Enton Hall - the real Shrublands

In 1956, Ian Fleming entered Enton Hall, a health farm near Godalming in Surrey, for a course of naturopathic treatment; his wife Ann had visited the clinic earlier in January of that year, and would be a regular guest. Andrew Lycett tells us that Ian Fleming did not take his treatment seriously, and often escaped the hall with another patient, Guy Welby, whom he had befriended, for drives in Welby's Rolls Royce. Nevertheless, Fleming's stay at Enton Hall had sufficient impact on him to provide the inspiration for Shrublands, a health farm which James Bond visits in Thunderball (chapters 2-4). Despite the different name and location (Sussex), Shrublands is a thinly-disguised Enton Hall, as a comparison of Fleming's text with a contemporary brochure issued by the health farm reveals.

The brochure sent out to prospective guests at the time of Fleming's visit is Enton Hall: A Residential Clinic and Health Farm Devoted to the Renewal and Preservation of Health by Natural Biological Methods. It is undated, but a copy I managed to acquire includes a price list dated October 1963. It was almost certainly unchanged from the brochure issued in 1956. Ann Fleming mentions the brochure in a letter to Evelyn Waugh dated 13 January 1956, noting that while the dining room looked melancholy, she was encouraged by the plates, which were heaped with food. The plates were still there in the brochure issued in 1963.

In Thunderball, James Bond arrives at Shrublands in a taxi. As stated in the brochure, Enton Hall similarly sent taxis to collect guests from the local station, and no doubt Fleming used this service. We know from Bond's earlier conversation with Miss Moneypenny that he's staying in the Myrtle room in the Annexe. Enton Hall also had rooms in an annexe (the Oak House), and the charge for these was 22 guineas a week (about £23), a figure very close to the 'twenty quid' for a week's stay that Bond's taxi driver mentions. As Bond enters the grounds of Shrublands, he passes an “imposing, mock-battlemented entrance”, a description that applies equally well to the gateway of Enton Hall.

Enton Hall gateway

Bond's taxi continues round the gravel drive to the front of the main house, a “red-brick Victorian monstrosity”, where the sun-parlour and terraced lawn are situated. Again the description matches Enton Hall, a red-brick Victorian building with a sun-lounge and south-facing lawn at the front.

Enton Hall: front of building

After being shown to his room, Bond flicks through a copy of Alan Moyle's Nature Cure Explained, which had been left beside the bed. Enton Hall's brochure does not mention the book, but the health farm's methods were utterly in keeping with its principles. As stated in the brochure, treatment “is based on the biological approach as incorporated in Osteopathic and Naturopathic Philosophy.” It is possible that Fleming was introduced to Alan Moyle's book during his visit to Enton Hall in 1956.

Walking around Enton Hall, he notices that his fellow guests wear “unattractive quilted dressing-gowns.” This no doubt reflects the rules of the clinic; at Enton Hall, the brochure instructed patients to bring a warm dressing gown, as patients were not to dress fully until after consultation and treatment. Alas the brochure does not show 'the rack', the motorized traction table to which Bond is grievously subjected, but we do see a photograph of the 'Gentlemen's treatment room' (and staff wearing short-sleeved 'smock-like' coats), which, just like the gentlemen's treatment room at Shrublands, was divided into compartments by plastic curtains.

Enton Hall: Gentlemen's treatment rooms

Before Bond faces 'the rack', though, he enjoys 'dinner' (hot vegetable soup in a mug) in the sun-parlour at a “little café table near the windows overlooking the dark lawn.” If an illustrated version of Thunderball were ever produced, then the illustrator could do no better than reproduce the image in the brochure captioned 'View from sun lounge'. The photograph, showing two men at a little café table at the window overlooking the lawn, precisely illustrates Fleming's description, which was almost certainly written with Enton Hall in mind.

Enton Hall: The sun lounge

The brochure produced by Enton Hall confirms that Shrublands was closely modelled on the health farm that Fleming visited in 1956. The scenes Fleming describes are there in the brochure, and one also wonders whether the treatment Bond receives (with the exception of 'the rack') is identical to that given to Fleming. As with much of his fiction, the Shrublands passages are detailed and convincing, not only because of Fleming's desire for accuracy, but also because they describe his own experiences.

