To Jock Murray
late July, alas [1968?]
Kardamyli
Messenia
Dear Jock,
The trouble is, that about twenty different people are doing to me exactly what I am doing to you. I know it’s no consolation, but if I am causing anguish, anger, sorrow and disappointment in Albemarle Street, [1] the same afflictions are being visited on me here twenty-fold; viz. deadlock on deadlock. The studio for writing in, the power-house for prose about thirty yards from the house in sequestered silence, was supposed to be finished three winters ago. The shell is up, but carpenters, tile makers, plumbers, electricians, glaziers – every single artisan whose combined efforts would make this thing habitable is doing a Leigh Fermor on me – viz. promises, delay, procrastination, augmented by a random scattering of illnesses, strokes, stones in the bladder, melancholia, and they are all interdependent. Occasionally it seems, after endless toil, journeys, pep-talks, threats and prayers, to be going well; then a link in the chain cracks; the cat stops killing the rat, the rat stops gnawing the rope, the rope stops hanging the butcher, the butcher stops killing the ox etc. etc. Each of these breakdowns involves long hot drives – then drinks – to the various villages where these horny-handed sluggards are scattered: to Kalamata and Tripoli, in the middle of the Peloponnese, each temporary remedy calling for a separate system of comminution, appeal, exhumination, wire-pulling and ruse. I could have settled in the empty shell, but there is always someone tinkering loyally away [at] the loam and the rough cast. [2] I am terrified unless I keep at it that it won’t be finished when winter comes. It’s no joke. No joke, above all, because all this does in the equanimity and established routine that I need to get over the style and cook my old man’s dumplings. But I do tear my nose from the wrong grindstone to the right one. If coming Greece-wards, do come here; one more distraction couldn’t do any more harm than the seething mass of it already on the job; and it would be such fun; and you would understand all these transitory but infuriating difficulties far better than by reading this bare outline of them, for there are many others tiresome enough for us to confront, without burdening you with them vicariously.
I feel better after all this. To hell with them all. The right will triumph.
Best love from Joan and me,
Yours ever
Paddy
[1] The John Murray building at No. 50 Albemarle Street.
[2] An allusion to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V, 1.
Paddy knew several of the British Ambassadors to Greece, but he was especially friendly with Michael Stewart, who was in post during the difficult period of the Colonels’ rule, and his wife Damaris.
To Damaris Stewart
2 October 1968
Kardamyli
Messenia
Dear Damaris,
I’ve been meaning to write for days to thank you both for letting me and mine horn in on that gorgeous banquet. It was fun, and the Ghikas adored it. I fear that, maddened with the General’s Naxian wine, I was rather noisy; I feel guilty about booming out those rather grivoises [saucy] French songs, which the wicked old general, muffled by his even riper years, treacherously initiated sotto voce. He did enjoy himself; so did I, and I think everyone. One’s only middle-aged once, is my new watchword.
It was a different tale next morning. Before setting off, I slunk round to see Barbara and Niko Ghika and was comforted to discover that the aftermath of the Naxian affected them in the same way, viz. spots before the eyes, racing pulses, headaches like forked lightning. (All well worth it.) It was consoling to pool hangovers in their softly lit quarters.
We called for tamer music and for paler ale. [1]
The Jellicoes’ [2] visit was all too brief. George did a tremendous high dive from a rock, which I’ll always think of as Jellicoe’s Leap, rival to Sappho’s in Lefkas. [3] Put on my mettle, I stole there after they left and when no-one was about (in case of funking at the last moment), described (?) the same dread parabola. It wasn’t as dread as it looked, but I wish I’d thought of it first.
We – my mason-god-brother and two workmen & I – are busy weaving a huge and beautiful pebble star round the octagonal fountain in the front terrace (placed there entirely due to you for the sake of swallows), to astound Joan with when she gets back from Blighty on the 8th. (I do hope you’ll both come and inspect whenever you can.) It is fed by cunning underwater pipes which will spread concentric ripples: beguiling enough, we hope, to lure down even the most jaded northbound swallow next spring. How quelling if they ignore these blandishments!
Yours ever
Paddy
[1] ‘I cried for madder music and for stronger wine’ – Ernest Dowson’s poem Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae (‘I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion’).
