Spanish Adventure, Norman Lewis

Norman Lewis with kestrel 1936My post of 13th May 2016 said I had bought Spanish Adventure by Norman Lewis; and I reported the faint praise it received on publication.  Well, I’ve now read it and have made up my own mind.  Spanish Adventure was published in 1935 and is Lewis’ account of travels in France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco during the autumn of 1934.

The TLS’s reviewer’s concern with the ‘immaturities of style’ are well founded, especially in the earlier chapters.  Lewis uses long or obscure words where simple ones would do the job better, several words where one or two would be enough and often lapses into the flowery use of metaphor and simile.  Sometimes he tries too hard to be clever.  He can be droll and sardonic and the humour adds to the overall texture, but he can be heavy handed in this.

Norman Lewis, 'Spanish Adventure', p110Spanish Adventure reveals an eye and ear for detail, atmosphere and the idiosyncratic in both people and places.  Lewis shows perceptiveness about customs and behaviours and the changes they are undergoing.  And he was prescient in his observations.  The timing of his journey just before the Spanish Civil War (July 1936 – April 1939) was opportune in retrospect and he brings out the sense of uncertainty, chaos and confused panic that was beginning to afflict the country under the ‘gathering storm’.  He bemoans the sprawl of Madrid into the surrounding countryside; and later is saddened by the rash of bungalows along the clifftops of the Algarve.  In this he anticipates the ruination of the Spanish Costas described so evocatively in his Voices of the Old Sea (1984).  In Morocco he despairs at the flight from the countryside to the cities with the terminal abandonment of fertile oases.  In Casablanca he records Qazim’s ‘hopes that England too might, in the long run, be induced to adopt a more tolerant attitude’ towards homosexuality.

The TLS reviewer claimed, ‘This is emphatically not a book to be read by those of delicate susceptibilities…’.  It’s not clear just what 1930’s susceptibilities are likely to be offended, but the descriptions of a bullfight dispel any sense of romance in the ring; and he is equally unromantic about life in the Bousbir, Casablanca’s purpose built red light district.  There may also be political susceptibilities.  The impression is given that Lewis is on the side of the workers.  In Spain he observes, ‘Here were two nations living together with no relations other than economic.’  In Morocco he reflects on the ‘depredations wrought by the anarchy of Capitalism’.  Such comments may have touched a nerve.

Modern susceptibilities are quite another thing.  This is a book of its time and there is a mild xenophobia in making fun of the foreigner; and a smattering of casual racism and not so casual antisemitism.  He encounters ‘primitives’, ‘human wreckage’, ‘poor wretches’, ‘anthropological specimens and the ‘refuse of humanity’; homosexuals (his terminology) are ‘abnormals’.

Spanish Adventure contains things to admire both stylistically and in subject matter.  It also has the shortcomings of a naïve literary voice and contains attitudes that are unacceptable in the modern age, any age, indeed.  As far as style is concerned, many of the problems should have been dealt with by a good editor.  It is a shame that this book has disappeared almost without trace, as Lewis wished – Paul Fussell’s Abroad – British Literary Travel Between the Wars fails to give it a mention.  I think it is worth reading for the insights into the atmosphere in Spain on the eve of the Civil War alone.

Spanish Adventure and Photography

Norma Lewis started what would become the R G Lewis photographic business in 1933.  He was a keen photographer himself and a member of the Royal Photographic Society.  He set out to take photographs on his adventure.

As he travels, care for his ‘chief possessions in the form of fairly expensive photographic apparatus’ is a concern; and it’s heavy, ‘about fifty pounds in weight’.  Trying to photograph in Madrid’s suburbs, he was beset by an interested crowd ‘eager to offer criticism and advice’.  In the central districts, where the unrest was most intense, ‘a Contax camera, used at eye level, and with the telephoto lens in position had a singularly lethal appearance’ and he feared that the Assault Guards might make a fatal mistake about his intentions.

