Patrick Leigh Fermor

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  [5] Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk (1658) and Religio Medici (1643); Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).

  [6] Actually from a speech given by the Lord Chief Justice Sir Randolfe Crewe, in the reign of Charles I, to his fellow peers sitting in judgement on the rival claims to the peerage, between Robert de Vere claiming as heir male of the family, and Lord Willoughby de Eresby, claiming through a female, as heir-general to the late earl. Judgement was given in favour of de Vere, but he died without leaving a male heir, so the title became extinct.

  [7] JJN was born in 1929.

  To Xan Fielding

  May Day 1979

  Athens

  Greece

  Darling Magouche/Xan,

  Please forgive this scrawl, scribbled with one foot in the stirrup, on the way to Jordan in three hours, where we hope to see Janetta on the plane, but, alas! neither of you.

  Recent news here on the disagreeable side.

  (1) With the backing of the Embassy, I’ve been trying to get that bronze memorial tablet [1] stuck up at Arkadi, as Tom [Dunbabin] and Fr. Dionysius [2] wanted it. Monks very hesitant and wet, but I went, there was a half-hearted banquet, and a suitable place chosen. A car turned up with four ‘journalists’ next day, who threatened and frightened the monks into withdrawing permission. Exactly the same thing happened at Preveli. Then Yerakari [3] bravely said they’d put it up. There are no Communists or even left-wing people in that bit of Crete, and the C [ommunist] P [arty] in Herakleion, responsible for everything, were thwarted. The next move was on Orthodox Easter Sunday night. Joan and Barbara were woken by a great bang at 1:30 a.m. but neither Niko nor I. Someone rushed down next morning with the news that the car had been blown sky high. There it was indeed, with the whole front scattered for acres all round, 10 yards of burnt, slow-burning fuse underneath, and a red poster with hammers and sickles. (They mistook the Feast for Ascension Day.) Everyone locally v. ashamed and apologetic, masses of telephone calls and wires including one of five pages from Chanea – all our pals’ signatures, so moving it was almost worth it. [4] Not quite, as insurance pays nothing for Malicious Acts; but the Ambassador may shame the Ministry of the Interior into compensating for it, or something. The CP are only a small minority in Herakleion: but it shows what hatred and organisation can do. They are trying to explode every trace of Anglo-Greek friendship, and rewrite history in their own version, which, thank God, is not working, except with isolated brutal acts and a stream of poison.

  The other disagreeable thing is that Bandouvas [5] has written his memoirs, with the sole purpose, some think, of shuffling off the responsibility of the Viannos massacres on to me, saying I’d given him carte blanche, ‘The Green Light’, etc., at the time of the Italian surrender. I’ll have to refute it some time. The odd thing was he insisted on coming to Arkadi with me from Herakleion – huge kisses and, that evening in Herakleion, a sheep roast whole. The book appeared a week later . . . All very strange.

  No more now, mes enfants. We are terribly excited at our departure. Please forgive the rather breathless tenor of this letter. Joan sends all her love to you both, so do I, also Barbara and Niko.

  Paddy

  xxx

  [1] A plaque to the Allied servicemen and Cretans who had died in the Cretan resistance to German occupation.

  [2] Pro-Abbot of the monastery of Arkadi, Crete.

  [3] The highest village in Crete, on the southern end of the pass at the north-western end of the Amari.

  [4] ‘Dear Mihali, We read an unbelievable piece of news in the papers yesterday STOP. Your friends in Chanea and the villages cannot find words to express our anger for this most uncharacteristic act STOP. Thirty-eight years ago you came to Crete to share with us the four darkest years of recent history, gambling heads and tails with your life every day and being always the first to set an example in the most daring missions STOP. With your leadership were written some of the most brilliant pages in the resistance of all Europe STOP. With your kindness and your dashing spirit you won forever the hearts of your old brothers-in-arms, and not the passage of time, or absolutely any other factor can diminish in the slightest degree the love we all feel for you STOP. With the certainty that history will write you down among the most ardent and tried Philhellenes, we grasp your hand.’

  [5] Manoli Bandouvas, a resistance leader in Crete, whose pre-emptive raid against the Germans in 1943 had provoked terrible reprisals in the Viannos area, in which over 500 people were killed.

