Tought, Worden Deed

WHEN THE GOING WAS GOOD (314pp.) --Evelyn Waugh--Liftle, Brown ($3).

Years ago, the brothers Waugh, Evelyn and Alec (The Loom of Youth), reportedly divided the world between them, agreed that neither should trespass on the other's travelogue territories. Now, on the profitable heels of Brideshead Revisited (TIME, Jan. 7, 1946), Brother Evelyn's combing of those days has been reissued, in one bumper hamper, by Little, Brown.

Travel-minded readers may find much to amuse them in these pages, but they are also likely to feel that Author Waugh is far from his best when he is obliged to keep his feet on the ground--e.g., what he has to record about Ethiopia is not comparable to what his imagination built around it in his subtle, witty novel, Black Mischief. Traveler Waugh is most like his better self when he is most irritated ("the bathroom [of the Aden hotel] consists . . . of a nozzle . . . encrusted with stalactites of green slime . . . the hall porter has marked criminal tendencies. . . .") and when his sharp sense of the ridiculous breaks through his languor--as in the description of a dialogue between a dogged British scout master and one of his troop of Somali boy scouts:

"Abdul . . . tell me what does 'thrifty' mean?"

"Trifty min?"

"Yes, what do you mean, when you say a Scout is thrifty?"

"I min a Scoot hass no money."

"Well, that's more or less right. What does 'clean' mean?"

"Clin min?"

"You said just now a Scout is clean in thought, word, and deed. . . . What do you mean by that?"

"I min tought, worden deed."

Some of Waugh's most interesting words are in his nostalgic introduction to his past writings. "How much we left unvisited and untasted in splendid places!" Author Waugh exclaims. "[We said]: 'Europe could wait. . . .' Had we [only] known that all [the] seeming-solid, patiently built, gorgeously ornamented structure of Western life was to melt overnight like an ice-castle, leaving only a puddle of mud. . . .

"My own traveling days are over. . . " There is no room for tourists in a world of 'displaced persons.' Never again, I suppose, shall we land on foreign soil with letter of credit and passport (itself the first faint shadow of the great cloud that envelops us) and feel the world wide open before us. That is as remote today as 'Yorick's' visit to Paris [in Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey], when he had to be reminded by the landlord that their countries were at war.* Some sort of reciprocal 'Strength-through-Joy' . . . system may arise. . . . The very young, perhaps, may set out like the Wandervogels of the Weimar period; lean, lawless, aimless couples with rucksacks, joining the great army of men and women without papers, without official existence, the refugees and deserters, who drift everywhere today between the barbed wire.

"Perhaps it is a good thing for English literature. In two generations . . . we may again breed great travelers like Burton and Doughty. I never aspired to being a great traveler. I was simply a young man, typical of my age; we traveled as a matter of course. I rejoice that I went when the going was good."

* Perhaps not so remote. Three months ago, Britain and France agreed to abolish visas in cross-Channel visiting.

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