Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel

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Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel Page 49

by Lawrence Durrell


  Indeed, all the valuable information brought back year by year by our literary wanderers, and which peters away in memorable conversations or private letters … it would all be gathered there within the pages of one gigantic tome which would be as ubiquitously available as a telephone directory. Here one would be able to draw courage and instruction from travellers as various as Freya Stark, Sir Harry Luke, and Gavin Maxwell.…

  But as I write I realize that the project, however magnificent, is impossible of realization. Where is the publisher with enough vision and money to embark upon it? Where is the editor who could harness such a team of brilliant dissimilars and prevent his contributors from coming to blows over the relative merits of Greece, Italy, or Syria? All might end in confusion and acrimony and letters to The Times.

  Finally, where is the traveller to merit such a project? It is possible, too, that the true traveller (who is not a tourist) might scorn such a work, and with justice? For he will have realized that part of the adventure of travel resides in those unexpected disappointments and hardships such a work would be helping him to avoid. Let the tourist be cushioned against misadventure; but your true traveller will not feel that he has had his money’s worth unless he brings back a few scars like that hole in his trousers which comes from striking Italian matches towards instead of away from oneself. No, the mishaps and disappointments only lend relief to the splendours of the voyage. Things should be left as they are, despite those sad autumn postcards.

  Index

  A

  Acre, 1965 191

  Aix-en-Provence 192, 210, 211, 516

  Aldington, Richard 1, 4, 40, 49, 192–193, 201–203, 215, 217

  Alexandria 1, 75, 92, 93, 95, 98, 101, 161, 164, 169, 179, 187, 191, 313, 557, 631

  Allen, J. A. 17

  Anand, Mulk Raj 7

  An Irish Faustus 191

  Argentina 131–133, 137, 146, 211, 238

  Asylum in the Snow, 1946 104, 363, 383

  Athenaios 228, 430, 436–450

  Athens 48, 53, 64–65, 65, 73–76, 79–84, 87, 113, 119–124, 132, 163, 183, 221, 225–227, 232, 235, 327, 347, 350, 412, 435, 441, 450, 560, 630, 632

  Auden, W. H. 14, 77, 149

  Avignon 204, 214, 493–496, 501–521, 526, 532–544

  B

  Balthazar 191, 214, 216

  Beccafico, 1963 5, 193, 423

  Belgrade 124–128, 139–141, 143, 145, 150–157, 160–163, 441, 587

  Bellapaix 163, 166, 168, 170, 173–178, 183–184

  Bitter Lemons, 1957 187–188

  Black Book, The 20, 26–17, 49–50, 55, 61, 66, 212

  Black Honey, (unpublished play by Durrell) 117

  Blixen, Baroness (Isak Dinesen) 137

  Book of the Dead, The 114

  Bournemouth 8, 17, 19, 24, 28, 60, 123–124, 126, 165, 173, 188, 195, 620, 631

  Brillat-Savarin 486, 602

  Brindisi 23, 30, 284

  Brown, Curtis 45

  Buenos Ayres 129, 131–132, 135

  Bull, Peter 34, 437

  Burrows, Ines, Lady 172, 177

  Burrows, Sir Bernard 177

  C

  Cairo, Egypt 16, 75, 91–96, 99, 102, 111, 140, 171, 177, 277, 441

  Campbell, Roy 207

  Cavafy, C. P. 95, 414

  Cejalû, 1947 (The Dark Labyrinth) 105, 137, 161

  Chalcidice 127, 157

  Cheval, Le Facteur (builder of the “Postman’s Palace”) 458–462, 467, 469–471, 478

  Christchurch Priory 20

  Cities, Plains and People, 1946 105

  Claude (née Claude-Marie Vincendon, Durrell’s third wife) 187–190, 193–195, 199, 203–204, 207–210, 217–218, 221, 224, 228, 566

  Clea 191, 218, 220, 224

  Cleopatra (film script for Elizabeth Taylor) 219, 225

  Climax in Crete (Stephanides, Theodore, 1946) 74

  Colossus of Maroussi, The (Miller, Henry, 1941) 74, 233

  Commin, H. G. (bookshop in Bournemouth) 18

  Condrieu 490–491

  Connolly, Cyril 27

  Cooke, Dorian 100, 143

  Cordoba, Argentina 124, 130–131, 135

  Corfu 1, 3, 17, 23–26, 28–30, 32–34, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48–49, 52–53, 56, 58–59, 62, 65, 74, 79–81, 86, 98, 103, 194, 221, 227, 275, 277–278, 347, 363, 405, 427–428, 433–435, 438, 440–441, 445, 632

