Patrick Leigh Fermor

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  No more now, darling Mushy, except heaps and heaps of love from

  JEM

  [1] A Time to Keep Silence, published on 29 May 1957.

  [2] From Gaston Leroux’s Le Mystère de la chambre jaune, one of the first works of ‘locked room’ crime fiction. It was first published in France in periodical form in 1907, then in novel form the following year.

  The peace of Saint-Wandrille was shattered by an unexpected telephone call from the American film director John Huston, who asked Paddy to write a screenplay (though usually he wrote his own). Paddy’s task was to adapt a novel by Romain Gary, Les Racines du ciel (1956), which became the film The Roots of Heaven (1958).

  To Debo Devonshire

  5 August [1957]

  Hôtel Prince de Galles

  33 Avenue George V

  Paris

  Darling Debo,

  Everything’s fixed. I only finished reading the book three minutes before meeting Mr Zanuck, [1] but it didn’t matter, because he burst into his suite at the Savoy like a rifle bullet saying: ‘Swell to see you, Mr Feemor, it’s really swell. I’m off to the Belgian Congo in three days, and I’ve just taken two yellow pills & three injections and don’t make much sense, so you mustn’t be sore at me if I talk a whole lot of boloney.’

  He’s tiny, with bright blue minute eyes glinting with mad intensity, a ragged sandy moustache and his injections had clearly incapacitated him from judging distances, as the colossal cigar in his mouth – as irremovably there as part of his anatomy – was snapped in the middle, one half hanging at right angles and belching volumes of smoke, like the funnels of one of those Thames steamers going under Chelsea Bridge. He must have charged into a door or a wall or perhaps a mirror.

  I can’t remember if I told you that the whole of the book is a plea against elephant shooting, in case the species becomes extinct. The villain of the book goes berserk and shoots them by the score in a sort of demon’s passion. This is obviously the bit Mr Zanuck likes best, because when I met him next day he said: ‘It’s a swell book, Mr Feemor, a wonderful book. The best bit is when they bump off all those elephants. But we’ll run into difficulties here because of all that goddam humanitarian hooey in England and America. I’d like to do the thing properly, and shoot a whole lot of them, a whole lot . . .’ his blue eyes kindled dreamily. ‘I doubt if I get permission to shoot more than a dozen.’ He looked rather dejected for a second, but then said, cheering up, ‘I tell you what we’ll do! We’ll only shoot a dozen or maybe fifteen, but I’ll put lots and lots of cameras about at different angles so it’ll look as if it were killing hundreds! But what a book!’

  There never seemed to be a second’s question of my not doing the thing, so now I’ve got to start work full steam ahead and hope for the best. It’s rather an alarming, but v. exciting assignation. I had luncheon with the old French authoress [2] the day before yesterday and with Mark Grant, [3] and there was much loving talk of you, and swapping of Athenian for Irish tales. Otherwise, Paris seems stripped of all my friends and has become one of the major tropical cities of the world. The policemen are in shirtsleeves and khaki solar-topees, as though it were Khartoum. I wandered around by myself till 7 a.m. in Montmartre the first night in countless bars full of negroes, soldiers, sailors, toughs and tarts of all colours and a few noseless pimps, and on the second night till 8 a.m. in Montparnasse and Les Halles. Here, very strangely, I fell in with two Australian nurses who seemed a bit lost, and fed them onion soup as day broke, surrounded by porters and butchers in blood-stained smocks as though they had just been helping at the guillotine. I am writing this in the mosaic courtyard of this luxurious hotel, with a bogus Spanish fountain tinkling in the middle. The Frogs and Americans here look awful, exactly like pigs, with tiny pig’s eyes. I have just caught a sobering glimpse of my own reflection, and so, alas, do I. Circe has done a thorough job. How I wish you had been here! Just think of the night prowling and dark dancing, all the fun. I long for you like anything, and yearn and gaze towards the dividing Channel with hate.

  Meanwhile, a billion tons of love, Debo darling, and promise to write hourly.

  Paddy

  [1] Darryl Francis Zanuck (1902–79), American film producer and studio executive.

  [2] DD’s older sister, Nancy, who lived in France.

  [3] PLF’s wartime comrade Mark Ogilvie-Grant, who lived in Athens.

