The James Bond Bedside Companion (19 page)

Fleming seemed to tire quickly of the women he knew. Fionn Morgan, his stepdaughter, says that most of the women in his early life were "housekeepers" rather than lovers. In his memoir,
You
Only Live Once
,
Ivar Bryce tells of receiving a telegram one day in 1938 to meet Ian in Boulogne for a "journey." Ian was there with an American Graham Paige sports car and an American girl named Phyllis. All Ivar could get out of Fleming was that their destination was Kitzbuhel. Ian put Ivar in charge of the luggage, placed Phyllis in between them in the seat and took off. Apparently, Ian and Phyllis had met at a party the previous evening. The girl was intelligent and witty, but Ian soon began snapping at her. By the second day, the tension had increased between them. That night, in Munich, Ian tersely told her he was taking Ivar to dinner where only men could come. Over dinner, Ian said he couldn't take any more of her Anglophobic American prejudices. Even though he was pro-American, Ian disliked spoiled American girls loaded with culture. Afterwards, Ivar found a note in his room from Phyllis, begging him to come to her room for a talk. She was very upset. She said she was in love with Ian, but he treated her so cruelly she didn't know what to do. Ivar advised her to forget him and go back to Massachusetts. In the morning, Phyllis appeared at the car, ready to go on but Ian said, "No, Phyllis, no. You are a good girl and I'm sorry this trip has been a flop, but the place for you is home in America. Now goodbye and grow up and be happy. Get in, Ivar, we're late." They drove away, leaving the girl with her baggage in the street. Ivar was distressed and embarrassed by Ian's behavior, but Fleming justified it by saying, "She's got no place, traveling alone with us. She would madden us with her demands, make herself miserable, and achieve nothing. We could have stayed there arguing with her all day. She ought to go home and she has plenty of money to get there, so stop fussing."

If a girl expected love from Ian Fleming in his bachelor days, she was destined to suffer. Bryce remembers that Ian would say to his girlfriends: "You must treat our love as a glass of champagne," which supposedly meant sparkling, delicious, and leaving a euphoric memory in its wake. Yet despite his enormous appetite for women, Fleming once told a close Mend that he had never received much pleasure from a woman. He hated the fact that "men depended on women." Fleming's bitterness toward women may have been caused by the demands and pressures placed upon him by his authoritarian mother when he was younger and from disappointment over the breakup of his engagement to the Swiss girl, Monique. But a close Mend contends that it was Muriel, the dispatch rider during the war who was killed in a bomb raid, who was the love of Ian's life. After her death he always said he'd never marry.

A snapshot taken at the airport prior to Ian and Anne Fleming's departure from Jamaica as newlyweds in March, 1952. The calypso band behind them was hired to send the Flemings
off
with a festive farewell. (Photo by Josephine Bryce.)

But he broke that promise in 1952, at the age of forty-three, when he married a woman who couldn't have been more his opposite. The love affair between Ian and Anne Fleming was a stormy and passionate one. They first met before the war, while Anne (née Charteris) was married to Lord O'Neill. Anne (called "Annie" by her friends), had two children from that marriage, which ended when O'Neill was killed in action during the war. Anne had begun to see Fleming occasionally by this time, but Ian avoided any serious entanglement. So Anne married Lord Rothermere. As the forties drew to a close, Ian and Anne saw more of each other, especially in Jamaica during Ian's winter sojourns. They became good friends with Noel Coward, who entered in his diary on July 10, 1949: "I have doubts about their happiness if she and Ian were to be married. I think they would both miss many things they enjoy now."

Anne was an extremely beautiful, strong-willed woman. It is quite well-known that she enjoyed the company of men over that of women, and she gained distinction by entertaining a long list of notable celebrities at luncheons or dinners which she would host. Among her closest Mends were Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, Sir Isaiah Berlin, Peter Quennell, Cecil Beaton, Malcolm Muggeridge, Noel Coward, and Cyril Connolly. She did have female Mends as well, notably Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Lady Diana Duff Cooper, and Lady Avon (formerly Lady Eden). Anne had a sharp wit and enjoyed that quality in others. Intellectual conversation stimulated her and men reportedly delighted in her company. But Anne could be very cutting with her wit. One close friend of the Flemings remembers a time when three couples were relaxing in the sun at Goldeneye. The men, in jest, each told the story of how they'd had their first woman. After all was said and done, Anne spoke up with, "All right, now I'll tell you how I had
my
first woman!"

The passion and intensity of the relationship must have changed Fleming's mind about marriage. The fact that Anne was already pregnant with his child was merely tangential to his decision. After Anne's divorce from Lord Rothermere, she and Ian were married in Jamaica. According to Noel Coward, one of the witnesses, on the BBC's
Omnibus
documentary: "It took place in the parochial hall of Port Maria, and Annie was very nervous. And she had on a silk dress—she shook so much it fluttered. I don't know why she was so terrified, but she was. . . The principal official of the ceremony spoke very close to them—he put his face very close—which I don't think they cared for, and so they had to turn their faces away when they said, 'I do, I do.' Very lovely ceremony."

