“Tracy, I love you. Will you marry me?”
She turned very pale. She looked at him wonderingly. Her lips trembled. “You mean that?”
“Yes, I mean it. With all my heart.”
Book two of Ian Fleming’s unofficial “Blofeld Trilogy” (Thunderball, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and You Only Live Twice) is a tale of many firsts for James Bond. Bond tries to quit the Secret Service, he finally confronts the elusive Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and Bond actually falls in love and gets married! In addition to being a welcome return to form after Fleming’s experimental departures in For Your Eyes Only and The Spy Who Love Me, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is also a charming wintry Christmas tale. Unlike earlier Bond novels like Live and Let Die, Dr. No, or Thunderball, which were set in sunny beachfront locales, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is very much ensconced in the cold, crisp alpine aesthetic of the Swiss Alps.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is also a deeply personal novel for James Bond –we learn a considerable amount of information about his family lineage (hence the ubiquity of heraldry and genealogy throughout the book), as well as Bond’s desire to fall in love, settle down, and start a family. At the time, Fleming consulted with heraldic researcher Robin de la Lannes-Mirrlees of the College of Arms (known as the “Rogue Dragon” where Fleming got the idea for the name of the quirky heraldry expert in the book named Sable Basilisk). Mirrlees was the son of Major-General William Mirrlees, Fleming’s friend and golf partner. The book’s dedication to “Sable Basilisk Pursuivant” is a nod to Mirrlees (in fact, it is dedicated to Sable Basilisk Pursuivant and Hilary Bray “who came to the aid of the party”).
At the time, Fleming was wrestling with his own failing marriage to Ann Charteris (in part, due to her disapproval of the James Bond novels). On the side, Fleming had struck up a relationship with Blanche Blackwell, the glamorous heiress of an old plantation family in Jamaica. She was a single mother whose only son from a prior marriage, Chris Blackwell, grew up to become the founder of Island Records. Today, he also owns Fleming’s GoldenEye estate in Jamaica, which was once the center of a community of ex-pat Brits (like Noel Coward) who escaped the greying dreariness of England in search of freedom, loose morals, public nudity, marijuana smoking, and wild torrid liaisons (Fleming’s lurid and somewhat sadistic sexual escapades were apparently legendary). Blanche Blackwell was one of Fleming’s most well-known mistresses (she is rumored to have been the inspiration for various Bond Girls like Pussy Galore in Goldfinger and Honeychile Ryder in Dr. No). Sadly, she passed away in 2017 at the age of 104. At any rate, in addition to a troubled love-life, the chain-smoking Fleming was also suffering ailing health after a heart attack, and his legal battle over the rights to Thunderball was still ongoing. Despite all the turmoil, Fleming still intended for his next novel to continue the Thunderball story –a return to the adventure tales of the earlier Bond novels. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service we are treated to the return of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the shadowy leader of the international criminal syndicate known as SPECTRE (first introduced in Thunderball).
Written while the first James Bond film Dr. No was being filmed not far from Ian Fleming’s GoldenEye estate, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service picks up shortly after the “Thunderball” Incident. The first part of the book is told out of chronological order in a series of flashbacks. Bond has returned to Royale-les-Eaux, in a callback to the first Bond novel Casino Royale (apparently, Bond returns each year to honor the memory of Vesper Lynd). From here, the novel flashes forward to Bond as he sits on a warm beach and watches a lone woman slowly wander into the waves with no clear intention of ever returning again. Bond shouts at her to prevent her impending suicide, but both he and the woman are stopped and kidnapped by two men. From here, Bond reflects on the last twenty-four hours that led to this moment. He recalls Le Chiffre and the high-stakes gambling incident many years ago at the Casino Royale, “He had come a long way since then, dodged many bullets and much death and loved many girls, but there had been a drama and a poignancy about this particular adventure that every year drew him back to Royale and its casino and to the small granite cross in the little churchyard that simply said “Vesper Lynd. R.I.P.” (15). Bond has drafted a letter to M announcing his resignation from the Secret Service. He begins by recounting his time in the Double-O Section and the last twelve months after Operation “Thunderball” in which Bond had received personal instructions, without a terminal date, to concentrate all efforts in pursuit of the criminal mastermind named Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his fellow members of the international syndicate known as SPECTRE (“Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence and Extortion”) –that is, assuming the organization managed to be reborn since its destruction at the climax of Operation “Thunderball.” Bond had accepted this assignment with reluctance and despite his objections, he was sent all over the world conducting detective work, trailing potential leads or rumors that might lead to Blofeld or SPECTRE. Recently, Bond traveled to Palermo on a wild goose chase that drew the ire of the Sicilian mafia. Upon returning to London, Bond has been pining for the days when he was doing the more fitting and arduous work insied the Double-o Section, rather than chasing after a ghost.
