Great White Father

THE WHITE MONK OF TIMBUCTOO-- William Seabrook--Harcourt, Brace ($3).

Three years ago Traveler Seabrook told the U. S. something about Timbuctoo's No. 1 Citizen. Pere Yakouba; last week he published the old man's informal but official biography. Written in Author Seabrook's usual man-to-mannish style, The White Monk of Timbuctoo is a racily sympathetic account of an unusual career. Devout Catholics will read it, if at all, as a warning; plain readers, as vicarious adventure.

Auguste Dupuis, known in his adopted city of Timbuctoo as Pere Yakouba, is an old (69) and somewhat remorseful man now. He was never pious. When he first went to Africa (1890) as a strapping young missionary he had already a quiet reputation as a priest who did not take his vows of celibacy very seriously.

But his genius for languages and for mixing with native Africans made him useful. He took to medieval Timbuctoo like a duck to water, sturdily resisted all attempts to send him elsewhere. When threatened with a transfer to Palestine, he announced that the only Jew he had ever loved was Jesus. Biographer Seabrook plays down the spiritual Pere Yakouba's spiritual labors in Timbuctoo but gives him high marks as a popular character.

But it was not long before his womanizing tendencies got him into trouble. The French officers stationed at the fort complained that he stole their women. When his superior died and Yakouba was next in line for a bishopric his unpriestly ways made the appointment impossible. He was recalled to Algiers.

Instead of obeying, Yakouba renounced the Church, dressed himself like a native and turned fisherman. Said he to Biographer Seabrook: "I quit the Church because I didn't want to leave Timbuctoo and didn't want to give up women." A strapping Negress, Salama, gave him shelter, persuaded him not to be so melodramatic in his renunciation.

She made him settle down again, accept a civil job as interpreter. Salama got his first week's pay, has managed him and their large family with shrewish boisterousness ever since. As head of the Arabic university, commandant of Goundam, interpreter in many a trial and on expeditions against the Tuaregs, Pere Yakouba added more laurels to his grizzling crown. Now most famed but no longer most respected citizen in Timbuctoo, he himself is not sure he has come the right way after all. Rich by native standards, he has a large mud palace, a large black wife, a large dusky family, all he wants to eat, drink, smoke, a good library, a reputation that brings every foreign visitor to his door. But he is not happy. Said he to Seabrook, as the upshot of his life's experience: "In the end it is not well."

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