest approach. At the end of the 1911 Diary, but written much earlier, before Douglas' departure for Calabria in Hay 1911• is a lis t of chapter headings by subject, not title, for a book on South Italy, of which the first nine chapters would be on Apulia, and the remaining eleven on Calabria
(the last, Agropoli, actually on the neighboring province of
Basilicata). In addition, four optional chapters are listed under these twenty, marked "EXTR (?). "^ The lis t deserves to be given in
Ions are Douglas'):
1. Lucera 2 . Manfred 3. Archangel 4. Venosa 5. Bandusi 6. Taranto 1 7. Flying Monk 8. Taranto 2 9. ■ 3 10. Policoro 11. Rossano 12 . Castrov. 13. Morano 14. Dolcedorme 15. Salandra 16. Albania 17. San Giov. 18. Cotrone 19. Taverna 20 . Agropoli
EXTR (?)
1. Madonna d i P. 2 . De Rada 3. P a tire 4 . T irio lo If this lis t of headings is compared with the Table of Contents of Old Calabria, one sees that it is a kind of skeletal version, with some of the headings corresponding exactly to the Old Calabria chapter titles; some require slight changes, "Lucera" thus became
^Saracen Lucera," "Manfred" became "Manfred's Town." In some cases,
Douglas replaced the individual heading on the lis t with a new title;
"Policoro" became "Into the Ju n g le," "Rossano" became "Byzantinism,"
"Salandra" became "Milton in Calabria." Among the "EXTR" headings,
"De Rada" became "An Albanian Seer" and so on. Of this list, only the last, "Agropoli," has no counterpart whatever in Old Calabria.
Further comparison reveals that the order of the headings of the list corresponds to the order of chapter titles in Old Calabria, the only difference being of course that Old Calabria contains additional chapters sandwiched in here and there.
What can this lis t be but Douglas' original conception of Old
Calabria? A confrontation of the lis t with the 1911 Diary shows that it predates Douglas' lengthy trip (May 1 to August 1) into
Calabria of that year. For example, according to the diary list, the final chapter of Old Calabria should have been on Agropoli; however, from the 1911 Diary itself, we learn that he did not visit
Agropoli b ut only passed through h a s tily en ro u te fo r London from
Catanzaro. Had the lis t post-dated the trip, Agropoli would have been excluded. In Looking Back. Douglas explained this sudden departure from Calabria; he had contracted m alaria.^ In brief, the diary list indicates that before leaving for South
Italy in May 1911* Douglas projected a travel book of modest dimen sions (the 1915 published version has forty rather than tirenty or twenty-four chapters), which would be based on a single, prolonged trip and would contain only two (or three if "De Rada” be included) scholarly chapters, one on "Flying Monk" and one on "Salandra.” The lis t assumes greater importance when one discovers that not only did
Douglas project such a book, and then base his trip in Calabria on that projection, but that he also wrote a considerable part of the manuscript "on the spot. If one reads Old Calabria with the original conception in mind, one can see how its twenty-four
chapters are tied together to form a single trip. Even the two
scholarly chapters on the Flying Monk and Milton form part of the
trip. Thus, Douglas pretends to go seventy-five kilometres out of
his way to search for a copy of Adamo Caduto. the book he claimed was the source of Paradise Lost (see OC, p. 16^). This side
excursion serves as a raison d*Stre for the scholarly Milton
article. That he never made any such trip according to the 1911
Diary only demonstrates his concern for a unified manuscript in which even the scholarly chapters would be part of the overall
voyage. We see then that in 1911 Douglas conceived and began
writing a travel book much smaller and more unified than the Old
Calabria published in 1915.
For some reason, however, Douglas decided in 1912 to expand
Old Calabria, perhaps at the command of his publisher, perhaps at the advice of Conrad. Whatever the motive, the method was not unlike that practiced on Siren Land; old and new material was added without full discrimination, and in a variety of ways. First, he included at least three of the seven chapters previously rejected from Siren
Land.13 together with three more articles that he had written on
Calabria after his short 1907 and 1909 trips.1** To go with this old m a te ria l, he composed four new chapters based on h is 1912 Calabria trip to the Montalto region, May 26 to 31 5^ and two new scholarly chapters, one entitled "Southern Saintliness," and the other "The
Sage of Croton," on Pythagoras. Both of these chapters can be tentatively dated in 1913 by similarities of style and subject matter to book reviews Douglas was then writing for The English
Review . 16 Finally, he expanded the Cotrone chapter of the original lis t into four new chapters, and doubled other single chapters.
Thus, the expanded 1915 version of Old Calabria lacks much of the unity of the smaller 1911 conception, even though Douglas made some effort to integrate his new material. Not only has the 1911 trip sequence been damaged, but the scholarly harmony of the book has been altered by the addition of the rejected Siren Land material.
On the positive side, the extra chapters are often of high quality, with the chapters on "Crotone" and "The Sage of Croton" among
Douglas' finest individual performances.
The exact completion date of Old Calabria is not certain, since th e book i s unnamed in the d ia r ie s . S ig n ific a n tly , though, on
December 22, 1913* Douglas noted, "Conrad (Ms as above)," while
Christmas of that year was passed with the Conrads. Could this reference be to Old Calabria, with Douglas then visiting Conrad to discuss the newly completed manuscript? In 1913 h® was at work on no other book, and Conrad in those days was his chief literary adviser. Tentatively, then, we may fix the completion of Old
Calabria at December 1913* or one month after the date of the chapter on Pythagoras.
Scarcely less complicated is the chronology of Alone, published in late 1921. Ely drawing on a variety of sources, however, one can establish an accurate dating. In January 1917* Douglas, facing a 17 criminal assault charge, was forced to quit England. He headed at once for the Mediterranean and passed the period from January to
October wandering about central Italy, with a three months' stay in
Florence. Alone is largely the description of these random wander ings, as a comparison of its pages to the 1917 Diary proves. Thus,
the second through the fifth chapters, entitled "Levanto," "Siena,"
"Pisa," and "Viareggio" respectively, correspond to Douglas' entries
in the 1917 Diary: Levanto, 16-25 January; Siena, 26 January-
1 February; Pisa, 2-3 February; and Viareggio, 4-17 February.
Thereafter, Alone drops its chronological sequence, while continuing
to draw largely on the events of Douglas' 1917 stay in Italy.
As with Fountains and the 1911 "version" of Old Calabria.
Alone was written on the spot. There is abundant internal evidence
to corroborate this assertion, not to mention Douglas' own footnotes 1R dating certain passages 1917* However, before Douglas could com
plete the book, or even bring his wanderings up to date in the manu
script, he was forced to leave Italy- on October 12, 1917* for 18
F r a n c e . 19 Obviously, Douglas had to put the book aside for the moment, and p re fe ra b ly u n til he could re tu rn to I ta ly to conclude h is
“wanderings." The year 1918 was passed in France, where he began his second novel, They Went.
Probably because he desperately needed money, Douglas decided in
September 1918 to publish Alone, then called "Sunshine," completed or not.20 At this time he probably added the final chapter on Alatrl using the 1917 Diaxy as a stimulus. Thus, in the last chapter of
Alone, he writes, "I have only a diary of dates to go upon, out of which with the help of memory and imagination, have been extracted these pages" (p. 257). The manuscript was then packed off to his friend John Mavrogordato in London. On September 22, 1918,
Mavrogordato wrote to Douglas congratulating him on "Sunshine."
His letter is important since from it we learn that this first version of Alone differed from the final version in at least two important respects: it had a chapter on Florence, or, more precisely, on the "oathes of the Florentine cabmen," and it had a running commentary, with translations, on the Greek Anthology. For unspecified reasons, however, "Sunshine" was not published, but once again laid aside.
After the end of the war, in early 1919» Douglas1 finances began to right themselves. In August 1919 he returned to Borne and
in September to the Sorrentine Peninsula, where he wrote the eleventh
chapter of Alone. An earlier chapter written at Mentone in the first months of 1919 was included . ^ Now, however, Douglas was in no hurry
to p u b lish . E|y March 1920 he had w ritte n the in tro d u cto ry chapter 19 recalling his war experiences in Ehgland.^ In August 1920 he re visited Siena, and in September Scanno; accounts of these visits were added to the earlier ones, as were probably the recollections of his first years in Italy and the "bird-slaying days" of his youth.At last, by October 3* 1921, the completed Alone was in Mavrogordato’s hands, at which date he wrote Douglas, "It is a fine book with a flavour of wisdom and an improvement, I think, on Sunshine as I remember it: in unity I suppose of tone."
Given the slowness with which Douglas completed Alone, revising here and there and adding new sections, one may assume that the published version represents his wishes in all their particularities.
Douglas1 last real travel book. Together, happily presents no problems of chronology. It was written at leisure during the summers of 1921-1922, which, Douglas tells us, were combined into one for "literary reasons" (LB. p. 429). The book was published in
September 1923*
A brief note should be added on Douglas 1 final effort at travel literature, the pendant and insignificant One Day. Sometime in early
1920, Douglas was commissioned by the Greek Government to write a travel book on Greece. With that goal in mind, he passed the Spring of 1920 journeying about old Hellas with his friend Edward Hutton.
For various reasons, later explained in Late Harvest (pp. 55-56), he was unable to produce anything of value, and the manuscript was laid aside. In 1928 Douglas again visited Greece and resumed work. By this time, however, he realised that his travel writing days were over, so when Nancy Cunard offered to publish One Day "as is," he 20 accepted. The book is short, little more than a pamphlet, and wholly inferior to Douglas' other travel writings. One Dav dates for the most part from 1920, with additions in 1928. Interestingly, the final section on the Greek Anthology was probably lifted from 'Sunshine. ”
The chronology of Douglas' travel book may be summarized as follows: Siren Land. 1908-1909* with important chapters earlier;
Fountains in the Sand. 1910; Old Calabria. 1911-1913* with a few chapters earlier; Alone. 1917* with additions from 1918-1920;
Together. 1921-1922; and One Dav. 1920 and 1928. The f if te e n year p erio d , 1908- 1922, of the travel books covers the most productive phase of Douglas' career. South Wind. 1916 (published 1917)* occurs midway. Only Looking Back. 1931 —1932, can compare with that novel and Douglas' five travel books in quality, and it, strangely, is but a continuation of the autobiographical impulse left off with Together ten years earlier. The travel books thus caught Douglas at his best. 21
Footnotes
'I For complete and accurate bibliographical data( see Cecil Woolf , 4 Bibliography of Norman Douglas (Iondon, 195*0. Supplementary bibliographical and some biographical data may be found in Edward McDonald's rare 4 Bibliography of Norman Douglas (Philadelphia: The Centaur Bookshop, 1927;* and in Douglas' own Looking Back (London, 1933) and Late Harvest (London, 19**6).
2Norman Douglas, Old Calabria. Intro, by John Davenport (New York, 1956), p. xiv. R. M. Dawkins, for example, asserts that Alone was written in 1921, the year of its publication. See his Noiman Douglas (London, 1952), p. 65.
3Woolf, p. 169.
**See pp. 131, 167 , 209 and 255.
^Subsequent references to Douglas' diaries and letters in the course of this study refer to this collection and w ill not be foot noted, other than to supply dates when necessary.
^The diary entries for these two days read, (May 26) "Walked Bagnara over St. Eufemia and Sinopoli to Delianuova,B and (May 2?) "Over Montalto to Bova and Bova S tatio n S le p t Gerace."
?In Looking Back, p. 50, Douglas refers to his beginnings as a professional writer. "I had taken to writing books out of sheer poverty, things having gone from bad to worse, and myself being under the frantic illusion—due to a slight personal acquaintance with successful writers like Conan Doyle, Marion Crawford, and Homung—that there was money to be made out of 'literatu re.'" ft Late Harvest, p. 73, In 1915* Douglas wrote that he had prepared by 1907 other monographs in addition to those published between 190*J-1907• See his Capri: Materials for a Description of the Island (Florence: privately printed, 1929)» p. 269. In Late Harvest, p. 75, Douglas characterizes the published monographs as "for reference only." It is strange, then, that he should have thought them suited for Siren Land.
9see pages 133-135. 151-153. 161- 163, 232 -233 , 277-278 and 291 of Siren Land (London, 1911). which draw upon the Ischia article as printed In The English Review. February 1909 (Douglas later revised the article). Richard Aldington has raised serious objections to Douglas' switching scene descriptions from IQschia to somewhere on the Sorrentine Peninsula (Pinorman /London. 1952/* P* 70). 22
^On another page is a pencil description of the format of a book to be published in twenty-four chapters. Douglas thus was already thinking of publication details In 1911*
^P . 32. *We lived in a dazed condition in Calabria during the end of July and the beginning of August /Douglas' dates are a little offy. . . • All we knew was that we felt queer and that we ought to go back to London." According to the 1911 Diary, Douglas traveled on August first from Catanzaro to Pompei, or about 270 m iles, a considerable distance in those days. One can judge how much time he had to spend in Agropoli.
^See references to "writing on the spot," pp. 13 , 65, 67, 178 and 193 o f Old C alabria.
^Douglas wrote in Late Harvest, p. 73, of these rejected chapters, "Some of this discarded material found a refuge in Old Calabria." Unfortunately, neither he nor his critics have ever identified these chapters. Chapters 8, 14 and 18 o f Q3£ Sfito)3*a are the most likely candidates, since they are of the pure scholar ship type that Douglas specialized in during the "Capri Monograph" period, 1904-1907, and since they contain numerous references to the Sorrentine peninsula. Chapter 8 of Old Calabria may be identified with certainty as belonging to the ore-Siren Land period, according to Douglas* own dating of it in Late Harvest, p. 75.
^These articles became chapters 27-29 of Old Calabria.
^Chapters 30, 3^-34 of Old Calabria.
1 ^Chap ter 31 of Old Calabria has stylistic sim ilarities with Douglas' review of a study of A. J. Balfour, The Baelish Review. February 1913, chapter 38 of Old Calabria has sim ilarities with Douglas * review o f a l i f e o f L is te r, The English Review. November
1?The nature of the charge has not been revealed. See Daven port, xiv; Alone (London, 1921), p. 15; and Aldington, pp. 147-148.
^®See, for exanqple, pp. 46, 70, 85, 86, 90, 134, 155 and 167 o f Alone for suggestions that the writing of the book is contemporary to the events described.
^9"In October, just before the Italian defeat at Caporetto, I had to hop over the frontier." Norman Douglas, Experiments (New York, 1925), p. 236 . The 1917 Diary dates h is departure October 12: "Left Rome for Turin."
^Douglas' finances were shaky during this period. He arrived in Mentone three months later in December 1918 "utterly knocked up" and "with 61 francs in my pocket." Looking Back, p. 424. 23 ^ Douglas had never seen Mentone before December 1918, and hence this chapter post-dates that event. His stay in Mentone lasted from December 1918 to August 1919. See Looking Back, p. 425.
22Published in The Anglo-Italian Review for that month. See Woolf, p . 170.
23see pp. 75-84 and 219-224. These passages did not appear in The Anglo-Italian Review when these sections of Alone were originally published. CHAPTER I I
THE ORIGINS OF THE TRAVEL BOOKS;
DOUGLAS AND SOUTH ITALY
Norman Douglas owes little to the great century of Ehgllsh travel literature that preceded him. With the notable exception of Doughty, one finds in Douglas' books scant reference to such eminent Victorian travelers as Burton, Palgrave, Blunt, Borrow,
Warburton, and Kinglake. Doughty's influence is hard to calculate.
Although greatly admiring Doughty's strength of character and his single-mindedness, Douglas was too fond of pleasure and good living to sympathize fully with the man who passed two years among what were for Douglas savage bigots. Undoubtedly, Douglas admired Doughty as an uncompromising individualist, as he seems to have admired most individualists, without going further. As for the rest, Douglas lacked the romantic spirit, and was too much l'homme Mediterranean
to be fully sympathetic with the daring Eastern exploits of the great
Victorian adventurers. Instead, one must turn one's gaze from
Nineveh and Persepolis to South Italy—to Naples and Capri, to
Cot rone and Reggio—and to the scholarly literature that had
collected about that region, to find the sources of Douglas' travel
books. For several years before the first of his travel books,
Douglas had immersed himself in this literature at the libraries of
Zk 25
Naples and Cava, until he was an authority in matters South
ItalianJ To this repository of often arcane knowledge he naturally turned for his first travel book. But if his reading provided the material for his early travel books, the changing fortunes of his existence provided the immediate stimulus.
Norman Douglas' five travel books must be placed in the perspective of his own life if they are to be properly understood.
Few writers have been less equipped with "negative capability" than
Douglas. His travel books, especially the earlier ones, grew out of his reading, his character, his outlook and even his financial cir cumstances. Siren Ignd is the final product of Douglas' early scientific and humanistic researches on the Bay of Naples area.
Fountains is an attempt to write out of experience rather than reading, but it was a step taken before Douglas was ready. Both books were conditioned by Douglas' very real need to earn money.
Old Calabria not only sums up Douglas' early scholarly period; i t also owes much to earlier writers on Calabria, both in terms of subject matter and presiding spirit. In addition, one may regard it as an attempt on Douglas' part to rectify the obvious faults of his first two travel books in a single volume that would be worthy of
the abilities he knew he possessed as a travel writer. If Old
Calabria is a summing up of Douglas' early life and attitudes, then
Alone represents a new direction, in which the author, rather than
the land, becomes the genius loci of the book. The outer world with its labyrinth of fact and fiction is forgotten as the author 26 turns within to examine the workings of his own being. Together. rambling and reflective, continues with lesser intensity to probe the character of the author. Since these last two books are sufficiently self-revealing, they need not be considered here. The intent of this chapter is rather to supply that perspective necessazy for an accur ate interpretation of Douglas' first three travel books.
The origins of Siren Land, indeed of all of Douglas' Italian travel books, can be traced to his arrival at Naples in 1896. Until that year. Douglas had been by inclination a natural scientist and by profession a diplomat in the Ehglish Foreign Service. His spare time had been spent in writing and publishing brief monographs on a mis-
cellany of scientific subjects and in traveling to Finland, to the
L ip ari Islan d , to Ceylon, and to In d ia. In November o f 1896, how
ever, in order to avoid a scandal with a certain Russian princess, he
voluntarily went en disoonibilit 6. establishing himself in a lux urious villa at Capo Posillipo overlooking the Bay of Naples. At
that time he was well off, and for the next ten years he was able to devote himself to travel and dilettante studies about the history
and science of South Italy. During these years Douglas read, so far
as one can estimate, every available book on South Italy. In 1902
he wrote to Ouida, then at Bagni di Lucca, for her advice and
counsel on a projected scholarly history of South Italy. Ouida wrote in return asking for a loan of 1000 fra n c s.
In 1903 he moved to Capri, which then became the focal point of
his interests, and in February 1904 he published the first of the 27
"Capri Monographs." These may give us pause, for it was during the period of their writing that Douglas prepared himself for the early travel books to come. The amount of study for these brief mono graphs can scarcely be estimated. Douglas1 personal notebooks contain comments on some six hundred books and pamphlets pertaining to such varied aspects of the island as its history, topography, fauna and flora, literature, and geology. An equal number of works are referred to in the monographs themselves. Douglas later spoke of the single volume edition of the "Capri Monographs" (Capri;
Materials for ji Description of the Island. 1929) in these terms:
Whoever glances into it may realize that the labour expended on its composing was sufficient occupation for an ordinary w riter's life-time—almost. . . . Certain of these papers, such as those on Fabio Giordano or the Venerable Serafina, called for an absurd amount of research, and one of these days I propose to count up all the authorities which had to be consulted in order to write about nothing but these two—worm-eaten books and chronicles and manuscripts not to be found save in this or that other library of Naples. (J£, p. 17)
Douglas later came to regard this period of intense anti quarian scholarship as the happiest in his life, and in the preface of Disjecta Membra, the last of the monographs, assembled tardily with the Index in 1915* Douglas wrote of this era: "Previous to the year 1906 (when my researches on Capri, such as they are, may be said
to have terminated) I saw no reason why I should not continue to browse a lifetime among such literature as might be expected to deal with the island, producing every now and then some fresh monograph
illustrative of its historical and other curiosities" (CMP, p. 269). 28
The studies and researches of these years not only established a bedrock of scholarship upon which all of Siren Land and much of Old
Calabria rest; they gave Douglas a scholarly way of looking at a world dominated by recondite facts.
In 1906, however, with surprising rapidity, Douglas' situation changed. Overnight, and with a lack of foresight worthy of the true scholar, Douglas awoke to find himself in severe financial diffi culties. With the selling of his Capri collection that year, the era of gentlemanly scholarship drew to an abrupt close. The next five years witness Douglas' ineffectual attempts to gain a living at writing. Perhaps at the suggestion of such men as Joseph Conrad, whom he had met on Capri in 1905, and Bliss Perry, who sojourned there in 1906, Douglas decided to try his hand at scholarly articles.
A mediocre effort on Poe was followed by another on Milton; only with great difficulty could publishers be found. Two companion articles, both written in 1907, one on Ischia and one on the Greek Sila, met better fortune, and must have indicated to Douglas that his talents lay in travel literature and not literary criticism. In May 1908 he began Siren Land, though at this early date, he may have been thinking only of a loose collection of individual articles on the Neapolitan region.
The influence of Douglas' early studies on his first travel book is only too apparent. His outright borrowings from the "Capri Mono graphs" have been mentioned in chapter one. In most cases, he changed them but slightly, adding here and there a touch for popular appeal. 29
The f i r s t chapter o f S iren Land. entitled "Sirens and their An- centry," compares in scholarly thoroughness Kith the best of the
"Capri Monographs." In fact, throughout, Siren land is oppressively
scholastic. Such authorities as Jacobus Noierus, Theodorus Gaza,
Gessner, Scaliger, Brieslack, Rondeletus, Curtius Rufus and dozens more adorn its pages, as if their names were on everybody's tongue.
In no other book except Paneros of 1931. a study of aphrodisiacs in
classical and medieval lore, does Douglas depend so heavily on
scholarship to fill his pages.
In addition to adopting the scholarly technique of the "Capri
Monographs," Douglas also concerns himself with much the same
general subject material. He writes learnedly of deforestation,
of pagan relics to be found in caves, of word etymology, of past
historical events on Capri, and so on. It is doubtful that Douglas
did additional reading for the book; probably he drew upon the large
reservoir of knowledge he had accumulated on the region while writing
the "Capri Monographs.
Real differences of course exist. While the style of the "Capri
Monographs" is clear and unembellished, that of Siren Land is lively
and ornate. Whereas the "Capri Monographs" have as their abiding
purpose the conveyance of information, Siren Land often achieves a
rollicking, pagan humor which is its own end. In sum, however,
Siren Land depends heavily on Douglas' past writings and researches.
Too much of the book seems second hand to one who knows the Mono
graphs, and the new sections written after May 1908 do not blend well
with the borrowed chapters from the "Capri Monographs." For some reason, Douglas decided to turn his back on the Neapol itan region for his second travel book. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with the patchwork nature of Siren Land: more likely he was d isil lusioned at the difficulty of finding publishers for individual articles taken from the manuscript.^ Probably he felt a genuine travel book on a less-known region than the Bay of Naples would stand a better chance of finding publisher and public. At any rate, he v is ite d Tunisia from December 1909 to March 1910, w ritin g down h is impressions on the spot. If, however, Douglas thought he could produce an original, saleable book on that strange land, he was m istaken.
Whatever the mysteries of its origin, Fountains has never met
the favor of Douglas' other trave ooks.^ The reasons seem clear.
3h 1910 Douglas had not mastered we autobiographical, individual
approach toward travel literature which he was to develop in Old
Calabria and perfect in Alone. The author of Fountains seems ill
at ease when talking about himself, and one senses his presence more
than his personality. In addition, to borrow a phrase from R. M.
Dawkins, Douglas at this time needed something to "set him in
motion.n While the admirable history and lore of South Italy per
formed that service for Siren Land and Old Calabria, in Fountains
Douglas' lack of knowledge of Tunisia forced him to write of present
experiences and sensations.
In other words, Douglas needed at this early stage of his career
a body of material to fall back upon. He lacked that transforming
power of the imagination which enables the creative genius to turn the raw material of dally life Into the imperishable material of art.
Douglas was even dubious of the creative potentialities of the imagination, perhaps because he himself was so signally uncreative.
In the preface to his second novel, They Went. 1920, he asked, "Can our imagination ever create: Or mast it rather content itself with forming new combinations, with readjusting material that already lies at hand, if we care to pick it up" (p. xi). The obvious short comings of Fountains must have forced upon Douglas the realization that he needed to write on a land whose history and culture he had already absorbed, in other words, on South Italy, and specifically, on Calabria. Here lay material waiting to be picked up and turned into the kind of travel book that both Siren Land and Fountains were n o t.
The advantages of Calabria were obvious. First, its savage scenery and primitive people and its glorious and varied history which extended back over 2,500 years made it one of the most fasci nating regions of Italy. Unlike the hackneyed Bay of Naples,
Calabria was yet fresh, as Douglas knew, not only from his extensive reading, but from three week long "trial" trips there in the summers of 1907» 1908, and 1909* Two of these trips had yielded three articles that had been sold. Second, it was a region that lent itself to an extended journey which might then be described in a full- length book. Such a trip was not feasible in Siren Land, and, for some reason, never undertaken in Tunisia. Finally, a small body of literature had grown up about Calabria, at the hands both of local antiquarians and European travelers, which Douglas knew and could draw upon. In fact, there is reason to believe that these earlier travel accounts considerably Influenced the writing of Old Calabria.
It is this small body of literature and its effect on Old Calabria that I would now like to discuss.
That Calabria should attract a certain type of traveler is obvious, since her antiquities and historic associations exerted a particular appeal. Greek enthusiasts occasionally found their way to such places as Taranto or Cotrone, or speculated on the site of
Sybaris. Latin scholars visited Venosa, birthplace of Horace, or traced the route of Hannibal, or pondered the tomb of Alaric as
Cosenza. Perhaps no one has better expressed this antique charm of Calabria than one of her later visitors, George Gissing: "Alone and quiet, I heard the washing of the waves; I saw the evening fall on cloud-wreathed Etna, the twinkling lights come forth upon Scylla and Charybdis; and, as I looked my last towards the Ionian Sea, I wished it were mine to wander endlessly amid the silence of the ancient world, to-day and all its sounds forgotten.
If the traveler in Calabria was apt to be steeped in the classics, with a curiosity to see for himself, then he was also generally a strong individual with his share of courage. Until
1840, travel in Calabria was extremely dangerous, due to the banditi who defied in great numbers their hated Bourbon governors. Travel itself was arduous because of the absence of inns, the lack of good roads, and the inescapable presence of mountains in Calabria. Thus, only the hardiest of adventurers attempted Calabria, usually those whose love of Theocritus or Horace could surmount any barrier, manmade or natural. So It was that during the 18th and 19th centuries,
Calabria was visited and described by a snail and somewhat homogeneous group of scholar-adventurers, whose books possess certain common qualities later to be found in Old Calabria.
The first book to appear in Ehglish on Calabria was Patrick
Brydone's A Tour of Sicily and Malta, published in 1773*^ Brydone's account does not treat Calabria extensively, other than to describe the coastal parts. Nevertheless, he foreshadows later travelers in his strong individuality, and his thorough classical training.
His book is appropriately full of learning, together with some highly erratic opinions on the state of affairs in South Italy.
Ten years after Brydone, Henry Swinburne published the first important study of Calabria in English, entitled Travels in the Two
Sicilies. Swinburne was an odd sort of fellow, with a zest and curiosity which allowed nothing to escape his eye, or his pen. Only with difficulty could he keep his overactive intellect tied down to any one subject. For instance, while at Taranto, he decides to check the accuracy of Strabo's assertion that the Mare Piccolo measures
twelve and one-half miles. However, no sooner is his tour under way than he begins a long, eight page digression on the kinds of fish
and mollusks to be seen. At the end of his digression, he notes
apologetically: "To return to my tour, which the fish had caused
me to lose sight of, we passed under the banks of the Piano. , . .
Swinburne's mind in short is steeped in learning that he cannot
control. One observation gives way to another in a long series of
associations, with Swinburne generally delving into his reading to fill out what he wants to say. His book is thus a charming mixture of classical learning, gossip, acute natural observations, and the ruminations of an active mind. What Douglas wrote of another traveler, Pacicchelli, is equally true of Swinburne: "This amiable and loquacious creature, restlessly gadding about Europe, gloriously complacent, hopelessly absorbed in trivialities and credulous beyond belief" (QC, p. 217).
Swinburne was followed in Calabria by the extremely learned but stodgy Kepple-Craven.9 His Excursions in the Abruzzi and Northern
Provinces of Naples. I 838, is almost solely of antiquarian interest, and lack s the human touch o f Swinburne. In 18*19, Edward Lear toured
Calabria which he described three years afterwards in his Journals of a, Landscape Painter in Southern Italy. While Lear's account cannot be compared with those of his predecessors in erudition, it contains a charming naivete which seems to be a staple quality of these books.
Undoubtedly, the most Important book on Calabria before
Douglas' was Franpois Lenormant's three volume set. La Grande
Grece. published from 1881-1884. Lenormant planned to give a complete description of South Italy, historical, archaeological and topographical. Unfortunately, he died young before completing his description of Calabria. At the end of the preface to the third volume, where Lenormant announces his never to be completed program,
Douglas penned in his own copy, "Died, too soonI" Nevertheless, the completed sections, totaling some twelve hundred pages, comprise the most exhaustive non-Italian studies of those regions then 35 undertaken.^0 Two things about Lenormant*s treatment of Calabria
should be noted: his Immense erudition, and his associational
manner of joining Ideas. He constantly digresses from his "subject"
to describe some village inn, or a peasant's costume, or an occur
rence by the road, or some "related" matter. A sample of Lenormant's
scholarly yet relaxed approach to his task may illustrate both his
learning and associational technique, and at the same time demon
strate his kinship with Douglas.
Le point de la cote £Ls called/ Porto di Santa Venere, d'apr&s une statue antique de marbre, fort mutilee, qu'est 1A de temps immemorial et qu'on a placle au-dessus d'une petite fontaine. Les paysans lui rendent un culte sous le nom de Santa Venere. C'est probablement Sainte Parachevi, la martyre de Locres sous ce nom. Elle etait ainsi appel^e, dit-on, parce qu'elle Atait nAe le vendredi, comme Sainte Cyriaque or Kria kl, la martyre de Tropea dans la m£me persecution, parce qu'elle 6tait n6e la dimanche. Dans quelques liturgies latinos de la Calabre, le nom de Parashevi est traduit par Venere; dans un dipldme du grand comte Roger, le village de Paraviti, A la porte de Mileto, est appele Terra Parasceves, id. est. sancta Venere. Mais, grace a 1'assonance du nom, qui y prStait bien facilement, c'est 1'antique Venus, qui a et6 conservle par la superstition populaire sous le dlguisement de Santa Venera . . . Ceci me rapelle que. . . .11
Lenormant continues to relate, with a quote from Pausanias to
strengthen his point, how, near Athens, Santa Venera ousted her
classic predecessor by the same "veritable jeu de mots." Nor can he
refrain from adding that the status really represents no saint,
Christian or Pagan, but Ariadne on Naxos, and that she is neither
sacred nor venerated, but just "un des sujets que la sculpture
antique a traite aves la plus de complaisance" (p. 220). This is "du meillaur lenormant.H to adopt Douglas1 own phrase: a series of scholarly observations arising naturally at first, but taking a technical turn so that only a specialist can follow; then a second series suggested by the first, and adorned with a quote from an ancient authority; finally, a eommon-sense observation to cap the disquisition and show how simple the solution was, all along.
Lenormant*s associational technique and his erudite approach to his subject w ill be echoed in the pages of Old Calabria.
The last significant book on Calabria before Douglas' was
George Gissing's slender but finely sensitive gjr the Ionian Sea. written in 1897 and published in 1901. Little need be said about this book; although one of Douglas' favorites,^ it lacks the solidity of the earlier books on Calabria and is essentially a breaking away from the scholarly approach to that land. Its influ ence on Douglas seems slight.
Even from such a cursory survey, one sees that the books on
Calabria possess certain common characteristics. First, they are dominated by a pensive scholarly note. Calabria seemed to require such treatment; not to know her rich past was to miss the peculiar chara of the land. Nor should one overlook the hundreds of learned monographs written by native Calabrian scholars whose effect in establishing a scholarly atmosphere about Calabria was considerable.
