Side by side in The Story of San Michele with Munthe’s account of the paradise he built for himself in Capri is his vivid description of both patients and colleagues in Paris and in Rome. He was a very successful doctor and, though he is modest about his skills, he is not modest about the attraction he had for fashionable ladies who came to him in droves. He mocks them relentlessly but also records his romantic involvement with one, which led to a duel when he confined a rival to bed by a diagnosis that was quite nonsensical.

But there are also moving episodes as in his description of the Little Sisters of the Poor who looked after the old and homeless, including a man who was always clad in a frock-coat and a top hat, threadbare, so that he went out only when Munthe had found him substitutes, taken from a Pittsburgh millionaire whose son had died of diphtheria. In cleaning things out, Munthe got the hotel to discard the carpet in the room, which he presented to the Sisters.

Then there was the English lady who delivered an illegitimate child whom Munthe traced for her, so she was able to be with him when he was dying, not quite sure he was hers till Munthe showed her the diamond brooch she had given the woman who arranged the adoption. Even though Munthe lays it on thick in these tales, he does create a strong sense of the helpless emotions of the people he helps in his unorthodox ways.

Then there is the account of the gentlemen who gave him shelter when he was working in Messina after the earthquake, who turned out to be convicts escaped from jail when ‘while of the eight hundred carabinieri in the Collegio Militare only fourteen escaped alive, the first shock opened the cells for over four hundred unhurt professional murderers and thieves on life sentences in the prison by the Capuccini’. Munthe being stopped by the police leads them to his friendly convicts, who think he has betrayed them, so that he narrowly escapes being shot and has then to leave Messina.

There are lots of such set pieces but perhaps I should confine myself to just one more, relating to the monkey Billy, which may have been part of the extract I recall having enjoyed so much. Billy likes his alcohol, and has to be locked up when he imbibes too much, but he generally manages to get out when he thinks it necessary.

His most impressive exploit concerned the parish priest of Capril between which and Anacapri, where Munthe in fact had his home, there was great rivalry. Munthe had no regard at all for Don Giacinto, who was supposed to be the richest man on the island, ‘squeezing the last penny out of his poor tenants, evicting them from their homes when the olives had failed and they could not pay their rent, leaving them to starve when they were getting old and had no more strength to toil for him’.

When he died he was kept in state in his church, but fire broke out there in the night and the coffin was consumed by the flames. The villagers thought it was the devil who had done this, but much else had been destroyed including paintings in the new Sala de Esposizione in Capri. 

The citizens of Capri thought that Anacapri was behind this and in a sense they were right. For when Munthe found Billy, he notices Billy’s scorched tail. The chapter ends with his exhorting Billy, after informing him that clearly the devil was his father, to tell him, ‘just to satisfy my curiosity, was it you or your father who knocked down the was candelabra and set the coffin on fire?’