While at Royale, Bond encounters a reckless-driving woman who speeds by him in a white Lancia Flaminia Zagato Spider wearing a pink scarf –“it was his experience that girls who drove competitively like that were always pretty – and exciting” (13). Her name is La Comtesse Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo –her father is a wealthy industrialist from the south. At first, she sounds a bit too grand for Bond (he prefers “private girls”) but after heading to the casino to play a few rounds (inside the Hotel Splendide), Tracy suddenly appears with “golden arms, a beautiful golden face with brilliant blue eyes and shocking pink lips, some kind of plain white dress, a bell of golden hair down to her shoulders…” (Fleming apparently based the character of Tracy on Muriel Wright, a married wartime lover of Fleming’s who tragically died in an air-raid during World War II). Tracy seems to have an air of indifference about everything –troubled, melancholic, and depressive, Bond reflects that “in some way this girl had come to the end of her tether.” After carelessly gambling with money she doesn’t have, Bond steps in saves her from certain scorn and social ostracization by claiming ownership over her round himself. As a token of her thanks, she invites Bond back to her room.
“She was waiting in the big double bed, a single sheet pulled up to her chin. The fair hair was spread out like golden wings under the single reading light that was the only light in the room, and the blue eyes blazed with a fervour that, in other girls, in other beds, James Bond would have interpreted. But this one was in the grip of stresses he could not even guess at” (31).
She instructs him to “take off those clothes. Make love to me. You are handsome and strong. I want to remember what it can be like and what you would like from me. Be rough with me. Treat me like the lowest whore in creation. Forget everything else. No questions. Take me” (31-32).
Fleming’s fantasies really are unmistakable in these books. At any rate, in the morning Tracy suddenly claims she despises Bond and urgently dismisses him (he grows concerned that she may be suffering from severe depression). But he leaves anyway but closely follows her. Later, we are given the beach sequence with the two men who kidnap Bond and Tracy aboard a boat and truck before leading them to a mysterious office building where Bond meets Marc-Ange Draco (named after Sir Francis Drake or “El Draco”), head of the Union Corse and father of Tracy. The Union Corse is a criminal outfit that is perhaps “more deadly and perhaps even older than the Union Siciliano, the Mafia.” It controls most of the organized crime in metropolitan France and its territories –in the book Draco seems much more seedy and nefarious than in the film –he runs a “dirty business” of prostitution houses, smuggling, protection-selling, and stealing from the very rich. As the father of Tracy, Draco married an English governess, and they lived like bandits in the mountains, but he raped her (the narrator claims she desired to raped –again, Fleming infects his novel with this vile, incendiary, drivel). Draco then married the governess (who died ten years ago), and the result of their union was young Teresa or “Tracy.” As Bond gets to know Tracy, he reflects on Tracy being mixed race –he exclaims “what a complex of bloods and temperaments!” Tracy, meanwhile was always a wild child –she once married a “worthless Italian” named Cpund Julio Vicenzo, but he robbed Tracy and left her with a daughter who died of spinal meningitis six months ago, leaving her distraught and despondent. It was a heartbreaking tragedy.
