Patrick Leigh Fermor

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  Love from Joan, and all the best –

  Yours ever

  Paddy

  [1] ‘The Monasteries of the Air’, published in the Cornhill magazine, summer 1951.

  [2] The Gennadius Library in Athens, owned by the American School of Classical Studies.

  [3] On PLF’s behalf, Jock Murray received the Heinemann Foundation Prize for The Traveller’s Tree at the Royal Society of Literature on 26 June 1951.

  [4] Sir Edward Howard Marsh (1872–1953), poet, translator, patron of the arts and senior civil servant.

  [5] Richard Austen ‘Rab’ Butler (1902–82), politician and President of the Royal Society of Literature. He would be appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer when the Conservatives were returned to power in October 1951.

  [6] Ian Fleming, then working for the Kemsley newspaper group, had proposed a limited-edition volume containing two articles PLF had written about life in the monasteries.

  [7] The poet Rupert Brooke died on active service in 1915, on his way to the landings in Gallipoli, after developing sepsis from an infected mosquito bite. He is buried on Skyros.

  To Joan Rayner

  undated [ January 1952]

  c/o Mrs Batt

  Britcher Farm

  Egerton

  Kent [1]

  My darling pet,

  Thank you so much for your heavenly letter from Dublin. It was absolutely maddening, I had to go to London in the middle of the week to do another recording of my Maya talk, and stayed on next day to hear Pallis’s lecture about the Greek War of Independence. [2] Your letter, meanwhile, had been forwarded to Kent, where the idiotic Batts [3] sent it to London, where I got it, thank heavens, the second I was leaving, but too late to catch you at the Shelbourne [4] before you set off for London or Paris. . .

  I dashed back to Chesham Place by taxi, and collected the guidebook, but of course, your bus had just left when I got back! Wasn’t that bad luck? When I got back again, I lay down on the bed and finished the last page of Patrick’s book, [5] and as I shut it, the telephone went, and a female voice asked for you. It turned out to be Angela ex-K., [6] asking you and me to a party that evening. I went, of course, and wish you’d been there, because there were Patrick and Angela laughing away in front of the fire with their arms interlocked like the most inseparable friends. It was a problem to know whether to press her hand in silent commiseration or to wring Patrick’s in congratulation. [7] I also had a drink at Diane’s [8] who sends her love. Peter Rodd [9] was there, extremely drunk and boring, so I retreated to the Travellers where Harold Nicolson was dining alone, so we went to Pratt’s together, and sat drinking port and talking till it closed. Very agreeable.

  The day I came to London for the recording (they had scratched the disc or something), I dined with a posh friend of Georgia’s & Sachie’s [10] called Dottie Beatty, [11] for Georgia’s last evening before sailing for Canada. Company half sympathetic, half hirsute: Alan Hare’s sister called More O’Ferrall, Seymour Berry, Joan Aly Khan, Georgia, Sachie, Lizzie [12] etc. I do believe my snobbish days are over, and about time. Drinking afterwards at Joan’s vast new house, and a lot of talk with Sachie, who suggests I take some work to Weston for a few days sometime, as he’ll be alone. Nothing I’d love more, but I doubt if anything will come of it, as he’s so shy and dilatory about independent decisions. Lunch next day with Daphne & Xan, [13] then to the French pictures again with D., where I again saw Patrick, with his Mum, who (P) wants to see us both. Then here. I saw Ronald Storrs [14] in the Travellers who told me he’s sent you an invitation to a tremendous Handel concert in St Paul’s. I think he’s in love with you. He always asks after that beautiful, splendid girl, and pumps away at my hand with vicarious ardour. Roger Senhouse [15] has asked me to translate Julie de Carneilhan by Colette, for Secker’s. It’s apparently Raymond’s responsibility. [16] So I’m doing that, which is rather boring but absolutely potty, [17] and as the book is only about 40,000 words, it will be over in no time, – two weeks? and will produce £80 or so (£2 per thou. words).

  My dear little thing, I’m longing to hear all your adventures. Do wire me the moment you get to London. Are you taking Barbara’s house. [18] Tell me when I can telephone you.

  Lots and lots of love, my darling sweet, and lots of hugs and kisses from

  Old Mole

  x x x x

  P.S. I’ve got a new pen.

  [1] Written on Travellers Club notepaper.

  [2] Given at King’s College London by A. A. Pallis, Anglo-Greek author and head of the Greek Office of Information in London, 1945–52.

  [3] PLF was a paying guest of a couple called Batt at their farm in Kent.

