Soon after he returned to England, Thesiger’s mother and stepfather gave a dinner party for him at Claridge’s, which John Buchan attended as guest of honour. On 12 November 1934 Thesiger read a paper entitled ‘The Awash River and the Aussa Sultanate’ to the Royal Geographical Society. Introducing him, the Society’s President, Major-General Sir Percy Cox, stated unequivocally that Thesiger’s ‘primary object’ had been to solve the mystery of the Awash river’s end: ‘A secondary object was the collection of natural history specimens, especially birds and mammals.’70 Thesiger took up Cox’s theme early in his lecture: ‘Unfortunately Haig-Thomas fell ill…This handicapped me badly with the collecting, but I succeeded in my main objective, which was the thorough exploration of the river…I also collected 880 specimens of birds.’71 While this was true, he might have paid a warmer tribute to Haig-Thomas, who had contributed a substantial sum of money to the expedition, as well as shooting several specimens of blue-winged geese for the Natural History Museum. He could also have mentioned Haig-Thomas’s extensive preparations for the journey, notably his research into the country’s birds, which was acknowledged by N.B. Kinnear after Thesiger read his paper. Instead, Thesiger appeared to treat the consequences of Haig-Thomas’s illness as a testing challenge that he had faced alone, and had successfully overcome.
Perhaps Thesiger had felt more sympathy for Haig-Thomas than he showed outwardly, and realised how hard it must have been for him to abandon the expedition before it got properly under way. Haig-Thomas’s decision was surely no less traumatic than Thesiger’s brother Dermot’s decision to withdraw from a boxing match at Oxford knowing the odds were hopelessly against him, of which Thesiger approved: ‘I think Dermot was extremely sensible over the boxing. It takes a courage which few people possess to do what he did. It is far easier to enter and be smashed up entirely, than to face facts and not give a damn for other people’s remarks. I admire him more than ever for this.’72
The mystery of the disappearing Awash had been solved. Closing his narrative in The Danakil Diary, Thesiger wrote: ‘I had come far, overcome many difficulties and risked much, but I had achieved what I had set out to do.’73 Yet the ‘lure of the unknown’ remained an irresistible enticement to adventure. He declared: ‘I had no desire to go back to civilisation, and wish[ed] I was just starting out from the Awash station with the whole Awash river still before me to explore.’74
For twenty-three-year-old Wilfred Thesiger, the Danakil expedition had been a life-defining experience. Even more than his month hunting big game along the Awash in 1930, the journey through Bahdu and Aussa to the Red Sea coast realised Thesiger’s boyhood dream of adventure. Above all, it proved that the life of ‘savagery and colour’ he had longed to lead was attainable.
The successful Danakil expedition helped to bolster Thesiger’s still fragile self-esteem, which had been almost totally destroyed at St Aubyn’s and only superficially restored at Eton. His almost undefeated record as a boxing Blue, and his near-mythogenic status as a guest of the Abyssinian Emperor who hunted alone among the Danakil, had helped to rebuild Thesiger’s self-confidence at Oxford. He had found himself admired and liked, enviably sought after by Robin Campbell, the ‘golden youth’ who exemplified what Thesiger called Oxford’s ‘decadent’ era.1 But for the rest of his life he found it difficult to trust completely more than a handful of people outside his immediate family circle. Even those who eventually did win his trust (or as much trust as he felt he could bestow) often discovered that Thesiger seemed continually to be preparing himself for the inevitable disappointment of being let down. He enjoyed many friendships over the years, but had few close friends. Deep down, Thesiger believed that even the best of friendships could not possibly last.2 His instinctive mistrust and chronic wariness, he claimed, had resulted from being treated as a liar and a misfit at St Aubyn’s.3 No doubt this was true. Moreover, he had been uprooted from his home in Abyssinia and its ‘extraordinary freedom’. This was replaced by the friendless, unfamiliar, brutal regime of his preparatory school (although in his autobiography he claimed he was not ‘particularly unhappy’ at St Aubyn’s4). As a result he felt deprived, disorientated and lonely. Not least, he was affected by the tragedy of his father’s sudden death. Again and again, he emphasised that he had very soon got over this, adding: ‘children are like that’,5 but (like the death of his spaniel) it taught him an unforgettable lesson: that all things come to an end. From then on Thesiger had become wary of ‘overtures of friendship’,6 and instinctively mistrustful. If and when he decided to trust someone, he set almost unattainably high standards of commitment on their part. He described those he trusted as ‘identifying completely’ with him, yet almost never did he identify with someone else, except in general terms with tribal peoples. In a futile gesture, he took from friendships as much as he could; he was edgy and frustrated with those he could not control or steer.
Once he remarked: ‘I suppose I’ve spent my life searching for permanence.’7 As a child, as a youth, Thesiger filled this void by imagining big game hunting adventures among wild tribes, in which he emulated or even surpassed his father’s life and achievements. The 1933-34 Danakil expedition not only brought his boyhood dreams alive, it fired his ambition to ‘win distinction as an explorer and a traveller’.8 Thesiger was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society on 12 November 1934, the same day as his lecture; on 24 November the RGS acknowledged his payment of £45, the fee for life membership.
Before leaving Oxford in 1933 Thesiger had applied to join the Sudan Political Service, and had been advised by their agent that he need not attend an interview until he returned to England the following year. Four articles he wrote about his Danakil expedition were published daily by The Times between 31 July and 3 August 1934. A fortnight after the articles appeared, Thesiger was interviewed by the Sudan Political Service’s Board, at Buckingham Gate. He said later: ‘I think the dangerous journey I had just done at the age of only twenty-three, and the articles in The Times, helped to get me accepted. There again, even if I hadn’t explored the Awash or written anything at all, they would probably still have taken me. A member of the Board did ask me why I wanted to join the Service, and I very nearly said, “Because I want to shoot a lion.” It was on the tip of my tongue. He was a self-important little man and I could hardly resist the temptation to provoke him. I’m sure the other members of the Board would have approved of that reply, but he certainly wouldn’t. Anyhow, I stopped myself just in time and gave him a rather dull answer that seemed to satisfy him. I’ve no longer any recollection of what it was I actually said.’9 All his life Thesiger took himself and his activities very seriously, and tended to prefer people who did the same. He always made a clear distinction between those who were serious about themselves and their work, and others who were merely sententious or pedantic. Thesiger remembered that the name of the member of the Board who asked him why he wanted to join the Service was Hall.10 This may or may not have been correct: it is possible that Thesiger associated him with Julian Hall, his fag master at Eton, whom he regarded as pompous, and had disliked intensely ever since Hall had caned him for forgetfulness on an evening when he was due to box for the school. He was