http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/thesiger.htmlWILFRED THESIGER
(He wrote travel books, don't you know!)
There are some authors who are so prolific that assembling a complete collection of their first editions is almost a pipe-dream. Others, however, produce such a small output that acquiring a full set is a very real possibility, and Wilfred Thesiger is a perfect example of the latter.
In a life spanning almost eighty years, he has produced just five books, but all of them are 'classics' of their kind. Apparently, the reason for such a small oeuvre was that for many years Wilfred Thesiger thought he had nothing much to write about - astonishing for a man who had spent most of his life wandering in some of the most remote and hostile lands in the world. Indeed, had it not been for the gentle persuasion of several friends and a publisher, it is highly unlikely that Wilfred Thesiger would have set pen to paper at all.
Wilfred Thesiger never travelled to write, only to find a subject for his writing. He had no publisher's deadline to meet and when traveling he stayed where he wanted - for as long as he wished. For example, he lived with the Arabian Bedu for five years, and his communion with the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq was even longer. He didn't just observe - he became, as much as possible, one of them. He adopted their language, wore their clothes, learned their customs and finally became their friend.
Even though most of Wilfred Thesiger's travels have been post-war, the astonishing way of life of the tribesmen he described, unchanged for centuries, has all but disappeared in the last twenty years, so not only are Wilfred Thesiger's books outstanding examples of travel writing, they can also now be considered as valuable documents of lost civilisations.
In his recently published autobiography, "The Life of My Choice", Wilfred Thesiger describes himself as the 'first British child born in Abyssinia' (now Ethiopia). That was in 1910, and his parents had only recently arrived at the series of scattered villages that was then Addis Ababa, where his father was Minister in charge.
From an early age Wilfred Thesiger was fascinated by the stark beauty of Abyssinia; the scenery, the wildlife, but most of all the tribesmen. It was the beginning of a fascination with remote civilisations which has stayed with Wilfred Thesiger all his life. As he states in his book "The Marsh Arabs": "People are more important to me than places." This early obsession with Abyssinia is understandable, for the country has a fascinating history, with perhaps only Egypt having a longer uninterrupted succession. Collectors with any interest in the history of Abyssinia should read the early chapters of "The Life of My Choice", where Wilfred Thesiger writes briefly on the history of this ancient civilisation.
One of Wilfred's enduring childhood memories was watching the Shoan armies marching into baffle during the 1916-17 revolution, a formation so vast that it took days to pass the British legation. As Wilfred Thesiger writes in his autobiography: "I believe that day implanted in me a life-long craving for barbaric splendour, for savagery and colour and the throb of drums."
Having lived in Abyssinia all his short life, Wilfred's return to England and what he later termed "the drab uniformity of the modern world", was a traumatic one. Having never encountered English boys before, his years at St Aubyn's boarding school near Brighton were extremely unhappy, and he soon began to long for the scenery and people of his birthplace.
Further trauma was to follow when his father died suddenly during Wilfred Thesiger's second term at St Aubyn's. Had not his father's brother (a member of an astonishing family which in his generation produced a Viceroy, a General, an Admiral and a High Court Judge) intervened with financial assistance at this time, it is unlikely that Wilfred Thesiger would have attended Eton, an experience he considers to be one of the most formative of his life.
But his longing for Abyssinia remained. Whilst at Eton he read anything and everything on the country and he particularly remembers finding James Bruce's "Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile" in a local bookshop for ten shillings, and becoming engrossed in all five volumes. He also read extensively about the Zulus and the Dervish empire of the Sudan. In lighter mood he would choose Buchan, Conrad or Kipling - Wilfred Thesiger now claims to have read "Kim" forty times! - or titles by big game hunters such as Gordon Cumming, Baldwin and Newman, of which he now has an impressive collection.
