The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe
published 1929
Anyone who hung around second-hand-bookshops and Oxfam shops
in pre-Internet days will surely recognize at least the idea of this book. I’m
going to say it: there was an old copy of this on every swap/share/sell
bookshelf for 30 years, and most of us will have had a relative with a copy
somewhere.
Axel Munthe's The Story of San Michele was first published in 1929, and was a quite astonishing bestseller: the figures are unimaginable, and really people have stopped counting how many copies it has sold. Well worth looking up on Wikipedia. It was written in English, though he spoke many languages.
Munthe was a Swedish doctor, 1857-1949, very successful, who
seems to have divided his life between being a fashionable society physician,
and helping the poor or those caught up in disasters and wars. At the same time, he spent his adult life
obsessed with an estate on the island of Capri, which he bought and restored –
that’s the Villa San Michele.
I vaguely thought I must have read the book at some point
(it was always there in holiday homes too) but when I did finally get round to
it recently I realized I had not. I had some vague idea that it was the story
of a jolly folksy community, that it was something like Whisky Galore. I wasn’t
sure if it was a novel.
But it is a memoir: Munthe tells stories from his life, many
of them from his life in France, where he did his medical training. San Michele
features along the way.
It is a book that leaves me at a loss. It is very hard to
know what people made of it in its glory years, and it is hard to know what to
make of it now. But at least nowadays you can find out what others think. There
are some very useful articles online, particularly this one,
Reaction:
The Story of San Michele | Occasional Mumbling (wordpress.com)
which looks in great detail at Munthe’s story, and tells you
about its quirks and eccentricities, and also does some fact-checking.
Ah yes. Fact-checking. Munthe apparently has a rather casual
view on accuracy. The book, as a story of his life, has amazing omissions – his
wives, his lovers, his relationship with Swedish royalty. Then also, the
stories within have been, it would seem, smoothed out or fancied up. The book
jumps all over the place.
I consider myself to be the Queen
of Tosh (mostly because nobody else ever reads those kinds of books – my
motto is ‘I read this so you don’t have to’). I have a resistance to
describing someone’s well-intentioned ‘true’ story as tosh, so am holding back
right now. But it fits right in with all my other
ventures into the bestsellers of yesteryear.
In fact the book it most reminds me of is Gerald Durrell’s My
Family and Other Animals – and the more I think about it the more the
parallels crop up. The Durrell book tells of a northern family who move to a
Mediterranean island. It’s full of charm and anecdotes – and is in the exact
same inbetween zone, in that it is meant to be a memoir but is full of
elisions, omissions and flatout made-up bits. Neither Durrell nor Munthe had
any qualms about this apparently – I think attitudes nowadays would be different, or at least readers would want more clarity.
And both books are full of charm and animals and make for an
interesting read. It is difficult to reach a final judgement. It’s not true,
it’s not untrue: it’s in an uncomfortable (to modern eyes) inbetweeen place.
What I would love to
know is, ‘what were its eager
readers getting out of it?’ And although I think could very much go into the above-mentioned
category ‘I read this so you don’t have to’, I quite want you to read it so you
can tell me what you think.
There is an excellent line in the Wikipedia entry:
As with any work, not everyone liked it; publisher Kurt Wolff wrote
‘I was the first German publisher to be offered The Story of San Michele. I read it in the German translation and found it so unbelievably trite, vain, and embarrassing that I did not hesitate for a moment in rejecting it.’
The Villa San Michele is now a tourist attraction on Capri. The website is
very helpful, and some of the pictures came from there.
Yes, this was in every second hand bookshop ever, as well as on my parents' shelves, where it remained one of the few volumes I didn't even attempt to read. So well done for tackling it - BUT, I almost can't bear that you've compared it to 'My Family and Other Animals' which was a book that changed my life when I read it at about ten (and I consumed it in a single day) - mainly because I found it sublimely funny, and it solidified my aspiration to write things that made people laugh. Surely 'The Story of San Michele' isn't....*funny* is it???
ReplyDeleteThat's so interesting about the Durrell, and so glad he inspired you! I think I read it too late, although I did enjoy it.
DeleteSan Michele has its moments, though you're right, he's no Durrell in terms of setting out to entertain.
But come on, as I'm going to say to others below - what were the other books that were on every secondhand shelf? There were books you confidently expected to find, I think I must make a list....
Nothing about clothes!