  To Joan Rayner

  31 December 1957

  L’Arche de Noé

  Îles de Porquerolles

  Var

  My darling Muskin,

  Lots of adventures to tell! First of all the Chasse à Courre from Chantilly. [1] I thought I was pretty smartly turned out with my new coat, boots, velvet-cap and all, but I can’t tell you how quiet and modest I appeared – like a female quetzal [2] as opposed to a male – when I went to have breakfast with M. de Souza Lage (I’ve got to chuck this horrible Biro) across the road from St-Firmin. (No, here’s another that actually writes.) He was dressed in a long-tailed blue coat with enormous gold and silver buttons and masses of pockets, a yellow waistcoat with gold buttons, white buckskin breeches and huge glittering jackboots like the Blues or the Life Guards. When we set out, he put on a belt with a silver-hilted sword about a foot and a half long, and one of those enormous horns over one shoulder and under the other. We had a great breakfast of omelettes and fried mushrooms washed down with a bottle of claret and then set off. The meet was at Royaumont, with Max Fould (Alan’s brother-in-law) [3] doing the honours, half in his house, half in the courtyard of the Abbey, now full of other splendidly dressed men and women in tricornes trimmed with gold lace, while haughty steeds led by smart grooms & second horsemen neighed and stamped under coronetted blankets and huge black and white hounds, leashed together by the half dozen and flogged and held back by glittering and bottle-nosed hunt-servants, slavered and bayed. It was a bright, slightly frosty morning and it looked glorious. The Master was a splendid old boy called le Marquis de Roüalle. Lots of handshaking and flourishing of doffed caps, assembling and mounting, then a terrific fanfare. All the male members of the hunt blow these, not only the hunt servants. How they manage to ride with these orchestral instruments and above all, continue to learn and remember the 200-odd most complex tunes that mark the different stages of the chase is a mystery.

  Off we tooled into the woods opposite, escorted by fanfares, and were hanging about in a field covered with haycocks when the hounds started kicking up a great fuss in the undergrowth, and out of the wood, with enormous leaps, came two stags, one of them a ‘royal’ with twelve points like an enormous scaffolding, the other with six: intelligence which was at once blown down the horns. They were just the opposite side of a stream, leaping along in great parabolas through the haycocks against a background of forest – it was just the kind of tapestry-vision I was longing for. We jumped over the stream (not a big one) – de Souza Lage and I, that is; I stuck to him like a limpet all the time, on a lovely mare called Herodiade – and we set off full tilt through the woods after the stags (the hounds and everyone else taking a different route) and followed them through a sort of petén [4] for about two miles, tormented by brambles & roots and ducking under low branches – I see the point of those caps now – till we lost them. All this sounds odd, but de S. L. is considered one of the crack chaps in this queer society, so I was in good hands. We were soon quite lost, and made our way back to the nest by listening for horns, and found everyone again in a built-up area like Welwyn Garden City, our horses thick in sweat as though preparing for a shave in a barber’s shop. The ‘royal’ was lost, but we pounded about for another hour after the six-pointer, by no means always sticking to the rides as I had imagined, but through the underbrush half the time, till we came to some swampy country with enormous tufted reeds ten feet high like the upper reaches of the Amazon, with the hounds making a great noise somewhere. De S. L. and I were alone again. We gave our horses to a girl to hold, dismounted, and plunged into the middle of this.
Most of it was several inches deep in swamp, and trotting through in boots and spurs was no joke. It became less of one when S. L. gave me his crop as well as his horn, scabbard & belt to carry, and advanced brandishing the naked blade in order to plunge it into the stag’s breast if it broke in our direction. It nearly did for me! After half an hour of this hell, we came on the stag aux abois [‘at bay’], surrounded by hounds. It broke through them at our approach, galloped off, and was shot (as it was in the outskirts of a village) a mile off by one of the hunt servants with a special gun, as there were lots of people and children about, and, if they attempt to despatch it with their long daggers in such circumstances, there is danger of the stag goring a bystander (A piqueur [whipper-in] was killed last year – more than you can say of fox hunters!). The poor quarry was put in a truck and taken back to Royaumont. We followed it, and, while it was being cut up and the venison distributed to the innumerable peasants who help in the hunt, we drank whisky & white wine and ate smoked salmon & caviar sandwiches, then gathered round the remainder of the stag, – all the innards, etc., which were wrapped in its skin – for the curée as it is called: i.e. a grizzly banquet when the hounds eat up all this: three-quarters of an hour of antiphonal hornblowing, recounting all the different – phases? – of the day, the members of the hunt divided into two orchestras, as it were, the hunt servants into a third, each playing in turn, sometimes all together, in elaborate obsequies. The impression of something ancient and mediaeval – almost Merovingian – was overpowering. All was over by 3.30, rather early, as it often goes on long after dusk. D. S. L. – a jolly, hirsute, good-looking, half-Brazilian – then suggested that we should sneak off and drive over to another forest, send for two more of his horses, and follow another hunt, a much rougher one, belonging to a Comte de la Béraudière; so off we set, only to discover that they hadn’t even found; so we went back to this house and drank maté [5] – it’s rather good – then lots of gin & tonic. Patrick [Kinross] turned up that evening, Alan & André de Staercke next day; a huge lunch, then dinner at Cécile de Rothschild. [6] It was a nice weekend, except that poor Diana had a dreadful cold, which she seemed to master towards the end. The hunt was the highlight for me. I managed to come out without disgrace, thank God, & Souza Lage is very eager that we should do lots more of it – horses any time! – and promises to take me to a boar hunt, which is fast and furious. Here the quarry is killed with a spear, often wreaking havoc first with its tusks. Their speed and fierceness is apparently quite something. Last year a boar was marked in north-east Poland and killed in the Camargue a fortnight later! Think of all the countries, frontiers, forests and rivers it must have crossed! The Vistula, the Elbe, the Oder, the Rhine, or the Danube, the Saône, the Rhone delta, with all its tributaries, perhaps the Etang de Vaccaris and the moat of Aigues Mortes!

