4. ‘Russian visions of Switzerland’.
5. This homemade weapon is on display in the Sisi Museum in Vienna.
6. Mark Twain, ‘The Memorable Assassination’, in The Complete Essays of Mark Twain.
7. Ibid.
8. Cited in Kobak, Isabelle, p. 17.
9. Ibid., p. 69.
10. Ibid., p. 75.
11. Ibid., p. 38.
12. From ‘Choses du Sud-Oranais’, published in L’Akhbar in 1903–04 and cited in Kobak, Isabelle, p. 216.
13. Eberhardt, In the Shadow of Islam, p. 27. Her journalist friend Victor Barrucand published this posthumous account of Eberhardt’s 1904 journey to Ain Sefra and Kenadsa near the Moroccan–Algerian border in 1920. The original text was found in an urn in the house where she drowned in a flash flood. Barrucand’s tampering (he claimed co-authorship) is evident from the overwrought style.
14. Kobak, Isabelle, p. 83.
15. Ibid., p. 56.
16. ‘Deuil’ in Eberhardt, Amours nomades, p. 137. My translation.
17. From the short story ‘Zoh’r et Yasmina’ in Amours nomades, p. 111. My translation.
18. The Nomad: The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt, p. 185.
19. Eberhardt’s Dans l’ombre chaude d’Islam, controversially edited and arranged by Victor Barrucand, was re-issued in 1921. The appendix ‘Choses du Sahara’, in which ‘Joies noires’ appears, has not been included in the English translation by Sharon Bangert (2003). The original French of Barrucand’s 1921 text has been published by l’Association Les Bourlapapey, bibliothèque numérique romande at http://www.ebooks-bnr.com/. This translation mine.
20. One of the first to recognise a kindred spirit in Eberhardt’s singular life and prose was the Scottish-Austrian writer Norman Douglas. Reviewing Dans l’ombre chaude d’Islam and Notes de route (1906) as early as 1911 for the North American Review, Douglas wonders, in an essay entitled ‘Intellectual Nomadism’, about ‘the effective affinity of some women for wild and destructive races of mankind: is it their development has been arrested at the emotional stage when as children, we were wont to delight in pirate adventures and redskin scalpings …?’ Douglas had been expelled as a British diplomat from Russia for sexual impropriety; like Isabelle he was a linguist, nomad and stood at the sexual margins: ‘like many of her sex, she always had a weakness for the soldiery’. Unlike her, he lived until the ripe old age of 84 and died on Capri with the words ‘get those nuns off me’ on his lips.
21. Clemenceau quoted by Revenin, Homosexualité et prostitution masculines à Paris, p. 225.
22. Kobak, Isabelle, p. 212.
23. Quoted in ibid., p. 213.
24. Quoted in ibid., p. 212.
25. In the Shadow of Islam, p. 42.
26. Ibid., pp. 39–40.
27. Ibid., p. 46.
28. Ibid., pp. 65–6.
29. Ibid., p. 83.
30. Ibid., pp. 91–2.
31. Ibid., p. 83.
32. Kobak, Isabelle, p. 225.
33. In the Shadow of Islam, p. 84.
34. The Oblivion Seekers, translated with a preface by Paul Bowles, pp. 54–5.
35. Ibid., p. 33.
36. Ibid., p. 8.
37. Ibid., pp. 71, 74.
38. Dessaix, A Mother’s Disgrace, p. 9.
39. The Nomad: The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt, p. 146.
40. Conrad, Under Western Eyes, p. 145.
41. Ibid., p. 119.
42. In a letter to Apollon Maikov, cited in Frank, Dostoyevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865–1871, p. 231.
43. Under Western Eyes, p. 182.
44. Ibid., p. 238.
45. Ibid., p. 240.
46. Ibid., p. 276.
5: The Infinity Pool
1. Quoted in Washington, Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon, p. 118.
2. Ibid., p. 156.
3. Kafka, The Diaries 1910–1923, pp. 47–9.
4. Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon, p. 233.
5. Ibid., pp. 233–4.
6. Details from Martin Green’s excellent Mountain of Truth: The Counterculture Begins, Ascona, 1900–1920.
7. Wells, A Modern Utopia, Chapter 1.
8. Ibid., Chapter 2.
9. Ibid., Chapter 7.
10. Ibid.
11. Wells, A World Set Free, Chapter 1.
12. Lawrence, Twilight in Italy, p. 115. The 1990 Barrie & Jenkins edition is beautifully printed and bound in Spain, and published with photos by Paul Strand, Henri Cartier-Bresson and watercolours by John Ruskin, Walter Tyndale and others.
