Born February 26: Robert Byron

Upon his debut in 2006, critics rightly hailed Rory Stewart’s The Places In Between [Kindle] a “flat out masterpiece” but too few explored the full extent of his debt to gay travel writer Robert Byron. The book’s tone, observations, humor, and history lessons follow the template established by Byron’s classic The Road to Oxiana (reissued with a preface by Stewart). Bruce Chatwin considered Byron's book "a sacred text," and Patrick Leigh Fermor's writing also reflects Byron's tremendous influence. At Eton and Oxford he nurtured the love of architecture so evident in his work, but at university he was perhaps more known for his impersonation of Queen Victoria. His “hedonistic” life ultimately got him expelled. Undaunted, he traveled. His first great trip was to Mount Athos in Greece, scene of the pig tickling above. Five years after his Greek book,Byron wrote First Russia, Then Tibet: Travels through a Changing World. In Peking, he lived with Desmond Parsons and developed a terrific crush on him before Desmond was stricken with Hodgkin’s Disease and left for a Swiss clinic where he died at twenty-six in July 1937. Devastated, Byron published his magnum opus that year and never wrote another major work. In 1941 he set sail for Egypt, where he was to work for the Times, and his ship sank in a torpedo attack by a German U-Boat. His body was never found. He was thirty-five.

Internet reading is so often a quick skim leaping from link to photo. Slow down, clear your mind, and read with care the excerpt I’ve typed just for you after the jump.

 

            "There was no furniture in the room. In the middle of the floor stood a tall brass lamp, casting a cold white blaze over the red carpets and bare white walls. It stood between two pewter bowls, one filled with branches of pink fruit blossom, the other with a posy of big yellow jonquils wrapped round a bunch of violets. By the jonquils sat the Governor, with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his sleeves; by the blossom his young son, whose oval face, black eyes and curving lashes were the ideal beauty of the Persian miniaturist. They had nothing to occupy them, neither book nor pen nor food nor drink. Father and son were lost in the sight and the smell of spring.

            "The irruption of the barbarian, dusty, unshaved, and lurching tired, was a trial of manners to which they rose, not without astonishment, but with a bustle and good-will that must have hurt their mood of poetic contemplation. While I lowered myself to the floor, creaking and sprawling like a dog in a doll’s-house, and feasted my nose in the jonquils, fire was kindled, the samovar re-lit, and thick red wine poured out; with his own hands the Governor chopped and skewered the meat to make me a kabob, and roasted it over the charcoal embers; then he was dismembering tangerines and sugaring them, for my pudding. In the end he went so far as to offer me his own bed. I explained mine was coming, and begged the room below to put it in."

        p.146-7, The Road to Oxiana

Comments

[Sandy]

OK, this excerpt is terrific. "The ideal beauty of the Persian miniaturist." I'm just home yesterday from a spellbinding trip, so near and yet so foreign, and appreciate your posting today. In touch soon, S. -S.

[Ian Reid]

Together with Freya Stark, Byron fuelled my passion for the Middle East. Thanks for reminding me. I might just go dig my copy out.

[Daniel]

Beautiful writing. Thank you very much for taking the time to post this. I'm hooked.

[Bob Smith]

I first read Byron after reading Evelyn Waugh's wonderful review of The Road To Oxiana. I was enthralled.