  To Diana Cooper

  28 August 1979

  Kardamyli

  Messenia

  Darling Diana,

  I’m feeling rather amazing and marvellous. I suddenly thought, rightly, I was too thick and heavy – all the aftermath and the revenge for having a lovely time in Blighty – [so] that yesterday, the first day with no guests or visitors since we got back, I determined to put your device for sylphdom into practice, viz. to skip all meals and intoxicating drink, for twenty-four hours. Started yesterday morning, no brecker, worked all morning, basked on beach in lieu of luncheon, walked six miles, three cups of tea, hid while Joan supped to be far from temptation, then played Word Making and Word Talking till midnight, slept like seventh Ephesian, [1] woke with the sun, toast & tea at 9, and it’s now 12.30 and I feel light as a feather, all evil shed away, a pulse in the eternal mind no less. [2] The shed evil is actually over 3 kilos – the same as three thumping vols. of the Dictionary of Nat. Biography ( just weighed them). But I know these shed kilos are hovering in the air hard by, scowling and snapping their fingers with frustration, planning early re-entry . . . But still, the feeling of buoyancy and beatitude is almost supernatural.

  Just to top everything, when I dived into the sea, at the end of that bracing walk yesterday, on surfacing I very nearly collided with a kingfisher which was flying low over the water. It settled on a sharp rock in the entrance to a cave. I swam towards it slowly and almost without moving and got within almost touching distance, hovering in the shadows while it twiddled its head about, peered for tiddlers and preened its marvellous coloured wings in the sun, pecking about in its armpits, and blinking. It flew off after about twenty minutes, and I hope it will be there when I go there in an hour. But no diving. I’ll slide in like a burglarious merman.

  This letter is a sprat to catch a whale, i.e., a long account of your Tuscan travels.

  Tons of fond love, darling Diana,

  from Paddy and from Joan

  [1] PLF refers to the story of the seven sleepers of Ephesus, Christians in the pagan Roman Empire, who sought refuge in a cave rather than recant. There they slept for 150 years or more (the period is disputed), until they awoke to find that Christianity was no longer persecuted.

  [2] ‘And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

  A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

  Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

  Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

  And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

  In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.’

  Rupert Brooke, ‘The Soldier’ (1914)

  Paddy and Joan spent Christmas 1979 with Xan and Magouche Fielding in their new house in Spain. ‘Their abode above Ronda has become delightful,’ Paddy wrote to Debo Devonshire, ‘with thick walls, blazing fires, mountains all round, twenty minutes’ walk to the amazing town, where a wonder-bridge spans a deep chasm full of swallows. One day we climbed up into some mountains and looked down on Gibraltar and the Mediterranean & the Atlantic hanging in space, with Jebel Musa, the other pillar of Hercules, on the Moroccan side; then the Riff Mountains; then the faraway glitter of the Atlas . . .’ (In Tearing Haste, pages 179–80). In mid January the four of them set out from Ronda by car, driving through the cork woods of Estremadura to the Atlantic coast, and then across the Tagus into Lisbon. They toured Portugal, zig-zagging north until they crossed th
e Spanish border into Galicia, and reached Santiago de Compost-ella, where the party broke up: Paddy and Joan flew on to Madrid, and from there to Barcelona, while the Fieldings drove on to Leon and Salamanca, and then south.

  To Magouche and Xan Fielding

  1 February 1980 [1]

  Kardamyli

  Messenia

  Darling Magouche, Ξάν, παιδί μου [Xan, dear boy],

  Well, that was terrific. There is so much to chew on, and we’re chewing on it like pepped-up and uncharacteristically competitive ruminants; dead-beat dashes for the Encyclopedia Britannica – vols PAY-REE and SHU-TOM – and unseemly tugs of war at bedtime over Rose Macaulay. I wish cats didn’t turn into cradles for me, the initial gear change from 2nd to 3rd seems to be a kind of wiegenlied [lullaby]: z-z-z-z sets in. I can’t think, this being so, how I can possibly be so glutted with visual impressions. Perhaps I have a subliminal knack of waking up in the nick [of time] – aided by a solicitous prod now and then – whenever anything this terrific looms. Selective Slumber in Portugal . . . I can’t get over what can be done with granite, viz. to Escorial. I wish we’d heard 12 strike!