ReplyDeleteWhen it was published Capri was fashionable - D.H. Lawrence, Norman Douglas, Somerset Maugham were among the people who lived there. People liked reading about it, even - or especially - because they'd never go there..
In defence of Munthe, he probably just wrote what occurred to him when it occurred to him and stopped when he'd got a bookful. He may have been vain (and self-despising too) without being very interested in himself. I get an impression of A.E. Housman, who refused to publish an essay because "I do not think it bad. I do not think it good enough for me".
There was no way he or his readers could check on what he said and he acknowledged he wasn't accurate.
Very much lacking in clothes!
DeleteI take your points, though even then, why was it quite so popular? People weren't rushing to read Norman Douglas in the same way were they? Maybe the Munthe was the kind of book that could be given as a school prize, unlike Douglas, I've wondered before now if school prizes could add a lot to people's sales figures...
Gracie Fields ended up on Capri too didn't she? They must have had good parties.
Having worked in journalism both pre-and-post internet, I saw a lot of writers who were very much caught out by the unexpected fact that their readers could a) quickly fact-check and b) quickly complain/report the mistakes: these were people who'd had long lucrative careers churning out casual pieces. I've not really seen this described anywhere, but it was a very real thing.
Now, I do feel that you might have suggestions for other books that were always in second hand shops, do please add to the list I am pondering in the comment above...
Just from your description, Moira, I get that feeling that it's one of those books that don't really fit well into a 'descriptive category.' I can see how you wouldn't be sure exactly what to make of it, or what others got out of it. I'm going to let it 'sit' for a while and think about it.
ReplyDeleteHave this one on me Margot - find me a good crime novel to read instead!
DeleteI too adored My Family and Other Animals - in my early teens in my case - and was really not bothered when it turned out that it wasn't all strictly true. I still like it just as much. For me it is part of a humorous sub-genre, like Three Men in a Boat and the Betty MacDonald books, in which real life has no doubt been improved in the telling and I don't mind a bit. However perhaps this book doesn't quite fit into this category. Chrissie
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's like 'attitudes of their times' - I think that when it's a book we like we can forgive a lot more, whether it's fast-and-loose with the truth or racial stereotypes. But I feel I have to distinguish between Three Men in a Boat, which is a novel, and books that claim to be memoirs?
DeleteAnd I know you will have some ideas for the books that were on every shelf....
Other books which must have been wildly popular in their day judging by the number that one used to see in second-hand bookshops include Aylwin by Theodore Watts-Dunton (which I think I did read - or try to read once) and those World's Classics by Constance Holme. Chrissie
ReplyDeleteWatts-Dunton was the man who kept Swinburne sober for years.
DeleteWhether we should regret that or Aylwin more is an interesting question.
Chrissie - sorry yes, you had already contributed.
DeleteA friend emailed me to say 'my grandmother was so impressed that she named her daughter - born 1917 - Aylwin'
Roger: yes such a strange story. They lived together in a suburban villa somewhere like Putney?
DeleteIndeed. My World's Classics edition of Aylwin is rather touchingly inscribed 'To Ethel with love from Father Xmas 1921.' Over 20 years after publication in 1898 it was still being reprinted. It really was a bestseller. It is probably unreadable now, but I would like to see Moira have a go! Chrissie
DeleteYes what a sweet inscription. I promise to at least look it up!
DeleteI did look up the Swinburne/ W-D menage, and learned that they lived in a house called The Pines, which meant that I now have an earworm for the old Leadbelly blues classic, Where did you Sleep Last Night?
Which could not be a more different setting, and yet somehow...
'In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shine
I will shiver the whole night through'
It's an atmospheric book and made Capri sound wonderful. It promised a glorious alternative to the drudgery of everyday life. I think of San Michele and Elizabeth's German Garden as bathed in golden glowing light. That's just me and I
ReplyDeleteprobably shouldn't read them again.
What a lovely description! But it might be better, as you say, to keep the dream intact by not re-reading...
DeleteI've learned that Munthe was blind, with no apparent prospect of recovery (a later operation restored his sight), when he wrote The Story of San Michele. No mention of that in the book, presumably, which is interesting and might reveal something of his personality and attitudes.
ReplyDeleteOh that is fascinating, and yes he was very selective indeed in what he wrote about. As you say, to the extent of revealing himself via what he missed out. He must have been an intriguing character.
Delete