Patrick Leigh Fermor

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  Most of the quotations in my introductory passages are taken from Ben Downing’s interview, which appeared after Paddy’s death in the Paris Review; or from the volume of correspondence between Paddy and Debo Devonshire, published under the title In Tearing Haste. Short profiles of the people mentioned most often in the letters, including most of the addressees, are provided in a dramatis personae at the end of the book.

  The Letters

  Paddy was twenty-four years old, and on a mushroom-gathering picnic in Rumania, when he heard the news that Germany had invaded Poland. He hurried back to England to enlist. Many years later he told his biographer that he came home in 1939 expecting to die. ‘I had read somewhere that the average life of an infantry officer in the First World War was eight weeks, and I had no reason to think that the odds would be much better in the Second. So I thought I might as well die in a nice uniform.’ Claiming Irish descent, he inveigled his way into the Irish Guards. ‘I joined “the Micks” in the ranks in 1939, same day as Iain Moncreiffe and other friends, though he was in the Scots Guards,’ he later explained (PLF to Rudi Fischer, 2 February 1982). ‘It was the first time future Guards officers went through the ranks, and a very good idea, though it was tremendously tough. We were all from the five Guards regiments – Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots, Irish and Welsh – trained in a squad of thirty at the Gd’s Depot at Caterham by the Coldstream. All had been fixed up before joining through mild pull etc., I’m sorry to say.’

  The letter that follows was written to a fellow recruit while Paddy was in hospital recovering from a bout of severe pneumonia which had almost killed him. Adrian Pryce-Jones (1919–68) was the younger son of a colonel in the Coldstream Guards. His brother Alan, later a travel writer and journalist, had been briefly engaged to Joan Eyres Monsell, Paddy’s post-war companion and, eventually, his wife.

  To Adrian Pryce-Jones

  1 February 1940

  Redhill County Hospital

  Earlswood Common

  Redhill

  Surrey

  My dear Adrian,

  I liked your letter, and it really was kind of you to write at such a moment of stress. God, how pleased you must have been to have escaped from that jail. My fate is positively tragic. Apparently, as I have missed over five weeks’ training through illness, the authorities are regretfully obliged to backsquad me; that is, I am to wait till they are at the six and a half weeks (the next Brigade Squad), finish with them and proceed with them to Sandhurst for the April intake. Isn’t this wretched? I am more vexed and disappointed than I can say; obviously, because it means the Depot for three weeks, and a long pointless wait before that, but still more because I would have so loved being at Sandhurst with you and our other friends. A still graver reason for concern presents itself: as the Irish Guards have only twelve vacancies, all being competed for in your course, my commission with them may be jeopardised, as there are fifteen candidates, and I don’t suppose they can very well hold one up for me, as there is such a crush. It may turn out all right, but if it doesn’t it will be very sad and disappointing. I can’t think of any other regiment I would like to join; and anyway, it would be wretched to be gazetted out of the Brigade. Why did I ever fall sick?

  Really, you know, owing to those butcher boys at the Depot hospital, I very nearly died. I felt myself all through one night at the brink of turning into a lump of carrion. Luckily, all goes well now, and I am feeling very well, though I must remain here [1] another fortnight. . .

  But that is enough about the horrid Depot, which you are probably beginning to forget. I want to know all about Sandhurst, if you can extricate yourself for half an hour from the maelstrom and write a fruity letter – uniform – who is there – juicy bits of scandal etc. – other candidates for our Regiments etc. Are you enjoying it? It must be silk and satin after Caterham. Please tell me all.

