Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel

by Lawrence Durrell

  L.

  [1940?]

  40 Anagnostopoulou,

  Athens

  To George Wilkinson

  Dear George,

  It was good to hear from you again, even if your diffidence was quite alarming. I don’t know where you got the hollow laughs with which you punctuated your letter; they didn’t come from me. I regard weaving and raffia work and all allied crafts with the deepest reverence. And rejoice to see you making panniers for a living; it’s certainly a more noble living than making puns or poems. I haven’t written anything for ages; and now the war has come I am all corners and edges. Nancy should present the world with a prodigy in May or so; watch the heavens for appropriate comets. I worked here for the legation for awhile which gave me a spurious caste and quite incidentally a decent salary; then we were closed down neck and crop, Theo and I, and half a dozen other worthies all neck and neck in the desperate pot-hunting game. In the meantime official lunacy runs like a millrace. British propaganda is enough to break your heart; huge manuals of Times prose served up like indigestible dumpling to an avid but illiterate public … In the meantime I am teaching English with abandon and circumspection at the British Institute; in May the institute closes for a holiday and I am off to the islands to hide out. What news there is is either too true to repeat or too much repeated to be true; multiply the Corfiot rumour by twelve and you get an idea of the kind of humming which keeps Athens going. Nevertheless the Acropolis is quite pure and beautiful on its plateau of white space, and the sun shows no sign of minding. In a way it’s pleasant to live thus, with the future amputated and the Finnish mists gathering, and a numbness in the hands and feet.

  First spring weather arrived just in time for carnival; masked figures, and huge branches of almonds being sold in the street; a performing bear answering to Turkish commands. On Sunday we gather at Wuthering Heights (Katsimbalis’ home) in Amarousion, and talk Greek literary politics until my heart bleeds. The mountains are still covered with snow and air is fresh as ether and electrical. Tomorrow is Monday and I begin my classes again. Earning a living is an awful business. Love to Pamela and Nicola (who will be Nicoloula when she visits Greece). All the best. Drop me a line when you feel like it. And spare not the rod with your young prep school boys with their shining morning faces. I make not mention of perversion. But avoid it if you can. Cheerio.

  Larry.

  [Early June 1940]

  40 Anagnostopoulou,

  Athens

  To Anne Ridler

  Dear Anne,

  I haven’t written because the silence was becoming heavier and heavier to lift; and the bombs getting easier and easier to drop. And now this damned breakdown in France! One gets so baffled. Nine months ardent boasting and preparation, and Adolf walks through like taking the baby’s rattle away. And all our nice red heroes fighting like lions to what end? Then when I see the kind of mummies who have the responsible jobs here, I begin to understand and sympathize with those who start parties; there is still this mental vacuum in which the English gentleman is busy despising the Greeks too much to propagand, and trusting the willies too much to enquire whether they are pure in heart. Now the whole thing must start all over again; and tomorrow Benito speaks, and I wonder whether this will reach you. Terrific wave of pessimism about us in the Balkans; they live, you know, on the successes of the strongest, and this retreat has badly shaken them.

  As for me, my dears, I am all but a master of hearts here—and a widower of arts. I did a few little poems not awfully good, but I am too distracted by what is looming up. I have been offered a council job in Cyprus now, with more money; but if the Mediterranean goes up in smoke I don’t know how I’ll get there. Nancy is still withholding the superman; it might have to be from island to island by fishing boats and across Turkey. O dear. The Council people here are a splendid lot, very popular and efficient; the British colony spends its time trying to get them sent to the war. The only terror about Cyprus is that they might mistake me for a mule and pop me into the muleteer corps; I’d prefer something either safer or more glorious.

  I have done the whole first act of the play but am not sending it anywhere; my collected poems are coming out in newspaper form in Cyprus with my first month’s pay; no review copies, just one for you and one for me and one for the dog. Miller is fighting a huge battle in USA for an edition of the B.B., and I am trying to stop him; you’ve no idea what a funny story the whole thing is. He is cracked about Greece, writing a book about it now, and about us all it seems.