  It still reverberates . . . [2] I think they should let one nearer these kneeling gilt figures, Charles V, his Empress, Ph. II. etc. What about that magical Beckfordian moment, in the painted chamber underneath the pretty theatre? Icy Avila, where we cowered over the brazero in our hostelry reading Ford [3] aloud, sticks in my memory like a sort of Castilian Troy. Eighty-eight Towers! Priam’s seven-gated City . . . Anyway, thanks to my everlasting diary (three months filled in with days of the week now in advance) and its contents copied down from Magouche’s and Joan’s, copied down from mine, we can now gloat over each step of our marvellous journey and sojourn in retrospect, like counting over the plum-stones on one’s plate and remembering how delicious each one was. . .

  Joan’s told you how we fared in Madrid – another feast at Botin’s, a visit next day to my Hispano-Rumanian pals, nice supper at Jijou’s – not bad at all for an informal snack, my solitary visit to appalling Apocalypse Now. [4] We were feeling pretty forlorn at the idea of the missed plane in Barcelona, and having to hang about five hours in Ciampino airport, [5] getting to Athens at nearly midnight when Joan had the brilliant inspiration of cutting our losses, staying in Barcelona, and catching the same plane we had missed next day. Our spirits shot up as we made for the Oriente, where we were given a huge suite full of discarded clothes horses, where only half the taps work, not much of the heating and few lights; but it’s failed to dampen our spirits, nor the discovery of hidden mousetraps in the dark corners, and mounds of nibbled biscuits. We had drinks in the lanes at a nice place called The 4 Brothers. There is a slightly típico restaurant called the Curallos, which I liked more than Joan. After ages with Picasso and a twilight prowl round the crypt of the Sagrada Família [6] – I’m sorry to see they have got rid of the bats, which squeaked and wheeled overhead at my only other visit by the hundred while the priest intoned vernacular vespers in Catalan: ‘Priei, Hermans’ instead of ‘Orate Fratres’ – we had a smashing dinner at the Amaya on the Ramblas. When Joan had retired, I set out to rove the town, headed straight for the lanes and was given a free fine-à-l’eau [brandy-and-water] by the v. nice owner of The 4 Brothers. I was strolling back along the same lane when the sound of rhythmic clapping from one of the many bars beckoned me inside. I was the only customer except at the far end a turtle of locals, some of them gypsies having a lovely time drinking, singing and swigging, and clapping, a couple getting up now and then to stamp and twirl. What luck I thought, and ordered a beer, and watched from the bar at a respectful distance. I was sipping my [illegible], when a seedy, bald, polite slightly fishy old boy came up and asked where I was from, and gave me a friendly pat on the back when I told him. He owned the bar, he told me, and pointed to a huge rather moth-eaten stuffed bull’s head on the wall over crossed banderillas and said he’d once been a matador, and had killed that very bull in the ring in Valencia thirty years earlier. Quick as lightning, D in the Afternoon in mind, [7] I said ¿Entonces, se ha cortado la coleta?, [8] with a swinging gesture; he laughed, slapped me on the back and said how splendidly I spoke Castilian (he was from Madrid) and left me. After half an hour I thought I might as well push off somewhere else, and put down a 100 pesetas note for the beer and waited for the change. At this the barman flew into a temper and said it was 270 pesetas for a beer. [9] I said the equivalent of what rot. He began to shout like a lunatic and soon all the people from the other end of the room were milling around shouting and waving their fists. I shouted ¿Donde está el Señor Matador que ha dado muertea un toro a Valencia? [10] There was a sudden bewildered pause in the shouting, everyone crying ¿Qué Toreador? Qué toro? Qué Valencia? [11] etc. and I spotted the bald man at the back of the room expostulating with the others. He’d obviously invented the lot. I shouted to him ¿Donde esta il pundonor Castiliana? [12] and this was taken up by all the rest. ¡¿Que pundonor Castillano?! etc., and much else, when suddenly I saw the barman stoop down his side of the bar, and emerge again, a screaming Jack in the Box, brandishing a heavy wooden club over my head like a lunatic. I managed to capture the throng’s attention for a second by pointing to the club, and saying: ¿Usted quiere tocar me aqui? – pointing to the crown of my head with my forefinger and not knowing the Spanish for ‘club’ (the same?) – ¿Con esta pieza de leño? [13] The clubman had burst into a sort of war dance, but the bar was safely between us. I pointed accusingly at this pseudo-matador, saying ¡El pundonor castillano e muerto! [14] and turning on my heel, as they say, strode to the door like Regulus, [15] shouting ¡No esta terminado! [16] There was still the hell of a row, but nobody stopped me. Two people came out not to crowd me but to reason with me, but I marched off in a fury, and at the next corner, came on three officials in uniform. Police, I thought, and dragged them back with [me]. The owner and one or two others were called out into the street, v. quiet and respectful now, while I went on about having been threatened: ¡Me ha amenazado con un grand leño! [17] etc. Apparently these particular officials were not allowed into premises but said I should go to the police station and report it. The others (‘Bar Andaluz?’) v. conciliating and I strode off, but cooled down before I got there (I suppose I was a bit tight as well) and thought, ‘What the hell?’ and headed for the Ramblas again, and ended up in a ‘drugstore’, bursting with people, where I drank a beer at the normal price, full of amazing tarts of both sexes. A rather splendid-looking girl, as I went past, pointed [at] the very tough pals who were standing on either side of her, and said ¿Which do you want? ¿Him – or him? ¿Or me? When I got back to the Oriente, Joan was heading through my part of the suite, clambering like a sleep-walker to the only loo through the assembled hat-stands, mousetraps and towel horses, so I had a splendid small-hours tale to unfold. I must say, the whole experience made me feel young again . . . [18]

