The James Bond Bedside Companion

by Raymond Benson

"Now," he turned back to the menu, "I myself will accompany Mademoiselle with the caviar; but then I would like a very small tournedos, underdone, with sauce Béamaise and a coeur d'artichaut While Mademoiselle is enjoying the strawberries, I will have an avocado pear with a little French dressing. Do you approve?"

  (CASINO ROYALE, Chapter 8)

  Once, while in Miami, Bond has what he calls "the most delicious meal he had had in his life." Bond is wined and dined by an American millionaire, Mr. Junius Du Pont, and he is afforded the opportunity to indulge. He has stone crabs containing the tenderest, sweetest shellfish meat he has ever tasted. The meat is perfectly set off by the dry toast and slightly burned taste of melted butter. After each helping of crab, champagne cleans his palate for the next. Once this meal is bloating his belly, Bond is momentarily disgusted with himself.

  The most celebrated of all the Bond dinners occurs in MOONRAKER, when Bond dines with M at Blades Club. Fleming devotes an entire chapter to the meal, and although the reader may not be familiar with much of the food consumed, Fleming's tasty descriptions are mouth watering. M orders caviar, devilled kidney with a slice of bacon, peas, and new potatoes. This is followed by strawberries in kirsch and a marrow bone. Bond has lamb cutlets, the same vegetables as M, asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, and a slice of pineapple. Along with all that, Bond has sliced smoked Scotch salmon on toast. The salmon has "the delicate glutinous texture only achieved by the Highland curers—very different from the desiccated products of Scandinavia." The cutlets are again so tender he can cut them with a fork And M, of course, is in heaven with his marrow bone—something he can't resist.

  The most amusing dinner sequences appear in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, as Tiger Tanaka initiates Bond into the culinary delights of Japan. At one point, Bond is "wrestling" with his octopus and rice, and is about to savor a lobster specialty:

  Lacquer boxes of rice, raw quails' eggs in sauce, and bowls of sliced seaweed were placed in front of them both. Then they were each given a fine oval dish bearing a large lobster whose head and tail had been left as a dainty ornament to the sliced pink flesh in the centre. Bond set to with his chopsticks. He was surprised to find that the flesh was raw. He was even more surprised when the head of his lobster began moving off his dish and, with questing antennae and scrabbling feet, tottered off across the table. "Good God, Tiger!" Bond said, aghast. "The damn thing's alive!"

  Tiger hissed impatiently, "Really, Bondo-san. I am much disappointed in you. You fail test after test. I sincerely hope you will show improvement during the rest of your journey. Now eat up and stop being squeamish. This is a very great Japanese delicacy."

  James Bond bowed ironically. "Shimatta!" he said. "I have made a mistake. It crossed my mind that honourable Japanese lobster might not like being eaten alive. Thank you for correcting the unworthy thought."

  (YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, Chapter 9)

  Bond also has the opportunity to try Kobe beef, which is reported to be the finest in the world. At one point,he is awarded the treat of tasting a fugu feast. Fugu is the Japanese blowfish equipped with poisonous glands, but the meat is the staple food of sumo wrestlers because of its strength-giving qualities. Bond thinks the fish tastes like nothing, not even fish. But "it was very pleasant on the palate and Bond was effusive in his compliments because Tiger, smacking his lips over each morsel, obviously expected it of him."

  "And now, my friend, I have ordered dinner, a good dinner, to be served us up here. And then we will go to bed stinking of garlic and, perhaps, just a little bit drunk. Yes?"

  From his heart Bond said, "I can't think of anything better."

  (ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, Chapter 23)

  This statement implies that James Bond likes to drink. From the moment James Bond gives a waiter special instructions for mixing a martini in CASINO ROYALE, we know that he is especially a hard-liquor man:

  "A dry Martini," he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."

  "Oui, Monsieur."

  "Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?"