Douglas knew this lore thoroughly, as the pages of Siren Land and
Old Calabria testify .^ Second, the method of joining ideas in these books is generally associational, with time and pragmatic concern
subordinate to the idea itself and its dictates. In particular, association of ideas is prominent in Swinburne and
Lenormant. Finally, these travel books are written In a different spirit from the travel books of today. Their authors, unpreoccupied by World Wars and carburetors and income taxes and the other essen t i a l s o f modem l i f e , breathed more fre e ly and more deeply. Knowledge was their business. They inquired of everything, from fish at Taranto to the whereabouts of V irgil's Galaesus to reflections on classic physiognomy to the soul of Pythagoras. Perhaps travel conditions in
Calabria then invited such a questioning outlook. Today one rushes from one end to the other by car, unaware of what is being passed by.
In those days, when the same trip took weeks, and therefore time was not of the utmost importance, the traveler naturally opened his eyes to see and to ponder what today is unobserved.
Old Calabria is in several ways a successor to the books of
Lenormant and Swinburne. It fits clearly into their scholarly pattern, not only with chapters on Milton, Joseph of Copertino,
Girolamo di Rhada, Pythagoras, Byzantinism, the history of Saracenic
invasions, but also in its overall tone. Douglas is as curious as
Swinburne, and he feels no qualms about digressing on whatever
subject suits his fancy. His long discussion of the possible site
of Horace's Bandusian Fount could easily derive from the pages of
Lenormant. If there is a difference, it lies in Douglas' lighter
approach to scholarly matters. Douglas' brief "history" of
Castrovillari would be unthinkable in the books of Lenormant or Swinburne: "It was only built the other day, by the Normans; or by
the Homans, who called it Aprustum; or possibly by the Greeks, who founded their Abystron on this particular site for the same reasons
that commended it in yet earlier times to certain bronze and stone age prim itives, whose weapons you may study in the British Museum
and elsewhere" (PC. p. 123). Whereas Lenormant and Swinburne and
Kepple-Craven were vitally absorbed in scholastic disputes, Douglas
views them with a certain calm, and when Gissing decides that a particular stream is the Galaesus because he wants it to be, Douglas
approves; "There is something to be said for such an attitude, on
the part of a dilettante traveller, towards these desperate anti
quarian controversies" (PC. p. 82).
Frequently, Douglas utilizes the books of his predecessors as
a means of achieving perspective. He sees Calabria not only with his
own eyes, but with theirs also. "In the days of Kepple-Craven, the
vale was 'scantily cultivated with cotton'" (PC. p. 81). He
justifies a long description of Grottaglie, an unimportant Calabrian
town, because he Questions whether Lenormant or any of them came
here" (QC, p. 217). He is sceptical of the claims of a local
cicerone because he knows from their pages that matters are other
w ise:
The town, he told me, derives its name from certain large grottoes wherein the inhabitants used to take refuge during Saracen raids. This I already knew, from the pages of Swinburne and Sanchez; and in turn was able to inform him that a certain Frenchman, Bertaux by name, had written about the Byzantine wall- paintings within these caves. Yes, those old Greeks I he said. And that accounted for the famous ceramics 39 of the place, which preserved the Hellenic traditions in extra-ordinary purity. I did not infora him that Hector Preconi, who purposely visited Grottaglie to study these potteries, was considerably dis appointed. (OC, p. 79)
The dependence Douglas felt on the earlier writers of Calabria may perhaps be gathered from what he writes In Alone on Crauford
T a it Ramage, whose book, Nooks and Bvwavs o f I ta ly . 1868, he re g re ts not having read while writing Old Calabria:
I wish I had encountered this book earlier. It would have been useful to me when writing my own pages on the country it describes. I am always finding myself in accord with the author's opinions, even in trivial matters, such as the hopeless in adequacy of an Italian breakfast. He was personally acquainted with several men whose names I have mentioned . . . in fact, there are numberless points on which I could have quoted him with profit, (p. 250)
If Douglas resembles his predecessors in Calabria in his full scholarly treatment of his subject, he also follows them in his method of organizing his ideas along associational lines. One cannot of course claim that he was influenced directly by Lenormant or
Swinburne; Douglas seems to have naturally thought along associ ational rather than logical lines. Nevertheless, he was fully aware of this aspect of their books and comments on it with approval. At the close of Old Calabria occurs a long passage in praise of
Lenormant. In it, Douglas describes, in an association of his own, how Lenormant delicately and subtly moves from one subject to another. The passage is worth quoting in full since no critic yet 40 has provided a more perceptive description of Douglas' own method of association than he has here of Lenormant:
On a day like this, the scholar sailed at Bivona over a sea so unruffled that the barque seemed to be suspended in air. The water's en surf ace, he tells us, is "unie comme une glace." He sees the vitreous depths invaded by piercing sunbeams that light up its mysterious forests of algae, its rock-headlands and silvery stretches of sand; he peers down into these "prairies pelagiennes" and beholds all their wondrous fauna—the urchins, the crabs, the floating fishes and translucent medusae "sembables a des clochettes d'opale." Then, realizing how this "population pullulante des petits animaux marins" must have Impressed the observing ancients, he goes on to touch—ever so lightly!—upon those old local arts of ornamentation whereby sea-beasts and molluscs and aquatic plants were reverently copied by master- hand, not from dead specimens, but "prls sur le vif et observes au milieu des eaux"; he explains how an entire school grew up, which drew its inspiration from the dainty shapes and movements of these frail creatures. This is du meilleur Lenormant. His was a full-blooded yet discriminating zest for knowledge, (pp. 336 -337 )
One suspects, however, that Douglas' debts to the earlier
Calabrian writers were not so much material, to be calculated in terms of borrowings, as spiritual. In his lifelong crusade against con formity, he saw these early travelers "gadding about Europe" in search of Latin inscriptions, or archeological fragments, or something else not worth mentioning, as perhaps our last individualists. Over and over in the travel books he praises that combination of vitality, erudition, eccentricity, and independence which make a Ramage or a
Swinburne, and just as often he asks why such men have passed from the stage: "Those earlier ones were gentleman-scholars who saw things from their own individual angle. Their leisurely aristo cratic flavour, their wholesome discussions about this or that, their waywardness and a ll that mercurial touch of a bygone generation— where is it now? How went it? (E x p .. p. 13)? "Where are they gone, those candid inquirers, so full of gentlemanly curiosity, so in formative and yet shrewdly human; so practical—think of Urquhart*s
Turkish Baths—though stuffed with whimsicality and abstractions?
Where is tne spirit that gave them birth" (&, p. 64)?
Douglas saw himself In their tradition, perhaps as the last exemplar of their spirit. nI like all these old travellers,n he confesses on one occasion in Old Calabria, "not so much for what they actually say, as for their implicit outlook on life" (p. 217).
Perhaps here is the final comment on Douglas' relation to the earlier
Calabrian writers, he liked them for their "outlook on life." Old
Calabria is a manifestation of that outlook. It too is curious, in formative, shrewdly human and sadly lacking in useful facts. Its pages contain nothing about banking, or world politics, or auto motive mechanics. There is no mention of the giants of twentieth- century thought. Instead, it is a poking about in a world of the past. When Douglas visits Grottaglie to see the place where Joseph of Copertino, the Flying Monk, received his education, the priest who acts as his guide is confounded by such unnatural curiosity.
"That a Protestant should come all the way from 'the other end of the world' to enquire about a local Catholic saint of whose existence he himself was unaware seemed not so much to surprise as positively to alazm him" (PC. p. 79)* The episode is emblematic of Douglas' detachment from the modem world and its concerns; his world is bz rather that of the Calabrian travelers of the nineteenth- and eighteenth-centuries. At one point in Old Calabria, he notes( nI have not yet encountered a single English traveller, during my frequent wanderings over South Italy. Gone are the days of Kepple-
Craven and Swinburne, of Eustace and Brydone and Hoare" (p. 187)!
Their roving, inquisitive spirit, however, lived on in Douglas.
Old Calabria is a summing up of Douglas* early life and interests. When Richard Aldington asked Douglas years later how long he had taken writing Old Calabria. Douglas snapped, "thirty years.Douglas looking back could see that Old Calabria drew together the threads of his early life by closing a period of amateur scholarship that had begun with his entrance to the
Karlsruhe Gymnasium in 1881. Old Calabria was thus Douglas' fare well to the eccentric scholarly spirit that had animated himself and the Calabrian travelers before him.
Douglas was not the man to extend himself again as he had in writing Old Calabria, nor was it within his powers to do so. His interests had changed rapidly away from the scholarly toward life
itself. The Bishop Heard in South Wind. 1916, dramatizes this
change in direction that had already occurred in Douglas. Thus, when in 1917 he once again found himself writing a travel book, he paid little heed to any scholarly traditions behind him. He wrote
to express himself, to please his friends, and perhaps to boater le
bourgeois. What else could be expected of the author of that
outrageous book, South Wind? Douglas now had a reputation to live up to. Together found him in a less defiant mood than Alone. He was an established success (South Wind had already reached an expensive, signed, blue paper, limited edition); the war had passed. Together. by regressing into the scientific period of Douglas1 youth, is even a trifle scholarly.
The critic looking over Douglas' travel books and noting their diversity may thus be perplexed as to how Douglas should bi classified as a travel writer. Of his five travel books, only Old Calabria and perhaps Fountains are travel books in the accepted sense of the word.
What species of travel book is one on Central Italy which fails to describe what the author sees, as in the chapters on Fisa and Siena in Alone? Or a book on the Vorarlberg which recalls events from the author's boyhood? Any labeling of Douglas involves problems, as
Tomlinson discovered in 19315 it seems clear, however, that Douglas is closest to that strange group of scholarly eccentrics who preceded him in South Italy. 4 4
Footnotes
^The biographical material of this chapter has been taken, un less otherwise specified, from Douglas' autobiography Looking Back.
2See Woolf, Douglas Bibliography, pp. 19-25* for dates and descriptions of these early scientific monographs.
3Douglas' notebooks contain no entries to books published after 1906, at which date his researches on Capri stopped. In the Caori Materials he provides an explanation: "Ify zeal evaporated on the day when my library of Capri books was sold together with the prints it contained” (p. 270).
^According to the 1909 Diary, Douglas sent off "Siren-land chapters" to four different publishers. Only The English Review. probably at the instigation of Conrad, accepted, and then only one chapter of five (see Woolf, pp. 148-149).
^Davenport, Old Calabria. Intro., lists Douglas' "best books." They include South Wind. Looking Back, and all the travel books except Fountains (p. xvi).
^Bv the Ionian Sea (Portland, Maine, 1920), p. 215.
?Brydone claims his book is the first in English on Sicily. "Had there been any book in our language on the subject of the following letters, they never should have seen the light" (A Tour of Sicily and Malta. I /London, 17727)* P» 6.
^Travels in the Two Sicilies. I (London, 1?83), p. 251.
?I regret that I cannot include at this point a discussion of Crauford Tait Ramage's Nooks and Byways of Italy (published in 1868 but recording a Calabrian tour of 1828), for the simple reason that I have never seen a copy. The book clearly belongs in the scholarly manner of Swinburne, according to Douglas' account of i t in Aloner pp. 245-250. One is consoled to learn that Douglas too had been unable to find a copy before writing Old Calabria, and thus there is no question of influence (see Alone, p. 250).
10Gertrude Slaughter in her Calabria: The First Italy (Madison, 1939)* p. v, writes, "Francois Lenormant went /to Calabria^ as an archeologist, to study sites and origins and the character of 'Grand Greece.' His classic work L& Grande Gr&ce is s till quoted by scholars with respect after half a century of further research."
^L&, Grande Grfcce. I l l (P a ris, 1881-1884), p . 220. ^5
12. For Douglas' comments on G issing in ad d itio n to those in Old Calabria (see Siren Land, p. 238, and Late Harvest, p. 4?).
^In Old Calabria, p. 33» Douglas refers to the quantities of monographs on South Italy: "One is surprised how large a literature has grown up around this small place /VenossJ—but indeed, the number of monographs dealing with every one of these little Italian towns is a ceaseless source of surprise."
l4Pinonaan. p. 98. CHAPTER I I I
THE PROBLEM OF FORM
Organization in the travel book is probably not so important as in the novel for the simple reason that the former is a non-fictional form. The novelist must not only create, he must also order his fictional world, if his novels are to be meaningful works of art.
For example, Hardy has created in his novels a world governed by an ironic but omnipotent Fate, while Dostoievsky's novelistic world is wracked by dark passions and hidden impulses. If some inconsistency creeps into the novelist's ordering of his world, or if he is unsure of his conception, his meaning as a novelist becomes blurred.
Thackery, for example, has been criticized as a novelist for trying to create a world which he was unable to accept as a man.
On first glance, the travel writer seems untroubled by such weighty concerns. He has no world to create and organize, but simply one to wander about in and then describe, and, not in frequently, he w ill warn the reader that he intends none of the novelist's tricks of embellishment. If, however, his record is to rise above the guide book stage to the level of literature, then he must select and interpret what he sees. He must focus his and the
46 reader's attention on salient features while allowing the ephemera to pass unnoticed. As Brydone observed,
Few things I believe in writing being more diffi cult than this "S'emparer de 1'imagination," to force, to make outselves masters of the reader's imagination . . . through every scene, and make i t in a manner congenial with our own; every prospect opening upon him with the same light, and arising in the same colours . . . as upon us: For when descriptions fail in this, the pleasure of reading them must be very triv ial.1
The travel writer must balance these thoughts and impressions, the inner trip, with what "haps befel" him, the outer trip. In other words, the serious travel writer has an obligation toward organi zation not wholly unlike that of the creative writer, even if his problem is simplified by the trip framework inherent in any voyage.
In Norman Douglas' case, a solution to the questions of form and organization was more than an artistic obligation, it was a matter of survival. No other aspect of the w riter's trade gave him such diffi
culty. Even the most casual glance at his travel books reveals their formlessness, with the partial exception of Old Calabria: they have no real beginnings or ends; they lack purpose and intention; trip
sequences are hazy or non-existent; chapters follow in no per
ceptible order; pure scholarship jostles with scene description.
Reading them, one is reminded of Samuel Johnson's judgment of one of
his friends, "Yes, Sir, he has a great deal of learning; but it
never lies straight. There is never one idea by the side of
another; 'tis all entangled."^ Siren Land may serve as an example
of this structureless type of travel book. It opens with a turgid,
disjointed, half-scholarly, half-farcical account of Sirens and 48
Attendant Spirits in literature and folklore, rather than with a projected tour or general view of the Sorrentine peninsula and the distant isles of Capri and Ischia. One would like to think that this chapter has established a governing scholarly tenor, but instead, in later chapters, scholarship is mixed with field excursions, scene descriptions and racconti in impious abandon. Three chapters of pure scholarship do follow in the course of the book, but on subjects un related to one another and to the non-scholarly parts of the book as well. In chapter nine, for example, one wonders why Douglas chose
Suor Serafina as the subject of a scholarly disquisition instead of
John of Procida, especially since Douglas himself asks: "How comes it . . . that none of our scholars has written a monograph about him" (p. 277)T Suor Serafina1 s chapter occupies some one-seventh of the book, and yet she is unmentloned outside of her chapter, a f it testimony of her irrelevance to the remainder of the book.
Other non-scholarly chapters begin rambles which are left unfinished, while in the penultimate chapter, Douglas suddenly informs the reader he must soon terminate his book as "the Summer is fast draw ing to a close" (p. 260). Up to this moment, there has been no hint of a chronological scheme. It is characteristic of Douglas' random approach to composition that, as he later explained in Late Harvest. he actually "commenced the book" with this passage, strangely
"shifted autumn-wards in the text" (p. 75)•
That, however, Douglas may have in time found at least a partial
solution to the problem of form was implied by John Mavrogordato's 49 judgment of Alone, quoted In chapter one: nIt Is an improve ment . . . in unity I suppose of tone. To this opinion may be added what he later wrote of Together: "At last I've finished your book . . . I like it immensely . . . because it is all of a piece. You have kept the atmosphere just right, falling neither into cheapness nor sentimentality; and you've never filled a better bumper with your own inimitable blend of learning and life .
Mavrogordato knew his Douglas well, and his opinion is not to be lightly regarded. Another critic also sensed a unity in the diversity of Alone: Iytton Strachey wrote Douglas: "The variety of moods in it is indeed extraordinary; and yet the totality of the impression is completely preserved. "5 Finally, a third critic sensed a "peace" in Alone; Norman Douglas wrote at the close of
Alone of what he had written: "Maybe the tone of the time fosters a reminiscential and intimately personal mood, by driving a man for refuge into the only place where peace can s till be found—into himself" (p. 255 ).
From these testimonies to the unity of Alone and Together, and from the contrary but incontestable fact that Douglas' travel books are formally disorganized, a working hypothesis may be drawn to account for some of the otherwise discordant facts presented by the organization of the travel books: although Douglas was incapable of organizing his travel books in a formal sense, in which chapters are logically connected to one another and then combined into a greater totality, he learned with experience to unify their diverse parts around the expression of his own personality. In other words,
Douglas' concept of the travel book was not static, but one in which ever greater emphasis is placed on expressing the author's person ality, rather than on describing the external world. Such a concept obviously implies a principle of organization: if a scene, con versation, excursion, memory, or even a description throws light on the personality of the author, it is relevant to the structure of the book. In terms of organization, this conception of the travel book proved valid. Thus, while Siren Land and Alone are equally fonnless in respect to chapter sequence and total structure, the frankly autobiographical Alone contains an inner, "personal" unity that is lacking in Douglas' first travel book, which is largely a rendering of his impressions of the outer, physical world.
The autobiographical travel book did not come easily for
Douglas, nor did it come at once. Only after a long struggle last ing over a ten-year period did he understand sufficiently his own strengths and weaknesses to write the kind of self-revealing book exemplified by Alone, a book unified around the personality of its c re a to r.
Douglas' first attempts at travel literature were still those of the amateur scholar bent on following his daeman. There is little evidence that he valued the craft of travel literature, as befitted a sworn enemy of Henry James and his school.^ Technique was probably the least of Norman Douglas' concerns in 1908. Thus, when he decided
to compose a travel book on the Neapolitan region in May of that year, there were several reasons why such a book was destined to be poorly constructed. In the first place, the kind of travel book that
Douglas knew so well, the "CalabrianM travel book, did not lend itself to easy organization. The books of Lenormant and Swinburne, with their pervading scholarly content and association of ideas technique, are rambling and discursive. An easy fam iliarity hangs about their pages, and it was precisely this type of book that
Douglas was prepared to write. Scholarship, he seemed to have felt, was ample preparation for the writing of travel books. His cup of learning could not but run over, and Douglas, with his immense erudition, could easily have written half a dozen Siren T^nds.
Second, it is doubtful that Douglas had any real desire to organize Siren Land. He was after all an aristocrat in every sense of the word—by birth, training, intellect and inclination. He had never worked for a living, nor been forced to cater to the whims of the reading public (his "Capri Monographs" were written and privately published for a select group of savants). Is it likely that such a refined dilettante should compose a book—in orderly fashion for the convenience of the average reader? Scornfully, at the outset of
Siren Land, he snubs such an enterprise:
Were 1 writing a guide-book or historical account of this region, I would endeavour to give a systematic description of these legendary islets, supplemented with measurements and hints for travellers. But I am doing nothing of the kind; I am only dreaming through the summer months to the music of the cicadas, and dreams are irresponsible things that flit about aimlessly, dwelling with absurd gravity upon unconsidered trifles and never quoting statistics, (p. 42) Finally, in addition to these considerations, the publisher's rejection of seven of the twenty chapters of the original version doubtless disrupted the organization of Siren Land. Suffice it to say, however, that there is no evidence that Douglas revised the book, or in any way healed its wounds.
Douglas' second travel book, Fountains in the Sand, came so shortly after Siren Land that his attitudes and approaches toward travel literature were little altered. Tunisia, however, is not
South Italy, and Douglas had only superficial knowledge of its art and history and people. With no wealth of lore to rely upon, he had to write out of himself by recording the events of the inner and outer journeys. Under such circumstances, Fountains should have been better organized than it is, with the infallible trip schema as its basic structure. In fact, Douglas had such an intention in mind and announces at the outset a journey "down to the oases of the Djerid,
Tozeur and Nefta" (p. 7)* Instead, he devotes more than half the book to his experiences at Gafsa, the first halting place, with the result that after his declared program, the book seems to be all introduction. Nor has he recorded much of the inner trip; his personality never comes across, and one is left with the impression of a shadowy and passive Douglas who has only touched and been
touched by the surface of Arab life. The personal strength of a
Doughty is nowhere in evidence. Just how much of Douglas' proposed
trip, or of his character, was lopped off by Conrad when he read the manuscript, one can't say. Certainly, however, Douglas must be held
responsible for the final form of the book. 53 Old Calabria is the only one of Douglas1 travel books to make any pretence at formal organization. Briefly stated, Douglas' original plan was to record his 1911 Calabrian trip and thus confer upon his book a kind of natural organization, with a true "beginning, middle and end." The ascent o f Mount P ollino and then the tra v e rs a l of the high Sila Plateau might serve as the dramatic center of the book, bounded on either end by the contemplative, peaceful chapters written near the sea, at timeless Taras and Croton. The slow descent through Apulia into Calabria, and the rapid departure northward to
Agropoli, would supply a stately introduction and a rousing coda.?
This simple scheme was sadly complicated in 1912, when, after having written much of the manuscript, Douglas expanded the book with additional material not altogether in harmony with the 1911 trip sequence.
Douglas made considerable effort to give the 1911 manuscript a formal trip sequence, and in places he succeeds rather well. His usual practice is to look ahead (Calabria is a land of expansive vistas) over the country he w ill traverse. A few samples may suggest his technique, though out of context their "connective" value is not so obvious. "Hy eyes often rest upon. . . . Grottaglie, distant a few miles from Taranto on the Brindisi line. I must visit Grottaglie, for it was here that the flying monk received his education" (p. 68).
"From my window in th e h o te l I espy a small patch of snow on the hills. I know the place; it is the so-called 'Montagna del Principe' past which the track winds into the Pollino regions. Thither I am bound" (p. 127). When the occasion demands, Douglas can be 5b appropriately formal. At the close of the section on Apulia, at
Taranto, he provides a "full introduction” for his forthcoming journey through the mountains of Calabria. He begins:
Here I sit, on the tepid shingle, listening to the plash of the waves and watching the sun as it sinks over the western mountains that are veiled in mists during the full daylight, but loom up, at this sunset hour, as from a fabulous world of gold. Yonder lies the Calabrian Sila forest, the brigands' country. I will attack i t by way of Rossano, and thence wander, past Longobucco, across the whole region. It may be well, to come again into contact with streams and woodlands, after this drenching of classical associations and formal civic life! (p. 9*0
Then, as if unsatisfied with this "visual11 introduction and wishing to arouse his own and the reader’s curiosity even further, Douglas quotes a full-page extract from one of his beloved "old writers" on the manifold glories of Calabria. No finer introduction for his scenic but scholarly Calabrian adventure ahead could have been devised than this suggestive juxtaposition of the physical sight of
Calabria's wild mountains golden in the sunset with the antique and scholarly description of her natural glories.
When, however, Douglas decided to expand Old Calabria in 1912, he ran into organizational difficulties. How could additions from
Siren Ignd, his 1907* 1908, 1909 and 1912 trips to Calabria, and other
sources be grafted onto the 1911 manuscript without destroying its
trip sequence? The obvious answer was to "blend truth with un
truth" (&, p. 257). At times, Douglas effected his blend; he
casually introduces his 1913 chapter on Pythagoras ("The Sage of 55
Croton," chapter 38) at the end of the "Cotrone" chapter (no, 37) In the course of a midnight stroll:
Every fo o tste p i s a memory. Along th is very track walked the sumptuous ladies of Croton on their way to deposit their vain jewels before the goddess Hera, at the bidding of Pythagoras. On this spot, maybe, stood that public hall which was specially built for the delivery of his lectures. No doubt the townsfold had been sunk in apathetic luxury; the time was ripe for a Messiah. And lot he appeared, (p. 32*0
Or he pretends that his ascent of Montalto (chapters 30 and 32) followed upon his v isit to earthquake-ravaged Messina (chapter 29):
"After such sights of suffering humanity—back to the fields and mountains" (p. 251). In reality, three years separated these two visits, and neither was part of the 1911 Calabrian trip. At times, he made no attempt whatever to integrate new material. For example, only one of the three chapters originally written for Siren Land is organically related to the text.
The formal organization of Old Calabria is thus very uneven.
Where Douglas follows closely the 1911 trip , he manages some sequence of event. When he abandons it, the relation of chapter to chapter becomes obscured. But however well-managed the trip sequence, one wonders if it is sufficient in itself to organize a first-rate travel book. Must there not be some controlling thesis or purpose to inform and direct? Gissing at the outset of his the Ionian Sea announces his intention to escape the everyday world for the dream world of his childhood. Such an intention leaves no doubt of his intellectual bias, and helps to unify the book by establishing a principle of selection. Consequently, the reader is not suxprised that Gissing should prefer Metapontum, a poverty-stricken hamlet of fifty peasants and the remnants of a Greek temple, to Catanzaro, a populous modem city of 10,000 bit with nothing more ancient than a twelfth-century c a s tle . Even the wayward Ramage seems to have had a purpose, as
Douglas Indicates in Alone: "For it was no mean task that he had proposed to himself, namely, 'To visit every spot in Italy which classic writers had rendered famous'" (p. 67). But Douglas was un willing or unable to devise a controlling thesis for Old Calabria.
It has no guiding light. ]h fact, the reader does not even know why
Douglas is visiting Calabria. Thus, even had he been able to follow
the original plan for Old Calabria, one doubts that the book would have been organically unified. What, then, makes the hybrid 1915
Old Calabria hang together as well as it does?
The answer to this question lies in the fact that in Old
Calabria. Douglas for the first time expressed in large degree his
own personality. The idealized Douglas of Siren Land and the
passive and ineffectual Douglas of Fountains have given way to a
man of strong prejudices and beliefs, a man of keen humor and tren
chant sarcasm, a man of discriminating curiosity and scholarly attain
ment, a man in sum who is worth knowing. An example w ill show how
Douglas enters the book. Near the end of chapter nine, Douglas
recounts a scene that occurred years before in a Neapolitan book
store where he had chanced upon a biography of Joseph of Copertino,
the Flying Monk. Technically, the passage serves as a bridge to 57 the scholarly but interpolated chapter on "The Flying Monk, n chapter
10. Actually, our interest is on Douglas himself, as he relates how, in his enthusiasm to learn of this strange creature, he was easily out-bargained by the shopkeeper. The scene closes:
And so it came about that, relieved of a tenuous and very sticky five-franc note, and loaded down with three biographies of the flying monk, one of Egidio, tiro of Giangiuseppe—I had been hopelessly swindled, but there I no man can bargain in a hurry, and my eagerness to learn something of the life of this early airman had made me oblivious of the natural values of things—and with sundry smaller volumes of similar import bulging out of my pockets I turned in the direction of the hotel, promising myself some new if not exactly light reading. But hardly had I proceeded twenty paces before the shopkeeper came running after me with another formidable bundle tinder his arm. More books! An ominous symptom— the clearest demonstration of my defeat; I was already a marked man, a good customer. It was humiliating, after my long years' experience of the south. And there resounded an unmistakable note of triumph in his voice, as he said: "Some more biographies, sir. Read them at your leisure and pay me what you like. You cannot help being generous; I see it in your face." "I always try to encourage polite learning, if that is what you think to decipher in my features. But it rains santi this morning,N I added, rather sourly. "The gentleman is pleased to joke! May it rain soldi tomorrow." "A little shower, possibly. But not a cloud-burst, like today." (pp. 70-71)
In such passages as these, and there are many in Old Calabria. the solid figure of Norman Douglas first emerges clearly. With some reservation, what he wrote of Doughty years later in his appreciation of Arabia Deserta is true of himself in Old Calabria:
Here is not only information; here is character, a human document. The image of the poet-traveller is no blur. Doughty has etched his lonely figure against 5 8
this desolation of sand and lava-crag, and we are glad to see how the thing has been accomplished; i t does one good to be in contact with a companion full of natural resources and listen to his tale. (E x p . . p. 10)
The writing of Old Calabria thus marks a watershed in his career.
After two somewhat tentative and perplexing travel books, he suddenly attained full maturity as a writer. In the two succeeding years he wrote South Wind, the most famous of his books, and Alone, the most original. Their rapid appearance suggests that Douglas had found his way, that the intensive work expended in the writing of Old
Calabria had revealed to him his future course as a writer. Its organizational faults—its lack of a unifying point of view, its lack of a controlling thesis or "intellectual bias," its lack of any logical sequence—were the unavoidable expression of his own intel lectual weaknesses. In other words, he knew he had failed to achieve the ideal travel book in Old Calabria not because of insufficient effort (it is perhaps a safe guess that he "worked" three times as hard on Old Calabria as on any other book), but because of organic deficiency.
With equal force, the experience of writing Old Calabria, and particularly of "organizing" it, revealed to Douglas his strengths as a writer. The rousing scene in the Neapolitan bookstore, the
Juvenalian and wholly irrational harangue against Pythagoras, Plato and Christian idealism (chapter 38), even the unforgettable index with such entries as "saints, their pathological symptoms; un avoidable lack of originality; . . . their baroque period . . . their
Bourbon period"—in these pages Douglas for the first time saddled 59 the autobiographical hobbyhorse he w ill ride so well in Alone. The
"moral” of Old Calabria was clear—the formal, balanced* properly
constructed travel book was simply not his style. His talent lay in disorganisation, informality, eccentricity, in whatever constituted
the free expression of his personality, rather than in the subjugation of it to some mistaken ideal of form. He was one of the genuinely unique figures of his time. Why suppress the fact? Alone is the m anifesto o f the new Douglas.
It is, naturally, not easy to isolate the "unity of Douglas'
character" as a technique of organization in Alone and Together, the way one can isolate and describe a formal organizational device, such
as the manipulation of chronology. 3h brief, certain character
traits, certain intellectual formulas, certain prejudices, even
certain peeves and grievances permeate these two books like so many
unifying threads. Individually, they function like a Wagnerian
1 Y~ Just as the sound of Siegfried's horn call ringing
through the orchestra precedes the appearance of that great hero on
stage, so the mention of Plato's sacred name in the pages of a Douglas
travel book will be followed by a tirade against that "Father of
Dreamers." Collectively, these peeves and foibles add up to the
character of Douglas himself.