[2] PLF’s close friend and wartime comrade, George Jellicoe (1918–2007), 2nd Earl Jellicoe, and his wife Philippa. The Jellicoes would become regular visitors to Kardamyli.
[3] Sappho is supposed to have leapt to her death from the white cliffs of the southerly cape of the island of Lefkas, for love of Phaon, a ferryman.
To John Betjeman
28 September 1969
Kardamyli
Messenia
Dear John,
Here are the gloomy London verses, and two more, while I’m about it [1] with explanatory preceding Arguments. I’ve just finished reading St Simeon Stylites; [2] my word, it’s funny.
I wish you’d all stayed here longer; it was so marvellous. Lovely autumn weather now, viz. in Greece, suddenly clean deep earth and vegetation colours after the rain, lighter veils of shadow cast by solids, evening air the colour of hock, pale magnesium shadows, clarity of vision, hence abolition of distance, all the way to Mars. Cyclamen and lovely smells.
After too much to drink one night before you came, Joan & I were making up epitaphs, apropos of one I saw years ago in a Devon (Cullompton) church full of Chichester tombs. One, with a lady very much overdressed and holding a coronet went: ‘Here’s Lady Donegal! To sing her praise // Needs not a wreath, but a whole Grove of Bays’, etc. This is one to Copella, the mule who brings all the sand for the building here.
Water with Tears the pebbles of this Strand!
Copella’s shed her final load of sand.
Her sands ran out. For Mortals, too, alas!
The Grains grow scarcer in Life’s brittle Glass.
Her life was grasing [grazing], but our Flesh is Grass.
which was followed by several others including both of us, of which I send Joan’s
Pussies, here Mistress Joan LIES! Offer her
At least the Incense of a grateful Purr!
Let Tortoiseshell and Tabby both repine
That ne’er look’d up in vain at suppertime.
Some call to mind her Bounty, some her Grace
And plaintive Mews contort each whisker’d Face
And Kittens, when they see incisèd here
Her name, a fleeting second may forswear,
Their lissom Sport for one compunctive Tear.
Next door to each other in Rousham churchyard, I noticed one headstone dedicated to Jos. (?) Mason, the other to Ebenezer (?) Fortnum, both mid eighteenth century, I think. In Tidcombe churchyard, Wilts, a stone commemorates someone called VIVEASH, a name I thought made up for Mrs V., in Antic Hay. [3]
Do come back and inspect progress.
Yours ever
Paddy
Box, I’m sure, is the name of the Penguin author on Orthodoxy. [4]
O Gemme of Joye and Jaspar of Jocunditie
(Soho Thoughts from Abroad) [5]
Come when the publics are shut and the fish bars are clashing their shutters
And the rust and the rain are in triumph and the cats are at work on the clanking
Dustbins and vomit cascades in a neonlit gush by the Wimpy
Bar. [6] The greensward is gossamer’d o’er with family planning devices;
Nark-time has
come to the manor. The narrows are busy with wide boys
And the lanes are a-flicker with flickknives and the clip-joints cough up for protection.
Unlayable dolls slick their heels in the dimly-lit doorways of clip-joints,
And a chucker-out slumbers below in a lair full of beetles and coke-lids.
Sid puts the blanks on the twanks and Sam pushes pot by the parking
Lot – what a zoom of exhausts as the kids come up West for a giggle and
Kicks! Look at Len, Jack and Les going in with the boot by the phone-box,
And Pimlico Pete on all fours, spitting half of his gnashers down Meard Street,
Poised for a cop in the shelter, a honey-haired plain-clothes policeman
Flutters blue lids on blue eyes at an out-of-work actor from Ealing
Billed for a run at the Scrubs; [7] the patrol-car glides blue to the kerb-stone.
Turbaned in lilac, a Sikh, and a clerk with his heart full of Helen
Of Troy, are morosely at gaze, but Kinky, Wank, Cute wink the windows
And mugs from the midlands and suburbs slow down at the lure of the glow worm
Glow on the jamb by the bell-push, of ill-written cards that say ‘Edna’,
‘Mona, young model’, ‘Sheree’ and ‘Sabrina’ and ‘Yvonne, French model’,
– Dodging a jagload of starlets with poodles in Ogilvie tartan
Jackets, all meat for their masters, the real estate moguls of Highgate,
With fruit machine empires and frighteners and candy-floss cohorts of call-birds
Taking a tenner a tinkle in Bayswater luxury flatlets –
Sadly they turn from the doors to the doorway of Round-the-Clock-Striptease.