Oxford University followed but Wilfred's thoughts were still elsewhere and during his first summer vacation, inspired by his reading of Eastern travel books, he worked his passage to Constantinople, a city which evoked romantic visions in the young student. Wilfred Thesiger was bitterly disappointed. In "The Life of My Choice" he describes it as "depressing, soulless, with drab crowds, deserted mosques, and palaces preserved as showpieces of a dead past". However, his dejection was soon dissipated when he returned to England to find two important letters waiting for him. One was an invitation to the coronation of the future emperor Haile Selassie in his beloved Abyssinia; the other a notification from the Foreign Office that Wilfred Thesiger had been appointed Honorary Attache to the Duke of Gloucester, the King's representative at the coronation.
The return to Abyssinia after ten years was a joyous occasion for the 2O-year old Wilfred Thesiger, not only for the historical significance of the event (indeed, few realised at the time the impact Selassie would have on his country), but also because it was the final time the ancient splendours of Abyssinia were to be on view. Wilfred Thesiger remembers seeing Evelyn Waugh (then a correspondent for 'The Graphic') at the ceremony; but it was not a meeting of minds and Wilfred was angered by the flippant manner with which Waugh treated the coronation.
With Oxford and final exams beckoning, Wilfred Thesiger's sojourn was all too brief. He vowed to return, but this time with a purpose: to organise an expedition to discover the unexplored source of the river Awash. With this in mind he contacted the popular author John Buchan who provided valuable assistance in his capacity as president of the Oxford Exploration Society.
The expedition proved to be a great success. Not only because Wilfred Thesiger, at great personal risk, had discovered the source of the Awash, but more importantly he had now determined to turn his back on Western civilisation and follow, as closely as possible, the life of a nomad.
He enrolled in the Sudan Political-Service, and made faltering attempts to learn classical Arabic in London, although in later years, through personal contact, he learned to speak Arabic with admirable fluency. Wilfred Thesiger was lucky with his posting. He was sent to Katum in Northern Darfur, a remote region much to his liking where he served under Guy Moore, a man whose views were every bit as unconventional as Wilfred Thesiger's own. Together they spent long evenings discussing the diverse characters of such well-known Arabists as Charles Doughty, T.E. Lawrence and Richard Burton.
For a while it was a pleasant life, but there were storm clouds on the horizon. Today, the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1936 is an often ignored military action, largely overshadowed by the Second World War. But it was infamous for two reasons: firstly, the brutality of the invaders who resorted to mustard gas to defeat the primitively equipped Abyssinlans and, secondly, the impotence of the League of Nations who refused to condemn the action despite the personal pleas of Haile Selassie. It was an episode which cemented Wilfred Thesiger's admiration for the primitive tribes of this part of the world, and also his distrust of Western governments. Indeed, in "The life of My Choice", Wilfred Thesiger writes of being particularly proud of firing the first shots into the Italian positions at the very moment the BBC announced that Mussolini's forces had entered the war.
Of all the places that Wilfred Thesiger visited in the first half of his life, it was the Arabian desert that he most wanted to return to at the end of the Second World War. As he writes in "Arabian Sands": "It was the same pull which takes men back to the polar ice, to high mountains, and to the sea."
Wilfred Thesiger had first read of the Desert Arabs in Doughty's "Arabia Deserta" and T.E. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom". Now, as a member of the S.A.S. behind enemy lines in Libya, he encountered the Bedu tribes for the first time. He was captivated by the timeless beauty of the desert and its people, and was astonished at their ability to survive in such a harsh environment.
Good fortune struck once more. Wilfred Thesiger discovered that the Locust Research Organisation were looking for people to travel the deserts of Southern Arabia in search of locust outbreak centres. Wilfred jumped at the opportunity and the next five years, spent in the company of the Bedu nomads, were the most exciting of his life. As he wrote in "Arabian Sands", the book Wilfred Thesiger produced from his time in the desert:
"All my past had been but a prelude to the 5 years that lay ahead of me."
In the late 1950s Wilfred Thesiger retired to a bedsit in Copenhagen and began to write as hard as he had once travelled. When passages were completed he posted them to friends for their criticism. The resultant book, "Arabian Sands", was published in 1959 to rapturous reviews. 'The Guardian' referred to it as "a major addition to the literature of exploration", and Hammond Innes in 'Bookinan' called it "that rare thing, a really great travel book".
