Graham Greene (18 page)

You are missing nothing here. Only the faint susurrus of the intellectuals dashing for ministry posts. Spender feathered his young nest in Ministry of Information.
³⁹
Had Clack in yday. A mistake. She broke the latchkey in the door (I’ve got a new one) and messed up a telephone call. I was having my bath when the Clack voice
called outside,
‘Go
round at once’, and disappeared. I got out and dried and went, towelclad, to find her. She didn’t know who had called. Wasn’t sure of message. It was a man. I said, ‘Next time, tell them to hold on, and fetch me.’ I had got my pants on, when she pounded up. Same man. She had asked him to hold on. Ran down; to find she had put back the receiver! He never rang again. Might have been Pat
⁴⁰
to tell you to go at once. Might have been anything. I think one gets on better without the Clack. Sully’s carpenter is in now, fitting plywood over the skylight, to prevent glass falling in. Good bye, my dearest, for a little while.

With all my love,

Tyg

14 North Side: Clapham Common: SW 4 | Sep. 4 [1939]

My dearest, a very hurried letter in return for your lovely long one. Yes, we had two warnings yday, one just as I’d begun my cinema article and the other about 2.45 this morning, both false alarms. Nobody seems to mind much. No scurrying at all. I went into central London for the second black-out on Saturday night, and heard Douglas Byng very funny and Nellie Wallace like[wise?] at the Prince of Wales.
⁴¹
Very lovely and impressive with all the sky signs gone and little blue phosphorescent milk bars and a hurdy-gurdy invisibly playing – rather like a Paris back-street. Newspaperman calling, ‘Ave a paper tonight’, plaintively. Another one very conversational, ‘Reminds me of the trenches. Never knew which way you was going.’ […]

After the all-clear went last night it was curiously like Christmas morning: the voices of air raid wardens going home like people
returning from Midnight Mass. After the sirens began yday morning a woman passed slowly along leading a dog, no hurry, and all the balloons began to rise round the sky; the pigeons made a mass dive for shelter. I’m very snug: work in the morning, then go out and see people and have my three halves, and wander round.

[…]

The anthologist and critic John Hayward
(1905
–65), who suffered from muscular dystrophy, is now remembered chiefly as the close friend and adviser of T. S. Eliot, with whom he shared a flat in Chelsea from
1946
to 1957. Graham had first consulted him in
1931
about the Earl of Rochester, whose works Hayward had edited while still an undergraduate
.

14 North Side: Clapham Common: SW 4 | Thursday
[14 September 1939]

Dear John,

I’ve just been ringing up your flat to see whether you were still in London &, if you were, to beg a cup of tea from you. I don’t like shop tea, & I can’t be bothered to make my own, & at the same time tea I love above all things. I’ve evacuated all my family & wait here, having finished a novel yesterday,
⁴²
to be called up on this Army Officers’ Emergency Reserve, as a second-lieutenant. Horrible to think of the lieutenants one will have to salute.

I was thinking out an idea yday of an organisation of war authors parallel to the war artists. They would be given acting rank & assigned to the various fronts, to do an objective, non-newsy & unpropaganda [?] picture of the war – for publication in England & America – composite books probably. I can’t help feeling there’s something here: they should be people who are published in America anyway on their name [?]. Of course the idea behind it is to avoid being sent for six weary months of training to
Catterick
⁴³
or some other hole. If you know someone in the War Office (not in that beastly den, the Ministry of Information) won’t you put it up, organise it & assign me to some picturesque theatre of war?

I suppose you’ve succeeded in either letting your flat or surrendering the lease. I ask because a nice, intelligent & reliable friend of mine, a girl who designs theatre costumes,
⁴⁴
asked me to look out for someone who couldn’t let his flat & would accept a nominal rent of not more than 30/-a week in return for a careful eye being kept on his things.