Come! ’Tis the time of good cheer! The deep freeze is rife with bistecca,
Pop goes the grocers’ Marsala, the tins are releasing their scampi,
Hang up the flitch made of cardboard and roll out the Watered Barolo!
Cyprus head waiters are welcoming admen in broken Italian,
And top men unbend from the tension of public relations and satire,
Carnaby-collared and cuffed, and cleverly quiffed for the close-ups.
Nasal the note of the noise and nasal and knowing the features
The crèpe-suzette lights from below; and fragrant the double Drambuies
Entwining with jumbo Partagás [8] the fumes of the spoils of the showroom
A crooner and runaway heiress confer with the Press over cointreau
And fizz! go the takeover bargains for retreads and camp-sites and surplus
As Bunny-time looms, as the wipers awake on the windscreens of Phantoms.
Come! ’Tis the hour of Expenses, TV personalities, flash bulbs!
Hark to the click of the wheel and the murmur in Bow Bells Parisian:
‘Banco!’ ‘Rien ne va plus.’ ‘Slip the sergeant a couple of tenners.’
Hark to the deep organ voice and purple heartbeat [9] of Old England.
[1] ‘The Greek Stones Speak’ and ‘Christmas Lines for Bernard of Morlaix’, both printed in Artemis Cooper (ed.), Words of Mercury (2003).
[2] A Tennyson poem, first published in 1842.
[3] In Aldous Huxley’s novel Antic Hay (1923), the character of Myra Viveash is inspired by the society heiress, Nancy Cunard.
[4] PLF probably refers to George Herbert Box (1869–1933), prolific author on religious topics.
[5] The title is drawn from a poem by William Dunbar (1465–1520), ‘London thou art the flour of cities all’, printed in the Oxford Book of English Verse, a volume that PLF knew well; he had carried a copy in his rucksack on his walk across Europe. The subtitle is a reference to Browning’s ‘Home-Thoughts, from Abroad’ (1845).
[6] A chain of cheap restaurants selling hamburgers.
[7] Wormwood Scrubs, a prison in West London.
[8] A brand of Havana cigar.
[9] A reference to ‘purple hearts’, a type of amphetamine.
To Niko Ghika
2 October 1969
Kardamyli
Messenia
Dear Niko,
What a lovely evening. Well worth postponing my departure for, and very nearly my last! Next day, after thousands of slow hairpin bends south of Tripoli, when I came to the straight bit of road leading into Megalopolis, I must have heaved a sigh of relief and accelerated to much too fast a speed; a back tyre exploded, the car shot along for a 100 yards or so while I just managed to keep it on the road, then its left wheels got into a shallow ditch and whiz bang! Over the car turned completely, went on a little way like a tortoise on its back, then stopped. I climbed out of the broken window on to the road, feeling blissfully happy and no wonder! Only a small bump on the forehead, like David’s sling stone mark on Goliath’s forehead – now vanished – and, out of a case of whisky, 2 huge demijohns of Markopoulo retsina, 3 γαλόνια [gallons] of Hercules’ blood, 3 of Νεμέα ροζέ [Nemea rosé], and 3 big Aigina pitchers for turning into lamps, not one was broken, not a drop spilt (of either nectar or ichor). [1] I have given up smoking as a penance for simple folly of inappropriate speed, a whole week now; and still feel rather bereaved and at a loss. The faithful Peugeot, which saved me like a loose-fitting suit of armour, is being hammered into shape again by Athenian artisans and will be ready next week.
There is a serious problem down here among the books, i.e. a steadily increasing plague of these destructive little insects known to bibliophiles as ‘silverfish’. We are very anxious about it, and I meant, when in Athens, to contact Mr Walton, and get his advice. (There is some very simple petrol-based solution that deals with it.) The awful thing is (don’t tell!) that I’ve forgotten his Christian name, and, as we are on first-name terms, I can’t write to him direct (no ‘cher ami’ in English!) Could you please most kindly send me his name – also – perhaps, put our problem to him by telephone? It is v. worrying, like a minor plague of Egypt. It would be sad if our slender library dissolved as it assembled!
