Ramblings on Eric Newby

I've been reading a series of autobiographical books by Eric Newby, who was an English travel writer in the mid 20th century. I read the first one "The Last Grain Race" because it was about sailing ships -- as a young man just before WWII he signed on to crew on one of the last ever commercial sailing ships. I wasn't expecting to read any more of his work until I saw the summary of his book "Love and War in the Appenines," which read:

"In 1943 prisoner of war Eric Newby successfully escaped the Germans and sought refuge in the mountains and forests of the Apennines [in Italy]... But amidst the danger and risks were humour, friendship and remarkably, love - as his life became interwoven with the hopes of the local girl who rescued him and eventually became his wife"

And apparently that's a love story I can't turn down. It turned out to a be a beautiful book. It was clearly written not to aggrandize his own actions but out of deep love and gratitude to the Italian farmers who took huge risks to help him. It's strange as an adventure novel because he ends up getting captured again in the end and doesn't do anything important in the war effort. But it captures instead what's really important: people being kind and sacrificing for others because it is the right thing to do.

And then the book ends without telling you anything about the rest of his courtship with his wife, so I had to hunt down a third book "A Little Place in Italy," an account of him and his wife buying a house in the same region of Italy twenty years later. Again, nothing much of consequence happens, but he gives charming and loving portraits of the farmer neighbors who welcome them into the community, mixed in with idyllic scenes of things like working on a neighbor's vineyard and taking a break for eating a mid-morning picnic delivered by the women of the house carrying baskets on their heads.

He does have that very English superpower for absurd coincidences and lucky breaks. During his time as refugee he gets lost in the mountains one day only to stumble into the house of an eccentric old man who shelters him for a day or two before leading him back to his hiding spot. The old man is a character. He is a skilled tinkerer and laborer, but has a habit of talking to himself incessantly. He also is a traditional storyteller and knows all the old stories. In the later book when they find the house they are to buy they learn that a man has been living in two of the rooms since the last owners. When they meet him Eric is shocked to see that it is the same old man. I gasped when I read it. The old man, Attillio, continues to board with them and helps them take care of the house and their vines. They are not sure if he remembers either of them, but he takes an especial liking to Eric's wife, Wanda, calling her "mi padrona."

All the books read like the book that every returned missionary wishes they could write. It exudes the desire to share with others the special love that one gets for a specific place and set of people. You know you will never really be able to get other people to see these things and these people the way you see them simply because they weren't there when you were, but it still feels important to try.

In fact, the bit about reuniting with Attilio feels very similar to an experience in India. When I was in Bangalore an older man dropped in to church meetings one day and so we started to teach him. He was a magician and entertainer, and a Christian, and had lived all over, including in the Maldives. He enjoyed meeting with us, but told us that since he was staying for free in a hostel run by a pastor he couldn't come to church with us for fear of upsetting the pastor. Then one day he disappeared. We tried calling him to no avail until a week or so later he called us from a payphone telling us he had moved to Calcutta. This was strange and surprising, but so was everything about him. We couldn't decide if this was eccentricity, or a lie to avoid having to keep meeting with us.

Six months later I was in Visakhapatnam heading for home through a busy square when I heard someone calling "Pritchett! Pritchett!" I turned and saw my magician friend walking towards me. When I got over my shock at seeing him again I introduced him to my new companion, and he led us to his tiny rooftop apartment. There he gave us snacks let us hold his dove that he used in his magic shows. I swear I am not making this up. We started teaching him again and he came to church a few times. At one point the Branch President, Prasad Kusuma, hired him to do some magic for a branch activity. Then he moved a ways out of the city into a similar hostel / pastor arrangement and we never really saw him again. 

All the books are filled with little snapshots of characters like this. Never making fun, but always highlighting the mix oddities and vices and virtues that all real people have, from Finnish sailors playing pranks on each other to Italian farm girls analyzing their dreams from a book over breakfast to a Nazi office who cares more about collecting butterflies than capturing an English escapee. They capture the important things rather than the exciting things.

And now, selected quotes from the books:

From "The Last Grain Race," young Eric working as a clerk in a London ad agency

"When I was not speculating about what I read, I would fight with Stan, ... one of the two assistants in the department... Both Stan and Les, the second assistant, called me 'Noob'. 

"'Ere', Noob, what abaht a pummel?' Stan would croak invitingly, and we would pummel one another until Miss Phrygian banged furiously on the frosted glass of her office door to stop the din."

From "The Last Grain Race", rounding Cape Horn

As [the Moshulu] ran she surged into the sea so that it came up at us on the bowsprit as if it was trying to lick us off. ...
"Kossuri, take my bloddy byxor," Taanila yelled in my ear.
I put my hand under his oilskin coat and took a good hold on his belt and trousers as he got down on to the footrope to take the gasket that Yonny Valker and I were swinging towards him over the sail and under the bowsprit.
At that moment, it was fortunate that Taanila's mother could not see him. It was fortunate, perhaps, that none of our mothers could see us. 

 From "Love and War in the Appenines," as a local clan builds him a hidden hideaway

This took much longer than they thought because while they were digging it they uncovered a perfectly enormous rock.

... Then, as if he had been waiting for his cue, an old man appeared on the cliff above us and looked down rather critically on the party assembled below. ... He went over it with his hands, very slowly, almost lovingly. It must have weighed half a ton. Then, when he had finished caressing it, he called for a sledgehammer and hit it deliberately but not particularly hard and it broke in two almost equal halves.  It was like magic and I would not have been surprised if a toad had emerged from it and turned into a beautiful princess who had been asleep for a million years. Even the others were impressed.

From "Love and War in the Appenines"

"Signor Zanoni," I said, using one of my small store of stock phrases, "Posso dormire nee vostro fienile?" "Can I sleep in your hayloft?" 

 "Did anyone see you on the road coming here?" he said.

 I told him that I had seen no one and that I was as sure as I could be that no one had seen me.

 There was a long pause before he answered, which seemed like an age. "No," he said, finally, "you can't."

... "No, you can't sleep in my hay," he said after another equally long pause. "You might set it on fire and where would I be then? But you can sleep in my house in a bed and you will, to, but before we go in I have to finish with Bella [the cow]." And he went back to milking her."

From "A Small Place in Italy"

 Almost every day Signor Guiseppe used to take off from his new house up the hill ... and come down the hill to our dell, singing a bit on the way. This was what most men did when visiting or passing through other peoples' properties by the labyrinth of tracks and paths that were normally open to anyone who wished to use them. ... Women would cough discreetly or carry on an over-loud conversation with whoever they were traveling with.

 ... One reason for all this ceremony - the coughing and the singing - was probably so as to not catch the owners of these properties with their trousers down or their skirts up, or both.

 From "A Small Place in Italy"

Signor Guiseppe ... had got it into his head that our well needed cleaning out and being a countryman saw nothing strange in arriving on our doorstep at half-past six in the morning to discuss the matter, without telling us that he was coming and without the usual premonitory arias.