[9] A celebrated Parisian cabaret bar.
[10] Odette Pol Roger, Grande Dame of the champagne family; a friend of Winston Churchill’s.
[11] The equivalent of about 50 euros in 2016.
[12] The Smarts were now living in south-eastern France.
[13] The St James and Albany hotel in the rue de Rivoli, opposite the Jardin des Tuileries.
[14] Valery Larbaud (1881–1957), French writer, translator and critic.
To Xan Fielding
1 April 1958
Marona
Cameroon
Ξάν, χρυσό μου [Xan, dear boy],
I’m so sorry being such a sluggard. I ought to have written to you and Daph ages ago. But, like poor Tom Dunbabin, I just didn’t. . .
I say, what’s all this about settling in Portugal? It does sound exciting, and I’d got a very faint impression that Tangier was beginning to get you down. I loved Portugal when I crossed it by bus a few years ago and liked the Portuguese. Do write more details, especially about the farming.
I like Corsair Country, [1] and many thanks for sending it. I’ve got several criticisms, all constructive ones I think, and long to see you to go into it. My Greek book is due out soon and I’m very anxious.
My life has taken a queer temporary turn. John Huston got hold of me soon after we broke up at Lismore last year, to do the script of Romain Gary’s Prix Goncourt book, Les Racines du Ciel [The Roots of Heaven], a queer, diffuse, bulky, rather brilliant book about a sort of Jean-Gabin-esque ἀντάρτης [partisan] who leaps to the defence of elephants in French Equatorial Africa. I was put up in an hotel in Paris – St James and Albany – for most of the winter, and scribbled away like a wild cat, conferring every two days, sometimes more, with Darryl Zanuck, who is the owner & producer of the film. A very strange man with a pepper & salt moustache, bright blue eyes and a colossal cigar, which he mashes to a pulp between irregular teeth, a barrier for a loud and rasping voice. We got on very well, and eventually out I flew to F.E. Africa [2] with him & J. Huston, arriving at Fort Archambault, [3] on the banks of a winding crocodile-haunted river, the savannah around being full of elephants, lions, panthers, jaguars, giraffes & buffalo. We lived here in a huge stockade containing scores of huts inhabited by the 100-odd members of the unit & there was a stone bungalow in the middle in which dwelt Zanuck, Huston, Juliette Gréco (leading lady), Trevor Howard, Errol Flynn [4] and me . . . All pretty odd. The camp is a seething mass of cliques, largely based on nationalities, and I compatriotically belong to the French one – Juliette, a girl called Anne Marie Cazalis, a pansy actor called Marc Doelnitz, a journalist called Hedny and me. It is by far the most fun, full of secret languages and jokes and, I fear, cordially hated by all and sundry, who – like last year – hate to see one group having such a good time. Juliette is the most interesting by far – oddly beautiful, utterly bohemian, erratic, very well read and brilliant, and with a tremendous sense of humour. We became great pals at once. The life of this clique is not plain sailing by any means, as Juliette is supposed to be living with Zanuck, but gives the impression of shuddering with horror at his touch. He is blinded with violent and pathetic jealousy, and two days ago knocked her out clean, and then sobbed for two hours. I know she must be an infuriating girl for a rejected lover; but God, God spare us all this.
We are now in the Cameroon. Marona is a labyrinth of conical huts inhabited by jet-black Moslem horsemen with sabres and spears, sometimes chain mail, vast turbans wound round their heads so that only their fierce eyes peer forth. Their horses are caparisoned to the fetlocks in bold black and white checked housings. The surrounding mountains and savannah are inhabited by fetish-worshipping animists who live in caves, wear not one stitch of clothing and never sally forth without an assegai, a bow and a quiver full of long arrows.
John Huston is very amusing and very odd – as you know – and needs to be watched like a hawk. The only way of dealing with him is to diagnose his weak points and hit very hard and again and again. This establishes a humorous and rather friendly modus vivendi. We both know from the glint in each other’s eyes what we are up to and it’s rather stimulating. Thin ice work.
