Patrick Leigh Fermor

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  Gadencourt, Tuesday (eight days later)

  It looks as if this letter will never depart! I scribbled you a letter, which I sent off yesterday, roughly telling you what plans were, unless you thought I’d fallen under a bus or lost the use of my right hand.

  Of course, everything turned out differently from what I’d expected. Drove to Paris with Diana and Liz, left my luggage at the Travellers where I was to meet J. de Bendern later to be given the keys of his flat, and went with Liz to Dessès [the fashion designer, Jean Dessès] and saw Lilia Ralli [20] for a moment. Then to the Travellers, where I found John de B. & Ed Stanley in an advanced state of intoxication, and positively reeling. John’s life is extremely complicated. You remember that tale about the gypsy flower-girl he picked up on the Champs Elysées? Well, she was now established in John’s flat in the Rue Surcouf, just off the Invalides. There she was, a tremendously attractive creature with a husky voice and an unbelievably gavroche accent. The thing is, she wasn’t sleeping with John (though I think they actually curled up in the same bed), at least, so they both explained to me at length; he was in love with her but not she with him. Meanwhile he was busy getting engaged to a Catalan girl – ‘a lady’ – called Mercedes who was terribly in love with him. This and John’s drunkenness and absences with flash tarts all night finally had become too much for Thérèse the gypsy, who did a bunk while I was there, and Mercedes came in to clear up the mess. All very complicated. I telephoned Amy, who couldn’t have me till Sunday as the house and bistro were full. Also Xan and Daph., on their way to Capri, had announced their passage through Paris, calling at Chantilly on the way. Another wait. On Thursday I went to a first night, with the Coopers, of a film called Sound Barrier, [21] presented by Alexander Korda, who took us to a horrid nightclub afterwards, from which Duff, Diana & I escaped and went and drank several bottles of Alsace wine at the Brasserie Lipp till it closed, and I went down to Chantilly again next day, till Amy could have me – a lovely quiet time of the sort we had this spring, including a heavenly walk to that deserted Cistercian monastery by the green trout stream, where we sat and drank wine under a willow tree. I came here to Gadencourt on Sunday night – just Amy & Smarty, both very sweet and friendly, not, I believe, quite as ruined by the Naguib reforms in Egypt [22] as I had feared, but still hard hit. No suggestions so far about letting us have Gadencourt for the winter! I’m getting a free lift back to England in D’s car the day after tomorrow, being picked up at Pontoise [23] on the way, which will be fun. So darling, I’ll probably arrive hotfoot on the tracks of this, so, unless there is something wonderful you’ve planned, please keep Friday free!

  My darling little Muskin, many many hugs and kisses

  from your old Mole

  [1] A popular card game in France.

  [2] An hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés which PLF had used before as a place to write. ‘From my bed I looked out onto the tossing manes of three gilded metal horses’ heads above the shop front of a horse butcher; it was like waking up holding the reins of a troika. The Deux Magots, the Flore, and a half-dozen other existentialist gathering places were just round the corner.’

  [3] Desmond Francis Ryan (1910–76), soldier, and his wife Mary Rose Pulham (?–1991).

  [4] Ann Fleming and her husband Ian.

  [5] No. 69 rue de Lille was owned by Loel Guinness, who lent Duff Cooper and his wife Diana the first-floor flat on the front. His sister Tanis and her husband Howard Dietz lived in another part of the building.

  [6] Duff and Diana Cooper.

  [7] John Galway Foster (1904–82), barrister, Conservative MP and Under Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations,1951–4.

  [8] Henri-Léon-Gustave-Charles Bernstein (1876–1953), French playwright. Evangeline was his thirtieth and final play.

  [9] Rowland Denys Guy Winn MC (1916–84), soldier and Conservative politician, eldest son and heir of the 3rd Baron St Oswald, had been one of the habitués of Tara during the war. He married Laurian, daughter of Sir Roderick Jones, in 1952. PLF was best man.

  [10] Edward John Stanley MC (1907–71), 6th Baron Sheffield.

  [11] Diana Cooper’s niece.

  [12] PLF is quoting from Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome (1842):

  ‘By the right wheel rode Mamilius, prince of the Latian name, And by the left false Sextus, who wrought the deed of shame.’