  Cyprus 1–2, 65, 85–86, 128, 156, 160–161, 163–185, 187–188, 193, 195–196, 199, 214, 218, 220–222, 275, 415, 423–424, 426, 632

  D

  Darjeeling 5–6

  Davies, William Henry 38

  Dawkins, Professor R. M. 35

  De Guylder, Father Joseph (schoolmaster, Darjeeling) 6

  Delphi 234, 407–412

  Douglas, Keith 92

  Douglas, Norman 20, 26, 96, 149, 192, 216, 232, 470

  Down the Styx, 1964 5, 193, 619

  Durrell, Gerald (brother) 25, 105, 123, 183

  Durrell, Lawrence Samuel (father) 5–6

  Durrell, Leslie (brother) 3, 6, 18, 35, 46–47, 56–57, 65, 80

  Durrell, Louisa (mother) 5, 8, 29, 50, 163, 172, 178

  Durrell, Margaret (sister) 19, 53, 188, 199, 228

  Durrell, Penelope Berengaria (Pinkie) (daughter) 75, 88–89, 93, 126, 193, 552

  Durrell, Sappho Jane (daughter) 163, 193

  Dutton, E. P. & Co. Inc. 214–215

  E

  E Editions Poetry London 105

  Eliot, T. S. 2, 4, 9, 14, 27, 76, 85, 89, 104–105, 113, 116, 119, 164, 178

  Elizabethan writers, Durrell plans book on 28, 134, 171, 222

  Esprit de Corps, 1957 125, 188, 211

  Evans, Patrick 54–55 Eve (née Cohen, Durrell’s second wife) 93, 103, 107, 109, 123, 126–127, 132, 141, 147, 149–151, 163–164, 184

  F

  Faber and Faber Ltd. 283

  Fermor, Patrick Leigh 92, 95, 163, 165, 233, 633

  Fielding, Xan 93, 95, 145

  Fraser, G. S. 92, 277

  G

  Gascogne, David 210

  Gascony 474, 581–589, 597–598, 600, 602

  Gawsworth, John 4–7, 48, 70

  Gould, Diana (now Menuhin) 4, 93, 101, 111

  Grenoble 565–570, 574, 578–580

  Gründgens, Gustaf 191

  H

  Hadkinson, Mary 4, 131, 135, 137

  Harrison, Austen 179–180, 183, 226

  Hauterives 458, 464, 468, 470, 473

  Hudson, Barclay 39

  Hughes, Prudence (aunt, Dedicatee of Down the Styx) 619, 621–622, 624–626

  I

  Irish Faustus, An 191

  Ischia 104, 126, 145–146, 149, 554, 632

  Israel 225–226

  J

  Jalunda (United Provinces, India, Durrell’s birthplace) 5

  Justine, 1957 128, 164, 166, 184, 188, 207, 210–211, 213–214, 216, 219–220, 223, 284

  K

  Kahane, Jack (publisher of The Black Book) 27

  Kalamata 73, 75, 87–88

  Katsimbalis, George 73

  Key to Modern Poetry, 1952 124–125

  Kinross, Lord (Patrick Balfour) 93, 163, 165, 181

  Kurseong 5, 129, 243, 250, 252

  L

  Lady Chatterley’s Lover 208

  Lawrence, D. H. 232, 238

  Lawrence, T. E. 192, 206

  Legrand, Louis 189–190

  Lewis, Wyndham 4, 9

  London 8, 12–13, 25, 67–68, 92, 95, 100, 105, 119, 131, 145, 151, 168, 183, 197, 211, 218, 236, 243, 266, 268, 415, 441, 495, 501, 515, 545, 629

  Luke, Sir Harry 163, 165, 176, 180–181, 183, 633

  Lyons 483–484, 486–492, 516, 573, 582, 597

  M

  Macaulay, Rose 2, 163, 171

  Machen, Arthur 13

  Macrae, Elliott B. 213

  Mani (Fermor, Patrick Leigh) 233

  Mazet Michel 190

  Menuhin, Diana 93, 194, 225

  Midi, the 1, 187, 188, 191, 483, 489–490, 502, 512, 514, 544, 5
58, 585, 589, 594, 597

  Miller, Henry 27, 37, 39, 47, 70, 74, 114, 116, 128, 132, 134, 164, 172, 192, 194, 216, 222–223, 313, 364, 411

