“I was always a great reader when young. Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, which I read over and over again. A historical novel called Bellarion by Rafael Sabatini, which again I read time and time again. I think those are the two that came out most, as it were.” — Gareth Kavanagh, “Terrance Dicks”, Vworp Vworp! Volume Three (March 2017) p. 126.
When I visited Terrance’s home earlier this year, in pride of place in his study was a set of Sabatini’s novels, most of them in either brown or blue leather-bound editions published by the Phoenix Book Company Ltd of 3 & 4 King Street, Covent Garden, London — a company founded in 1928 and which “faded away” at some point during the war. Terrance’s copies are clearly well loved, Bellarion especially. But there’s nothing to tell us if this is the very book he read and reread as a child. He may well have bought these editions later in life and as a child borrowed and reborrowed Bellarion from his local library in East Ham.
Even so, I sourced a Phoenix Book Company edition of Bellarion for myself — in better nick than Terrance’s — and read it with great interest, hoping to understand why it made such an impression on him and whether it left any trace in Terrance’s own writing.
It begins pithily enough:
“‘Half-God, half-beast,’ the Princess Valeria once described him, without suspecting that the phrase describes not merely Bellarion, but Man.” (p. 9).
There’s a lot packed into this opening sentence. The contradiction in those first four words is intriguing. Then the name “Princess Valeria” suggests the kind of story this will be: history, fairy tale, romance. But we’re also being invited to question Princess Valeria’s judgment — and, surely, to make our own assessment of the titular Bellarion, whoever he may be, before we’ve even met him.
Sabatini clearly knew the importance of a good opening sentence, as we can see from what he said himself about the genesis of his most famous novel:
“I began by fastening upon a title, Scaramouche, and almost simultaneously came the phrase descriptive of the character: ‘He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.’ That supplied the opening line and the keynote of the book. With so much in hand, the setting readily suggested itself. How the actual story came I do not know. But the seed and the soil were found, and the rest followed somehow.” — Sabatini, quoted in Herbert Greenhough Smith (ed.), What I Think — A Symposium on Books and Other Things by Famous Writers of To-Day (1927)
After its zinger of an opening line, Bellarion continues by telling us that what follows is drawn from a real, historical document attributed to a big name:
“It is more than probable that this study of Bellarion the Fortunate (Bellarione Fortunato) belongs to that series of historical portraits from the pen of Niccolo Macchiavelli, of which The Life of Castruccio Castracane is, perhaps, the most widely know. Research, however, fails to discover the source from which he draws. Whilst many of his facts agree completely with those contained in the voluminous monkish Vita et Gesta Bellarionis left us by Fra Serafino of Imola, whoever he may have been, yet discrepancies are frequent and irreconcilable.” (pp. 9-10)
But Fra Serafino of Imola is an invention of Sabatini, while the reference to Macchiavelli is surely a gag, because he’s thought to have made up large parts of his Life of Castruccio Castracani.
There’s more historicity peppered through this account of intrigues in Italy in the years 1407-1412. At one point, Sabatini supplies an “Englished” version of a rare surviving letter from Bellarion, preserved in the Vatican Library (p. 295). He compares an account given of an incident by Fra Serafino (him again) with that of real-life Milanese historian Bernardino Corio (p. 326) — which can’t really exist because the incident is invented. Sabatini responds to Bellarion’s “detractors” (p. 302), suggesting a host of historical sources and scholarly debate. We’re told that Bellarion’s military tactics are critiqued in L’Art Militaire au Moyen Age by M. Dévinequi (p. 386), but there’s no such book or historian, whose surname translates as “Guess who”.
Yet many of the characters here are real historical figures and Bellarion schemes his way through real history. The Visconti Castle of Pavi “as described by Petrarch” (p. 327) is a real place, and really was described by Petrarch in Letters of Old Age. The wholly fictional Bellarion has been inveigled into real history, just as the character inveigles his way into the various courts and councils.
