In Tearing Haste

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  [9] ‘When showing people around Houghton, Sybil Cholmondeley used to point out paintings, furniture and decorative works of art, sometimes exotic and often with an Eastern influence, collected by Sir Philip Sassoon, saying, in her precise clipped tones, “These are my brother Philip’s things – the best of their kind.” ’(DD)

  [10] In a letter to a friend, Horace Walpole wrote that ‘Dowagers as plenty as flounders’ lived around Strawberry Hill, his house on the River Thames.

  * Even Queen Mary’s Fabergé stuff has gone to London.

  26 March 1984

  Mani

  Darling Debo,

  What a spanking description of those Proustian birthday celebrations at Houghton! I’ve read it again and again, and aloud to gaping listeners, all agog at those wonders by proxy.

  I had a very bracing letter from your Emma, full of kind words about ‘Das Herz von Douglas’, [1] which I had inflicted on all friends at Yuletide. Somebody sent a copy of it to an 87-year-old Gräfin Strachwitz, who is the gr. gr. niece of the poet who wrote it. Apparently, her relation is also her life’s passion, and she has sent me an enormous book she has written about him, the first of three vols, all arriving in due course. It’s full of pictures of spiky Schlosses in Silesia and Bohemia, and pictures of splendid old grafs that Nancy would have liked when swotting on Frederick the Great [2] – all epaulettes and sabres and a criss-cross of fencing scars, ending up with a picture of herself, unscarred, but otherwise the image of Field Marshal von Bock [3] in a picture hat. Rather like O. Sitwell’s remark about Dame Ethel Smyth: ‘Ethel would be the dead spit of Wagner if only she were more feminine.’ [4]

  Must now write to D Cooper.

  Tons of love,

  Paddy

  [1] PLF had sent Emma Tennant his translation of ‘The Heart of Douglas’ by the Silesian poet Moritz, Graf Strachwitz (1822–47).

  [2] Nancy Mitford’s last book, a life of Frederick II of Prussia, published in 1970.

  [3] Fedor von Bock (1880–1945). The commander of Hitler’s failed attempt to capture Moscow had a thin, hatchet-like face.

  [4] Ethel Smyth (1858–1944). Composer, militant suffragette and prolific author. At the age of seventy-one she fell in love with Virginia Woolf who described her as ‘an indomitable old crag’.

  6 April 1984

  Chatsworth

  Bakewell

  Darling Paddy,

  Hoorah re you looming. COME TO IRELAND.

  We’ll be there 16–28 April. You would be WELCOME any or all of that time.

  Much love

  Debo

  16 May 1984

  White’s

  St James’s

  London SW1

  Darling Debo,

  I’m still living in an afterglow of those lovely days at Lismore. It was more marvellous than ever, even than that glorious first sojourn, twenty-eight unbelievable years ago. Why I’m so late in writing to say all this is a mystery I can’t fathom; but 1000 thanks, and to Andrew. It was bracing to see him fit and well again.

  I’ve been enjoying my minor season – or Greece dweller’s equivalent of a Mediterranean seaside holiday – and, the weekend after my return, went first to Coote Lygon’s cottage, then to the Mad Boy’s [1] for two nights. He’s considerably slowed up, walks rather laboriously on a stick, legs swivelling along rather like a pair of dividers, so my long walks were solitary trudges across green Berkshire, and I wish we had been on the march instead along the Blackwater with an escort of unjacketed Garda a couple of fields behind. Poor Robert had a fall and a sort of stroke three days later, but Coote says he is better now. I fear they will be more and more frequent.

  Well, next weekend – to continue Jennifer’s Diary [2] – was at Daph’s (she had telephoned to Diana Cooper while I was hobnobbing with her as she lay abed and when she suggested it, I couldn’t resist). Well, her quarters in the Old Laundry [3] are simply glorious and she seemed very happy and settled and surrounded by loving souls. We went to the v nice house David & Caroline Somerset, now Beaufort, [4] live in, full of gigantic grandchildren of Daph and lots of guests, and I got her nice intellectual granddaughter [5] who had just written a book. The last morning I went for a tremendous walk before brekker in that park, where two simply tremendous herds of deer were on the move looking v romantic, and was overtaken by David on a glorious steed, accompanied by two Springer spaniels. He told me that two evenings before Master, your Leic Sq pick-up, [6] died, he (Master) was given rather a turn by seeing three foxes sitting on his father’s grave, giving him a serious look. The day before, Daph and I came out of the house, and his stooping rather absent-minded relict was ambling down towards the moorhens with a companion, and, spotting Daph, asked her if she lived near. Daph said Yes, here in the laundry, and the Dss said ‘I expect you have lots of fun with the milkmaids’, suggesting nameless high jinks among the churns and the mob caps. Then she asked David, ever in blue jeans, where he lived and he said ‘I live here too, don’t you remember me’ and she then said to Daph ‘They won’t like him like the other feller who was here’.

