So here I am, all alone with the cats, and work, which I have flung myself onto with tremendous verve, after the kind words of these two literary gents! This is an absurd letter, all social doings, but I thought you would like to know what we’ve been up to. I’ll write a proper one later on.
Please give all my fondest love to Pomme, and lots and lots to you, darling Balasha,
from Paddy
[1] Long Crichel House, near Wimborne, in Dorset, shared by Edward ‘Eddy’ Sackville-West, his partner, the music critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor (1907–95) and the artist Eardley Knollys (1902–91). They formed what was in effect an all-male salon and entertained a wide variety of guests. Later they were joined by the literary critic Raymond Mortimer and, later still, by the ophthalmic surgeon Patrick Trevor-Roper (1919–2004).
[2] Napier Sturt (1896–1940), 3rd Baron Alington, a friend of Balasha’s who lived at Crichel House; PLF stayed there several times before the war.
[3] He died on 25 November.
To Balasha Cantacuzène
28 June 1975
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Balasha,
Joan’s told you all about my temporary medical bother, [1] so no need to go into it, except that all goes well and they are very pleased with progress at the hospital where I go for treatment. The hanging about waiting for one’s turn is the most burdensome part of the business. I had a lovely long telephone call with Ins a few days ago, v. cheering and encouraging as she knows all about these woes. What a lovely time she had in Sicily.
I must tell you the recent happy ending of a long Cretan saga. In the summer of 1943, I had assembled about fifty Cretans in the north slopes of Mt Ida, most of them being hunted by the Germans, in order to take them by night marches to the S. coast, for evacuation to Egypt by torpedo boat. There was a sudden false alarm of 300 Germans coming up the hillside. Everyone leapt to arms, I picked up my rifle – which was always unloaded, as I carried the bullets in a bandolier – shot the bolt back and forth and pressed the trigger – ‘easing the springs’, as they call it; and bang! Some students from Herakleion had been playing about with the weapons, loading, unloading etc., and had left a round in the magazine. There was a cry. The bullet had struck my old friend and guide Yanni Tsangarakis, passing twice through his bent leg, striking a stone and ricocheting back and through his body. He died in half an hour, holding my hand – you can guess at the misery! – and we buried him there. I wanted to go to his village in W. Crete, tell his elder brother Kanaki what had happened, but couldn’t, because of the embarkation on hand; and all the other guerrilla leaders said: ‘Leave it till after the war, say Yanni has left for Egypt, for the accident, by Cretan custom, could start a blood feud, and split the resistance movement.’ I reluctantly consented, determined though to seek out Kanaki at the earliest opportunity. Immediately after the embarkation came the Italian collapse, Badoglio, [2] etc. I went to eastern Crete, which was occupied by the Italian Siena Division, and persuaded their General Carta to desert with much of his staff and plans of the defences of Crete; and went with them by sea to Egypt; returning several months later by parachute; and I only returned to W. Crete when we had General Kreipe as prisoner. We went through Photeinou, Yanni and Kanaki’s village, where Kanaki asked me if I had shot Yanni. I told him the whole story. He nodded and said, ‘That’s all I wanted to know,’ and wandered off through the olive trees. When I was out of the army immediately after the war, I went to Photeinou on foot in the dusk, and entered Kanaki’s cottage – high up on the mountain-side – and he stood up, saying ‘What do you seek here, Mihali? [3] We are not friends,’ laying his two first fingers on the butt of his pistol in his sash. It was no good, so I left v. sad. Meanwhile, everyone in Crete – where I’m rather a favourite – was trying to persuade him that it had been a mistake: but politically opposite people had somehow poisoned the family into believing that I had done away with Yanni ‘because he knew all the secrets of the English’. Can you beat it? (We hadn’t any.)
