Words of Mercury

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  ‘But one day some treacherous dauber must have swallowed a streaming green yard or two of tagliatelle—the end of the enemy’s foremost tentacle, you might say—and, hotfoot, the rest of the huge, victorious monster came coiling into the Veneto and reared itself for the kill. And then —’ the end of Mr Vortigern’s malacca cane, which had been describing faster and faster loops in the air, stopped in midsweep—‘and then, wallop! A billion boiling tons of pasta fell on the town, and the proud city, the sea’s bride, with her towers and domes and bridges and monuments and canals, went under. The piazzas were a tragic squirming tangle of spaghetti and lasagne, the lagoon ran red with tomato sauce. Italy’s genius was dead, laid low by her own gluttony . . . not only Italy’s painting, but Italian thought and poetry and literature and rhetoric and even Italian architecture. Everything was turned into macaroni.’

  Mr Vortigern fell silent. The world seemed locked for a while in an elegiac hush. ‘But,’ he resumed at last, ‘it had its compensations. Baroque’s debt to pasta has never been fully recognized. In fountain statuary its influence was supreme. Think of those beautiful fountains at the Villa d’Este and Bagnaia! Think of the Piazza Navona and the Piazza di Trevi! Where do you think they found the inspiration for all those bearded Tritons, those Neptunes and gushing river gods and sea beasts, those swirling beards and fish tails and manes, all ending in water weed? That feeling for tempestuous and tangled flow, of deliquescence, of solidity in flux, that brio and speed and sweep?

  ‘Where but in those swirling ingurgitated forkloads, those wild mealtime furlongs that keep a Roman going? They are pure Bernini, an Italian dinner played backwards, Gorgon-struck in mid-swoop . . . Conversely, how eatable post-Renaissance Italian architecture looks—scagliola rock cakes, Carrara barley sugar, marzipan statuary, pasta in travertine, ceilings and cloudbursts straight out of an icing gun! It is not for nothing that the Victor Emmanuel monument is called the Wedding Cake. Perhaps,’ Mr Vortigern continued with a change of key, ‘one should adopt a gastronomic approach to all architecture, like a cannibal’s attitude towards his fellow mortals. The Taj Mahal would be delicious, especially on a hot day. Gothic horrible; too bony. And I would not care for a square meal of Corbusier, either. Too square by half and far too austere. The food might be concrete, I feel, and the drink abstract . . .

  ‘Cannibalism is a problem. In many cases the practice is rooted in ritual and superstition rather than gastronomy, but not always. A French Dominican in the seventeenth century observed that the Caribs had most decided notions on the relative merits of their enemies. As one would expect, the French were delicious, by far the best. This is no surprise, even allowing for nationalism. The English came next, I’m glad to say. The Dutch were dull and stodgy and the Spaniards so stringy, they were hardly a meal at all, even boiled. All this sounds sadly like gluttony.

  ‘France, you will agree, is the place where the instinct has been most successfully harnessed and exploited. But this pre-eminence exacts a cruel price. The liver! That is their Achilles heel! It is a national scourge, brought on by those delicious sauces, by all those truffles and chopped mushrooms peeping through the liquid beige. Every Frenchman over fifty writhes under its torments. He is a chained Prometheus, a victim of the tribal inventiveness. Only it’s no vulture that pecks at the weak spot but the phantom and vengeful beaks of an army of geese from Strasbourg. Now the Chinese —’

  Mr Vortigern broke off. A mild flurry of excitement and a scatter of clapping reached our ears across the flower beds. We caught a glimpse of a long motor-car with a flag on the bonnet, and a gloved hand in the window fluttering in gracious acknowledgement. Mr Vortigern gravely raised his hat.

  ‘Diet and royalty,’ he said as he replaced it, ‘there’s a rewarding theme! Not only in our fortunate kingdom but all over Europe. It is the supreme illustration of the importance of regular meals over long periods. There’s no question here of that unsettling swing between unwilling frugality and neurotic stuffing which has been the lot of most commoners. It is a matter of excellent meals in unfaltering continuity.