Douglas' method in Alone, and to a lesser degree, Together, is
to express himself on any subject that comes into his head, with full
rein given to pet prejudices. We learn in Alone his opinions on
Peruvian mummies, cats, Book Reviewers, why the Parisians have big
noses, moralizers and a hundred other odd topics. Every thought and 60 every action is grist to his mill. In other passages, his dislikes are clarified in an often ringing rhetoric that has a consistency of i t s own. Modem gadgetry, u n iv e rsal education, c r i t i c s , goats, p o lic e o ffic e r s , Henry James, "ism s," th e Madonna, m argerlne, progress—they all receive his cordial damnation. The following passage as he ponders the face of an Italian police officer who is about to arrest him is typical of the freedom with which he expresses his fancies:
I found myself studying the delegate *s physiognomy. What could one do with such a composite face? . . . How make it more presentable, more imposing? By what alterations? Shaving that moustache? No; his countenance could not carry the loss; it would forfeit what little air of dignity it possessed. A small pointed beard, an eye glass? Possibly. Another trimming of the hair might have improved him, but, on the whole, i t was a face difficult to manipulate, on account of its inherent insipidity and self-contradictory features; one of those faces which give so much trouble to the barbers and valets of European royalties. ( 4 * p. 237) The unfeigned expression of his prejudices and dislikes, joined to the full praise of those things which make life worth living—
Ouida, ruins, footnotes, lizards, incunabula, analphebetics, mountains, Neapolitan dialects, limericks—contrive to invest these books with a kind of Johnsonian unity. 'What is it—this sense of fundamental unity pervading the whole?" Douglas asks of the books of a favorite author, "It is the character of Isabelle Eberhardt herself" (Exp.. p. 135). Of course, a period of acquaintance is necessary on the part of the reader. The contradictory unity of such a complex and original personality is not to be sensed at once, but with each book, with each censure of Plato and each praise of Port, the figure of Douglas emerges in increasing clarity and reality. 61
The free expression of Douglas' character in Alone and Together did not yield a perfect unity, of course, for he was essentially a contradictory person. In him, no "ruling passion" held sway over its rivals to provide a rallying point, as, for example, Swift's
Christianity helps to unite that otherwise enigmatic and baffling figure. Douglas, however, is so honest and forthright in recording his thoughts and opinions, his contradictions and imperfections— sometimes he seems to delight in them—that he achieves a paradoxical kind of consistency. The reader comes to trust, even to believe in
Douglas, assured that no attempt w ill be made to abuse his con fidence. An example from Alone may illustrate this frankness of self-evaluation:
It kept me company, this melodious and endearing fairy, till where a path . . . led up to the ruins already visible. There the ethereal comrade took flight, scared, maybe, because my senses took on a g ro ssly mundane complexion—i t is a way they have, thank God—became absorbed, that is, in the con templation of certain blackberries, (p. 264)
One of his favorite quotations perhaps epitomizes his attitudes:
"Malheur a qui ne se contredit pas une fois par jour" (SL. p. 59)•
To sum up the present discussion, through Old Calabria. Douglas' conception of the travel book was more or less unchanged; he was content to write the kind of book he preferred himself: scholarly, sem i-personal, d e sc rip tiv e and somewhat inform al, in sh o rt, a book like those of Swinburne and Lenormant, whose function was to inform the reader of the history and lore of the land being visited. Its organization, if it had any, would derive from the traditional trip 62 sequence. However, the experience of trying to organize Old Calabria probably convinced Douglas that fonnal organization, although perhaps desirable in itself, was for him impossible. His own talent, as he came to realize, lay in the direction of autobiography, which for him meant yielding to his inclinations, rather than attempting to overcome them. Like the hero o f G ide's T.'TwmfrraHst.. he was forced to confess, nEn vain chercherais-je a imposer a mon recit plus d'ordre qu'il n'y a dans ma vie." Old Calabria thus is seen to be a kind of dramatic episode in which Douglas' aesthetic concept of the travel book clashes with the necessities of his character. Alone, by subjugating form to ex pression, dramatizes the outcome. Strangely, the fact that in Alone
Douglas was true to himself has imbued that book with a kind of in n e r, personal u n ity . Together shows him in a relaxed mood, co n fi dent in his formlessness. Autobiography is mixed with scholarship, scene descriptions, trips and memories to express the many-faceted personality of the author.
In terms of fonnal, conventional organization, Douglas' travel books must be severely censured. Siren Land and Together simply defy analysis; they have no perceptible organization. Even as deliberately distorted structures, they cannot be defended, as can, for example,
Conrad's Lord Jim. Except for parts of Old Calabria, there seems nothing deliberate whatever about the construction of a Douglas travel book, and he probably had as little control over the format of Alone as he did over his tastes in wine. In compensation, Alone and Together possess a kind of Inner unity easier felt than described.
Alone, in its formlessness, its low-seriousness, its Babelasian moments, its general lack of oietas. and its contempt for conven tional mores, is perhaps of all of Douglas' books the truest expres sion of his fascinating personality. He himself later referred to it as his favorite and the only one of his book he would not wish to change or rewrite. Like Byron's Don Juan or Beethoven's C sharp minor quartet, it contains material too individual for traditional moulds. If we are to reject such works of art because their form is flawed, then the very idea of form in art has lost its signifi cance. 64
Footnotes
Tour of Sicily and Malta (London. 1773)* I* p. 100.
^Boswell1s Life of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman (London, 1953)* P. 1237.
^Letter of October 3* 1921.
^Letter of January 13* 1923* Mavrogordato had just finished correcting the final proofs of Together for Douglas.
^Undated letter quoted in Looking Back, p. 350.
^Douglas frequently attacked James and his followers. See, for example, Alone, pp. 116-117* and Late Harvest. P. 37.
^Perhaps Douglas had the form of Arabia Deserta in mind. One of Doughty's critics has commented upon the structural features of the voyage into Arabia. "Doughty's actual travels and adventures have a natural unity of structure which man could hardly better. . . . They have a dramatic beginning and a dramatic end ing; they have their climaxes and their repetitions and their contrasting periods of repose." Barker Fairley, Charles M. Doughty (London, 1927)* p. 42. CHAPTER IV
THE ASSOCIATIDNAL UNIT
As Douglas would have doubtless suggested, "it stands to reason" that a man Ill-suited for one type of work w ill fare better in an opposite endeavor. Such was his own case. Although the formally organized travel book exceeded his powers, Douglas was able to manipulate the small form, or the individual chapter, with origi nality, versatility and confidence. This is not to say that the individual chapters are invariably perfect in their form. Douglas was far too erratic to be consistent in any undertaking. The point is that within the small form he was at home and there often excelled.
The reasons for this comfort are easily discovered. Since far less constructive power is necessary for the small form, Douglas* logical shortcomings, particularly his incapacity to organize in rational sequence, were of slight consequence. On the other hand, his strengths—his informality, his individuality, and even his eccentricity—seem essential to the small form, whether it be called
the lyric, the leu d1esprit, the mazurka or the single chapter itself.
Douglas* problem was thus not to overcome his inclinations as he had
to do in the large form, but find their proper expression by con
trolling and directing his non-logical, associational intellect.
65 No one, I suspect, will argue that association of ideas per se leads to good organization. Sterne's warning example is still fresh in our winds, and probably we think of association as leading to disorganization rather than the reverse. Nonetheless, even on a large scale, association and organization are not necessarily inimical, as
Joyce and Virginia Woolf have demonstrated. Joyce adapted his modem
Odyssey to the framework of the Homeric epic; Virginia Woolf selected some visible, concrete part of the environment, a lighthouse or an airplane, on which she and her characters might sight their associ ations. If then the associational process can be held in check by some tangible control, it can be organized.
No task could have been simpler or more natural for Norman
Douglas. He was too self-conscious ever to deliver himself com pletely to excess, even excessive length in his books. Such a rhapsody as Lawrence's Women in Love would have been constitutionally impossible for Douglas, even had he had the requisite imagination.
To be carried away in one's art to the extent of 400 pages, to be convinced in one's artistic mission to the point of self-oblivion, these were mental states both ludicrous and reprehensible in Douglas' eyes. The thought of being a long-winded bore horrified himJ In fact, had it not been for this natural moderation, he might well have written a second Tristram Shandy, since his brain was amply stocked and amply discursive.2 Instead, Douglas inclined toward the other extreme. His associational sequences tend to be clipped off, samples as it were, rather than the real thing. The fine "Cotrone" chapter of Old Calabria, shortly to be discussed, might profitably be doubled in length. Even Douglas eventually realized that Alone, the most associational of his books, was too short.3
Douglas1 real excellence in limiting the associational process lies, however, not in any natural fear of length, but in his
"technique 11 of blending setting and association into a unified, dramatic whole. Since his intellect was too close to the earth for
fanciful flights, his associations are never far-divorced from the
flesh or the soil; they spring out of their environment naturally
and casually, yet their relation to their source is an intimate one.
For example, while on a leisurely walk in his beloved Siren Land,
something w ill catch Douglas' eye, a section of antique masonry
underfoot, which suggests a subject—how the cut of a piece of brick
may date it during the reign of a particular emperor. Once under
way, the subject broadens to a discussion of Roman villas to be
found in Siren Land, and then to various ramifications: how the
villas of the governing class differed from those of the wealthy
aristocracy, how the wealth and social status of the owner may be
deduced from the location of his villa (villas facing the North were
inhabitable only during the Summer), how social life differed accord
ing to the season, whether the climate has changed appreciably since
Roman times. All unawares, both the reader and Douglas himself have
been lured into a disquisition on Roman architecture and some of its
functions, without ever trespassing the bounds of the Immediate h, environment. “Technique" is perhaps not the right word to describe this process that has nothing artifical about it. The hand of the crafts man is nowhere in evidence. These associational miniatures simply exist, as if Douglas has somehow got down on paper one of his own thought sequences. Here is perhaps the answer to his mastery of the small form and his failure in the large forms. The individual chapter, casually composed of an associational sequence aroused by some aspect of the tangible reality about him, expressed part of
Douglas' being. The large form, in contrast, by demanding a logical relation of parts and a seriousness of intent and purpose, demanded something not within Douglas and absolutely foreign to his nature.
Perhaps a more dedicated w riter could have overcome these limitations for the reality of his art. To this pious Epicurean, however, for whom life itself was the only reality, such self-immolation would have been sacrilege.
In the following pages, I should like to examine selected chapters from the travel books to "see how the thing has been accom plished, that is, to demonstrate how Douglas was able to fuse setting and association into an integrated, self-containing unit.
Douglas' technique can be most clearly seen by tracing the declining importance of the setting in the setting-association equation. As
Douglas gained mastery over his "technique," and as he turned away from the outer world, or setting, towards his own inner experience for subject matter, he expressed himself with increasing variety and freedom, until he reached the "pure expressionism" of Alone.^ These pages serve a second end as well. In Alone Douglas wrote of "these travel-pages themselves that register nothing bat the cross-currents of a mind which tries to see things as they are" (p. 220). I hope that an examination of a few of these "cross-currents" w ill provide some insight into the workings of Douglas1 basically associational intellect, and further, that such insight will in turn clarify the strangely autobiographical travel books themselves, where Douglas
"wrote himself down."?
The setting is given maximum importance in the associational chapters of Siren Land, where i t provides an organizational frame work by governing not only the sequence of Douglas' associations, but their content as well. Douglas' organizational technique at this stage may be illustrated by one of his most provocative early chapters, "Bain on the Hills." The setting pictures Douglas trapped in a peasant cottage far from his home base, while outside the rain pours in sheets. The chapter consists of his associations as they are invoked by what he sees and hears while waiting for the rain to cease. The device is an ingenious one, for what else can one do but soliloquize? The chapter is thus an imaginative discourse on those varied aspects of Siren land which the setting brings to Douglas' mind.
Douglas' associations commence at once when, looking through
"panes streaming with downpour," he considers the advantages of a
summer rain: its cooling effects and its pleasant odors. A tower nearby catches his eye and evokes an anecdote, beginning, "for the place is associated in ray mind . . ." (p. 142). That finished,
Douglas discusses the flora of Siren Land, only to break off with 70
"and still it rains" (p. 146). His glance now turns indoors to the room itself, and after a brief description, he picks up something to read, an Italian trade catalogue. The list of authors advertised leads to a weighing of Italian and English reading habits. These speculations end when Douglas discovers that he is hungry. A peasant girl enters and suggests various local specialities, "guarracini and scorgani and aguglie and toteri and — —" (p. 151). Each item evokes associations on the food of Siren Land, until the mention of
Zuppe de Pesce leads, after many convolutions, to a Professor
Schubart's theory that man was descended from the dolphin.
Setting and association have become especially close at this point. The thought of the dolphin reminds Douglas of the sea, and he looks o u t through the rain s "The window where I s i t would o ffe r a fair view upon vineyards and distant sea, if the panes were not
streaming with the downpour" (p. 155). Unable to view the sea, his
thoughts return to the dolphin, that magical fish of many legends,
one o f which now comes to mind. Douglas 1 fish-reflections are
suddenly interrupted by, "Perhaps the signore would prefer a
hen" (p. 160)? Has the peasant girl been standing there all the
while, or are Douglas' associations on the fish lore of Siren Land
but the product of a moment? One cannot tell. The hen reminds
Douglas of a fantastic hen story, which he recounts with great energy.
The chapter suddenly ends on a b u rs t of sunshine.
In this, perhaps Douglas' first attempt to combine setting and
association, it is easy to see the complete dominance of the former,
as his thoughts respond to the environment with behavioristic regularity. The rain* the grass outside the window, the tower, the room ("It w ill be some time before the picture of this room is effaced from my memory"), the catalog, and the remarks of the peasant girl are just so many physical stimuli bombarding the Douglas cerebellum to produce the proper ganglial responses. And yet, there is nothing mechanical about the organization of the chapter. Douglas has been careful to give his responses psychological validity. He begins by looking ou tsid e the window a t the ra in , as a man does when he is in a hurry to get home. Then, slowly resigning himself to a wait, his attention casually wanders about the room until he finds something to read. Finally, he discovers that he is hungry. His associations follow a parallel cycle. At first they are brief, staccato as befits his impatience. Then, as time passes and he resig n s him self to a long w ait, they become le is u re ly , u n til the story-telling stage is reached. It is obviously time for the "deus ex machina" in the form of a ray of light to close the chapter on a quick, bright chord.
Such a cursory summary of Douglas' treatment is apt to overlook his clever solution to an age-old artistic problem—how to present in palatable form necessary factual information. Instead of a lec ture on Siren Land, Douglas has dramatized his scene, and the associ ational processes that accompany it. He has not related what happened on a particular afternoon, but has acted it out before our eyes. So interesting is the drama that the reader of "Rain on the
Hills" is hardly aware that he has consumed considerable information on Siren Land, on its flora and fauna, its food, its folklore, and 72 even on the Intellectual life of Italy and the psychology of the peasant. If only all scholarship were half so interesting. If only certain requisite information in Bergson's concept of £>e Rlre might be presented by means of a dramatic farce, or perhaps Wordsworth's dictum that poetry must utilize the speech of common man by means of the limerick.
With Old Calabria. Douglas has learned to subdue and disguise the organizational frame represented by the setting, so that one is not always aware of just how a chapter is organized. Such a chapter is the nCotronen chapter, perhaps Douglas' finest example of blending setting, association and action into a single unit. The chapter follows a day's activities, not rigidly, but by selecting those hours after lunch and after dinner, when the mind is at peace and free to associate. These two periods form the core of the chapter and are framed by non-associational descriptions.
The first passage is introduced by two sentences which, not with out irony, establish the setting: "The long hours following luncheon are consecrated to meditation and repose. A bundle of Italian news papers has preceded me hither; upon these I browse dispersedly while awaiting the soft call to slumber 11 (p. 318). One by one, Douglas comments on th e papers, in slumberous le is u r e . The "venial and vapid Neapolitan dailies" are soon put aside. Then humorous quota tions are given from the "richly-tinted" personal columns, where lovers under pseudonyms carry on their affairs at "two sous" a wo id:
They are nothing if not poetic, these love-sick swains. Arrow murmurs: "My soul lies on your pillow, carresslng you softly"; Strawberry 73
laments that as "bird outside nest, I am alone and lost. What sadness," and Star finds the "Days eternal until Thursday". . . • The sagacious Cooked Lobster desires, before commiting himself further, "a personal interview." He has perhaps been cooked once before, (pp. 319-320)
Douglas' re fle c tio n s soon become te r s e r :
Ah, here are politics and News of the World, at last. A promising article on the "Direttisslmo Roma-Napolin—the railway line that is to connect the two towns by way of the Pontine Marshes. . . . Dear me! This reads very familiarly. . . . Why, to be sure, it is the identical dissertation, with a few changes by the office-boy, that has cropped up period ically in these pages for the last half-century, or whenever the railway was first projected. The line, as usual, is being projected more strenuously than before, and certain members of the government have gone so far as to declare . . . H’m! Let me try something else: "The Feminist Movement in England" by Our London Correspondent (who lives in a little side street off the Toledo); that sounds stimu lating. . . . The advanced English Feminists—so it runs—are taking the lead in encouraging their torpid sisters on the Continent. . . . Hardly a day passes, that some new manifestation of the Feminist Movement . . . in f a c t, i t may be avowed th a t the Feminist Movement in England . . .
The air is cooler, as I awake, and looking out of th e window I perceive from the mellgw lig h t-e ffe c ts that day is declining, (p. 320) /Ellipsis marks in original/7 The fine irony and sarcasm should not pass unnoticed. Douglas has n o t o v e rtly condemned the fem in ist movement; he has simply gone to
sleep while reading about it, with the satire immeasurably sharpened
by his silence.
Although without extensive quotation the full impact of this
associational passage is difficult to imagine, what Douglas has done
is to dramatize an associational sequence, rather than describe it.
He has, in effect, "browsed dispersedly while awaiting the soft call 7^ to slumber,H and the reader should be aware of a passing of time, and of the particular setting of these associations: Douglas stretched o u t on h is bed, reading casu ally various news item s as he moves from paper to paper, u n til an e d ito ria l on th e fem in ist movement f in a lly puts him to sleep. This dramatization of an association by giving i t a time dimension is perhaps not unlike Cezanne's attempt to imbue his paintings with a sense of depth.
The second lengthy associational sequence of the chapter, the one after dinner, opens with the setting:
This meal marks the termination of my daily tasks; nothing serious is allowed to engage my attention, once that repast is ended; I call for a chair and sit down at one of the small marble-topped tables in the open street and watch the crowd as it floats around me, smoking a Neapolitan cigar and Imbibing, alternately, ices and black coffee until, towards midnight, a final bottle of vino di Ciro is uncorked—fit seal for the labours of the day. (p. 321 )
Conversation now begins, appropriately, on Calabrian wine, and on that most important problem, how to uncover the best vino di famielia which, needless to say, is superior to any that can be bought on the market. Douglas' language is eloquent and poetic, as befits the converse of a rich mind at perfect ease:
Now although, when young, the Calabrian Bacchus has a wild-eyed beaute du diable which appeals to one's expansive moods, he already begins to totter, at seven years of age, in sour, decrepit eld. To pounce upon him at the psycho lo g ic a l moment, to discover in whose cool and cobwebby cellar he is dreaming out his golden summer of manhood— that is what a foreigner can never, never hope to achieve, without competent local aid.®
Such wine is never to be had in the hotel, but your host w ill not mind if you bring your own bottle of vino di famiglia; "He tests 75 your wine, snacks his lips, and thanks you for communicating a valuable discovery. He thinks he w ill buy a bottle or two for the use of himself and a few particular friends. . . . Midnight has come and gone. The street is emptying" (p. 323)* /Ellipsis marks in o r ig in a l^
Again, the associational sequence has been dramatized. The way to pass an evening in Cotrone is to converse, while imbibing coffee and ices, and then close on a bottle of Ciro wine. Douglas drinks and talks, and at one point casually remarks, "This wine of Ciro, for instance, is the purest nectar" (p. 322). He has, we assume, reached that "final bottle of Ciro," a whole litre for which a con siderable peroration will be required. The reader must imagine the setting and be aware of the passing of time if this sequence is to have full effect.
In the "Cotrone" chapter, scene, association and action have become one in a perfect miniature, for the chapter is only six pages long. Even so, the reader can almost visualize Douglas at Cotrone.
There are no vague generalizations; just a sentence or two to raise the curtain upon an action performed before the reader's imagination.
The strokes are deft, precise, concrete. Douglas knows what he wants and how to get it. Seldom has he so facilely bridged the fom- content dichotomy as in this chapter.
Alone marks a new approach to the organization of the in dividual unit.? In Siren Land and Old Calabria Douglas' associations
are essentially concerned with the outer world, as he thinks about the odors and food and fish of Siren Land, or the room he is in, or the merits of Calabrian wine and Neapolitan newspapers. In Alone. however, Douglas is far more interested in expressing his own per sonality, as he remembers the days of his youth, or blasphemes some moralist or an inferior brand of whisky, or wonders why Latins can't leave trees unpruned. The outer world does not disappear, of course, but frequently it serves only as a prod to start some associational sequence. The chapter on the venerable city of Pisa, for example, contains a series of memories about a friend of Douglas' who chanced to die there in its train station. This shift away from the outer world explains why in Alone the setting is a less important factor in Douglas' associations. Alone is too paradoxical a book however to be characterized by any facile generalization; it traces a full gamut, and includes completely extrovert passages of description.
Nevertheless, the inward trend is unmistakable, even if not every where manifest.
The new method of organizing the individual unit can most
clearly be demonstrated by examining several associational sequences
in an order based on the progressive decrease in importance of the
setting. In Douglas' account of his visit to Ferento, 12 August
1917* the setting still frames the associations, but that a new
technique is at work can be seen in the first sentence: "Now what
happened at Ferento7 Let me try to reconstruct that morning's
visit. Here is the frame of reference; the visit is not to be
described first hand, but only as Douglas can remember it. Hence,
the setting must be "inward11 and subjective, since i t is a remembered setting. The phrase, "that morning's visit" is equivocal, referring both to the physical act of walking the eighteen kilometres to Ferento and back, and to the more significant voyage over the landscape of
Douglas' memories. A few lines indicate the outer scene, before a single phrase formally introduces the real, or associational voyage.
"I recall that trudge along the highway and how I stepped across patches of sunlight from the shade of one regularly planted tree into
that of another. The twelfth of August. . . . It set me to thinking
. . ." (p. 263 ). /Ellipsis marks in original/7 At this point, "it set me to thinking," Douglas' associations begin, with no connection to
the setting. A Brahms' Intermezzo comes to mind, and launches some
romantic specualations on that composer. He is interrupted, however,
by the sight of clusters of blackberries, which recall two old
memories: first, remaining in an out of the way Scotch Inn until
the last bottle of a case of rare whisky which he had found there by
accident was "cracked"; and, second, halting a bicycle trip at a
sm all French v illa g e u n til a c e rta in meadow of d e licio u s mushrooms
"was cropped close." In both instances, Douglas drank and ate until
nothing remained for anyone else.
The psychological appropriateness of these two memories may
escape the reader, unless he recalls that Douglas on first seeing
the blackberries by the road had remarked in some irritation, "the
tons of blackberries that fall to the earth in Italy unheeded." Of
course, there are far too many for one man to eat, no matter how
inexhaustible his appetite, so Douglas recalls two similar chance 78 occasions on which he was able to eat everything, and let nothing
"fall to the earth unheeded.n The solace of these two memories is only temporary, since the blackberries still confront him there, un eaten. This return to the setting is short-lived for Douglas soon loses himself in trying to solve the question, how could one man eat all those blackberries, as he had the French mushrooms. First, he might specialize in one of the two Italian varieties of blackberry.
But then, he would be forever thinking of the other variety, falling to the ground uneaten. Reality now gives way to reverie, as Douglas envisions a richly fantastic solution:
Or else—seeing that every zone of altitude bears brambles at its season and that the interval between the maturing of the extreme varieties is at least four months—he might pilgrimage athwart the country in a vertical sense, devouring blackberries of different flavour as he went along; he might work his way upwards, boring a tunnel through the landscape as a beetle drills an oak, leaving a track of devastation in his rear- browsing aloft from the sea-board, where brambles are black in June, through tangled macchia and vine-clad slopes into the cooler acclivities of rock and jungle—grazing ever upward to where, at close of September and in the shadow o f some lonely peak on which the white mantle of winter has already fallen, he finds a few more berries struggling for warmth and sunshine, and then, s till higher up, just a few more— the last, the very last of their race—dwarfs of the mountains, earthward-creeping, and frozen pink ere yet they have had time to ripen. Here, crammed to the brim, he may retire to hibernate, curled up like a full-gorged bear and ready to roll downhill with the melting snows and arrive at the sea-coast in time to begin again, (p. 266)
At this point, when Douglas and the reader have forgotten about
the walk to ancient Ferento in his blackberry dreams, its ruins
suddenly burst upon the scene. Douglas seems to regard them as an
intrusion, an unwelcome visitor who awakens him from his fantasies. 79
"Dutifully I Inspect the ruins,H he grumbles, and then concludes with relief that Ferento was "relatively unimportant and relatively modem" (p. 267). The sight of a shepherd with his dog nearby offers
Douglas an excuse for avoiding further exploration, and he walks over to talk. The conversation is soon cut short, for when the peasant mentions having been to Zurich, a new train of association begins and the setting is once again pushed aside, Switzerland being an id^e fixe whose mention sets in motion a series of associations as ir revocably as if the word "’Nose1 had been mentioned to my father."
Zurich: incongruous image I Straightway I was trans ported from this harmonious desolation of Ferento; I lost sight of yonder clump of withering thistles . . . and I found myself glancing over a leaden lake and wandering about streets further afield, into feature less hills encrusted with smug, tawdry villas and drinking-booths smothered under noisome horse- chestnuts and Virginia creepers. How came they to h it upon the ugliest tree, and the ugliest creeper, on earthT Infallible instinct! Zurich; who shall sum up thy merciless vulgarity? (p. 268)
The shepherd is forgotten, and all "along that hot road the spectre of Zurich pursued me" (p. 269). Thus, Douglas introduces a second series of reflections which dominate his return trek.
Douglas’ reflections are so casual and interesting that one is apt to ignore the excursion itself. 'What happened at Ferento?" he began by asking. On the level of event or action, nothing—nothing is said of Ferento and the walk there. That it contains a supremely interesting Etruscan-Roman theatre, the only surviving example of
Etruscan civic architecture, apparently did not strike Douglas as worthy of mention.^ One thinks of the history and descriptions a 80
Lenormant would have evoked. Ironically, Douglas has described with precision only the shepherd and his dog, particularly the latter.
Nevertheless, he has faithfully recorded 'What happened at Ferento," since the excursion was an inner, associative one.
However in s ig n ific a n t the s e ttin g , or th e ac tu a l walk to Ferento may appear in comparison to the associational voyage, it is not with out organizational consequences. Both of the lengthy associational sequences which make up the bulk of the chapter are touched off by something Douglas sees (the blackberries) or hears ("Zurich") in the setting. In addition, the trip to Ferento and back, with its coming and going, provides an excellent frame for Douglas' associations.
Not only are they divided into two separate sequences of roughly equal length, corresponding to the two halves of the trip, but the
Zurich sequence is closed with a second reference to Brahms, or the original starting point of this associational circle: "And here, as the name formulated itself /Boecklin, the Swiss painter/ that little sprite of Brahms, that intermezzo, once more leapt to my side out of the parched fields" (p. 270). Thus, the two trips parallel each other, before drawing to a harmonious close on Brahms, or the real starting point of the excursion. One must admire the art with which
Douglas has blended setting and association; he has limited his reflections while taking nothing from their naturalness and freedom.
He was not always so fortunate.
The reduced importance of the setting in Douglas' later travel books may be further illustrated by the first two chapters of 81
Together. In the Ferento visit, the walk frames the associations; in the first two chapters of Together the setting is so underplayed that its presence goes unnoticed, even though it provides a background and a partial justification for the associations and memories and conversations which make up these two chapters.
The first chapter begins with a brief sketch of the setting.
"It rains. It has rained ever since our /Douglas and Mr. R J a r riv a l in this green Alpine village /Thuringen, Austria, Douglas' birth place/. . . . Little I thought ever to become a guest in this tavern, familiar as it is to me from olden days'1 (p. 3)* Douglas then d escribes h is room before looking o u t of the window as would any curious traveler when it is raining. The next three long paragraphs focus on the three points of the compass visible from his room, each evoking a series of memories from his youth, while at the same time giving the reader some idea of the appearance of Douglas' "valley".
"I glance eastwards and recognize the old, old view, the earliest that ever greeted my eyes," for Douglas recalls having been lifted from his crib to watch the aurora borealis on the only time it was ever seen in the province (p. 5)* From another window, he sees the ancient church with its red-topped steeple "confronting me on its h illo c k ."
In such maimer the setting mingles with Douglas' memories, until, his geographic orientation over, he turns to other subjects which will form the bulk of this first chapter: a description of their menu with its local culinary specialties and a lengthy argument with 82
Hr. R. over certain non-conformist past participles and other fail ings of the English language.
Chapter two opens without indication of setting or time: "Now what may that old Brunnenmacher have looked like" (p. 21)? Is it a continuation of the first chapter? The reader has no idea of who the
Brunnenmacher was, and even less of what he looked like. In frag mentary fashion, one leams that he was a friend of Douglas' father, and that his son was Douglas' closest childhood friend. The reader seems forgotten as Douglas loses himself in boyish memories of hunting and mountaineering with the Brunnenmacher. "So I pursue the memories,
as they rise from the past, of those old days of the Brunnenmacher"
(p. 29). At last, Douglas begins a conversation with the Innkeeper,
an old friend, on local subjects, but chiefly on the rain, "What I want to know is this: how about the rain? Are we in for a
Landregen" (p. 32 )? The rain has not been mentioned since page seven of the first
chapter. In fact, it has been forgotten, but its influence has not
therefore ceased. What are these first two chapters but the talk of
a man who, unable to go outdoors because of the rain, occupies him
self, first with reminiscences about the good old days of his youth—
of hunting and mountaineering, of past friends, even of his first
cigarette and a tame marmot—and then with conversations of the
present—of the food, of Mr. R's Ehglish difficulties, of the hotel
accomodations and so forth. Thus, although the rain, which is really
the active part of the setting, is all but forgotten, its influence is considerable. Without it. much of Douglas' talk and memories, particularly those of the Brunnenmacher. would seem arbitrary. Douglas emphasizes the importance of the rain when he begins chapter three with these words: ttA really fine morning at last; glorious sunshine. 'Now for those idiots,' says Hr. R., and so do I. We have found out about them, from the inn-peopleN (p. 37 )• One can picture them bursting forth from the Inn, eager for outside activity, after their enforced captivity indoors.
The handling of the setting in these first two chapters is how ever somewhat enigmatic. If it is to play an influential, con versation-making role, why has Douglas allowed the reader to forget about it? Perhaps the setting has been overly subdued. Perhaps if some references had been made between pages seven and thirty-two to the rain, or to their confinement within the Inn, these pages would bind together with more cohesiveness. After all, Douglas' idea of presenting necessary introductory material in an "indoors" chapter where such conversation would be normal was an ingenious one. Why then be so coy with it? What is the use of such an imaginative mise en sc&ne if it is not to be exploited, as he exploited the similar frame of the "Rain on the Hills" chapter of Siren Land?
If the setting is an important organizational device not to be neglected, what happens when i t is completely suppressed and thus can exert no check on the associational processes? When are they too long or too short? Douglas' practice suggests his answer to these questions. Such sequences seem organized if they are brought to a full, sharp close, and if they are kept to reasonable length, just 84 as the short story should be short. The second Rome chapter of Alone
Is broken up Into six such miniatures (one Is rather long) y the third of which, Douglas' visit to his friend Mrs. Nicholst presents an in teresting example of how Douglas could free associate and s till conserve a sense of fom. As customary, Douglas paints the setting at the outset; in this case, he has climbed the ninety odd steps to Mrs. Nichols' apartment
16 announce his arrival in Italy, only to find her occupied. He decides to wait in her library, and there spies copies of Gautier and
Baudelaire. He begins to weigh their formidable merits, which are not so formidable in his opinion. Gautier seems overly facile, while
Baudelaire is overly nebulous, and yet, in Douglas' mind, all that nebulosity is but a cover for the poet's fidelity to his mistress,
"that stupid and spiteful old cat of a semi-negress" (p. 205). In fact, Baudelaire's behavior perfectly illustrates the gulf between the "logic of the emotions" and "the logic of the intellect which ought to shape our actions" (p. 205). Why, Douglas wonders, could
Baudelaire not see that he was being a fool, for, after all, he was
"a man of ruthless self-analysis" (p. 205 ).
The fa ilu re o f Baudelaire to see him self as others saw him reminds Douglas of a particularly charming opisode from his own youth. Everyday, he used to wait for his true love, standing in the shadow of the obelisk at the center of the nearby Piazza del Popolo.
What a fool he must have looked, thinks Douglas, standing there by his obelisk, "petrified into a pillar of fidelity," his eyes glued apprehensively on the clock. However, if anyone had suggested that his actions were not in accord with the "logic of the intellect,"
Douglas would have gravely replied, "The logic of the intellect, my dear Sir, is incompatible with situations like mine. It was not invented for so stupendous a crisis. I am waiting for my negress— can't you understand?—and she is already seven minutes late . . .
(p. 206). /Ellipsis marks in original^ Then, without transition,
Douglas is contemplating some moribund cats in Trajan's forum.
So interesting have been these reflections on Baudelaire, and so perfectly natural the ensuing sequence of Douglas1 own recollec tions, that the reader forgets that Douglas is waiting all the while in Mrs. Nichols' library, and that according to the "logic of the intellect," we ought to attend him there. Instead, by leading his associations to a full close on the image of the young Douglas wait ing for his negress, he achieves a sense of finality which makes a
return to the original setting unnecessary. In no sense, then, does
this incompleted narrative seem incomplete. In its way, it is perfectly molded, even though the divorce between the setting and
the association is almost complete. The setting has no other function
than to incite Douglas' associations.
A final example from Alone shows just how far Douglas was willing
to divorce setting from association. Little interpretative comment
is necessary as the following quotation speaks for itself.