  (CASINO ROYALE, Chapter 7)

  And thus is born the famous James Bond martini, "shaken but not stirred." After the martini is brought to the table and tasted, Bond tells the barman that if he can obtain a vodka made with grain instead of potatoes, he'll find the drink even better than it is. Later on in the book, Bond dubs his original martini "The Vesper," after the heroine of the first Bond novel. Actually, Fleming was contested over his use of Kina Lillet, which contains quinine and might be very bitter in a martini. Simple Lillet vermouth would have been more appropriate. The martini is contagious, for even Felix Leiter develops a taste for it He chastizes a bartender in THUNDERBALL for not following instructions in making it Bond's standard variation of the martini is simply vodka, medium dry.

  Bond also has a taste for champagne. When he's not drinking martinis or ice-cold vodka straight up, he almost always orders champagne (especially the pink variety). While dining with M at Blades, the wine waiter suggests Bond try the Dom Perignon '46, to go with the real pre-war Wolfschmidt vodka from Riga. Once Bond has both drinks in front of him, he shocks M with some unusual table practices:

  When M pouted him three fingers from the frosted carafe Bond took a pinch of black pepper and dropped it on the surface of the Vodka. The pepper slowly settled to the bottom of the glass leaving a few grains on the surface which Bond dabbed up with the tip of a finger. Then he tossed the cold liquor well to the back of his throat and put his glass, with the dregs of the pepper at the bottom, back on the table.

  M gave him a glance of rather ironical inquiry.

  "It's a trick the Russians taught me that time you attached me to the Embassy in Moscow," apologized Bond. "There's often quite a lot of fusel oil on the surface of this stuff—at least there used to be when it was badly distilled. Poisonous. In Russia, where you get a lot of bath-tub liquor, it's an understood thing to sprinkle a little pepper in your glass. It takes the fusel oil to the bottom. I got to like the taste and now it's a habit But I shouldn't have insulted the club Wolfschmidt," he added with a grin.

  M grunted. "So long as you don't put pepper in Basildon's favourite champagne," he said drily.

  (MOONRAKER, Chapter 5)

  Bond's traditional drink at Royale-les-Eaux is Taittinger's Blanc de Blancs. Bond consumes a bottle of this one evening before visiting the casino, immediately followed by half a bottle of Mouton Rothschild '53, and a glass of ten-year-old Calvados with three cups of coffee!

  Bond also likes bourbon on the rocks. His favorite brands are Old Granddad, Walker's de luxe, Jack Daniels, and I. W. Harper's. When thinking gin, he prefers Gordon's or Beefeater. Other favorite cocktails include an Old-Fashioned or a Negroni (one-third gin, one-third Campari, one-third red Cinzano). He is particular about certain drinks in specific countries. For instance:

  James Bond had his first drink of the evening at Fouquet's. It was not a solid drink. One cannot drink seriously in French cafes. Out of doors on a pavement in the sun is no place for vodka or whisky or gin. A fine à l'eau is fairly serious, but it intoxicates without tasting very good. A quart de champagne or a champagne à l'orange is all right before luncheon, but in the evening one quart leads to another quart, and a bottle of indifferent champagne is a bad foundation for the night Pemod is possible, but it should be drunk in company, and anyway Bond had never liked the stuff because its licorice taste reminded him of his childhood. No, in cafes you have to drink the least offensive of the musical-comedy drinks that go with them, and Bond always had the same thing, an Americano—bitter Campari, Cinzano, a large slice of lemon peel, and soda. For the soda he always stipulated Perrier, for in his opinion expensive soda water was the cheapest way to improve a poor drink.

  ("From a View to a Kill," FOR YOUR EYES ONLY)

  Bond always orders his drinks double. Once, in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, he feel
s a little guilty ordering his third double (but Mary Goodnight wouldn't know it as a double when it came anyway).

  Finally, Bond does not drink tea. He hates it. "It's mud," he says. He believes it is one of the main reasons for the downfall of the British Empire. After he had said this to one of the girls from the canteen at headquarters, the expression "cup of mud" began seeping through the building.