  Here, life flows by in a mild lotus-eating atmosphere. Lots of books and fruit and flowers, in the middle of which I lie pale and endearing, with an attendant chorus of surprisingly personable and charming nurses. I have invented a fascinating brave, hurt, bittersweet expression, with eyebrows wrinkled up over a twisted smile, and I use this on them whenever I want some special favour. (Lights on late, drink etc.). It works every time. Family have been here several times, also sweet Prue Branch and Guy, [2] the ones I told you about. Last night something marvellous happened. I am just being tucked up for the night, when I hear strange foreign noises outside the door, which opens, and in bursts Anne-Marie Callimachi, [3] followed by Costa. [4] She was dressed in black satin and dripping with mink, with pearls and diamonds crusted at every possible point, topped by the maddest Schiaparelli hat I’ve ever seen. Then Costa, who is very dark, with a huge grin, and quite white hair at the age of thirty. He was dressed in a bright green polo jersey over which he wore a very long black new coat with an immense astrakhan collar: both laden with huge presents. The nurses were struck dumb. Shrill squeals burst from us all, and then we were gabbling the parleyvoo like apes. The nurses fled in disorder. Then of course, they couldn’t get a taxi as Anne-Marie had left Rolls Royces etc. in London; but they had their luggage, and stopped the night at the hospital! We all pretended they were married, so the Sister, with girlish squeaks, got their room ready, with screens coyly arranged between the beds. By this time Costa was telephoning the Ritz to say Her Highness wouldn’t be back that night, his voice echoing down all the passages. The sensation in the hospital was absolutely phenomenal. Huge princely coronets on the luggage – such nighties! Slippers! Oh!! The hospital hasn’t recovered yet, and my glamour-value among the nurses is at fever pitch.

  It was great fun. We talked and laughed idiotically late into the night, Anne-Marie narrating her latest experiences, which, as usual, were quite extraordinary. I dramatised the Depot to them. I told them about you, and as they know your brother Alan well, Anne-Marie was very curious to know what you were like. I said you were just a naughty little jazz-baby. Nothing could have intrigued her more.

  They left this morning, Anne-Marie leaving a munificent cheque for the Hospital Fund, which I tendered with a languid gesture to the head doctor. Their passage will not be forgotten for ages!

  Alors, mon petit Adrien, te voilà déjà presqu’un petit officier dans la Garde Galloise! Ce que vous devez rigoler là-bas, vous autres. Oh la la! Je me rouge de jalousie. Je vous emmerde! Et royalement! [5]

  My address during my sick leave is at my sister’s: c/o Mrs Fenton, St Arild’s House, Kington, near Thornbury, Gloucestershire. Don’t forget to send your civilised address when you write. I will be a day or two in London before going to my bucolic retreat. We might meet and make whoopee. Helen Hardinge [6] suggested I might go and stay a bit at Windsor, but it isn’t supposed to be frightfully healthy there, so I don’t think I will. May go to the Sitwells for a bit. [7]

  Remember me affectionately to Desmond and Trevor and Iain [8] and Hal & Michael, Nevill, Douglas, Jeremy, and all the boys. I can’t tell you how I will miss being with you all there. Pity Holland [9] & the wicked Baron aren’t there too!

  Every kind of good wish to yourself, mon petit, and very much luck for a successful course at Sandhurst.

  Love Paddy

  [1] In hospital.

  [2] Flying Officer Guy Rawstron Branch (b. 1913) and his wife, Lady Prudence, née Pelham, daughter of the 6th Earl of Chichester. They were married the previous March. PLF and his Rumanian lover, Princess Balasha Cantacuzène, had stayed with Branch’s family when they visited London in 1937. Just over six months after this letter was written Branch would be dead, killed in action over the English Channel during the Battle of Britain.

  [3] The Rumanian Princess Anne-Marie Callimachi, a cousin of PLF’s lover, Balasha Cantacuzène.

  [4] The Greek photographer Costa Achillopoulos, later PLF’s collaborator on The Traveller’s Tree (1950).

  [5] ‘Now, my dear Adrian you are already almost an officer in the Welsh Guards. What fun you lot must be having down there.
Oh la la! I am red with envy. Up yours. And royally!’

  [6] The wife of Sir Alec Hardinge, Private Secretary to King George VI. The Hardinges had an apartment in Windsor Castle. It was through them that PLF had wangled his way into the Irish Guards.

  [7] After PLF had been introduced by Costa Achillopoulos to Sacheverell ‘Sachie’ Sitwell and his wife Georgia in 1937, he spent many happy weekends at Weston Hall, their Jacobean house in Northamptonshire.

  [8] Iain Moncreiffe (1919–85), later Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, MP and genealogist.

  [9] Antony Holland (see note 5 on page 92).

  It is in time of war that the public school system that so many of you laugh at, is really put to the test. You may scoff at Latin and Greek, Virgil and Homer, but its value is character training . . .