  ‘Think of a chart of royal quarterings, each coat representing an ancestor and the number doubling with each receding generation; two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents—sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, a hundred and twenty-eight, doubling each time—you’ve got over a thousand in only ten generations, and by the fourteenth century, counting four generations a century, over eight million.

  ‘Eight million splendidly fed forebears! Turn this upside-down’—the ferrule of his cane drew an isosceles, the ferrule swept from left to right in an airy hypotenuse—‘and it becomes the base of a steaming pyramid of regular and wonderful meals—quadrillions of them!—on the apex of which each royal person is seated. Of course there are one or two hungry strains—the Bonapartes, perhaps, the Karageorgevitches and the Montenegrins—mountain life, you know, and the hardships of a pastoral calling—but the rest seldom skipped a meal. A religious ascetic here and there, I dare say, and perhaps a vegetarian or two in the last hundred years, but otherwise, it is an imposing edifice of breakfasts and luncheons and teas and dinners and, no doubt, delicious late suppers. A fragrant and unfailing counterweight to the cares of State.

  ‘It was all good stuff, that is the point! And what is the result of this magnificent continuity? A much rarer quality than mere looks or brains or brawn, a priceless adjunct to outward splendour and inward dedication: no less than majesty itself. An indefinable aura, at the same time gracious, affable, untroubled, august, Olympian and debonair, to which few commoners and no chance-fed dictators or hungry and fortuitously nourished heads of state, whether beefy or scrawny, can possibly aspire. I hope you won’t think me a reactionary or a snob when I say that these random figureheads have neither the breeding nor the feeding.

  ‘I see by your puzzled brow,’ Mr Vortigern continued, ‘that you have spotted the fallacy in my theory. How could each of us have eight million ancestors in the fourteenth century—for we all have the same number, however obscure and hungry—when the population of England after the Black Death was under a million? You conclude that most of them were the same. Rightly. They were pluralist progenitors. It narrows the triangle and inter-relates us all. Remember, too, that if we take up a fundamentalist position, this expanding fan must begin to taper at some point, finally dwindling to Adam and Eve: two pyramids stuck base to base forming a lozenge.

  ‘Each of us is at the bottom of one of these huge human rhomboids.’ He described one in the air with four malacca strokes. ‘This means that sooner or later you are related to everyone in the island. A glorious and intimidating thought.’ His stick, leaving the rhomboid in mid-air like an invisible hatchment, soared in ample sweeps, symbolizing universal kinship—and then fell static, aimed at a figure lying supine on the grass. A Herculean and bearded tramp, his boots removed and a stove-in bowler over his eyes, snored contentedly among the mandarin ducks and the sheldrakes. ‘That grimy old boy is sure to be a relation of yours. And of mine too, of course. He looks as though he enjoys his food. I would dearly like to slip him a fiver. After all, blood is thicker than water . . .’

  We paused on the Regent’s bridge, the crook of his stick safe over his arm once more while he lit a new cigar.

  ‘But I fear I digress,’ he resumed. His words were scanned by thoughtful puffs. ‘It is odd that solid gluttony has inspired so small a literature—outside cookery books I mean—compared to its liquid form. There is Rabelais, of course, and the “Eloge de la Gourmandise”, and the amazing Norman guzzling in Flaubert, and there must be more. Des Esseintes’ black banquet in Huysmans doesn’t really count: it was aesthetic, not gastronomic. But there is no end to poems in praise of wine. Hundreds of them! And some of the best prose of our younger writers—Waugh and Connolly, for instance—is dedicated to it. Those beautiful similes! Wines that steal up to one like shy fawns, and other delightful comparisons! They are charming! Charming, but hopeless. These gifted writers face th
e same problem as mystics attempting to convey their experiences in the language of profane love.’

  He watched a pelican preening its breast-feathers for a moment. ‘What a pity the same device is so seldom used in a derogatory sense: Algerian that charges like a rhinoceros, port-types that draw alongside like charabancs, liqueurs that reek like a bombed scent factory! Yes, blame, as well as praise, should be codified. Michelin allots stars for merit, and rightly. We follow them across France like voracious Magi. Vortigern’s Guide would have them, too, but also a scale of conventional signs to warn my readers. A bicarbonate pill first, then a basin, a stretcher, an ambulance and, finally, a tombstone.