  Drinks with Jim and Alvilde [Lees-Milne], also quartered nearby. He said Joan’s brother Graham had been the terror of all the surrounding nurseries and schoolrooms when young, and got so cross with Jim’s sister once that he smashed his tennis racquet over her head so hard that all the strings broke and her head came through.

  Many, many thanks again, darling Debo, and tons of love from

  Paddy

  [1] Robert Heber-Percy (1911–87). Known as ‘the Mad Boy’ because of his wild behaviour. Married twice, to Jennifer Fry 1942–7, and to Lady Dorothy Lygon in 1985, but his liaisons were mostly with men.

  [2] The social column by Betty Kenward (1906–2000), chronicling the activities of the English upper classes, ran for more than half a century in Tatler and Harper’s & Queen.

  [3] Daphne Fielding moved to the house on her son-in-law’s estate after her divorce from Xan Fielding.

  [4] David Somerset, 11th Duke of Beaufort (1928–). Married Lady Caroline Thynne, Daphne Fielding’s daughter, in 1950.

  [5] Lady Anne Somerset (1955–). Historian, whose first book, Ladies-In-Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day, was published in 1984.

  [6] Henry Somerset, 10th Duke of Beaufort (1900–84). Master of the Horse, 1936– 78, to three British Sovereigns. Known as ‘Master’ since he was a small boy by virtue of his creation and Mastership of his own pack of Rabbit Hounds. ‘A few years previously, Debo and I had been to see a film in Leicester Square called The Belstone Fox. We were the only people there, except for a very tall silhouette in the front row. It was the late Duke of Beaufort. Afterwards, on the pavement, he looked sad. “What did you think of it, Master?” Debo asked. “O, I didn’t like those hounds being run over by a train,” he replied. “Don’t worry, Master,” Debo reassured him, “scenes like that are always faked.” He cheered up a lot and was driven off in his big beflagged Master of the Horse Daimler. “He’s very shortsighted,” Debo said, “I bet he thought I was a street-walker.” ’ (PLF)

  19 August 1984

  [Postcard]

  Bolton Abbey

  Skipton

  I thought you’d like this P.C. [1] Got permission from Ld Oxford as you note above.

  I took Stella Tennant to the S of France for a few days. Asked her what she was going to do when grown up & without a moment’s hesitation she said Oh I’m going to be a coroner. [2]

  Much love

  Debo

  [1] A postcard printed with an extract from a letter from Raymond Asquith to Katherine Horner, written from Chatsworth in 1906, ‘How you would loathe this place! It crushes one by its size and is full of smart shrivelled up people . . . there is only one bathroom in the house which is kept for the King.’

  [2] DD’s fourteen-year-old granddaughter was to become a famous model.

  18 December 1984

  Mani

  Darling Debo,

  Joan and I met Xan and Magou
che in Salonika towards the end of September. The Hotel Mediterranean Palace, where I had appointed the rendezvous, had been pulled down ten years ago, but I found them mooching about in a café hard by, and we set off for Turkey next morning, through Thrace and Macedonia, and finally reached Constantinople, & dossed down at the Pera Palace, which used to be charming, now gone to pot. Here we sight-saw, gaping at all the marvels I hadn’t properly gazed at for half a century, and in the evenings, hobnobbed and ate deliciously with various exalted Turks who lived in romantic wooden palaces in bosky gardens on the edge of the Bosphorus. I’d forgotten how simply delicious the food is: have you ever been there?