  Sextus Tarquinius was the third and youngest son of the last King of Rome. His rape of Lucretia precipitated the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Roman Republic.

  [13] The diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean had disappeared the previous year, and there would be much public speculation about what had become of them until they surfaced in Moscow in 1956. Cyril Connolly’s Sunday Times articles, which revealed some of the personal qualities of the missing men, were thought by some to be in poor taste; they were subsequently re-published as a booklet by Ian Fleming’s Queen Anne Press.

  [14] These are all constellations of stars.

  [15] Count John Gerard de Bendern (1908–97), private secretary to Duff Cooper 1946–7, who had recently divorced his wife, Lady Patricia Sybil Douglas, daughter of the 11th Marquess of Queensberry.

  [16] Anne, Duc de Montmorency (1493–1567), soldier, statesman and diplomat. As Connétable [‘Constable’], he was commander-in-chief of the army, outranking all the other nobles and second-in-command only to the King of France.

  [17] PLF is quoting again from Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome (‘The fortress of Nequinum lowers o’er the pale waves of Nar’; ‘Best of all pools the fowler loves the great Volsinian mere’).

  [18] The Villa Cimbrone in Ravello, owned by Lord Grimthorpe, whose nephew Martyn was a friend of Joan and PLF

  [19] A region of southern Italy, the ‘instep’ of the Italian boot.

  [20] Jean (Lilia) Ralli (1901–78), an Alexandrian Greek who worked for a Paris fashion-house and was a close friend of Cecil Beaton.

  [21] The Sound Barrier, directed by David Lean and written by Terence Rattigan, had just been released by Korda’s production company, London Films.

  [22] In July 1952, a group of disaffected army officers led by General Muhammad Naguib and Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the government of King Farouk. Naguib became prime minister, and legislation was passed to enact a land redistribution programme.

  [23] A Parisian suburb.

  As one of the first Europeans to travel through the southern Arabian deserts, Freya Stark was already well known as an explorer and travel writer when she met Paddy in Egypt during the war. She was one of the stars of John Murray’s list; in all, she wrote more than two dozen books on her travels in the Middle East and Afghanistan, as well as several autobiographical works and essays. In 1950 she spent a day with Paddy and Joan as guests of the British Ambassador, Clifford Norton, and his wife Noel Evelyn (known to friends as ‘Peter’), at their cottage near Piraeus. ‘Yesterday we had a cheerful party down here with Paddy Leigh Fermor and Joan,’ she wrote afterwards to her husband, Stewart Perowne: ‘Paddy looking in this wine-dark sea so like a Hellenistic lesser sea-god of a rather low period, and I do like him. He is the genuine buccaneer’ (Freya Stark to Stewart Perowne, 27 August 1950).

  To Freya Stark

  8 June 1953

  Castello della Rocca di Port’Ercole

  Orbetello

  My dear Freya,

  1,000 congratulations on the CBE! I’ve only just read about it in a very belated newspaper, and am absolutely delighted, as everyone else must be. A jolly well-deserved one and about time too!

  Thank you very much for your kind postcard which I got weeks and weeks late, as I was trudging about in Umbria with Peter Q [uennell]. The ‘Violins’ story is coming out as a book soon, which I’m very thrilled about, as it’s a first attempt at fiction, which was something I’d always looked on with superstitious awe. It was certainly easier than the last phases of the travel book about Greece that I’m struggling with at the moment.

  I�
��m longing to hear all about your adventures in Asia Minor with Fn Balfour, [1] and envy you them very much. I wonder what it was like when there were Greek villages dotted all over Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pontus [2] etc. – at least one would have been able to converse. Did you learn Turkish at all? I admire their undoubted stirling qualities – honesty, courage and so on – but have never managed to like them, or be amused by them. Reports of the Turkish celebrations for the quincentenary of the fall of Constantinople [3] make very irritating reading, though I suppose one can’t blame them. I had a plan to go to Constantinople and, for as long as the mafficking went on, drive round and round the city in a hearse, with six black horses in sable housings and feathers, and with a long crape round my stove-pipe hat, in mourning for the death of Constantine XI Dragatses Palaiologos, [4] who fell on the battlements on that horrible Tuesday. . .

