Journey to Neutralia

SCOTT-KING'S MODERN EUROPE (89 pp.) --Evelyn Waugh--Little, Brown ($2).

This short novel from Evelyn Waugh (published in Britain in 1947*) reads like a malicious parody of his good ones. It is the story of a middle-aged teacher of the classics who happens to become (through some "blood-brotherhood in dimness") the greatest living authority on an obscure 17th Century Central European poet named Bellorius. On the Bellorius Tercentenary, Scott-King is invited to Simona, a city in Neutralia, for the celebration.

The Disguised Professor. Neutralia itself (which, Waugh cautiously explains, represents no existing state) has suffered from "dynastic wars, foreign invasion, disputed successions, revolting colonies, endemic syphilis, impoverished soil, masonic intrigues, revolutions, restorations, cabals, juntas, pronunciamentos, liberations, constitutions, coups d'etat, dictatorships, assassinations, agrarian reforms, popular elections, foreign intervention, repudiation of loans, inflations of currency, trade unions, massacres, arson, atheism, secret societies." It has become a totalitarian republic whose dictator is popular because he kept it out of World War II

The Bellorius Celebration takes place simultaneously with a religious pilgrimage, a gathering of stamp collectors and ; congress of 500 women athletes. Scott-King's companions include a battered newspaperwoman, a law professor substituting for someone else, a Swiss scholar who wanders into the hills and is murdered by partisans. Since the British government has no official knowledge og Scott-King's presence in the country, his is compelled to leave by the underground disguised as a nun, and is at length deposited at a small Mediterranean port among various royalists, anarchists, Petainists, terrorists, ex-Gestapo men, Italian airmen, Turkish prostitutes, Hungarian ballet dancers and Portuguese Trotskyites. He winds up eventually at a Jewish Illicit Immigrants' camp in Palestine where one of his former students recognizes him and establishes his identity.

The Tired Master. Even in the distressed state and anything-that-goes philosophy of U.S. book publishing, Scott-King's Modern Europe (which also appeared in Cosmopolitan) hits a low-watermark. It is hardly more than a short story expanded just enough for book form. The studied anticlimaxes and the resolute deflation of the funny scenes give it a grisly monotony; the book suggests a tired master who seems to be trying to see how far he can go in revealing his contempt for his large and profitable audience. Out of it, however, Scott-King emerges as one of Waugh's rarer characters.

The inconsequence of his journey does not in the least detract from the impression (rather reluctantly given) that he is, after all, the embodiment of some old English virtues: heroic without knowing that he is, eloquently monosyllabic, honest, scrupulous, sane, reserved, decent. He deserves more room than he gets.

* And written between Brides head Revisited (TIME, Jan. 7, 1946) and The Loved One (TIME, July 12).

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