  I haven’t yet said thank you for that marvellous hol – a whole nosegay of roses and not a thorn in the lot – and for all the feasts and wonders and fun. But I do so now, and tons of fond love to you both,

  from Paddy

  I’ve found the Rumanian poem [19] about the wind in the different flutes, and will send it in a few days. Did you note down the two Enc. Brit. mentions, from the Index, about the White Ship? Worth a mention. I’ll see if I can find anything here. I have a feeling there was something else I was going to hunt up. But can’t remember – do let me know if you can – and anything else.

  You must have seen how excited we both were about the book. [20] It’s absolutely tip-top and will be a great triumph.

  Do write to George Bug [George Psychoundakis] after another look at his book.

  [1] Misdated 1970.

  [2] ‘Have you seen it?’ PLF wrote to Debo Devonshire. ‘Bleak and splendid is the word, half palace, half monastery, all granite, full of dead kings, with a bell that goes on vibrating half a minute after each toll.’

  [3] Richard Ford (1796–
1858), author of books on travelling in Spain.

  [4] Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, set during the Vietnam War, had recently been released.

  [5] They were due to change planes in Rome.

  [6] The extraordinary cathedral-sized church designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926), still unfinished more than a century after construction began in 1882.

  [7] PLF is thinking of Hemingway’s book about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon (1932).

  [8] ‘Has he cut his pigtail?’ Matadors use the phrase ‘cutting your pigtail’ to mean retiring from the bull-ring.

  [9] About £1.84 – perhaps £7 in today’s value. In a letter to Diana Cooper describing the same incident, PLF reports that the barman demanded 500 pesetas.

  [10] ‘Where is the matador who once killed a bull in Valencia?’

  [11] ‘What bullfighter? Which bull? What about Valencia?’

  [12] ‘What happened to the famous Castilian honour?’

  [13] ‘Are you going to hit me with that piece of wood?’

  [14] ‘Castilian honour is dead!’

  [15] PLF perhaps refers to Roman general Marcus Atilius Regulus, who was taken captive by the Carthaginians and returned to Rome on parole to negotiate a peace. He urged the Senate to refuse the proposals and then, despite the protests of his own people, fulfilled the terms of his parole by returning to Carthage, where he was promptly tortured to death.

  [16] ‘This is not over!’

  [17] ‘They threatened me with a big stick!’

  [18] He was a fortnight short of his sixty-fifth birthday.

  [19] Mioritza – see Between the Woods and the Water, pages 235–8.

  [20] A reference to Fielding’s manuscript of a book about the winds.