Property of a Gentleman

Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor

Still in his early fifties, Ian Fleming nevertheless knew that he had less than five years to live, thanks to all those vodka martinis and specially made Turkish cigarettes.

Having recently visited Japan to research his novel “You Only Live Twice,” Fleming decided to adopt a quasi-Buddhist attitude toward the luxuries Bond had bought.

So he gave his friend Patrick Leigh Fermor a navy blue vicuna overcoat. A BBC journalist once described the travel writer, scholar and soldier Fermor as “a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene.”

Years later, when the IRA was regularly bombing London, Fermor was stopped by a police officer while walking. The officer asked for proof of his identity, joking that people frequently liked to claim they were James Bond.

Fermor casually opened his vicuna coat and displayed the label, which read, “Benson, Perry & Whitley, Cork St W1 7.9.1956 Ian Fleming Esq.” The policeman immediately summoned a car to take Fermor home.

Source: “Ian Fleming” by Andrew Lycett

James Bond Breakfasts at Tiffany's

The young Truman Capote

Ian Fleming

During the 1956 Jamaican sojourn when he was writing “From Russia With Love,” Ian Fleming’s unlikely houseguest at Goldeneye was Truman Capote.

The tall, womanizing English spy novelist and the tiny, effeminate American writer got along well. The creator of James Bond described the creator of Holly Golightly as a “fascinating companion” who told “wonderful stories all day long when we weren’t working.”

When Fleming’s young, wealthy racehorse fancier friend Billy Woodward was shot to death by his wife, Fleming dedicated a novel, “Diamonds Are Forever,” to his memory, no doubt wishing Woodward had heeded him when Woodward asked Fleming what to do about his socially inept ex-showgirl wife, Fleming replied, “Divorce her, old boy. Divorce her.” Capote fictionalized the tragedy in his novella “Answered Prayer.”

Fleming’s wife, Ann, was in England while Capote was Fleming’s

houseguest, and was amused by the notion of them staying together with Noel Coward and Cole Lesley as friendly neighbors.

“Goldeneye was the last heterosexual household,” she quipped. “What will its reputation be now?”

Source: “Ian Fleming” by Andrew Lycett

The Eagle, the Wizard and the UFOs

Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s fascination with psychology was counterbalanced by her husband’s antipathy to introspection.

So, when they vacationed in the Swiss Alps in the summer of 1959, she was eager to meet their lakeside neighbor, 75-year-old Carl Jung, the psychologist famed for his theories about humanity’s collective unconscious.

Charles Lindbergh was surprised to learn that Jung did not regard the many reports of “flying saucers” as psychological manifestations, but as factual. Jung waved away Lindbergh’s recitation of findings from U.S. Air Force investigations.

Noting that he had discussed the topic with Air Force Chief of Staff Carl Spaatz, Lindbergh said Spaatz told him, “Slim, don’t you suppose that if there was anything true about this flying saucer business, you and I would have heard about it by this time?”

Unimpressed, Jung replied, “There are a great many things going on around this earth that you and Gen. Spaatz don’t know about.”

Anne thought Jung resembled one of his own archetypes, calling him “the old wizard.” Charles sensed “…elements of mysticism and greatness about him — even though they may have been mixed, at times, with elements of charlatanism.”

Lindbergh asked Jung why he chose to live by down by the lake instead of high up in the mountains. Jung explained that having the lake next to his house suggested the different levels of human consciousness and the subconscious.

The Lindberghs’ friend Helen Wolff found the question was as telling as the answer. “The eagle and the fish,” she thought.

Source: ‘Lindbergh’ by A. Scott Berg

A Raven Asks for Aid

Palette knife painting by Francine Dufour Jones

A raven pierced by porcupine quills asks for help from humans in this extraordinary video footage.They are reasoning beings, just like us.

Woman and Phone, 2013

I caught her coming and going, the young woman walking on 4^th Street for exercise, talking without pause into her cell phone. More than an hour later, back she came, still talking loudly into her phone.