  Is Eliot coming here? Tell him to come and wash away the taste of Binyon, who bumbled and bombinated for a few weeks and then crawled away into the woodwork of the Orient Express again. If he does come here and I am not near, will he please get in touch with George Seferiades, his Greek translator, and chief foreign press censor, who is a remarkable poet and person: the most civilized man in Balkania. He is at the ministry of tourism here, and will show him Greece if he cares to see it like no other man.

  I did rather despise the flavour of off-licence sherry and lilies which Horizon distils, but so happy that you are up and coming; if one has anything good, you know, it does no harm where it appears.…

  Somebody just blew in and told me that four-fifths of the B.E.F. is saved; I hope it’s true. It will be a triumph of a sober kind. Here the situation will be more amusing, the fighting more open if it comes, and full of funny panics and staggering advances. When you write Moore ask him to send me a bundle of copies of 7 in which I appear; I love reading my own stuff printed so far. Like talking to my own ghost.…

  Today is a blue day, pure as a kingfisher from here to Nauplia; I wish I could cut you a slice of this bell-blue heaven and water and time. One leans forward on the toes and has the sensation of flying; and the whole town lies outside the window, polished and graven up like a shield. Anyway I send you a little poem which is quite quite inadequate.

  If all goes well we shall leave for Cyprus on the 13th; write us care of the BRITISH INSTITUTE, P.O. Box 42. Nicosia. Cyprus. Otherwise if we get stuck I shall willy nilly have to be Lawrence of Albania or Corfu.

  And so, my dears, all the best for the turning of the water of our tears into the wine of victory; and safety and an après la guerre when such things will be written as make the philistines to gape and the little fishes to dance.

  love, larry.

  [1941]

  c/o British Institute,

  Hermes Street,

  Athens

  To Anne Ridler

  Just a swift note dear Anne and Vivian to find out if you are all right: just got permission for this to fly round in the bag, so there is some hope of you getting it. What an awful mess this war becomes: let us hope some agreement by arms can be reached short of absolute destruction. Woe on the damnable apathy that’s brought us to this! Woe Chamberlain!

  I feel a little guilty because here the sun’s great candle etc. and the sea rolls quietly at the foot of the temple in Sunion without any interest in our scurvy wars: went to see Agamemnon on Sunday. The heights of the rock blazing hot, dizzy with cicadas, and the Argolis so sweet and calm like always. Bathed naked at Kinetta from a pure dazzling white shingle beach, every pebble perfectly oval as if sucked by generations of Chinese women: and twenty feet of water clear like heavy glass, slightly frosted over: later from the Corinth road saw dolphins playing like black shields in the Salamis. So remote from Heinkel and Hair-raid shelter were we. Did you know? I have a thumping daughter, with the ancestral nose and a voice like a bittern. We are supposed to be sent down to Kalamata in southern Peloponnesus in late August to start a school there. Rich wild and unvisited country again—how I adore Greece, and how lucky I am to be here really, in spite of everything. I am not writing a line needless to say except little poems; one can’t somehow with the war going on. But I’m germinating a marvellous novel which I shall never have time to write.

  Miller has written a huge book about his Greek trip with fantastic portraits of all of us in
it. Very amusing.

  I hear from no one in England—and no one hears from me I spose: even lost touch with my family.

  I can’t do better than quote Miller’s last post-card to end this letter: “Bless you and keep you: we belong to the new world, remember, so keep yr head.” Don’t forget that Anne—and make Vivian keep his head down—I have a feeling we’ll all come through.

  Love—Larry

  [1941?]

