Continuing the theme of writers who have sunk into obscurity, I was given a 1946 novel by Phyllis Bottome for Christmas. She must have spent a lot of time repeating, “Bottome with an E”.
Before we get to the book there are a few things you need to know about Phyllis. She was a successful novelist in the first half of the 20th century, married to Ernan Forbes Dennis, so then she could get around the Bottome bit by calling herself Mrs Dennis. He was SIS station chief in Marseille and then vice-consul (a cover) in Austria. SIS, you will recall, was the fore-runner of today’s MI6.
The couple opened a skiing and language school in Kitzbühel, Austria, called the Tennerhof. It was a sporty version of the British Institute of Florence and its clientele was English Public School boys, although they had usually been expelled. Cue for Ian Fleming to arrive having departed Eton prematurely (though not expelled) and then Sandhurst because of a mésalliance (not really, they didn’t get married, but it’s a good word) with a prostitute. He at last found somewhere that he fitted in. He learnt French and German and, of course, to ski. Crucially, Phyllis encouraged him to write and the result was his first short story, Death on Two Occasions.
She wrote The Lifeline (my Christmas present) introducing schoolmaster (Eton, natch) turned amateur spy, Mark Chalmers. Much has been made of the similarities between her creation and James Bond; it makes a good story. The reality is that Mark Chalmers follows in the footsteps of Charles Carruthers (The Riddle of the Sands) and Richard Hannay (everyone knows him). Fleming’s debt to Bottome is for her encouragement when he tried writing at the Tennerhof. He repaid her and her husband in that they remained friends, visiting him at Goldeneye.
Digression: I have just come across these apt lines by Cecil Day-Lewis (From Feathers to Iron).
The full-throated daffodils
Our trumpeters in gold
Call resurrection from the ground,
And bid the year be bold.
This is at least an 8/10 or maybe a 9/10 of a CB post. It is promoted from an 8 to a 9 by your flagging up any remark of yrs as a “digression”; we are often offered such extras without labelling, and like them a lot. So a point for irony (and a great bit of downhome straight poetry).
I have three Fleming family books waiting for a read, and yr posts remind me nicely of the fact. I did get to the Fleming church in Nettlebed the other day and it was very heaven.
BTW: I, unlike Craig Revel Horwood when judging dancers, cannot readily say what takes a CB post from a 9 to a 10 except that in yr league I might demand that I cry or LOL – and I read the yr posts in the early morning, when I am a bit cool. Besides, you sometimes surpass yourself and where wd we be without a 10 in hand then?