  [4] A well-known Dublin hotel.

  [5] Patrick Kinross’s The Orphaned Realm: Journeys in Cyprus, which PLF reviewed in the Observer on 13 January 1952. ‘The light and readable manner of this excellent book proves an apt instrument for tackling the more serious, as well as the light-hearted, aspects of Cyprus.’ The book was published under the name Patrick Balfour, though the author had inherited the title Lord Kinross on his father’s death in 1939.

  [6] Angela Culme-Seymour (1912–2012), Kinross’s ex-wife, described in a Daily Telegraph obituary as ‘a dazzling feature of smart society before and after the Second World War, changing husbands and lovers with bewildering regularity; they included, but were not limited to, Churchill’s nephew, an English peer, a French count, an Army major and a professor of atomic physics who was married to her half-sister.’

  [7] Kinross was homosexual.

  [8] Lady Diane Abdy (1907–67), daughter of 5th Earl of Bradford, who married Sir Robert Abdy, Bt.

  [9] Peter Rodd (1904–68), the estranged husband of Nancy Mitford. He is said to have been the model for Evelyn Waugh’s character Basil Seal in his novel Black Mischief (1932).

  [10] Sacheverell (‘Sachie’) and Georgia Sitwell.

  [11] Lady Dorothy Beatty, the American ex-wife of the 2nd Earl Beatty.

  [12] Elizabeth Cecilia More O’Ferrall (1914–90), daughter of the 5th Earl of Listowel and older sister of Alan Hare, an officer in SOE who had been a frequent visitor to Tara during the war; John Seymour Berry (1909–95), politician and newspaper proprietor, who would succeed his father as 2nd Viscount Camrose in 1954; his mistress the Hon. Joan Aly Khan, ex-wife of Loel Guinness and Prince Aly Khan, son and heir apparent of the Aga Khan; the Sitwells; unidentified.

  [13] Xan Fielding and his first wife Daphne (née Vivian), who had previously been married to the Marquess of Bath.

  [14] Sir Ronald Storrs (1881–1955), a retired Foreign and Colonial official.

  [15] Roger Senhouse (1899–1970) was himself a translator, and co-owner of the publishing house Secker & Warburg.

  [16] Knowing PLF to be short of money, Raymond Mortimer had suggested him for this task.

  [17] PLF apparently means that the work will be easy for him.

  [18] Joan’s friend Barbara Warner had given Joan the use of a flat in Charlotte Street belonging to her mother.

  Paddy first met the writer Patrick Balfour in the 1930s, at the Gargoyle Club in London. The two men shared an interest in Islamic history and culture, and became close friends. Kinross stayed several times with Paddy at Gadencourt, and later at his house in Greece.

  To Patrick Kinross

  17 February 1952

  Gadencourt

  Pacy-sur-Eure

  My dear Patrick,

  Thank you so much for your letter. I’m so glad you liked the review – I enjoyed The Orphaned Realm immensely, and do hope the one on Turkey is going strong. I’m struggling with an opus on Greece, and hope to have it finished by early summer.

  I don’t think Percival Marshall [1] are doing all that they should about shoving The Orphaned Realm about. The Observer never got a copy sent to them, and I had to show it to the editor and ask to review it. Surely a paper like that ought to have received it automatically? I imagine they have made the same omission elsewhere, which is really scan
dalous. I think you ought to write quite a stiff letter to them.

  What do you think about the Egyptian goings on? Thank heavens Amy, Smartie, Eddie etc. were OK. [2] They frightfully kindly let me live here for the whole winter. Why don’t you come and move in on your way home? It’s been raining and snowing like mad for the last week or so. I listened in most of yesterday to the Royal Funeral, [3] and for someone like me, who reacts to these things exactly like a scullery-maid, it was almost too much – a knot in the throat for six hours on end, bosuns’ pipes, cannon booming, the sound of horses’ hoofs, clink of bits, muffled drums and distant pibrochs [4] . . . Phew! The mention of the emerald Henry V had worn at Agincourt glittering on the crown on the bier was a dangerous moment. You’ll have to be shaking the moths out of your ermine soon, if, as I hope, you are taking part in the Coronation. You really mustn’t miss it. Xan is in Crete preparing a vast book. [5] Daphne went to stay with him for two months before Christmas, and is going back next month. I’d love to see her trudging over the rocks with an escort of lovesick brigands. Joan alternates between here and London, and will be back in a couple of weeks. Do let me know how you are getting on. I think you’re very brave living in Kyrenia after roasting the inhabitants so! Rose Macaulay [6] is going to Cyprus soon, writing a book on ruins. Do you know her? I think she’s a heavenly person. No more now, as the facteur [postman] is at the gate,

  love

  Paddy

  [1] A publisher specialising in technical books and magazines, many about locomotives, with a sideline in country sports.