13. Ibid., p. 120.
14. Ibid., p. 121.
15. Ibid., p. 130.
16. Ibid., p. 135.
17. In a July 1912 letter to Edward Garnett, following Heinemann’s rejection of Sons and Lovers.
18. Twilight in Italy, p. 137.
19. Ibid., p. 142.
20. Ibid., p. 144.
21. Ibid., p. 152.
22. Ibid., p. 153.
23. Ibid.
24. Hesse, Klingsor’s Last Summer.
25. Hesse, Basler Erinnerungen.
26. Cited in ‘As far away from Berlin as I can get!’, a lecture given by Volker Michels on Hermann Hesse on Lake Constance. See www.hermann-hesse.de.
27. ‘Journey to Nuremburg’ (1926), collected in Autobiographical Writings, translated by Theodore Ziolkowski.
28. Hesse, Steppenwolf, p. 35.
29. Ibid., p. 47.
30. Greene, Dr Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party, p. 12.
31. ‘Moving to a New House’ in Autobiographical Writings.
32. Autobiographical Writings.
33. Byatt, The Children’s Book.
34. Ibid.
35. FBI-Bericht von J.E. Hoover vom 7. Juli 1952, in: NARA RG 65 FBI File 029424.
36. Museum Rietberg press release April 2013.
6: Keeping the Wars at Arm’s Length
1. Ellmann, Selected Joyce Letters, p. 40.
2. Crivelli, James Joyce: Itinerari Triestini/Triestine Itineraries, p. 150.
3. A verse composed by Joyce and cited in Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 420.
4. Lenin’s speech to the Swiss Social Democrats cited by Bode, ‘Russian visions of Switzerland’, p. 35.
5. de Botton, The Art of Travel, p. 37.
6. Commentary by Ellmann in Selected Joyce Letters, p. 214.
7. Nora’s letter to Joyce from Locarno, cited in Maddox, Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom, p. 148.
8. Selected Joyce Letters, p. 226.
9. Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 455.
10. Cited in Brivic, Joyce the Creator, pp. 36–7.
11. O’Brien, James Joyce, p. 88.
12. August Suter’s reminiscences of James Joyce in the James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Spring 1970), University of Tulsa.
13. Joyce’s lyrics quoted by Edna O’Brien in James Joyce, p. 107.
14. Caws, Maria Jolas, Woman of Action.
15. PACS (Paris-American Committee to Stop War).
16. Maria Jolas, Woman of Action, p. 104.
17. ‘que je ne suis pas juif de Judee mais aryen d’Erin’, quoted in Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 736.
18. Ibid., p. 738.
19. Lester’s fascinating account of the Joyce family’s day in Geneva is included in The Joyce We Knew: Memoirs of Joyce, edited and with an introduction by Ulick O’Connor.
20. Ibid., p. 120.
21. Selected Joyce Letters, p. 408.
7: Loony Bins and Finishing Schools
1. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, p. 488.
2. Financial Times, 3–4 January 2015.
3. Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, p. 52.
4. Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, p. 218.
5. Ibid., p. 258.
6. Ibid., p. 262.
7. Ibid., p. 268.
8. In the short story ‘One Trip Abroad’, published in the Saturday Evening Post, 11 October 1930.
9. Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night, p. 129.
10. Ibid.,
p. 133.
11. Ibid., pp. 134–5.
12. Meyers, Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography, p. 110.
13. Tender Is the Night, pp. 162–3.
14. Ibid., p. 171.
15. Ibid., p. 189.
16. Ibid., p. 195.
17. Ibid., p. 213.
18. Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography, p. 195.
19. Ibid., p. 65.
20. Tender Is the Night, p. 268.
21. Haig Simonian, ‘Charm academy: Switzerland’s last finishing school’, Financial Times, 30 September 2010.
22. Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School in Exile, pp. 119–20.