  Bond smokes cigarettes made especially for him by Morlands of Grosvenor Street They are a special blend of Balkan and Turkish mixture, and each cigarette bears three gold bands. Bond keeps his cigarettes in a wide, gunmetal case which holds fifty. He also sports a black, oxidized Ronson lighter. Bond smokes around sixty cigarettes a day. This habit catches up with him in THUNDERBALL—Bond's medical report indicates that these cigarettes have a higher nicotine content than the mass-produced varieties. After his experience at Shrublands health spa, Bond's tobacco intake is reduced to around twenty or twenty-five cigarettes a day.

  John Gardner's Bond has arranged for Morlands to create a special cigarette with a tar content slightly lower than any currently available on the market. A year later, Bond quits using the Morlands cigarettes and commissions H. Simmons of Burlington Arcade to create a low-tar cigarette for him. These still retain the distinctive gold bands (along with Simmons' trademark).

  Bond basically stays away from other drugs, but he does have a habit of using Benzedrine before a particularly dangerous assignment He takes some of these tablets before his swim through Shark Bay in LIVE AND LET DIE, as well as before swimming to Dr. Shatterhand's Castle of Death in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. During the exquisite dinner with M at Blades, Bond is brought an envelope containing the white powder; he discreetly mixes it with his champagne. "Now what?" asks M, with a "trace of impatience."

  "Benzedrine," he said. "I rang up my secretary before dinner and asked her to wangle some out of the surgery at Headquarters. It's what I shall need if I'm going to keep my wits about me tonight. It's apt to make one a bit over-confident, but that'll be a help too." He stirred the champagne with a scrap of toast so that the white powder whirled among the bubbles. Then he drank the mixture down with one long swallow. "It doesn't taste," said Bond, "and the champagne is quite excellent."

  M. smiled at him indulgently, "It's your funeral," he said —

  (MOONRAKER, Chapter 5)

  In another instance, Bond uses Benzedrine at the Dreamy Pines Motor Court, before tackling the likes of Horror and Sluggsy. He explains to Vivienne Michel that it will keep him awake. The one thing he doesn't want to happen that particular evening is fall asleep.

  In Harlem, Bond and Leiter go to several nightclubs where marijuana is smoked freely. Bond sniffs the stuff and immediately knows what it is. And there's a point in THUNDERBALL when Leiter suggests that a traffic accident could actually have been an attempt on Bond's life. Bond dismisses this by saying, "You've been taking mescaline or something. It's a damned good sequence for a comic strip, but these things don't happen in real life." I doubt whether Bond or Leiter ever experimented with hallucinogens; but it is possible, since both of them have spent time in the Caribbean, where mescaline is plentiful.

  James Bond is not a man of many vices; only particular ones.

  HOME AND OFFICE LIFE

  James Bond lives in a comfortable flat on a square lined with plane trees off the King's Road in Chelsea. His flat is on the ground floor of a converted Regency house, and it is looked after by his elderly Scottish housekeeper, May. Bond's bedroom is "smallish," and is decorated with white and gold Cole wallpaper with deep red curtains. The sitting-room is lined with books, but Bond's reading tastes are never fully explored in the novels. There is an ornate Empire desk at which Bond likes to sit when he is studying Scarne on Cards or other such technical manuals. May serves Bond's meals on Minton china, of a dark blue and gold and white; the coffee pot and silver are Queen Anne. There are two telephones—a regular personal phone, and a red one with a direct line to headquarters. The red phone almost always rings at inopportune times. But the flat in Chelsea is within ten minutes driving time to the office.

  When Bond is not on an assignment abroad, one wonders what he does with his spare time. One paragraph gives us a small clue:

  It was the beginning of a typical routine day for Bond. It was only two or three times a year that an assignment came along requiring his particular abilities. For the rest of the year he had the duties of an easy-going senior civil servant—elastic office hours from around ten to six; lunch, generally in the canteen; evenings spent playing cards in the company of a few close friends, or at Crockford's; or making love, with rather cold passion, to one of three similarly disposed married women; weekends playing golf for high stakes at one of the clubs near London.

  (MOONRAKER, Chapter 1)

  It's hard to imagine Bond having a "few close friends" because they are never mentioned—Bill Tanner, M's Chief of Staff, is supposedly Bond's best friend at the office.