'Spanish Adventure', Norman Lewis 1935Lewis hunted for colour and local characters.  In Salamanca he photographer El Panadero, who might be the subject of the picture entitled ‘Primitive man of Salamanca’, which features on the book’s cover.  The quest reached a climax in the Bousbir, Casablanca, where he went in search of ‘Moroccan beauty.’  Here the inhabitants posed twin frustrations for him: those who were ‘excessively eager to be photographed’ and flaunted their charms; and those who combined shyness with a fear of ‘the baleful influence projected from the lens’.  Some of the pictures appear in the book as ‘A corner of the Bousbir’, The sophisticate’, ‘The savage’ and ‘L’Amour venal’.

Lewis was largely a conventional photographer in the pictorial, camera club tradition.  Two incidents exemplify this.  In Pamplona he described a bowl of soup as reminding him ‘of a distinguished Japanese “New Angle” photographic composition entitled “Petroleum and Pond”’.  He is being complementary to neither the soup nor this school of photography.  In Villa Real de San Antonio, Portugal, his exploring was limited by bad weather and he says, ‘photography is of supreme value as a bulwark against boredom’.  Especially so, if one happens to be an enthusiastic addict of the German technique, vulgarly known in England as “new angle photography.” (Also called Neues Sehen, New Vision or Neue Optik).  He reflects on the prospects of ‘spending rainy days in….the energetic interpretation of aesthetic dreariness’.  There is some irony in his subsequent encounter with the Russian, Borrissov, in Casablanca, who frustrates him by displaying ‘all the rawness of the eight and sixpenny Box Brownie enthusiast when it came to the selection of material.  He could not help associating the camera with the family album genus of subject.’

L'Amour Venal, 'Spanish Adventure', Norman LewisThe 24 photographs in the book support the words; and the way they are distributed throughout the text (as opposed to the modern preference for grouping illustrations all together) helps to ensure that they are not merely pictorial padding.  However, with the possible exception of ‘The Primitive man of Salamanca’, none stand up to close scrutiny as strong images in their own right.  We do not know what other pictures Lewis took on the trip, what constraints were imposed on the selection for publication and whether the others were more telling about the experience of the ‘Adventure’.  It is reasonable to assume that Lewis would have argued for the best to be included.  The quality of reproduction does not do him any favours.

Evidence of Lewis’ limitations at the time is revealed by comparing his pictures of the Bousbir with those available through a quick search on line – though one can then see some of what he was faced with!  Perhaps Lewis himself summed it up best near the end of the book.  ‘I was taking back a heterogeneous mass of jottings and several spools of exposed film, most of which on development caused me to wonder why on earth I had ever taken them.’  Maybe that stimulated rather than depressed him.  In 1937 he published Sand and Sea in Arabia with a very different and more successful approach to photography, see post 17th June 2015.

 

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2 Responses to Spanish Adventure, Norman Lewis

  1. Peter Kersh says:

    Dear Brian
    Very interested in and thoroughly enoyed reading your piece about Norman Lewis’s Spanish adventure. I came late to Norman Lewis having never heard of him and have now read all his travel books with great joy, and also his very complete biography splendidly titled by Julian Evans. It is here that I read of his first book Spanish Adventure and I have searched high and low across the internet to find a copy of this ever more intriguing, following your blog, book. Do you have any ideas where I might obtain one?

    Many thanks in advance and for your wonderful blog!
    Peter Kersh

    • Brian Human says:

      Dear Peter,

      Thank you very much for your kind comments.

      I share your enthusiasm for Norman Lewis’s work. He is for me the best English travel writer of the second half of the 20th Century, though others seem to garner more praise.

      I managed to get my copy of Spanish Adventure from Ashton Rare Books (www.ashtonrarebooks.com) in 2016. It was a chance find and your experience suggests it remains elusive. Do let me know if you manage to find a copy.

      Best wishes,

      Brian

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