References
Amory, M (ed.), 1985, The Letters of Ann Fleming, Collins Harvill
Lycett, A, 1995, Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond, Turner

Photographs by Enton Hall Ltd

More Moyle memes inherited by Ian Fleming

It is clear from the words given to M, and the description of James Bond reading the book, that, rather than simply referencing the title, Ian Fleming read in detail Alan Moyle’s 1950 guide on naturopathy, Nature Cure Explained (1950), before he wrote Thunderball (1961), the adventure in which Moyle is mentioned. However, there are hints in other novels that Fleming read the book earlier. What is more, his reading may have influenced an aspect of Bond’s character and, in one case, a plot detail that would result in one of the most iconic images in cinema.

Chapter 11 of Nature Cure Explained concerns hydrotherapy, the use of water in curative treatments. One of Moyle’s rules is that cold water should be applied after any treatment using hot water. For instance, there is the alternative hot and cold sitz bath, and if having a hot full bath, a cold shower must follow. The reason? According to Moyle, the aim of water treatment is to achieve action and reaction of the blood. Heat draws the blood to the surface, whereas the cold water returns the blood from the skin to the deeper blood-vessels. The result, it is claimed, is increased and better blood circulation (Moyle 1950, 124).

Does this remind you of anyone? In his first adventure, Casino Royale (1953, chapter 8), Bond ‘took a long hot bath followed by an ice-cold shower’. Bond does something similar in From Russia, with Love (1957, chapter 11): he ‘stood in the glass shower cabinet under very hot and then cold hissing water’. Incidentally, that was after he did twenty press-ups and touched his toes twenty times, among other exercises, all while naked. And we know from Moyle (1950, 157) that naked exercise is recommended in Nature Cure. Returning to water treatments, in Diamonds are Forever (1956, chapter 22), Bond takes ‘a “Hot Salt” bath followed by a “Cold Domestic” shower’ while sailing the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth. For all I know, the Queen Elizabeth was indeed fitted with such facilities, but it nevertheless recalls the ‘Epsom Salt Bath’ described by Moyle (1950, 130).

Let us turn to another aspect of Fleming’s earlier writing that recalls Moyle, in this case the idea or meme that being covered in gold paint causes death, which appears in Goldfinger (1959, chapter 14). Goldfinger kills his companion Jill Masterton in revenge for Bond taking her away from him by painting her from head to foot in gold. Without a portion of the skin unpainted, she dies by skin asphyxiation. The meme spread with the release in 1964 of the film of the book, helped not least by the enormous popularity of the film, the iconic image of Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson (sic) lying dead on a bed covered with gold, and Shirley Eaton’s reprise of the ‘golden girl’ role for the cover of Life magazine.

Like Bond’s ablutions, the plot detail may not have been original to Fleming, but may have come from the pages of Moyle. Discussing the need, in his view, for the skin to be exposed allowing it to breath and be invigorated by the elements, Alan Moyle (1950, 22) reminds us of ‘the story of the little boy who was painted with gold paint and died’. It is possible that Fleming read the book before he wrote Goldfinger and was taken with Moyle’s warning as a potential villainous means of murder.

If Fleming had read Nature Cure Explained even before Bond’s first appearance in Casino Royale, then does that make Bond a disciple of Nature Cure? Well, no. His 70-a day smoking habit suggests otherwise (though curiously Moyle does not mention smoking), and a philosophy that Bond’s secretary attributes to Bond in his ‘obituary’ (You Only Live Twice (1964), chapter 21: ‘ “I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time” ’) does not bring to mind the naturopathic lifestyle of joyless diets, regular fasts, herbal remedies, and general abstention from any activity that could induce illness.