23. Friends of the Chalet School website, www.chaletschool.org.uk.
24. Information from crime writer Val McDermid’s BBC Radio 4 broadcast on the Chalet School series.
25. Spark, The Finishing School, pp. 4–5.
26. Ibid., p. 46.
27. Ibid., p. 197.
8: The Playground of Europe
1. Fleming, Thrilling Cities, pp. 207–8.
2. Ibid., p. 213.
3. Ibid., p. 216.
4. Ibid., p. 221.
5. Ibid., p. 226.
6. Maugham, Ashenden, p. 8.
7. Ibid., p. 9.
8. Ibid., p. 29.
9. West, Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence, p. 380.
10. Ashenden, pp. 109–10.
11. Ibid., pp. 148–9.
12. Ibid., p. 161.
13. Woods, Neutral Ground: A Political History of Espionage Fiction, p. 55.
14. Ashenden, pp. 170–71.
15. Boulton, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, pp. 162, 166. Lawrence unfavourably reviewed Maugham’s Ashenden for Vogue, July 1928, describing the stories as ‘faked’, ‘instruments of the author’s prejudice’ and ‘rancid’.
16. Glauser, In Matto’s Realm, p. 6.
17. Ibid., p. 10.
18. Ibid., p. 206.
19. Ibid., p. 103.
20. Ibid., p. 119.
21. Ibid., p. 127.
22. Glauser, The Spoke, p. 105.
23. Ibid., pp. 127–8.
24. Ibid., p. 150.
25. Diogenes Verlag, author page.
26. Schneider, Flattermann, p. 20. My translation.
27. Ibid., p. 31.
28. Capus, Almost like Spring, p. 33.
29. Ibid., p. 42.
30. Ibid., p. 97.
9: His Master’s Voice
1. Nabokov advised his students at Cornell to pronounce the second syllable to rhyme with ‘gawk’. In Strong Opinions he suggests: ‘A heavy open “o” as in “Knickerbocker”. My New England ear is not offended by the long elegant middle “o” of Nabokov as delivered in American academies. The awful “Na-bah-kov” is a despicable gutterism. Well, you can make your choice now.’
2. Andrei Bely (1880–1934) published Petersburg in 1916, which is among Nabokov’s four ‘greatest masterpieces of twentieth century prose’, the others being Joyce’s Ulysses, Kafka’s Metamorphosis and the first half of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Bely’s horseman is Pushkin’s, the Bronze Horseman, Peter the Great on Senate Square beside the Admiralty. A second rider, Nicholas I, sits on a prancing steed in Marie Square (St Isaac’s Square) fronting the cathedral and also figures prominently in Bely’s novel. Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophical movement, based in Dornach, influenced Bely, who spent from January 1914 to April 1916 in Dornach, across the valley from where I write, and where he re-wrote and tweaked much of Petersburg.
3. Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, p. 57.
4. Howells, A Little Swiss Sojourn, p. 103.
5. See Wyllie, ‘Nabokov and Cinema’. Nabokov’s deal with Harris and Kubrick was $150,000 plus 15 per cent of producers’ profits. Nabokov also picked up $100,000 for writing the screenplay. The film earned $3,700,000 in the US box office alone.
6. Lev Grossman, ‘The Gay Nabokov’, Salon, 17 May 2000.
7. Russell, The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov, p. 20.
8. Nabokov, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, p. 510.
9. Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, p. 423. See also Tappe, Nabokov, p. 53.
10. Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, p. 416.
11. Nabokov, Speak, Memory, p. 35.
12. Nabokov, Strong Opinions, pp. 78, 194.
13. Nabokov, The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, p. 27.
14. Svetlana Polsky wrote about ‘Easter Rain’ in Nabokov Studies, Vol. 4, 1997. Translated from Russian by Dmitri Nabokov and Peter Constantine, ‘Easter Rain’ appeared in Conjunctions, 38, Spring 2002.
15. Nabokov, Lolita, p. 9.
16. Ibid., p. 10.
17. Cited in Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, p. 422.
18. Nabokov, Pale Fire, p. 232.
19. Nabokov in a 1965 television interview with Robert Hughes, quoted in Strong Opinions, pp. 76–7. The cedar is still there, growing tall.
20. Ada or Ardor, p. 553.
21. Ibid., p. 527.
22. Ibid., p. 554.
23. Ibid., p. 522.
24. Ibid., p. 557.
25. See Tappe, Nabokov.
26. Unveiled by Dimitri Nabokov in 1999 to mark the centenary of his father’s birth, the statue is by Alexander Rukavishnikov. Rukavishnikov was Vladimir Nabokov’s mother’s maiden name.
27. Nabokov, Transparent Things, p. 15.
28. Ibid., p. 34.
29. In Strong Opinions, originally a 1971 interview for Bayerische Rundfunk.
30. Le Carré, The Night Manager, p. 184.
31. Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, p. 263.