About fifteen years later, Joan and I were going round all our old haunts in Crete, stopping three days in the village of Alones – 7 miles from Photeinou – with Father John [Alevizakis], the wonderful old priest there, a man in a million. When the evening came to go to a farewell banquet in Retimo, one of the priest’s surviving sons said, alas, we couldn’t: Yorgo, Kanaki’s son, had heard I was there, and was waiting on the edge of the forest, with a rifle and binoculars, to pick me off when I left the village. (There was only one way out of this deep black ravine, Yorgo was on one side, our way out on the other.) Yorgo, apparently, was a very wild boy (I’d known him v. young in the war), a great sheep-thief. I asked whether he was a good shot. Levtheri, Fr John’s son, laughed and said, ‘Yes, the blighter can shoot a hole through a 10 Drachma piece at 500 metres,’ which made us all laugh rather ruefully, including Joan (who was marvellous). The only thing to do in such a case is to be accompanied by a neutral figure, head of a rival ‘clan’ or family, in whose company nobody can be shot without involving the whole tribe. This is the accepted code. So Petro Petrakis, an old friend, was sent for, and under his protection Joan and I crossed the blank hillside, looking across the valley at Yorgo sitting on the rock, binoculars round his neck and gun across his knees; but unable, by Cretan ethics, to blaze away. . .
Another fifteen years elapsed. Meanwhile, the siege to convince the Tsangarakis family that they were behaving unjustly continued in vain. Yorgo, because of various misdeeds, had had to flee his village and got a job as a shepherd outside Herakleion. Three months ago, dear George Psychoundakis (‘The Cretan Runner’) went to Herakleion, sought out Yorgo, and tried to convince him; but, though he wavered, he said he could never be friends with me: it was his duty to ‘get the blood back’, as one says in vendetta circles. He also told George that two years earlier, he had gone [illegible] around to Kardamyli but I was away, somewhere; and after a brief stay with a Cretan gendarme there (who said I was a nice chap) left again with his mission unfulfilled. All this was gloomy news: when suddenly – four weeks ago – lo and behold, the telephone rings in Kardamyli and our old wartime leader in E. Crete, Micky Akoumianakis, tells me that my would-be destroyer Yorgo had a nine-month-old unbaptised daughter and he wanted me to stand godfather, and name her – next Sunday. Micky was out of his mind with joy – this is the classical and only happy ending to a Cretan blood feud – George’s words, and the weight of all opinion in Crete (which is all on my side) had worked at last!
Joan had left for England (this was all only a month ago), so I flew to Crete, armed with a candle two yards long, adorned with a dreadful pink tulle bow (why are Orthodox wedding & baptism things so [illegible]?), a whole baby’s outfit, a gold-inscribed cross, ribbon-button-holes, smaller candles, net bags of sugared almonds, etc. There, waiting at Herakleion airport, was Geo. Psychoundakis, Manoli Paterakis, a dozen guerrilla chiefs, old Kanaki who had left his village, 7 miles to the west, for the occasion – now aged and infirm, booted, sashed, turbaned, stooping over a twisted stick; and Yorgo, a wild-looking chap of forty now, two front teeth knocked out, booted too. I was buried in whiskery and badly-shaven embraces for minutes on end; then I was whisked off to a banquet in the mountains, getting back to Herakleion in time to smarten up for the service; I’d decided to call the child Ioanna, in memory of Yanni, and because of Joan. So there I was, with this pink naked infant in my arms, flanked by a mass of my grown-up god-daughters from wartime baptisms, walking round and round the font, reciting the Creed, blowing away the Devil (‘Ftou! Ftou! Apotássomai!’), [4] where a bishop, an archimandrite and several splendidly clad priests, all old chums, officiated and chanted. When I’d placed my new god-daughter, sumptuously clad now, in her mum’s arms and been kissed by my new god-brother Yorgo, Kanaki and several hundred other wartime brothers-in-arms from all over Crete, we all gathered at a taverna, where a table was laid for 300, sucking-pigs roasting, wine flowing, lyras, lutes, violins playing. It was a gian
t banquet. I had to lead the dances (plenty of foot slapping!). Everyone was very happy, as it was the happy end of a miserable saga; all wartime Crete rejoiced. Yorgo my god-brother, said, as we sat, rather tight, with arms round each other’s necks, ‘God-brother Mihali, if you’ve got any enemy, anyone you want got rid of – just say the word, god-brother! You’ll have no more trouble!’ I hastened to say that there was no one, absolutely no one!
All singing, we drove in a cavalcade to the aerodome, and I caught the midnight plane back. It seemed as if the day had lasted a century. . .
