Patrick Leigh Fermor

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  Respectfully your obedient servant,

  Dr Franz Xaver Hinterwälder,

  Professor of Farsi and Pashtoo, Fridausi School of Oriental languages, Kirchstetten, Nether Austria

  P.S. As an attentive reader I was able to discover from A Time of Gifts that your LXXI birthday is approaching next Tuesday. Permit me to take the occasion to wish you the compliments of the season.’

  [1] See the passage in A Time of Gifts, pages 95–7, which describes how PLF’s rucksack, containing his passport, money and diary, was taken from a hostel while he was in a state of ‘hoggish catalepsy’ after a night’s drinking in a Munich Bierkeller.

  This was of course a hoax, concocted between Rudi Fischer and Xan Fielding in the Travellers Club, but Paddy fell for it, ‘hook, line and sinker’.

  To Franz Xaver Hinterwälder

  18 February 1986

  Kardamyli

  Messenia

  Dear Dr Hinterwälder,

  Thank you for your postcard and the news of the fate of my rucksack in Munich half a century ago. I am glad that it helped your grandfather to escape from the Nazis. I wonder if my passport was any use in getting across the frontier. The loss of the rucksack, the newly arrived £4, and the passport didn’t matter, as they were all made good within twenty-four hours. But the thing I did miss was my notebook, full of my travel journal. It had my London address inside – it would have been kind of your ancestor to have posted it. I am sure you would have mentioned it, if by any chance it had survived. It would have been a great help to me in writing the book.

  Thank you for your kind wishes, and the best of luck.

  Yours sincerely,

  Patrick Leigh Fermor

  To Rudi Fischer

  2 [?] February 1986

  Kardamyli

  Messenia

  Dear Rudi,

  I was absolutely amazed by the news that F. X. Hinterwälder doesn’t exist! The hoax was entirely successful – I was fascinated and a bit horrified by the complacency of the thief ’s descendant – the tone was so exactly right! . . . Of course, I should have suspected the writing – but I didn’t! . . . Bravo!

  Yours ever

  Paddy

  Between the Woods and the Water, the second volume in Paddy’s trilogy about ‘the Great Trudge’, was published in October 1986.

  To Rudi Fischer

  10 November 1986

  Kardamyli

  Messenia

  Dear Rudi,

  As you see, we have run out of the usual paper, so here goes in leading strings. [1] Perhaps it will make me more legible!

  I do apologise for being such a bad correspondent while in Blighty, but you will soon see why, and condone. I scribbled a note to you just before leaving, promising to send a clump of reviews when I got here, and posted them off registered to you yesterday. I v. much want you to see them, as I strongly feel that much of the credit for the book’s success is due to your marvellous help. The reviews are all good except for the one in the new Independent, who couldn’t bear the book. [2] The best is, rather unexpectedly, the Guardian, which really does get the point of what I was trying to do. [3] Jan Morris, who I admire very much, has written a very friendly, percipient and slightly worrying one. [4]

  We broke our journey to England in Amsterdam, which I’d never been to, where we met an old friend called ‘Coote’ (Lady Dorothy) Lygon, or rather, since last spring, Heber-Percy, as, both of them in the mid-seventies, she was married last spring to Robert H. P., usually known as the Mad Boy, who was left beautiful Faringdon House in Berkshire, by an admirer for many years, Lord Berners. But he seems to have turned into a monster of selfishness and she has moved out again to her nearby cottage. . .

  We saw all the Rembrandts within miles, starting with the Rijksmuseum, and then visiting the Hague and Haarlem, also in pursuit of painting. The red light quarter was just as dramatic as you painted it on the telephone – corsetted sirens in window after pink-lit window, a seething public, and suddenly, trumpets and drums and flags as a formation of the Salvation Army marched along the canal-bank, took up position on one of the bridges, and burst into brass-backed hymns, banners waving. It was like a scene out of a Passion play, especially with that enormous Gothic church looming over all.

  In London we stayed with our old friend Janetta, not far from Sloane Square. Jock Murray had worked out the most intricate plan of campaign. Before it started, I went down to Canterbury for a night, after being wooed by letter by the school, to talk to the sixth form and other local worthies. They knew all the details about the sack including the heroine’s name (Nellie Lemar) and all about her. It seemed very strange. I stayed with the headmaster, Canon Phillips. All very odd.