  ‘Or perhaps, in extreme cases, a skull and crossbones: robbery and extortion as well as poisoning. For these malefactors are the true sinners. They, and the criminal accomplices who swallow their wicked handiwork without a murmur. These accessories after the fact are guilty of a far greater sin than gluttony.’ Mr Vortigern’s voice had assumed a sepulchral note. ‘I refer to Despair.

  ‘Surely it is not casuistry to say that neglect of the fruits of the earth is doubting divine providence? Why do sturgeons swim in the Volga? Why do trout glitter and dart, what makes oysters assemble at Colchester and plovers lay their forbidden eggs? Why do turtles doze in the Seychelles and crustaceans change their carapaces and mushrooms rise from their dunghills and truffles lead sunless lives in Périgord and grouse dwell in the Pictish mists? Why do strawberries ripen and why do vine tendrils grow in those suggestive corkscrews? Why is the snail on the thorn? Is it to test us or is it a kindly providence at work? But the Fathers have spoken. It’s no good trying to shift the blame or to say that sin lies only in excess. How can one eat caviar in moderation? There is another peculiar thing about gluttony: its physical penalties may be the heaviest, but it is the sin that leaves us with the lightest deposit of guilt. One feels like St Augustine—of Hippo, not Canterbury—postponing his reformation. “Give me frugality and sobriety, Oh Lord,” one might paraphrase him, “but not yet.” Sed noli modo! But it’s no good. Cerberus and the hailstones are waiting.’ Big Ben chimed its preliminary tune and began to toll the hour.

  ‘There,’ Mr Vortigern said, ‘is the note of doom. I must go . . . The time for emendation of life grows shorter. And the time for further backsliding too . . . Sed noli modo! Sed noli modo!’ His voice had regained its wonted buoyancy and his eyes were akindle. ‘Are you free this evening? Capital. Come to me at eight o’clock. Don’t be late. I won’t tell you what we are going to have, but I think you will like it. The condemned men will eat a hearty dinner.’

  Some Architectural Notes

  The Spectator, 24 September 1994

  I. THE GREEK STONES SPEAK

  ‘Metope with anyone?’

  ‘A mutule friend.’

  ‘Arris? ‘E’s a regula guy! Won’t admit him pediment.’

  ‘He’ll abacus up?’

  ‘Well, he’s echinus on.’

  ‘Capital!’

  (entasis) ‘Your façade speaks volutes!’

  Yes, but she astragal with her dentils, boss!’

  ‘Hollow moulding?’

  (pendentive) ‘What a cavetto!’

  ‘Well, I’m not soffit, Adytum last night . . .’

  ‘He scotia there!’

  ‘My cornice something Ionic!’

  ‘Tried pilasters? Or a pillar entablature used to? Triglyph for relief, annule see!’

  ‘No! Don’t palmette off on me!’

  (‘He’scotus all wrong!

  What a cella!!’)

  ‘Pronaos, but antefix!’ (‘He’s in antis!’ ‘He’s all of a dado!’ ‘In a stylobate!’)

  ‘Peristyle?’

  ‘No Hypostyle!’

  Architrave!’ (He torus apart)

  ‘Doric . . .’

  ‘What, Gable?’

  ‘We’ll frieze in this gutta!’

  ‘Do you . . . caryatid . . . ?’

  ‘Mm! But don’t telamon!’

  (Intercolumniation)

  ‘Ah! I feel like a taenia old!’

  ‘Don’t come an acropolis! Stoa ‘nother?’

  ‘Yeth! Cyma ‘gain, plinth! Your lapith lovely!’

  ‘Centaur-mental! ‘

  (Necking) ‘This is parados!’

  (base fluting and tympanum): ‘O tholos mio!’

  II. THE GOTHIC NORTH

  ‘In transept?’

  ‘iSi, aumbry!’

  ‘Dancing steps?’