  Bond almost never brings women home to his flat. Only once in the entire series does this happen: Tiffany Case comes to live with Bond in between books, after DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. John Pearson, in his fictionalized biography of 007, presents these scenes in which Tiffany comes to blows with May; the two women cannot get along in the same flat, and eventually Tiffany becomes disenchanted and leaves. Although the story is fleshed out by Pearson, the incident is only vaguely hinted at in FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE.

  The Secret Service (M.I.6) is housed on the eighth floor of a tall, grey building near Regent's Park. The Ministry-of-Works, as it was then called, is a "bustling world of girls carrying files, doors opening and shutting, and muted telephone bells." The doors to the offices have no numbers. If a person had business on the eighth floor, one had to be fetched by a secretary and brought to the particular office one was visiting.

  Bond shares an office with two other members of the Double-0 section-008 and -011. There is hardly a time when all three members of the section are in the office on a particular day, so there is no fighting for the attentions of their attractive secretary, Loelia Ponsonby. The total number of personnel in the Double-0 section is never mentioned.

  Bond takes no holidays, but is usually awarded a fortnight's leave at the completion of each assignment, in addition to any sick leave that might be necessary (it almost always is). Bond earns, in 1955, fifteen hundred pounds a year, but he also has an additional one thousand pounds a year free of tax of his own.

  While on a job, Bond has an unlimited expense account, so for the other months of the year he spends in London, he lives very well on his roughly two thousand pounds a year net In 1955, an English pound equalled approximately $2.80, which made Bond's salary, in American money, roughly $4,200 a year. Once, while staying in a luxurious hotel in Miami as a guest of Mr. Du Pont, Bond muses that were he spending his own money on the room (at $200 a night), he would lose his entire salary for a year in three weeks.

  Routine office work usually consists of wading through piles of secret papers. These papers are circulated among the top members of the Service, and after reviewing, Bond simply signs "007" on the list, and places the document in his own tray. Sometimes Bond is called on to perform night duty. What this amounts to is basically the same secret-paper weeding, but in addition, Bond must, of all things, answer the Universal Export telephone. When M informs Bond that it is time that all senior officers do "their spell of routine," Bond protests. But after a few nights of the work, Bond begins to enjoy it It gives him time to work on a handbook he is writing on secret methods of unarmed combat (Bond titles it Stay Alive!) which he hopes may become a standard manual for the Service.

  Universal Export is the standing cover name for the British Secret Service until around 1963. By then, almost all enemy operatives know about it, so the name is changed to Transworld Consortium around the time of THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.

  ATTITUDES TOWARD HIS PROFESSION

  It was part of his profession to kill people. He had never liked doing it
and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how and forgot about it As a secret agent who held the rare Double-0 prefix—the license to kill in the Secret Service—it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional—worse, it was death-watch beetle in the soul.

  (GOLDFINGER, Chapter 1)

  James Bond's duties as Principal Officer in the British Secret Service include diverse roles requiring diverse skills. But his most important function—never said in so many words—is to perform the role of executioner for the British government. That's putting it bluntly, but the "privilege" of holding a Double-0 number means that James Bond must kill people in the line of duty. It is something that he has accepted and is expected to perform. Many times an assignment involves nothing but the elimination of an enemy op erative. Bond performs this unpleasant task as best as he can without second thoughts—but even James Bond is not immune to the repercussions of this burden on his psyche. The opening chapter of GOLDFINGER finds Bond glumly reflecting on a recent assignment—involving a nasty killing—and attempting to block the regrets from his mind. He forces himself to justify his actions:

  What the hell was he doing, glooming about this Mexican, this capungo who had been sent to kill him? It had been kill or get killed. Anyway, people were killing other people all the time, all over the world. People were using their motor cars to kill with. They were carrying infectious diseases around, blowing microbes in other people's faces, leaving gas-jets turned on in kitchens, pumping out carbon monoxide in closed garages. How many people, for instance, were involved in manufacturing H-bombs, from the miners who mined the uranium to the shareholders who owned the mining shares? Was there any person in the world who wasn't somehow, perhaps only statistically, involved in killing his neighbor?