Out in the Blue (Signed)

Vivienne Florence Beatrice de Watteville was a British travel writer and adventurer, author of two books based on her experiences in East Africa in the 1920s, Out in the Blue and Speak to the Earth. She accompanied her father on an eighteen-month safari through Kenya, Uganda and the Belgian Congo in what was primarily a hunt for big game, collecting fauna for mounting in the Natural History Museum of Bern, Switzerland, without the help of a professional hunter.

In her first book, Out in the Blue (i.e. in the far country), published in 1927, she describes her experiences on safari.On 30 September 1924, [5] on the Congolese shore of Lake Edward, shortly after being refused permission by the Belgian authorities to hunt the rare okapi, Bernard shot and wounded a lion, his nineteenth. Believing that no wounded animal should be abandoned, he followed the lion on foot into a bed of reeds where it lunged at him and swatted him to the ground. He jumped to his feet and fired at the retreating animal, causing it to whirl around and in just a few bounds attack him once again. The angry cat mauled him until he was able to shoot it while it was on top of him. The lion's claws were buried in the man's body and had to be pulled out one by one. Two hours later Bernard staggered into camp where he collapsed in his daughter's tent. Vivienne did her best to save her father, treating his infected wounds with raw crystals of permanganate, but the bleeding could not be stopped.

Bernard died at sundown the next day and was buried the day after. Though suffering from spirillum fever and shock, and though before her father's death she had killed nothing bigger than dik-dik and guinea fowl, Vivienne took charge of the safari and completed the mission, shooting both for the pot (she had a team of native trackers, skinners and porters to feed) and for the collection.

Among admirers of Out in the Blue was Wilfred Thesiger, who was greatly impressed and moved by it. Despite the killing, the book is notable for its sensitive description of animals and landscape.

The book is signed and inscribed by the author to Mrs Thesiger.

Beautifully rebound in dark blue quarter-leather with blue cloth, new endpapers. vi prelims, 254 pages, and 8 pages of Methuen titles at the back. Black & white photographic illustrations and fold out map at the rear. Foxing on half title and title page & towards rear with minor sporadic foxing throughout. Methuen & Co. Ltd, London 1927, 1s ed.