When the Going Was Good Read online

  At first sight there is something a little surprising in this sudden convergence on Abyssinia of the envoys of the civilized world, and I think that the Abyssinians were as surprised as anyone. After the sudden death of the Empress Zauditu in the spring of the year, immediately subsequent to the defeat of her husband Ras Gougsa, Ras Tafari notified the Powers that he proposed, as soon as he decently could, to assume the title of Emperor of Ethiopia, and included in this announcement, in the case of those few nations who maintained diplomatic representatives at his Court, an invitation to attend the ceremonies. A few years before, he had been crowned Negus; on that occasion his immediate neighbours had taken a few days’ holiday to visit him, and there had been a mild exchange of courtesies by telegram. Something a little more conspicuous was expected of the imperial coronation, but the response of the world Powers exceeded Ethiopian expectation in a manner that was both gratifying and embarrassing. Two Governments sent members of their royal families; the United States of America sent a gentleman of experience in the electric installation trade; the Governors of British Somaliland, the Sudan, Eritrea, the Resident at Aden, a marshal of France, an admiral, three airmen, and a marine band all appeared in various uniforms and orders. Substantial sums of public money were diverted to the purchase of suitable gifts; the Germans brought a signed photograph of General von Hindenburg and eight hundred bottles of hock; the Greeks a modern bronze statuette; the Italians an aeroplane; the British a pair of elegant sceptres with an inscription composed, almost correctly, in Amharic.

  The simpler Abyssinians interpreted it as a suitable tribute to Abyssinian greatness; the kings of the world were doing homage. Others, a little more versed in world affairs, saw in it some plot against Abyssinian integrity – the ferangi had come to spy out the land.

  One need not explore any deep political causes for a plausible explanation. Addis Ababa is not a place where great diplomatic reputations are easily won, and the potentates of the Foreign Office do not keep any very keen scrutiny to see how their cadets are shaping in that rare altitude. Who could blame these officials if occasionally there crept into their despatches phrases tending to estimate with some generosity the importance of the land of their exile? Is Abyssinia not the source of the Blue Nile? May there not be vast mineral wealth in those unprospected hills? And if, in the trivial course of compound life, that unvarying round of modest entertainment, there suddenly came to the women of the diplomatic corps – poor half-sisters of the great ladies of Washington or Rome – the possibility of sudden splendour, of royalty and gold braid, curtsies and champagne and handsome A.D.C.s, who can blame them if they strengthened their menfolk in urging the importance of really imposing special representation at the festivities?

  And need one wonder if States very remote from Africa – sledded Polaks and blond Swedes – decided to join in the party? If the glamour of Abyssinia had drawn me there from a life of comparative variety and freedom, why not them from their grey chanceries? Gun-cases among their trunks of uniform showed that they intended to make the most of their jaunt, and several of them, I know, had paid their own fares. ‘Nous avons quatre citoyens ici, mais deux sont juifs,’ one attaché explained to me, and proceeded to demonstrate the apparatus with which, during his sojourn in Africa, he hoped to add to his already extensive collection of butterflies.

  Day broadened rapidly and the dancers finally separated and went off to bed. Lighters came out from shore and coaling began. Planks stretched between the ship and the barges. One of them broke, throwing the Somali coolies heavily on to the coal – a drop of ten feet or more. One lay on his back groaning after the others had got up. The foreman threw a lump of coal at him. He groaned and turned on to his face; another lump, and he staggered to his feet and resumed work. Somali boys came swimming round the ship calling for money to be thrown them. Passengers appeared on deck.

  Soon it began to rain.

  Great uncertainty prevailed as to how or when we should get to Addis Ababa.

  We waited our turn to go ashore with some anxiety. The coolies droned dismally up and down the unstable planks; the little boys in the water cried for francs, or appeared shivering on deck, offering to amuse us by jumping back again; guns on shore boomed the salutes as the Government launch fetched each delegation in turn. The warm rain poured down steadily.

