Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh

First published: 1932

Type of work: Satire

Time of work: The early 1930’s

Locale: The mythical empire of Azania, an island off the East African coast, near Aden

Principal Characters:

• Seth, the Emperor of Azania, the twenty-four-year-old, self-proclaimed “Chief of the Chiefs of Sakuyu,” recently returned from England, where he earned a B.A. from Oxford University
• Basil Seal, a former young-man-of-promise, familiar to London’s “Bright Young Things,” in Azania to seek adventure and destiny
• Sir Samson Courteney, the British Minister to Azania
• Prudence Courteney, his daughter and Seal’s mistress
• General Connolly, an experienced mercenary serving Seth
• Krikor Youkoumian, a merchant/manipulator serving everyone with money or power

The Novel

After two centuries of Arab rule, the expansion of European imperialistic ambitions into East Africa at the end of the nineteenth century precipitated a series of conflicts in which Amurath, formerly Commander-in-Chief of the Sultan’s forces, led his Wanda tribesmen to victory over their hated rivals the Sakuyu and then to victory over the Arabs themselves. Proclaiming himself Emperor, for nearly two decades he presided over an uneasy truce between the two tribes while representatives of the major imperial powers maintained legations in hopes of winning some influence in the region. During this time, exploiters, adventurers, opportunists, and missionaries from everywhere immigrated to the country pursuing various schemes, plans, and dreams. As the novel begins, Amurath’s grandson Seth has returned from his studies in England after news of Amurath’s death has been made public, the courtiers no longer able to cover up the Emperor’s absence from view. Seth is anxious to bring the benefits of his education to his country, but he has confused the diverse manifestations of modern thought to which he was exposed at Oxford into an incoherent “philosophy” of isolated buzzwords, trendy concepts, and catchphrases. Preposterously ill-equipped to administer a land torn by ancient tribal blood feuds, conspiring colonial powers, and a polyglot population rife with corruption and indifference, Seth attempts to impress upon Azania a bizarre mixture of social reforms and civic projects which he calls the New Age.

While Seth tries by fiat and decree to rearrange local society, his efforts at control are paralleled by the plots and intrigues of the French and British governments and the various Church fiefdoms to gain power behind whatever native sect is ostensibly in charge. The disparity between the grandiose proclamations for the general welfare by all the competing factions and the meager level of their accomplishments is a measure of the greediness and cupidity of everyone involved in a colonial enterprise—all expressing concern for the country, all acting entirely in terms of self-interest.

Although Seth’s position is very precarious upon his return, the unexpected triumph of his forces under the shrewd direction of General Connolly, a no-nonsense veteran of many colonial expeditions, encourages his most ambitious ideas. He accelerates his plans for modernization, focusing everything on a Pageant of Birth Control, complete with posters, pageants, festivities, and assumptions about the inhabitants of Azania not based on any knowledge of their behavior or inclinations. He is assisted in his campaign by a sardonic, relatively young English upper-class semiwastrel who has grown tired of scrounging, sponging, and posturing around London and has voyaged to Azania because he vaguely knew Seth at Oxford.

In spite of Basil Seal’s generally practical and progressively idealistic handling of reforms, Seth’s nearly total separation from reality and the increasingly aggressive strategies of the foreigners to gain power lead to civil war and the attempted installation of a French-supported figurehead as the new Emperor. When he dies at the moment of coronation, a random sequence of events culminates in the destruction of most of the country’s infrastructure and Seth’s death, probably by his own hand. Seal essentially redeems his past excesses by his almost heroic endeavor amid the chaos and by his genuinely stirring tribute to Seth in the form of a legend-creating eulogy designed to give the country some foundation for future self-determination. The British community is evacuated, but Seal’s mistress is captured when her plane is forced down, and the funeral feast for Seth has some horrifying, unexpected ingredients.

At the conclusion of the novel, a new group of British colonialists has arrived, apparently even more obtuse and racist than their predecessors, appropriate emblems of an empire in decline. Seal is back in London, possibly deepened and refined by his experience, and the land of Azania remains a raw and uncivilized field for barbarism, where egoists, petty tyrants, and other operators clash by day and night, indifferent to the beleaguered citizens of a stricken land.