  Jock’s promotion campaign started with signing 1,100 copies in a fantastic Clerkenwell Dickensian warehouse, piled high with Byron, Macaulay and Scott and all subsequent authors. I rather enjoyed this, drawing back between each hundred, and looking out over Wren churches. There were signing sessions in the following days at several giant bookshops, with buyers lining up, in each case followed by a feast: Hatchards (twice), Heywood Hill, Sandoe, Harrods, and many others. In each case, windows were filled with copies of the book and snaps of the author . . . I secretly revelled in these displays, but was alarmed by the idea of being caught gazing in, like a nipper outside a sweetshop. Everyone likes the cover, which I was rather disappointed by at first, but have got used to now. I insisted on Jock’s people inserting a loose addendum slip in all signed copies, with corrections of a few of the worst mistakes. There are plenty, alas; some publisher’s blunders, some due to my proofreading blindness. Anyway, the thing seems to have sold like billy-o: a second printing was followed by a third, and when I left, a shop [assistant] said to Joan, when she asked how that book (pointing) was going, ‘like hot cakes’. Jock had also fixed up BBC talks (I missed hearing them, alas!), also one in Greek from Bush House, followed by a Rumanian interview in the same building. To my relief, the Rumanians there had read it and were v. enthusiastic; I dreaded their thinking I had taken too neutral, or pro-Hung. line over Transylvania, [5] but no. I even muttered a few lines of Mioritza, [6] which they were very keen on. They were all violently against the President (C), [7] & hate the regime . . . John Julius Norwich and I did a long interview for TV, not shown yet (don’t know when), but I don’t expect you get that in Hungary. (By the way, did Murrays send you an extra copy of the book, and A T. of Gifts, in case they wanted you to translate it? More important still: did I send you an inscribed copy, as would be my delight & duty if I haven’t? I ask because I signed and handed out so many, that I might easily have got in a muddle. Please put me out of my agony, so that I can act at once, or not, as needed.)

  Next day. I see my writing has degenerated again. There was one day that I dreaded: being guest of honour, and making a speech, twice on the same day, once to the Anglo-Hellenic League, after a huge lunch at the Travellers in the library, and, much larger, in the evening, at a dinner of the Special Forces Club – SOE, Commandos, SAS etc. – in the D. of York’s headquarters, everyone in full fig with decorations. I’d got this one typed out, and, thanks to oceans to drink all through dinner, it went off well, and all ended up in a cheerful and drunken blur, with Xan Fielding, Geo. Jellicoe and others. The first speech was about Anglo-Greek memories, the second about picturesque SOE characters.

  Jock drove me down to a vast book emporium at Henley, where there was a great signing session, then lunch with Steven Runciman, and after that we went to see Bruce Chatwin, who is very ill and thin, with a disease that apparently only usually affects young whales in the South Pacific. But he was very cheerful in spite of that. We continued on to the painter John Piper and his wife Myfanwy, [illegible] by Betjeman in her salad days. They live in a sort of tithe-barn in the middle of the woods.

  The only weekends away from London were both to Chatsworth, the first with Joan and Janetta, while Debo was in America for some exhibition, the second, and last, when she got back. .
.

  It seemed very strange to get back after these hectic weeks; now, from here, the weeks seem stranger still. A huge round of correspondence was waiting, with lots of letters to write. This is the first!

  Joan sends her greetings, and please give my love to Dagmar, and forgive these illegible self-centred pages. I’ve only gone into all this at such length because a great share of the credit belongs to you!

  Yours ever

  Paddy

  Now for Vol. III! Andalusia for Christmas.

  [1] The letter was written on lined paper.

  [2] ‘Every girl is pretty, every man dashing. Horses are strong, dogs eager’, the end result being ‘a quite ruthlessly pleasant journey’. Graham Coster, Independent, 16 October 1986.

  [3] Tim Radford, ‘Recalling Perfectly’, Guardian, 17 October 1986.

  [4] ‘Mr Fermor is beyond cavil the greatest of living travel writers.’ Jan Morris, ‘Jaunts in the Balkans to the Land of Dreams’, The Times, 24 October 1986.

  [5] The rival claims for Transylvania by Hungary and Rumania were a recurrent problem for PLF.