  Eventually we were free to land. There was another Englishman travelling to Addis Ababa, an elderly gentleman on his way to the legation as a private visitor. Throughout the voyage he had studied a formidable little book about tropical hygiene, and passed on to me much disquieting information about malaria and blackwater, cholera and elephantiasis; he used, over his cigar in the evenings, to explain how hook-worms ate their way from the soles of the feet to the internal organs, how jiggers laid their eggs under the toe-nails, and retailed the symptoms of slow paralysis with which the spirillum tick might infect us.

  Together we put our luggage in charge of the French-speaking native porter of the Hôtel des Arcades and went to the English vice-consul who told us that there were in fact two trains that evening, but both of them were reserved for delegations; the next train was three days later; that was reserved for the Duke of Gloucester; there was another one three days after that – reserved for Prince Udine. He could hold out very little hope of our getting up to Addis. In a state of mind born of this information we drove to the Hôtel des Arcades. Our topees were soft on our heads, our white suits clinging about our shoulders. The porter said I must go with him to the customs. We arrived there to find a damp native soldier on guard with water running down his rifle. The customs officer was at the reception at Government House, he said. He could not tell what time he would return or whether he would return at all that day. I pointed out that we must have our luggage to change into dry clothes. Nothing could be moved until the officer returned, he said. The porter, without more ado, picked up the nearest pieces and began piling them into the taxi. The guard remonstrated, but the porter continued undeterred. Then we drove back to the hotel.

  This was a two-storeyed building with an arcaded front of shabby stucco; at the back a wooden staircase led to two broad verandahs on to which the two or three bedrooms opened. There was a lemon-tree in the yard inhabited by a misanthropic black monkey. The proprietress, a handsome Frenchwoman abounding in commercial good nature, made light of our troubles. It was her peculiar fortune to subsist upon the inadequacies of the Franco-Ethiopian railway service, for no one voluntarily spends long in Djibouti.

  This fact, sufficiently clear from our earliest impression, became clearer when, after luncheon, the rain having stopped, we drove for a tour of the town. We bumped and rocked along in a one-horse cab through pools of steaming mud. The streets, described by the official guide-book as ‘elegant and smiling’, were mere stretches of waste land between blocks of houses. These, in the European quarter, were mostly built on the same plan as the hotel, arcaded and decaying.

  ‘They look as though they might fall down any minute,’ remarked my companion as we drove past one more than usually dissolute block of offices, and while we looked they actually did begin to fall. Great flakes of stucco crumbled from the front; a brick or two, toppling from the coping, splashed into the mud below. Some scared Indian clerks scampered into the open, a Greek in shirt-sleeves appeared from the house opposite, a group of half-naked natives rose from their haunches and, still scouring their teeth with sticks of wood, gazed apprehensively about them. Our driver pointed excitedly with his whip and admonished us in Somali. It had been an earthquake which, in the more sensible motion of the cab, had escaped our notice.

  We jolted on past a whitewashed mosque to the camel-market and native quarter. The Somalis are a race of exceptional beauty, very slender and erect, with delicate features and fine, wide-set eyes. Most of them wore a strip of rag round their waists and a few coils of copper wire on wrists and ankles. Their heads were either shaven or dyed with ochre. Eight or nine harlots besieged our carriage until whipped away by t
he driver; innumerable naked children splashed through the mud after us, screaming for bakshish. Some splendid fellows with spears, in from the country, spat contemptuously as we passed. We came to the outskirts of the town, where the huts, formerly grass-thatched, mud-built squares, became little domed structures like inverted birds’ nests, made out of twigs, grass, rags, and flattened tins, with one hole through which a man might crawl on his belly. When we returned to the hotel we found the vice-consul there with the good news that he had obtained a carriage for us in the first special train that evening. Elated though we felt, the heat was still overpowering; we went to sleep.

  At evening, with the knowledge of our imminent departure, Djibouti suddenly became more tolerable. We visited the shops, bought a French novel with an inflammatory wrapper, some Burma cheroots, and changed money, getting, in return for our scattered and grimy notes of the Banque d’Indo-Chine, massive silver dollars of superb design.

