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Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel

Page 13

by Lawrence Durrell


  10 February 1953

  Ionian Bank,

  Kyrenia, Cyprus

  To Alan G. Thomas (Postcard)

  Just got here and am in a frightful mix with the child a house a job—It seems a hopeless thing to satisfy all these demands—place is lovely—would like to stay if I can. Will let you know about the books—I’ve forgotten how many I have—approx. what would the whole shoot cost—just the books of course?

  Love

  Larry

  [1953]

  Cyprus

  To Alan and Ella Thomas

  Dear Alan and Ella,

  … Meanwhile I’m getting on with the bloody house, some days gloomy and despondent, and on the point of selling it, some days full of optimism. I calculate it could be really lovely for about £1500—a Turkish house skilfully and unobtrusively modernized inside. Rather an inaccessible position but a really glorious view. I wonder if you could get me the catalogue of a stained-glass manufacturer. Can one just buy panes of coloured glass—or perhaps single panes with not too hideous a something painted on them? I wonder. Also have you any idea what woodwork costs in England. It is expensive and bad here. I’m toying with giving Sapphy a Turkish bed—a dais in one corner of the room with a carved wood balustrade running round it—I often saw clumps of carved rails for sale in junk shops. But perhaps transport would make the sending of it too expensive.

  As soon as I’m organized I’ll ask you to start sending the books.

  Love, Larry

  15 October 1953

  c/o Ionian Bank,

  Kyrenia, Cyprus

  To Alan G. Thomas

  Dear Alan,

  Forgive me being such a lousy correspondent. We are on the last lap of the house and I’ve started work—terribly tiring—another fortnight should see the house done. I wonder if you could be an angel and order me a dozen panes of coloured or stained glass—small—the size of half this page, in as many different colours as possible. I have two small windows—fanlights—and though the whole island is plastered with Turkish glass none is imported now. If you could airmail them to me I’d be grateful as the first rains are expected in 14 days. I think any little jobbing builder could tell you a glass-maker who would get them for you. Please would you? We are all as yet unearthquaked and well. Mother is bearing up.… I have no place to work and am going mad with frustration. Simply dying to get on with my novel—The girl’s VI form of the place where I teach send me about six red roses a day anonymously, which is a good boost for a battered ego. I’ll ask you to start posting the books soon and send you a cheque.

  Love to you both

  Larry

  30 October 1953

  Bellapaix, Cyprus

  To Dr. Theodore Stephanides

  Dear Theo,

  It was good to hear from you again. Thank you for all your snake-dope. It came very appositely as we killed a viper just by the Abbey yesterday. Sapphy was within a few inches of it, playing with a cat which was hunting it. Yes we had a mild quake here but so far touch wood the house is standing up. Glad the Rhodes book amused you—cut in half as it was—I can’t bear it.

  KYRENIA, CYPRUS

  (gouache)

  Marie Millington-Drake should be in London this week and is going to ring you up about the shadow-plays. You will like her I think. She returns in November—so please give her the material you can for me—I will look it over and we might get out a ground-plan. At the moment I’m dead beat with teaching and building but I’ve written 25,000 of a corking novel about Alexandria which no doubt everyone will deplore but which engrosses me. Yes, my mama is here, and sends her love to you. She was very alarmed by the snake episode. Cyprus is charming but the climate is nearer Salonika than Mykonos—but it has a very real beauty of its own—it lies in the great soft hush of the Levant—The house is beginning to look quite pretty—I hope you will come out and stay soon—Zarian is going to settle and we are expecting Seferis from Beirut any day now. Paddy Leigh Fermor is here at present and we are having riotous evenings together. The trouble is that I have to get up at five and be at work at seven—you will sympathize I am sure. The Cypriots are awfully nice but dead in a peculiar sort of way—Security? Lack of real freedom and responsibility? Riches? I have not decided as yet which. Perhaps all three. But they are more honest than the metropolitan Greeks—though somehow so mentally sluggish it is unbelievable.… I’m dying to finish this book—such a strange mixture of sex and the secret service! Love to you. Embrace Marie warmly from me. She’s a good girl.