  I am established in a damp and ruined Aragonese fortress on the edge of the Tuscan Maremma, a sort of Zenda, really. I don’t know how Joan, who appears in a few days, will like it; but it’s wonderfully cheap – 1,000 lire a day for two rooms and an immense mileage of pasta twice daily. This is supplied by the owner, an ex-schoolmistress dwarf from Pesaro who acquired the huge ruin in payment of a debt fifteen years ago. It’s triumphantly gloomy, like something out of Mrs Radcliffe or Sheridan Le Fanu – especially at the moment, with a downpour and ear-splitting thunderstorm raging all round it – but fairly good for work.

  Will you be coming to this part of Italy at all? If not, we must try and make a sprūng [leap] in your direction on the way back if you are still there! I long to hear all your news. How has drawing been going?

  Many, many congratulations again, dear Freya, and love from

  Paddy

  [1] The Arabist and former political officer Frank Balfour, a friend of FS’s since the 1930s.

  [2] Provinces of Asia Minor.

  [3] Constantinople fell to an Ottoman army on 29 May 1453, following a seven-week siege.

  [4] PLF is referring to the last emperor of Byzantium, Constantine XI Palaiologos (1405–53).

  Paddy’s next refuge was a mansion – a ‘fine family ziggurat’ – belonging to the artist Niko Ghika on the island of Hydra. ‘He was seldom there, and, with boundless generosity, he lent it to Joan and me for two years,’ recalled Paddy. ‘It was an inviolate island, as empty of wheels as pre-Columbian America. Many of our friends came to stay – Nancy Mitford, Diana Cooper, Cyril Connolly, Dadie Rylands, Maurice Bowra, Freya Stark, and others.’

  To Jock Murray

  30 July 1953

  c/o Niko Ghika

  Island of Hydra

  My dear Jock,

  Many apologies for my remissness in writing. I got yours of the 30th of June about ten days ago, but have been on the move constantly since, and procrastination, I’m ashamed to say, set in.

  First of all, thank you so much for sending £50 to Hambros. It’s a real stitch in time, and v. kind. Secondly, I’m sure you’re right about films, birds in hand etc. I wonder how your chat with Ivan Moffat [1] went. These glowing suggestions, when it comes down to it, are often very like the bit out of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. . .

  ‘A thousand guilders?’ the Mayor looked blue; (So did the Corporation, too)’

  . . . ending up with ‘Come! Take fifty!’ Anyway, I’m sure you’ll manage everything for the best.

  So glad the galleys turned up all right, and a duplicate set sent off to America. I’ve had another very nice letter from Canfield, [2] who really does seem keen on the ‘Violins’ project. What is the projected publishing date?

  I’ve just got a rather sad letter from George Psychoundakis, [3]

  saying how hard up everyone is in his village, and notably his own family. He says, inter alia, ‘I wonder if the remainder of the £75 of which Mr Murray sent 40 could be sent, if it were not too difficult, if some friend were coming out who could bring them . . . Forgive me for asking, but things are pretty bad.’ I see authors’ letters don’t vary much! I enclose the original, for the records. It ends up ‘with love to you (P.L.F.) and all our friends Mr Murray, Aleko (Xan), Ioanna ( Joan), Daphne (Mrs Xan) etc.’

  What are your views on his book? I think with cutting and polishing and our trimmings & pictures, it could be first rate. I wish now, I’d brought the typescript with me, instead of leaving it at Taffy Rodd’s [4] flat in Rome, as I am static again for a few weeks. But Greece soars forwards.