  On his recovery, Paddy expected to become a regular officer with the Irish Guards. But it did not turn out this way. ‘When I was finishing my recruit time at the Depot, I had tempting promises of future exciting intelligence work in Greece, and like a fool, talked about it.’ The Intelligence Corps was very interested in the fact that he spoke French, German, Rumanian and Greek, despite his ‘below average’ record. ‘The Col. of the Micks, who I knew quite well (Tom Vesey), had me up to Birdcage Walk (Wellington Barracks) and asked me if this was true. I said it was, and he was very cutting about it. “What’s the point of us training you as an ensign if you go buggering off on some ghastly Intelligence rubbish?” I was given a week to decide. If I hung on with the Micks as an officer, I would, morally, have been bound to eschew all tempting “I” offers. So, most reluctantly, I went into the Intelligence Corps. Very unhappy, because I loved the Irish Guards. But I was much more use where I went, as it turned out, than I would have been as an ensign in the Brigade’ (PLF to Rudi Fischer, 2 February 1982). Paddy was posted to Greece, and, after the Axis invasion, to Egypt, from which he was infiltrated on to the island of Crete, to work with the resistance against the German occupiers.

  Natalie Moss was the mother of Paddy’s wartime comrade Billy Moss, his second-in-command in the daring and successful operation to capture General Kreipe.

  To Natalie Moss

  15 November 1944

  In the Wilds [1]

  Dear Mrs Moss,

  I do hope you got a letter I wrote to you this summer in hospital, [2] and thank you very much for your kind telegram. It was nice of you to send it, and I do hope Billy thanked you for it as I asked him to, as I couldn’t write at the time.

  Unfortunately, when I was let out of hospital, Billy had left on a fresh adventure, that we had planned to carry out together, but which I was too ill to take part in. He carried it out most brilliantly and bravely, and, as you will have heard, has been recommended for a very well-deserved bar to his MC. Meanwhile, I went to stay with Lady Spears, our minister to Syria’s wife, [3] in the cool mountains near Beirut, and just as I was finishing my stay, who should arrive by plane but Billy, just arrived back from our island hunting-ground, [4] where he had ambushed a German column, knocked out ten trucks, killed forty Germans, and taken fifteen prisoners. Finally an armoured car appeared, which Billy put out of action by climbing on the back and throwing hand-grenades down the turret until the cannon stopped firing. It was a really splendid and brave achievement.

  From Beirut we drove off to Damascus together, and spent a very happy and gay five days there and in Beirut, after which we flew back to Cairo, and returned to our home – ‘Tara’ [5] – of which you must have heard so much! We share it with Sophie Tarnowska, [6]

  Billy McLean [7] and David Smiley. [8] But Bill had to leave soon, and I a month later, so now poor Sophie is holding the fort all alone. She is a most charming girl and looks after our comic household of rather wild young men like a very responsible younger sister. I left for the place where Bill and I caught the Hun General three weeks ago, and am writing from there. Billy is absolutely all right, and will probably be back in ‘Tara’ soon. I hope to meet him there for Christmas.

  Billy is a really magnificent chap, and it would be hard to think of anyone more universally loved in the Middle East. He is one of the few really great friends I have made during the war, and this island seems very bleak without his gay company.

  You must not get worried if you hear from him only irregularly, as posts are sometimes difficult from these out of the way places. Perhaps you have news of him already. If not I’m sure you very soon will. Thank you again for your kind sympathy while I was ill, and every kind wish.

  Yrs very sincerely

  Paddy L-F

  [1] Soldiers on active service were forbidden to reveal their location.

  [2] ‘The rigors of a year and a half of Cretan cave life, it seems, suddenly struck me with an acute rheumatic infection of the joints, akin to paralysis. After two months in a Cairo hospital – where King Farouk once kindly sent me a magnum of champagne – I was sent to convalesce in Lebanon.’

  [3] Lady Spears (1886–1968), the American novelist Mary Borden. Known as ‘May’, she was married to Major-General Sir Edward Spears (1886–1974), diplomat, army officer and MP, noted for his role as a liaison officer between British and French forces in two world wars.

  [4] Crete.

  [5] A spacious villa on Gezira Island, inhabited by a group of high-spirited Special Operations Executive (SOE) officers and named by them ‘Tara’ after the title used by the High Kings of Ireland. ‘With its ballroom and a piano borrowed from the Egyptian Officers’ Club, and funded by our vast accumulations of back pay, it became famous – or notorious – for the noisiest and most hilarious parties in wartime Cairo. At one of these, fired by the tinkle of a dropped glass, everyone began throwing their glasses through the windows until not a pane was left.’