As such, Draco has something to add to the mix. He wants Bond to marry his daughter:
“I wish you to pay court to my daughter and marry her. O, the day of the marriage, I will give you a personal dowry of one million pounds in gold.”
However, Bond politely declines (in some ways, Draco is a character reminiscent of other Bond allies like Darko Kerim in From Russia, with Love or Enrico Colombo in the short story “Risico” –however, Draco seems to be slightly more ominous and foreboding. Can Bond trust this criminal?) Draco asks Bond to go out with Tracy one more time that evening, and he asks if there is anything else he can do for Bond with his extensive power and connections, and when Bond reveals his current objective, and after digging around, Draco learns that Blofeld is indeed alive and living in Switzerland.
Two months pass as Bond is away on assignment in both Canada and the United States (as chronicled in The Spy Who Loved Me and also apparently in “007 in New York”). When Bond returns to London, he is frustrated by the lack of progress in tracking down Blofeld in Switzerland –he has been waiting around on Station Z to penetrate the reserves of the Swiss Securite to find Blofeld’s address, but since Blofeld is not wanted by NATO, there has been trouble in locating his bank records because he has technically not committed a Swiss crime, despite having held Britain and America ransom for stolen atomic weapons. Suddenly, Bond’s newly developed “Syncraphone” goes off (a device given to all officers, akin to a radio receiver the size of a pocket watch) and it urgently summons him to Headquarters where we learn that Bond’s secretary Loelia Ponsonby has finally left the Service to marry a “dull, but worthy and rich member of the Baltic Exchange.” Bond’s new secretary is Mary Goodnight, an ex-Wren with blue-black hair and blue eyes. He greets her with: “Good morning, Goodnight…”
As always, I find myself drawn to these ordinary scenes portraying the dynamics from within the Secret Service –006 is mentioned (or Tracy, an ex-Royal Marine Commando) as well as Miss Moneypenny and Bill Tanner (or the “Chief of Staff”)– and Bond is told to visit the College of Arms in pursuit of project “Bedlam,” the code name for the mission to find Blofeld. Bond meets with Griffon Or, an eccentric “Pickwickian” heraldry expert at the College of Arms who spends his time tracing peoples’ family trees, their allotted coat of arms, and organizing various royal ceremonies. Griffon Or pushes to discover if Bond is related to a baronetcy connected to Sir Thomas Bond, baronet of Peckham in the county of surrey for whom Bond Street is named (the family motto is “The World Is Not Enough”). Bond reveals that his father was a Scot (from the highlands near Glencoe) and his mother was a Swiss –Fleming inserted the fact that Bond was half-Scottish because Sean Connery had recently been cast as Bond in Dr. No. Next, Bond meets with Sable Basilisk, who shares with Bond that the College has recently received a request from a respectable Zurich firm about a client: Monsieur le Comte Balthazar de Bleuville, a man who wishes to prove the truth of his claim to a title –a Count– and whose family motto is “For Hearth and Home.”
This man, Count de Bleuville, is actually Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Thus, Bond plans to go under cover as an emissary of the College of Arms to visit Blofeld. He poses as a foppish, aloof heraldry expert named Sir Hilary Bray whose family in Normandy is said to date back to William the Conqueror (the real Sir Hilary lives in the remote highlands “watching birds and climbing hills with his bare feet”). There is no reason why anyone in Switzerland should have heard of him. Bond hopes to win Blofeld’s trust and bring him across the border into Germany somehow, so he can be kidnapped like the Israelis did to Eichmann (it is codenamed “Corona” and will be kept secret from Station Z).
“The personal dangers to Bond himself were discussed. There was total respect for Blofeld at Headquarters. Nobody questioned his abilities or his ruthlessness. If Bond’s true identity somehow became known to Blofeld, Bond would of course instantly be liquidated” (75).
