Met Alistair for a drink at the NFT bar on Tuesday evening, and we got to talking about Bond (only natural in so filmy an environment), eventually getting on to the poem Tracy di Vicenzo’s recites in the Piz Gloria Apline Room as Draco’s helicopters close in for the kill.

It only really works when she says it in her clipped yet silky tones, but I’ve hunted down the original, which comes from a poem by James Elroy Flecker in a play called The Story of Hassan of Bagdad and How He Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

Thy dawn, O Master of the world, thy dawn;
The hour the lilies open on the lawn,
The hour the grey wings pass beyond the mountains,
The hour of silence, when we hear the fountains,
The hour that dreams are brighter and winds colder,
The hour that young love wakes on a white shoulder,

O Master of the world, the Persian Dawn.
That hour, O Master, shall be bright for thee:
Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea,
The braves who fight thy war unsheathe the sabre,
The slaves who work thy mines are lashed to labour,
For thee the waggons of the world are drawn—
The ebony of night, the red of dawn!

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service has been widely paned, but predominantly by those who follow the crowd and criticise it on account of Lazenby’s portrayal of Bond, which I actually think was rather good; it’s just unfortunate that he came after Connery, who many felt was Bond.

Wikipedia’s entry on Tracy Bond reveals a lot of hidden depths to the story, which was so multi-layered that much of the character development had to be skimmed across, perhaps accounting for some of the criticism:

Born Teresa Draco in 1943, she is the only child of Marc-Ange Draco, the head of “The Union Corse,” a powerful international Mafia crime syndicate — not quite as large as S.P.E.C.T.R.E., but with substantially larger “legal” operations, including Draco Construction. Teresa goes by “Tracy” because she feels “Teresa” is too grand. (As she once said, “Teresa is a saint; I’m known as Tracy.”)

Tracy’s mother died when Teresa was 12; her father then sent her to a boarding school in Switzerland. Deprived of a stable home life, Teresa joined the “jet set”, committing “one scandal after another”; when Draco cut off her allowance, Teresa committed “a greater folly” out of spite. She later married Italian Count Giulio di Vicenzo who, during their marriage, got ahold of a large portion of her money before eventually leaving her; he subsequently died while driving a Maserati in the company of one of his mistresses. During this marriage, Teresa had a child, who later died of spinal meningitis.

Desperate with grief for her child, Tracy attempted suicide by jumping into the sea, to be saved by James Bond. Her father pleaded with Bond to continue to see her, claiming that their relationship had changed her for the better. Bond initially refused, but he changed his mind when Marc-Ange offered his resources for anything Bond desired. Since the events of Thunderball and the demise of S.P.E.C.T.R.E., Bond had been hunting for Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and at one point was willing to retire from MI6 because he felt the hunt was folly and that his services and abilities could be used better. Using Draco’s resources, however, Bond was able to track Blofeld to Switzerland. In return, Bond continued to see Tracy and eventually fell in love with her. They married, but Tracy was murdered on their wedding day in a drive by shooting orchestrated by Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his henchwoman Irma Bunt in retaliation for Bond foiling their plans.

It will be interesting to see how EON treats the portrayal of Vesper Lynd in the forthcoming Casino Royale. She is perhaps the most important female character of the whole series in terms of shaping his character. She is the reason for his womanising and, until Tracy came along, his inability to form a steady, meaningful relationship. As such, Eva Green’s portrayal of Vesper will have to be at least as strong as Diana Rigg’s playing of Tracy Bond. That’s no small demand.

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