Eagle & Mate

THE BOOK OF TALBOT--Violet Clifton--Harcourt, Brace ($3.50).

Excited book-boomers have compared this unusual biography to James Boswell's Life of Johnson, to Herman Melvill's Moby Dick, to Charles Montagu Doughty's Arabia Deserta. The Book of Talbot is a biography of a comparatively unknown man written by his widow. Gravely, not to say solemnly told, it is sometimes pompous but never inane. Authoress Clifton's fierce reverence for her subject does at times succeed in making her manner grand.

Like many an Englishman since the days of Drake, Talbot Clifton (1868-1928), found England too small, too safe. Scion of an ancient line (beginning in 1060), and inheritor of great estates, he stayed caged only long enough to go through Eton and Cambridge, then set off to live dangerously in far places. Twice before he was 20 he circled the globe, but trotting in tourist tracks was not his idea. He aimed to make his body an instrument of his will. Practicing this counsel of perfection, he wandered purposefully to Mexico, California, Alaska, the Barren Lands north of Hudson Bay, the centre of Africa, Siberia, South America, Burma.

First white man to penetrate the Barren Lands, he counted his expedition a success when he came back alive with a single trophy: a musk-ox head. Grimly faithful diarist, no matter how frost-bitten or near-delirious with tropical fever, he seldom missed recording his daily tale. Fond of good living when he could get it, he learned to thrive on savage fare. Few things turned his stomach. Once in Africa, stooping to drink from a shallow well, he saw in the water beneath his own reflection "the ragged black face of a man, newly murdered." But he was thirsty and drank "gratefully." Just returned to England at the outbreak of the Boer War, Talbot went back again as war correspondent. A slow-healing love affair drove him to Siberia, where he shot an ovis nivicula (mountain sheep), and a new species later named in his honor ovis cliftoni. He was stabbed by a drunken Cossack servant, rested a while at Verkhoyansk, coldest spot on earth. A fellow-traveller, Scientist Hertz, sent him some frozen flesh of a mammoth he had found. Talbot "ate it thoughtfully, for was it not about 8,000 years old?"

Talbot met his wife in PerUj where she was living with her father, the British Minister. It was love at third sight; they went back to England, properly chaperoned, to get married. Rawboned Violet was no less characterful than Talbot, and even on this first trip they had stormy times. But she never tried to domesticate him. Soon after marriage they went off to Burma and the Malay Archipelago to find new types of orchid. When the Great War came, Talbot, too old for active service, got a coast guard job cruising off Ireland; they bought a house and settled there. After the War Talbot went off on another expedition by himself, to Africa, and was taken ill there. But usually they went everywhere together. Once he said: "I am going to Bagdad to see Gertrude Bell, and on into Persia. Will you come?" She said, "Oh yes, I'll go."

On Talbot's last trip to Africa Violet had gloomy premonitions, but she said nothing, was content to be with him. He fell too ill to be taken home. "Kneeling in front of Talbot, Violet saw the face of her husband with awe. She seemed to be ministering to a divine stranger. The victory of his will over his suffering was his investiture; was the crowning of his life's attitude towards his body." When at last he died, she was glad for him.

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