  Most recent books about Abyssinia – and I had read many between Westmeath and Marseilles – contain graphic descriptions of the train journey between Djibouti and Addis Ababa. Normally there is a weekly service which does the journey in three days; the two nights are spent in hotels at Dirre-Dowa and Hawash. There are several good reasons for not travelling at night; one is that the lights in the train are liable to frequent failure; another that during the rainy season it is not unusual for parts of the line to get washed away; another that the Galla and Danakil, through whose country the line passes, are still primarily homicidal in their interests, and in the early days of the railway formed a habit, not yet wholly eradicated, of taking up steel sleepers here and there to forge into spear-heads. During coronation week, however, it was found necessary, if the rolling-stock was to be adequate to the additional traffic, to run through trains. We left Djibouti after dinner on Friday and arrived at Addis on Sunday morning. It was a fairly comfortable journey.

  We passed in the darkness the intolerable desolation of French Somaliland – a country of dust and boulders, utterly devoid of any sign of life, and arrived at Dirre-Dowa at dawn. This orderly little township sprang up during the construction of the railway on the land conceded to the French company, and has lived on the railway ever since with slightly diminishing prosperity. It contains two hotels, a café, and a billiard-saloon, a few shops and offices, a bank, a flour-mill, one or two villas, and the residence of an Abyssinian governor. Bougainvillea and acacia-trees border the streets. Twice a week the arrival of a train stirs up a few hours’ activity; travellers arrive for the hotels; luggage is carried about the street; postal officials sort out the mail; commercial agents put on their sun-helmets and saunter down with their invoices to the goods office; then, like a small island when the mail-boat steams out of harbour, Dirre-Dowa relapses into its large siesta.

  This, however, was no ordinary week. Not since 1916 – the civil war before the last – when Lej Yasu’s Mohammedan followers were massacred just over the hills at Harar, had Dirre-Dowa known so many radically disturbing events as this succession of special trains bringing the Emperor’s visitors to the coronation. Flagstaffs painted with the Abyssinian colours had been planted down the main streets, and lines of yellow, red, and green flags strung between them; motor-cars had been brought by train from the capital – for there are no roads outside the town – to convey the delegates to breakfast; the irregular troops of the whole province had been mobilized to line the way.

  It was a grand and startling spectacle. My companion and I waited behind for some minutes in our carriage until the formal greetings were at an end and the delegates were clear of the station. Then we crossed the platform into the square. It was quite empty and quite silent. On three sides stood the Abyssinian soldiers; in front, where the main avenue led up to the governor’s house, the last of the cars was just disappearing; as far as one could see stood the ranks of motionless, white-clothed tribesmen, bareheaded, barefooted, with guns on their shoulders; some had olive skins and keen, aquiline features; others were darker, with thick lips and flat noses showing the infection of slave blood; all wore curly black beards. Their dress was the invariable costume of the country – a long white shirt, white linen breeches loose above the knee and tight at the calves like jodhpurs, and the chamma, a white shawl worn like the toga over one shoulder, and a bandolier of cartridges prominently displayed. In front of each section stood their chief in the gala dress so frequently photographed for the European Press. This, varying in grandeur with the wearer’s wealth, consisted of a head-dress of lion’s mane and gold ornament, a lion’s skin, a brilliantly striped shirt, and a long sword curving out behind for some three feet or more; in some cases the lion’s skin was represented by a garment of embroidered satin, like a chasuble, slit in front and behind in conventionalized tail and legs. It was a memorable experience to emerge, after the Latin holiday-making on the Azay le Rideau, the scramble at Djibouti, and the unquiet night in the train, into the sweet early morning air and the peace cast by these motionless warriors; they seemed at once so savage and so docile; great shaggy dogs of uncertain temper held for the moment firmly at leash.

  We breakfasted at the hotel, and smoked a pipe on the terrace, awaiting the return of the delegates. Presently the soldiers who had been squatting on their haunches were called to attention; the cars came down the hill bearing diplomats handsomely refreshed by a banquet of porridge, kippers, eggs, and champagne. We returned to the train and resumed our journey.