  [6] Countess Zofia Roza Maria Jadwiga Elzbieta Katarzyna Aniela Tarnowska (1917– 2009), known as ‘Sophie’, later Mrs Billy Moss. She and her first husband, a cousin, had been forced to flee their native Poland after the German invasion in 1939. She lived at Tara with a fictitious chaperone, Madame Khayatt, who supposedly suffered from ‘distressingly poor health’ and thus was always indisposed when visitors called.

  [7] Lieutenant Colonel Neil Loudon Desmond ‘Billy’ McLean DSO (1918–86), SOE officer, and later an MP.

  [8] Colonel David de Crespigny Smiley MC and Bar (1916–2009), special forces and intelligence officer.

  In 1935, at the age of twenty, Paddy had fallen in love with Marie-Blanche Cantacuzène, known as ‘Balasha’. Sixteen years his senior, Balasha was a princess from one of the great dynasties of eastern Europe, married to a Spanish diplomat, who had left her for another woman. She and Paddy met in Athens, and spent the next eighteen months in Greece, before making their way by steamer to Constant, a, on the Black Sea, and thence by train and coach inland to the dales of eastern Moldavia, where Balasha’s family owned ‘a rambling, down-at-heel country house’ called Băleni. ‘It was surrounded by hills and trees and full of books, there was snow on the windowsills all winter, and outdoors meant sleighs or horses: a Tolstoy or Turgenev kind of life. The family were Moldavian Cantacuzènes, and, as in certain spheres in pre-revolutionary Russia, French was the language used. They were civilised, warm-hearted, amusing people, and devoted to literature . . .’

  ‘It was a magical house, and the time I spent in it seemed to take the place of the university I was missing; I read more there, and in several languages, than anywhere else in my life. I don’t think it is entirely the decades of patina which may have accumulated between now and my early twenties which makes me say that the charm, intelligence, humour, fun, and range and stimulus of conversation at Băleni equal anything I can remember since.’

  Paddy wrote the letter that follows on a table by the water’s edge, overlooking the narrow channel that flows between the Greek island of Poros and the mainland of the Peloponnese; on the other side of the channel a path runs uphill to the watermill of Lemonodassos, where he had spent two ‘blissful summers’ with Balasha ten years befor
e, reading, painting and swimming. The two lovers had last seen each other in September 1939. Now, almost seven years later, he was in love with another woman, though he still felt loyal towards Balasha. This letter tries to make sense of his conflicting feelings. It seems probable that it was never sent.

  To Balasha Cantacuzène

  Easter Saturday 1946

  Poros

  My own darling,

  The clock has suddenly slipped back ten years, and here I am sitting in front of our café in the small square, at a green-topped iron table on one of those rickety chairs. The marble-lantern, with its marine symbols – anchors and dolphins – is within reach of my arm; the drooping tree has been cut down. But the same old men, in broad shady hats, snowy fustanellas [skirt-like garments traditionally worn by men in southern Europe] and moustaches, sit conversing quietly over their narghiléhs [shisha pipes]. They all bowed and greeted me warmly, but soberly as if I had seen them only yesterday; my hand still aches from the iron grasp of Christo, the smiling Mongolian kafedzi [café-proprietor] – ‘Where’s Kyria Balasha? How is she?’ they all cry. – Mitso the boatman, Spiro’s coumbáros [god-brother] at the grocer’s shop, the man at the zacharo-plasteion [shop selling sweet cakes], the barber, the chaps in the little walled restaurant, and a dozen whiskered friends – especially Tomás, the one armed forest-guard, all down here for the Easter ceremonies. Loud shrieks of delight from Uncle Alcibiades’s daughter, married now. Best of all, three tall young men – guess who? Niko, Yanni and Andrea, and a strapping Tasso in his teens. Spiro is up at the mill, with thirteen-year-old Kosta and Katrina, and, isn’t it amazing?, ten-years-old Evtychia! Devout Marina is across the water at Galata, busy at her religious observances. Stop! Who do you think has just come and sat at my table, flinging an affectionate arm round my shoulders? Yanni, our boatman, who taught us the names of the winds, and always rowed us to Plaka. His brother Mitso told him I was here. He is a sailor now, veteran of countless battles, and as charming and gay and simple as ever and sends heaps of love to you. Ἔ! Ἡ Μπαλάσσα! Ἡ Μπαλάσσα! Τι καλὴ γυναίκα! [‘Ah! Balasha! Balasha! What a nice lady!’] They all adore us both here, and are real friends.