So what of Bellarion himself? Our first impression is of a precocious, bookish teenager. Aged 17 in 1407, he has been brought up since the age of 6 by the abbot (!) in charge at the Convent of Our Lady of Grace of Cigliano, and is widely read but has little experience of the real world. That’s clear from the argument he has with the abbot, taking the logical but blasphemous view that because God can do no evil, He would not create sin or the Devil, and so neither of these things can exist.
Worn down by Bellarion’s recalcitrance, the abbot sends him away to be better educated. But on the way, the naive Bellarion falls in with a man claiming to be a friar but who we can see is a thief. After some comic episodes, Bellarion realises the truth — just as the friar is arrested. Accused of being the friar’s accomplice, Bellarion scarpers and, by chance, escapes into the garden of Princess Valeria. He lies to her about who he is, and finds himself quickly caught up in court intrigues and then bigger plots, battles and wars.
I can see why this lively, often funny tale about a bookish boy of modest background living on his wiles and running rings around the posh lot would appeal to the young Terrance Dicks. The dry humour is very him. For example, when Bellarion is on trial and facing sentence of death, his earlier (false) claim to be the adopted son of a nobleman makes his enemies pause.
“Thus it was demonstrated to Bellarion how much may hang upon a man’s wise choice of a parent.” (p. 123)
Perhaps some of the language rubbed off on Terrance, too — on p. 97, Valeria and Bellarion are mocked repeatedly as, “long-nose and long-shanks”.
“Is this Doctor a long-shanked rascal with a mighty nose?” — Irongron, Doctor Who — The Time Warrior, script editor Terrance Dicks
But then there’s the kind of hero Bellarion is.
“I grew up reading John Buchan, and Dornford Yates, and Rafael Sabatini, people like that, and I imbibed my ideas of what was right and proper – and the way an English gentleman should be – from my reading.” TD interviewed by Benjamin Cook, “He Never Gives In And He Never Gives Up…” Doctor Who Magazine #508 (2017).
Bellarion — an Italian — is not a fearsome warrior but a bookish, thoughtful man who aspires to be a monk.
“If I were your chronicler, Bellarion, I should write of you as the soldier-sage, or the philosopher-at-arms.” (p. 334)
He is a canny tactician and strategist, but not motivated by conquest, fortune or glory.
“‘Tell me why you so schemed and plotted.’
Bellarion sighed. ‘To amuse myself, perhaps. It interests me. Facino said of me that I was a natural strategist. This broader strategy upon the great field of life gives scope to my inclinations.’ He was thoughtful, chin in hand. ‘I do not think there is more in it than that.’” (p. 368)
He’s done all he’s done out of intellectual curiosity; because he was bored. He is prone, too, to what we might call moments of charm, such as when he disses an enemy:
“He assumed that I, too, had no aim but self-aggrandisement, simply because he could assume no other reason why a man should expose himself to risk.” (p. 79)
He’s brave and brilliant, moral and determined, and passes easily among dukes and princesses while not being quite of their kind. Like so often with Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, there’s a chapter where everyone thinks he is dead.
But that’s not to say that Bellarion is a prototype Pertwee Doctor. He is often impetuous, at one point murdering a man in cold blood who tries to rescue him, which causes no end of complications later. He’s also no good at combat; for all he is brave in executing his clever schemes, they are often a means to avoid his having to fight. On one occasion, he pretends to be ill to get out of a joust.
It’s also not very dramatically satisfying that his various schemes all succeed exactly as he predicts. In that sense, I think Terrance was better on the structure of this kind of adventure.
At the end, when Valeria finally realises that Bellarion is not the rogue she thought and kisses him, the romantic ending is punctured by a joke, or at least by downplaying the moment: the last line is Bellarion saying he must have a fever. Valeria isn’t the only woman to fall for Bellarion but it often seems that this is another kind of conflict for him to dodge.
It’s intriguing, too, that the title page calls this book Bellarion the Fortune. Is Bellarion lucky or does he make his own luck? That’s something Terrance Dicks thought about quite a bit when considering his own career… More of which anon.
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