Clemency suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

Axel Munthe: The Road to San Michele

Doctoring the record

Bengt Jangfeldt (translated by Harry Watson)
I. B. Tauris, 381pp, £25,

Jane Ridley

Wednesday, 7th May 2008

Jane Ridley reviews Bengt Jangfeldt's biography of Axel Munthe

In fact The Crowded Street contains moments of terrific comedy, like the scene in which Muriel’s sister Connie disappears at an uncontrolled gallop on the dashing hero’s chestnut mare. It is punctuated by a quietly mordant wit that ruthlessly exposes the pretensions of Marshington’s intensely snobbish provincial society: ‘Some women take to crochet as others do to cigarettes.’ Its female characters are strongly drawn, although its menfolk remain stock types. The novel is well-crafted, elegant, intelligent and persuasive. Only at the final fence does it fall.

Holtby must have been aware that the outcome she bestowed on her readers would disappoint many of them. We can rejoice in Muriel’s belated moment of self-determination only if we believe that she has changed enough to make her stand with conviction and certainty. And of this, this reader remains unsure. A Hollywood scriptwriter would rewrite the ending. So, too, would this reader. But then, this reader is a man.

The Story of San Michele is one of the great bestsellers of all time. It languishes on the shelves of second-hand bookshops, the autobiography of a Swedish doctor who fell in love with the island of Capri. The author, Axel Munthe, is a shadowy figure, a name often mentioned but (to me at least) an enigma.

Munthe’s life, as related by Bengt Jangfeldt in this new biography, was an extraordinary adventure, far more exciting than his autobiography. He was entirely self-made. Born in 1857, he was a middle-class Swedish boy, the son of a pharmacist. When he began to cough blood as a medical student, he left Sweden in search of the warmth of the south. He completed his training in France, qualifying as a doctor in five months — there was always a question mark hanging over his medical qualifications. He married a woman he didn’t love, and started to practise in Paris, where he discovered a wealthy patron, who bankrolled him. Then he heard about an outbreak of cholera in Naples. On a whim he dashed off to offer his services as a doctor, sending back articles for the Swedish press which he later published successfully as a book. He climbed up Mont Blanc, almost killed himself, and wrote another book about it.

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment | Apollo Art Books

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 Next page

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Life and Letters

Allan Massie

Breaking the rules

Brave new writing

Richard Bradford

Fifty years ago, Alan Sillitoe’s first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, changed the history of English fiction. Richard Bradford explains how.