Doctoring the record

The Story of San Michele is one of the great bestsellers of all time. It languishes on the shelves of second-hand bookshops, the autobiography of a Swedish doctor who fell in love with the island of Capri. The author, Axel Munthe, is a shadowy figure, a name often mentioned but (to me at least) an enigma.

Munthe’s life, as related by Bengt Jangfeldt in this new biography, was an extraordinary adventure, far more exciting than his autobiography. He was entirely self-made. Born in 1857, he was a middle-class Swedish boy, the son of a pharmacist. When he began to cough blood as a medical student, he left Sweden in search of the warmth of the south. He completed his training in France, qualifying as a doctor in five months — there was always a question mark hanging over his medical qualifications. He married a woman he didn’t love, and started to practise in Paris, where he discovered a wealthy patron, who bankrolled him. Then he heard about an outbreak of cholera in Naples. On a whim he dashed off to offer his services as a doctor, sending back articles for the Swedish press which he later published successfully as a book. He climbed Mont Blanc, almost killed himself, and wrote another book about it.

Munthe had straw-coloured hair, a moustache and round spectacles, and he liked to pose as a romantic, melancholic outsider. He divorced his wife and retreated to Capri, where he became a hero among the islanders, living on the land and charging no fees for his doctoring. His next step was inspired. He moved to Rome, and set up in practice as a doctor living in Keats’s house on the Spanish Steps. He was clever at attaching himself to influential patrons such as the British ambassador Lord Dufferin, and soon he had the most fashionable practice in the city.