It rains persistently in soft, warm showers. Borne is mirthless. There arises, before my mind's eye, the vision of a sweet old lady friend who said to me, in years gone by: 'When next you go to Rome, please le t me know if it is still raining there." 86
I t was here th a t she celebrated h er honeymoon—an event which must have taken place in the 'sixties or thereabouts. She is dead now. So is her husband, the prince of moralizers, the man who first taught me how contemptible the human race may become. Doubtless he expired with some edifying platitude on his lips and is deblatteratine them at this very moment in Heaven, where the folks may well be seasoned to that kind of talk. (p. 120)
Once started on the subject. Douglas goes on to denounce this
"prince of moralizers" and the Victorian brood he typified, until at last he closes on the usual major chord, "Well, well! R.I.P."
(p. 122). Douglas knew full well that to reduce the setting beyond this point would be to enter the domain of the essay, where he was both uncomfortable and unfitted. In other words, except in a few rare cases, he prefers to support himself on the tangible world he
so loves. "What you can not find on earth is not worth seeking"
(&• P» 137)* Together, as the title suggests, is a step backwards from the isolation and the "pure associationism" of Alone toward
the outer, common, shared world of the market place.
These few passages w ill perhaps suggest the skill and orig
inality Douglas brought to the individual chapter or episode. In it he could be perfectly natural, and in so being, he could excel.
Naturalness is indeed the keynote of these passages. How often, for
example, does Douglas begin a narrative, only to forget it in the
course of some fascinating series of associations. Yet probably few
of his readers were aware that such narratives are unfinished. 12
His digressions were too interesting, and one wonders if Douglas
himself was aware. "Technique" thus seems an inappropriate tem
to describe so natural a proceeding. Rather, the best technique for Douglas was a systematic avoidance of all technique, while giving free rein to the expression of his remarkable personality.
In Alone Douglas wonders if it is possible to identify oneself with a writer, that is, "to instill oneself within his mentality and make it one's habitation" until one has "lived two lives and possessed two ch aracters" (p . 63). Perhaps such an ideal drove Douglas to record some of his associational sequences with a clarity that en ables the reader, if he wishes, to partake of them first hand, rather than merely read about them. He is being invited, so to speak, to accompany Douglas to Ferento rather than watch from afar. Douglas is not writing, like Pamela, locked in her closet (or Squire B's), but in plein-air. "Come, let us discourse beneath this knotty carob- tree . . . of leisure" he apostrophizes the reader to begin one of his finest associational chapters, that "On Leisure" in Siren Land.
The result of this free approach is to break down the bonds of formality which separate the writer from his audience.
In a sense, Douglas is close to the twentieth-century novelistic ideal that the reader should be placed in direct contact with the thoughts of the hero. By recording some of his own thought sequences,
Douglas has achieved this same end; he has put the reader in direct contact with his consciousness. Comparison may thus be made to
Joyce's stream of consciousness technique which, by removing the author as a medium, enables the reader to follow at first hand the thought processes of the hero. In one case, we follow the interior monologues of Stephen Dedalus or Leopold Bloom, in the other, those albeit briefer but perhaps more interesting, of Norman Douglas. 88
I have wandered from the subject of organization to that of con tent since Douglas' primary interest in these passages seems to be content. That does not mean he neglected their fora; rather, that it was g, priori correct. No conflict need exist between fora and content. Ideally they should be inseparable.^ The "Cotrone" chapter of Old Calabria relates a day's events so clearly that one may be assured its structure is just. On the other hand, the over all hazy impression we have of Douglas' wanderings in Tunisia is a clear indication that the total form of Fountains is defective; it has failed to convey the content of that book, or Douglas' external voyage. One immediately notes this failing and ascribes it to faulty organization. Alone, although equally dishevelled in con struction, does not leave the impression that its fora is unsatis factory, since there Douglas is not so much interested in describing his wanderings as in expressing his own somewhat dishevelled per sonality. It is a healthy sign if, while comprehending the meaning of a work of art, one fails to note its fora. In the finest chapters of Douglas' travel books, and they are generally the associational chapters which best reflect his character, one has the feeling that fora is properly serving content. 89 Footnotes
^Douglas' qualms about boring his readers may be inferred from his judgment of D. H. Lawrence's dialogue: "To give your reader a sample of the chatter of third-rate people is justifiable; ten consecutive pages of such stuff is realism gone crazy. Lawrence never divined that conversations and dialogues are precious con trivances , to be built up con amore. . . . They should be sparkling oases, and not deserts of tiresome small-talk" (Looking Back. P. 3^5). o H. T. Webster in fact likens Douglas to Sterne, and suggests that South Wind, which to date has baffled categorization, might best be placed in the comic tradition of Tristram Shandv ("Norman Douglas: A Reconsideration," SAQ. XLIV, p. 227).
^Late Harvest, p. 37. "The book is too short for my taste; I would have it longer."
^This example, slightly "idealized" here, may be found in Siren Land, pp. 44-51.
^Douglas employs this expression to introduce his discussion of Doughty's self-portrayl in Arabia Deserta (Experiments, p. 10).
^By "outer world" is meant anything which did not concern Douglas directly. For example, Pythagoras, Sirens, scholarship, "minerals and g i r l s ," and p ro je c ts have a l l become p a r t o f th e ou ter world by the time Douglas wrote Alone, since they no longer concern his welfare. He can take them or leave them. 3h contrast, maccaroni made with pre-war flour in those hungry war-time days concerned Douglas very directly and hence are not part of the outer world. (See, e.g., pp. 131-132 and 215-216 of Alone.) The variety and breadth of Douglas' interests contracted considerably between Old Calabria and Alone. (See also Chapter 2, p. 3»)
7Alone, p. 68. Although the following discussion is limited to chapters based on the association of ideas, not all of Douglas' chapters are therefore associational. Some are short narratives based on trips, a few are pure description or exposition, and still others are melanges of narration, exposition and description. On the other hand, very few chapters entirely escape from association. In addition, the associational chapters represent Douglas at his best, his most original, and his most characteristic. No particular genius was required for, and none is manifested in, his description of the journey from Metlaoui to Tozeur (Fountains, chapter 19); & noteworthy originality, if not genius, went into the composition of the associational "Cotrone" chapter of Old Calabria. 90
®P. 322. It is a typically Douglasian touch that the "local aid" turns out to be the parish priest.
^In Alone, the chapter is frequently an arbitrary division; that i s , Alone has become a book o f m in iatu res, whether th ese be scenes, or memories, or trips, all clustered together into chapters named after some town or city. There need be no connection between town and subject matter, nor between one scene and another. For example, half of the chapter on Soriano is composed of entirely unrelated incidents that occurred in Rome. In other words, rather than being made up of a series of chapters, each on a single subject, as was Old Calabria. Alone consists of small, often unrelated units loosely grouped into chapters. Our concern is obviously not with the chapter, but with the individual unit.
I^The visit to Ferento is described on pages 263-271 of Alone. The v isit itself is a good example of how Douglas drew upon his diaries when he wished to reconstruct. According to Alone, p. 263 , the v isit to Ferento occurred on August 12, with the year un sp e c ifie d . The d ia ry en try fo r August 12, 1917 reads: /from Viterbj/ "to Ferento. Viterbo to Rome. Hotel Senato." Upon this fragment he later constructed his visit.
1 ^When Douglas judged Ferento "relatively unimportant and relatively modem" and then neglected to describe its ruins, he could hot have done so in ignorance of the Importance of the site. He certainly was familiar with Dennis1 account of the Etruscan origins of its theatre; he refers to Dennis by name in Alone (p. 68), and later in the notes to McDonald's Bibliography (p. 99)» be wrote, "A description of Ferento as it was in 1848 or thereabouts, and as nomodem tourist need hope to see it, w ill be found in Dennis' Etruria (Vol. I, p. 201)." According to the Guida d*Italia (Milan, 1923), III* p. ^ 2 , "Ferentum fu una citta prospers e magnifies sotto i Romani al temp d'Augusto. ..." Most likely, Douglas suppressed any interesting facts about Ferento as irrelevant to his concentration on the "interior voyage."
l^See, for example, chapter 22 of Fountains. "The Disamal Chott" or the far more interesting "By the Inland Sea," Chapter 11 of Old Calabria. In both chapters, Douglas begins a walk, only to be side tracked down some associational alley from which he never emerges.
^Douglas commends an analogous thought when he quotes from a youthful essay of his father's in Together, p. 150. "A noble thought always commands powerful and harmonious expression. . . . When a truly great thought is clothed in language unworthy of it, the mind which dictated the words can have conceived i t only imperfectly." CHAPTER V
THE STILE OF THE TRAVEL BOOKS
Norman Douglas, like most important twentieth-century w riters, has been the object of critical controversy. Critics have debated the literary value of each of his books, with their dissent cul minating over the succes de scandale of How About Europe? in 1930*
While Douglas' fellow hedonists and free-thinkers hailed him as
something of a seer, conservatives, absolutists, moralists and modems censured him as something less.^ On one point, however,
even his detractors had to yield—that he was a stylist of con
siderable distinction.
In a letter to Douglas written in February 1908, Joseph Conrad
said of the early essay on Ischia: "And indeed why should one touch
a thing so individual in style and full of life. . . . The descrip
tions touched me deeply. . . . This is most excellent from every
point of view.11 Conrad's reaction was to be typical. Richard Curie
applauded the "exquisite finish and irony" of the style of Fountains
at its appearance in 1912.^ The publication of Old Calabria in 1915
evoked additional praise from Conrad who, in a long letter of
appreciation to Douglas, lauded its "almost flawless diction."
Later critics echoed these early estimates of Douglas' style.
H. M. Tomlinson, in the first real study of Douglas' work, published
91 In 1931» recognized a total absence of "stylistic flourishes" in his prose.3 In 1933* the classical scholar R. M. Dawkins, in his short study of Douglas, singled out the scene descriptions for particular eulogy. "In what seems the driest statement of fact we have con veyed to us the impression of a beauty at times well-nigh unendur- li able." Nor did critical opinion change significantly after Douglas' death in 1952. V. S. Pritchett wrote of a Douglas' scene description,
"There is no messy literary palette here. . . . Scientific observa tion, impersonal comment are the means. This was Douglas' very original contribution to landscape in literature. Nancy Cunard considered Douglas as a prose-poet. "He can hardly get away with not being called a considerable poet himself in the stuff and texture of many of his prose passages, where the style and subject take wing together and rise above the everyday ground."6 Even the anti-Douglas spokesman, Richard Aldington, admitted that Douglas' prose was "truly a c la s s ic a l p ro s e ."7 F in a lly , in 1956, Ralph Lindeman closed h is full-length critical appraisal of Douglas with the judgment that
"Douglas' greatest power lay in his prose style and in his descriptive power."®
Only Anthony West has raised his voice in strong censure, in a
review of the reprints of Siren Land and Fountains in the Sand: after mocking what he called Douglas' archaic diction, he concludes, "The
sad truth is that the style of the Master has lost a good deal of
its nap and that the Edwardian weave of the fabric is showing badly
in the thin spots. To this D. M. Low's caution should be added,
"Some of his earliest writings . . . were extremely lush in a lush 93 period, . . . Over the years his style does evince a progress, not without fluctuations, towards the flexible, conversational ease of
Looking Back.® He elaborated neither point.
Other criticism might be cited in evidence that in critical eyes
Douglas' greatest strength lay in his prose style, and, further, that nowhere else was his mastery more evident than in his scene descrip tions. On two other points there is critical accord, that Douglas' style was essentially static (Low excepted), and that it was
" c la s s ic ."
Although in full agreement with the estimate that Douglas was a fine stylist, I think his critics have reached this conclusion by devious routes. In short, Douglas' style has been praised, in part at least, for the wrong reasons. The point is of especial importance in reference to the travel books, for by valuing Douglas chiefly as a stylist, and in particular as a master of scene description, his critics have distorted and even misunderstood Douglas' merits as a travel writer. In other words, Douglas excelled as a travel writer, not because of his scene descriptions, as LLndeman and Dawkins would have one believe, but in spite of them. In addition, by regarding
Douglas' style as classic and static, that is, by failing to recognize the radical change in his style which occurs in the travel books
themselves, critics have not given due emphasis to the striking differences in conception and execution of, say, Siren Land and
Alone. nor have they realized "where Douglas was going" in his five
travel books written over a fourteen-year period. A just estimate of the style of the travel books cannot be achieved unless they are considered in a continuum. Then and only then w ill the remarkable change and growth of h is sty le become evident, and the travel books themselves be placed in proper perspective.
Since Douglas' first travel books, Siren Land and Fountains in the Sand, share the same stylistic practices and premises, they may be considered together. Their immediate effect on the reader is one of pervading richness. Much of this feeling comes from their subject material: medieval Sirens, Tiberius, fantastic Saints, fabled rocks and caves, the Mediterranean in a ll i t s myriad color and reflectio n , legendary Capri, or the silent Arab, the burnous, Haskish, the desert at sunrise, and all the other mysterious paraphernalia of Orientalism
This sense of pervading richness also derives from the style, that is from the scene descriptions so essential to these early travel books, and from the diction and syntax.
Perhaps the term "Impressionistic" best describes the numerous
scene descriptions of these two books. Although in literature and painting, Impressionism was already on the way out during those im mediate pre-war years (in music it was only reaching its climax),
the term strikes me as particularly apropos as a label for Douglas'
scene descriptions. Like Monet and Turner, his primary concern is to
render the effects of light by means of an appropriately vague tech
nique. Although no critic has yet called attention to this peculiar
quality of his scene descriptions, examples of impressionistic
descriptions abound both in Siren Land and Fountains:
Have you ever sailed under one of these precipices by moonlight: It is a picture that you see, not a palpable cliff of limestone; a picture that floats 95
past you. . . . Those ancient, seared rocks, so familiar at noontide, have put on strange faces since the moon rose. Their complexion has waned to a livid splendour, and their wrinkles and bosses re solve themselves into unsuspected designs—designs of spears and shields and bastions and all the pomp and healdry that melt away, under incessant showers of gentle light from above, into other combinations of form, ever new and so convincing, that at last the mind, weary of riddles, surrenders to the stony enchantment and drifts along in a calm disdain of reality. (SL, pp. 137-138)
Here, Douglas observes the changing appearances of objects as they vary with light, and tries to capture that change in words. Nothing
is tangible, all is unreal, the images pass and dissolve as if in a
flux; Douglas renders this change by personifying the natural ob
jects he sees in a series of metaphors, or extended oxymorons:
"seared rocks . . . put on strange faces," "complexion . . . wane/sJ7 to a livid splendour," "shields and bastions . . . melt
away."
Douglas' interest in the light of Siren Land can best be seen
in the following catalog of fantastic light effects which recall the
brilliant canvases of Van Gogh:
There are wondrous tints of earth, sky, and sea in these regions—flaring sunsets and moons of melo dramatic amplitude that roll upon the hill-tops or swim exultingly through the aether; amber-hued gorges where the shadows sleep through the glittering days of June, and the mad summer riot of vines careering in green frenzy over olives and elms and figs; there are tremulous violet flames hovering about the sun-scortched limestone, sea-mists that climb in wreathed stateliness among wet cliffs, and the sulphurous gleams of a scirocco dawn when fishing-boats hang like pallid spectres upon the skyline. (SL, p. 86) Again, one should note the dominance of strange, almost "meta physical" images: "swim e x u ltin g ly ," "shadows sleep," "green frenzy," "flames hovering," "melodramatic amplitude," "wreathed stateliness." There is an attempt here to fix a precarious state of being in an equally precarious language.
A lengthy list of similar, light-filled, impressionistic images might be compiled from Siren Land alone: "a craggy islet, black and menacing against the background of crimson conflagration"; "the sea- route on a night of full moon /where/ all discords dissolve in the mellow sheen of a southern night and blossom forth . . . into new and ghostly harmonies"; "betwixt whose lustrous leaves the sea, far down below, is shining turquoise-blue in a dream of calm content";
"a yawning sea-cave which throbs with an emerald light-reflection";
"listen to the water dripping musically in the twilight and look back, through the narrow opening, upon the burning world beyond."^
There is nothing realistic, or as Pritchett claimed, scientific about these descriptions (one would never guess their author had written a learned monograph on the stomach coloring of lizards); they either glint in artificial brilliance, or are subdued, with veiled tints and shades, as if seen through a curtain. Mere than anything else, they are attempts at a poetic prose which draws its sustenance from a strange, phantasmagoric world of light and color, visible only to the poet, and possible of recreation only by means of a strained, hued, poetically charged vocabulary. 97
When Douglas turns his attention from light and color to sound, and he does but once in Siren Land, he fails completely to give an impression of sincerity:
Forest voices are the music of Bach; we seem to wander in cool wooded glades with sunlight pouring through leaves overhead, to breathe the fragrance of dew- spangled moss and fern, to hear the caress of light winds playing among the crowns and rustling of branches and streamlets and a ll those elfish woodland notes which the master him self, in h is so lita r y wander ings, had heard and thenceforth emprisoned everlastingly— coaxing their echoes into those numbers whose enchantment none but chosen spirits, little less than angels, can unseal, (pp. 289-290)
The defender of Douglas' prose blushes, or ought to, at such an effusion and is thankful that he seldom attuned his metaphors to things heard, while the musician must wonder what work of Bach
Douglas had in mind. The numerous scene descriptions of Fountains. like those of
Siren Land, are generally impressionistic, and invariably focus on shifting light effects. They differ by being more extended and ambitious. Fountains was "written on the spot," and probably some of its descriptions are direct renderings by poetic means of what
Douglas saw, in contrast to those of Siren Land, largely "recollected in tranquility." All show Douglas' interest in light; here is a ty p ica l example:
But whoever wishes for a rare impression of oriental l i f e must go there before dawn, and w ait for the slow-coming dawn. It is all dark at first, but presently a sunny beam flashes through the distant palms, followed by another, and yet another—long shafts of yellow light travelling through the murk; . . . the ground, heaving, gives birth to dusky shapes; there are weird groans and gurglings 98
of silhouetted apparitions; and still you cannot distinguish earth from air—-it is as if one watched the creation out of Chaos, (p. 173)
One might note, en, pass ant, that the loose comparison of a scene to
some vague mythical event is not infrequent in Douglas1 imagery.
Sunrise and sunset seem to have particularly fascinated Douglas while in Tunisia, and frequently he tries to capture the magic effects
of the rising or setting sun upon the sands.
For as it /the sun/ left the horizon, a counterfeit sun began to unroll itself from the true, as one might detach a petal from a rose; at first they clung together, but soon, with a wrench, parted company, and while the one soared aloft, the image remained below, weltering on the treacherous mere. For a short while the flaming phantasma lingered firm and orb-like, while the space between itself and reality grew to a hand's breadth; then slowly deliquesced. It gave a prolonged shiver and sank, convulsed, into the earth. (pp. 1790180).
Oddly enough, this description, an attempt to recreate an actual
sunrise, fails because the images lack specificness and are singu
larly inappropriate. The rose-petal simile is unable to convey the
sight of the two suns splitting apart, while the "space between it
and reality" is too vague to be meaningful. What does "reality"
refer to? What is the subject of "deliquesced"?
Even London is rec o llec te d by i t s sunsets, and here Douglas is
more satisfactory in his imagery: "And I remembered London at this
sunset hour, a medley of tender grey-in-grey, save where a glory of
many-coloured light hovers about some street lantern, or where a
carriage, splashing through a river of mud, leaves a momentary
streak of silver in its rear." (p. 45). 99 This time, Douglas has been sufficiently clear in his images, the
"light hovering about the street lantern," or "a momentary track of silver," to give the reader some of the scene in his mind's eye.
Occasionally, Douglas abandons the impressionistic mode for something more direct, without however achieving that end:
I thought of the sunset this afternoon, as viewed from Sidi Mansur. They are fine, these moments of conflagra tion, of mineral incandescence, when the sober limestone rocks take on the tints of molten copper, their convulsed strata standing out like the ribs of some agonized Prometheus, while the plain, where every little stone casts an inordinate shadow behind it, clothes itself in demure shades of pearl. Fine, and all too brief. For even before the descending sun has touched the rim of the world the colours fade away; only overhead the play of blues and greens continues—freezing, at last, to pale indigo, (p. 44)
Whatever his intentions, this particular description has all the un reality of a Dali landscape; its sharply etched and clearly defined shapes and colors convey no sense of realism. Something is lacking; it does not quite "come across."
The second source of the "richness" of Siren Land and Fountains is their diction and, to a lesser degree, their syntax, particularly in the scholarly chapters of the former. One cannot fail to be amazed at the extraordinary diction of Siren Land, which is archaic,
to say the least:
I have fe lt the awe-inspiring midday hush in many wilds and wolds, and often enough the mind, surrounded by the unfamiliar, is prone to conjure up phantoms from inanimate nature; here it is merely aglow with life; self-centered in the cir cumambient calm and stimulated to attention by the sun's rays, it is yet at rest. (p. 35) 100
Variety Is attained at the cost of clarity, for again Douglas1 diction lacks the necessary specificity to give his picture substance, nor is the grammar clear in this instance. The diction itself, "wilds and wolds," "self-centered in the circumambient calm," transports the
reader back to the seventeenth-century.
Elsewhere, one encounters terms out of current use for ages:
athwart, whilom, gainsaid, adown, glebe, erst, partake, methought.
Epithets yearn for the world of Pope, or at least of his lesser con
temporaries: "painted argosy" for clouds, "dewy freight" for rain,
"blithe communion" for friendship, "gaudy host" for butterflies,
"finned and crawling denizens of the deep" for fish and crabs,
"parching firmament" and "chrystalline dome" for sky. D. M. Low has
commented in his own quaint way on Douglas' propensity for archaic
forms o f expression: "He was never quite free from a r e c id iv ist
tendency towards choice language. Indeed, some words of this kind
he could overwork with apparent carelessness. How many times does 12 'delve' occur in the quotations of An Almanac?" Anthony West's
censure of Douglas' archaic diction has already been noted.
To suggest that Douglas' diction is archaic, and nothing more,
is, however, to grossly misrepresent it. Douglas commands an
astonishingly rich and varied assortment of words, drawn from many
of the resources of our language. His non-scenic descriptions are
often genuine tours de force of linguistic virtuosity. Here is a
description of an Arab marabout:
Some of them are simple epileptics, verminous and importunate; others, shrewd worldly rogues who, having run away from home a fte r a f i t of 101
discontent or homicide, cruise vaguely about Islamism for half a lifetime, and at last return, bearded venerables, to be stared at by their kinsfolk as portents, heaven-sent, because they have freighted themselves with a cargo of fond m a y i such as "The World is Illusion: All Flesh is Vanity," and similar gnomic balderdash, the wisdom of the unlettered. (F, pp. 185-186)
In particular, Douglas* encyclopedic learning served his vo cabulary. For example, he can rely on his extensive knowledge of archeology for such a sentence as, "Yet, searching among the debris on the hill-side, I found some fragments of white penthelic and giallo antico slabs for a pavement, and a systematic hunt might yield brick-stamps which would help to decide the age of the building"
(SL, p. 45). Or from geology for "So Dumas talks of the * granite ramparts' of Capri, and a Swiss, writing only three years ago, praises its 'parois verticales de porphyre et balsalte.1 A deplor able lack of general intelligence, seeing that the principal charm of all Italian scenery ..." (SL, p. 4 1 ). Or to botany fo r . . . but one might continue endlessly.
Less need be said of the syntax of Douglas' early travel books.
It wavers between an alarming complexity and a disarming simplicity.
Despite the examples given to illustrate his scene descriptions, his
sentences are of an enviable clarity of structure and sense, and obviously more modem than his diction. Some, it is true, have a
flavor of the past: "Many other caves and inlets we explored to
gether in that craft of Ciro's, and much he told me of their wondrous 102 lore0 (SL, p. 114). Some attain an admirable length without coming a p a rt:
Gold and silver galore must be lying under the waves in those narrow three miles; anchors and chains, too, and rusty implements such as were used on one memorable occasion when the great medical school of Salerno was flourish ing; flourishing and yet envious; envious of the fame of the mineral waters of Pozzuoli which attracted travellers away from their own town— for the waters, you perceive, cured patients gratis, while the Salerno doctors used to send in heavy bills--so envious, that certain rich and well-reputed physicians of that school, to wit, Sir Antoninus Sulimella, Sir Philippus Capograssus, and Sir Hector de Prochyta, after taking counsel how to remedy this vexatious state of affairs, decided that it was no time for half- measures. (SL, p. 276)
As Lindeman justly observes, "Many sentences are longer than the modem reader is accustomed to expect. ^ Even so, such a Proustian sentence as the above need not be read twice. The repetition of,
"flourishing; flourishing," and "envious; envious . . . so envious" to give a kind of overlapping effect is the most characteristic and individual aspect of his syntax, and one that w ill occur gd infinitum in the later travel books, as will be shortly observed. Johnsonian sentences, replete with elaborate parallelisms and antitheses, are noticeably absent from Douglas' prose, which, in the last analysis, is seen to draw its source from the rhythms and patterns of speech.^
The style of Siren Land and Fountains is, then, characterized by an extraordinary richness, coming from impressionistic scene descrip tions, an archaic and widely varied vocabulary, and a more than normally complex syntax; all these elements in turn are handled with an undeniable virtuosity. Thus, Douglas bows into literature with a 103
style echoing Pater and Morris in its impressionistic descriptions,
Pope and Thomson in its diction, and the Swift of 4, Tale of a Tub in
its general virtuosity, ibid actually Douglas is probably indebted to
none of these worthy sources.
It is interesting to digress a moment to consider the paradox of
Douglas, the arch-cynic and rationalist, creating such gaudy art
treasures as Siren Land and Fountains. How could this hedonistic
satyr who so gleefully scorned all illusion bring himself to write,
in apparent seriousness, and then publish, "the soil at your feet is
besprinkled with a profusion of fair and fragile flowerlets" (£,
p. 30)? How is one to explain in the light of Douglas' professed
Hellenism the lushness of the early travel books? Obviously, those
critics who see his books as models of classic style and scientific
description are of no help here. Instead, we must turn to the facts
of Douglas' biography for an answer. It has not yet been fully
realized just how deeply immersed Douglas was during the period of
1896-1908 in the arcane lore of Sirenology and its attendant fields:
archeology, biology, geology, hagiology, Classical studies, Medieval
history and literature. Perhaps Douglas himself did not know. In
Old Calabria he describes, with characteristic virtuosity, one of the
scholarly "blind alleys" of that era:
There was a time when I probably knew as much about Carthusian convents as is needful for any of their inmates; when I studied Tromby's ponderous work and God knows how many more—ay, and spent two precious weeks of my life in deciphering certain crabbed MSS. of Tutini in the Brancacciana library—ay, and 10^
tested the spleenful Perrey's "Ragioni del Regio Flsco etc.," as to the alleged land-grabbing pro pensities of this order—ay, and even pilgrimaged to Rome to consult the present general of the Carthusians . . . as to some administrative detail, all-im portant, which has wholly escaped my memory. Gone are those days of studious gropings into blind alleys I (p. 30 ?)
A trace of Don Quixote hangs about the Douglas of this period, and doubtless a certain amount of adjustment was necessary after he finally emerged from the dusky archives of the South into the bright clarity of its sun.
A second factor requires consideration. Ian Watt has carefully charted the influence of the reading public on the rising novel 1 s form; J the same might be done for Douglas' travel books. His early monographs, of-which Siren Land is an extension, were written and privatelyx. published for a select group of savants—Edwin Cerio, who spent a life-tim e writing intricate volumes about Capri; Marion
Crawford, far wiser than his novels might lead one to believe;
Furcheim, the official bibliographer of Capri; Joseph Conrad; lo Bianco, the biologist; Johnston-Lavis, the geologist—men in short who considered scholarly treatises on Fabio Giordano, Roman brick stamps, the Faraglione lizard, Phoenician influences and a thousand other essentials of the lore of Capri as being in the order of the day. Again, a period of transition was required, and Douglas began to simplify style and subject matter only when he was wished
to reach a larger public.^
Finally, Douglas1 aesthetic predilections help explain the
anomaly of his early style. Douglas was attracted to rhetorical brilliance and a certain amount of floweriness in writing. The early articles on Poe and Milton, both written in 1907, testify to his interest in two of the most rhetorically conscious writers on our language.^ Of Poe's style he says little; Milton he praises for his erudition, and then observes, "His English may not have been good enough for his contemporaries, but it is quite good enough for us."
Then he adds, 'We cannot but be influenced by the colour-effects of mere words, that arouse in us definite but indefinable moods of mind" (0C,, p. 176). In addition, his praise of the scene descrip tions of Isabelle Eberhardt in his essay on her travel books written just after his return from Tunisia in April 1910 implies an aesthetic approval of the impressionistic scene description: "There is a mirage hanging about them; like all artists, she detects colours and shapes invisible to the common eye . . . her pictures are distortions in the sense of Turner's landscapes: distortions, that is, till we have risen to her point of view and learned to know better." 18
Whatever the causes, aesthetic or biographical, there is no denying the ornamental, roccoco nature of the style of these first travel books. Douglas seems to have had two ends in mind: to evoke the many-colored, light-filled world of the sea and the desert by means of a poetic, impressionistic technique, and to accompany a
recherche, archaic subject matter with a similar diction. Certain popular elements, the clarity of his syntax and a conversational quality of some passages, are also present and suggest a dichotomy
in his style that has not been resolved. These informal elements w ill constitute the discussion of the style of Alone and Together. 106
Moving on now to Douglas' th ird and f in e s t tra v e l book. Old
Calabria, one is amazed at the wide stylistic gulf traversed. Where as Siren Land and Fountains impressed by their "eccentricities" of style, Old Calabria impresses by its maturity, dignity and eloquence.
"It ripples along," as Pritchett observes. The specific differences from the earlier books are immediately apparent: the frequent im pressionistic scenes have given way to infrequent factual descrip tions; the vocabulary has lost much of its archaic quaintness; the sentence structure has been simplified and smoothed out; the stock epithets have disappeared; and the virtuosity has lost some of its obvious show. This is not to say that Douglas' style has become lean and sparse; it is in fact still a rich, antiquated expression for its time, but one from which the excesses that marred the earlier books have been pruned.
Let us examine some of these differences more fully. First, one notes a drastic reduction in lengthy scene descriptions, as if
Douglas felt not only less inclined, but also less obliged to pro vide shimmering portraits of his surroundings. The following description is typical of those in Old Calabria:
There is a note of joyous vigour in this landscape. The muletrack winds in and out among the heights, through flowery meadows grazed by cattle and full of buzzing insects and butter flies, and along h ill sides cunningly irrigated; it climbs up to heathery summits and down again through glades of chestnut and ile x w ith mossy trunks, whose shadow fo s te rs strange sensations of chili and gloom. Then out again, into the sunshine of waving com and poppies, (p. 305 ) 107
Although even here the precise image is lacking and objects are
treated in groups rather than singly, Douglas is describing the objects themselves instead of the visual play of light upon them.
More often than not, Douglas attempts no poetic effects at all, as
in this description of the track to the Capo Colonna at Cotrone, one of the most poetic scenes in Calabria:
The driving road ends at the cemetary. Thence onward a pathway skirts the sea at the foot of the clay-hills; passes the sunken wells; climbs up and down steep gradients and so attains the plateau at whose extremity stands the light house, the column, and a few white bungalows - summer-residences of Cotrone citizens, (p. 33*0
One might argue that Calabria lacks the dazzling sights of the
Sorrentine Peninsula, or the Tunisian desert, and hence descriptions
of it are accordingly moderated. Possibly so, if Douglas' prose
"takes p re c ise colour from i t s s e ttin g ," as an anonymous review er of
Together suggested.^ But even when he turns his gaze toward the
sea, his vision is chastened. Surely the Sirens themselves were
astir when Douglas looked over the sea from the base of the solitary Doric column to Hera at ancient Croton, and yet there is no hint of
their presence. "Showers of benevolent heat stream down upon this
desolation; not the faintest wisp of vapour floats upon the horizon;
not a sail, not a ripple, disquiets the waters. The silence can be
felt. Slumber is brooding over the things of earth" (QC, p. 337)•
All atmospheric effects are eschewed; the impressionistic period is
over. 108
The moderation which led Douglas to simplify his descriptive apparatus has rendered a like service for diction and syntax, which, though still of ample elevation, now flow and "ring true." Diction has been modernized, and one may search Old Calabria in vain for the
"wilds and wolds" of Siren land. They have been ycelpt. The vo cabulary is of course s till rich, perhaps even richer than that of
Siren Land: it differs by being more appropriate and up-to-date.