  The Greek venture [5] has been a tremendous success. We went by road to Brindisi (across Apulia, via Lucera, Bari and those queer domed villages, Casa Rotonda and Alberobello), shipped the jeep from Brundisium to Corfu, and from there over to the Epirote coast at Igoumenitsa, and along the Kalamas valley to Yannina. Did a certain amount of Ali Pasha research, had a good look at the remains of Byron’s house, and went to the Monastery at Zitza (‘Romantic Zitza, on the shady brow . . .’ etc. see Childe Harold) where Byron and Hobhouse stayed twice, on way to and from Tepelen. [6] Then up into the Pindus, to revisit the Vlachs of Metsovo. Then south to Preveza and from Preveza over the mountains and the Acheron & Cocytus rivers to Parga, which I’d never seen before: wonderful, surrounded by steep, Albanian-speaking villages. Then over the Thesprotian mountains to Paramythia, up into the Cassiopeian range to Souli, where I left the others and trudged for two days over the mountains to the rock of Zalóngo, where the Souliot women leapt dancing into the void, in flight from the Arnauts of Ali Pasha. [7] Collected lots of splendid material from old kilted and whiskered chaps, whose grandparents can almost remember these great events. So, on to Arta, round the Ambracian gulf, through Vonitza to the island of Levkas (Santa Maura), then south through the Acarnanian mountains to Astakos and Ætolikon, & so to Missolonghi by sea. (Nearly all these places come into Childe H. & the Notes, which is fun.)

  Here the great search for Byron’s shoes began. I hadn’t got Lady Wentworth’s [8] letter with me, containing the address, and of course, she had lost it, she writes. I asked all over the town – mayors, local bigwigs etc. – for an old man who had a pair of Byron’s shoes. They all said they’d never heard of them or him, and he must be an impostor. But I tracked him down in the end, a very decent wall-eyed old man called Charalambi Baïgeórgas or Kotsákaris, descendant of a family that played a considerable part in the siege. Along with a lot of scimitars, yataghans [short Ottoman sabres], pistols, powder horns etc., he produced a parcel, already addressed, on the strength of my letters last year, to ‘the Baroness Wentworth, Crabbet Park, Sussex’. Since then, though, he seems to have fallen in love with them, and (rather understandably) wants to leave them to his children. (Lady W. would probably have had them turned into nosebags for Arab colts.) Before opening the parcel he told me the following tale.

  Byron, when he was in Missolonghi, often went out duck-shooting in the lagoon in the boat of a fisherman called Yanni Kazìs. (It was, Baïgeórgas states, on one of these outings that the fatal ‘pneumonia’ was caught. Mavrocordatos, [9] on the enclosed ‘mourning order’, calls it a ‘flaming rheumatic fever’ – ‘φλογιστικὸς ῥευματικὸς πυρετός’.) Byron died, and, in due course, Kazìs, leaving three daughters. Two of them married, but the youngest went away to Jerusalem, and became a nun. She returned to Missolonghi, a very old woman – eighty or ninety – in 1921. As she was penniless and had nowhere to stay, Baïgeórgas gave her a little room in his house where she lived a few years, and then died, handing over an old box to Baïgeórgas, containing a few mouldy religious books, some odds and ends, Mavrocordatos’ ‘Mourning Order’ (enclosed – they are quite common), and – Ld Byron’s slippers, which, she said, he used often to wear about the house when he returned from riding or from these duck-shooting trips. He gave them to her father, who kept them previously, leaving them to her when she died.

  Old Baïgeórgas then undid the parcel, and produced a pair of slippers that looked more Turkish or Moroccan or Algerian (or Burlington Arcade oriental) than Greek, to my surprise, as I had expected an ordi
nary pair of pom-pommed Evzone tsarouchia [wooden clogs worn by palace guards]. I enclose a sketch and a description of the colours. They are leather-soled, turned up at the tip, and with uppers of cotton and embroidered silk, rather faded. The age looks just about right. I made a tracing of both of them, also of the parts of the soles where the criss-cross tooling is worn smooth, in case it should corroborate, or conflict with, known facts about Byron’s malformation. Also, the size might be a help. I made enquiries about Kazìs – everyone knows about him. Also it is true that his daughter died in Baïgeórgas’s house. Baï himself makes the impression of an absolutely straight man. Personally, I’m inclined to think they really are Byron’s shoes. There was something wonderfully convincing about them. Could you ask Harold [Nicolson] & Peter [Quennell], showing the tracing? They are boat-shaped and roughly symmetrical, but one must bear in mind that they were traced sole downwards on the paper, and the worn parts copied down by holding them sole upwards, if you follow me. The worn parts are notably different on each – but so, quite often, are the shoes of normal people . . . Please don’t mistake all this for ghoulish Trelawny-like inquisitiveness – I’d just like to know if there is any possible chance of corroborating the old boy’s story. Joan took a photograph of them, also enclosed.