  Institute of English Studies,

  Kalamata, Greece

  To Anne Ridler

  Dear Anne,

  Just a line to tell you that my poems have been sent off and will probably arrive before the invaders do. By now you must be feeling like Sir Thopas

  “Love is a Lord of misrule

  And keepeth Christmas in my corpse”

  I do hope it’s a boy and at least as much fun for you as Ping-Kêe [Penelope] is for us with four rabbit-teeth and a snub nose: she can now make every sound within the range of a seven and sixpenny dollie. It is strange this lovely valley: orchards and undulations and oranges: particularly unreal when the sirens go and the little children dash for the trees. Last week an Italian seaplane nearly flew into our room: no bombs, just curiosity but we all got a fright. Places round about have been plastered and we have had visitors right overhead and low several times but as yet no bombs—Just as I wrote that a terrific explosion outside. Rushed down to get Pinkie who was being walked by the sea: mystery. No planes—no damage. They say perhaps a mine has exploded against the further harbour.

  By the way, will you ask Eliot if he ever received the Modern Greek translation of the Rock and Wasteland by my friend Seferiades the poet? It’s the best translation into any European language and S. is the Eliot of Greece: can Eliot read Greek?

  He says he sent E. a copy c/o Faber a long time ago: Miller is doing a sort of Crazy Gang book about Greece. Wish I could do something but just can’t. Am still waiting on the Air Force: and of course we are waiting for the Bulgarians too.

  In the meantime I am a peripatetic teacher of English in a Greek factory town. Not so Socratic or so damned rusty as might be: I have gigantic plans and bulging notebooks—but no . [soul].

  I enclose a topical comic anti-wop song much sung here: with all good wishes to V. and you and Alan Pringle and D.B.

  After this damned war we won’t half write things of value, won’t we?

  in the meantime

  Love from us all

  Keep yourselves safe

  and hurrah for the spring-child

  Larry

  Egypt

  THE HORDES OF refugees that poured into Egypt were held in two camps until they had been screened; for the authorities feared, not without reason, that Nazi agents would have been infiltrated into their company. Those proved to be innocent were accommodated in requisitioned hotels while they arranged the transfer of money, found a place in which to live and generally organized their new life. Theodore Stephanides, now a medical officer in the RAMC and stationed in Egypt, went in search of his friends and found them living in Cairo at the Luna Park Hotel.

  During his first months in Egypt, Durrell supported himself to some extent, by writing a weekly funny column and a fair number of leaders for The Egyptian Gazette. In August he was interviewed by Sir Walter Smart, Oriental Counsellor, and taken on by the British Embassy in Cairo as Foreign Press Officer. He had been chosen because he now spoke Greek fluently and had a considerable knowledge of the Greek temperament. His field of work lay in supplying the Greek press with information and generally influencing their editorial line in harmony with the Allied cause. In 1944 he was posted, as Press Attaché, to Alexandria, a city where the Greek population, numbering some three hundred thousand, supported several daily newspapers and a variety of weekly journals in their own language.

  During the war years in Egypt Durrell was, to a large extent, cut off from his friends in northern Europe, most of whom, in any case, were scattered in the services; but he was soon to form important new friendships that were to prove enduring.

  Cairo was, at least nominally, neutral; the Germans did not attempt any bombing; indeed, it was one of the few large cities of the old world to escape the “blackout,” and the lights shone brightly all night. The front line at Alamein was only eighty miles away; when friends disappeared into the desert to fight and then came back for the weekend, it seemed as if they had been riding to hounds rather than taking part in a war. Brilliant people from many walks of life found themselves at the nerve centre of the Middle East and coalesced into groups bound by mutual interests; indeed Cairo almost took on an aspect of London, and the social life of this somewhat seedy capital received a shot in the arm.

  G. S. Fraser, looking back on those days, quoted the title-phrase of Hazlitt’s essay: “This was the time of my first acquaintance with the poets.” Among the young writers stationed in Egypt were Bernard Spencer, Keith Douglas, George Fraser, Gwyn Williams, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Xan Fielding, and Lord Kinross; while, later in the war, the celebrated ballet dancer, Diana Gould (now Diana Menuhin) spent some time in Alexandria. Under the stimulation of these conditions a good deal of poetry emerged, some of which first appeared in the eight numbers of a magazine, edited by Durrell and Robin Fedden and printed in Cairo: Personal Landscape, A Magazine of Exile, 1942-45.