While the depressive Tracy is checked into the Clinique e l’Aube at Davos under the care of Professor Auguste Kommer (President of the Societe Psychiatrique et Psychologique Suisse) the College of Arms makes a variety of excuses for Bond to go undercover to Switzerland to find Blofeld. Upon arrival, he is met by Fraulein Irma Bunt, personal secretary to Count de Bleuville, and taken by helicopter 10,000 feet into the air to a lair high in the snowy alps –this particuar alp is called Piz Gloria, where Blofeld has built his life’s work, the Institut fur Psychiologique Forschung for scientific research in the field of allergies. It has a Seilbahn cable car which leads to a town far below.
After getting situated in his room, Bond enjoys drinks at the compound bar at six o’clock with a group of beautiful country girls who are each being treated for their allergies related to poultry and agriculture. They give Bond the “fleeting impression of one of the most beautiful groups of girls he had ever seen.” Some of their names are Ruby, Violet, Pearl, Anne, Elizabeth, Beryl, Caresse, Denise, Sarah, and Polly –they all have sunburnt faces from the snow. Bond takes a keen interest in Ruby and they later sleep together. Additionally, there are a variety of guards who are a mix of Corsicans, Germans, and men from the Balkans –one of them reminds Bond strongly of SMERSH. In the night, Bond is awoken by the faint sound of whispering coming from under the floor (we later learn all the rooms are being closely surveilled with devices inside the lights). Later, a deathly scream is heard in the night –a guard named Bertil mysteriously took a fall down a bobsled run which sent him plunging to his death (though Bond speculates that perhaps he was actually being punished by Blofeld for sexually assaulting one of the women named Sarah).
The next morning at eleven, Bond finally meets face-to-face with Blofeld in his private quarters. Sadly, this whole scene is a bit anti-climactic in my view –is this really the ultimate mystery villain introduced in Thunderball? The Secret Service file on Blofeld initially described a heavyset man “twenty stone, tall, pale, bland face with black crew-cut, black eyes with whites showing all round, like Mussolini’s, ugly thin moth, long pointed hands and feet” (105) however the man Bond meets is different –tallish with long thin hands and naked feet, fine silvery white hair, and wearing dark green contact lenses to counter the dangerous levels of sun ultraviolet exposure at these altitudes. Blofeld has a nose eaten away by syphilis and he claims to be a “heliotrope,” or sun worshipper. Perhaps Blofeld has undergone a radical physical transformation since Thunderball.
They discuss why Bond/Sir Hilary and the College of Arms requested a physical meeting in the first place, which Bond explains was necessary because the de Bleuville family was known not to have earlobes and the Garter of Arms ruled that an in-person meeting was necessary. Blofeld is revealed not to have earlobes, however Bond as Sir Hilary (a junior freelance research worker for the Pursuivants) still needs to fill in a variety of the gaps in the de Bleuville family line, so Bond plans to remain at Piz Gloria for a week or so. Later in his room, Bond discovers that somebody has carefully rifled through all of his possessions (Bond had carefully placed strands of his hair in various places, like his passport, as a test –this little ploy was also used in the first James Bond film Dr. No). Bond discovers the use of plastic which allows him to slip in and out of doors in the building, and he also learns that deep hypnosis is being used on all the young women at the facility. What is Blofeld up to? “Malignity must somewhere lie behind the benign, clinical front of this maddeningly innocent research outfit…” (136).
In town, a man recognizes Sir Hilary as an old military connection, but Bond quickly makes up a story about another Hilary Bray being his first cousin who has since passed away after falling off a mountain (but Irma Bunt seems suspicious). And later, while speaking with Blofeld again about gaps in his family genealogy, another Secret Service spy is brought forth who has been captured –No. 2 (or Shaun Campbell) from Station Z in Zurich, who is tossed into a nearby room and cries out for help from “James” but, still since Bond is still undercover as Sir Hilary, he calmly denies ever knowing this strange, disturbed man. No. 2 is taken away and presumably tortured to death and we never hear from him again.