  [6] An old Rumanian ballad, quoted extensively in Between the Woods and the Water.

  [7] Nicolae Ceauşescu (1918–89), General Secretary of the Rumanian Communist Party 1965–89, head of state 1967–89. He was overthrown in the revolution of 1989, tried and executed by firing-squad.

  To George ‘Dadie’ Rylands

  27 October 1987

  Kardamyli

  Messenia

  My dear Dadie,

  This letter is written in sackcloth and ashes.

  Have you ever written a letter, stuck it up, stamped and posted it – and then realised, later on, that you have done nothing of the sort? It happens to me from time to time, and it has happened now, hence this deeply apologetic letter. James Stourton’s [1] invitation to your birthday party [2] arrived a few days before our return to Greece and I wrote to him at once, in a hurry, saying, alas, we would be back here; but put off writing to you till the morrow, in the hopes of sending you a proper letter, full of thanks for being bidden and tons of seasonable thoughts and bitter regrets at missing the feast; whereupon a tidal wave of packing, movement, change, complication and departure swirled us away and it is only now that I realise, with a thrill of guilty horror, that the letter was only written in imagination. (Or so I think. If I did write, and have been equally forgetful about the deed, please discount all this. But I don’t think so.) Hence the deeply contrite mood of these lines. I haven’t dared mention my hideous oversight to Joan. As I was to send all her wishes as well, she would swoon with horror. . .

  I do hope it was a splendid banquet and worthy of the occasion. Many, many thanks for asking us and I do wish we had been there too.

  I am writing this at 7.30 a.m. in a dressing-gown. It rained heavily last night, so I got up as soon as it was light and set off after mushrooms, sure I would come back with a record-breaking basketful. I combed all the groves within a mile, and found not one. Worse still, there was a sudden lightning-flash, then a crash of thunder like Waterloo, Borodino and King Lear rolled into one, followed by a soaking downpour like massed hosepipes. Hence the dressing-gown. Mushrooms have been a great disappointment this year, either rotted away, poisonous, or not there. Otherwise, lovely October weather, and I think we will be able to go on bathing for two or three weeks more. Meanwhile Vol. III proceeds, rather ploddingly, but I feel it will soon break into a trot, then a canter.

  Many apologies again, dear Dadie. Joan would send lots of love as well as me, but she’s still fast asleep, and I’m not sure I’ll apprise her of my grave omission.

  Yours ever

  Paddy

  P.S. Here are two frightful riddles.

  1) What would be a suitable name for a country nook where Dukes of Sutherland might recover from all the ceremonies of a coronation?

  2) The title of what book by a famous nineteenth–twentieth-century novelist might also apply to vomiting induced by an oyster?

  (Answers inside envelope.)

  1. ‘Dunrobin’. [3]

  2. The Return of the Native.

  [1] The Hon. James Stourton, art historian.

  [2] A party to celebrate Rylands’s eighty-fifth birthday on 23 October.

  [3] Dunrobin Castle is a family seat of the Dukes of Sutherland.

  To Jock Murray

  29 August 1988

  Serres

  Macedonia

  My dear Jock,

  I feel a bit strange, after driving incredible distances (for me) and have halted for the night in this town (not slept in by me since April 1935), and am scribbling under a huge plane tree strung with lights, not many furlongs from the Struma river – Strymona – which I tried to cross on a horse in the same month. Thank God the wise beast turned back soon after he was out of his depth, peering reproachfully back at me like an indignant chessman. I’d read about ‘swimming horses across rivers’ – it’s not so easy as it sounds. My steed and I had begun to revolve in the current, and I had visions of us both being whirled out to sea – it was a mile from the mouth – like the head of Orpheus down the current of the Hebrus, only two rivers from the east, still singing it seems, altho’ torn to bits . . . [1]

  My aim on this journey is to fill in the middle distance – it’s purely a visual thing. One remembers pretty clearly the foreground, also the skyline, especially if it is, as it usually was, a violent zigzag of peaks. It’s been so hot in Kardamyli, one melted like a midsummer snowman. I rather pine for those Rhodope and Balkan canyons, and vast cool forests of beech and pine.

  Love to all,

  yours ever

  Paddy

  [1] According to Ovid, Orpheus was torn to pieces by the women of the Cicones after he rejected their advances. His head and lyre, still singing mournful songs, floated down the swift River Hebrus to the Mediterranean, and there, the winds and waves carried them to the shores of Lesbos.

