Eric Newby’s other half

Wanda, the great travel writer’s widow, is as formidable a presence in real life as she is in Newby’s books, as Sam Jordison discovers When the late, great travel writer Eric Newby was asked in a magazine article to name one thing he couldn’t travel without, he said simply “my wife”. Wanda Newby is such a commanding presence in his books that it’s easy to see why. She is tough, practical and – most importantly – absolutely hilarious. Without her, he wouldn’t have had half so much to write about. Indeed, when she stayed at home, his journeys didn’t come off. Wanda herself once said: “He cycled 700 miles across England with somebody else because I didn’t want to do it in the cold. But it didn’t work. Eric said he couldn’t write the piece without my dialogue.” In Newby’s books, Wanda is combative, constantly argumentative, but thoroughly endearing. It’s hard to convey just how marvellous she is in a few words, but you can get a flavour from the following curt note, which Newby quotes in Love and War in the Appennines , his autobiographical account of hiding out in the Italian mountains during the second world war. She sends it to Eric at a point of extreme personal stress into warn him that the Nazis are about to arrive and he must escape: “Get out! Tonight, 22.00, if not Germany tomorrow 06.00.” Naturally, when I was offered the chance to meet her I leapt at it. Wanda spoke to me in her home in Kennington one bright afternoon last month, in a room flowing over with trinkets, sculptures, and pictures gathered from the four corners of the earth, and dominated by a large glass case containing a beautiful scale model of the Moshulu , the four-masted steel barque in which Eric sailed to Australia, aged just 19. We sat and leafed through the big red book Eric had been given after appearing on This Is Your Life, back in 1978, and drank tea while Wanda reminisced over 60 years of marriage, 20 books and countless journeys. My original intention was to ask Wanda how it felt to be the star of so many books, but she didn’t much want to talk about that. In fact, I got the impression she thought it was rather a daft question. “It’s rather embarrassing,” she said. “I don’t like it. But I was there. So of course, he had to mention me.” I wasn’t about to argue with her – from reading the books, I knew I’d lose. But on the subject of arguments, she did give me the following insight into why Eric invariably let her have her way: “I kept the money. If we had a quarrel, or something, I always said I’d go home with my purse. He did listen to me quite a bit. In fact, he needed somebody to support him.” To illustrate the latter point she told me about the time Eric decided he had to go on a river trip: “He said ‘I’m going on the Mississippi’. And I said: ‘You must be mad to go on the Mississippi, it’s not an adventure. There are houses everywhere.’ Then he said: ‘What about the Volga?’ And I said: ‘Well what are you exploring there? It’s all built up, it’s in Europe. Why don’t you go on the Ganges.’ And he said: ‘That’s a marvellous idea.’ “And we went.” The result was the classic Slowly Down The Ganges . To hear Wanda tell it, you’d think taking a 1,200-mile boat trip through the heart of India was as straightforward as catching the tube from her home in Kennington to Waterloo. The reality is that the Ganges is even less conducive to comfort than the Northern Line. I asked her if this marked lack of luxury had ever troubled her. “Well, it was interesting. If something is interesting, it doesn’t matter how tough it is. I enjoyed it,” she said. “We had to sleep on the banks, and the first night I was petrified because hyenas started shrieking around our camp. But the boatman said: ‘Don’t you worry, they only eat dead things.’ And since I wasn’t dead I put up with it.” Wanda was similarly enlightening when talking about Eric’s ability to charm his way around the globe. Her husband, she said, “was a strong man”. He may have described himself as “a bloody idiot” who mainly provided entertainment by blundering in and out of trouble – but that wasn’t the whole story. Just as “a short walk” in the Hindu Kush was actually a gruelling many-hundred-mile trek, so Newby carefully understated his own ability. Even his prose – which flows as easily and naturally as a river to the sea – conceals great labour. Writing did come naturally to him, said Wanda, but only because he worked so hard at it. Even before setting out “he did a lot of preparation”, reading up on wherever he was going and planning meticulously. “He wasn’t just going for adventure. He always found what he wanted. He didn’t choose a place and just go.” He kept comprehensive notes and, on his return, would spend hours working every evening. So he may have been an idiot – but he was no fool. He was also, Wanda told me with satisfaction, “well fed.” Once again, I could see how important she must have been to the partnership. But she insisted it was she who was the lucky one: “I was very fortunate to meet someone as eccentric as Eric. I enjoyed everywhere we went because he made it so interesting.” By now, the afternoon sunlight had faded. We had more tea. “I never thought I’d end up in London,” said Wanda. She had come a long way. I knew, because I’d also read the one book she wrote, Peace and War: Growing Up in Fascist Italy. She insisted to me that it was “not very good”, but on that point at least, I would have to argue. As well as providing a funny and poignant retelling of the story in Love and War in the Apennines – and how she and Eric first met, in fascist Italy – it is a fine evocation of a lost place and time, the Slovenian countryside between the wars, a world away from that comfortable room in Kennington. It made me feel quite misty-eyed, but typically, Wanda had little time for such sentimentality. “Don’t live to be 89,” was her last word on her long eventful life. “People grow too old nowadays. I don’t recommend it.” Eric Newby Travel writing Sam Jordison guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 5, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.