32. Transparent Things, pp. 50–51.
10: Ticino Noir
1. Highsmith, quoted in Wilson, Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith, p. 179.
2. Highsmith letter to Kate Kingsley Skattebol, 26 October 1952, Swiss Literary Archives.
3. Highsmith diary, 5 December 1952, Swiss Literary Archives.
4. Swiss Literary Archives, Highsmith archive, Cahier 22, A-05/22.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Highsmith, Strangers on a Train, p. 3.
8. Highsmith, The Price of Salt, p. 17.
9. Ibid., p. 191.
10. Swiss Literary Archives, Highsmith archive, Cahier 22, A-05/22.
11. Ibid.
12. Plath, The Bell Jar.
13. ‘A Long Walk from Hell’, published in French as ‘La longue marche hors de l’enfer’ in Le Nouvel Observateur, 1988.
14. Quoted in Meaker, Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s, p. 178.
15. ‘A Long Walk from Hell’, Swiss Literary Archives.
16. Schenkar, The Talented Miss Highsmith, p. 490.
17. See Highsmith’s article ‘Winter in Ticino’ in Dicks, Ticking along with the Swiss.
18. Ibid.
19. Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s, pp. 3, 118.
20. The Talented Miss Highsmith, p. 314.
21. Beautiful Shadow, p. 219.
22. Swiss Literary Archives, Highsmith archive, Cahier 22, A-05/22.
23. Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s, p. 190.
24. Dessaix, Night Letters: A Journey through Switzerland and Italy, pp. 25–6. Dessaix appends a fine comment to Highsmith’s drawling indifference: ‘Yet a civilized life is a matter of depth, surely, not surfaces. Otherwise it’s just civility, expensive manners. We love all this in the late twentieth century.’
25. Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s, p. 155.
26. Beautiful Shadow, pp. 170–71.
27. The Talented Miss Highsmith, p. 240.
28. Ibid., p. 485.
29. Swiss Literary Archives, Highsmith archive, B-01-02. Marijane Meaker confirms the virulence of Highsmith’s racism: ‘She said that black men got physically ill if they didn’t have sexual intercourse many times a month’ (Meaker, Highsmith, p. 196).
30. The Talented Miss Highsmith, p. 26.
31. Meaker, Highsmith, p. 198.
32. Terry Castle, ‘The Ick Fact
or’, The New Republic, 10 November 2003.
33. Beautiful Shadow, p. 255.
34. Typescript in the Highsmith archive, Swiss Literary Archives.
35. Highsmith, Small g: A Summer Idyll, p. 56.
36. Ibid., p. 25.
37. ‘The Ick Factor’.
38. Small g, p. 83.
39. Crédit Suisse Bulletin.
40. Ibid.
41. The Talented Miss Highsmith, p. 480.
42. ‘The Ick Factor’.
11: Truffles Missing from the Bonbon Box
1. Dürrenmatt, Suspicion, p. 205.
2. Ibid., p. 110.
3. Dürrenmatt, The Judge and His Hangman, p. 63.
4. Ibid., p. 35.
5. Ibid., p. 41.
6. Suspicion, pp. 110–11.
7. Ibid., p. 143.
8. Ibid., p. 104.
9. Stage directions for The Physicists, pp. 1–2.
10. Suspicion, p. 178.
11. Ibid., p. 183.
12. See Profit, The Devil Next Door, p. 37.
13. Suspicion, p. 184.
14. Ibid., p. 174.
15. The Pledge, p. 1.
16. Ibid., pp. 30–31.
17. Ibid., p. 111.
18. Ibid., p. 158.
19. Ibid., p. 161.
20. Ibid., p. 162.
21. Ibid., p. 167.
22. The Physicists, pp. 23–24.
23. The Pledge, p. 168.
24. Ibid., p. 107.
25. Ibid., p. 172.
26. ‘Switzerland – A Prison’ in Dürrenmatt, Selected Writings Volume 3: Essays, p. 67.
27. Ibid. p. 68.
28. Ibid., pp. 68–9.
29. Ibid., p. 69.
30. Ibid., p. 70.
12: Hard Boiled in Bern
1. The Guardian, 5 March 2005.
2. Conversation with Miriam Gross, 1980, in Bruccoli and Baughman, Conversations with John le Carré, p. 66.
3. Prize-giving speech for the Oxford German Olympiad 2013, Bodleian Library, 18 June 2013.
4. Le Carré, A Perfect Spy, p. 140.
5. Le Carré, Smiley’s People, p. 184.
6. BBC television interview with Jon Snow, 2011.
7. A Perfect Spy, p. 159.
8. Macintyre, A Spy among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, pp. 91–2.
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