To my astonishment, Errol Flynn and I have become great buddies. He is a tremendous shit but a very funny one and we sally forth into dark lanes of the town together on guilty excursions that remind me rather of old Greek days with you. In fact, Juliette and he are my real standbys. Otherwise I loathe the whole atmosphere of the film world. Everything in it seems counterfeit except the money, of which, fortunately, there is a lot. I think, nevertheless, that the film stands a chance of being terrific.
What are your and Daph’s plans? Do write at once, giving full details. I have none – can’t have any, because of the film – in the immediate future, except going to one of the Greek islands – Paros, perhaps – with Joan & Maurice Bowra in June. I long to feel those waters washing away the last traces of all this rubbish. Will you write to The Rock Hotel, Bangui, Oubangui Chari, French Equatorial Africa, whither we move in a few days? It’s close to the Equator, on the edge of the great rain forest that follows the basin of the Congo.
I long to see you both again soon. Give Daph lots of hugs from me, and lots of love to you.
Γειά σου, γειά σου! [Goodbye! Good health to you!]
Paddy
[1] Corsair Country: The Diary of a Journey along the Barbary Coast (1958).
[2] French Equatorial Africa, a federation of French colonial possessions which included Cameroon, Gabon, Chad, Central African Republic and Congo-Brazzaville.
[3] The French colonial name of the city now known as Sarh.
[4] Juliette Gréco (b. 1927), bohemian French actress and singer; Trevor Howard (1913–88), English actor who became a star after appearing in Brief Encounter (1945); Errol Flynn (1909–59), Australian-American actor known for his swashbuckling roles.
To Joan Rayner
Easter Monday [7 April] 1958
Marona
Cameroon
Darling,
Χριστòς ἀνέστη! Χρόνια πολλά! [Christ is risen! Long life and happiness!] I gave a lovely Easter party last night, about twenty people, outside the little house I’ve taken here. It was terribly pretty, with lamps shaded by carved Fulbé [1] half-calabashes, all on straw mats, sitting and lying under the lamplit leaves of two enormous mango trees. Zanuck was ill, thank God – poor chap! – so couldn’t come and ruin it. I had two stark naked animists turning a lamb on a spit – a ‘meshoui’ such an occasion is called here – and a vast cauldron of very strong iced sangria. Gréco and two other Frogs came early and we cut and spread lots of caviar sandwiches. Most of us, for fun, wore the thin flowing embroidered baggy trousers that the local grandees wear, and we lolled happily talking away under the leaves till the small hours – Gréco, Flynn, Huston, Trevor Howard, Friedrich Ledebur, [2] Grégoire Aslan [3] and the local governor, who is a charming lonely white Russian called Sarkisoff, and a few more. I do wish you had been here. It was lovely and strange and gloriously different from the usual awful film atmosphere, which I grow to detest more and more.
The day before yesterday the French High Commission [er] flew from the capital in the south – Yaoundé – to decorate half a dozen powerful Fulbé Lamidos [4] of this area, ‘our’ Lamido – ‘Marona’ – and the Lamidos of Bogo, Mirdif and Foumban. Each Lamido was enthroned under a vast coloured umbrella which gyrated and hovered up and down by his court, with vast retinues of draped horsemen behind them with spears, rifles and scimitars. Each had a storyteller and jester and a swarm of splendidly clad swaggering minor potentates and his team of drummers and trumpeters. The noise was deafening – hundreds of drums hammering away, across which cut the sound of ear-splitting fanfares every now and then, as the trumpeters put their long thin instruments to their lips. They are of brass, four or five yards long, exactly like the ones displayed on Egyptian bas-reliefs. When each légion d’honneur was pinned on, there was
a pandemonium of firing, drumming & trumpeting, and the whole thing ended up by swarms of horsemen galloping and caracoling [5] past in a whirl of dust, brandishing their sabres and spears. The best of all was the queer and beautiful young Lamido of Bogo – jet black, distinguished and nourished on all that is rarest and most decadent in French literature, lolling in sober and grand robes at the heart of the most glittering and martial court of all and escorted by a fluttering troop of fan-bearers.
We push off to Rock Hotel, Bangui, Oubangui-Chari, French Equatorial Africa, in three days’ time.
All my love, darling
JEMY
[1] The Fulbé of Central Africa (also known as the Fula or Fulani) are a pastoral, nomadic people.