The focus of "Arabian Sands" is two journeys Wilfred Thesiger made across an area of the desert known as the Empty Quarter - an area so desolate it is referred to as a desert within a desert. As a wilderness it is almost beyond compare, but although such places always fascinated Wilfred Thesiger, it was the fact that the Empty Quarter was virtually unmapped that really attracted him. It was an adventure into the unknown which he hadn't experienced since his pre-war expedition in Abyssinia. Surprisingly, Wilfred Thesiger wasn't the first Englishman to cross the Empty Quarter. In 1930, St John Philby (father of Kim) crossed from North to South, and earlier in the same year Bertram Thomas made the same journey in the opposite direction as a prelude to writing his highly collectable book "Arabia Felix".
The Bedu that Wilfred Thesiger travelled with remembered Bertram' Thomas - as he wrote of them, "Bedu notice everything and forget nothing". Indeed, Wilfred Thesiger owed much to Bertram Thomas: he learnt much from his_book and, moreover, he was accepted more readily by the Bedu when they learnt he was a member of the same 'tribe' as Thomas.
Although gregarious by nature, the Bedu are merciless critics of those who fall short of their expectations, and they make no allowances for strangers. In "Arabian Sands", the reader learns from first-hand experiences of the harsh existence of these camel-breeding tribes. Being desert dwellers theirs is a closed community, with no know-ledge of the outside world and even less curiosity.
Interestingly, it was not the physical hardship that Wilfred Thesiger found difficult to endure, even though the constant irritation of the wind-driven sand, the brackish water, the cold of night and the heat of day all took their toll. Instead it was the constant nervous tension of living in close harmony with another culture which often drove him to the edge of despair. Curiously, he was never lonely. In fact, it was quite the reverse, for amongst these intensely social people it was almost impossible for Wilfred Thesiger to find the solitude he often sought. Eventually he grew used to their ways, first by enduring them and then through a gradual understanding of their customs until initial displeasure developed into admiration.
Having spent so many years amongst the Bedu, Wilfred Thesiger's viewpoint in "Arabian Sands" is evidently no longer that of a European. In fact, he is violently against the all-pervading culture of the West which, even forty years ago, he thought was already contaminating the Bedu way of life.
Collectors should note there are three major editions of "Arabian Sand?' to choose from. The original 1959 Longmans edition is by far the most desirable, with a photograph of a Bedu on the dust-wrapper and the title printed in red beneath. This particular edition also has a large colour map loosely inserted inside a pocket at the rear of the book - collectors should ensure that this is present.
Collins issued an admirable reprint of "Arabian Sands" in 1983 (it is still in print), which includes a new preface by Wilfred Thesiger in which he bemoans the introduction of the oil money which led to the collapse of Bedu life. As Wilfred Thesiger puts it: "The changes which occurred in the space of a decade or two were as great as those which occurred on Britain between the early Middle Ages and the present day". Once again a large map is included at the rear, but this map is in black and white.
Also of interest to collectors is the Long-mans' 'Heritage of Literature' edition produced in 1964. This particular edition includes some new illustrations together with the original photographs but some collectors are discouraged by some rather savage editing which mars the narrative.
After leaving Arabia, Wilfred Thesiger went to Southern Iraq in 1951 where he hoped to "recapture the peace of mind I had known in the deserts of Southern Arabia". As luck would have it, Wilfred chanced upon another tribe of remote and backward people, the Madan, who inhabited the swamp-like deltas of the Euphrates and Tigris. Wilfred Thesiger originally planned to visit for a fortnight; instead he stayed for almost eight years. As he said in the first chapter of "The Marsh Arabs" (1964), the book he wrote about these years: "Once more I experienced the longing to share this life and be more than a spectator".