Fionn Morgan, Anne's daughter, says that Ian was a good stepfather and was very interested in his stepchildren. But even she agrees that the marriage was not made in heaven. John Pearson seems to think there was some kind of "sadomasochistic" strain, mentally, in their relationship. Both partners were egocentric, and ultimately this destroyed their happiness. Noel Coward wrote in his diary on Sunday, November 14, 1954:

On Tuesday I dined with Annie and Ian and it was somehow tiresome. Annie is such a darling when she is alone with Ian but when surrounded by her own set—Judy (Montagu), Alastair (Forbes), etc.—she changes completely and becomes shrill and strident, like one of those doomed Michael Arlen characters of the twenties. I am really surprised that Ian doesn't sock her in the chops and tell her to shutup.

Years later, on January 29, 1961, Coward wrote:

. . . their connubial situation is rocky. Annie hates Jamaica and wants him to sell Goldeneye. He loves Jamaica and doesn't want to. My personal opinion is that although he is still fond of Annie, the physical side of it, in him, has worn away. It is extraordinary how many of my friends delight in torturing one another.

In an interview for the
Evening Standard
in 1960, Fleming openly admitted to not caring for his wife's dinner parties. "My wife," he explained, "fully understands my attitude, that I don't care for her parties and literary friends. For one thing, you know, if you are married to a hostess, you find that she will seat the most interesting men next to herself and saddle you with their boring wives. So whenever possible I avoid going to my wife's parties." He went on to say that he would much rather go to a Hamburg striptease joint than to one of Anne's parties. "Give me a cheap joint any day," he said.

It was almost immediately after the birth of their
son, Caspar, in August 1952, that the physicality went out of Ian and Anne's relationship. But Fionn contends the couple loved each other in their own way through the end, and couldn't leave each other even though the romance had gone out of the relationship. It is obvious that Anne had a profound effect on his life. Once he became a father, he was very proud. He looked forward to his weekends and arranged his work schedule so that he put in what was called "The Fleming Four-Day Week." The time he spent alone with his family was precious to him. Still, the loss of his bachelor existence frustrated Fleming, and from the beginning of the marriage, he found another outlet from which to release these frustrations—he began writing the James Bond novels.

Ian and Anne Fleming
in
January, 1962. (Wide World Photo.)

"For Ian, marriage was an admission of defeat," Robert Harling says. "Hence, the Bond books were an escape." John Pearson also believes that James Bond was a wish fulfillment for Fleming. Noel Coward said that "James Bond was Ian's dream-fantasy of what he would like to be, you know—ruthless and dashing." There is evidence to support this theory. When Fleming sent Ivar Bryce a copy of his most recent book, he wrote in a note that it was the latest installment of his "autobiography." But Fionn Morgan says that "wish fulfillment' ' is an oversimplification. Ian created the character and it simply grew as Fleming grew as a writer. Ernest Cuneo commented: "I think Bond was a thing apart from him. Though created by him, he seemed to be as detached from Bond as a scientist who has created a robot, and indeed, there were a considerable number of times when I thought Bond bored Fleming to tears. I had the impression that Bond was the mere instrumentation, perhaps unconscious, of this craftsmanship, which is most excellent. Indeed, I think some of Fleming's paragraphs are all but Keatsian, and that a good deal of his writing will survive James Bond. Fleming didn't. As a matter of fact, at that time, he was striving to get James Bond living and wasn't too sure he wouldn't die before."

Fleming himself thought of the books as schoolboy literature. He wrote from Goldeneye to one close friend
that he was writing the final pages of a
B.O.P. (The
Boys' Own Paper
was a boys' magazine from Victorian days which presented adventure stories of a pure, patriotic nature). Naomi Burton believes that Fleming was capable of writing a much more literary work than the Bond books. The problem was that he was afraid of the criticism he would receive from Anne and her intellectual circle. He asked a mutual acquaintance to tell Naomi that he refused to write a "good" book. He admitted having the mind of a mischievous "boy scout" and that was the material his agent would be forced to hawk until he became aged and sagacious and wrote a book about his sad boyhood.

Noel Coward supported this theory. In his diary entry for Sunday, January 25, 1955, he wrote:

I have read Ian's new thriller in proof. It is the best he has done yet, very exciting and, although as usual too far-fetched, not quite so much so as the last two and there are fewer purple sex passages. His observation is extraordinary and his talent for description vivid. I wish he would try a non-thriller for a change; I would so love him to triumph over the sneers of Annie's intellectual friends.

It is said that Fleming wanted to dedicate CASINO ROYALE to Anne but she objected. She told him that "you do not dedicate a book like this to
anyone
."

Fionn Morgan says that Anne did not actually disapprove of James Bond; she was unhappy with the image and way of life the character had brought to Fleming. "She was secretly proud of him but publicly felt she had to stick to her guns that they weren't of high literary value." William Plomer said that Fleming felt "eclipsed" by James Bond in his later years. And indeed. Fleming's lifestyle did change in the last few years of his life. Fionn Morgan also states that he was probably the type of man who couldn't handle success well; he attempted to live up to an expected image. His smoking and drinking increased, and as a result, his health deteriorated. One close friend says that Ian was terribly unhappy the last few years of his life—he was frustrated with his marriage and the slowness of success, but mainly with his inability to live the life of his fantasy.