Ian Fleming was of the twentieth century and indeed, his creation, James Bond, who emerged full-blown from his imagination as a Greek God from the brow of Zeus, may be one of the twentieth century's landmarks. The twentieth century marked the conflux of divergent forces, and a number of these forces converged within Ian Fleming. Typical of twentieth-century artists, Ian Fleming was many people, and indeed, some of the most pointed anecdotes of the century can be applied to him. Thus, in a debate with George Bernard Shaw, Graham Wallas read two contrary opinions by Shaw, adding sarcastically, "I suggest that on different occasions, Mr. Shaw speaks like two different people!" "What?" screamed the red-headed Irishman leaping from his seat "Only two?!"
Ian Fleming was the warmest kind of friend, a man of ready laughter, and a great companion (everything James Bond is not!). Fleming was really quite simple to understand, but only within the complex class structure of the British civilization into the upper stratum of which he was born. He was not English; he was a Scot by his father's line, only third generation in a class structure which reserves its highest accolades for the peerage. Ian was not a peer of the realm nor were any members of his family. He was the second son of a second son. This explains much of Ian Fleming's basic drive. One night at the White House, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, no admirer of the British caste system, questioned Prime Minister Winston Churchill about the rule of primogeniture, whereby the first-born gets everything and the others nothing. "Mr. President," Churchill said, ". . . in Great Britain, the first son gets all and thus keeps the family capital intact. The other children, witnessing and indeed sharing in the benefits, though not the ownership of the good things of life, are determined to acquire them for themselves, to go out and dig for it. In the digging out of their fortunes, they lay the foundations of our empire." (Having made his point, Churchill grandly added, with his captivating twinkle, "Moreover, the first son, being heavily endowed, marries not for money, but for beauty, which, Mr. President, accounts for my good looks!") This, it seemed to me, was the basic drive of Ian Fleming: money. He was brought up on the good things the British privileged class counts as its birthright, and actually, he was never without them as long as he lived.
Fleming was regarded by many as somber. It is a wonder he was able to smile at all. His father was killed during the First World War when Ian was nine. His brother Michael was killed in action in World War II as were many of his Eton friends. Thus, by the time he was thirty-seven, his life had been deeply affected by the two worst wars in the history of the United Kingdom. Fleming saw that though victor in both wars, the British Empire was dying of its wounds, suffering a hemorrhage of its capital as well as its blood. The effect on him was something akin to the gloom Nelson might have felt at Trafalgar had he been forced to watch his fleet defeated. Fleming felt it deeply. Furthermore, his personal fortunes were closely tied to the fate of his country. He desperately wanted to make money, big money, in the style of the banking house of Fleming founded by his grandfather. But, when the chips were down, he was as certainly Etonian as a West Pointer is a West Pointer: he sought no fate better than that of his country; he was more deeply troubled about England's future than his own.
Kierkegaard made a profound impression on Fleming, and to a certain considerable extent, his own life experience paralleled Kierkegaard's. One aphorism of Kierkegaard's had particular application to both Ian and his wife: "Rather well-hanged, than ill-wed."
There were four things of which Solomon himself said he knew nothing and one of them was "the way of a man with a maid." Ian was an experienced man when he met Anne. She was twice married before, when, née Anne Charteris, she was widowed as Lady O'Neill when Lord O'Neill was killed in action in Italy. She then married Lord Rothermere, one of Great Britain's press lords, and divorced him to marry Ian. In all human affairs, luck is an intangible factor. From an objective standpoint, luck is without blame. By almost any count, the Flemings' marriage was ill-fated from the first. There is evidence that Anne and Ian did not drift apart; they tore each other apart instead.
Both moved in top-drawer Mayfair: Maugham, Coward, and the satellite world of heartless literati. The Flemings, particularly Anne, were very close to Prime Minister Eden, much as the American jet set was close to President Kennedy. It was a fast, slippery track. It is worth mentioning that both Prime Minister Eden and President Kennedy came a cropper on it, as did Fleming, his son Caspar, and eventually Anne. However, it would be fatuous to suggest there was any causal relationship. All one can do is note that whatever his literary existence, James Bond appears as an evil talisman in the very real lives of people in his periphery. Eden's illness and his fleeing to Fleming's place, Goldeneye, has an overtone of Appointment in Samara. Jack Kennedy, professing his preference for James Bond, certainly imitated him to a degree no President had even remotely approached before. President Kennedy's death duel with Cuba's Castro has James Bond overtones.