  During the general apprehension and disruption of life caused by the near approach towards Cairo of the Germans under Rommel, Nancy moved to Palestine, taking Pinkie with her. The marriage which was already under some strain now broke up and Nancy did not return to Egypt. About a year later Durrell met and fell in love with an Alexandrian girl, Eve Cohen, who was to become his second wife.

  Thinking about “Smartie”

  Reprinted from Walter Smart by Some of His Friends. 1963.

  Despite the eminence of his official rank nobody in the Cairo Embassy ever succeeded in thinking of him as anything but “Smartie”—even down to the secretaries and typists. Where the nickname came from I do not know but it imposed itself on us all and carried with it a concrete image of this lovable, whimsical, curious and delightful man. Perhaps the most endearing of his many qualities was that he was afflicted by one of the intellectual pieties which one finds more often among Frenchmen than Englishmen: he was an “artist-cherisher.”

  This was brought home to me during my first week as a junior in the Press Department of the Cairo Embassy. I was late for the office one afternoon (I had been lunching with an Egyptian poet), and when I arrived I heard, with sinking heart, that my Oriental Councillor had been looking for me: had, indeed, actually dropped into my office. This was unheard of—for normally juniors were summoned, not visited. I immediately concluded that Smartie was a low-down dog who had been testing my punctuality and general efficiency by a surprise visit. (I was rather weak in both qualities.) I picked up the phone and rang his office; immediately his voice came over the wire, warm and reassuring. “I wanted to talk to you about your new book of poems which Amy and I got yesterday,” he said. He sounded almost apologetic for troubling such a great man!

  Talk we did, later that evening, in his beautiful Cairo house, with its great army of books, on a terrace overlooking a shady garden and my timidity melted almost as swiftly as the ice cubes in my glass. I had discovered (as everyone did) The Smarts. The house itself was a fitting frame for a life which might be described as one of pure intellectual curiosity—it was crammed with books, paintings, manuscripts, pamphlets in a number of languages. But it was not merely the house of a great collector, or an antiquary, or a patron of the arts. There was a continuous and purposeful life being lived there among its treasures which included several big grave thoughtful paintings by Smartie’s wife Amy Nimr. And so many books! Persian, French, Arabic, Greek.… The house of the Smarts was a hinge between a dozen cultures; their world was completely international and the house reflected it. It smelt of Paris, Damascus, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Cairo, London, and New York. I became (as everyone did) a frequent visitor
. If one were invited to tea one never knew whom one would meet—a soldier just back from India or Ethiopia, a parachutist-poet like Patrick Leigh Fermor or Xan Fielding, a Persian poet, a mystic, a scholar of international renown, or perhaps even a pure eccentric deeply cherished by Smartie and Amy for a wayward habit of life or a singular theory about the Holy Ghost.

  Smartie’s first anecdote fully illustrated this physiological predisposition towards the arts and sciences; he told me, with that delightful self-deprecating ruefulness with which he always gave point to a story against himself, just how as a junior accredited to Cairo he had committed the worst of all sins by forgetting, not only to sign the book, but even to present himself for duty for a number of days. The reason for this lapse was that someone had given him an introduction to a then completely unknown Greek poet called C. P. Cavafy who lived over a brothel in Alexandria. Smartie had been impelled to visit him and spend several days talking literature with him. It was well worth the reprimand, he added.

  But if Smartie adored and cherished artists he never used them for copy, so to speak; he savoured and enjoyed them, derived amusement and self-instruction from them, but would never have dreamed of publishing anything about them. He was like a Persian monarch in his attitude to his artists. An English poet once said: “Smartie is so refreshing because he always makes art seem worth while.” And it was something more than a boutade when someone else coined the phrase, “Art for Smartie’s sake.”