“My friend — well she isn’t anymore — has three jobs, takes fasting pills, never sleeps…”

How Sondheim Hired His Houseman

Stephen Sondheim

Financially buoyed by the movie sale of Gypsy, composer Stephen Sondheim bought himself a row house in the Turtle Bay area of Manhattan. 
Featuring an upstairs rental apartment and opening in the back, London-like, into a shared garden, the place could even boast bird-filled trees. Sondheim had his collection of games and puzzles to line the walls and some 2,500 record albums to fill the shelves. All he lacked was someone to take care of it all.

In his 1998 book Stephen Sondheim, biographer Meryle Secrest notes that Sondheim was eager to hire Louis Vargas, “a sort of South American version of Jeeves,” as his cook/houseman. But Vargas was unimpressed with the job offer.

Sondheim dropped names in an effort to entice him, but nothing worked. Not until Sondheim happened to mention the barefooted next-door neighbor who had come banging on his glass door to protest his habit on composing on the piano in the middle of the night.

Her name was Katharine Hepburn. Vargas instantly took the job.

“The day he came to work he heard her voice out in the garden, and went out and was feather-dusting the flowers,” Sondheim recalled. “They struck up a conversation …  and became fast friends within 10 minutes. She would bring him fruits and vegetables from the country and he would give her recipes.”

How Sondheim Earned an Oscar

By Dan Hagen

The young Stephen Sondheim

In one of history’s synchronicities, the famed Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim found a childhood family friend in the famed Broadway composer Oscar Hammerstein, who recognized Stevie’s talent from the start.

In his 1998 book Stephen Sondheim, biographer Meryle Secrest notes that Hammerstein put the teenaged Sondheim’s ambitions to the test by creating a singular course of study for him. He told the boy to write four musicals: the first based on a play he admired; the second based on a play he thought needed improvement; the third based on some story or novel that hadn’t already been converted into a play; and finally, an original story of his own. A task few could accomplish, but the teacher had gotten to know his pupil, gotten to know all about him.

When Sondheim reached the third herculean labor, he decided to adapt the Mary Poppins stories by P.L. Travers (The Disney movie was still a dozen years in the future).

Sondheim completed three-quarters of the project, but could never make it gel to his satisfaction. “(T)hat is a pity, because his own portrait of the insufferably perfect governess is much more nuanced and believable than the one offered by the famous film starring Julie Andrews,” Secrest observed.

Too bad. Would have been interesting to see what the chilly sensibility of Stephen Sondheim would have made of that surprisingly chilly children’s character.

Hammerstein and Sondheim are on the right

Someone else had the same idea. While visiting London years later, Sondheim got a call from Travers, who said, “Mr. Sondheim, I would like you to adapt Mary Poppins for the stage.” She was undoubtedly astonished to find that he had already done so, at age 19.

Jackie and Charlie

By Dan Hagen

Charles Addams with his sports car and dog

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis once dated the cartoonist Charles Addams, a pairing that seems just about as strange and anything Addams ever created for his “Addams family” panel cartoons in the New Yorker.

According to the biography Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life by Linda H. Davis, they got along wonderfully together. The former first lady played with his crossbows, rode with Addams in his Bentley at 110 mph and was a real fan.

“I love Pugsley and Lurch, but my favorite in Morticia,” Jackie said. “She and I have a lot more in common than you might think.”

Morticia takes a spin

Addams may have harbored hopes of marrying her, but Jackie killed those in one single chilly sentence. “Well, I couldn’t get married to you,” she said. “What would we talk about at the end of the say — cartoons?”

Morticia, indeed.

Nearer, My Quad, to Thee

By Dan Hagen

Old Main photo by Janice Hunt

Crossing with the pedestrian light at 4^th and Lincoln this morning, I was nearly run down. And yes, my last sight would have been the one I have been expecting to see for a decade now — a wide-eyed woman behind a windshield, talking on her goddamned cell phone. I gave her a good scowl and took a mindful breath, determined to let the sight of the campus relax me.

Walking to my campus office in the early morning over a holiday break, moving alone across that stately vastness utterly emptied of people, is an experience that seems symbolic of something existential, a mute question for which I have no answer. The only movement is the gamboling of squirrels, the only sound birdsong and the occasional rich, welcome toll of a bell tower.

I’d liken it to the opening of some Stephen King novel, but the feeling is friendlier and weightier than that. It’s like an abandoned park where children once played long into the dusk, or some afterthought of an afterlife.