With these tenuous moments unfolding, Bond realizes he must escape the facility or else face death. Without a weapon, Bond slips his small Gillet razor over his knuckle and sneaks around, procuring necessary gear, like goggles so that he can quickly flee down the mountain. Using his own urine as secret ink, he transcribes the names and locations of the ten girls, before embarking on the Gloria Run skiing downward, but an armed cable car is sent after him, firing a grenades at him, forcing him to the run the black flag run with faces an avalanche danger, however all of these explosions do not cause a stir in the town below because there is a party –“And then Bond remembered. But of course! It was Christmas Eve! God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay! Bond’s skis hissed an accompaniment as he zigzagged fast down the beautiful snow slope. White Christmas! Well, he’d certainly got himself that!” (162).
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is indeed a Christmas Bond novel! Badly banged up, Bond makes it down the mountain utterly exhausted and he surprisingly runs into Tracy, who appears like a deux ex machina out of nowhere, and they sneak out together while kissing in order to get past the guards and this leads to a wild car chase, before they narrowly escape. From here, Bond regroups back in England and he considers his long-term relationship with Tracy, reminiscent of his reflections on Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale:
“Bond suddenly thought, Hell! I’ll never find another girl like this one. She’s got everything I’ve looked for in a woman. She’s beautiful, in bed and out. She’s adventurous, brave, resourceful. She’s exciting always. She seems to love me. She’d let me go on with my life. She’s a lone girl, not cluttered up with friends, relations, belongings. Above all, she needs me. It’ll be someone for me to look after. I’m fed up with all these untidy, casual affairs that leave me with a bad conscience. I wouldn’t mind having children. I’ve got no social background into which she would or wouldn’t fit. We’re two of a pair, really. Why not make it for always?” (183).
With these thoughts in mind, Bond spontaneously professes his love for Tracy and asks her to marry him –naturally she enthusiastically agrees.
“…now, in three days’ time, he would no longer be alone. He would be a half of two people. There wouldn’t only be May and Mary Goodnight who would tut-tut over him when he came back from some job as a hospital case. Now, if he got himself killed, there would be Tracy who would at any rate partially die with him” (245).
Back at the Secret Service, Bond links up with secretary Mary Goodnight (his housekeeper May is mentioned again but is not featured in this book). Bond also meets with M at his home. We learn that M would have preferred to live by the sea in Bristol or Plymouth, but work has compelled him to be closer to London, living at the edge of Windsor Forest on Crown Lands, earning 5,000 pounds per year. For a stock bachelor hobby, M is a water color painter who paints various flowers, and his walls feature a collection of naval prints –M uses the bell of the HMS Repulse as his doorbell (his last naval assignment) –Fleming inserted this little tidbit as another nod to the real inspiration for M, Admiral John Godfrey, to whom Fleming served as a personal assistant in Naval Intelligence during World War II (during the course of the conversation between Bond, M, and other Secret Service members, the Identicast machine is mentioned again (it was first introduced in Goldfinger). Bond and M meet with Franklin from the Ministry of Agriculture, and Number 501 of the Secret Service named “Leathers,” the Chief Scientific Officer of the Secret Service, where they ponder Blofeld’s plot –Is Blofeld being sponsored by the Russians? What is he doing? Mr. Franklin studies the list of girls and their locations, and it dawns on him that Polly’s return home coincided with a virulent outbreak among turkeys in that region. They conclude that Blofeld is hypnotizing the girls and using them to commit biological warfare on England by having them spread diseases among the crops or livestock within their respective farming areas, thus crippling the country’s economy.
Bond is given two weeks leave wherein he travels to Marseille –the “most criminal and tough of all French towns” to enlist Tracy’s father, Marc-Ange Draco, to help in attacking Piz Gloria. Unsurprisingly, Draco agrees and he brings in two of his top lieutenants, Ché-Ché and Toussaint, along with a few other henchmen. They regroup in Strasbourg and take a helicopter to the alps and when they arrive in a barrage of gunfire at Piz Gloria, Blofeld flees down a bobsled run while a shootout occurs between Draco’s and Blofeld’s men. Meanwhile, Bond chases Blofeld down the bobsled run but a grenade tossed by Blofeld knocks him unconscious and Blofeld escapes. Some time later, Bond awakens in the snow to witness the explosion of Blofeld’s lair –the assault has been successful but Blofeld has gotten away.