  [2] There had been widespread rioting in Egypt in protest against corruption and the general belief that King Farouk was a puppet of the British.

  [3] The funeral of King George VI had taken place on 15 February 1952, and was broadcast on the BBC World Service.

  [4] A form of music played on the Highland bagpipes only, by a solo piper.

  [5] The Stronghold: An Account of the Four Seasons in the White Mountains of Crete (1953) is 316 pages long.

  [6] Rose Macaulay (1881–1958), novelist, biographer and travel writer.

  Paddy had agreed with the publisher Derek Verschoyle to write a chapter for a book with the arresting title Memorable Balls; but as was often the case with him, this task outgrew its original function and became a full-length book, Paddy’s only work of fiction. The following letter was written while he was still working on the book, and was staying with his new friends, the writer, politician and diplomat Sir Alfred Duff Cooper and his wife Lady Diana at the Château de Saint-Firmin, the exquisite eighteenth-century house that they rented in the grounds of the Château de Chantilly.

  To Joan Rayner

  undated [Spring 1952?]

  Chantilly

  My own darling little Muskin,

  Here’s a fine thing, my not writing for all this time, and please forgive me, darling. I simply don’t know how it happened – specially after your lovely long and juicy letter. Well this is what has been happening to me roughly. I stayed on in the forest of Compiègne almost a fortnight, indeed until the place shut up for the end of the winter season. I was the only person staying there in the end, and I gradually, by bits of conversation overheard from the kitchen, gathered that the ancient old girl who kept the place was an ex-semi-tart of the Paris music hall stage. She was Belgian and slightly deaf and conversing eternally with two other contemporaries that had formerly been colleagues on the boards round about 1900. They were always talking about the tremendous offers they had had from South American admirers in the good old days – des messieurs vraiment bien [‘true gentlemen’], possessing ten or twenty thousand, or once, two hundred thousand heads of cattle on the pampas! The last day I was there it rained cats and dogs without stopping, and these old girls played an endless game of belote [1] over the kitchen fire, all croaking with laughter like witches; and, when I left next day, the proprietress told me, that as I was the only man in the house, they had been playing for me! L’enjeu, était vous, Monsieur! [‘The stake was you, Monsieur!’] I think it very delicate and considerate of her only to have told me the day after. . .

  I got to Paris, and found a room in the Louisiane, [2] that gloomy little one next to our old circular one, where you have to have the light on even in the daytime. I met Desmond Ryan and Mary Rose Pulham [3] (she had my coat, and I felt rather a pig taking it off them, as it had obviously been a godsend to the whole family. But I had to as I was absolutely shuddering by then). I had one or two nice meals with them.

  I’ve forgotten to tell you that, except for two paragraphs, I have at last finished the story of the Antillean ball, and feel terribly excited about it. It’s twenty thousand words long, I’m afraid, instead of four, and I would like it to be printed as a small book. I don’t know what it’s like, really, but I think it is exciting and alive and rather odd. Did I tell you that it is called The Violins of Saint-Jacques – do you like that as a title? A day or two after, I got letters from Annie and from Ian, [4] who had got the address from you, saying they were arriving and bringing the proofs of the monastery book to be corrected and (bugger it) added to. So I waited on in Paris, wandering about by myself, drinking too much and getting into a fearful state of depression. It will be a great day when I realise when I’m being bored. . .

  I rang Annie up the day she arrived and appointed a rendezvous at the Deux Magots, but when I got there, found Pierino, the Coopers’ chauffeur, waiting for me, who drove me off to that house in the Rue de Lille (Tanis Dietz’s) where the Coopers live [5] and where Annie was staying. The Coopers were there too – tremendously friendly greetings, and a lot of mock scolding of you and me for going through/being in France without going to Chantilly. Annie I thought nicer & friendlier than ever before, but pretty ill. I had supper with her while Duff and Diana [6] wandered about dressing for a first night, to which I accompanied them & John Foster, [7] of Henry Bernstein’s [8] [play] called Evangeline. Horribly boring. Afterwards to Maxim’s and a lovely supper with lots of champagne and talk, getting pleasantly tipsier, till very late, and laughing a great deal. I was planning to go and stay with Amy [Smart], but Diana persuaded me to go to Chantilly, saying Rowley and Laurian [9] were coming through on their way back. So went on Friday, party consisting of Coopers, me, and to my sinking heart, Ed Stanley, [10] who I’ve always disliked. But he was so funny over dinner and so much more intelligent than I had thought and so much friendlier (always difficult to resist) that I ended by liking him. He is hoping to get a job as Speaker of the House of Representatives in Lagos, capital of Nigeria, which I think is rather funny. Next day the Flemings turned up, also Liz v. Hofmannsthal [11] for a long stay. Odd people turned up. I managed to do a lot of work (finished The Violins!), correcting & adding to Monasteries etc., in my room and under the big tree at that round stone table, where I am writing at the moment. The first day I felt rather awful and shaky, slinking about like False Sextus who wrought the deed of shame; [12] but soon recovered and felt regenerated and reborn by this heavenly place.