James Bond and alternative medicine

Recently I acquired an addition to James Bond’s library: Nature Cure Explained (1950), by Alan Moyle. The book is waiting for Bond on the bedside table of his room at the Shrublands sanatorium. As described in Thunderball (1961), Bond is ordered there by M to undertake a two- to three-week abstemious regime to improve his physical fitness. Bond turns to the book shortly after his arrival (Thunderball, chapter 2) and manages to get through 12 of its 19 chapters, discovering in the process that Nature Cure, or naturopathy, is ‘the application of natural laws’ through fasting, balanced and special dieting, exercising, and hydrotherapy among other means to maintain good health and prevent disease. Evidently M has read the book too. His views on denatured food, the harm of conventional medicine, and his reference to pioneers (usually Austrian or German) of the naturopathy movement (chapter 1), are taken direct from the pages of Moyle.

To some extent, naturopathy sits on the milder end of the alternative medicine spectrum. Alan Moyle’s manifesto for a balanced diet includes the consumption of whole foods, abundant fruit and vegetables (preferably raw), fair quantities of dairy products, and little meat. Sixty years on, much of Moyle’s assertions would find little disagreement. We accept without question the health benefits of wholegrain products, and pass on the ‘wholegrain-is-good’ meme to the next generation as naturally as we transmit our genes. Society, too, has long rejected foods that contain additives and preservatives, something much despised by Moyle. Words like ‘natural’, ‘pure’, and ‘fresh’ are scrawled over food packaging like graffiti under a railway bridge, and while the food displaying such labels is not necessarily those things (as Which? noted), it is nevertheless a recognition that consumers seeking a healthy lifestyle form a significant population.

One also cannot argue with Moyle’s claim that exercise is very beneficial, although his insistence of exercising in the nude, as well as his view that the ‘uplift [in morale] arising from the freedom from clothes’ leads to ‘a healthier outlook on sex’ reminds us of naturopathy’s links with the naturism movement, and recalls the film of badminton-playing naturists eagerly watched by Sid James in Carry On Camping.

Moyle is likely to have fewer supporters, however, for his preference for sour milk (replacing pasteurised milk, which Moyle claims is robbed of nutrients), the recommendation to fast once a year for seven days (ideally in the ‘eminently suitable’ period of spring), and his special diets, like the potato diet (breakfast: potato and onion broth; mid-morning: potato and onion broth; lunch: baked or steamed potatoes; supper: baked or steamed potatoes and potato and onion broth). More worrying is Alan Moyle’s assertion that a cold is the body’s way of telling us that it is clogged with poisons from unhealthy living and needs to be brought back into balance; fried food, he maintains, is one cause of colds.

But Alan Moyle’s rejection of conventional medicine is dangerous. Drugs, he claims, suppress disease, not cure it. The only way to treat disease is to rectify the underlying cause – a result of a violation of the natural laws – by fasting, dieting, water treatments, and so on. Maintaining Nature Cure obviates the need for medicines, as one is less likely to become ill. To be fair, Moyle expressed his views a long time ago when research into viruses or the causes of cancer was at its infancy. However, today’s naturopathy movement retains this principle, though acknowledges that ‘short term measures which assist in the removal of symptoms for the comfort or safety of the individual’ are sometimes necessary.

Returning to Thunderball, how does James Bond cope with his nature cure? He is put on a course of strict dieting, massage, irrigation (presumably colonic), hot and cold sitz baths, osteopathy, and some traction. This final treatment, incidentally, is not mentioned by Alan Moyle, and may have been an plot device original to Fleming or derived from another source. We learn that Bond consumes vegetable soup and, later, orange slices. He has massage, including effleurage, which, ‘acts on the cutaneous nerves and superficial vessels’ (Moyle 1950, 155). The results? Reduced blood pressure, weight loss, osteopathic lesions gone, and clear eyes and tongue (chapter 4). On his release from the clinic, Bond initially maintains the diet, replacing his usual breakfast of boiled eggs, toast and coffee with yoghurt. But the regime is short-lived. SPECTRE has stolen two atomic missiles and Bond is ordered to the Bahamas to investigate. For this, Bond needs some proper food, and he breaks his diet with scrambled eggs, smoked bacon, hot-buttered toast (‘not wholemeal’, he tells May, his housekeeper), and double-strength coffee.