Bond later reconnects with Tracy who professes her love for him: “I wouldn’t love you if you weren’t a pirate. I expect it’s in the blood. I’ll get used to it. Don’t change. I don’t want to draw your teeth like women do with their men. I want to live with you, not with somebody else. But don’t mind if I howl like a dog every now and then. Or rather like a bitch. Its only love” (245).
Bond and Tracy travel to Munich together where Bond buys her an engagement ring, but he happens to be unknowingly spotted by none other than Irma Bunt on the street, causing her to secretly inform Blofeld. In the course of the amorous dialogue between Bond and Tracy, Bond echoes his famous words: “we’ve got all the time in the world to talk about love.” Her father, Draco, offers a million-pound dowry for their impending nuptials but Bond kindly refuses the money while lovingly talking about a home in the country and possibly having children someday. It is all a lovely time as Bond and Tracy are married on a crisp New Year’s Day at the British Consulate, and the Head of Station M serves as Bond’s best man, before Bond and Tracy head off together in her Lancia for their honeymoon in Kitzbuhel on the Autobahn en route to Salzbur –but they are being tailed by a strange couple in a red Maserati:
“There’s a red car coming up fast behind. Do you want me to lose him?”
“No”, said Bond. “Let him go. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
Moments later, their Lancia is fired upon by a man with a “snarling mouth under a syphilitic nose” –it must be Blofeld– and in the hail of bullets, Bond is knocked unconscious while Tracy is tragically killed. Some time passes and a young Autobahn Patrolman approaches the car, awakening Bond who sorrowfully embraces his dead bride one final time.
“It’s all right,” he said in a clear voice as if explaining. Something to a child. “It’s quite all right. She’s having a rest. We’ll be going on soon. There’s no hurry. You see—” Bond’s head sank down against hers and he whispered into her hair—“You see, we’ve got all the time in the world” (258).
A tragic, melancholic, and deeply personal ending to a James Bond novel, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service might be well contrasted with Casino Royale. In the latter, Bond is betrayed by his lover, Vesper Lynd, and their budding love is cut short when she betrays Bond and dies. In response, he curtly remarks, “the bitch is dead” (however, as we learn in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond still makes an annual pilgrimage to Vesper’s grave). However, with Tracy, Bond finally decides to get married with plans to settle down and resign from the Secret Service –but their plans are violently ended by Blofeld’s revenge on James Bond. In this case, Bond remains a tragic, melodramatic character. As with From Russia, with Love, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service ends on an explosive cliffhanger –where will Bond go from here?
For the most part, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is another delightful addition to the Bond literary canon –a fan favorite with an entirely unique tale—and while I found myself instantly drawn to the snowy, mountain-top-Christmas imagery in the novel (particularly scenes of Bond working undercover as Sir Hilary Bray) there are some glaring plot-holes that arise here. Perhaps the most striking question to me is: why in the world would Blofeld risk exposing his true identity by relentlessly seeking to confirm his Count titleship with the Royal College of Arms? Why does he require this title? I thought he was an extraordinary careful, calculating, invisible actor who prefers to work behind the curtain? Wouldn’t he prefer to quietly conduct his biological warfare plot first, and then pursue his due Countship later? Personally, I prefer the ominous, shadowy portrayal of Blofeld as found in Thunderball. The thin, prideful man hiding in an alpine ski resort who escapes on a bobsled in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service somehow makes Blofeld seem remarkably diminutive and less threatening. Still, this is another convivial, pulpy James Bond adventure with plenty of fittingly sharp, lyrical prose. It comes highly recommended for true fans, despite not being my personal favorite of the series.
Fleming, Ian. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Thomas & Mercer in Las Vegas, NV c/o Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. 1963 (republished in 2012). Paperback edition.
Click here to return to my survey of the James Bond saga.
Film Review: click here to read my review of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).