Douglas' account of Platonic utopianism exemplifies the richness and justness of the language of Old Calabria:
Yet it was quite good sport, while it lasted. To "make men better" by choice dissertations about utopias, to s it in marble halls and have a fair and fondly ardent ieunesse doree reclining about your knees while you discourse, in rounded periods, concerning the salvation of their souls by means o f transcendental Love. (p . 329)
A fragrance lin gers about these lin e s; the "proper words are in the proper places."
Douglas' description of Pythagoras suggests another point. "I fancy that the mist of centuries of undiscriminating admiration has magnified this figure out of all proportion and contrived, further more, to fix an iridescent nimbus of sanctity about its head." If this beginning seems a trifle professorial, Douglas brings himself, the reader, and Pythagoras all back to earth in the next sentence:
"Such things have been known to happen, in foggy weather" (PC. p.
325). A new sense of perspective is thus at work in Old Calabria. as though Douglas now saw and corrected what he would have passed over in the earlier travel books. If Old Calabria occasionally 109 falls short of Siren Land in terms of sheer rhetorical brilliance, i t more than compensates by avoiding the often mawkish excesses of that volume.
The style of Old Calabria is closer to the "classical prose" that Aldington hailed. Certainly it is more restrained and less gaudy, more functional and less ornamental than that of the previous books. Pages of undoubted brilliance remain, but the brilliance seems called for by the subject matter, whereas formerly it seemed the result of excess energy. The brio of this passage from Siren
Land is undeniable, and one wonders if many of Douglas* contempo
raries were equally uninhibited:
Meanwhile, your health! Drink, my friend, and let me see that smile of yours; soon enough, I dare say, neither of us w ill smile anymore, though we may g rin f o r a l l ages to come, i f the s o il i s dry. A sorry preamble, this, not exactly a "Captation of benevolence" in the Ciceronian sty^e. But what matters the exordium, if the oro /the wine of Sant* Agatgy is to our liking? Let us down it in four inches, and begin again, (p. 229 )
But if we turn to the final paragraphs in Old Calabria, the differ
ence in maturity and in tonality is immediately apparent:
This corner of Magna Graecia is a severly parsimonious manifestation of nature. Rocks and waters! But these rocks and waters are actualities; the stuff whereof man is made. A landscape so luminous, so resolutely scornful of accessories, hints at brave and simple forms of expression; it brings us to the ground, where we belong; it medicines to the disease of introspection and stimulates a capacity which we are in danger of unlearning amid our morbid hyperborean gloom—the capacity for honest contempt; contempt of that scarecrow of a theory which would have us neglect what is earthly, tangible. . . . The sage, that perfect savage, will be the last to withdraw himself from the influence of these radiant 110
realities. He will strive to knit closer the bond, and to devise a more durable and affection ate relationship between himself and them. Let him open his eyes. For a reasonable adjustment lies at his feet. From these brown stones that seam the tranquil Ionian, from this gracious solitude, he can carve out, and bear away into the cheerful din of cities, the rudiments of something clean and veracious and wholly ter restrial—some tonic philosophy that shall foster sunny mischiefs and farewell re gret. (p. 338) The causes for this radical change in style must again be sought in the facts of Douglas biography. In 1910 he began to switch his center of activities from Capri to London, and by late 1911 he was reviewing for The English Review na considerable mass of the latest so-called lyric poetry" (T, p. 82). No doubt, this "melancholy task" sharpened his critical sense toward his own "so-called lyric prose." In addition, after years on remote Capri, his arrival into the literary and sophisticate society surrounding The English Review. and h is new frien d sh ip s w ith such lite r a r y fig u re s as Eden P h illp o tts ,
Hugh Walpole, Compton Mackenzie, H. M. Tomlinson, Ford Madox Hueffer, and Austin Harrison must have forced him to modernize his own 20 literary practices and opinions.
Douglas* new attitude can be vividly shown in his approach to
impressionistic scene description. Whereas in 1910 he had praised
Isabelle Eberhardt's impressionism, in May 1912 we find him now writing in a review, "How difficult it is, despite the clearest
language, to gain a vision of colour in landscape from verbal
description. . . . The feat of visualization becomes almost im
possible. The actual picture exists only for the writer; do what he 111 w ill, his reader soon finds himself lapped in a vague and sensuous colour-dream. This critical attitude he applied to his own work, not only by producing no more impressionistic descriptions, but by censuring those on hand. Thus, when he expanded Old Calabria in
1912, he incorporated an early article on Messina, written immediately after his second v isit to that town in June 1909# or during the Siren
Land period.^ It is significant that although he transferred the article with only minor revision, he omitted completely a long, gaudy description of the moon rising over the straits.^3 Obviously, this type of description written only three years earlier in the
Land manner was no longer compatible with Douglas1 newly-acquired critical sense, not to mention the other scene descriptions of Old
S h r i f t * Old Calabria catches Douglas at the peak of his skills, at the very point when he was turning his energies away from describing life to living it. Thus, it looks backward to the monkish scholasticism that produced the Capri Monographs and ahead to the ribald hedonism that gave birth to South Wind. These biographical cross-currents naturally reflect in its style, the one providing a substance and a fullness, a fozmal note, the other a spontaneity and a naturalness, or autobiographical and essentially informal note. It is this second awakening tendency which is to dominate the style of Douglas1 last
two travel books, Alone and Together. These books may be considered
together since the latter continues the innovations of Alone. 112
The new autobiographical approach to the content of the travel book represented by Alone has been discussed in the chapter on the organization of Douglas* travel books, and need not be elaborated here. Suffice it to say that Douglas probably felt the formally elegant, rhetorical style of the earlier books an inappropriate vehicle for the expression of his own personality. Poetically charged, impressionistic language is very proper to paint the sun rising over the sea; it is quite unsuited for railing against imitation strega wine that one has been served. Scholastic diction might do for describing the aspirations of John of Procida, but it won't do at all for those of a particular friend who happens to be something of a bum. The stylistic problem that confronted Douglas in Alone, then, was to find a style that would be suitable for ex pressing his own personality, and for vivifying the ephemera which made up his active life in wartime Italy. His solution was to employ an extremely conversational, chatty, infomal style, with diction and syntax based on the rhythms and mannerisms of everyday speech, or, perhaps more precisely, on those of his own speech.
It would be incorrect, of course, to suggest that the style of
Alone has nothing in common with that of the earlier travel books.
A writer cannot discard his style as he can his winter coat; vestiges
remain. Just how new the style of Alone and Together is, however,
can be demonstrated by a rapid glance at some of their scene descrip
tions , keeping in mind those of Siren Land and Fountains. Instead of
the numerous, lengthy, "iridescent" descriptions of the earlier 113 books, we have something relatively simple. The following example is
Douglas at his richest in Alone?
Later than usual, long after sunset, under olives already heavy-laden, through patches of high-standing com and beans, across the little brook, past that familiar and solitary farmhouse, I descended to the canal, in full content. Another golden moment of life! Strong exhalations rose up from the swampy soil, that teemed and steamed under the hot breath of spring; the pond-water, once so bare, was smothered under a riot of monstrous marsh- plants and loud with the music of love-sick frogs. Stars were reflected on its surface. (i. P. Coming on the last line after the effulgent, moon-lit descriptions of the earlier books, one is struck by its simplicity. Before, one feels, Douglas would not have passed such an inviting opportunity for poetic display. Here the descriptive adjectives are hackneyed, or,
at best, pseudo-poetic, and if Douglas could do no better than this,
he would not be reputed today as a stylist.
For the most part, however, Douglas avoids rich description.
The view of Velletrl seen from a distance is typical in this respect,
for he refuses to be tempted by foggy metaphors: "Velletri1 s ram
parts, twenty miles distant, are firmly planted on the lower slope.
Standing out against the sky, they can be seen at all hours of the
day, whereas the dusky palace of Valmontone, midmost on the green
plain and rock-like in its proportions, fades out of sight after
midday" (p. 25 ).
The decrease in richness is of preference, rather than due to
any lessened sensitivity on Douglas1 part toward what he sees.
Colors are s till recorded, only now with restraint, while pure n 4 light is reduced in importance, as in this passage on the changing colors of the Amo:
At Florence—where those citron-tinted houses are mirrored in the stream—you may study the Amo in all its ever-changing moods* Seldom is its colour quite the same. The hue of cafe au lait in full spate, it shifts at other times between apple-green and jade, between celadon and chrysolite and eau-de- Nil. In the weariness of summer the tints are prone to fade altogether out of the waves. They grow bleached, devitalized; they are spent, withering ' away like grass that has laid in the sun. Yet with every thunder-storm on yonder hills the colour- spri te leaps back into the waves, (p. 72)
The scene descriptions of Together are similarly restrained, as in this example where Douglas refuses the temptation of a Symonds* sunset: nA winding, narrow vale encompassed by woodlands and drenched, just then. In a magical light from the sunset at our backs” (p. 44). The reader must take on faith the fact that the
light was magical, since Douglas obviously has no Intention of betraying that memory through some word-effusion. On the rare
occasion when he drops his guard, his description is apt to be pre
cious, even feminine: "How sweet, how intimate, are those hours of
late afternoon under the trees, when all is voiceless and drowned in
mellow radiance; how they conjure up sensations of other times, and
cleanse the miry places of the mind” (p. 98)! Perhaps Douglas con
cluded that such affairs should be left for the poets.
Diction is also simpler in Alone and Together, and is less
ambitious than that of Old Calabria. It is true that Douglas still
indulges his passion for archaisms, but with reduced vigor; most are
merely co lloq u ial, such as "yonder" or "whereto" or "thereby," or perhaps slightly more formal as "wheneeforth" or "hitherto."
Occasionally, however, they intrude: "Forthwith, Mr. R, who has an
imaginative and impressionable turn of mind, besought me to take him
up there and show him the exact spot, on the condition, of course,
that nothing but Ehglish was to be spoken during the trip. Well, why not? No harm in that, no ham whatever" (£, pp. 134—135) •
Here, side by side, are the archaic "forthwith" and "besought" and
the colloquial 'Well, why not? No ham in that, no ham whatever."
Douglas never fully sated his appetite for archaic diction, and in
such cases as the present example, they strike a discord. Such cases
are, however, infrequent, especially in Alone.
The new Douglas is not to be found in these innocuous descrip
tions or archaisms, but rather in the devices he employs to achieve
a conversational prose. Unfortunately, the tern "devices" is mis
leading, as i t suggests something mechanical or manipulated, whereas
the prose of Alone and Together is almost as free as the speech of
an imaginative speaker; it is a genuine spoken prose. Nevertheless,
as a linguist is forced to isolate artificially elements from the
stream of speech in an effort to get at and then describe that
stream itself, so there seems no other approach to the prose of
Alone and Together but to lis t some of the most important con
versational devices, in full awareness that out of context they lose
much of their effect.
By far the most important of the devices Douglas uses to give
his prose a conversational note is that of repeating a word, or rarely, a phrase, to provide additional clarity or emphasis. The same device is common in speech, though probably not so common as i t is in Douglas' prose. On the simplest level, he repeats a single word, usually a noun or verb: "Thrice already, in a burst of con fidence, has she told me the story of an egg—an egg which rankles in th e memory" (A, p . 24). "I sp ecializ ed in m inerals In those days— minerals and girls" (£,, p. 132). "Now these are the things for which
I have come here; things for which you w ill vainly ransack England and the whole Mediterranean basin" (T, p. 41). "We were never shocked by such things; only interested, hugely interested" (£, p. 40). "It set me thinking—thinking that there are not many town- lets of this size in rural England" (^, p. 233)* There is a hint of a formula at work in these examples. When Douglas repeats function words, he is moving closer to the heart of real speech. "There, at the foot of that weedy and vacuous yet charming old Neptune—how perfectly he suits his agef—there, if you look, you w ill see certain gigantic leaves sculptured into the rock" (^, p. 132). 'Why, I used to wonder—why not let the beast graze by itself and go home and get a Schnapps and a change of clothes?" (£, p. 205). "For who—not five thousand, but, say, five hundred years ago—who would have thought of building a town on a spot like this?" (^, p. 202). Hundreds of similar examples could be cited; the first page of Together has
th re e .
Douglas' repetitive devices vary in complexity, from these
simple examples, to elaborate, half-page long sentences encrusted 117 with modification, as in the sentence from Siren Land quoted on pages
101-102, At such times, the syntax may assume a ludicrous but charm ing pomposity, as in this splendid, Baroque specimen from Together:
The old fellow also burst into poetry once or twice and perpetrated, among other things, some flattering lines on our family of Tilquhillie entitled "Feugh and Dee,H lines which nothing but ingrained modesty now prevents me from re printing, seeing that this family, though venerable enough—the oldest in the county, they tell me— was never yet, to my knowledge, hymned in verse, but has contrived to live on, from age to age, sufficiently inconspicuous; inconspicuous, and all of us rather cracked into the bargain. (p. 26) The repetition of words and phrases and the accumulation of modifiers is a common device in Douglas' prose. Possibly he used the device more than he realized, for such a trick achieves spontaneity only if it is not overdone; otherwise, spontaneity yields to artifi ciality, precisely the effect he wished to avoid. The device itself is doubtless sound enough; the mind seldom thinks in rounded,
Johnsonian periods, with lengthy, parallel, subordinate clauses.
Instead, it constructs as it proceeds, so that before a simple sen tence can be ended, new material has occurred which must be tacked on. However, since this natural speech trait is infrequently used in prose, it must be employed with care if it is not to appear suspect and unnatural.
Another common speech-device Douglas employs is the cliche or
colloquialism. I am not thinking of his own personal cliches, for which he has been roundly criticized by Lindeman, Aldington, Cyril
Connolly and others, such cliches as "it stands to reason,* "food 118 for thought," "what next!" "take life by the throat," or "worthy of a better name." Bather, I am referring to the deliberate and artistic usage of everyday cliches as a means of breaking down formality and adding a common touch. So skillfully has Douglas handled the normal cliche that none of his critics has yet complained. Quotation, how ever, does not reveal his expertise since it calls attention to the cliche, when otherwise it would pass unnoticed, but not unfelt. A good example of his use of the cliche occurred in the closing phrase of the previous quotation, "rather cracked into the bargain." There, it serves as a humorous little coda to a long conversational sentence that had become dangerously formal. Here are some other examples:
"Those wrynecks, by the way, are abundant, but hard to see" (^, p. 144); "There he remained, anyhow, like an old cock on his dung h ill, crowing and gobbling" (p. 2?); "Fraulein Schumber got the sack because she had a flirtation" (£, p. 211); "Had I been subjected to half the annoyances he endured, my curses would have been loud and long" (4, p . 149).
Perhaps Douglas is at his sublest, and most Informal, when he seems to be thinking aloud in his prose. He begins a sentence, only to stop midway to clarify a difficult point, or to correct himself, or perhaps to add something else which he has just remembered. At
such times his prose assumes an extremely personal, intimate tone.
The reader is as close to the author's rational consciousness as a prose technique can bring him. There is no question here of a trick
technique like the stream-of-consciousness. It is a refreshing fact that Douglas' interest is not in the technique itself, or in being avant-garde, but in communicating with the reader* and brushing aside all formality to do so. A passage near the end of Alone quoted earlier is a splendid example of this ability to "write aloud":
"And so* discoursing of this and that, one rambles oneself into a book. . . . Into h a lf a book; fo r here—a t A la tri and now—midsummer,
I mean to terminate these non-serlous memories" (p. 255)* The ellipsis marks are Douglas' and indicate a pause as he reconsiders his assertion that Alone is a whole book. He corrects himself and continues, pausing again to clarify the place and the time. Most commonly, Douglas employs the device to add on ad d itio n a l in fo r mation : "It was his unvarying habit to begin breakfast—a huge cup of a certain kind of chocolate, specially imported from Paris, for himself; tea or coffee for all the rest, and be damned to them—with a boiled egg" (£, p. 197)• Or because he has remembered some perti nent detail which must be added on at all costs: "Ify sister, who was the firs t woman that ever got up the Zimba—and well I remember the state of her leather knickers when she came down again—also had a
try at the ' Hexenthurm,' a little exploit of which I only learnt after her death" (£, p. 135)* Both of these examples have an
especial verisimilitude about them. The device can also be given a
comic touch: "Whereupon Mr. R. swore a g re a t oath in the M editer
ranean manner, on the head, or the honour—on both, I fancy—of his
own mother, to obey to the letter" (£, p. 238 ). Perhaps the classic
of the series occurs in Alone when Douglas, disgruntled at a poor 120 meal, Is describing some soldiers: "The place Is full of rigid officers taking themselves seriously. Odd, how a uniform can fill a simpleton with self-importance. What does Bacon say? I forget.
Something apposite—something about the connection between m ilitary costumes and vanity" (p. 70). Prose, it seems to me, can come little closer to speech than it does here.
In such essentially autobiographical books as Alone and Together. a clear, open exposition and dramatization of the author's views and character may not be enough to establish the rapport between author and reader that Douglas desired. Such a rapport also requires a breaking down of the reader's resistance, or, "a gaining of his confidence." He must not only have an interest in Douglas; he must also feel that Douglas has an interest in him. The devices that
Douglas utilizes for this end constitute an interesting aspect of the
conversational style of Alone and Together.
The most obvious device is, naturally, to address the reader
directly, as Douglas does, for example, when he councils him on how
to get a certain rare fish cooked properly at a certain hotel: "But,
first of all, a word for your guidance. Make love neither to the waitress nor the chamber-maid, nor the she-cook. Make love to the
manager. Lure him into some comer, and unbosom yourself freely"
(T, p. 203). Often, Douglas' dice are loaded, for the reader is
addressed in such a way that he is forced to accept and associate
himself with Douglas' viewpoint, or else find himself in rather
unflattering company. For example, Douglas asks the reader to
"Consider well your neighbor, what an imbecile he is. Then ask 121 yourself whether it be worthwhile paying any attention to what he thinks of you" (^, p. 136). Or the reader finds himself being asked to accept Douglas' non-serious view of life or classify himself as a
"solemn buffoon":
I never pass that way now without thanking God for a misspent youth. Why not make a fool of yourself? It is good fun while it lasts; it yields mellow mirth for later years, and are not our fellow-creatures, those solemn buffoons, ten times more ridiculous? Where is the use of experience, if i t does not make you laugh? (4, p. 206)
Douglas commonly uses rhetorical questions such as these to gain the
reader's assent to some philosophical fancy. Great individualist that
he was, Douglas detested the mass or anything which pushed one in its
direction. In the following example he politely coerces the reader by means of questions into condemning the commonly accepted notion that
the happiness of the greatest number is a positive good:
The happiness-of-^the-greatest-nuinber. of those who pasture on delusions: what dreamer is responsible fo r th is eunuchry? M ill, was i t ? Bentham, more likely. As if the greatest-number were not necessarily the least-intelligent! As if their happiness were not necessarily incompatible with that of the sage! Why foster it? He is a poor philosopher, who cuts his own throat. (A, p. 1 j6)
The reader is caught at once, for to answer Douglas' first question,
he has to agree that the theory is a "eunuchry," and so on. Of
course, some of Douglas' rhetorical questions can be the picture of
innocence: "By the way, what does Baedeker mean by speaking of the
'excellent wines' of Scanno, where not a drop is grown?" (4* pp. 156—
157 ). 122
S till another means of rapprochement with the reader that Douglas practiced was to imply a common store of knowledge, including facts pertaining to Douglas' own past, as if the two were old friends.
"Think only," he apostrophizes the reader, "without going further back, of that pillage by the Spanish and German soldiery under the
Bourbon" (4, p . 205). If the reader is versed in history, he may be prepared for the "that" and understand why he should not "go any further back." But when, in talking about his childhood schooldays,
Douglas informs the reader that "to his establishment I was now sent every morning—rather a long tramp for a child, across all those fields," he is obviously taking the reader into his confidence, since the reader cannot know what fields "those" fields were, unless, like
Douglas, he is familiar with Thuringen, Austria (21* p. 211). In either case, he welcomes these little oversights on Douglas' behalf as marks of friendship. Is it a wonder that, after having read two or three of Douglas' books, his readers began to consider themselves an "In-group," and that Douglas responded to their needs by printing his books in de luxe, private, expensive limited editions?
The discussion has thus far centered on the conversational ele ments in the prose of Alone and Together when Douglas himself is the speaker—posing questions to the reader, recalling old memories,
ruminating aloud, or grumbling over some annoying trifle . This focusing of attention on himself and his own mannerisms is in keep
ing with the egocentric nature of these books in which our attention
is primarily on the traveler. Nevertheless, other characters do 123 appear and speak, and Douglas1 treatment of dialogue and reported speech constitutes a significant aspect of the conversational style of Alone and Together, especially the foxmer.
Dialogue was always a problem for Douglas. He had little gift and even less inclination for creating lifelike, natural dialogue, and, as Richard Aldington has pointed out, Douglas' characters usually end up talking like their creator, with the same cliches and manner- ^ oQ isms, the same repartees and entendres. Such a weakness hurt
Douglas in his novels where he was forced to create sustained dialogue—how intelligent is the speech of Keith and Caloveglia in
South Wind, and in the end, how boring. Perhaps for this reason the
dialogue in the travel books is minimized and often replaced by
Douglas' own special brand of "reported" speech.
The dialogues of the travel books make slight effort at realism,
and perhaps should not be faulted on that score. Douglas' concern is
to amuse; the dialogues are clever, polished, and artificial. Two
samples from Alone may serve as illustrations; each rises to a neat
(and identical) close, almost a rhymed couplet. (Douglas' French
landlady is asking him to walk lightly on the carpet, to make it last
lo n g e r):
MI do not ask you to avoid using it. I only beg you w ill tread as lightly as possible." "Carpets are meant to be worn out." "You would express yourself less forcibly, if you had to pay for them." "Let us say then: carpets are meant to be trodden on." "L ig h tly ." "I am n o t a f a ir y , Madame." "I wish you were, Monsieur." (p. 2 k) 12^
And (Douglas is talking to a young soccer player about his tight p a n ts):
•Why do you wear those baby things?" "We are all wearing them, this season." "So I perceive. How do you get into them?" "Very slowly." "Are they e la s tic ? " "I wish they were." (p. 102)
At times Douglas achieves a fine virtuosity, with his dialogues
displaying an almost eighteenth-century wit and sparkle. The best
example of this type of dialogue occurs in Together when Douglas and
the eleven-year-old Mr. R. are arguing over the latter*s English.
Douglas, to demonstrate a point, has asked Mr. R. to translate two
lines from a Greek poet into English (the passage is extended and
loses much out of context):
"D. Would you lik e to tra n s la te h is two sh o rt lines? They are very easy. And then you w ill under stand the state of my feelings." "R. Not if you write in Greek. Put them into French, and I will translate anything you please. Here is a scrap o f paper." "D. . . . There nowl Go ahead. No, no, no. I must have it in writing. You are too slippery, viva voce. And please try to do it carefully, for a change." "R. Voilal . . . Xvas gamble nude to the earth, and 1 w ill ramble nude underneath her. And why I dredge in vain, viewing the nude finish? So that is the state of your feelings. You seem to have forgotten to put your clothes on." "D. I was ramble nude——" "R. You may say 'stro ll1 instead of 'ramble1; I am not particular! Or 'saunter.1 All these are better words than 'walk' or 'promenade'; they are more adapted for poetic uses. That is why I chose 'dredge' instead of 'labour'; it sounds less common. You see what comes of knowing one's vocables." "D. Drudge; not dredge. I was ramble nude. This is appaling. . . . Ramble nude—God Almighty! Why, th e poet means to say that he walked, that he was bom, naked into this world; don't you see?" 125
"R. Sfc.se peut bien. In that ease, he was perhaps not the first. There is nothing very original in baby- poets being bom naked. Now if he had worn a felt hat on that occasion—-/Mr. R. is alluding to Douglas' felt hat, a common source of mirth in the book^" "D. This i s hard ly the moment, i s i t ? Tour Ehglish I must insist on telling you, leaves a great deal to be desired. And I should like to ask: what are we going to do about it?" "R. If the baby-poet had suddenly come to light, wearing th a t London h a t of yours . . . ah, th e d o c to r's explanations !" "D. Laugh away. There w ill be a nude f in is h . You will never pass the test.tt "R. And why not? Only a camel would bother to learn all those useless idioms. I was always first in our E nglish class a t c o lleg e. I knew more than th e p ro fs. and they were high-class people." "D. Was you ramble nude there?* "R. Allons: just a little more polish . . . ah, ah I The horrified sage-femme . . . her face . . . ah, ah, ahl . . . (pp. 1 o3-1o*l-) /Ellipsis marks in original/
Clever as such passages may be, they are against the realistic tenor of Douglas' own speech which forms the core of the book; probably for this reason, he kept his dialogues to a minimum.
It is obvious that Douglas1 weakness in, or aversion to natural dialogue presented a problem, for without dialogue, how was he to give a vivid impression of daily life and human surroundings which form a valid part of Alone and Together? How was he to prevent them from being unbearably solipsistic? Douglas solved the problem by developing a unique kind of "reported" speech in which he simu lated actual conversations in a few telling phrases. The process is more easily illustrated than described. Here is an Italian patriot "speaking":
German influence in Italy—why not? They had been there before; it was no dark page in Italian history. Was his own government so admirable that one should 126
regret its disappearance? A pack of knaves and cut throats. Patriotism—a phrase; auto-intoxication. They say one thing and mean another. The Ehglish too. Purely mercenary motives* for all their noble talk. (£, p. 100)
The passage is extremely natural and lifelike* with the patriot muttering his opinions while doing something else* perhaps eating his nightly portion of spaghetti. Obviously* the matter is not worth his undivided attention, much less such Inessentials as subjects and verbs.
An example from Together may further illustrate Douglas' ability to catch the flavor of speech by means of this technique. He begins in his own voice* then moves to that of his tiny sister, jumping back wards some forty years in time. The repetitions suggest her speech, as she persuades him to follow her.
A little later in life* I remember, and on a scorching summer afternoon, my sister and I bolted into these fields from the house, presumably after butterflies. How the sun blazed; how hot and sticky we were I And there was the old Feldbachle fu ll of water* gadding along in its usual, brisk style. An idea occurred to her. What about walking into it, clothes and all? Then, at last, we should be cool again. No; not paddle about the water like anybody else, but get right in, get properly in, in up to the neck and lie down there as if we were in bed. A great joke.29
In both of these passages the personages seem to be speaking; they are, in fact, more lifelike than his actual dialogues. Thus, Douglas realizes the naturalness of dialogue, without surrendering his auto biographical role as nCicerone.n 127
It would be possible to cite other devices of various inport in illustration of the conversational style of Alone and Together: these, however, should suffice. Despite an occasional archaism or flourish, it seems clear that Douglas was seeking a conversational, personal style which would express his character and the immediate world around him with freedom and fidelity. That he succeeded in this end should be evident from the quotations themselves. However, his final success can best be measured, I think, in the judgments of those who knew him, and who felt that the style caught the speech of the man. Constantine Fitzgibbon, who spent a summer with Douglas just before his death, writes, "Luckily, perhaps more even than most great writers, his talent was such that some part at least of his person ality lives on in his books."3® D. M. Low, a friend of the thirties, writes, "In one thing Douglas excelled his contemporaries and that was in his power to communicate himself in his pages even to the idiom and intonation of his speech."31 The most revealing of such judgments is that of Douglas' lifelong friend and councellor, John
Mavrogordato, who wrote to Douglas after reading the firs t version of Alone, then called Sunshine; "This book. Sunshine (a good
title) hangs together because it has 'personality.' So strongly
so that I could hear you voice in every line, and got quite senti mental thinking of the days when you would discourse wisdom half the
morning while I drank your Marsala, having le ft my horse to make a
mess on the steps of Albany Mansions. 128
A study of the style of Douglas1 travel books thus reveals a full shift from the ornate, ebullient prose of Siren Land to the in formal, conversational idiom of Alone and Together. In the first books, whose primary function is to convey information about the appearance and history and people of the land he is visiting, Douglas describes externals with what he assumed to be the appropriate style.
The lands themselves are rich in beauty and learned in lore; hence,
Douglas1 style is marked by the same qualities. When, however, he is not absorbed in his official duty as a travel writer, he writes with gusto and brilliance.
In Alnwfl and Together. Douglas is no longer so interested in informing the reader about the land visited as in pursuing his auto biographical daemon. Scene descriptions are kept at a minimum, while scholarship enters through the back door by way of digression. His changed attitude is implicit in a remark to the reader before the only pages of pure scholarship in Alone, the six pages on the Punta
Campanella. Douglas suggests that what he has to say w ill interest only "some scholar," and that "others w ill be well advised to pass over what follows" (p. 18*0. The style reflects his new concept of the travel book by being conversational and informal.
Old Calabria, coming midmost, somehow catches the virtues of both styles, without ever fully participating in either—it is neither learned nor colloquial, but eloquent and dignified.
It is thus clear that Douglas' style is not static, but in continuous development, from a complex toward a simpler form of 129 expression. To praise, then, the scene descriptions of the travel books, as Lindeman, Dawkins and others have done, is misleading, since the later descriptions differ so markedly from the earlier ones; and it is of course ridiculous to praise the travel books for their scene descriptions when there are so few in Alone and Together.
At the same time, to criticize Douglas1 diction as being archaic is clearly unfair to the later travel books. Finally, to praise the richness and poetry of his style is largely to ignore the facts of the style of Alone and Together. Any judgment of Douglas1 style must view it as a changing style.
Certain judgments may be given, nonetheless, of the style of the travel books. Beginning with Siren Land and Fountains. the essential scene descriptions must be censured. They are intolerably poetic, and yet Douglas was no poet. He lacked the poet(s imaginative gifts, and although a keen observer, he was an indifferent creator. Despite the quotations given in this chapter, Douglas1 travel books are not rich in simile and metaphor, the raw material of poetry, and in this respect they make a poor comparison with those of D. H. Lawrence.
Moreover, Douglas constantly falls back on the same images; for example, something is invariably "putting on a new face," or "cast ing off outworn weeds" of something else.33 Such repetition of imagery is a sure sign of a cramped imagination. Had Douglas been content to record in simple fashion what he saw, the descriptions of th ese books might p a ss. In stead , he compounded th e ir fa u lts by em ploying an overwrought, often out of date language. The reader too often finds himself "lapped in a vague and sensuous color dream." Nor can the archaic diction of these books be applauded. Their stylistic anachronisms are simply passe, though one might argue that much of the subject matter of Siren Land is equally passe, and hence the diction is justified by the content.
In Douglas' defense, it should be pointed out that at a later date he criticized his early work, more so than have some of his critics. His changing attitude toward impressionistic descriptions, and his own criticism of South Wind have been referred to. In the
Author's Preface to the 1929 reissue of Nerinda. he said that "it reads sloppily.” Since the style of Nerinda. written in I899t differs only slightly from that of Siren L a n d , his censure is perti nent here. Later, in the dedication of the 19^8 Penguin reprint of
Siren Land, he cautioned his friend Kenneth Macpherson, "And please
remember, this was written in 1908-1909." Stronger than any of these pronouncements, however, was his own renouncement of the sins of
Siren Land and Fountains in his later books.
And yet, despite its too obvious faults, Siren Land is a charm
ing book. It achieves an 6lan and virtuosity that Douglas never fully
equalled again. After a ll, to employ the language Douglas employed
argues an enviable lack of inhibition. There is a paradox here that
a book so long out of date can be so fresh and vital, and I think
the answer lies in the fact that Douglas was not trying to write in
an out of date style. He was not playing literary games as, say,
Joyce would do in Ulysses. He was simply writing in his own, natural 131 manner. What Ford Madox Ford said of Douglas' critical values sheds some light here:
In a sense Mr. Douglas is a writer of an older generation—of a generation infinitely old, critically. To come upon passages of appraisement in "Alone" is to be bewildered by the feeling that one's young, young- youth has returned. You have Ouida and Mathiide Blind—Mathilde Blind of all people!—exalted at the expense of James. . . . There is hardly anyone old enough to remember that literary point of view.3^
Stylistically, Fountains does not come out so well; while sharing the faults of Siren Land, it neglected its virtues.