  Larry

  [1953]

  Bellapaix, Cyprus

  To Alan G. Thomas

  Dear Alan,

  The coloured glass was a great success and every bit arrived safely. I have had the troublesome ground floor window of the dining room glassed in—it looks a bit like a Belsize Park Synagogue but really awfully nice. I’ve discovered that you can be as Betjeman as you like with Turkish houses without ruining them. Will you let me know what I owe you? I am standing by for the books now—how wonderful now the winter is setting in to immerse in the Elizabethans. I wish I could have afforded the huge £125 collection of reprints in your last catalogue. If you have any old books too shameful for the 2d box even make me a present of them and I’ll pay the postage on them. Anything at all. Also please for Xmas dig me up a few bright books for Sapphy—full of animals, please. I have started a back-breaking teaching job but otherwise am happy—no chance to write as yet—however a good novel cooking.… I keep farmer’s hours now—4.30 I’m up and away. Such beautiful dawns as in Cyprus I have never seen—better even than Rhodes. Paddy Leigh Fermor whom you’d love has just been through and John Lehmann: Adrian Seligmann is wintering here to write his Turkish book; Freya Stark is coming for a few months to stay with Harrison—who is awfully like you—and has (he’s an architect) built up an old Turkish house into a sort of biblio oikion [book house]—we are becoming terribly arty—like Cairo during the war—Send my beloved Eliza’s will you when you can?1

  Bless you—Love to you both

  Larry

  Did I tell you what fun Sapphy and I had with old Rose Macaulay? She adopted us and whizzed us off to bathe in her old car. She is a sweet thing—and went off vaguely towards Syria. Zarian is coming to settle here (“My boy we will immortalize Cyprus”). Armenians have given him a whole monastery to live on in a bluff beyond Buffavento. He threatens to give parties to which we shall have to ride 3 hours on muleback. Last night there was a knock on the door and in walked Seferiades—from Beirut holidaying here—you see we are not alone. Every one is arriving or planning to arrive and I am busily furbishing up a spare room for chance guests. Diana Newall is coming from Beirut to spend Xmas and x Yugoslav ballet dancers—one the ravishing and ever beloved FOSCA—have booked for August next. Miller is coming for a month next September. Why don’t you?

  Larry

  22. December [1953]

  Cyprus

  To Alan G. Thomas (Postcard)

  Dear Alan,

  Thank you so much. I’ll tell Grindlay to transfer you £10 to cover postage. I’m on the last lap of the house and it is really awfully pretty. The books will perfect it, I hope. All sorts of artists coming through—why don’t you come next summer. We have camp-beds etc. Henry Miller and wife are coming in Sept. Paddy Leigh Fermor and Joan in June; Ines Burrows in June—hosts of people. It will make the island quite perfect. If only I didn’t have to work so hard.

  My book has gone by the board now unfortunately. Never mind. Sapphy is well and my mother who sends her love—Love to you both for Xmas.

  Larry

  [1954]

  Bellapaix, Cyprus

  To Alan G. Thomas

  Dear Alan,

  The local bookseller in Kyrenia has been pestering me to help him re-arrange his shop. He has suddenly woken up to the fact that Kyrenia (which was the size of Corfe) is now being heavily Charminsterized,2 prices are rising, people coming in. He really runs a small stationery shop with a counter
-trade in mags. He smells the boom and realizes that in a year or two there will be several more enterprising people trying to open up here—Meanwhile he has by far the best position but is at his wits’ end to know what to do. He stocks a few Penguins, post-cards, papers, stationery and text-books for the Greek schools. In fact a stroll round Charminster will tell you exactly the sort of shop he has, and a glance at your own windows will show the sort of thing he dreams about. He wants advice as to stocking. There is only one big bookshop on the island which is a huge emporium, an inextricable jumble run by a Turk, but which has a large stock and is consequently famous. People motor 18 miles into Nicosia for a book rather than visit my friend.