[2] Friedrich von Ledebur (1900–86), Austrian-born character actor who gained international recognition after playing the role of the South Sea islander Queequeg in John Huston’s film Moby Dick (1956).
[3] Grégoire Aslan (1908–82), known as ‘Coco Aslan’, was an ethnic Armenian actor and musician.
[4] Local ruler, the African equivalent of the Arab title ‘Emir’.
[5] A caracole is a half-turn executed by a horse and rider.
To Joan Rayner
25 April 1958
Rock Hotel
Bangui
Oubangui-Chari [1]
French Equatorial Africa
My darling Musk,
What a long delay, caused by our deracination from the Cameroons and the shift to the Oubangui-Chari, and by various misadventures and the grind of script writing. I’m so sorry, darling.
Marona became an inferno of heat and anger and anguish before we left it. Ice became more precious than diamonds, as a glass of water left standing for half an hour practically reached boiling point. Great dust-devils a mile high whirled over the plains and the dried-up riverbeds. But there were lovely moments, and perhaps the best of these were early morning and evening rides, with Friedrich Ledebur – who rides like a saint – or alone. The horses all have saddles rather like Guatemala and Nicaragua, and no doubt they are of identical Moorish origin. They try to canter all the time and the Fulbé never seem to move at any other gait. Some of these rides were wonderful. One sometimes got mixed up in a whole troop of Fulbé tittupping along in clouds of dust. It was specially nice in the evening, with wonderful red sunsets behind mountains like groves of thunderbolts and long streams of ibises and crested cranes homing overhead with sad cries. I went on one of these evening rides on a black half-broken Arab that behaved more and more queerly and, the moment the sun set and it began to get dark – you know how quick it is – broke into an unhaltable gallop across the plain. Terrifying! No stopping him. On and on he went for half an hour till he suddenly stopped dead outside the walls of a Fulbé village, banging me against a tree with terrific force. I only stayed on by grasping the pommel like mad; and somehow managed to get home without disaster, aching like hell. My left elbow was scratched and bloody, so I put some iodine on, but a week after getting here it swelled up double the size and went an awful shiny dark red, so I was stuffed with antibiotics and put to bed. After two days of hell they cut it open in the hospital and let out the flags of all the nations – it was almost as if they had removed an alarm-clock, it throbbed so. All’s well now, but it was awful while it lasted. Everything seems to go septic here.
We flew here by relays over endless tracts of semi-desert and then over endless tracts of petén-like forest. Bangui is rather a gay little town – a bit like Scarborough in Grenada – on the banks of the Oubangui river, which is the same sort of thing as the Rio San Juan, except that it has great rocks and islands jutting from it. The other bank is the Belgian Congo. There are pygmies in the forest, and, it is hoped, elephants. I have got a lovely studio here, over a restaurant, a huge L-shaped room which I have curtained and hung with glorious lengths of cloth which the women wear here – all from Manchester, France or Japan, but specially made for the African market, and very odd and strange (I’m bringing lots back, which you can have made into washing dresses or cushions or something).
My French chums were saints while I was laid up, arriving with loads of pawpaw, flowers, soursops, mangoes etc. Also, I must say, John Huston & Zanuck. John H. has been joined by Suzanne Flon, the French actress he is in love with, who is charming, unspectacular, funny and quiet. [2] I’ve got to like him a great deal better. It’s all much better when he realises that one is fully aware of what a wicked old scoundrel he is. He is in no doubt about this now, and all is fine.
Two lovely letters of yours – one to Marona and a much older one to Fort Archambault – arrived just as I was getting better from the arm, but still bedridden. What a lovely account of your French trip, it did sound fun. I felt like crying at the news of all our friends, they seemed so far away and remote and so utterly different from the fifth-rate world I’m surrounded by here – there are only about three people I would ever like to see again – and as inaccessible as Olympians. I realised how outstanding and what exceptions they all were from ordinary life, how spoiled one is. Starting with you, they all seem more rare than black pearls.