The stylistic mastery of Old Calabria has been sufficiently com mented upon; if there are occasional lapses, they occur in chapters 8 and 18, both originally written for Siren Land and perhaps insuffi c ie n tly r e v i s e d .^5 Some readers may object to Douglas' personal cliches; these, however, are common to all his books, for his faith in them was as durable and uncompromising as i t was in other, greater matters. Perhaps the only stylistic weakness in Old Calabria is the insufficiently varied dialogue, but since the dialogue plays a minor role, the criticism must be considered equally minor.
The style of Alone also requires but slight critical reservation; except for an occasional, discordant archaism (which seemed to be part of Douglas' own speech), its style is as modem as its subject matter.
What one of Stendhal's critics recently wrote of his prose style seems also to apply to the prose of Alone: "La prose de Stendhal n'est jamais une draperie pos£e sur un quelconque contenu, elle est le contenu meme de sa pens£e."3^ Style and subject, draperie et contenu. are equally inseparable in Alone. One feels that Douglas' finest talent lay In describing the human comedy. Here his creative shortcomings were minimized, for man provides his own plot, his own satire, even his own rare poetry. The creative writer observes and records. Once Douglas had emerged from the "wilds and wolds" of his early period, he found that he was well-suited for such a task. His own sense of humor, his tolerance, his experience, his common sense perception, all enabled him to see at once the comedy within and without. The breezy, chatty, witty prose of Alone perfectly catches that variegated but always human world.
Together is not quite the equal, and doubtless it suffers from the comparison its title invites. Douglas himself preferred Alone.
The dranerie is sometimes too elaborate. The style cannot match the finish and wit of the style of Alone; the purple patches are too numerous. Perhaps Douglas had little left to say after Alone, and so in Together was content to idle too often in those charming, but wholly inconsequential Alpine side-valleys of his youth. But one should not be too severe with Together: it is an enjoyably written,
ruminative, leisurely book, with occasional moments of brilliance, and perhaps a yawn or two. 133 Footnotes
See, for example, Edmund Wilson's severe censure of Hour About EuropeT: Dguglas in Wilson's eyes Is a second Nietzsche (The Shores of Light /New York, 1952/, pp. 485-491). ^Curle reviewed Fountains for The Ehelish Review,. XII (1912), p. 665.
^Norman Douglas (London, 1931). p. 77.
^Norman Douglas. 2nd. ed. rev. (London, 1952). p. 63.
^"Norman Douglas: 1868-1952," The New Statesman and Nation. XLIII (March 15, 1952), p. 307.
^Grand Man (London, 195*0. P. 36.
^Plnorman (London, 1954), p. 62.
®"Norman Douglas: A C ritical Study," unpublished dissertation (University of Pittsburgh, 1956), p. 256.
9The New Yoricer. Nov. 1, 1958, p. 172. 1 °Nnrmaw Douglas: A Selection from the Works, ed. D. M. Low (London. 1955). p. 17. “ 11Pp. 45, 137, 228, 101, and 103 .
12 P . 17. 13p. 214.
l4This point w ill be discussed in connection with the style of Alone and Together. It has been suggested that Douglas' prose style was influenced by his own early scientific writings and the scientific literature of the nineteenth-century, and by such writers as Ouida and Doughty. Idndeman asserts, for example, without offering any evidence in corroboration, "This precision and lucidity are probably to be connected with his scientific bent and his disciplined experience with scientific description and foreign office reports" (p. 213 ). Actually, Douglas' scientific writings total only a little more than one hundred pages and certainly did not influence the style of Nerinda. an early short story written in 1899 while Douglas was s till in the "scientific" period. The style of Nerinda is even more exag gerated than that of Siren land. Da Looking Back. Douglas mentions only two foreign office reports, one of which he later printed. It is eight pages long and full of statistics. The "scientific in fluence theory" is tempting but has no relation to the facts. As 134 has been pointed out, Douglas' scene descriptions are anything but scientific. D. M. Low has traced perhaps a half dozen epigrams of Douglas to Ouida (pp. 9-10), while no one has shown any real paral lelism between the styles of Douglas and Doughty. On this point, Kenneth Macpherson wrote me, nI expect that Doughty, as a stylist, impressed N. D. in youth. I imagine he would have found him some what archaic as times changed. He said of his own early works that they 'dated'" (Letter of June 20, 1959).
I^The Rise of the English Novel (London, 1957)* Chapter II.
^Several of Conrad's letters to Douglas during the 1909-1912 period wain him that he is being "too concentrated for the general public." For example, the last sentence of Douglas' essay on Ischia, driving home the moral, was added at Conrad's insistence, and, in fact, was written by Conrad himself, who may not have trusted Douglas in the matter.
^Both articles are mentioned in the 1907 Diary. In Old Calabria. Douglas writes of the Milton article, "since then six years have passed over our heads * (p. 164). Assuming these remarks were prefaced to the Milton artiole when Douglas expanded Old Calabria, then the original article would date 1906.
^Douglas reprinted the essay in Experiments. see p. 145. Douglas may have always had a taste for impressionistic scene descriptions, if one may judge from Nerinda. 1899* For example, the following description of a sunset might easily have come from Siren Land: "The sun had set, but the sky, at first, still glowed with opalescent streaks of light that shone like flashing meteors strayed from their path. Suddenly they vanished and there was a great stillness. The landscape at our feet floated in an ocean of liquid pearl. Then a purple veil fell over all things. The evening star glittered overhead" (Nerinda /Florence. 1922/, p. 16).
19The Saturday Review (London), CXXXVI (Oct. 13. 1923). p. tok.
^®See Murial Draper. Music at Midnight (New York, 1929). for a description of this society. Douglas is frequently mentioned.
21The Ehelish Review. XI (1912), p. 332.
22The diary entry for July 4, 1909. reads: "Conrad with Messina art. reg."
23rhe offending paragraph reads: "From behind the Calabrian mountains i t /the moon J arose, slow-climbing; fit seal for such an evening. Half way over the crest it paused as if to take thought, while trees and clefts on those distant hills were silhouetted 135 against the kindly face; then, tearing Itself free from earth, It soared aloft and drowned the stars in Its fullness; light was diffused; the dimly suspected sea-channel transformed into an authentic river that mirrored the radiance in silver ripples. And to crown the melodramatic effect, a forest conflagration suddenly broke out over Reggio. A large tract of country, some two miles long, was quickly ablaze, throwing an angry glare upon the waters where the moonbeams lay weltering.* See "land of Chaos," Comhill. XXIX (1910), p. 384. This lengthy description became in Old Calabria the harmless, "So we discussed the world, while the music played under the starlit southern night" (p. 242). 2 k Actually, Douglas' first book in the "new," conversational style was not Alone, but the inconsequential and seldom read little volume, London S tre e t Games, w ritte n in th e jargon o f London children. The book, finished in 1916, was doubtless a good warm up for Alone to follow.
^^Alone. p. 141. Similar examples occur on pp. J6 and 54 of Alone.
^ Together, pp. 216-217. Douglas preserved these "flattering lines" among his private papers, and they are now in the possession o f Mr. Macpherson.
^ Together, p. 201. The "he" refers to Douglas' maternal grandfather.
28 "Douglas . . . had a theory of stylized dialogue which was fatal to the living word, so that almost everyone who talks in his books is Douglas-ized into sim ilarity, a monotony of flippantly doggish worldliness" (Pinorman. p. 109).
^Together. pp. 60-61. One of the jokes of Together is that the elderly Douglas, age six, is constantly being led into error by his sister, age four. The Index entry reads, "Sister of author, leads him astray" (p. 24?).
^Constantine Fitzgibbon, Norman Douglas: A Pictorial Record (London, 1953)* P* 35. 31P . 10.
32Letter of September 12, 1918. Albany Mansions is where Douglas lived while serving as Assistant-editor of The Baalish Review.
33For examples of these two images, see Siren Land, pp. 3 8, 138, 261, and 277; Fountains.'o. 65; Old Calabria, pp. 101, 150, 257, and 338; Alone, pp. 118 and 228; One Day, p. 33; and Experi ments. p. 156. 136
3^ "A Haughty Generation," Yale Review. XI (1922), p. 711.
35see the F irst Chapter and footnote 13*
-^Claude Roy, Stendhal Par Lui-Meme (Paris, 1960), p. 6. CHAPTER VI
THE EXTERIOR VOYAGE
In 1921 Douglas wrote fo r the London Mercury an ap p reciatio n o f
Charles M. Doughty's Arabia Deserta in commemoration of the long- awaited reissue of that epic of travel literature.^ While Douglas' warm p ra ise o f Doughty i s not overly im portant, h is comments on tra v e l literature are, since they constitute his only significant utterance on that subject. Two points in particular stand out in his appraisal of the good travel book: it must relate the experiences of a journey, and it must contain a portrayal of the traveler himself. These tiro aspects of the travel book Douglas labelled the "exterior" and "in terior" voyages. It is not difficult to see which he regarded in
1921 as th e more im portant.
It seems to me that the reader of a good travel- book is entitled not only to an exterior voyage, to descriptions of scenery and so forth, but to an interior, a sentimental or temperamental voyage, which takes place side by side with that outer one. . . . It is not enough to depict, in however glowing hues, the landscape and customs of distant regions, to smother us in folklore and statistics and history, and besprinkle the pages with imaginary conversations or foreign idioms by way of generating "local colour." It is not enough. We want to take our share in that Interior voyage and watch how these alien sights and sounds affect the writer.
Douglas then goes on to explain that because Doughty has succeeded as
have few others in giving reality and consistency to the interior
137 138 voyage, he must rank as one of the great travel writers:
Doughty- is rich In character, self-consistent, never otherwise than himself. Press him to the last drop, It has the same taste as the first, whereas Palgrave, for Instance, who trav ersed some o f these same regions, Is by no means always Palgrave; and Burton—what of Burton: A driving-force void of savour or distinction; drabness excelsis: a glori fie d Blue Book. (Ebro.. pp. 11-12)
Whatever the validity of these criteria, they provide Insight
Into Douglas1 development as a travel w riter, since his own books describe a curve In which increasing prominence is given to the author's character and philosophy at the expense of the travel voyage and the land visited. In Siren Land, the sights and sounds, the folklore and legend, the history and literature of the Neapoli tan region are all; the personality of Douglas counts for little .
In Alone, however, the persona of the author controls and consti tutes the subject matter of the book. In no sense is Alone a guided tour, or even a voyage through Italy; rather, it is an exploration into the character of the traveler-author, with Italy as a back ground. In short, Douglas was moving toward Doughty and the "in terior voyage."
This is not to say that the separation of the two voyages is rigid or complete. At times the author and the "alien sights and sounds" of the voyage may seem of equal importance. Nevertheless, a separation exists. The pages in Alone on Douglas' walk to Ferento are obviously not about a wa!Uc to Ferento, just as the earlier chapters on Sister Serafina and the Flying Monk are not about Norman
Douglas. An understanding of the two voyages is essential to an 139 understanding of the travel books. To overlook the difference In subject natter In Siren Land and Alone, as have most of Douglas1 critics, Is to be unaware of his particular growth and development as a travel writer.2
The two voyages, if Interpreted with proper latitude, thus pro vide a meaningful approach to the content of the travel books. Siren
Land and Fountains are essentially exterior voyages, with Douglas discussing various aspects of the outer world: a fine view of Capri, or the Galli rocks, or perhaps even the life of Sister Serafina. Our attention is focused not on the author but on what he is saying. In contrast, Alone and Together are interior voyages, with Douglas re
calling the days of his youth, or railing against progress, or perhaps only letting us in on the secret whereabouts of a good
restaurant. Our attention is now on the actor-author himself.
Calabria, as befits its wider scope, contains both journeys, or worlds, though its kinship is nearer to Siren Land than to Alone.
It is the purpose of this chapter to examine in some detail the ex
terior voyage of the early travel books, with particular emphasis on
Old Calabria, the finest of Douglas' travel books. Perhaps the
simplest approach to the rich commentary of Siren lend. Fountains
and Old Calabria is to examine Douglas1 treatment of a few basic
topics—history, nature and man—before stepping back to survey the
ensemble effect of the whole.
Douglas' foremost artistry in the early travel books lies in
his treatment of history. It is not surprising that history figures 140 prominently in such a book as Old Calabria, whose very title suggests something hoary and eld. The land itself is intensely historic, and perhaps few other regions have witnessed a comparable procession of rulers and kingdoms: the Bourbons of yesteryear, the Spaniards before them, the middle ages with their Saracens and Byzantine
Greeks, and the warring Hohenstaufen and Anjou, the days of Roman conquest, and, finally, the years of gold when Calabria was known as
Magna Grecia. Douglas feels the fascination of Calabria's history, and expresses it in eloquent terms:
At Venosa one thinks of Roman legionaries flee ing from Hannibal, of Horace, of Norman ambitions; Lucera and Manfredonia call up Saracen memories and the ephemeral gleams of Hohenstaufen; Gargano takes us back into Byzantine mysticism and monkery. And now from Altamura with its dark record of Bourbon horrors, we glide into the sunshine of Hellenic days when the wise Archytas, sage and lawgiver, friend of Plato, ruled this ancient city of Tarentum. A wide sweep of history I And if those Periclean times be not remote enough, yonder lies Orla on its hilltop, the stronghold of pre-Hellenic and almost legendary Messapians; while for such as desire more recent associations there is the Albanian colony of San Giorgio, only a few miles distant, to recall the glories of Scanderbeg and his adventurous bands. Herein lies the charm of travel in this land of multiple civilizations«the ever-changing layers of culture one encounters, their wondrous juxta p o s itio n . (J)£, p . 65)
Despite the fullness of Douglas' historical knowledge, his
general procedure in the travel books is to introduce this knowledge
lightly. He seldom lectures on a specific topic; he rarely explains
(some of his references make severe demands on the reader's "his
torical sense"); he almost never moralizes, except for an occasional
diatribe against Christianity or Plato. His interest in history is 141 thus not didactic but aesthetic. He is not trying to write the history of Calabria or the Sorrentine peninsula, but to increase our awareness of it. There is a pleasure in recognizing the historical significance of some relic of the past, as any traveler knows; and
Douglas takes the same pleasure in revealing the past of a lone column on the beach at Cotrone, or of a wall of antique masonry on one of the Galli rocks, or of a shallow, marsh-filled, rather odorous little stream at Taranto, the Galaesus, "whose virtues are extolled by: Virgil, Horace, Martial, Statius, Propertius, Strabo, Pliny,
Varro and Columella" (PC. p. 81). Douglas' early travel books are full of such recognition scenes. His description of Venosa, the birthplace of Horace, is a fine example of his ability to recognize
the past in the present.
The country around must have looked different in olden days. Horace describes it as covered with forests, and from a manuscript of the early seventeenth century which has lately been printed one learns that the surrounding regions were full of "hares, rabbits, foxes, roe deer, wild boars, martens, porcupines, hedgehogs, tortoises and wolves "--wood-loving creatures which have now, for the most part, deserted Venosa. S till, there are left some stretches of oak at the back of the town, and the main lines of the land cannot change. Yonder lies the Horatian Forense and "Acherontia *s next"; further on, the glades of Bantia (the modem Banzi); the long-drawn Garganian Mount, on which the poet's eye must often have rested, emerges above the plain of Apulia like an island (and such it is: an island of Austrian stone, stranded upon the beach of Italy). Monte Vulture s till dominates the landscape, although at this near ness the crater loses its shapely conical outline and assumes a serrated edge. On its summit I perceive a gigantic cross—one of a number of such symbols which were erected by the clericals at the time of the recent rationalist congress in Rome.3 142
The entire passage is a remarkable, but not unusual example of
Douglas1 ability to blend history and description into an artistic whole.
Nowhere i s Douglas' s k i l l in v iv ify in g th e p a s t so keenly f e l t , nor so easily illustrated, than in the Initial chapter of Old
Calabria, on Saracen Lucera. The town itself had a special meaning for Douglas, since its sacred history revealed a grandeur and a pagentry that more modem places could not equal. Here, Frederick
II, that great and enlightened Monarch of Medievalism, ruled the
Kingdom of Naples for thirty years: here his son Manfred valiantly defied Popes and Kings before falling to the power of Charles of
Anjou; and here the relics of their era yet stand. Pondering in the twilight before the sombre, centuries old castle of Frederick H , the largest in all South Italy, with walls "nearly a mile in circum ference," Douglas evokes in imagination the death struggle of those two families, Hohenstaufen and Anjou. His recollections assume the dimension of a cosmic drama, with kings and queens and Popes and generals the actors caught in the eternal cycle of hubris, ate, m oira:
Then my thoughts wandered to the Hohenstaufen and the conspiracy whereby their fate was avenged. The romantic figures of Manfred and Conradin; their relentless enemy Charles; Costanza, her brow crowned with a poetic nimbus (that melted, towards the end, into an aureole of bigotry); Frangipani, huge in villany; the princess Beatrix, tottering from the dungeon where she had been confined for nearly twenty years; her deliverer Roger de Lauria, with out whose resourcefulness; and audacity i t might have gone ill with Aragon; Popes and Palaeologus—brilliant colour effects; the King of Ehgland and Saint Louis 1if3
of France; in the background, dimly discernible, the colossal shades of Frederick and Innocent, locked in deadly embrace; and the whole congress of figures enlivened and inter-penetrated as by some electric fluid—the personality of John of Procida. That the element of farce might not be lacking, Fate contrived that exquisite royal duel at Bordeaux where the two mighty potentates, calling each other by a variety of unkingly epithets, enacted a prodigiously fine piece of foolery for the delectation of Europe. From th is te rra c e one can overlook both Foggia and Castel Fiorentino—the beginning and end of the drama; and one follows the march of this magnifi cent retribution without a shred of compassion for the gloomy papal hireling. Disaster follows disaster with mathematical precision, till at last he perishes miserably, consumed by rage and despair. Then our satisfaction is couplete. (pp. 7-8)
As suggested, Douglas seldom treats history in such length or fullness (the above passage contains yet another long paragraph). He preferred history to be part of the journey, not the goal. He had an
"eye for history" and seldom missed what was historically interest ing. Throughout his books one finds history turning up without warning. At Siris, he pauses to reflect on the fate of the Sybar ites of old: "Yet long ago it /the plain of SybarigJ resounded with the din of battle and the trumpeting of elephants—in that furious f i r s t b a ttle between Pyrrhus and the Romans. And h ere, under the very soil on which you stand, lies buried, they say, the ancient City of Siris" (2£, p. 97). At Thurii, he wakes up to history: "I re lapsed into a doze, but soon woke up with a start. The carriage had
stopped; it was nearly midnight; we were at . . . Thurii—death-place of Herodotus I How one would like to see this place by daylight"
(PC. p. 180). At Gafsa, it lies by the railroad station: "I climbed
this afternoon to the summit of the Rogib h ill, which lies near the 144 railway station. . . . This, presumably, is the site where Marius halted for the last time before attacking the town" (F, p. 102).
History is thus part of the voyage and an essential ingredient of the atmosphere, and were Douglas' treatment fuller and more rigorous, one would be tempted to come up with some such phrase as nthe voyage is conducted simultaneously on two levels of time, the present and the past, each echoing and taking meaning from the other.n The facts seem otherwise. Douglas1 travel books are his torically alive for the simple reason that history was alive to 4 Douglas. His interest was more than scholarly; it was active. He traversed the entirety of Calabria by foot, studying the visible and often ruined records of her past. He lived with the people, and spoke their dialects. He read the historians and priests and chroniclers who recorded her history while it was s till present.5
Given this passionate delight in history, it is not surprising that the travel books are permeated both with references to the past and a feeling for it.
Although much of what Douglas writes about Capri or Calabria or Tunisia relates in some way to their history, he is also properly concerned with their present. Unlike Gissing, he had no desire to escape from the here and now into a dream world of the iroagaination.
The exterior voyage is of the body as well as the mind. There are mountains to be climbed, forests to be traversed, towns to be visited, castles to be inspected, people to be talked to, and wines to be drunk. The exterior voyage is thus concerned with the land and its inhabitants. 1^5 The land plays a prominent role In the early travel books. Old
Calabria and Fountains describe trips to primitive regions. While
Siren Land records no such journey, nature figures In its pages, with Douglas exploring caves, climbing mountains, taking long hikes, and discoursing in learned fashion on the fauna and flora of the region. Douglas, however, was not interested in merely describing what he saw; nature was one subject that he took seriously and with out compromise, and this seriousness informs his treatment of nature in the travel books.
Douglas saw nature as an aesthetic and moral force which man could neglect only at his peril. His attitude recalls Wordsworth's without the pantheism. For Douglas, nature was a great teacher, giving graphic illustrations of the fundamental laws of birth, growth, and decay. Kan in society loses his bearings by being out of contact with the tangible realities of nature; seeing only his own works, he becomes, improperly, the measure of all things. To Douglas, such a viewpoint was intolerable, for he saw man as a finite, in s ig n ific a n t being, e sp e c ia lly when l e f t to h is own devices. Once in contact with nature, however, he broadens his view and acquires a sense of perspective through an awareness of the immensity of things non-human. Over and over in the travel books, Douglas stresses the need for communication with nature. For example, Douglas sees the myopic self-absorption of the Tarentines as the direct result of their distance from nature.
And never was city-population more completely cut off from the country; never was wider gulf between peasant and townsman. There are charming 146
walks beyond the New Quarter—a level region* with olives and figs and almonds and pomegranates standing knee-deep In ripe odorous wheat; but the citizens might be living at Timbuctu for all they know of these things. . . • Their interests are narrowed down to the purely human; a case o f partial atrophy. For the purely human needs a corrective; it is not sufficiently humbling* and th a t i s ex actly what makes them so su p e rc ilio u s. We must take a little account of the Cosmos nowadays—-it helps to rectify our bearings. (QC. p . 90) There is also in these books a touch of escapism. Douglas is sick of man and his "conjuring tricks." He values Calabria and Tunisia precisely because they are "uncivilized" and out of date. Occasion ally* one wonders if Douglas is going to the country or fleeing from
the town. Even a t th a t rare moment when he accepts the city* as he does Rome* he qualifies by stating that nature is better. "Were green pastures not needful to me as light and air* I* for one, would never more stray beyond those ancient portals ..." (&» p. 202). In Siren
Land, he is more himself and lashes out against the city in Swiftian
fu ry .
We are not yet ripe for growing up in the streets; they stimulate the social Instincts of the adult* but stunt the adolescent who craves for solitude and surroundings habitual to earlier periods of human history. We know what is said of the second genera tion of city-dwellers* even of high social standing; an d has any good ever come out of that foul-clustering town-proletariat, beloved of humanitariansT Nothing— never; they are only waiting for a leader* some "inspired idiot" to rend to pieces our poor civili zation. Whereas out of the very dregs of the country folk has often arisen* by the operation of that dark law which regulates the meteoric appearance of "sports*" a Lincoln* a Winckelmann, to guide men's footsteps in the path. (p. 35) It would be a mistake, however, to see Douglas' love of nature as resting primarily on moral grounds. He loved nature for its own sake, just as he loved good wine, and he seldom felt the need to justify his inclinations. Mountains and forests he found difficult to resist (like Sam Johnson, he detested the sea). He was an in
curable climber, as he confesses to a police officer in Alone; "Now why did I climb up that wretched Muretta: For an all-sufficient
reason: it was a mountain. There is no eminence in the land, from
Etna and the Gran Sasso downwards, whose appeal I can resist"
(p* 237)* Nor does he seem to have often resisted: "As to this
Scalambra, this mountain whose black grey summit overtops everything
near Olevano, I could soon bear the sight of it no longer. It seemed
to shut out the world; one must up and glance over the edge, to see what is happening on the other side" (^, p. 145).
Old Calabria is a continuous record of climbs up what seems every
available mountain. Douglas describes, for example, in considerable
detail, the long ascensions of Mount Pollino and Aspromonte; the
latter climb and descent covered some thirty miles by foot and was
"by no means to be recommended to young boys o r persons in d e lic a te
health" (PC. p. 285). Then of course there is the long passage over
the high Sila plateau, which Douglas recounts in chapters 22-28 of
Old Calabria. Siren Land contains the record of treks along the
backbone of the peninsula, Tore, and up and down Mount San
Costsnzo. Douglas' exploration of the heights has the value not
only of furnishing the reader with entertaining accounts of ascents
and descents; it also provided Douglas with first-hand experience 148 of the land he was describing. This experience, combined with his
extensive knowledge of geology, enabled him to interpret accurately what he saw. Whereas a distant line of hills might be only a pleasing prospect to the ordinary traveler, to Douglas it often connoted some
thing more precise, a rare strata of rock, a subterranean eruption,
a period of time. He understood what he saw and could pick out the
essentials. In the following passage, he describes with sure hand
the singular effect of the sight of the Bay of Naples. In a few
lines, he has caught its "being."
A gradual change is taking place in the orographical modelling of the Bay of Naples. Capri and other lime stone portions must formerly have presented a smoother aspect to the eye, as they were covered with trees and soil which gave them a rounded lock. The trees being felled, the earth slipped down, exposing the jagged asperities of the rock. With the volcanic districts it is generally the reverse, for these craters are of soft material, and the longer they are exposed, the smoother they become. The lower eminences of Baiae and Ischia are now merely a jumble of curving lines, and a small crater near Fuorigrotta is in the last stage of liquesence; soon the rain and the plough w ill have merged i t into the earth whence it arose—the limestone tracts, meanwhile, grow more peaked every day. (SL, pp. 28-29)
Douglas' passages on the forest are of a different kind of in
terest. He was too concerned with deforestation to view a forest
objectively, and generally the sight of some magnificent tract of
timber evoked anger at those who could destroy it for profit. Re
flections of this sort are frequent in the travel books, and consti
tute an idee fixe. A humorous and typical diatribe occurs in the
second chapter of Old Calabria, where Douglas sees a kind of
retributive justice falling on those who fell the trees; "Denuding 1^9 the hill-sides that were once covered with timber . . . has im poverished the country. . . . It has modified, if I mistake not. the very character of the people. The desiccation of the climate has
entailed a desiccation of national humour" (pp. 12-13). Passages
of poetic appreciation are infrequent. Good examples occur in the
final chapters of Fountains. written in the gardens of Nefta, if one
can accept the luxuriance of Douglas' style, which perhaps suits the
luxuriance of the gardens themselves. Too often, Douglas' appreci
ative passages are overly brief; he had the scientist's eye for
detail without the poet's technique for recreating it at length.
His brief description of the famous Gariglione forest is typical in
this respect:
G ariglione was a t th a t time /J*9o£7 * v irg in f o re s t, untouched by the hand of man; a dusky ridge, visible from afar; an impenetrable tangle of forest trees, chiefest among them being the "garlgli" (ouercus cerris) whence it derives its name, as well as thousands of pines and bearded firs and all that hoary indigenous vegetation struggling out of the moist soil wherein their progenitors had lain decaying time out of mind. (PC. pp. 231-232)
Douglas has not given enough detail here to provide a clear picture
of the forest.
As one might expect, Douglas' most characteristic treatment of
nature occurs in the random reflections that occurred to him along the
road. Perhaps such reflections, arising effortlessly out of his
encyclopedic knowledge of nature and her ways, might best be con
sidered footnotes in the text. Old Calabria in particular contains
a mine of information on nature scattered through its pages. The reader finds himself being informed on such subjects as the medicinal value of herbs, the distribution of mountain flowers, the changing colors of the beech, the importation of the lemon by the Saracens, the scandalous eating habits of the goat, and the iniquities of the
Eucalyptus. Douglas' observations add considerable exactitude and variety to the journey. For example, he always records the precise name of the flora he sees, and Old Calabria contains twenty-eight separate entries in the Index under this heading alone. When, as is usually the case, he reflects directly upon what he sees, then his re fle c tio n s become p a r t o f the te x tu re of th e book, a risin g ou t of his inborn curiosity. Such reflections not only clarify various aspects of natural history, but, more important, they often provide insight into Douglas' way of thinking. Note, for example, the sensibility and humor of these two brief observations of things seen along the road: "An old bull, reposing in solitary grandeur, allowed me so near an approach that I was able to see two or three frogs hopping about his back, and engaged in catching the mosquitoes that troubled him. How useful, if something equally efficient and in expensive could be devised for humanity!" (PC. p. 101) and "Here the jackdaws congregate at nightfall, flying swiftly and noiselessly to their resting-place. Odd, how quiet Italian jackdaws are, compared with those of Ehgland; they have discarded their voices, which is the best thing they could have done in a land where every one persecutes them" (Q£, p. 3 ?).
When, however, Douglas' commentary is not the result of some
thing seen, but rather apart from the trip, with Douglas perhaps 151 digrossing in scholarly manner out of his reading, then it may seem ornamental and superfluous. Is, for example, the following passage taken from a chapter on Malaria in Old Calabria of broad interest, or is its appeal restricted to the Calabrian specialist?
Returning to old C alabria, we fin d th e woods o f Locri praised by Proclus—woods that must have been of coniferous timber, since Virgil lauds their re sinous pitch. Now the Aleppo pine produces pitch, and would still flourish there, as it does in the lowlands between Taranto and Metaponto; the classical Sila pitch-trees, however, could not grow at this level any more. Corroborative evidence can be drawn from Theocritus, who mentions heath and arbutus as thriving in the marine thickets near Cotrone— mountain shrubs, nowadays, that have taken refuge in cooler uplands, together with the wood-pidgeon near Cotrone, and, indeed, large tracts of South Italy are described as marshy by the ancients. (0£, p. 298)
Generally, however, Douglas treats nature artistically. He
views her with the love of a poet and the objectivity of a scientist.
One discovers few of the "errors of observation" in his travel books
that he detected in those of "friend Lawrence" (LB. p. 350). There
are nevertheless limitations to Douglas 1 poetic renderings of what
he saw in nature, as was noted in the chapter on his style. These
may be summed up in V. S. Pritchett's judgment that "the poetic
image . . . in Douglas' descriptions . . . seems false.Despite
these limitations in his descriptive technique, Douglas has conveyed
in the early travel books with appreciable clarity not only his own
belief in the benign power of nature, but some of the unrestrained
pleasure that he himself experienced in his walks and rambles.
If Douglas' attitude toward nature is marieed by clear-cut
appreciation, his attitude toward man is at best ambivalent. Douglas 152 did not visit Calabria solely for her history, nor her scenery; he was also interested in, if not overly sympathetic with, the peasant, the villager and their culture. And, in varying degree, he visited
Tunisia and wrote on the Neapolitan region for similar reasons.
Douglas' first critic, his friend Arthur Eckersley, has called attention to this "human note" in the travel books:
Mr. Douglas' travel-books keep scenery in its place, as a background. For him the proper study of the tr a v e lle r remains man; and i t i s p re c ise ly h is sympathy of outlook that enables him to pursue this study with such entertaining reward. Where your superficial observer would see a sunset and a dirty peasant, Mr. Douglas (after one approving glance at the sky) would have struck up a friend ship with the unwashed that shall furnish a whole chapter of indigenous anecdote and philosophy.?
Yet Eckersley has exaggerated the importance of man in the travel books. Certainly, Douglas' fellow creatures play a minor
role in Siren Land for the good reason that he was trying to get away from them. "On these Siren heights —Montes Sireniani. they used to be called—the human element is lacking. . . . Here . . . it may not be amiss to build a summer but wherein to undergo a brief period of
katharsis. of purgation and readjustment" (p. 37)* The case is
different in Fountains. where limited knowledge of Tunisia forced
Douglas to write out of his experiences with the Arab, whatever his
predilections, and in Old Calabria, where his desire to provide a
complete picture of the land led him to include a little of every
thing. But even in these two books, the common man plays a minor
role. Put bluntly, Douglas' interest in la condition humane was
lim ite d . 153
There is little of the genuine intuition and understanding of man in Douglas1 travel books that one finds in Twilight in Italy or the Ionian Sea, two Italian travel books contemporary with his. Parallel passages from Gisslng and Douglas immediately differ entiate their authors on this important matter of human sympathy.
(In each instance, the author is watching a Calabrian peasant at work on the land.) Douglas w rites:
I remember watching an old man stubbornly digging a field by himself. He toiled through the flaming hours, and what he lacked in strength was made up in the craftiness, malizia. bom of long love of the soil. The ground was baked hard; but there was still a chance of rain, and the peasants were anxious not to miss it. Knowing this kind of labour, I looked on from my vine-wreathed arbour with admir ation, but without envy. . . . I can find little to admire in this whole class of men, whose talk and dreams are of the things of the soil, and who knows of nothing save the regular interchange of summer and winter with their unvarying tasks and rewards. (OC, p . 4?)
