The Unlikely Pilgrim

In December 1933, an eighteen year old youth named Patrick Leigh Fermor sailed from London to the Hook of Holland to begin a walk that would take him from the Dutch coast to Constantinople - as he liked to call it - in Turkey. The walk would take him two years. Forty years later he wrote A Time of Gifts, an account of his journey. It is a beautiful book that takes the reader from lonely and icy northern roads to warm welcomes in noble castles. Among the people who Leigh Fermor meets are playful girls, wise old men, and, sadly, Nazis. The world was changing, and soon, the world that Leigh Fermor walked through, would be gone forever. One of the many blessings of the book is that he was there to record a little of what the last years were like.

During the Second World War, 'PLF' served in the British army, fighting behind enemy lines in Crete. There, he famously captured a German general and became friends with him - in a manner of speaking - when the officer quoted part of Horace's eleventh Ode. Leigh Fermor knew the whole poem and finished it for him. In 1972, the two met again on Greek Television: Leigh Fermor was a hellenophile and lived in the Peloponnese with his wife Joan (if you have ever seen the film Before Midnight (2013), the house that Jesse and Celine visit is Leigh Fermor's. As a nod to its former owner - PLF died in 2011 - the host's name is Patrick).

While on his walk, Leigh Fermor lived as much by his insatiable curiosity and great charm as he did by any money in his pocket (which was never much). He was an extrovert and in the war used that to befriend and make allies of Cretans willing to take up the fight against the Nazis (though, to be fair, they didn't need much persuading). 

After the war, nothing changed. He remained an extrovert, being a famed conversationalist, charming and curious. It is this that lead him to a number of monasteries in England and abroad.

 

Two of the foundations that he visited were St. Wandrille de Fontanelle and La Grande Trappe in Normandy, and in 1957 he published A Time to Keep Silence about these visits and sojourns to Solesmes Abbey near Le Mans and abandoned rock monasteries in Cappadocia, central Turkey.

I first read A Time to Keep Silence back when I first 'discovered' Leigh Fermor's books (in 2011. I hadn't heard of him before his death) and loved it nearly as much as A Time of Gifts. Leigh Fermor's language wasn't as baroque as in ToG, and the book doesn't have the latter's joie de vivre, but what it does have is depth. Depth of thought, feeling, and spirit. It is an honest book, a heartfelt one. It is proof of God's grace working in people who are not Christians. There's no other way to explain his interest in and appreciation for the Faith.

As for me, I have been thinking a lot about religious life lately, so A Time to Keep Silence scratched a little of that urge to find out more. My interest is not in the Benedictines or Trappists but that didn't matter. I was just happy to read once more about Leigh Fermor's experience and learn again from his insights. I hope it won't be too long before I do so again. In short, I loved the book and am so happy to have had the opportunity to read it again. If you like gentle, passionate writing, or religious life, A Time to Keep Silence will be worth its place on your shelf, or even worth its weight in gold. Either way, thank you Patrick Leigh Fermor for giving us a second time of gifts.