  On Saturday, over luncheon, the conversation was almost entirely about Cyril’s ‘Missing Diplomat’ articles, [13] and was a regular tempest of anger and indignation, led (naturally) by E. Stanley, and seconded by Duff, who, though he likes Cyril very much, grew red in the face till the veins stood out about C’s exposing his friends as drunkards, traitors, sadists, buggers, bolsheviks etc. etc., cashing in on friends’ failings etc. I may say that I was the only one to take the opposite view, which I did with some vehemence, till there was practically a free fight and danger of being knocked down with a decanter. I actually meant it too, as I thought the articles very good, though they told us nothing new – but they did establish, and in a way, I thought, rehabilitated them both as human beings, fallible etc., but not the shifty and guilty shadows that have emerged in the press so far. What do you think about all this? It was a real shindy. For heaven’s sake don’t mention it to Cyril (unnecessary injunction).

  Apparently Ian had heard how much long
er I’d made my memorable ball than was planned (via Peter Q. [Quennell] from you) and suggested printing it as an illustrated special book like the monasteries. If Derek Verschoyle doesn’t want it, I suppose one might. The ideal would be to have it done as a £4 book with a limited circulation and a cheap one for general circulation, if both publishers would agree, and get paid for both. I’ll put this to Derek & Graham when I hand it over, as it all depends on them. American Vogue are reprinting the Jamaica article on the fifteenth of this month, which seems odd. I hope it means extra pennies. I wish they’d do the Greek one with your snaps.

  There has been great fun here planting narcissus and daffodil bulbs, in which pursuit Diana presses anyone who comes near the house. You punch holes with a tubular instrument like a spade, and I have usually been allowed charge of this, and have laid them out in all sorts of sentimental messages, transfixed hearts, great bears, Pleiades, Orion’s belts [14] etc., which will look very odd when spring comes round, and perhaps awful. Lovely walks in the woods and trips into Chantilly to buy moules and chestnuts and things. The trees are a wonderful mixture of autumn tints, and there is a constant rustle of falling acorns. I do wish you were here, my darling love, and so does everybody else, especially Duff, several times a day. They really seem (and other people have told me so ‘quite unsolicited!’) very fond of us both indeed, so we can come absolutely any time. I propose to go back this afternoon to Paris with the Coopers, Liz & their maid, stay a night in J. de Bendern’s flat [15] (which may be rash), then go to Amy’s for three to four days, and either come back to England or to St W. for a bit. I’m longing to see you again, Muskin darling, and miss you quite horribly. I also feel rather guilty hanging about like this, and being so slow in writing, but please don’t be cross, I don’t know how I’ve contrived to indulge so . . . Well there it is, and no draggle-eared rabbit nonsense either. My capacity for solitude is dwindling fast and gloom and loneliness and homesickness for being with you sets in almost at once, coupled with sleeplessness and bloody dreams. It’s raining now, late afternoon, the autumnal park outside, the plunging ducks, the statue of the Constable de Montmorency, [16] and the sheet of water looking romantic, solitaire et glacé, and I’m scribbling in the room near the bar – lovely and warm in here, fire blazing. I wonder how Cape Palinuro is looking now under the autumn rain, and Tarquinia, the pale waves of Nar, San and the Volsinian mere? [17] I think so much of our last two months (Cimbrone [18] has quite disappeared, strangely enough) and what an unusual and oddly enriching (not financially) and rewarding time it has been, and how happy, in spite of my ghastly procrastination over writing. I’ve had two charming & funny cards from Peter [Quennell], and think of him with great fondness. Do let’s wander about the Basilicata [19] sometime in search of Greek stragglers, it would be a wonderful quest. I must learn to drive.