  Millington-Drake, Marie 168, 170, 178

  Mills, Ray 104

  Mistral, Frederic 202, 491, 498, 514, 524, 526, 536

  Montevideo 128

  Morgan, Charles 114

  Mountolive 191, 211, 216, 222

  Mussolini, Benito 445

  Mycenae 76, 77, 409, 553

  My Family and Other Animals (Durrell, Gerald, 1956) 25, 223

  N

  Nancy (née Myers, Durrell’s first wife) 7, 17–19, 23–25, 28–29, 37, 71, 73–76, 82, 85, 93, 105

  Nemea 76, 78

  Niko 228, 430, 440–451

  Nîmes 189, 190, 194, 197, 199, 200, 204, 214, 216, 221–222, 224, 226, 493, 508, 529, 531

  Nin, Anaïs 27, 158, 383

  O

  On Seeming to Presume, 1948 119, 131

  P

  Panic Spring, 1937 16, 283

  Paris 1, 27, 37, 40, 65, 95–96, 121, 189, 195, 210, 213, 222–225, 233, 407, 441, 503, 512, 515–516, 539, 544, 551, 555, 568–569, 579, 603, 606, 607, 611, 613–614, 616, 619

  Parthenon, The 104

  Perlès, Alfred 4–5, 221

  Personal Landscape (published in Alexandria 1942 93, 100, 105

  Pied Piper of Lovers, 1935 17, 23, 25, 243, 284

  Pont du Gard 507–508

  Pope Joan, 1954 176

  Porteus, Hugh Gordon 4

  Potocki of Montalk, Cedric 7

  Pound, Ezra 38

  Powell, Lawrence Clark 4–5, 132, 277

  Prospero’s Cell, 1945 25, 105, 126

  Provence 165, 203, 220, 434, 457, 483, 491, 493, 497, 510, 513 514, 518, 523–544, 547, 555, 565–566, 593

  Prurient Duck (lost story by Durrell) 54

  R

  Ranage, Marcel 189

  Rawlings, Margaret 153, 191

  Read, Herbert 27

  Redonda 15–16

  Redonda, King of. See Gawsworth, John

  Reflections on a Marine Venus, 1953 104–105, 155

  Rhodes 1, 103–121, 132–133, 136, 138, 140, 151, 153, 156, 168, 171, 199, 111, 363, 451, 546, 632

  Rhône, river 464, 466, 481–499, 507, 509, 515, 518, 526–527, 529, 533, 547, 565

  Ridler, Anne 4, 67, 76, 79, 84, 87–88, 99, 105, 115–116, 118, 128–130, 141, 143, 146, 151, 154–155

  Rio de Janeiro 130

  Rodda, Patricia 4, 5, 210

  S

  Sappho, 1950 125, 143, 153–155, 191, 552

  Sauve Qui Peut, 1966 125

  Seferiades, George 73, 85

  Shaftesbury 16, 187, 196

  Shakespeare, William 29, 67–68, 70, 236, 412, 556, 562

  Shiel.M.P. 15

  Smart, Lady (Amy Nimr) 4, 94–95

  Smart, Sir Walter 4, 91, 109, 192, 199

  Sommières 189–190, 192, 194–195, 197–200, 202–206, 208, 210, 213–215, 219

  Spencer, Bernard 92, 100, 177

  Spender, Stephen 14

  Stark, Freya 4, 163, 165, 171, 175–177, 179, 181, 183, 195–196, 226, 237, 633

  Stendhal (Marie Henri Beyle) 223, 476, 556–558, 565, 568, 573, 576–580

  Stephanides, Dr. Theodore 3, 168

  Stiff Upper Lip, 1958 125

  Stratford-on-Avon 67, 70

  Summers, Romilly 104, 109, 111–112

  Sykes, Gerald 4, 213

  T

  Tain l’Hermitage 474–475

  Tambimuttu 105

  Temple, EJ. 5, 193, 619

  Ten Poems 17

  Thomas, Alan G. 30, 32–33, 36, 39, 42, 45, 49, 52, 53, 56, 59, 62, 65, 153, 157, 161, 166–167, 170, 172–173, 176, 184, 202, 206, 208, 218–219, 222, 224, 227

  Thomas, Ella Mary 66, 166, 176, 194, 197, 202, 224

  Tito, Marshal 126–128, 151, 160

  Transition 17

  Tropic of Cancer (Miller, Henry, 1934) 37, 39, 59

  W

  White Eagles Over Serbia, 1957 125, 188

  Wilkinson, George 4–5, 17, 23, 28–29, 34–35, 82

  Wilkinson, Pamela 83

  Williams, Gwyn 4, 92, 101, 106–107, 121

  Y

  Yugoslavia 1, 123–127, 139, 162, 632

  Z

  Zarian 60, 126, 145–147, 169, 171

  Zero 1946 104, 363–383

  A Biography of Lawrence Durrell

  Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) was a novelist, poet, and travel writer best known for the Alexandria Quartet, his acclaimed series of four novels set before and during World War II in Alexandria, Egypt. Durrell’s work was widely praised, with his Quartet winning the greatest accolades for its rich style and bold use of multiple perspectives. Upon the Quartet’s completion, Life called it “the most discussed and widely admired serious fiction of our time.”