  From here we struck south, to Bursa, and climbed Bithynian Olympus. Then came to a score of ancient sites of incredible beauty lost among mountains and woods and wilderness – Sardis, Aphrodisia, Priene, the Meander Valley, Ephesus, Didymus, Smyrna, and on up the Aegean coast, bathing by full moonlight in creeks and coves, till we got to Troy. A tremendous jumble but it made one’s heart thump all the same, standing on those crumbly grass-grown battlements with the wind driving cloud-shadows across the Scamander valley . . .

  Well, next day we got to Channakalé – the ‘Channack’ of the Dardanelles, where the Hellespont is about a mile across, steep ridges of Asia on our side, and of Europe on the other. I’d always longed to have a try swimming across, and, suddenly confronted, couldn’t very well wriggle out. I’d been given the name of a boatman who might show me the way, and finally found one, and next morning, with Ahmad, a nice deep-sea fisherman, brother of the Channack Hotel owner, Joan and I set off up the Asian coast to Abydos. We weren’t allowed to land because it was a military zone, so we almost ran the skiff aground and I dived in, not far from where HMS Goliath was sunk in 1915 (the whole straits are full of sunk men o’ war from the Gallipoli campaign). I slogged along after the skiff, Joan and Sevki shouting encouragement and instructions across the stern. One has to cross either in the early morning or in the evening, as a wind blows up in the late morning and at noon and makes rough waves. It should take just about an hour. It was 9.50 a.m.

  It seemed quite easy at first, the landmarks – lighthouses, mountains, minarets, forts etc – changed places with heartening speed, and the dreaded current didn’t seem too strong. A huge Russian tanker, Bogomiloff, loomed from the north leaving a strong wash behind it which kept lifting me up and dropping me again. Then the Gooriah from Tunis, next the Dâmbovitzà from Constantza, a Rumanian liner, and from then on there was always a ship or two and often several. Ahmed stuck a red Turkish flag with the crescent in the stern slot and, when we looked like being run down, waved another one.

  Only when I thought we were halfway did I start to feel the dread current. The water suddenly became choppy and ruffled, and hard to make headway in. Joan and Sevki of the hotel kept sending encouraging cries: ‘Only ten minutes fast now and you’ll be through!’, so I toiled on but could see, by the speed of the scene-changes on shore, that the current was beginning to carry me downstream. Two or three miles away, the ridge on the Ægean was Gaba Tepe, the ‘Anzac Cove’ of 1915.

  I was swimming sidestroke and began to notice a strange fluctuating hiss, a very eerie sound, like an echo in a vast dark room, under my submerged left ear and I thought it must be the grinding of pebbles and silt at the bottom of the sea. The surface current flows S.W., but, under this current, another one flows the opposite way, and I thought the noise – brought about by the narrowing of the channel at the Dardanelles a mile downstream – might be the shock of the two currents colliding. (A few days later, in one of those wooden palaces on the Bosphorus, I mentioned this to Nuri Birgi, the nice Turkish ex-ambassador to London. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ he said. ‘It’s Russian submarines. I often hear them here at Scutari. They’re supposed to surface, but they don’t – or only one in every 30 or 40!’) So here I was, about a mile S.W. from Leander’s and Ld B’s crossing places, a mile N.W. of Xerxes’ and Alexander’s boat-bridges, on the track of the Argo on the way back with the Golden Fleece and next to Troy; but too concerned about the current to think of all this, except in fitful snatches. A vast castle was advancing from the S.W., with great round bastions with crescent flags; and two mosques – one of them with a minaret topped with a green spike, sliding upstream as well. It was Kilid Bahr, much battered – but all in vain – by our naval guns in 1915; immediately opposite Channack at the narrowest point of the whole Channel.

  Joan kept shouting ‘Are you all right?’, and smiled cheerfully; and I was, though getting rather tired. I felt she might be sitting on her hands to avoid wringing them.

  I churned away like mad, the fort and the mosques vanished, but it still looked a discouraging distance to the European shore: the Asian one, meanwhile, my kick-off point, had faded into the distance. The current took me past a row of bathing huts, followed by a derelict hotel, then there was nothing ahead but open country and sea – sheep, hillsides, pine woods and dried-up torrent beds; and, infuriatingly, with the sudden widening after the narrows, it all seemed to be sliding away westward and out-of-reach and I had grim visions of being whirled out between Cape Helles and Kum Kale. For this bit, the chart says – or I think it does, it’s a bit indistinct: ‘Current 4 knots at times’, and, all of a sudden, there was a strong counter-current upstream, indicated on the chart by minute arrows. But it was no help.

