Norman Douglas (1868-1952)
The modern Englishman abroad is a toe-curling embarrassment. Underwashed and superior-minded backpackers. Trippers who treat Tuscany as an annexe of Sainsburys. Those who bring Saturday-night Stoke to the Mediterranean. All have missed the real point of foreign travel: misbehaviour of a grand, stylish and near-unforgivable nature.
Not so Norman Douglas. This Old Uppinghamian long ago won the gong for louche behaviour abroad. Like many homosexuals of his generation, Douglas found sunnier lands more congenial. He first worked a diplomat in Russia and Italy before finding his vocation as a travel writer.
His debut Unprofessional Tales was followed by three travel books, Siren Land (1911), Fountains in the Sand (1912) and Old Calabria (1915). Douglas's only popular success was his novel South Wind (1917).
However, the suspicion remains that these books were merely offshoots to his career as a lotus eater and flouter of popular morality. Of course, the books aren't just the drivelings of an old lech. Like any decent writer, he was interested in biology, classical antiquity and anthropology. But there is always the subtext: what songs did the Sirens sing?
Norman Douglas made his home on Capri – like that most simpatico of emperors, Tiberius – and died in 1952. Apart from his reputation and (mostly unread) books, he left many choice quotations for posterity, such as “many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends."
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