>The Madan tribe had already been the subject of one book. Gavin Maxwell, who accompanied Wilfred Thesiger for a brief time in the marshes, published his own account of this part of Iraq in his 1957 classic, "A Reed Shaken by the Wind". But Wilfred Thesiger's book is an incomparably deeper analysis, thanks to his longer acquaintance with the area and the people, and critical acclaim was fulsome.
As with the Bedu, it was the harsh existence of the Madan that attracted Wilfred Thesiger. Early in "The Marsh Arabs", the reader gains some idea of how Wilfred Thesiger lived when he recounts a sheikh's son explaining that the "Madan live like their buffaloes. Their houses are half under water, filled with mosquitos and fleas. If you try to sleep in one of them you. will probably get your face trodden on by buffaloes during the night". The scene grows even bleaker in later passages when you learn that the few strips of dry land in the deltas are inhabited by ferocious wild dogs which make it impossible to stray very far; many people get gored by wild pigs; houses catch fire with unnerving ease; and diseases like dysentery are rife. It was this prevalence of injury and ill health that gave Wilfred Thesiger his entry into the marsh Arabs' life. With the small supply of antibiotics he always carried, Wilfred Thesiger soon became elevated to legendary status amongst these primitive people.
Once more, of course, first editions are very desirable. However, if collectors have any problems acquiring a copy, the 1985 edition by Collins provides a very satisfying alternative.
With the publication of "The Marsh Arabs", Wilfred Thesiger's reputation as a travel writer of the first order was secure and during his infrequent visits to Britain he was (and still is) lionised in London society. Always immaculately dressed, he is the epitome of an English gentleman, barely recognisable from the photographs of him in Arab dress which appear in his books. A story doing the rounds in the 1960s claimed that when an aristocratic lady said that she didn't suppose he went to many parties on his travels he replied, "On the contrary. I was at a splendid one a few weeks ago; all the guests were naked and they ate one of them afterwards."
Today, Wilfred Thesiger spends most of his time amongst the Samburti tribe of Northern Kenya, a country he began exploring during the early 1 960s. A chronological list of all Wilfred Thesiger's travels appears in his 1979 book, "Desert, Marsh and Mountain", which also includes an exhaustive list of Wilfred Thesiger's magazine writing. This publication is an extremely impressive large volume, with hundreds of outstanding photographs taken by the author throughout his travels - Wilfred Thesiger rarely went anywhere without his trusty Leica. Collectors might be a little disappointed with the text, however. Much of the book merely reworks his two previous titles, although there are some valuable accounts of the author's travels in the Yemen during the 1966 civil war, and also in Afghanistan where that other collectable travel writer, Eric Newby, remembers bumping into Wilfred Thesiger, "a great long-striding crag of a man".
Of interest to collectors is the Collins leather-bound edition, published at the same time. Only 120 copies of this book were issued, of which 100 stayed in Britain. Copies are very hard to find today. Incidentally, a further selection of photographs was published in 1987, "Visions of a Nomad".
Wilfred Thesiger has often been called the last of the great Victorian travelers, born half a century after his time. Had he been born any later he would have found that most of the areas he explored had been destroyed. Today, the geographical barriers to entering Wilfred Thesiger's areas of wilderness have largely been replaced by those of a more political nature. Iraq and Afghanistan have been troubled by wars for many years, and the recent turmoil in Ethiopia has occupied much of our thoughts in recent times. Wilfred Thesiger's admiration for the nomadic way of life, evident in all his work, has led him to despise the conveniences of modern life - cars, industrialisation etc - which first threatened, then caused so much destruction. Wilfred Thesiger has been a visionary because he expressed such views when few doubted that the irrepressible march of science was for the ultimate benefit of all mankind. Unable to change his world, he abandoned it for another, and so began a life which has produced a number of unique and highly collectable travel books.
http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/thesiger.html
http://www.eapgroup.com/thesiger.htm
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0201/story.html
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The above was loosely adapted (other than my deleting the odd outdated piece or adding a contemporary comment, it's original) from an article authored by one David Howard in Book and Magazine Collector Magazine, issue 65 of August 1989. More Stuff! can be found at www.kruse.co.uk
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