  I tried swimming on my back, but what with the clash of currents, the steamers’ wash, and, by now, the midday waves, I couldn’t keep direction, so thrashed on as before. I was very tired, but I must have made some headway at last; things began to look up when Ahmed cut off the skiff ’s engine to avoid running aground. There were pebbles underfoot, and Joan shouting ‘You’ve done it!’, and soon I was stumbling ashore among slippery boulders and green seaweed, a couple of hundred yards upstream from a wooded headland and a ravine full of poplars.

  I sloshed back into the water again with a gravelly handful of Europe, and was hauled aboard with joyful cries, feeling exhausted but jubilant; dressed in the little cabin, drank some tea brewed by Ahmed, then followed by a slug of whiskey brought by Joan, and we headed back full tilt to Channack and Asia, where Xan and Magouche were waiting with a bottle of champagne; they had followed our course with binoculars from the hotel balcony, like Zeus and Hera from the clouds above Tenedos.

  I had got to the other side at 12.45 a.m. after swimming for exactly 2 hours and 55 minutes. I’m still not quite sure how far it was but I think 3–4 miles. Sevki of the hotel said I got out at aplace called Havuzlar (‘pools: Avuzlar’ on the chart); but I think it was further down, about a mile, at the mouth of a stream called ‘Suyandere’ or Soğan dere – ‘Onion Valley’, also famous from the Gallipoli battles.

  Too tired to eat any luncheon, and Joan ditto psychologically, we slept like logs, telephoned for tea and toast, and up came delicious Welsh Rabbits instead. But my limbs had turned to stone, so I slunk creakily off to a charming hammam and lay on the marble slab dissolving and watching, on the other side of the perforations in the dome, the daylight fading and then turning black, while a burly masseur was taking me apart and then reassembling me by trampling up and down my spine like an elephant; and I emerged into the dusk feeling light as a feather and strolled to the end of the lane and smoked a thoughtful hookah there in a café, half an hour of total felicity, watching the twinkling lights and reflections in the narrows, and thinking that, tho’ I was only the most recent in a long list of copycats, I was certain I had beaten all records for slowness and length of immersion; a wreath no future swimmer is likely to snatch at.

  Well there we are, Debo, what a rigmarole to inflict, put together from what I put down next day. Do you mind if I crib it for an article? [1]

  I do hope this gets to you in time for Yule at Dingley Dell [2] – it brings all fond wishes for Christmas to you, and to Andrew, and all you and yours, ed il vecchio zio Cobley e tutti quanti, [3] and tons of fond love from

  Paddy

  I feel a b
it out of breath after all the above and I bet you do too.

  [1] PLF published an account of his feat in the Independent, 7 March 1999.

  [2] PLF spent many Christmases at Chatsworth, which he called ‘Dingley Dell’ after ‘the abode of Mr Wardle in The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, famous for its Yuletide feasting and fun’. PLF to DD, 28 November 2002.

  [3] ‘Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all’. PLF translated into Italian the English folk song ‘Widdecombe Fair’, and enjoyed regaling friends with his rendition (see p. xvi).

  30 January 1985

  Mani

  [Why no gnus?]

  12 February 1985

  London

  Darling Paddy,

  Yes, Sorry, HOPELESS not to have written (a) re Hellespont & now (b) yr very old birthday. [1]

  Pressure of Business is the reason, & having had to do a piffling little piece on Bolton Abbey for some artist lads at Bradford (a mag). It came between me & everything for ages. Now it’s done & posted thank goodness, & very bad as well.

  Business is Pleasure of course but takes nonetheless time for that.

  Anyway the Hellespont & the above & below currents, Joan in the boat & the time it took & the success of the whole boiling & now you’re 70, just too extraordinary for words. So congrats on that & don’t do it again, eh.

  Before I get on, a few questions.

  If you saw a notice saying DIM PARCIO what country wd you be in & what does it mean?

  Olives. You know how when you buy them they are green or black? Well, are they the same kind treated differently? What happens? RSVP (Or are they Cox’s Orange Pippins & Beauty of Bath?)