Here is the passage from Gissing:
Later in the day I came upon a figure scarcely less impressive . . . there, amid great bare fields, a countryman was ploughing. . . . I could not but approach the man and exchange words with him; his rude but gentle face, his gnarled hands, his rough and scanty vesture, moved me to a deep respect, and when his speech fell upon my ear, i t was as though I listened to one of the ancestors of our kind. Stopping in his work, he answered my inquiries with careful civility; certain phrases escaped me, but on the whole he made himself quite intelligible, and was glad, I could see, when my words proved that I understood him. I drew apart, and watched him again. Never have I seen man so utterly patient, or primaevally deliberate. The donkey's method of ploughing was to pull for one minute, and then rest for two; it excited in the ploughman not the least surprise or resentment. Though he had a long stick 154 in his hand, he never made use of it; at each stoppage, he contemplated the ass, and then gave utterance to a long "ah-h-hI" in a note of most affectionate remonstrance. They were not driver and beast but comrades in labour. It reposed the mind to look upon them.® The passage from Old Calabria is marked by a cool objectivity and a lack of sentimentalism. Douglas knows the toil and hardship of the peasant's lot, but he does not commiserate. Gissing, in con
trast, feels an instinctive bond with the peasant, and a deep com passion for his timeless toil. Douglas' objective portrayal of man in the travel books is
continually illustrated in Fountains. whose Arabs elicited less than usual tolerance (in the Arabia Deserta essay, he calls them "peevish
ly ferocious bigots"). Douglas' distaste for romantic primitivism
and his refusal to palliate what he feels are evident in this
description of a half-savage woman wallowing in front of her hut
(one wonders what "blood wisdom" D. H. Lawrence would have detected):
The wild-eyed young wench, with her dishevelled hair, ferocious bangle-ornaments, tattooings, and nondescript blue rags open at the side and revealing charms well fitted to disquiet some robust savage—what has such a creature in common with the rest of us? Not even certain raptures, misdeemed primeval; hardly more than what falls to man and beast alike. On my appearance, she rose up and eyed me unabashed; then sank to the ground again, amid her naked and uncouth cubs. (£, p. 15)
As for the Italians, Douglas observes them closely, almost
scientifically; he mingles with them because he is curious of their
ways; he talks with them because he is a natural linguist; he adapts
to their mode of life because he wishes to have done with European-
ism; but he is never really one of them in the sense that Gissing was. 155
They are ultimately a source of amusement, the actors on his stage.
For this reason Douglas prefers the more colorful peasant to
the city-dwelling bourgeois. The peasant is forthright, uncompli
cated and, above all, picturesque. This preference frequently shows
up in the travel books, as Douglas seeks out those isolated pockets where the peasant can s till be found in the pure state. One entire
chapter of Old Calabria is devoted to the peasant festival on Mount
Pollino where Douglas has gone because "here the old types, uncon
taminated by modernism and emigration, are s till gathered together"
(p« 155)* Douglas’ love of the picturesque is clearly seen in his
remark on the peasantry of Morano:
The oldsters, with their peaked hats (cappello pizzuto) shading gnarled and canny features, are well worth studying. At this summer season they leave the town a t 3*30 a.m. to cultivate their fields, often far distant, returning at nightfall; and to observe these really wonderful types, which w ill soon be extinct, you must take up a stand on the Castrovillari road towards sunset and watch them riding home on their donkeys, or walking, after the labours of the day. (OC, p. 135 )
Yet, whatever Douglas' interest, the peasant occupies an un
important place in the travel books. Those conversations noted by
Eckersley which "furnish a whole chapter of indigenous anecdote and
philosophy" are not to be found, however much we may regret their
absence. Nowhere are we tre a te d to an exhaustive study o f someone
Douglas has met, whether traveling companion, peasant, or chanqe
acquaintance.9 Instead, we are given a series of vignettes, some
what in the manner of Fielding, in which a minor character momen
tarily comes alive, dances out his part, and then "passes into the 156
gloamingu (£, p. 15)* There is nothing particularly real or life
like about these characters or their performances; they are staged, with artificial, pointed speech and exaggerated gestures. Their psychology reverts back to the old "humours." Nonetheless, we are
amused. A fine example of this type of characterization occurs at
T aranto.
I witnessed an Aristophanic scene in one of their shops lately, when a simple-minded stranger, a north I ta lia n —some arse n a l o f f ic ia l—brought a l i t t l e boy to havq his hair cut "not too short" and, on return ing from a brief visit to the tobacconist next door, found it cropped much closer than he liked. "But, damn it," he said (or words to that effect), "I told you not to cut the hair too short." The barber, immaculate and imperturable, gave a p relim in ary bow. He was c o lle c tin g h is thoughts, and his breath. "I say, I told you not to cut it too short. It looks horrible— " "Horrible? That, sir—pardon my frankness! —is a matter of opinion. I fully admit that you desired the child's hair to be cut not too short. Those, in fact, were your very words. Notwithstanding, I venture to think you w ill come round to my point of view, on due reflection, like most of my esteemed customers. In the first place, there is the ethno logical aspect of the question. You are doubtless sufficiently versed in history to know that under the late regime it was considered improper, if not criminal, to wear a moustache. Well, nowadays we think differently. Which proves that fashions change; yes, they change, sir; and the wise man bends to them—up to a certain point; of course; up to a certain reasonable point——" "But, damn it— " "And in favour of my contention that hair should be worn short nowadays, I need only cite the case o f . . . (PC. pp. 82-83)
The scene continues in like vein for another page. Sometimes there
is no conversation at all but only an exaggerated description, as we 157 have in the following picture of an Italian at lunch, a genuine tour de force.
I once watched a young fellow, a clerk of some kind, in a restaurant at midday. He began by informing the waiter that he had no appetite that morning—sangue di Plot no appetite whatever; but at last allowed himself to be persuaded into consuming an hors d 'oeuvres of anchovies and olives. Then he was induced to try the maccheroni, because they were "particularly good that morning"; he ate, or rather drank, an Immense plate ful. After that came some slices of meat with a dish of green stuff sufficient to satisfy a starving bul lock. A little fish? asked the waiter. Well, perhaps yes, just for form's sake—two fried mullets and some nondescript fragments. Next, he devoured a couple of raw eggs "on account of his miserably weak stomach," a bowl of salad and a goodly lump of fresh cheese. Not without a secret feeling of envy I left him at work upon his dessert, of which he had already con sumed some six peaches. Add to this (quite an ordinary repast) half a bottle of heavy wine, a cup of black coffee and three glasses of water. (Q£. P. 130) The pages of Old Calabria are dotted by these quaint eccentrics,
who add spice if not complete veracity to the journey. There is
Douglas' coachman to Sant’ Angelo who, when caught drinking, defends
himself by proclaiming that "the horse is perfectly sober" (p. 22 ).
Or the booksalesman in Naples who wishes to explain how simple i t is
fo r humans to f ly : "The only reason why people d o n 't f l y lik e th a t
nowadays /Jike the Flying Monjc/ is because— w ell, sir, because
they can't. They fly with machines, and think it something quite new
and wonderful. An yet it's as old as the hills! There was Iscariot,
for example—Icarus, I mean—" (p. 69). Or the peasant girl who
b eliev es th a t th e Madonna in heaven takes the same food a t the same
hours as humans. "'The same food?' I asked. 'Does the Madonna 158 really eat beans?1 'Beans? Not likelyt But fried fish, and beef steaks of veal"1 (p. 61).
In the final analysis, however, I t Is not so much Douglas' treatment of any single subject, whether history, or nature, or man, that defines the exterior voyage, but the abundance of subjects that he worked Into h is books. S iren Land and Old C alabria are com- pendiums of South Italian lore, with Douglas discussing geology, archeology, biology, literature, hagiology, religion, and perhaps half a dozen other fields as well. Several of his critics have, in fact, singled out this richness and variety of content as the dis tinguishing feature of these early books. What John Davenport observes in this respect is typical: "It has been said that what makes his 'travel books' unlike anyone else's is that he takes as his
subject the total nature of the area he is writing about, its history,
geological and social, its fauna and flora, its religious beliefs past and present, and its present and past pleasures.
In two ways, Douglas described the "total nature of an area."
First, he wrote, or included, individual, scholarly chapters on
particular subjects, such chapters as "Sirens and their Ancestry,"
"Tiberius," and "Sister Serafina" from Siren Land: "Roman Olive
Culture" from Fountains: and "Tillers of the Soil," "The Flying
Monk," "Dragons," "African Intruders," "The Sage of Croton," and
"Southern Saintliness" from Old Calabria. The weight these chapters
supply is undeniable; their worth is something else. Not only do
they disrupt an already precarious organizational pattern; they are 159 apt to be pedantic and dull. Too often Douglas was content to sub stitute an accumulation of fact for the development of an organic thesis. In 'Sirens and their Ancentry," he amasses an amazing quantity of obscure names and odd quotations, with burlesque intent.
He shares Swift's methods without, however, sharing his genius. The chapters on "Sister Serafina" and "Southern Saintliness" are exposes of subjects more interesting to Douglas than to his readers. Both chapters would have profited from judicious cutting. "The Flying
Monk" is more successful, since Douglas maintains the ingenu role throughout. Only in the "Sage of Croton" does Douglas reach usual strength. In it, he attempts neither to reason nor to argue; he harangues in flamboyant style. (Douglas' rhetoric was always superior to his logic.)
Douglas' second method was to blend observation and learning
"along the road" according to the exigencies of association. It is
this second method that actually gives these books their variety and
richness. Ralph Lindeman has clearly described Douglas' "pro
cedure ":
The reader i s tra v e lin g in a le is u r e ly way w ith Norman Douglas through some particular region, usually off the beaten track, and sharing his ran dom w alking, ta lk in g , and d in in g . And, more im portant, he is listening to Douglas' views on philosophy, religion, art, and the art of living. When treasures of town or village are turned up— some cave used for worship during the middle ages, the ruins of a villa where Horace once stayed, a collection of rare coins in the local museum, or just some unusual vantage point which allows an especially attractive view of the landscape at sunset—the reader finds that his guide and 160
companion is able to discourse on almost anything with the authority of wide learning and with the perceptions of an artist. The history of the region, its legend and literature, references to it by ancient writers—all are tapped as sources of the urbane and easy-flowing discourse.H
' The variety of subjects one happens on in Douglas 1 early travel books is astonishing. A glance at the pages of Old Calabria hints at a few of the topics discussed therein: Malaria, Italian law, nutritional values of food, emigration, folk legends, artificial lakes, Calabrian poets, Greek and Albanian dialects, the locations of cemeteries, Gissing in Calabria, public gardens, music, means of
tra v e l, Byzantine t r a i t s , Basilean Monks, erosion, s in , verde antico
and brigandage. The lis t is endless, and similar ones might be drawn up for Siren I*nd and Fountains.
Douglas seems to have taken all of South Italy as his province.
If we come across an old convent, Douglas has been there before, and
has read several monographs on its history. If we pass some peasant
along the way who talks in a strange dialect, Douglas has studied it
and knows the precise percentage of Greek words and how they have
resisted the inroads of Italian. If perchance we encounter a
religious procession, Douglas knows the Saint involved, her pedi
grees, her Pagan progenitors, and how the latest official life
differs from those of the seventeenth-century* for despite, or
because of his fanatic atheism, Douglas specialised in Saints and
was on intimate terms with at least half a hundred. If we stumble
over Johnson's rock, Douglas consoles us that had it been another
species of chalcedony, i t would have been much harder. The comprehensiveness of Douglas' subject material must be qualified, however, at least in Siren Land and Fountains. where the completeness of his approach is more apparent than real. Douglas does not discuss every aspect of the history and physiognomy of Tunisia and
the Naples region in the manner of a Lenormant. He selects what interests him, and devotes full detail only to certain favorite sub jects, for example, to Tiberius or the Caves of Siren Land. In two ways, Douglas was able to give a deceptive completeness to these two books. First, as he well knew, the very exhaustiveness of certain discussions implied an untapped reserve that encompassed other sub
jects as well. The man who cites at length obscure references on the
literature of the Blue Grotto can be expected to know the broad out
line of the history of Capri, even if he never mentions it. Second,
Douglas' loose associational method of organization enabled him to
hit superficially on a wide variety of subjects. Had he practiced
a more rigid, logical approach, his scope would have been cor
respondingly narrowed. Only in Old Calabria does Douglas seem to
have attempted a full picture of the land, the people and their
h is to ry .
The completeness of the early travel books must be qualified
in another respect as well. Occasionally, paragraphs and even pages
are devoted to the pedantic exposition of some trivial concern.
Douglas seemed to think the supplying of information a worthy end
in itself, regardless of the value of that information. For pages,
he w ill advuabrate the pedigree of some saint, or detail the various
names of a certain plant. At times, the reader is borne under by 162 the sheer weight of Douglas' scholarship, and amid a welter of saints and scholars, he is forced to gasp for air. Readers of Tristram
Shandy know the sensation, and no one in his right mind would read either Sterne's novel or Old Calabria straight through. Douglas' derivation of the name I« Tore in Siren Land is a representative sample of this kind of pedantry. With its closing reference to
Onofrio Gargiulli, it seems unintentionally satiric, rather than informative:
The ridge or backbone which divides the gulfs of Salerno and Naples is called "Le Tore"—an obscure and venerable word which is common a ll over this region and takes us back to Mount Taurus in Cilicia and to the Celtic and Sinaitic Tor. . . . A modem scholar derives the "Tore" from the Greek Ta %ph. the mountains; which, if not correct, is at least simple. There is a village called Torco on the southern slope of the ridge just below Sant* Agata, whose name has been drawn by some from the Latin toraueo. because the road "turns" there, and by others from the Greek theories. because, they say, a religious procession of youths and maidens used to wend thither in olden days. Though the church of Torco -is one of the oldest in the district, there are no classic remains whatever in the neighbourhood, and I rather disbelieve this tempting theories- derivation, although it is adopted in his Magic araL Astrology by Maury, who copied it, I suspect, from the old Sorrentine writer, Onofrio G a rg iu lli. I t seems more n a tu ra l to connect the word Torco with this backbone or Tor. (p. 24)
Less defensible is Douglas' penchant for dropping names. The pages of Siren Land and Old Calabria are encumbered with the names
of old chroniclers and priests whose manuscripts Douglas once read
in the Naples Museum and therefore assumes to be in the public
domain... Both books sin consistently in this regard, and an example
or two should suffice: "The monstrum mayipum monachi forma was a 163 ceaseless source of marvel to the learned Aldrovandus, Olaus Magnus,
Pontoppidan, M alolus, and o th e r sages" (SL, p . 106). "However that may be, the place used to be in a deplorable state. Riedreser
(1771) calls it, . . . 3h 1828, says Vespoli, it contained. . . .
The sack of the town by their hero Cardinal Ruffo, described by Pepe and others ..." (OC, p. 312).
Douglas' early advisors warned him against this practice.
Joseph Conrad writing to Douglas in 1912 about one of his manuscripts for The English Review tasks him severely: 'Who's Jack? . . . You musn't quote people. Chuck out Metchnikoff too; make your own statements. . . . Chuck out M.C. She's archaic, and anyway what's
this passion for dragging in the names of people who don't matter.
I have heard people talk of your 'suppressed pedantry.'"^ John
Mavrogordato, on reading the first version of Alone, querried, Vho was PratelliT . . . Who's Hadju Abdullah of Azeu? . . . I'm stupid
and ig n o ra n t, b u t, good God, not more so than the average r e a d e r ." ^
Douglas thus achieves the extraordinary variety of subject matter of the exterior voyage at a cost which on occasion may seem a trifle
high. If critics like Davenport praise the scope of the early travel
books, others censure Douglas for his pedantry. V. S. Pritchett saw
both sides of the coin, and his estimate of Douglas, if severe, is
substantially correct: "Douglas certainly had no horror of a fact—
but he plumped for the small facts. At its best, this was the Med
iterranean piety toward detail, the reverence for the stone, the
flower, the bird, the fragment and the hour; at its second best this 164 was an attempt to anthologize history and civilization in footnotes.
They became a sort of personal schismatic theology."^ Looking back over the content of these early travel books, at
Douglas1 treatment of nature and history and the complex lore of the regions themselves, one is forced to admit a certain aloofness in his approach. Douglas is more skillful in recording the history and sizing up the geological and biological components of a region than
in grasping the life of her people. A thorough study of Old Calabria
tells us much about that strange land; we sense her complex history, we understand something of her physical structure, we have seen the
Sila Plateau, we have experienced the sounds and sights of a
mountain festival, we have marvelled, or laughed at, her Saints,
and we have been aghast at the destruction of Messina—above all, we have traversed her, from end to end, from Lucera to Reggio. But
her people have escaped us; they are still strangers. While laugh
ing at their eccentricities, and on occasion, even conversing with
them, we have failed to understand them. Perhaps the answer is that
Douglas could not give what he did not possess; lacking warmth him
self, he was unable to impart it to others. Whatever the explanation,
one cannot deny that in the midst of the amazing variety of the
travel books, a certain human element is lacking.
Nonetheless, their amazing variety remains. The early travel
books contain an impressive amount of knowledge on an impressive
number of subjects. Almost every aspect of Calabria's past, and
much of her present, has been touched on, for what Douglas the
tra v e le r could not visit, Douglas the scholar had already seen. 165
Even his accounts of the Neapolitan region and of parts of Tunisia seem complete, though Douglas occasionally loses himself in minutiae.
Both books lack the balance, the selectivity, and the significance of
Old Calabria, while at the same time being brilliant in spots.
And yet, there is an obvious limitation to the exterior voyage.
In the travel books, Douglas' view is forever on the tangible world around him, and the tangible records of its past. What falls within his view, he sees instantly and with instant clarity. No cultivated reader need come away from Old Calabria perplexed by ambiguity, or by suggestions of things meant yet unsaid. Of course, he may not under stand everything, but that failing can be remedied by a short course in the Calabrian chroniclers, or the perusal of a few Saints' lives.
Douglas was an eminently non-symbolic writer; he preferred what could be seen and touched. "What you cannot find on earth is not worth seeking," was a byword.
There is little doubt that Douglas' obedience to facts defines his scope as a writer. For an artist,- the symbolic, idealistic cast of mind is advantageous; art itself is a kind of tampering with reality as the artist seeks to modify, to mould, to recreate.
Douglas however was a heretic; he found the world, or parts of it, quite beautiful enough and in no need of misrepresentation. His world, the world of Sancho Panza, he saw in fine precision, without blur or shadow, and he rendered i t with praiseworthy accuracy. Within these limitations, he has performed well. As for the other world, the world of Don Quixote, the moving world of symbol and illusion, it was a terra incognito to Douglas, and unexplored in his travel books.^ 167
Footnotes
^Except for Edward Garnett's drastically abridged version, Arabia Deserta had not been printed since its original appearance In 1888.
2D. M. ow L is one of the few critics to point out the narked changes in style and content that separate Siren Land from Alone. See his introduction to Norman Douglas: A Selection from the works (London, 1955)* 3pld Pfllfthrift. p. 3 2. It may be instructive to compare Douglas 1 description of Venosa with Kepple-Craven *s. The latter has none of the overtones that one finds in Douglas 1 description.
Venosa, placed on a much higher level than the glen we had traversed, is reached by a long winding ascent, where the town breaks on the sight under a favourable point of view, chiefly due to the vener able aspect of its castle; which, though a complete ruin, exhibits such magnitude of dimensions, and regu larity of construction, as to form a very striking feature in the landscape. The town is seated on a perfectly flat, but not very extensive plain, beyond which a range of well formed and richly cultivated hills is seen, together with the distant towns of Maschito, Acerenza, and Forenza. On looking back th e way we came, th e peaks o f Monte V olture, show ing themselves above an intermediate line of mean eminences, have a much more pictu resq u e and imposing appearance than when viewed from a nearer point, such as Barilo or Melfi.
Excursions in the Abruzzi and Northern Provinces of Naples (London, 1838), I, pp. 272-273. ^The noted Greek scholar, R. M. Dawkins, has even perceived in Douglas a kind of reincarnation of the Greek spirit. Writing of Douglas1 "translationsn of certain passages of the Greek Anthology in One Dav. Dawkins observes, "I do no t know anyone who has seen so deeply into these poets as he has. He feels himself of their kin.n See Dawkins, Norman Douglas (London, 1952), p. 80.
^Lionel T rillin g has commented on Douglas 1 insistence on going directly to the sources of history: "Whether it be the malarious condition of Venosa, which in Horace's day was immune, or changes in topography or in climate, or the lives of the vonder-vorking saints of the local monasteries, particularly those who could fly, or the 168 poetic academies; or the rule of the Bourbons, or the exploits of the bandit Musolino, Douglas is eager to dig into i t in whatever manu script or chapbook or oral tradition w ill give him the facts. " "Old Calabria,” The Griffen. February 1957» P* 8.
^V. S. Pritchett, "Norman Douglas: 1868-1952,” The New Statesman and Nation. XLIII (March 15, 1952), p. 307. ? Arthur Eckersley, "The Work of Norman Douglas,” The Anglo- Italian Review. January 1919* p. 78.
^By the Ionian Sea, pp. 43-44.
^Douglas mentions particular peasant friends only briefly in the travel books, even though at least one of them, a fisherman named Garibaldi, was quite close. (See Siren Land, p. 127 and Alone, p. 182.) From various accounts, i t is known that Douglas had numerous friends among the peasantry; he simply preferred to keep them out of his travel books. Ian Greenlees, for example, writes, "Already in 1934, when I first travelled with him to Calabria, he had become something of a legend there. . . . The innkeeper, the chemist and schoolmaster would gather round him as he arrived unexpectedly In the primitive hostelry in some mountain village. . . . They were flat tered that he remembered and recognized them, enjoyed his laughter and his jokes and ware immediately put at their ease by his courteous manner and his fam iliarity with their language.” No naan Douglas (London, 1957), p. 10.
10john Davenport, "Norman Douglas," The Atlantic Monthly. CXCIV, p. 72. Lionel Trilling writes that Douglas' travel books are "based both on scholarship and intimate personal observations, touching on legend, local customs, history, topography, zoology, and botany, with a liberal dash of personal opinionatlveness." The G riffen . jo. 8. V. S. Pritchett vividly describes the variety of Old Calabria:
The pleasure o f "Old C alabria" i s th a t i t rip p le s along. We shall be groping among caves or poking about monasteries to come out in the evening sun in some dilapidated corso where the young bloods are gazing up like sick puppies at the town's beauties on their balconies. There we pause for a prompt disabusing of our illusions about southern love. Or looking for an inn, we shall be told to take a chair in the chemist's and wait for the conversation to turn in that direction, while we consider what Milton got from Calabria or what Calabria got from Greece. We can move from a haircut or the vulgarity of commercial travellers to "the exotic efflorescence of holiness" that burst in Southern Italy under the Spanish viceroys. 169
"Crusted and Corked," The New Statesman and Nation." II (March 10, 1956) , p . 216. HNorman Douglas: A C ritical Study, p. 122.
^L etter of December 16, 1912.
^Letter of September 22, 1918. Douglas' habit of filling his books w ith the names o f unknown scholars apparently became a joke among h is frie n d s . Edward Hutton, in h is Glimpse of Greece (London, 1928), recounts the following conversation with Douglas. (Douglas is telling Hutton a tale of how he once missed an opportu n ity to s te a l some rare books from the Athens Museum):
"D. I noticed over and over again, among a pile of books in the comer, that wonderful volume by Rosel von Rosenhof ..." "H. My dear boy, before you go any further, let me explain what you are going to do. You are going to te ll me about one of your imaginary authors; you have invented that man, as you invented a good many others whom you quote in your books. I quite realize that this system gives your writings a fine veneer of scholarship, but believe me, you'll be found out one of these days. Hosel von Rosenhof—that name is too good to be authentic." (p. 117)
^"Norman Douglas: 1868-1952," p. 307* Unwittingly, Douglas substantiated Pritchett's assertion of "history in footnotes." Often Douglas was willing to collect facts, or "notes," and leave the job of interpreting them for other's. In the preface to an early study, On the Herpetology the Grand Duchy o£ Baden. 1891, Douglas writes, "The following notes . . . may perhaps induce others visit ing th is p a rt o f Germany to tak e up the same branch." In 189^, in the preface to his Contributions t& gn Avifauna of Baden, he ex presses the wish that some later scholar "may be induced by these indications to take up the task of studying more fully the Avifauna of Baden." Years later, in the preface to the last of the "Capri Monographs," the Disjecta Membra. 1915* Me states "I . . . would not have undertaken this final paper at all but for the conviction that some of these same notes may prove of use to subsequent investi gators. " Many of his books, Paneros. Some * 1™. Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology. London Street Games, etc., are essentially glorified collections of footnotes.
I^More than one of Douglas' commentators has noted this lack of depth in h is w orld. Cf. Jack Lindsay, "Norman D ouglas," The London Aphrodite. April 1921, pp. 385-389. Lindsay observes: "The poetic universe of tragic exaltation is closed to him but so are its 170 quicksands of russianisn and tensions begotten of the rotted nerves, all its sick sweetnesses. Douglas is the completely not-sick nan.* Mario Praz, however, sees Douglas' world as one of ample complete ness : "Ma in quale altro autore ai trova quel perfetto equilibrio tra l'interesse per gli uonini e l !amore per il paessagio, tra il naturalist*, l'artista e l'uono del nondo, il filosofo nel senso ampio e umano ohe codesta parola aveva nel Settecento?” (Studl E Svaehi Inelesi /Florence, 19321/» P» 338. ~ CHAPTER V II
THE INTERIOR VOYAGE
To those who penetrated his circle of acquaintances, and then were not shocked by what they found, Norman Douglas was one of the most fascinating literary figures of his time. One of Douglas' friends, Richard Aldington, was deeply shocked, yet he described
Douglas' fascination as have none of his worshipful admirers.
Addressing some future biographer of Douglas, Aldington warns of the difficulty of the task ahead:
Norman Douglas was a d istin g u ish ed man but no plaster saint from the Place St. Sulpice. He was a good, and in a few books a great, writer, but he had his limitations and faults like everyone else. . . . It will surely be a fascinatingly difficult study for that biographer—the handsome German-Scottish "gent" who became a scallywag bohemian without abating his claims to aristocracy in spite of the fact that . . . he was a bum, a spunge, a cadger, a borrower, even a swindler. . . . This lady-killer, is suddenly made a pederast through a romantic incident with a Neopolitan slum boy. He amusingly puts out a "philosophy" of extreme hedonism with unabashed candour in an age of mealy-mouthed servitude to inferiors . . . and yet refutes his own philosophy in the days when the cicada became a burden. . . . What a study; what a character to explain; what a story to tell; what a career to investigate! . . . And then the delicious paradox of his becoming up-to-date by being so far behind the times, of his being taken up too by the snobby ersatz highbrows whom he despised so heartily . . . I That w ill be a difficult biography.^
However exaggerated and biased A ldington's assessm ent of Douglas may be, one fact emerges undeniably: That Douglas was no ordinary man.
171 Douglas' readers were, like Aldington, both fascinated and repelled by the man they saw portrayed in the books. On the one hand, Douglas appealed strongly to the displaced intellectuals of the early post-War period.2 With his robust paganism and his accent on the physical, he seemed a living refutation of those who argued that life was without meaning. Mario Praz saw him as not of the "gener- azione stanca degli Huxley e dei Sitwell, che non rlescono a essere uomini completi e universal!" but as "un uomo con rosso sangue nelle vene."3 Laughing at the schools of disillusion, Douglas preached his own "extreme hedonism," essentially the philosophy of the Rubaiyat in a Mediterranean setting.^ To others, however, with his., scorn of the spiritual and the artistic Douglas seemed the incarnation of some terrible anathema.
Such diverse and strong reactions testify to the obvious power of Douglas' personality as he expressed it in his books. To his early readers, he was something more than the ordinary run of the mill aesthete, or even artist in exile. He seemed that rare in dividual who somehow had escaped the trammeling effect of modem life. Here was an individual in action as well as word, a man who genuinely did not give a damn what others thought and who refused to sacrifice himself to the public weal. Even to the arts, the common rallying point of the intellectual, Douglas remained aloof. The wine
Douglas offered was heady and uncompromising. This vivid impression of a self-directed man was the result of more than Douglas' personal strength; it also resulted from Douglas' highly individual concept of autbbio graphy. According to Douglas, autobiography was a selective, almost Imper sonal affair. What he recorded In Alone and Together was not an expression of the complete man, but rather the expression of his own
"ch aracter . 11 He attempted neither a cross-section of his life, nor a "monotonous chronicling of acts and sensations . . . an in- descriminate pouring out of matter" (LB. p. 220). He had no sympathy with that type of realism which recorded all the insignificant,
colorless events of daily existence. In Late Harvest, he pinpointed his beliefs on this vital issue of what and how much of his character
an author should include in his books: "Once I lent him /Harvard
Thomas, a sculpto£/ a certain new book. Dull reading, he called it.
'This fellow seems to think that I'm as much interested in his little
moods as he him self is.' (I'll make a note of that, I thought, and
never over do it. That is why I wrote long afterwards that the
chronicling of moods depends upon whose moods they are)" (p. 60).
Readers of Alone and Together thus found few tflte-a-t&tes with
the author or intimate confessions of the Boswellian vein.
In Douglas' eyes, certain subjects and areas of experience had
no place in autobiography, whose business was not the recording of
all the tremors of the personal psyche. In Alone. Douglas recounts
what was fo r him alm ost a symbolic a c t. Once on a v i s i t to S uffolk,
he passed through Bury, the birthplace of Ouida, his boyhood hero,
yet on this occasion, he refused to visit her house. "While looking
one day at the house where she was bom, I was sorely tempted to
crave permission to view the interior, but refrained; something of her own dislike of prying and meddlesomeness came over men (p. 112).
This respect that he extended to others he extended also to himself.
One looks in vain in the travel books for references to personal friends, except for the eleven year old Mr. R. of Together. What reader would guess that Douglas' 1911 trip through Calabria was undertaken in th e company o f a young boy, Eric WaltonInstead,
Douglas repeatedly pretends to be alone and even concludes in the last chapter that "Calabria is not a land to traverse alone" (p. 33^).
Nor would one suspect that at least part of Alone describes walks undertaken with Mr. R (LB. p. 429). Unlike D. H. Lawrence, Douglas never talks about his own domestic affairs, and there is no mention in the travel books of his having married his own cousin, who burned herself to death smoking in bed sometime during the Old Calabria period, or of his two sons, one of whom was raised by Joseph Conrad.
About these and other personal matters Douglas draws a line which nothing ever induced him to cross. Like Joyce, Douglas drew heavily on his own experiences for the material of his books, and like Joyce, he treated that material with complete objectivity, selecting that which suited his purposes, and discarding the rest.**
To Douglas, the ephemera of the personal world were no more viable or indicative in autobiography than in real life; rather, he valued in others and cultivated in himself those strengths and idio
syncrasies which somehow set a man apart from his fellows as un
mistakably different. Self-contradiction, humor, rlght-reason,
prejudice, strong convictions—such traits occurring in sufficient
strength gave a man character and individuality. If a man's heroes 175 define his ideals, then Douglas1 heroes define his: Ouida who after living like a grande dame died penniless in Italy because she had spent her fortune on silks and writing paper and unnumbered cats; the naturalist Charles Waterton, who at 83 was still climbing trees and rushing out from under the dining room table on all fours at his g u ests; o r Ramage, who cavorted about South I ta ly in a w hite frock coat and umbrella during times when even the bandits were not safe from one another; or even Doughty, whose life concern was the restor ation of our modem, barbaric Ehglish tongue to the "purity" of the
Elizabethan. Douglas saw himself in their tradition as one of the last in a long line of great individualists.
Douglas' remarks in the Arabia Deserta essay on the "ideal" travel writer sum up his attitude on the type of character that is fit for autobiography. (One cannot help observing how well these remarks describe his own character.)
The ideal author of travel-books is the inspired, or at least enthusiastic, amateur. One would not take it amiss, furthermore, were he obsessed by some hobby or grievance, by idiosyncrasies and prejudices not common to the rest of us. And it goes without saying that he must be gloriously indifferent to the opinions of his fellow creatures. . . . The writer should therefore possess a brain worth exploring; some philosophy of life—not necessarily, though by prefer ence, of his own forging—and the courage to proclaim it and put it to the test. (Ex p .. pp. 5-6, 11)
It was the job of the travel writer, as Douglas realized by the writing of Alone, to record the unique personality of the traveler.