  Yes. Who’s that ball-flower? Newel?’

  ‘Rose Window, a module. Trumeau’s dorter, by a dormer tie.’

  ‘Romanesque! . . . Engaged column?’

  ‘No, free-standing. No offspring or diaper-work. But she’s finial! Pyx, you’ve no credence!’

  ‘Shall I . . . ashlar?’

  ‘Not a chancel a mullion, with those clustered piers!’

  ‘Tester?’

  ‘Wish I hagioscope!’

  ‘Why not triforium, tell a clerestory? Or play a mandorla just in caisson?’

  ‘O cladding voussoir lunette —’ (coffers, getting cloister). ‘May I, a spire —’ (no responds)

  ‘If you squinch, aisle screen!’

  ‘There! You’ve sedilia can!’

  ‘Where’s that organ?’

  ‘Aisle in choir . . .’

  (‘Cantoris win the bolection?’ ‘How decani tell?’)

  ‘Corbel!’

  ‘Arch?’

  ‘Guilloche’s off! They’re laying on stanchion.’

  (‘Put those Saxon here, Norman!’

  ‘Got the basket, arch? Bell hamper?’

  ‘Open the chamfer! Nook shaft!’)

  ‘Fillets? Impost? Herringbone? Fresco buttress? Jamb? Scallops? Vessica piscis?’

  ‘Ogee!’

  ‘Or broach the string course? Hammer-beam?’

  ‘I’m not perpendicular, Arch.’

  ‘Haunch, or rib?’

  ‘The lattice?

  ‘Span? Crockets? Mould?’ ‘Some more trefoil, please.’

  (pointed)’ You’re putting on flèche.’

  (beams) ‘Why wear a truss?’

  ‘Another bowtell, Arch?’

  ‘Mm! Fillet up—don’t joggle!’

  (stained glass)

  ‘Scroll!’ ‘Scroll!’

  ‘Dog-tooth? One wing?’

  (Flushmrk! In their cusps again! They gargoyle in it, ravelin barm kins!) ‘I’ve a niche, a pinnacle on my postern . . .’

  Your reredos? Let me lancet!’ (skew-back) ‘Don’t arcuate!’ (stoups)

  ‘Misericorde!’

  ‘Turn it up, Arch! Are you a crypt, o choir!’ (Rood-loft her . . . )

  (Arch groins): ‘Billet me on the dome!’

  ‘A stretcher!’

  ‘Call an ambulatory!’

  ‘Have a squint, or he’ll piscina minute!’

  ‘Look what that dripstone!’

  ‘Who canopied here? Who’s coping?’

  (‘A bit steeple! Not crocket! A debased spandrel! Re vaulting! Give him a dozen flying buttresses up the apse! Rough strapwork! Pulvinate him!’ etc) (Springing, archivolts undercroft)

  ‘Arch is a slype now.’

  ‘They’re both sleepers.’

  ‘Won’t Hern! . . .’

  ‘No. Arcades ambo.’

  ‘Overhung?’

  ‘Per apse, when dais done . . .’

  In Andalucia and Estremadura

  from an undated letter to Diana Cooper

  This letter to Diana Cooper tells of a holiday that Paddy and Joan pent in Spain in early 1975, with their friends Jaime and Janetta Parlade. They were joined by Xan Fielding, one of Paddy’s brothers-in-arms in occupied Crete during the war, and Magouche Phillips. She and Xan were to marry in 1979.