I don’t know how the film will be. But I think very good. It’s exciting work and maddening at the same time – John H. is such a last-minute changer, utterly empirical on the surface, but perhaps with a dash of underlying genius which will make the whole thing cohere. The changes in the script can be either an exciting challenge to one’s talents and skill in marquetry; or deadening, heart-breaking mortician’s work, rouging and curling a corpse, when one goes over a scene for the fifth or sixth time. Apart from the pennies, I think it’s an utter waste of time, or almost. There may be some lessons about concision and dexterity in manipulating plots which might conceivably be of use.
There are terrific tornadoes here, whirling El Greco skies that turn black and break to smithereens with forked lightning and thunderclaps, all the branches thrashing together and splitting and the pouring clouds and the seething Oubangui joining in a palisade of water. They make the town seem cowering and fragile and pathetic and the forest appears to make a threatening leap forward, with its disturbing content of fierce fauna and strangling vegetation and arrows and drums and pygmies and fetishes and ritual murders. The Rock Hotel is a ghastly modernistic Corbusier smart building. I went into it after one of these tornadoes, and found it cloudy with flying termites and moths & bats, the floor two inches deep in drifts of termites’ wings and hundreds of frogs leaping hither and thither, with Juliette Gréco’s mongoose running wild among them, killing frog after frog, and, when he could take no more, vomiting frogs’ feet and heads onto this eerie carpet of broken-off wings. It was like the last gasp of Babylon or Nineveh.
I wandered off into the forest some nights ago and slept under a tree, rather like the Negress in D. Rousseau’s picture [3] hoping a lion might come and rub muzzles and move on. When I woke up I was soaking wet and lashed to the ground by thousands of strands of gossamer, like Gulliver waking up in Lilliput.
I’ve had a case of local butterflies made for you by a woman who became expert in such matters in Indo-China, they look very pretty & strange and I hope you like them.
I’ve no idea what’s to become of me. We may go to the Belgian Congo – or we may go back to Paris for the studio shots in a week or so. So alas! no good writing. I’ll keep you in touch. I do miss you darling, and long to be in Chester Row planning more sensible journeys than this!
lots and lots of love from
JEMY
xxx
oxo
[1] Known since 1958 as the Central African Republic.
[2] Huston described Flon as ‘the most extraordinary woman I have ever known’.
[3] A reference to Henri Rousseau’s painting The Sleeping Gypsy.
Joan allowed Paddy to pursue other women, secure in the knowledge that he would never leave her. In October 1958 he went to stay in Rome with his friend and former lover, Judy Montagu. There he met Lyndall Birch, who was working as a proof
reader for the Food and Agriculture Association (FAO), while she tried to write a novel in the tiny flat in the Via del Gesù she shared with the photographer Josephine Powell. Still in her mid-twenties, she was beautiful but shy and unconfident. Earlier in the year she had played a small part in the film The Nun’s Story, directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Audrey Hepburn. When she met Paddy she was secretly engaged to the bisexual Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, though both were experiencing doubts and this engagement was broken off soon after. Her liaison with Paddy was the first of what she would later describe as ‘a chain of disastrous affairs’. This letter was written after Paddy had returned to London for the publication of the first volume of his long-awaited book on Greece, entitled Mani; he enclosed a photograph of himself in the same envelope.
To Lyndall Birch
23 November 1958
13 Chester Row, SW1
Darling Lyndall,
I packed off a whole bundle of deathless prose [i.e. Mani and earlier books] to you a few days ago, something to get your teeth into! But it probably takes ages for parcels to reach the Via del Gesù, and up all those stairs. But at least they won’t have to sneak in on tiptoe, like their author! I did love that. It gave everything a wonderful feeling of conspiracy and romance – not that the latter was lacking anyway. I loved those coffees and rolls, too, in different cafés, in a lovely, early morning unbreathed Rome, and walking on air back to the Tiber island along a labyrinth of palaces. I played through the whole of Don Giovanni last night, and felt very homesick for your pretty room and heavenly hours.
I saw Ivan [1] several times in Paris, and he seemed pretty keen on the Zurich idea. I cracked you up like anything to David O. Selznick, [2] backed by Ivan, pointing out that you had a jolly good, steady and well-paid job in Rome, so it would have to be a pretty good offer to prise you out of it. Could you leave your Rome job for say, six months, make a vast quantity of money, and return again? That would be the ideal.
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