I had to get back, as next day I was flying to Paris, with Manoli and another resistance figure, Manoussos Manoussakis, to take part in the TV broadcast ‘Dossiers de l’Ecran’. We were put up in great luxury – all paid for, including the journey – in a charming and grand hotel called the Château Frontenac, just off the Champs-Élysées. It was so strange to see Manoli – a mountain chap who belongs to sheepfolds, caves and mountain tops – among those muslin curtains, brass bedsteads, pink lampshades, Empire furniture, watered-silk panels on the walls, gold swan-shaped bath taps, and reproductions of Chardin, Watteau, Fragonard & Vigée Le Brun: La Cruche cassée, La Balançoire mystérieuse, Embarquement pour Cythère, Le Baiser volé, etc.
It seems that the programme was a great success. They showed the whole film Ill Met by Moonlight first, then there was a sort of ‘table ronde’ – Me, Manoli, Manoussos, Wavell’s chief-of-staff, Gen. Belchem, Sir Colin Coote (ex-editor of The Times) – but, alas, no Kreipe, as he had fallen ill at the last moment (we talked on the telephone to Hanover). Instead, a very intelligent German military historian. We all had invisible interpreters in all four languages used, connected to hidden earphones, but I spoke in French throughout. The whole operation was discussed from every point of view – strategic, moral, tactical etc. – and people were telephoning from all over France, asking the chairman questions, which he then put to us in turn to answer. It was v. lively and (as we had plenty to drink!) fluent. The whole thing lasted three hours. What was extraordinary was that for the rest of our stay – I took the two Cretans to the Invalides, up the Eiffel Tower, to Notre-Dame, Arc de Triomphe, etc. (great fun!) – total strangers kept saying ‘Tiens! C’est Manoli le Cretois!’ or ‘Regarde! C’est le Commandant Fermor!’
*
It’s lovely here. I arrived yesterday. Fellow guests, apart from Debo and Andrew, are A’s uncle (married to his father’s sister), ex-prime minister Harold Macmillan, and Sybil, Dowager Dss of Cholmondeley, half French, very erect, eighty, with hair powdered, looking more like a French marquise than an English one, sister of Philip Sassoon. V. intelligent. Hates Marthe Bibesco. Full of tales of Briand, Herriot, Clemenceau. [5] Diana Cooper told me the other day that she’d had a long, v. secret affair with the actor Louis Jouvet, [6] now dead. I’ve always liked her. Also Robert and Cynthia Kee, great friends of A and D, and of Joan’s and mine. Alas, no Joan, in spite of pleading, as when she’s in England she never goes anywhere except The Mill House, which she shares, officially, with her brother Graham.
It’s Saturday morning, everyone is outside, strolling under the trees except ‘Uncle Harold’ and me, in a sort of big library sitting room. He came tapping in on a silver-mounted Malacca cane half an hour ago, saying, ‘Just been wandering through the state rooms. I don’t expect I’ll see them again.’ He’s sitting beside the fire now, leaning back with long legs outflung, reading Thomas Hardy’s poetry, the book held almost touching his nose, occasionally reading out a few lines – ‘Rather good, eh?’ – when I break off this letter for a minute or two’s chat. He’s marvellously intelligent and alert, and side-splittingly funny, with a wonderful quiet but imagé [full of imagery] way of reminiscing. Tremendously well read, rather like an eighteenth-century grand Whig. Brilliant imitations of Curzon, Lloyd George, Churchill, Lansdowne, etc. He looks v. well – blue eyes, pink cheeks – occasionally almost pretending to be an old man, if you know what I mean. As the years pass, everyone begins to understand what a very good P.M. he was. When he finished, he refused any reward – Earldom, Garter, etc. – and remained a plain Mr, which is very grand. Not even a Knight! [7] He and Sybil Cholmondeley were full of tales of Talleyrand last night (who is Andrew’s gr. gr. grandfather), [8] e.g. the Prussian Ambassador who was totally bald, had a ballerina as mistress. He was boasting about her disinterestedness: ‘what can I give her?’ he asked. Talleyrand’s answer: ‘just a lock of your hair’.
No more now, my darling Balasha – I’ll write all news soon. We are going to move into a flat of Joan’s sister Diana, for the rest of the treatment. I’m not sure of address. Whites, St James’s St, SW1 is safest for the moment.
Tons of fond love to you and to Pomme,
from Paddy
[1] PLF was being treated for cancer of the tongue.
[2] Proclamation announcing the Italian armistice broadcast on 8 September 1943.
[3] PLF was known as Mihali by his Cretan comrades.
[4] ‘Ftou!’ represents the sound of spitting: Greeks say this (instead of actually spitting) in order to avert the evil eye, to which babies are especially prone; ‘Apotássomai’ means ‘I renounce [Satan]’, which is said by the godfather during the baptism service, speaking on behalf of the baby.
