Doctoring the record
Jane Ridley
AXEL MUNTHE: THE ROAD TO SAN MICHELE by Bengt Jangfeldt, translated by Harry Watson I. B. Tauris, £25, pp. 381, ISBN 9781845117207 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 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 selfmade. 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 Mont Blanc, almost killed himself, and wrote another book about it.
Munthe had straw-coloured hair, a moustache and round spectacles, and he liked to pose as a romantic, melancholic outsider. He divorced his wife and retreated to Capri, where he became a hero among the islanders, living on the land and charging no fees for his doctoring. His next step was inspired. He moved to Rome, and set up in practice as a doctor living in Keats’s house on the Spanish Steps. He was clever at attaching himself to influential patrons such as the British ambassador Lord Dufferin, and soon he had the most fashionable practice in the city. Being a doctor brought him especially close to women. Jangfeldt shows how, like Freud, Munthe understood the wealthy women who suffered from the fin-de-siècle malaise of hysteria, nerves and depression. He was direct and physical, and an expert in the new medicine of sexual pathology. One after another his female patients fell in love with him (professional ethics were not his strong point). Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, who suffered from chronic ill health brought on by a disastrous marriage, fell under his spell and appointed him her physician. Doctors were among the very few people who were able to talk to royals on equal terms, and the Queen of Sweden, as Victoria became, was utterly dependent on him.
Meanwhile, he cut a swathe (the author calls this double-entry book-keeping) through the women he met. Ottoline Morrell was besotted by him. He became suddenly improbably rich, presumably as a result of handouts from the Swedish royal family, and built himself a beautiful villa on Capri named San Michele, which he filled with antiques. Henry James, Oscar Wilde — all visited the Swede in his Capri villa.
Aged 50 his life changed again. A detached retina left him almost blind. He needed a carer, so he remarried. His second wife was an Englishwoman named Hilda Pennington Mellor. They had two sons, but Munthe was both absent and unfaithful, and Hilda left him, taking the boys with her, to his lasting regret. As he grew older and his eyesight worsened, he became domineering, bad-tempered and slovenly. The Queen of Sweden corresponded with his wife about his iniquities, but adored him until her dying day. He was at her death bed. His autobiography, The Story of San Michele, was a surprise success, making him a celebrity in his seventies.
Some people thought Munthe was a fake, but most considered him a genius. In reality he was both. He was a liar, a namedropper and an appalling egocentric. He messed up his own marriages, but he was remarkably acute at helping other people. He only really liked people he felt sorry for — ‘You cannot be a good doctor without pity,’ he once said. A good doctor he most certainly was. Above all, he was an enchanter. Bengt Jangtfeldt has done impressive research to uncover Munthe’s colourful secret life. The book suffers a little from being translated, especially as all the source notes have been eliminated, but this is a compelling account of a remarkable man.
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