  Meanwhile his potential public is as follows:

  1. 3,500 English residents

  2. Visiting tourists and troops—say 5,000 a year

  3. Schools anxious for books on simplified English, Texts, Eckersley etc. (Longmans)

  The stationery side is well established and the shop pays its way on it; but I think books, both new and second-hand, particularly travel and guide-books would sell steadily and quietly. How shall I advise my friend? How much capital should he put into a larger stock? Secondhand books? Is there any sale or return system? I imagine his problems are those one would face in expanding a business in Winton or Boscombe. Would you be interested in selling him chosen stock? Let me have a note if you are interested. Perhaps it might later appeal to you to be a managing director of a shop in Kyrenia (Business Trips). I am confident that if his little shop is carefully nursed it could rapidly expand—so many people spend the summer and winter here—and as I say the town is expanding horribly. The US Radio Station has produced a number of Yank families too. Let me have your views will you?

  Yours

  Larry

  13 February [1954]

  Bellapaix, Cyprus

  To Alan G. Thomas

  Dear Alan,

  Thank you for your good essay on bookselling the contents of which I have passed on to my eccentric friend in Kyrenia. He is most grateful. At the moment I am working so hard that I can’t contemplate opening up another venture or I shall break a blood-vessel. But I shall keep your offer in mind for future ref. It has been a most tiring year and I am not out of the wood yet. To build a house, mind a baby, find a job—and write 25,000 of a good book (alas stopped), has taken all my energy. But the house is really most attractive. I do hope some time you’ll come and stay with us. At the moment Freya Stark is preparing for a journey to the Black Sea here and we see quite a lot of her. She says that one bookseller sent in a query about her last book and thought the title was “The Cost of Incest”!3 She’s nice. All sorts of other people seem to be coming out so we should not lack for friends. By the way would it be impossible for you to order me a printer’s dummy the size of a large novel—is it crown octavo, with some decent though not super paper—I shall make distinguished visitors write me something. I have an old dummy with quite a lot of interesting autographs in it. If this one is nicely bound in buckram could you have lettered on the spine

  Bellapaix Abbey

  in Cyprus

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  The books are coming in nicely. Thank you. They will make such a difference to life as Cyprus is terribly provincial and utterly cut off—No music, no theatre, no nothing. But there are some v. nice people settled here—an old architect called Harrison whom you’d love, a descendant of Jane Austen, and an artist or two.

  If I have any money over I’m going to ask you to send me a few books later—but as I can’t quite remember what I already own I’d better wait. I do hope I haven’t sold all the psychology I once owned—particularly a psychoanalysis of Baudelaire.

  Love to you both

  Larry

  14 March [1954]

  Bellapaix Abbey, Cyprus

  To Alan G. Thomas

  Dear Alan,

  I must write you immediately to thank you for the munificence. The book is simply beautiful and could not be better adapted to its purpose. I will kick off with Freya Stark and Sir Harry Luke today and get Rosemary Seligmann to do a drawing. What a beautiful parchment bag for it. Since my new address people have been reacting in a most favourable way; it has been given out that I have bought a huge ruined monastery and am living therein with 275 concubines. It’s shocking how people exaggerate. I’ve only got 235. But I’m having a press photo taken of myself in Carmelite rig, “tonsured like a ‘mandril,’” dictating Pope Joan to a couple of pretty nuns.…

  I’m working so hard these days I have no time to think. The clock is just striking six—I’m off to work.

  Many thanks for the lovely book. I hope you and Ella will come and write in it before the Greeks push us into the sea.

  Love

  Larry

  1 June [1954]

  Bellapaix, Cyprus

  To Freya Stark

  Dear Freya Stark,

  Thank you so much for your letter from Turkey which was full of characteristic touches which made one feel the weird bare splendour of it. I do hope the book is shaping itself steadily in your mind’s eye. I have, as usual, been working terribly hard and only snatching moments for my book which I have begun to loathe because it is nagging at me all the time and I feel I haven’t the strength and concentration to deal with it as it deserves. We have also been simply inundated with visitors, mostly old friends I haven’t seen since my pre-war Athenian days. Pleasant meetings enough but I feel the wretched book reproaching me when I get up in the morning and stagger down the hill to the car! Sapphy is enormously well and happy and Lucia is still her favourite doll, though she has developed a faintly spastic left knee which we do not dare to examine for fear of making it worse. On the second we are expecting Ines Burrows to stay for a week en route for England, I am sure you remember her from Cairo. Bernard B. [urrows] was Head of Chancery when you were a Friend of Freedom, and indeed it was he who introduced us one afternoon long ago. They are at Balukesir now—Bernard has his first Embassy. Xiutas—the Right Rev—was delighted by your card, and continues to swear and recite his way round the island. He has unearthed a charming little Turkish verse which, recited in a dark incinatory tone, seems to me good even in translation. It goes like this:

  And if you go to Kyrenia

  DON’T GO INTO THE WALLS

  And if you go into the walls

  DON’T STAY LONG.

  And if you stay long

  DON’T GET MARRIED

  And if you get married

  DON’T HAVE CHILDREN!

  Try reciting it aloud. It is quite haunting. My mother sends you her best wishes as does Marie [Millington-Drake] who is building an extraordinary encampment of grass huts down by the sea while she decides about the ever more problematical house. Every good wish and do come back soon.

  Yours Sincerely,

  Larry Durrell

  [1954]

  Bellapaix Abbey, Cyprus

  To T. S. Eliot

  Dear TSE,

  How delightful to find your inscribed play waiting for me in the pouring rain at the village pub. Couldn’t have been a greater thrill. I sit down at once to thank you. I’m still working infernally hard as a schoolteacher but I have managed to put what little money I have (had) into a tiny but lovely Turkish house in a tumbledown village built round a huge ruined Abbey. A lovely village. Cyprus is rather a lovely, spare, big bland sexy island—totally unlike Greece with a weird charm of it’s own—I haven’t yet seen it properly.…

  I have no time to write alas! And I’m teeming with books at the moment. I’ve got the guts of a good book on Alexandria out on paper: but I have no time at the moment to induce the necessary nervous breakdown without which one can’t get the little extra power into it which embalms.…

  I’m getting old. Can’t write poetry anymore—too tired. Only things which really please me are making love and lying in the sun—To realize the importance of plea sure and get contemplative enough to really enjoy it is something achieved.…
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  Every good wish

  Larry Durrell

  [1954]

  PIO. Nicosia, Cyprus

  To Freya Stark

  Dear Freya,

  I learned with dismay from Austen [Harrison] that you had not had a word from me. I answered your letters and addressed by hand the envelopes—to Asolo—as you seemed to be moving about a great deal. Rumour said Baghdad. Then came a cryptic post-card from Paddy with a less drunken looking note by you in the corner. And news? Surely you must be back and have my letters. I have been working like a black—they have made me a pasha and I am grappling with the moribund Information Services of the island, trying to make our case against the united howls of Enotists, British pressmen and fact-finding M.P.s. It has been no joke and all writing has had to be put on one side. How I envy the sense of space and leisure and meditation you are getting into your new book.… Later on you must send me some pictures and a short article on some Cypriot Turkish subject for the Cyprus Review which I am trying to revive.… As for us, we are cleaving fast to this politically “jumbly” island. How I long for a short holiday somewhere. But, materially things are looking up and the work, though hot, is more congenial than teaching. Only my own real writing beckons and leers at me from the subconscious—but there’s nothing to be done about that for the time being. We are doing £25 worth of alterations to the house while we live in the Government House in Nicosia which they have given us. The usual troubles with Cypriot labour. But at last Marie’s problems are settled for Austen has agreed to build her the sort of house which will put an end to wander lust. Endless conferences and telephone-calls. Endless discussions on concealed patios and fountains. Soon there will be half a dozen nice people settled here and we can begin to work on the doughy shapeless mass of Cyprus social life and give the island an identity. You must really help in the pages of the Review. Important people coming here and bothering to write about it will make life seem all the more worth living for us Cypriots. As soon as I have got the Review on its feet I shall write you a formal editorial letter making you an offer for an article. I also hope to entrain that tireless and delightful globe-trotter Sir Harry Luke—and others like Osbert Lancaster who know the island well and who deserve to be better known in the island. In about six months I hope to be able to relax—Sapphy is well and happy.

 

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