Bengt Jangfeldt, Axel Munthe: the road to San Michele, translated by Harry Watson, London and New York, I B Tauris, 2008, pp. ix, 383, illus., £25.00 (hardback 978-1-84511-720-7).

Abstract

Dr Axel Munthe (1857–1949) is best known as the author of The story of San Michele (London, John Murray, 1929), a book translated into some forty languages, which has fascinated readers across the world. In a semi-fictional autobiography the elderly Munthe presented himself as an old hermit, retired from medical practice to a mystical retreat on the isle of Capri. The adventures and sentiments of the hero in The story of San Michele were a construction of an alternative life, that of an ideal physician, ever available to his patients, never charging for his services, modelling his life on St Francis, and a benevolent protector of animals. This book and probably also Munthe’s earlier Letters from a mourning city (London, John Murray, 1887, 1899) about volunteer work during a cholera epidemic in Naples inspired many men and women to good deeds in medical service. Munthe did not publish in medical journals. His early fiction, however, provides some interesting glimpses into the practice of medicine a century ago. Bengt Jangfeldt’s biography Axel Munthe: the road to San Michele is a valuable contribution to the publications in English about the medical man Axel Munthe, who developed into a literary personality. Drawing on a treasure trove of Munthe’s preserved private correspondence and other sources, Jangfeldt has meticulously traced his life’s journey and professional career. The younger son of an apothecary in Sweden, Munthe’s brief medical education in Montpellier and Paris prepared him for work as an obstetrician, but he fashioned himself as a nerve doctor, claiming that he had trained under Jean-Martin Charcot at La Salpetriere. His attempts to build a medical practice in Paris in the 1880s failed, but he was assisted to set up practice at Piazza di Spagna in Rome and became a sought-after physician among English, American and Scandinavian expatriates in the 1890s. Munthe retired, a wealthy man, to the isle of Capri, where he would have his main residence for forty years. On Capri he had already built the Villa San Michele, presently a popular tourist attraction. In the private realm, Munthe experienced two failed marriages. With his English second wife Hilda, nee Pennington Mellor, Munthe had two sons. For thirty years he maintained a close relationship with Queen Victoria of Sweden, a relationship lasting until her death in 1930. Munthe left Capri in 1943 and spent the remaining years of his life in an apartment at the Royal Palace in Stockholm. Jangfeldt’s main focus is on the Anglophile, cosmopolitan Munthe’s personal life and the social milieux in which he moved. Jangfeldt’s fascination with Munthe’s ascent into high society—diplomatic circles, nobility, and the network of royal families in Europe a hundred years ago—and Munthe’s stance in the two world wars conveys empathy and thrill. Sweden does not have a great biographical tradition on a par with France or Britain. Jangfeldt’s work in this genre is therefore a first. Lytton Strachey pointed out in his preface to Eminent Victorians that a biographer has two duties: to preserve, and to lay bare, to expose. Jangfeldt excels in the first task, but he is not a critical historian who cynically examines his findings to uncover a truth less seductive to a romantic imagination than the first, fresh impressions. Nevertheless, a reader interested to learn about the life of a high society physician a hundred years ago will be well entertained by Jangfeldt’s rendition of Axel Munthe’s story.