  I caught the night train to St Raphael on Monday, catching the bus thence to St Tropez next morning. And it was raining! Miles of vineyards under water, long detours caused by overflowing rivers – one bridge washed away! – and St Tropez, when I got there, a steep labyrinth of cascading streets and a wicked criss-cross of gushing gutters overhead. Françoise [Germaine Tailleferre’s daughter] and Jean-Luc were waiting in ground-sheets, Wellingtons & Sou’Westers. For some reason, we were not staying in the villa 3 miles from the town, but in a large gloomy palazzo-like building in the middle of the town; huge, but not big enough for the quantity of people staying there – my two, three children, two crop-headed lesbians smoking cigars and a shifting troop of friends and hangers-on and an enormous and very funny Provençal femme de ménage who sat down to table with us. All this revolves round Germaine Tailleferre. [7] She’s not at all brilliant, as Freddie G. said, but funny, charming, friendly, kind and nice. Philippe Soupault [8] caught influenza at the last moment and couldn’t come, alas! I think it would have killed you, the noise and the lack of privacy, and I thought I would expire too – for the first day; then I seemed to slip into the general lunatic atmosphere and enjoyed it a great deal. It’s the most bohemian thing I’ve had anything to do with for ages. Nobody seemed to have a bean, & lived like Elijah fed by ravens, but it was all very gay and happy. G. Tailleferre is a wonderful mimic and raconteuse, full of funny & scandalous tales of Cocteau, Morand, Radiguet, Charlie Chaplin, Les Six, etc., Boeuf sur le Toit, [9] Ernst, Jacob etc. She played us the first two acts of the opera she is writing to P. Soupault’s libretto, of Hans Andersen’s Little Mermaid. It seemed awfully good. She kept forgetting the words, and when this happened, improvised ones of such startling and inventive indecency that all were very soon in tears. But after three days I baled out, as it was quite impossible to do any work, and escaped here, where I set to like a madman, and I’m already two-thirds of the way through the proofs, and feeling much happier.

  It is simply heavenly here, rather like the forested part of Spetsai, rocks and pine-needle-covered pathways, jagged cliffs, calanques and inlets, and ilex, arbutus, thyme, marjoram, bay, μαλοτήpα [mountain tea] and φασκομηλιά [sage] everywhere, smelling exactly like Greece. I bathed this afternoon, and my word it was cold! But there has not been a cloud or a drop of rain since I arrived: long walks in shirtsleeves and two glorious sleeps in the sun under an ilex. This hotel is delightful – Odette P. R. [10] told me about it – and I have a lovely room down three steps with a red-tiled floor and a window overlooking a tiled roof, reeds, bamboo, trees, masts and the sea. The food is lovely – urchins, lobsters, brandades, rouille, bouillabaisse, calamares, all washed down with a terribly good vin-rosé from the island, or a red wine from opposite called Pradet. My room and full pension costs 2,200 francs a day. [11] I was going to end this letter by begging you (reinforced by a telegram) to fly out at once to Marseilles or Toulon, where I could have met you and then, after a few days here, go and see Larry [Durrell] and then Amy [Smart]. [12] But, alas! this morning (New Year’s Day) I got a telegram saying (a) John Huston absolutely delighted with script and (b) that I’m urgently needed in Paris on the 3rd; so, alas, I’m catching the night train tomorrow, back to St James & Albany. [13] I hope it is only a meeting or something. If so, I’ll come straight over to London afterwards. I’ve got some surprises that I do hope you’ll like.

  Darling, you were a saint when I left, and I do feel guilty leaving you with all these things unreturned. I’m sending some pennies towards the telephone bill, as most of it must have been mine, and it’ll be coming in soon. Do let me know (St J & A) if I can do or get anything in Paris.

  I am reading, and am absolutely fascinated by, Valery Larbaud [14] – don’t get him, as I’ve got his complete works. I long to know what you think of him. No more now, my own darling Musk, except a happy New Year and heaps and heaps of love from

  Paddy

  We must come here together some time. Between New Year and Easter is best. From Easter to October, it seems, is infernal. This hotel, I’ve just discovered, has one star, and no wonder.

  [1] PLF gave a more worked-up version of this episode in a letter written to Debo Devonshire the next day (In Tearing Haste, pages 39–41).

  [2] A species of bird found in tropical forests; the males are strikingly coloured, while the female plumage is brown or grey.

  [3] Baron Max Fould-Springer, whose sister Thérèse (‘Poppy’) married Alan Pryce-Jones, lived at Royaumont, a Palladian abbot’s palace near Paris.

  [4] A heavily forested region of Guatemala, visited by PLF and JR in 1948.

  [5] A traditional South American caffeine-infused drink.

  [6] Baroness Cécile de Rothschild (1913–95), expert golfer and friend of Cecil Beaton and Greta Garbo. Her country house was nearby at Noisy-sur-Oise.

  [7] Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983), composer: the only female member of the group of composers known as ‘Les Six’.

  [8] Philippe Soupault (1897–1990), poet, novelist, critic, and co-founder of the Surrealist movement.