[5] Aristide Briand (1862–1932), French foreign minister; Édouard Herriot (1872–1957), three times prime minister of France; Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (1841–1929), prime minister of France, 1906–9 and 1917–20.
[6] Louis Jouvet (1887–1951), actor and director, one of the most influential figures of the French theatre in the twentieth century.
[7] In 1984 Macmillan accepted a peerage as Earl of Stockton.
[8] Talleyrand was AD’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, through his illegit imate son, Charles Joseph, Comte de Flahaut.
To Xan Fielding
11 July 1975
The Mill House
Dumbleton
Xan, παιδί μου [dear boy],
How rum, ill health smiting us temporarily down suddenly, as with twin thunderbolts! Yours must have been terribly alarming, both for you and Magouche! Thank heavens all seems well now, from the various accounts flitting back across the Bay of Biscay. Ὁ Θεὸς νὰ μᾶς φυλάξει ὅλους, ἀμήν! [May God preserve us all, Amen!] My course of therapy is about two-thirds through, and consists in going to the Royal Marsden Hospital in the Fulham Road every afternoon, except for weekends, and getting a two-minute deluge of cobalt rays on the right cheek, like Danaë under the golden shower. It makes one rather raw, dry-mouthed, shaky and a bit headachy at first, and not fit, while the treatment lasts, for much physical or mental exertion. I’m just coming to what they call the ‘uncomfortable cumulative period’; but, I must say, it’s not nearly as bad as one thought it might be, and cramps one’s style much less than we had thought it might. When it’s over in a couple of weeks, I have to have a reassessment in a month’s time, so will not go to Greece with Joan, but hang about in the cool north, to keep out of the sun, which is supposed to be not good at first. Joan will go back to Kardamyli, to look after things and people there, and I’ll go on a sort of Mr Sponge’s Correcting Tour [1] with my MSs – Ireland, Scotland? – cadging shelter under friendly roofs. Not too bad!
We stayed at Patrick’s for ages at first, then, to be closer to the hospital, removed to a flat belonging to Joan’s sister near the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, where we’ll be another week or so. Everybody’s been angelically kind, endless offers of hospitality and help. All hopes are high, including the Docs.
So much for all that! . . . In spite of the hospital boredom there has been lots of fun involved, much feasting and chat. Daph was here for a bit, taking all recent events lightly and unvehemently; [2] goodwill all round, inevitable cabinet reshuffles that happen to all of us, no question of people taking sides, splitting people up into Montagues & Capulets, as poor Cyril was prone to; in fact, hang right and making things easiest for all. I went to Simpson’s
in the Strand last week – downstairs – with Ran [3] and Michael Astor, and it was marvellous. We gorged ourselves to a standstill, and I was shocked to discover how unregenerately carnivorous I could still be on occasions.
Joan and I are alone here at the moment – a slightly rainy Sunday, welcome as there has been a drought. We walked in the fields yesterday where we slid on the hayrick twenty years ago. . .
Please give fondest love to Magouche, and ὅ,τι ποθεῖς διὰ σένα, χρυσό μου [whatever you may wish for, dear boy].
Love Paddy
[1] A reference to Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour by R. S. Surtees (1849).
[2] Xan Fielding had left his wife Daphne for Magouche Phillips, whom he would marry in 1979.
[3] Randal McDonnell (1911–77), 8th Earl of Antrim.
To Raymond Mortimer
19 September 1975
Sevenhampton [1]
Swindon
Wiltshire
Dear Raymond,
I did enjoy our threefold irruption into the peace of Long Crichel. Miraculously, when there were so many temptations pulling the other way! – I managed to get lots of work done. I think I could play the Dictionary Game forever without getting tired of it. I still can’t quite believe in Caleb Simper, that household world to Joan. [2]
She left, alas, on Tuesday, and I came down here the day after, hotfoot from a festive lunch at Diana Cooper’s. She was looking marvellous and in great spirits, and only mentioned over coffee when she had run through more pressing topics that the night before she had had a crash in which her car was 100% write-off. She and Auntie Nose [3] were inside – not a scratch on either, except a quarter of an inch of court plaster on Diana’s little finger – ‘But all our pockets were full of broken glass and of course the car looked like a brown paper bag –’
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