Mark Cocker.  Loneliness and Time:  British Travel Writing in the Twentieth Century.  London:  Secker and Warburg, 1992.  294 pages.  £17.99.  Loneliness and Time:  British Travel Writing in the Twentieth Century.  New York:  Pantheon, 1993.  294 pages.  $23.00
 
 

Grove Koger


"Loneliness and time"--the words are Lawrence Durrell's and are taken from Bitter Lemons:  "We had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time--those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything."
    Durrellians who pick up Cocker's Story of British Travel Writing (as the American subtitle puts it) will first turn to "Greece--The Dark Crystal."  In this chapter Cocker discusses not only the author of those magical words but also Robert Byron (The Station, The Road to Oxiana) and Patrick Leigh Fermor.  Is it a coincidence that these three are the best writers in the book?  "Possibly," Cocker suggests, "there is something in the Greek air and light, in its wine-dark seas and myth-darkened mountains, that points the way to deeper experience."
    In addition to this trio of philhellenes, Cocker deals with Eric Bailey, Harry St. John Philby, Wilfred Thesiger, Laurens van der Post, and Gavin Maxwell.  Do all these names ring bells?  Well, Bailey wrote three books (China-Tibet-Assam, Mission to Tashkent, and No Passport to Tibet) detailing his experiences in Central Asia soon after the turn of the century.  Cocker makes him out to be indefatigable but unimaginative, a Maskelyne-like figure, but one whose very single-mindedness is awe inspiring.  I've put his books on my reading list.
    Philby was a brilliant Arabist and explorer who maintained two ménages--one in Pudding Island and one in Saudi Arabia.  (His son, Kim, built a similar dichotomy into his life, rising high in the ranks of MI6 while spying for the Soviets.)  Thesiger is Philby's only rival as an explorer, a natural aristocrat who has preferred life with the natural aristocrats of Arabia and Africa to "the drab uniformity of the modern world."
    Van der Post and Maxwell are of course familiar names, but Cocker tells me nothing about them--or their ability as writers--that makes me want to know more.  On the other hand, they do exemplify certain tendencies in British travel writing--hence, I suspect, their presence here.
    The heart of Cocker's book is a chapter entitled "The Purpose of the Traveler," which argues that travel may be the modern equivalent of the religious pilgrimage.  Cocker points out that Durrell caught a "tantalizing" glimpse of "Europe's rich pre-Christian past" but misses a bet, I think, in otherwise neglecting him as a spiritual writer.  Durrell rejected conventional religion but endowed all his subjects--travel and landscape, sex, food and drink--with an intense spirituality.
    On a more mundane note, Durrellians may regret that Cocker does not discuss Durrell's later travel writings.  Yet his analysis of the "island trilogy" is informed and his attitude admiring--a reminder, should one be needed, that some of Durrell's very best work lies here.
    As a reviewer, I'm glad to recommend Loneliness and Time as a well-rounded work, particularly to those not already familiar with its subjects.  As a reader, though, I miss two of the best travel writers of the century:  Norman Douglas and Freya Stark.  Douglas was once a name to reckon with, if for no other reason than his delightful novel South Wind.  It and such travel books as Siren Land and Old Calabria will be remembered, I suspect, when Maxwell and van der Post are forgotten.  Stark has never received her due as a traveler or writer, despite the preface Durrell wrote to her collection, The Journey's Echo.  She perpetually awaits discovery.  I'd like to think that some reader of this review, perhaps Mark Cocker himself, will soon take up her cause.