ODDMENTS (3)

    My life is not generating much in the way of interesting material, so I will offer some bits about others who have far more to offer.

Xan Fielding

   I know about Fielding because he was a good friend of Patrick Fermor, of whom I am a big fan. Now that I am telling you about him, I will confess that I wondered how "Xan" was pronounced and learned that apparently Fermor would have called him "Zan." That Fielding is rather more adventurous and accomplished than I, is easily revealed in this personal ad he placed when in need of money:
It is found in The Times on July 31, 1950:

   Tough but sensitive ex-classical scholar, ex-secret agent, ex-guerrilla leader, 31, recently reduced to penury through incompatibility with the post-war world: Mediterranean lover, gambler, and general dabbler: fluent French and Greek speaker, some German, inevitable Italian: would do anything unreasonable and unexpected if sufficiently rewarding and legitimate. 

  He was among other things, a newspaper editor in Cyprus and ran a bar. He first met Fermor in "1942 as members of the Special Operations Executive, they were introduced in a vintner's hut in Yerakari in the Amari Valley in Crete. Over three years they developed a guerrilla force among the native Cretans and helped build an intelligence network on the island." 

Wait, there is more exciting stuff.

   "The theatre of war moved away from Crete towards the West. Believing he could do no more, Fielding applied for a transfer to the French section of the SOE. He was sent to an airfield camp twenty miles outside Algiers....
   Fielding parachuted into the Vercors in the South of France. However, in the guise of a clerk in the Electric Company of Nîmes, he was quickly arrested and imprisoned and was saved from the firing squad by a member of the Resistance in a remarkable rescue. At the end of the war he returned for two months to Crete and was then sent to Indo-China."

  For additional interesting material, read more about Fielding, or these books by him:
Hide and Seek (1954, wartime memoirs)
Corsair Country (1959, a history of the pirates of the Barbary Coast)
Money Spinner: Monte Carlo and Its Fabled Casino (1977)
Aeolus Displayed (1991)
Images of Spain (1991)
Hideous Disguise (1994)
  His name is also found in relation to these books (as translator): The Bridge Over the River Kwai and The Cretan Runner: His Story of the German Occupation. 

Somerset Maugham

   Fielding is often encountered in the writing produced by Fermor. That is also where I ran across this next bit which allows me to balance out this post during what is known as "Gay Pride Month".  Admittedly, the Maugham material is less flattering then the Fielding offering, but that is not my fault. When Maugham's wife died, he reportedly sang "Tra-la-la, no more alimony, tra-la-la," which makes some sense I suppose since he was queer. Rebecca West called him "an obscene little toad."

   Fermor walked across Europe as a young man and later travelled extensively before settling in Greece. On this occasion he thought he might be able to mingle a bit in Maugham's circle on Cap Ferret. His stay was shorter than he thought, but from it, one does get a description of Maugham.

   ‘Paddy[Fermor] was invited [to Somerset Maugham’s house in the South of France] for lunch and arrived with five cabin trunks, parcels of books and the manuscript of his unfinished work on Greece strapped in a bursting attaché case,’ she writes. ‘Despite this inauspicious start, luncheon went like a marriage bell... so when coffee was finished I was not entirely surprised to hear Willie [Maugham] invite Paddy to stay and the minions carried in the trunks to a magnificent suite..." 

  But, Fermor did not charm Maugham, who characterized Fermor as "a middle-class gigolo for upper-crust women." You might want to tuck away this strategy if you tire of your house guests.

   ‘But, alas, that evening Mr and Mrs Frere of Heinemann came to dinner and Paddy, who never travels without a bottle of calvados, appeared more exuberant than one small martini could explain. The Freres left at ten o’clock. Willie saw them to the door, returned to the living room and said to Paddy, “Goodbye. You will have left before I am up in the morning.”

Admittedly this description is harsh, but it is at least a parenthetical one found in a private letter. 

(Do you know Somerset Maugham? He is 84, and his face is the wickedest tangle of cruel wrinkles I have ever seen and so discoloured and green that it looks as though he has been rotting in the Bastille, or chained to the bench of a galley or inside an iron mask for half a century. Alligator's eyes peer from folds of pleated hide and below them an agonzing snarl is beset with discoloured and truncated fangs, but the thing to remember is that he has a very pronounced and noticeable stutter that can seize up a sentence for 30 seconds on end.")
From: In Tearing Haste" Letters Between Deborah Devonshire & Patrick Leigh Fermor, ed. by Charlotte Mosley, pp.20-21.

The Bonus: Peter Fleming
   Xan Fielding placed the ad in The Times. Peter Fleming answered one found in The Times and it is also a source for additional interesting reading.

    Exploring and sporting expedition, under experienced guidance, leaving England June, to explore rivers Central Brazil, if possible ascertain fate Colonel Fawcett; abundance game, big and small; exceptional fishing: ROOM TWO MORE GUNS: highest references expected and given - Write Box S.1150
14 and 15 April 1932.

   Peter Fleming, the brother of Ian, is more interesting than James Bond. He supplies one of the guns and goes on the journey as a correspondent for The Times. The book, Brazilian Adventure, is the result and it is far better than the newer one about the search for Colonel Fawcett, The Lost City of Z by David Grann. If you would rather read about other places on the globe, Fleming can supply you with more books. See the Wikipedia entry, the source of the photo.

It is also the case that Fleming was the anonymous author of many "Fourth Leaders" for The Times. I also can be considered an anonymous author of "Fourth Leaders", in the sense that no one has ever read what I wrote about them almost ten years ago.
   Although there are books consisting of compilations of "Fourth Leaders", there has not been much written about them and, as a subject, information was difficult to research. There is still no Wikipedia entry and apparently AI doesn't troll deep enough to uncover MM. If you happen to work for The Times, or are a journalist looking for a topic, here is a good place to start for Fourth Leaders.