The James Bond Bedside Companion (16 page)

Relaxing in the sun at Goldeneye. Ian, Anne, Robert Harling, and Ivar Bryce (sitting on ground). (Photo courtesy of owner.)

According to one close friend, Fleming was not a snob at all. "Ian exhibited great kindness through his generous ways of dealing with the people he cared for. He was very protective of his friends." Indeed, Fleming was known to do special favors for the people who meant something to him. If he could help a friend in his career, he was always more than willing. He respected those with whom he associated, whether they cleaned the windows or played bridge with him.

Fleming lived his life intensely and to the fullest. He was never one to "wallow" (one of his favorite words, which he would pronounce with exaggeration as if the word itself were wallowing), and was always intent on extracting the most out of life. His greatest fear was boredom; he dreaded the "soft life," a malady James Bond himself suffered at times. Ivar Bryce, who had known Fleming since childhood, believes that Ian was
always
searching for adventure; and throughout the years, the two friends indulged in many unusual escapes. They were constantly sending letters and telegrams inviting the other to accompany him on some outlandish expedition (such as the trip to Inagua in 1956); every invitation closed with the words, "Fail Not." One time Bryce and Fleming decided to lose weight together. They visited a doctor in New York, who put them on a strict diet and said to come back in two weeks. After the allotted time period, when Bryce met Fleming at the airport he appeared much fatter than he did two weeks earlier. Fleming thought to himself, "Well, I've got this one won." Then Ivar laughed and pulled out a pillow from underneath his overcoat. Actually, he had lost the most weight.

Because Fleming was a vigorous man of action, he was difficult to keep inactive for any lengthy period of time (except when he was at his most mellow during January and February at Goldeneye). James Bond's epitaph at the end of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE is even more suited to Fleming: "I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." This rather brave attitude, mixed with Fleming's undeniably boyish taste for the romantic, fed lifeblood into the Bond adventures, and for the most part, explains why they are so popular.

Anne Rothermere (a year before she became Mrs. Fleming) with Ivar Bryce in Jamaica, circa 1951. (Photo by Josephine Bryce.)

I
an Lancaster Fleming was born on May 28, 1908, in appropriately, the Mayfair section of London, England. His father, Valentine Fleming, was a Scot, who worked for his father's prestigious banking firm, Robert Fleming and Company, and who was elected a Tory M.P. for South Oxfordshire in 1910. He was well-liked and also extremely wealthy. His circle of friends included Winston Churchill. Ian Fleming's mother was Evelyn St Croix Rose, a beautiful woman of Irish, Scot, and Huguenot descent Eve Fleming was reported to be a romantic, passionate woman, full of surprises and changes. She was a strong-willed, somewhat vain, authoritarian person, capable of standing her ground against any form of challenge. From the beginning, his parents' characteristics (his father's pride, patriotism, geniality, intelligence, and love for the outdoors; and his mother's extravagance, taste, curiosity, and independence) blended to create a multifaceted individual.

John Pearson wrote in
The Life of Ian Fleming
about Fleming's early childhood: "From the start he had one of those natures for which the world is uncomfortable in whatever shape they find it. . ." He was a precocious and sometimes mischievous child, a rebel as far as his family was concerned. According to Pearson, little Ian disliked everything his family loved, such as horses and dogs and family gatherings, and held no particular affection for Scotland.

By August 1914, Valentine Fleming was in the army and had been sent to France where he soon became a major. Eve Fleming was left to care for four sons—Peter, Ian, Richard and Michael. In 1915, Peter and Ian were sent to a boarding school, the Dumford School, near Swanage, on the island of Purbeck. The school was run by a man named Tom Pellatt, who allowed the boys a good deal of freedom. In the next couple of years, young Ian Fleming became interested in adventure and mystery yams, for Pellatt's wife read aloud the stories of Bulldog Drummond to the boys. Soon, Fleming was addicted to the works of Sax Rohmer, Robert Louis Stevenson, and other adventure novelists.

Tragedy struck on May 20, 1917. Valentine Fleming was killed in action in France. He was posthumously awarded a D.S.O., and Winston Churchill wrote an appreciation of him in
The Times.
Ian Fleming's father had died a hero, and this incident had a profound effect on the boy's emotional growth. Ian seemed to need a hero, and as a result, he began to idolize his older brother, Peter. As with most upper-crust English families, the emphasis on primogeniture was strong, and Ian was forced to walk in his brother's shadow for a good many years. Peter seemed to be the perfect son: he was well-behaved, extremely bright for his age, and held much promise for success. Ian, on the other hand, was considered eccentric, overly imaginative—the black sheep of the family.

In the autumn of 1921, Eve Fleming, an extremely rich widow, packed Peter and Ian off to Eton. At thirteen, Ian had grown into a handsome boy, and he took great pride in his appearance and personal affectations. (It was reported that Ian's housemaster disapproved of his pungent hair oil.) Ian was never happy at Eton. According to Paul Gallico, Fleming actually loathed it, and constantly felt out of place. But this didn't stop the boy from making some kind of mark for himself. Ian found he was athletic, and was especially good in track. In 1925, Fleming was named
Victor Ludorum (
champion of the games) for the school. He won the title a second time in 1926, while he was still under eighteen. He broke his nose during a football match that year which tended to give his features a somewhat worldly look

Fleming once related one of his Eton experiences to Paul Gallico. He was due for a birching in the headmaster's office at noon one day for some misdemeanor. But as he was also due to run the steeplechase at noon for the championship, he persuaded the headmaster to move the caning back to 11:45. At the appointed time, Fleming reported to the office and submitted to the punishment. Afterwards, he proudly ran the steeplechase with blood stains on the back of his trunks, and came in second place. Fleming was, from the beginning, a strong advocate of the British stiff upper lip.