  From now until Hawash, where we arrived at sundown, the line ran through mile upon mile of featureless bush country – thorn, scrub, and flat, brownish mimosa-trees, and dust, ant-hills, a few vultures, now and then a dry watercourse or outcrop of stone, nothing else, hour upon hour. At noon we lunched in a tent at Afdem; luncheon consisted of four courses of meat variously prepared. We waited four hours at Hawash, from six until ten, while mechanics experimented with the lighting of the train; an armed guard squatted at the door of each coach. There are several sheds at Hawash, two or three bungalows of railway officials, a concrete platform, and an inn. After dinner we sat in the yard of the inn on hard little chairs, or paced about the platform or stumbled between the steel sleepers of the permanent way; there was no village or street; it was better to keep in the open as there were fewer mosquitoes; the lights in the carriage windows flashed feverishly on and off. Presently a group of ragged Gallas appeared and began a dance; two performed in the centre of the circle; the others stood round singing, stamping their feet and clapping their hands; they acted a lion hunt in dumb show. The guards wanted to drive them away, but the Egyptian Minister restrained them and gave a handful of dollars to the dancers; this set them going more eagerly and they spun about in the dust like tops; they were extremely fierce men, their long hair matted with butter and mud, and their thin, black bodies hung with scraps of skin and sacking.

  At last the lighting was put right and we started again. Hawash lies at the foot of the highlands; throughout the night we climbed steadily. Each time we were jolted into consciousness between intermittent periods of sleep, we found the air fresher and the temperature lower, and by early morning we had wrapped ourselves in rugs and overcoats. We breakfasted before dawn at Mojo and resumed our journey just as the first light began to break. It revealed a profound change in the landscape; the bush and plain had disappeared, and in its place there extended crests of undulating downland with a horizon of blue mountains. Wherever one looked were rich little farms, groups of circular thatched huts inside high stockades, herds of fine humped cattle browsing in deep pastures, fields of corn and maize being worked by families; camel caravans swayed along the track by the railway, carrying fodder and fuel. The line still mounted, and presently, between nine and ten, we came in sight, far ahead of us, of the eucalyptus-woods that surround Addis Ababa. Here, at a station named Akaki, we stopped again to allow the delegates time to shave and put on their uniforms. Tin trunks and dressing-cases appeared again, valets ran between the luggage-van and the sleeping-cars. The
Dutch Minister soon appeared at the side of the line in cocked hat and gold braid, the Egyptian in tarboosh and epaulettes, the Japanese in evening coats and white waistcoats and top hats; then all got into the train again and proceeded. We puffed up the winding track for another half-hour and at last arrived at Addis Ababa.

  Red carpet had been put out, and before the carpet were drawn up a very different body of troops from those we had passed on the way. These were squat, coal-black boys from the Sudanese border. They wore brand-new, well-cut, khaki uniforms; the lion of Judah shone in polished brass on cap badges and buttons; with bayonets fixed and rifles of recent pattern. Beside them a band of bugle and drums, with a little black drummer poising crossed sticks above the big drum. But for the bare feet below their puttees, they might have been the prize platoon of some public school O.T.C. In front of them with drawn sword stood a European officer. This was a squad of Tafari’s own guard.

  As the train stopped, the guard presented arms; the head chamberlain advanced in a blue satin cloak to greet the delegations, and the band struck up. There was no skimping of difficulties, every anthem was played through thoroughly verse by verse. The Poles came out easy winners in prolixity. Finally, the Ethiopian anthem was played; we heard this so often during the next ten days that it became vaguely familiar, even to me.

  Eventually the last delegation disappeared. The Minister’s daughters had come from the British Legation to meet the train. They asked me what arrangements had been made for my accommodation, and I replied, to the best of my knowledge, none. Consternation. They said the town was completely full. It would be impossible to get a room now. There might be a tent somewhere at the legation; it was conceivable that one of the hotels would let me pitch it in their yard. We got into the car and mounted the hill into the town. Half-way up we passed the Hôtel de France. At the entrance stood the Western figure of a friend named Irene Ravensdale in riding habit. We stopped to greet her. I ran indoors and asked the manager whether there was, by any chance, a vacant room. Why, yes, certainly. It was not a very good room, it was in an outhouse behind the hotel; but, if I cared to take it, it was mine for two pounds a day. I accepted eagerly, signed the register, and rejoined Irene. The legation car and the luggage had disappeared. Instead, the street was full of Abyssinians arriving from the country on mules, slaves trotting all round them, clearing and obstructing the way. The preposterous Alice in Wonderland fortnight had begun.