Scott-King’s Modern Europe by Evelyn Waugh
Scott-King’s Modern Europe is a short, perhaps too short, novel by Evelyn Waugh. Written in 1946, it visits a fictional part of Europe largely unknown to its decidedly English protagonist. By 1946, Scott-King had been a classical teacher at Grantchester for twenty-five years, we are told in the first sentence of the tale. This locks the main character of the book firmly in his place within the English class system, outlines his probable character, with his earnest dedication to what has always been and still is “right,” and places him squarely within the apolitical conservatism of a finally submissive establishment. . It’s the kind of England that used to believe that the fog in Dover meant that Europe was isolated. This is how Waugh presents it to his undoubtedly sympathetic readers.
Out of a non-political blue comes a request from the little known and less understood and now independent state of Neutralia that Scott-King attend a national celebration of a long-forgotten national poet named Bellorius. The writer died in 1646 and left a treatise of fifteen hundred lines, written in Latin hexameters, of implacable tedium. It described a journey to an unknown island in the new world, where a virtuous, chaste and reasonable community subsisted, Waugh tells us. This utopia went unread and forgotten, until it appeared in a German edition in the 20th century, a copy of which Scott-King picked up on vacation a few years ago. Thus, the master of classics began a relationship with this European oblivion that led to this invitation to visit his homeland.
Scott-King’s Modern Europe is so brief that any additional details of its plot would undermine its reading. Suffice it to say that the international delegation is not what it seems. Things don’t go according to plan, or maybe they do, depending on your perspective on neutralist politics, whose infighting couldn’t be further from anything associated with the aloof British character, let alone his upper-class relative, English. Life becomes unbearably complicated for the scrupulously fair Scott-King. He may, given the possibility, suffer the ignominy of not having enough traveler’s checks to cover the hotel bill!
As the farce unfolds, Bellorius’s celebration morphs into something decidedly more contemporary, the boundaries of which become increasingly blurred. Most of those involved are revealed, in one way or another, to be frauds, except, of course, for the impassive and persevering Englishman of the title, who remains the epitome of the innocent victim. If there is fault in the world, then it is all the fault of the foreigners, those who live there, those who speak unintelligible languages that are not English and live in those unbearable climates that have sun. They don’t play fair in politics, and they confuse responsibility with profit, all unthinkable at home, of course…
It all works out in the end, somehow. Let it be recorded here only that, true to the values of the English Public School where Scott-King has taught, it is a former student, always loyal, who finally gets his former teacher out of trouble. But what is permanently interesting about this little book is the depth of metaphor that classical education presents. It is a culture in decline. Their values are destined not to last. Inevitably, the values enshrined in the assumption of this state of enduring education are destined to disappear. The English are sure to become like the divided, quarrelsome, distrustful neutrals, and all the other foreigners with their strange and unacceptable ways, who had previously only lived “over there.”
Written at the end of World War II, when perhaps mythically the British were alone, the book is perhaps the author’s reflection on the events that saw Europe split into opposing camps. The territorial integrity of the United Kingdom, and essentially of England within it, had been maintained. But those “over there” are still foreigners and fortunately yours were not “here”. His values were not our values, and yet his influence was omnipresent, or at least potentially. Britain, and the English on the throne within it, are still alone, still threatened. This is the culture that pervades Evelyn Waugh’s little book and it’s the assumption that makes her reading in 2018 at least poignant. It might even have been written a week ago, according to the list of assumptions of anyone surrounding the Brexit referendum. Everything that was not an English value is manifested in this non-culture of Neutralia, a nation that needs to invent heroes raised from within the mediocrity of its unrecognized and, more reprehensibly, unrecorded past. How can you get one that is not English?
Waugh’s humor brings the story to life and his unapologetic English almost makes him the main character himself. It’s short enough to take an hour to read, but its sentiment and message will resonate strongly with contemporary readers. In the current political context of Britain, Scott-King’s Modern Europe is a small book with a big message.