I had thought I knew Ian Fleming thoroughly, in and out. Thus, I was surprised, and a trifle miffed with Ian, when I read John Pearson's book on Fleming. I was amazed to learn that Fleming had not graduated from either Eton or Sandhurst, which he certainly permitted and even encouraged me to believe. In fact, he even told me that on graduation from Sandhurst, he had selected the Black Watch as his regiment. I was also under the impression he left the Foreign Service for journalism. Actually, he had not; he never belonged to it. I was annoyed also, because his broken nose led me to believe that he had taken terrific physical punishment during his athletic years. I assumed his broken nose was acquired in amateur boxing or one of the collision sports. Once, however, when we playfully squared off, I perceived that he hadn't the slightest notion of the conventional boxing stance. "Egads," I said to him, "no wonder you've got a busted nose!" There is a certain intrinsic knowledge gained from physical damage which can only be learned by experience, which most civilians never learn, and never have to. Those who do experience it form a sort of freemasonry, a brotherhood, as it were, of those who have been badly hit, knocked unconscious, and managed to come back to life. This group was called by an appellation of the Old Frontier: "Fighting Men." I assumed that Fleming was a Fighting Man. Fighter he was, but a Fighting Man he was not: he was a very badly wounded civilian, both in life and in love. He lived a hard, emotional life, because unlike Fighting Men, he never emotionally accepted death—especially of his ideal love.
It is my belief and experience that most British and American boys receive a terrible emotional mauling in their first love affair because of the chivalry and Boy Scout ideals with which they are indoctrinated shortly after they can read: the Knights of Old, King Arthur, Sir Galahad. It seemed to me that Fleming was too badly wounded in his first love to talk about it. But I sensed there was some lissome, ivory-skinned girl with blue-black hair—for this is what he considered to be the ultimate type of beauty—off in some fir-clad hills in the idyllic Alpine snowlands, who was the cause of his deep wound. It seems to me that James Bond embodies Ian's revenge for the terrible hurt; Bond tumbles them into bed, leaves them with the memory of a savage ravishment which, ye gods, leaves them pining for Bond and forever bereft without him. This, of course, is the exact opposite of the ethereal "pure" love of the adolescent English and American boy. I think it is possible that Ian carried the image of the ideal damsel throughout his life, and found his adult ideal in Anne; that Anne was the ideal superwoman, the super-sophisticate, the toast of Mayfair, and the Madame de Stael of statesmanship and empires. This society is a twentieth-century version of Vanity Fair. It is dangerous, a maelstrom of descending disaster, and Anne and Ian got into its swirl when they were both old enough to know better. I suppose it is more accurate to say, she was already caught in it and he jumped in after her.
There is one thing, I think, that marks Ian's modus operandi: he mastered whatever he undertook. He was a first-class journalist, a magnificent administrator, a most excellent wordsmith, a writer who created his opposite, an upper-class knave, in Bond, an elegant cad, an amoral bastard, who performed every kind of crime, and with Ian's final, wry revenge on his class—of all things—in the service of Their Britannic Majesties! What a bitter twist!
Gresham's Law of the Twentieth Century is applicable to fields far wider than economics. Like bad currency, bad literature is driving out the good. If this be so, Ian Fleming's James Bond certainly gave the Gresham's Law of Literature a grand shove into the spotlight. Ian Fleming knew exactly what he was trying to do. Not the slightest presumption of innocence attaches to either his effort or the character of James Bond. His objective was the making of money. It made him a lot, but, ironically, not nearly as much as it made for others after his death. James Bond is no Sherlock Holmes, but as long as sexual fantasy exists (and it has existed from the Pompeiean friezes through Fanny Hill), James Bond will live on as a Popeye the Sailorman, a combination of the supermale and the Little Jack Horner of the Intelligence Services, who from here to eternity, will stick in his thumb and pull out a plum and say what a smart boy am I. Actually, in even the flaming character of Bond it can be seen that Ian Fleming was a great wordsmith and most excellent writer.
It so stunned me to find out that Ian hadn't graduated from Eton and Sandhurst, that I examined the pattern of his departures. There was a curious twist: he did not drop out until he had met the challenge. He had mastered the course but refused to cross the finish line. Having demonstrated he could win, he threw in his hand. That's what he probably did with his life: at the end, in pain, tired, and disillusioned, he said, "The hell with it, it's a bore. I've proven I can play the hand, I've won the pot—and now you can keep it." James Bond, who, in the novels, is often stricken with the malady of ennui, would probably have done the same thing had he been a real person. After all, what could be more ridiculous than a seventy-five-year-old James Bond?
Ernest L. Cuneo
Washington, D.C.