  Spain. This was all glory. We arrived there on Christmas Eve, met by Janetta at Malaga, driving a Range Rover that could knock a hole in the Bastille. The house, Tramores, is marvellous, built about a ruined Moorish tower in a high
valley of the Sierra de Ronda, in an interlock of mountains forested with pine and cork-oak, where wild boar roam (I saw five), in a great sweep of land owned by Jaime’s father. It’s very comfortable; blazing fires, half-manor house, half-farm, where the life centres on a great beamed kitchen with flags underfoot, hanging hams, a green parrot, two dogs and a cat in the same basket, a brisk house-boy called Miguel, and Zara, a bulky and always smiling she-Moor from the Atlas. One lolls about hobnobbing and swigging while Janetta, (with the same ease as someone else absent-mindedly knitting), chops, grates, strains and bastes, imperceptibly wielding colanders, rolling-pins, bunches of herbs, etc. till she whisks something stupendous out of the oven. Everyone is suddenly round a table, with a crimson baize cloth falling to the ground to keep in the heat of the great brass brazier underneath, and our toes warm; candles twinkling, the parrot’s music-hall interruptions quelled under green baize and red wine gurgling out of a fascinating involuted jug, like an alchemist’s flagon. I love Janetta and Jaime. Different but congruent, they have some light and fine-boned quality in common. He’s busy building, planting and decorating all day, while Janetta crunches across the valleys to the neighbouring towns in that tank of hers—assembling still more delicious things for us all to eat. Lovely walks through the woods, which are full of streams—so much water seemed a miracle to our parched Maniot eyes—that the tiered gardens thrive like a marvellous jungle under control; in the evening there is chat, music and the Dictionary Game into the small hours. The participants were the four of us, Robin Campbell, Frances Partridge, and for a few days, Xan and Magouche. Both are radiant. There were visits to and from Gerald Brenan and Bunny Garnett, those two hale Bloomsbury stags; and lots of cheerful Spaniards.

  For the New Year we all travelled west along the coast, peering south at Gibraltar and the Moorish mountains beyond, stopping to swallow countless sherries and about 100,000 tiny elvers, netted on their way to the Sargasso Sea, in Tarifa, Europe’s southernmost point, where the inhabitants of the flat-topped houses have been going mad from the east wind since the dawn of time. We looked down on Trafalgar; and saw the New Year in among the crowds in the Cathedral Square of Cadiz where we stayed two nights, gazing at Zurbaráns and mooning along the lanes of the oldest inhabited city of Europe; the eccentric tropical trees that tower above the roofs here were planted by conquistadors hot-keel from the Indies. At Sanlucar we ate many large prawns in booths overlooking the estuary of the Guadalquivir and inspected a harem of beautifully groomed dapple-greys owned by Mrs Terry, (a famous sherry-growing lady), each preening in its spotless loose-box with lashes lowered, like odalisques. An ocean-going liner slid upstream across the landscape on the invisible Guadalquivir, Seville-bound under racing clouds and gulls. Here we turned inland, and to the north, looking out at the rock-perched castle and church of Arcos de la Frontera, after stopping for sips in Jerez, and, led by a ghostly white Carthusian, explored the overgrown Gothic precincts of the Cartuja there. (Last time, we drew rein at the tremendous battlements of Arcos to feast with the very nice English Marquesa de Tamarón who reigns in it, but it was too late and we had to press on.) It was a dramatic landscape, with night falling fast. Next stop, Ronda—I bet you know this wonderful Roman-Moorish-Spanish town, lifted into the sky, complete with bullring and churches and palaces on tremendous cliffs sundered by a narrow chasm from top to bottom, right in the town’s heart, so that one peers over the bridge and down through the layers of choughs, jackdaws, ravens, swallows and crows to a cascade that looks a mile below. In the hills outside, we stayed in a farmhouse of Jaime’s father standing as amply as a rectory in a forest of cork-oak. Joan, Jaime and I went for long rides through the ilex-forested hills on near-Palominos with blonde tails and manes, Moorish saddles and box-stirrups. They have a marvellous gait of their own, silk-smooth and tireless. From the hills we looked down on the wide airy waves of country, symmetrically criss-crossed with olives, hill towns rising on cones here and there, with white houses like flocks of doves settling, each village with a domed church and a ruin: Visigothic or Moorish or Spanish. Enormous herds of sheep and champagne-coloured goats grazed in the steep cork-woods, raising clouds of golden dust as they were herded back to their folds against the sunset. The horizon was bounded by a score of sierras as jagged as cut-out paper. Joan and I stayed two nights in the olive-grove house the other side of Ronda that Magouche is turning into a beautiful nest, helped by Xan: lucky birds with twigs in their beaks.