  Born in Jalandhar, British India, in 1912 to Indian-born British colonials, Durrell was an avid and dedicated writer from an early age. He studied in Darjeeling before his parents sent him to England at the age of eleven for his formal education. When he failed to pass his entrance examinations at Cambridge University, Durrell committed himself to becoming an established writer. He published his first book of poetry in 1931 when he was just nineteen years old, and later worked as a jazz pianist to help fund his passion for writing.

  Determined to escape England, which he found dreary, Durrell convinced his widowed mother, siblings, and first wife, Nancy Isobel Myers, to move to the Greek island of Corfu in 1935. The island lifestyle reminded him of the India of his childhood. That same year, Durrell published his first novel, Pied Piper of Lovers. He also read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and, impressed by the notorious novel, he wrote an admiring letter to Miller. Miller responded in kind, and their correspondence and friendship would continue for forty-five years. Miller’s advice and work heavily influenced Durrell’s provocative third novel, The Black Book (1938), which was published in Paris. Though it was Durrell’s first book of note, The Black Book was considered mildly pornographic and thus didn’t appear in print in Britain until 1973.

  In 1940, Durrell and his wife had a daughter, Penelope Berengaria. The following year, as World War II escalated and Greece fell to the Nazis, Durrell and his family left Corfu for work in Athens, Kalamata (also in Greece), then Alexandria, Egypt. His relationship with Nancy was strained by the time they reached Egypt, and they separated in 1942. During the war, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British Embassy. He also wrote Prospero’s Cell, a guide to Corfu, while living in Egypt in 1945.

  Durrell met Yvette Cohen in Alexandria, and the couple married in 1947. They had a daughter, Sappho Jane, in 1951, and separated in 1955. Durrell published White Eagles Over Serbia in 1957, alongside the celebrated memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and Justine (1957), the first novel of the Alexandria Quartet Capitalizing on the overwhelming success of Justine, Durrell went on to publish the next three novels in the series—Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960)—in quick succession. Upon the series’ completion, poet Kenneth Rexroth hailed it as “a tour de force of multiple-aspect narrative.”

  Durrell married again in 1961 to Claude-Marie Vincendon, who died of cancer in 1967. His fourth and final marriage was in 1973 to Ghislaine de Boysson, which ended in divorce in 1979.

  After a life spent in varied locales, Durrell settled in Sommières, France, where he wrote the Revolt of Aphrodite series as well as the Avignon Quintet. The first book in the Quintet, Monsieur (1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize while Constance (1982), the third novel, was nominated for the Booker Prize.

  Durrell died in 1990 at his home in Sommières.

  This photograph of Lawrence Durrell aboard his boat, the Van Norden, is taken from a negative discovered among his papers. The vessel is named after a character in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. (Photograph held in the British Library’s modern manuscripts collection.)

  One of Nancy Durrell�
�s photographs from the 1930s. Pictured here is the Caique, which they used to travel around the waters of Corfu. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin, property of the Gerald Durrell Estate.)

  This photograph of Nancy and Lawrence Durrell was likely taken in Delphi, Greece, in late 1939. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin and the Gerald Durrell Estate.)

  A 1942 photograph of Lawrence Durrell with his wife, Nancy, and their daughter, Penelope, taken in Cairo. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin.)

  This manuscript notebook contains one of two drafts of Justine acquired by the British Library as part of Lawrence Durrell’s large archive in 1995. (Notebook held in the British Library’s modern manuscripts collection.)

  A page from Durrell’s notebooks, or, as he called them, the “quarry.” This page introduced his notes on the “colour and narrative” of scenes in Justine. (Photo courtesy of the Lawrence Durrell Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.)

  “As well as serving delicious food in an idyllic setting, the Taverna Nikolas at Agni has strong links with the Durrell story in Corfu,” says Joanna Hodgkin of this 2012 photo. Durrell lived in the neighboring town of Kalami, where his famous White House sits right above the shoreline. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin.)

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  copyright © 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1969 by Lawrence Durrell

  cover design by Jason Gabbert

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