But Fleming soon lost interest in his studies at Eton; his marks dropped. Eve Fleming decided to remove her second son from the school and place him into a more rigorous, disciplinary environment. At age eighteen, Fleming was enrolled in the Royal Military College at Sandhurst (England's West Point). In that summer of 1926, Fleming was sent to a "Crammer's" tutoring school to prepare him for the Sandhurst entrance exam. Colonel William Trevor, who ran the school, wrote to Mrs. Fleming that Ian should make an excellent soldier, "providing always that the ladies don't ruin him." For already, Ian Fleming was something of a ladies man. He was extremely good-looking and had a natural ability for meeting and wooing girls. According to Paul Gallico, once Ian escorted a local girl to a nightclub and persuaded another cadet to sign in for him at the evening roll call. Later that night, Fleming was caught climbing into the college and was penalized with thirty days confinement to barracks and no leave for six months.

Actually, Fleming did quite well at Sandhurst. By 1927, he had been placed on His Majesty's List for the King's Royal Rifle Corps. But as the time approached for him to take his commission, it was reported that the army was going to be "mechanized." Fleming, along with a few other cadets, decided he didn't want to spend his time pushing buttons and levers in the army, and refused his commission. He even had the audacity to write his refusal on a postcard, drop it in the mail, and then simply leave the college. Needless to say, his mother was not pleased.

Eve Fleming had heard through friends that an excellent private school had been set up in Kitzbuhel in the Austrian Tyrol, run by Eman Forbes-Dennis and his wife, the novelist Phyllis Bottome. This school, located high in the mountains in a château called the Tennerhof, held a special place in Fleming's memory for the rest of his life. For it was here when he was in his late teens and early twenties, that he discovered his ambitions and began to think of himself as something other than Peter Fleming's younger brother. The Forbes-Dennises not only provided a rigorous foreign-language program (from which Fleming learned German and French), but also experimented in psychology. The life in the mountains was idyllic, and Fleming soon became an avid skier and mountain climber. He also became very popular with the local girls.

Encouraged by Phyllis Bottome, Fleming began to write in Kitzbuhel and even produced a short story called "Death, On Two Occasions." With the prodding of the Forbes-Dennises, Fleming decided to build a career in the Foreign Office, which was considered a prestigious and difficult profession. To improve his language skills, the Forbes-Dennises sent him to Munich

University in 1928. Fleming soon picked up an adequate knowledge of Russian. In 1929, he enrolled in the University of Geneva to improve his French. One of his notable achievements at the time was receiving permission from Carl Jung to translate a speech Jung had delivered on Paracelsus.

Fleming had many friends during this time, mostly girls. One of his closest friends was Lisl Popper, to whom Fleming left £500 in his will. Fleming told another friend years later that Ms. Popper was one of the few people he had known who cared sufficiently enough about him to tell him the truth about himself. On the BBC's
Omnibus
documentary about Fleming, Lisl Popper told how she and Ian had met. She and a few friends were sitting at a table in a restaurant and one of the youngest and most naive of the girls said, "Can you see the Englishman over there?" The girls all looked and there at another table was Ian Fleming, whom they had never seen before, wearing a navy blue shirt. He was "slim, very good-looking, reading a book, very serious." The girl asked, "How can we meet him?" The others told her to forget it. She persisted. Finally, Lisl explained to her that the English were "shy," and that there was only one thing to do. She should get up, pass the Englishman's table, fall over his feet, and say, in English, "I am sorry." The girl repeated the phrase over and over to make sure she would get it right, then went over and fell over Fleming's feet. "Ian was delighted," and from then on, "We never left each other," Ms. Popper said.

While Fleming was in Geneva, he became engaged to a Swiss girl named Monique. Perhaps for the first time, Fleming was truly in love; and despite the differences in their backgrounds, the young man made a valiant attempt to convince her family and his that theirs was a suitable match. But when Ian's mother met the girl, there was a scene. She did not approve and that was the end of that. Eve Fleming held a very powerful card in her hand: in Valentine Fleming's will, she had been granted power to alter the family's inheritance in any way she saw fit. This meant she could disown any of her sons, and they would be denied the extensive Fleming fortune. After the engagement was broken off, Fleming was reportedly quite bitter, and his attitude toward women became one of careful objectivity. Never again would he become so obsessed with a woman. Fleming, however, later paid something of a tribute to his ex-fiancée: the mother of James Bond was a Swiss named Monique.

In 1931, Fleming took the Foreign Office exam. He placed twenty-fifth out of sixty-two. The failure was a tremendous blow to his pride, and he never told the truth about the defeat. To friends he said that he placed seventh, but that only five candidates were accepted.