The Characters

The primary component of both Evelyn Waugh’s distinctive “voice” as an author and his moral vision is his almost manic compulsion to regard all human existence from a satirical perspective. This angle of perception prohibits the development of character beyond the deft portraiture of representative figures of the world on view. Waugh is such a keen observer and so imaginative a recorder of behavior, however, that his depictions of the members of the British Colonial Service and the Mayfair “Smart Set” have become archetypal, the standard version of accepted historical truth. In addition, Waugh is comfortable with this satirical tack because, in the majority of his work, he is more interested in the reaction of his own mind/sensibility to the circumstances than that of almost any of his characters. With a few exceptions from his later works, particularly the Sword of Honour trilogy (1965), he is writing at a remove from all the characters. Even when he chooses to sympathize with them to some extent or to indicate his admiration for them when they act with reverence for the code he covertly cherishes and discretely proclaims, he maintains a judgmental distance. He expects only a few rare superior people to be able to see and know as much as he does, and, consequently, his attitude toward his characters ranges from mild amusement through scathing displeasure to absolute disdain and contempt.

The characters in Black Mischief are, for the most part, not worth contempt. Seth, with his pathetic misrepresentations of everything he has studied, is trying so hard to be regal with no instinct for how royalty should behave that he evokes pity for the most part. Sir Samson Courteney never questions the worst manifestations of the British class system, but he is generally genial and seems more a pathetic bumbler than a villain, although his actions constitute villainy in their unintended consequences. Lady Courteney devotes herself to re-creating the English countryside in Africa by tending her garden no matter what catastrophes are occurring. She is so oblivious as to be childlike, although a rather privileged child. The Armenian merchant Youkoumian, with his comic burlesque of the English language and his constant scheming and minor bullying, is a relatively harmless lickspittle whose cruelties seem incidental. Prudence Courteney thinks of herself as an intellectual, an absurd overestimation that draws Waugh’s sharpest fire, but she is so much the lighthearted, rose-lipped English girl whose head is turned by romantic notions that she becomes rather endearing. Her fate is wholly undeserved. The two women who arrive from England to work for “Dumb Chums” as members of the League for Animal Rights are easy figures for ridicule, representative of all busybodies whose concern for animals or plants obliterates any consciousness of human need. The French minister and the other turf-protecting officials are caricatures from a stage farce or a slick magazine illustration used solely for comic effect. Most of the local power brokers are similarly flat and exist only to provide some flavor and variety to the forms of corruption and mendacity Waugh takes a perverse pleasure in describing. Attributes shared by all these targets of Waugh’s satire include the almost complete self-centeredness of their actions and their stasis.

The only character who exhibits any sense of change, any potential for growth beyond the prison of self, is Basil Seal, and he is initially presented as the most selfish and self-regarding person in the narrative. His transition from scrounging frivolity and self-assured indifference to engagement with another’s problems eventually leads him to act in accordance with principles he previously suppressed. This is Waugh’s indirect method for indicating how the values he defines as a part of “civilization” might be preserved. Without this kind of commitment, Waugh could easily have settled for the cynicism of a Celine, but, because it would be inappropriate for someone of Seal’s background to be too ardent in expressing any kind of belief, when Seal returns to London he is surrounded again by “friends” who do not want to hear anything of his adventures and fear that he is “going to turn serious on us.”

Critical Context

One of the basic tenets of literary theory holds that satire must juxtapose specific positive qualities with those characteristics it attacks. For Waugh, however, it seems to be too late everywhere; “he would have to go back to the Creation itself to find an unsullied place.” It is not surprising, then, that his standard for comparison with what he satirizes is an implicit picture of a Utopia formed by suggestion and inference. Consequently, the most memorable aspect of his work in Black Mischief is his now classic picture of the most bizarre manifestations of colonialism, wrought in a prose of remarkable clarity, felicity, balance, and smoothness. The “country” of Azania is drawn from his own travels, particularly in Ethiopia, and its description ranks as one of the finest examples of the journal of exploration of the twentieth century.

While many other writers have attempted to develop a tone of corresponding authority, Waugh’s remarkably unforced delivery evokes an ethos of placid confidence that lends an air of authenticity to even his most inventive episodes. His address is to a reader of similar sophistication, and while he has been justifiably criticized for cruelty and for seeming to relish violence, he is capable of a kind of rueful sympathy that rebukes the frequent charges of callousness, which misses the complexity of his work.

Bibliography

Davis, Robert M. Evelyn Waugh, Writer: The Making of a Man of Letters, 1981.

Heath, Jeffrey M. The Picturesque Prison: Evelyn Waugh and His Writing, 1982.

Littlewood, Ian. The Writings of Evelyn Waugh, 1983.

Lodge, David. Evelyn Waugh, 1971.

Phillips, Gene D. Evelyn Waugh’s Officers, Gentlemen and Rogues: The Fact Behind His Fiction, 1975.

Sykes, Christopher. Evelyn Waugh, 1975.

Waugh, Evelyn. The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, 1980. Edited by Mark Amory.