Do come here, if you feel like a change from Athens. It is marvellous now, beautiful autumn weather, paler sunlight, warm bathing, clear air. The new exedra, [2] to the left of the terrace outside the drawing room, looks lovely. It’s nearly finished, same system as the big one, with a marble balustrade at the end supported in two squat pillars. The other two pillars are these old rafters from downstairs embedded, to mark the change from the leaning exedra back to the horizontal. It looks very nice. Underneath, there is a broad black stripe (pebbles, etc.) round the table plinth, and then round the edge, the crest all white except for a symmetrical pattern of black dots, like the spots on a Hellenistic mosaic leopard.
How is the Corfu house plan getting on? [3] I think one of the most beautiful things in architecture, gardens, etc. is the descent of white terraces, balustrades perhaps, all connected by a shallow continuous staircase – raft after floating superimposed raft, jutting out over sky and sea – this kind of thing is occasionally seen with two tricorned figures standing, for scale, in imaginary Piranesi ruinscapes, or better still, Virgil and Dante in a Paradiso illustrated by Doré – cypresses, cedars, sea below, cloudburst descending, shafts of sunlight overhead.
Lela’s waiting for this, so I must stop. Do come here if you want to do some work away from Athens. Many thanks for letting us stay!
Love,
Paddy
[1] The ethereal golden fluid that is the blood of the gods.
[2] A room, portico, or arcade with a bench or seats where people may converse, especially in ancient Roman and Greek buildings. PLF built several exedrae at Kardamyli, one inside and two outside.
[3] The Ghikas were building a house on Corfu, after their house on Hydra had been destroyed by fire – set alight, it seems, by a servant who resented his new mistress. The landscape gardening – the courtyard floor, the stone benches and tables, the fountains – was all done by Ghika himself. PLF sent him suggestions under the title ‘Random thoughts about San Stephane’.
&n
bsp; To Balasha Cantacuzène
10 November 1971
Kardamyli
Messenia
Darling Balasha,
I can’t wait till the whole Peruvian document [1] is ready, before writing, as it looks as if it might easily be another two weeks or more! My writing in the tents in the Andes must have been almost more illegible than it normally is, what with wind and thick gloves and the cold, and the poor lady who typed it out obviously had an appalling struggle with it. I’ve just finished correcting it, as there were so many misreadings, and have sent it back to England. Ouf! It’s not for printing, only for those who were on the trip and three or four others. It’s almost fifty pages of typescript, written absolutely helter-skelter, but I hope it gives a lively picture of our adventures. The whole thing was so marvellous and the company so delightful and amusing and the place so strange and impressive and beautiful that it ought to be readable, in its superficial and slapdash way. So I’ll resist the temptation (once more!) to spoil whatever novelty it might have by anticipating its unpretentious contents! One moment (which I forgot to put in the journal) came back to my mind in the middle of last night: we were high up a very bleak snowy plateau, all of us huddling in a tent just under the glacier line, dark, with a few streaks of afterglow (not dawn, alas!) showing sulphurously in the west; a scene of great desolation. It suddenly reminded me of that Goya print from the Caprichos, with those shapeless creatures huddling as we were, except that it was the wrong end of the day. [2] I described it to the others and the sinister import of ¡Si amanece, nos vamos! They were all very impressed with the appositeness of the situation and the quotation, and we started talking about Goya, and Los Caprichos and those awful Horrors of War. Robin Fedden remembered that he’d been to a big comprehensive Goya exhibition at Burlington House two years ago (which I missed). One of the drawings represented a brawl involving three men, drunk, he thought. The captions underneath had Goya’s Spanish, and an English translation; it was the English of this particular caption that had struck Robin. It was ‘Two against one? Stuff his arse with hay!’ Whose? How? Why? We were all suddenly in fits of laughter about this enigmatic sentence; and also at the boldness of the translation. The phrase became a catchword for the rest of the trip, à propos de rien. We wondered what the original had been – ¿Dos contra uno? ¡Henchi su culo con heno! – or con pajo? Simple pleasures. . .
Patrick Leigh Fermor Page 33