  To Michael Stewart

  15 December 1988

  Kardamyli

  Messenia

  Dear Michael,

  We’ve been having a strange time here, the last few days. All of a sudden in the middle of the night a huge wind blew up, clashing shutters and doors, rattling windows, and soon, puncturing the hours of darkness with sounds which turned out next day to be falling trees. (We lost one tall cypress.) Rain came down as though from a hosepipe, turning our gallery into Venice, and terrific seas crashed, accompanied by hours and hours of thunder and lightning. All this, with telephone poles down between here and Kalamata, plunged us into darkness and silence. When Petro came next morning, he had a terrible tale to tell. Three young policemen were on the jetty, half in and half out of a car (why, nobody can discover) when a gigantic wave swept them into the sea. One fought for a while, a rope was thrown, he was dashed on the rocks, and soon dead, but eventually hauled out. The other two vanished, and for the next two days, a helicopter was slowly clattering up and down the coast, peering down, boats zig-zagged about the bay, frogmen flown from Euboea worked their way along all the submarine caves. They were found on two succeeding days, many fathoms down in chasms on either side of the island, tangled in yards of seaweed . . . The first to go was a Cretan called Strati, extremely nice, and the son of a chap from the Amari in Crete, between Ida and Kedros, who had been a great help to us all in the war, and especially when the General was being smuggled west. A week ago we were drinking tsikoudia here and talking about all this – prehistoric legend for him, of course. All these things have cast a pall of mourning over our bit of coast.

  Joan and I fortified ourselves in her room, lit blazing fires and hurricane (or rather, butane) lamps. It felt very primordial and cut off. But after dinner I read Curzon’s Monasteries of the Levant [1] to her – and then we remembered your bottle of Dow’s vintage port in the cellar; and as we sipped warmth and cheer began to spread, and it has transformed every succeeding evening. I felt I had to write and tell these tidings.

  Corfu
, alas, is off, so we are meeting Xan and Magouche in Marseilles, to wander about Provence, and spend Christmas under the roof of Dominic de Grunne, [2] whom Joan and I scarcely know; but he’s kindly welcoming us.

  Happy Christmas to you and Damaris, Lucretia and Olivia! [3] We’ll toast our benefactor in tonight’s blushing glasses. . .

  Yours ever

  Paddy

  [1] Robert Curzon, Visits to Monasteries of the Levant (1849).

  [2] De Grunne lived in a house tucked into the hillside below the château of Ribes, not far from Le Puy.

  [3] Their daughters.

  To John Julius Norwich

  19 February 1989

  Kardamyli

  Messenia

  My dear John Julius,

  Many, many thanks for Byzantium: the Early Centuries. [1] I’ve darted about in it everywhere, and it reads beautifully. I can’t sail formally through, as I would like to have done, and will do, because Joan has taken it, and is doing just that, and enjoying it enormously. But she said, towards the end of dinner last night, rather sadly: ‘The only trouble is, it’s no use my reading history now, especially at night,

  I simply forget it all in the morning.’ Then, after a pause, she said, ‘I suppose I ought to be reading Black Beauty’; a second pause followed, then, ‘except that it makes me cry . . .’

  My turn next.

  I’m so glad you approved of the S. Bank Show. [2] I can’t make up my mind about it. I thought there were many lost opportunities, and sequences where, because of cutting, the original purpose got somehow lost. I rather thought Jock stole the show, a wonderful Phiz or Cruikshank illustration, and beautifully modulated début. Xan looked nothing like himself, and I thought I was pretty odd most of the time. It was a bit hazy, so I had to sit for innumerable hours, eyes screwed up like boot-buttons as they stared into the glare. It somehow turned the mouth to a sneering slit, with glimpses within of an elegiac country churchyard; while Melvyn sat questioning under low cool fronds, fingers elegantly weaving, and as cool as a cucumber. The drawback was that he didn’t really know anything about it. I sighed for you, who do, and thought of how swimmingly and painlessly that easy-going session in Blomfield Road [3] had gone, and how splendid the result. Ah well. David [4] was terribly nice, occasionally burying his head on Joan’s shoulder, and saying ‘Why are they all so beastly to me!’