Apparently, in looking at himself and weighing his own character,
Douglas felt that his uniqueness lay in the clarity of his thinking, his ability to see and proceed without hesitation where others 176 stumbled, and in his personal courage and independence, his freedom from the common wants and fears which burden most men. It would be incorrect to imply that Douglas exaggerated these aspects of his character at the expense of others, perhaps less commendable. The truth seems to be that Douglas was supremely self-confident and in dependent, and exceptionally clear-sighted. Of course, Douglas impresses us in other ways as well, but it is these two character istics which mark the Douglas of the last two travel books.
Few of Douglas' readers and critics have failed to note the sanity of his worldly outlook; one of the latter, H. T. Webster, even compared him to Dr. Johnson: "But with Douglas, as with Sam Johnson, common sense is likely to triumph” (p. 232). Alone and Together are pervaded by this common sense, as Douglas, looking about him, strips off externals to reveal things as they are. Time and again, Douglas comments on th e human kaleidoscope w ith sure psychological in sig h t.
Of a moralist he writes, "No doubt she meant to do right, it is an old pretext for doing wrong" (T, p. 92); of Shelley, "He tried to translate the Symposium. He never tried to live it" (^, p. 95)! of certain strutting soldiers, "Odd, how a uniform can fill a simpleton with self-importance" (A, p. 70); of some particularly well-dressed young man, "These refined youths are fastidious about their clothes.
They would not dream of buying a ready-made suit, however w ell- fitting. They are content to take their opinions second-hand" ( 4, p. 102). At times, Douglas expresses his insights with epigrammatic precision: "Gambling and religion go hand-in-hand—they are but two 177 forms of the same speculative spirit" (&, p. 41). Sometimes, one senses a rich humor in his observations, as when he describes the necessary furnishings of a water-closet (the one in Douglas' child hood school looked up a valley on a splendid mountain vista): "It was then and there borne in upon me how needful to such apartments is a spacious prospect upon which the eye can dwell with pleasure. To this attraction I should be inclined to add, now, a choice little library and for those of musical tastes, a pianola" (T, p. 212).
The sanity with which Douglas regarded the external world, he also turned within. Few writers were more honest in their self-
estimate. He seldom took himself seriously. Like the sanest of poets, Horace, he could laugh at his own foibles and prejudices, and
in Alone and Together he often turns his introspection upon his inner weaknesses. On one occasion in the former book, he recalls an old
friendship with the celebrated mystic, Malwida von Meysenburg. Her
life was of the sp irit, and hence she had chosen Borne as her earthly
dwelling place. Often, the two of them would walk slowly up the
Palatine h ill and then meander through its flowery gardens, each lost
in a private world of thought.
So, while her arm rested lightly on mine, we wandered about those gardens, the saintly lady and myself; her mind dwelling, maybe, on memories of that one classic love-adventure and the part she came nigh to playing in the history of Europe, while mine was lost In a maze of vulgar love-adventures, several of which came nigh to making me play a part in the police- courts of Borne, (p. 125) On another occasion, Douglas recounts being arrested in Borne as
a~spy on the charge that he climbed a certain mountain to make 178 mathematical calculations. While the officer is citing the evidence,
Douglas imagines himself climbing the mountain. "I tried to picture myself climbing up Muretta with a theodolite bulging out of my pocket. A flagon of port would have been more in my line. Calcu lations! It is all I can do to control my weekly washing bill, and even for that simple operation I like to have a quiet half hour in a room by myself. Instruments!" (^, p. 241),
In addition, Douglas was equally sane in his evaluation of his own views. In an age when some writers were accustomed to deliver ex cathedra pronouncements on life and art, Douglas often sought to place his views in a perspective. Often, he rounds off his lectures with a hint to the reader not to take them too seriously. For example, a long, early morning attack on various types of progress ends w ith th is comment: "Having generated, by means o f sundry t r i t e reflections of this nature, an enviable appetite for breakfast, I dress and step out of doors to where, at a pleasant table, I can imbibe some coffee and make my plans for loafing through the day" (fa, p. 194). Douglas rides his hobby horses as frequently in
Together as in Alone, and yet there too he is generally careful to inform the reader that perspective is all. One particularly vicious attack on what Douglas considers our century1!: herd instinct, joined with the suggestion that we might well adopt certain autocratic medieval practices, has the following footnote appended: "This
reads a little jaundiced. I must contemplate my oleographs" (p.
172). Douglas' i s re fe rrin g here to two p ic tu re s on h is room w all 179 of hunters shooting chamois at absurdly close distances. Douglas notes: "Cheerful pictures of this kind should hang in every room.
I shall look at them whenever I feel jaundiced" (T, p. 4).
Personal insight is characteristic of Douglas' attitude towards himself and a mark of his sanity. He knew his imperfections, almost
as well as he did those of others, and he saw no reason why he should not laugh at them: "I never pass that way now without thanking God
for a misspent youth. Why not make a fool of yourself? It is good
fun while it lasts; it yields mellow mirth for later years, and are
not our fellow creatures, those solemn buffoons, ten times more
ridiculous: Where is the use of experience, if it does not make you
laugh?" ( 4, p. 206). Such sane evaluation of th e human comedy i s as
rare in literature as it is in life. Imagine Square, on being dis
covered in Molly Seagram's bedroom, bursting into peals of laughter
at this proof of his own humanity. Generally, we prefer, like the
Sterne of A Sentimental Joumev. to shed tears over our weaknesses.
Yet i t would be completely erroneous to conclude that Douglas'
sane self-evaluation conduced him along a measured and moderate path.
His views were strongly held and often immoderately expressed, and in
his own behavior he often recklessly pursued pleasure. A recurring
and indicative phrase in his writings is "Take life by the throat."
In his eyes, a man who had risen above the restrictions of his race,
culture, and age was free to indulge himself as he wanted, and to do
less was to act irrationally. Freedom of action was his reward, his 180
God-given prerogative for being bom different. Douglas' sanity is not then of the usual sort; it is a highly individual sanity of im moderation. "It warms the cockles of one's heart,n he once wrote in
The Ehglish Review, "to come across a minstrel who seems to have preserved his primordial outfit of choler."? One need have no doubts about how well Douglas preserved his; Alone and Together are filled with "ludicrously savage outbursts" which reveal Douglas' strong personality.®
Perhaps the most memorable instance of Douglas' readiness to censure reality occurs in the second Rome chapter of Alone. Douglas has been awakened early one morning by the noise of the trams in the streets below. Without delay he bursts into a lengthy diatribe against all modem progress, from the tram to the telephone to the newspaper.
Can folks who cherish a nuisance /the tram J o f th is magnitude compare themselves, in point of refinement, with those old Hellenic colonists who banished all noises from their cityT Nevermoret Why this din, this blocking of the roadways and general unseemliness? In order that a few bourgeois may be saved the trouble of using their legs. And yet we actually pride our selves on these detestable things, as if they were to our credit. . . . The telephone, that diabolic invention! It might vex a man if his neighbour possessed a telephone and he none; how would i t be, if neither of them had it? We can hardly realise, now, the blissful quietude of the pre-telephone epoch. And the telegraph and the press I They have huddled mankind together into undignified and un- hygenic proximity, we seem to be breathing each other's air. (pp. 193-19*0 The diatribe closes with Douglas hopping onto a tram which w ill carry him to the MUvian bridge and a pleasant lunch. On another occasion, Douglas remembers a particularly odious man, a certain good Christian who specialized in moralizing. After recalling some of his more unpleasant traits, Douglas concludes:
"Let us be charitable, now that he is goneIn But Douglas discovers he is not through. The man's memory calls for further exorcism, so he retu rn s w ith new v igor to the a tta c k . "He was a worm; a good man in the worst sense of the word." After further squibs, he calms down, and addresses the reader, "Why say unkind things about a dead man?
He cannot answer back.u And there the ordinary w riter would have stopped, with perhaps a brief apology for having gone beyond the lim its of decorum. Not Douglas. He detests ordinary writers and their virtues. He is not at all through with this man and as he has other things to say, which need not be suppressed, he answers his own question, "Upon my word, I am rather glad to think he cannot. The
last thing I ever wish to hear again is that voice of his. And what
a face: gorgonizing in its assumption of virtueI" All pretense of moderation now abandoned, Douglas delivers himself over to thoroughly
flaying the man's memory, before finally concluding, "he ought to
have throttled himself at his mother's breast . . . in the name of
Christian charity and common sense" (pp. 120-122).
Diatribes of this sort are somewhat rarer in Together, perhaps
because of its dominating mellow mood. Yet on occasion the fine
urge to denounce can be aroused, given sufficient cause, as when
Douglas sees certain innovations in his natal village. 182
Bat men are becoming blind to these and other uglifications—the word is not quite ugly enough for the thing—of the scenery and of their houses. For instance; forty-one unseemly electric wires converge at the post-office of our small village; there they are, so repulsive that you cannot but look at them; the women of the place, instead of feeding chickens or mending the children's clothes, spend their lives in gossiping with each other at long distances, and God alone knows the nonsense they find to chatter about. Go where you please, in fact, and you cannot fail to perceive half a dozen decorative telegraph poles staring you in the face. Now what do people want all this ridiculous electricity rushing up and down the countryT Solidarity. Brotherhood of men . . . (p. 22?)
As noted, the travel books are regularly punctuated by such ex plosions : the recollection of an old grandmother who once spanked him
'•unjustly" dominates and nearly spoils a walk in Together (pp. 92-
100); the thought of an unflattering sentence on Ouida by Henry James elicits a torrent of invective against that "feline and gelatinous
New Englander" (£,» PP# 115-117); the lack of individuality of a certain Italian albergo brings forth an entirely uncalled for and totally illogical diatribe against the beds one finds in Ehglish
Inns (4* pp. 232-23*0; the sight of a row of stately Eucalyptus trees signals the beginning of a two page outroar: "Detesting, as I do, the whole tribe of gum trees, I never lose an opportunity of saying exactly what I think about this particularly odious representative of the brood, this eyesore, this grey-haired scarecrow, this reptile of a growth with which a pack of misguided enthusiasts have disfigured the entire Mediterranean basin" (0C, pp. 99-100).
Douglas was well aware of these proofs of his human fallibility; he revelled in them as signs of good body chemistry and a proper 183 perspective on things, as signs, in other words, of his sanity.
Invariably, Douglas' outbursts tell us more about Douglas than about their ostensible subjects; in them Douglas si sfoea.9 he gives vent to pent up irritation as a means of regaining his good humor. It was precisely such instances of strong character that he sought to record in his travel books as providing an unmistakable note of human veracity. Douglas' judgment of Ramage's book indicates that he con sidered his own free expression on certain matters as part of the overall plan of self-characterization. "For he does not supply mere information. A fig for information. That would be easy to digest.
He supplies character, which is tougher fare. His book, unassuming as it is, comes up to my test of what such literature should be. It reveals a personality. It contains a philosophy of lifen ( 4, pp.
2^5-246).
Nor can it be denied that in these scenes, with Douglas excori ating in mock anger some impertinent trifle—a plant, or a group of
telephone wires—he reaches his best form. One senses a noble out
rage coupled with an exhilarating gusto in these ribald denunciations.
Douglas is enjoying himself immensely, and so is the reader. Here is
"character" in abundance, and even a "philosophy of life," if one
agrees with Douglas that we could do with fewer telephones, fewer
street cars, perhaps fewer grandmothers and eucalypti!, and certainly
fewer moralists.
From Douglas' sanity to his independence is but the smallest
step, for it should be obvious that to such a man, the sane life was the independent life. Probably no theme recurs in his writings more often and more intensely than the notion that our century is herding men together in a concerted and diabolical attack on the individual.
In the travel books, we encounter it frequently, from Siren land
("There is repose in Siren land; there is none of that delirious massing-together in which certain mortals, unable to stand alone, can lean up against one another and so gain, for a moment, a pre carious condition of equipoise")(p. 38) to Together ("Our loves and hatreds . . . have ceased to be personal; we love and hate in the herd, the mass. . . . Love your neighbour as yourself. Now what has that gentleman done to deserve our love?")(p. 1?2).
Douglas himself was fanatical in his own individualism. He never chose the common way; he was the ne plus ultra of non conformity, the first in rank of the arri^re-garde. His tastes, his habits, his intellectual interests, even his sexual inclinations marked him as an incorrigible individualist. In Alone, he outlines his credo of individuality: "The sage w ill go his own way, prepared to find himself growing ever more out of sympathy with vulgar trends of opinion, for such is the inevitable development of thoughtful and self-respecting minds. He scorns to make proselytes among his fel lows: they are not worth it. He has better things to do. While others nurse their griefs, he nurses his joy. He endeavours to find himself at no matter what cost, and to be true to that self when
found—a worthy and ample occupation for a life-tim e" (pp. 136- 137)* At times, one may feel that Douglas' individuality has some thing sophomorlc about it, as if he prized difference for its own sake or for its shock value, living in Florence, the city of art, he laughed at those who toured the Uffizi and babbled about Botti
celli and Benozzo Gozzoli and Lorenzo di Credi; his advice was to go
to Volterra to see the Etruscan remains. (In those days before
Etruscan Places. the surviving Etruscan cities were off the tourist's
itinerary.)^® And yet, according to the record of his own diaries,
Douglas had only faint interest in the Etruscans. He never visited
Tarquinia, Caere, Castel D' Asso, Norchia, Vulci or other Etruscan
strongholds, and Volterra itself but on occasion. His lack of in
terest in the remarkable theatre of Ferento has already been com
mented upon. Yet however one interprets Douglas' individuality, one
cannot deny that it made him a more interesting personage than he
might otherwise have been. He was that rare bird, an eccentric
rationalist, and the travel books are the richer and more strange
because of his quirks and compulsions. Alone and Together record
clearly his inner command to be different, to stand apart from the
crowd and even the thought of h is tim e. They are monuments of
personal non-conformity.
Douglas' independence from society and its ways is clearly seen
in Alone and Together in his total renunciation of moral values.
Unlike such contemporaries as Conrad, Lawrence, Waugh, Joyce, Eliot,
Forster, and Shaw, all of whom either accepted Christianity or were
unable to free themselves from its effects, Douglas rejected it com
pletely and absolutely. In Alone, he expounds a relativity which equates, and therefore nullifies, all moral codes: "Such persons
/the moralist/ exercise a strange attraction upon those who, con vinced of the eternal fluidity of all mundane affairs, and how that our most sacred institutions are merely conventionalities of time and place, conform to only one rule of life—to be guided by no principles whatever" (pp. 41 -42). However, Douglas discovered on occasion that the Christian moral code was personally restraining. In Alone, he set out to rectify matters by means of a sustained denial of social, and hence Christian values, both by precept and example. Typical of the latter is Douglas1 handling of his own homosexuality. That he was fully aware of the homosexual overtones of Alone is evident from a
comment from Mavrogordato 's letter to him on September 22, 1918: "I
certainly think, as you suggest, that a certain subject is unduly em phasized. It would be a pity to lose the letter on p. 52, but four words might be omitted from the sentence beginning ci mando." We do not know if Douglas toned down the finished Alone: he did not alter
the "letter" and quotes it verbatum on page 89 of Alone. The last
line, from a young Italian peasant boy with whom Douglas has appar
ently had an affair, reads, "Ci mando dici mille baci e una setta
dimano.
The most overt reference to homosexuality occurs in the second
Viareggio chapter, where Douglas finds himself conversing with a
young, scantily clad soccer player,"A superb speciman, a ll dewy with perspiration." The conversation closes with these words: "On
some other day, I would like to discuss the matter with you point 18? by point—some other day, that is, when you are not playing football and have just a few clothes on. I am now at a disadvantage. You could never get me to impugn your statements courageously—not in that costume. It would be like haggling with Apollo Belvedere. Why do you wear those baby things?" (pp. 101-102).
The entirety of the book is in one respect an account of Douglas' experiences with young boys he has encountered on the road. Invari ably, they are alone, the two of them, in some secluded dell: "As for ourselves, we took our ease. We ate and drank, we slumbered a- while, then joked and frolicked for five hours on end, or possibly
six. I kept no count of what was said or how the time flew by. I
only know that when at last we emerged from our ambrosial shelter the muscles of my stomach had grown sore from the strain of laughter, and
Arcturus was twinkling overhead" (p. 27*0. Anyone at all familiar with Douglas' sexual predilections would have no difficulty interp
reting this passage, which, as the closing paragraph of Alone.
suggests the tone Douglas wished to close the book on.
What one should observe of these passages and others like them,
passages n o t so shocking now as in 1921, i s th a t Douglas makes no
attempt to justify or defend his actions, nor does he even attack or
ridicule the moral code which would and did condemn him. He re
counts his affairs as though they were normal and natural, with
complete indifference to what society might think. Perhaps he felt
beyond matters of judgment, or perhaps he knew that nothing more
enrages the moralist than to -feign his non-existence. * Douglas1 homosexuality was only one of the ways by which he manifested his independence of the social context. There was in
Douglas a strong desire to eoater le bourgeois. In the travel books, he either openly flaunts cherished illusions and beliefs, or he acts as if there were none at all, though well aware of the effects of his words and actions. Douglas1 treatment of idiots in Together is
typical of his contempt for common feelings. Instead of regarding
them with pity, his attitude reverts back to the eighteenth-century.
They exist for his amusement. "There is always a fine assortment of wrecks on view here," he observes of one asylum, but later expresses
indignation that several specimens possess a glimmer of understanding.
"These things call themselves idiots. Even idiots, it seems, have
degenerated nowadays" (pp. 37-38). Pity was not one of Douglas' weaknesses. On another occasion he recalls how a dog of his had
murdered a family of cats, at Douglas' instigation. "One of his
most brilliant exploits took place in Bludesch at our tailor's . . . where dwelt a family of cats, a mother and half a dozen kittens.
The operation took less than a minute to perform . . . two shakes
for the mother, half a shake each for the kittens; the entire family
laid out flat on the grass, dead as doornails, side by side" (T,
p. 230). The coarseness and crudity of such passages is undeniable.
At times Douglas clearly goes out of his way to shock the reader,
as in this description of a pig eating a rat:
We once gave the hugest of these destroyed rodents, I remember, to an amiable old sow, a friend of the family. What was she going to do? 189
She ate it, as you would eat a pear. She en gulfed the corpse methodically, beginning at the head, working her way through breast and entrails while her chops dripped with gore, and ending with the tail, which gave some little trouble to masticate, on account of its length and tenuity. Altogether, decidely good sport. (&. p . 76) One might well question the taste of such a description, and perhaps even Douglas' most fervent admirers experienced a moment of
revulsion. Such passages however help create the image of Douglas as
a man impervious not only to the codes and values of civilization,
but to our own commonest sympathies as well.
It would be inaccurate to give the impression that Douglas was
perpetually out to shock, or to denounce man and society from some
sort of perversity. On occasion, he was the most tolerant of men.
His sense of humor and perspective were both such that he could not
long indulge in such attitudes. As indicated in the previous chapter,
Douglas the traveler was generally content to move among his fellow
creatures in quiet indifference. He asked only that they leave him
alone, or amuse him. The following episode typifies his attitude.
While on the long road to Valmontone, a little town about forty
miles from Rome, he finds himself joined by a Tuscan hat salesman who
i s groaning and sweating under an immense load o f h a ts:
His waxed moustache began to droop; he vowed he was not accustomed to this kind of exercise. Would I o b ject to carrying h is bundle of h ats for him? I objected, so vigorously that he forth with gave up all hope. But I allowed him to rest now and then by the wayside. I also offered him, gratis, the use of a handful of my choicest Tuscan blasphemies, for which he was much obliged. Most of them were unfamiliar to him. He had been brought up by his mother, he explained. They seemed to make his burden lighter. ( 4,1 p . 176) 190
The hatter is then forgotten; whether he reached Valraontone with his hats, we are not informed. The event seems symbolic of Douglas' quiet indifference to the plight of his fellow men. They are not worth bothering about. Sometimes this indifference comes as an aside, as if his fellow creatures and their "posturings" were not worth his full attention.
On one occasion in Alone, he carefully subordinates a Bourgeois moral judgment to a description of what he has eaten for dinner, as if morality itself merited only passing comment. "We also—for of course I took a friend with me, a well-preserved old gentleman of thirty-two, whose downward career from a brilliant youth into hope less mediocrity has been watched, by both of us, with philosophic unconcern—we also consumed a tender chicken, a salad containing
olive oil . . . and an omlette made with genuine butter, and various
other items which we enjoyed prodigiously, eating ..." (^, p. 216).
Douglas is more concerned with the menu of his dinner than the world's evaluations of him and his friends, and one feels that he wants it that way, that a man's stomach outweighs his reputation on
any rational scale of values. A passage in Together illustrates
Douglas' lack of concern even for his own name. A shopkeeper in
Bregenz tells Douglas one day that his name is "eternal in this
country." Douglas' analysis of this little episode is axiomatic.
It is doubtless gratifying to find yourself in a district where your family is held in honour. One must try, however, not to take these things too melodramatically. We live but once; we owe nothing to posterity; and a man's own happiness counts before that of anyone else. Jfy father's 191 tastes happen to have lain In a direction which commended him to his fellows. Had his nature driven him along lines that failed to secure their sympathy, I should have been the last to complain. The world is wide! Instead of coming h ere, one could have gone somewhere else. (2., pp. 64-65) Douglas could not conceive how a thinking man could be influ enced by the mass. He censures both Doughty and Gissing for being in sufficiently independent. "Of one thing I was soon convinced:
Doughty's outlook was not mine. Never could I have attained to his infinite capacity of suffering fools gladly" tBxrp.. p. 8). Gissing he censures for not learning "to elbow his way through the crowd with its droll little conventions; instead of taking them at their own valution and being at their mercy" (W, p. 47). One doubts if Douglas was ever imposed upon, and the phrase, "elbowing his way through the
crowd," is singularly appropriate to describe Douglas' progress
through the late travel books. There he laughs at society and pur
sues his pleasures, strong in his surety of himself and his values.
If at times he is insensitive, he knows the fact, for sensitivity
means harrassment. If he is callous, he does not care. At the end
of a long life, Douglas could write with full justice, "I am far too
tough to care tuppence what anybody think or says or writes about
me. To H ell w ith them!" (LH. p. 52).
The autobiographical achievement of Douglas in the late travel
books may not be a major one. His self-portrait is too clear for
overtones or great suggestiveness. It is too restricted to be a
moving human document, as are the records of Pepys and Boswell. Nor does one sense in Douglas the warn geniality of an Anatole France,
or the urbane skepticism of a Somerset Maugham, or the paradoxical
greatness of a D. H. Lawrence. Finally, Douglas is too positive
and dominant a figure to arouse our finer sympathies. And yet the
picture of Douglas in the late travel books is not without appeal.
It is the portrait of a man who saw that what he valued almost alone
in a world gone mad—good wine, laughter, sexuality, and his own in
dividual sanctity—could still be had if one stood against the forces
of society with sufficient courage. The travel books thus are a
testament of a man's individuality and his refusal to compromise in
an age that destroyed individuality and required compromise. They
are a record of self-reliance and tenacity, or, as Douglas wrote of
Doughty, "cussedness." Finally, they are a record of truth. Douglas
has not palliated the acount; what he has set down, he has set down
accurately. In the words of a friend who knew him well, "Douglas,
with every fault we may find in him, never leaves his sincerity in
doubt. If Douglas was no saint, he cannot be charged with pre
tending to be one. His faults are no less clearly revealed than his
virtues. It is true that he preferred not to discuss certain per
sonal, and one feels unimportant matters. Such personal reservations
were part of his "character," and one doubts that the Douglas wander
ing about Italy "loafing" in early 1917 substantially differed from
the Douglas of Alone.
It might be advanced that Douglas' best moments as a travel
writer are precisely those in which "he writes himself down," when,
for example, he rails against some moralist of the Aldington school, or when he recounts some unsalntly escapade, or when he day dreams about nothing in particular while the rest of the world Is intent on cutting throats. In these moments Douglas seems to find himself as a writer, and if he is to survive as a literary figure, he w ill do so not as a novelist, or as the author of such descriptive books as Siren Land and Fountains. both of which were harshly reviewed when jointly reissued in 1958, but as the picaresque hero-author of
Alone. Together and parts of Old Calabria. 19** Footnotes
Ipinorman. pp. 205-206.
^Graham Greene writes in his Introduction to Douglas* Venus^ in the Kitchen (London. 1952). p. iii. "Jfy generation grew up on South Wind /which/ appeared in 1917. superbly aloof from the catastrophes of the time. • • . This wasn't the world of Lord Jim or the Forstyes or the dreary Old Wives."
^Studi E Svaehi Inglesi. p. 3**1• ^Several of Douglas' critics have noted that, in contrast to other postwar writers, Douglas had positive values to offer. H. T. Webster observes, for example, that "along among the critics of the puritan-industrial way of life in the 1920's, he /Douglas/ had an understandable set of positive values to offer his reader.n "Norman Douglas: A Reconsideration," SAQ. XUV (1950), p. 231.
^Looking Back, p. 132. Douglas was also accompanied on his 1909 Calabrian trip, though bo mention is made of the fact in Old Calabria (Looking Back, pp. 153-15*0. ^Douglas' younger son, Robin, told me in 1957 that "no one ever knew my father." Kenneth Machperson, who lived with Douglas the last five years of his life, stated that Douglas never discussed his per sonal affairs. 7Review of Poems of the North, by H. F. Brett Brett-Smith, XI (1912), p. 333. ^Douglas employs the expression while describing Mr. R's temper. Together, p. 187. ^The Italian sfogarsi. roughly translated "to blow off steam," best describes Douglas' very Italianate behavior in these examples. Undoubtedly, the lacuna in our language corresponds to a lacuna in the Anglo-Saxon character.
1®See William Alexander Percy's Foreword to Douglas' Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology (New York, 1929) for an amusing account of Douglas1 war on the art dilettantes of Florence.
Both Mavrogordato's letter to Douglas and the postcard from the young Italian boy, which Mavrogordato mis takingly calls a "letter," are now in the library of Mr. Kenneth Macpherson. Douglas prints the postcard in Alone as it was written, with original spelling. The last line may be translated, "I send you ten thousand kisses and a squeeze of the hand."
1^H. M. Tomlinson, Norman Douglas (London, 1931). P« 52. CHAPTER V III
CONCLUSION
As a travel writer, Douglas appears a minor figure in twentieth-
century literature, but one not wholly without interest. His values
are substantial, if limited. First, he continues the tradition of
bold individualism in Ehglish travel literature. If he does not
display the sweeping Romantic spirit of a Burton or a Borrow, it was
perhaps because he had too much common sense for gesticulation. In
his own way, however, he was sufficiently individualistic, and his
simple hedonism places him apart from the overriding religious,
economic, political and artistic concerns of twentieth-century
literature. Like Verdi's Falstaff, Douglas "went his way," Tin-
concerned about the import of world changes about him, and perhaps
even oblivious to them. Douglas' individualism at all costs and
his unfailing humor and sanity are the most appealing aspects of the
autobiographical portrait contained in the travel books.
The non-autobiographical aspects of his travel books are of
more lim ited in te r e s t. The mass o f f a c t and d e ta il th a t Douglas
accumulates in the early travel books about the history and topography
and fauna and flora of Capri or Calabria must finally be of limited appeal* limited perhaps to the enthusiast of those regions. Douglas
195 196 is on surer ground when he casually describes what he sees and feels in random associations, for in such cases he does more than provide information, he allows a glimpse into the working of an active mind.
In addition, some of his associational sequences, that describing the walk to Ferento, for example, are aesthetically satisfying as harmonious combinations of form and meaning.
The personal content of Alone and Together in which Douglas reflects on this or that aspect of life, why he dislikes Henry
James, or why he thinks war is a mercenary transaction, is of wider significance than the scholarly disquisitions of the early travel books. Even here, however, Douglas' appeal is limited, for the simple reason that hedonism as a philosophy has never been widely acceptable. What Swinburne wrote in 1783 of the Sybarites applies to Douglas: nI have often wondered why the most outrageous bar barians . . . have found more favour at the hands both of their contemporaries and of posterity, than the soft and indolent
Sybarites, who seem to have done harm to nobody." Most people re je c t hedonism fo r some no b ler philosophy, g en erally one th a t demands denial, rather than acceptance. Swinburne offered another explana tion: "I suspect the virulence of abuse sprang . . . from a spirit of envy at their enjoyments."^ Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that Douglas1 ideas w ill never gain him wide approval as a w rite r.
As a stylist, Douglas deserves praise for the rich eloquence of Old Calabria and the conversational ease of Alone. The variety 197 of his word choice and the rightness of much of his phrasing are enduring stylistic values. However, were critics to consider seriously Douglas' prose style, they would probably insist that his subject matter was not of sufficient gravity or originality to allow his style to be a great one. Thera would be some justness, I feel, in such a charge. If Douglas did not make his minnows talk like whales, he must s till answer for writing about minnows in the first p lace.
Probably Douglas' eventual niche in the history of literature will be as a humorous eccentric who had a fine gift for expression, and a knack for self-characterization, for "writing himself down."
As Mario Praz observed in a brief article on Douglas written in
1937: »E insomma uno di quegli scrittori eccentric!, di cui esiste una gloriosa tradizione in Inghilterra.If so, his repu tation will in large stand on his last three travel books. For those who wish to press further, Douglas w ill perhaps be remembered as an Englishman who gave one of the finest'portraits of South Italy in Old Calabria and Siren Iggd: of its art and history, its topography and science, its literature and learning. If so, Douglas w ill be esteemed not as an authority on any one aspect of the culture of South Italy, but for his wide grasp, his Renaissance vitality and breadth. In the judgment of another learned Italian, Edwin Cerlo,
Douglas has gone to the Pagan heart of Italy: "Sono migliaia i lib ri inglesi che descrivono la nostra terra, ma uno solo scrlttora che ne ha penetrata l'essenza fina alia midolla—alia midolla pagana—:
Norman D ouglas."3 198
Footnotes
1Travels In the Two Sicilies. I, p. 295.
^Studi e Svaehi Inglesi. p.
3*Norman Douglas,” La Paelne del 'Iso la dl Cap id. April 1923t BIBLIOGRAPHY
199 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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——— —-. Pino man. London, 195^.
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Cerio, Edwin. "Norman Douglas," Le Pagine dellIsola di Canri. April 1923, pp. 3-6.
Curie, Richard. Review of Fountains in the Sand. The English Review. XII (1912), pp. 665-2&
Cunard, Nancy. Grand Man. London, 195**.
Davenport, John. Introduction to Norman Douglas, Old Calabria. New York, 1956.
—— —— . "Norman Douglas," The Atlantic Monthly.CXIV (S ep t., 195*0, PP. 69-7**. Dawkins, R. H. Norman Douglas. 2nd. ed. rev. London, 1952.
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-———— . Late Harvest. London, 19**6.
200 201
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Guida d1Italia. 10 vols. Milan, 1913-1928.
Hutton, Edward. A Glimpse of Greece. London, 1928.
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Lindetaan, Ralph. "Norman Douglas: A C ritical Study." Unpublished Doctorial dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1956.
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Pritchett, V. S. "Corked and Crusted," The New Statesman and Nation. LI (March 10, 1956), p . 216.
— ------—. "Norman Douglas; 1868-1952." The New Statesman and Nation. XLIII (March 15, 1952), pp. 307-308.
Roy, Claude. Stendhal P ar Lui-Meme. P a ris , i 960.
Slaughter, Gertrude. Calabriat The First Italy. Madison, 1939.
Swinburne, Henry. Travels in the Two Sicilies. 2 vols. London, 1783. Tomlinson, Henry Major. Norman Douglas. London, 1931. 202
T r illin g , Lionel. "Old C a la b ria ,H The G riffen . February 1957. pp. *M 0.
Webster, H. T. "Norman Douglas: A Reconsideration," SAQ. XLIV (1950), pp. 226-236. Wheatley, Elizabeth. "Norman Douglas." Sewanee Review. XL, i , (1932). pp. 55-67. Wilson, Edmund. The Shores of Light. New York, 1952.
Woolf, Cecil. A Bibliography of Norman Douglas. London, 195^»