I must stop & read an incredibly funny & indecent Hugh Walpole (I am doing
Spectator
fiction to earn some money).
⁴⁵

‘Standing up they embraced until they were indeed one flesh, one heart, one soul. But it hurts to make love standing, so Joe said: “Let’s not bother about lunch.”’

Yours,
     Graham

Another gem: ‘For weeks they had been constantly together, & during the last week had been without a break in one another’s arms, spiritually when it had been too public to be so physically.’

By April 1939, Graham was involved in a very serious relationship with Dorothy Glover
(1901
–71), which continued until the late 1940 s. Although Glover’s short, stout appearance was hardly prepossessing, he admired her direct and forceful character, which offered a decided contrast to Vivien’s. She lived with her mother in Mecklenburgh Square and met him when he came to rent a studio from them.
⁴⁶
The two remained in London
through the blitz, mainly at another studio at
19
Gower Mews. Graham did his best to promote Dorothy’s career and went on to collaborate with her on several children’s books. In later years Dorothy became a Catholic. Hard drinking eventually destroyed her health
.

14 North Side, Clapham Common, SW4 | Feb. 8 [1940]

Dear Laurence,

I have advised a friend of mine, Dorothy Glover, to send you a play she has written. She is a theatrical designer, costume and sets, so, although this is her first, she has had plenty of experience of the stage. I read it in the rough and it seemed to me as good as most plays one sees put on. A farcical-thriller. Anyway perhaps you’ll look out for it.

I’ve just heard from Gyde that the novel is not being published till March 11.
⁴⁷
Isn’t this rather a lousy date, as it only gives it ten days to run before Easter gums up the works? Good Friday is the 22nd. What do you think?

Yours,
     Graham

D.G. asked me how many copies you’d need of a play. I said I thought two – one for managements & one for files. Is that right?

In this letter Graham responds to comments on
The Power and the Glory
from Michael Richey (b
. 1917),
who became one of his closest friends. Briefly a monk, then an apprentice to the artist Eric Gill, Richey served on a minesweeper and other ships in the Royal Navy. After the war he became a prominent navigator and author
.

14 North Side | Clapham Common |S.W.4 | June 5 [1940]

Dear Michael,

I’m afraid I’ve been a long time answering your letter. Frantically busy about affairs of no earthly importance. I’m glad you like P. and G., and you are probably right about the length. I don’t agree with you otherwise. The priest may have kicked up a fuss, but his rightness is neither here nor there. He was the sort who would. Read some lives of the saints and see what a fuss they make. He was a bit of a religious materialist, I meant him to be, though I think you are wrong in saying that he found the toothglass odd. In fact you are objecting to him on the same grounds as people who object to a book because it has no nice characters. The answer is: they are not meant to be nice.

If you ever get leave, do come and see us. You certainly live now in a stranger world than that priest’s.

Yours,
     Graham

On
18
October 1940
, 14
North Side was bombed. Vivien and the children were in Oxford and Graham was at the studio in Bloomsbury, so the house was unoccupied
.

as from 99 Gower St. [
c
. 19 October 1940]

Dearest Mumma,

Alas! our house went at 1.30 a.m. on Friday. I arrived to collect some objects at 8.30 to find a scene of devastation. There has been no fire & no flood & the structure is still standing, so something may be salvaged when the demolition people have made it safe to enter. Either a landmine at the back or else a whole load of bombs. The secret [?] workshop in the garden next door destroyed, part of the L. C. C. flats & damage all along the row, but the back of our house got the worst blast. Impossible to get beyond the hall for wreckage. I
only hope some of my books & some of V’s things will be saved. But there was still an unexploded bomb nearby to go off, & the whole place is likely to tumble at much more shock. Rather heartbreaking that so lovely a house that has survived so much should go like that. And I feel over-awed without my books. No hope of salvage starting before Monday. However there were no casualties.

Much love,
     Graham

Graham’s shock at the destruction of a fine old house was not the whole story. He was certainly glad to be rid of a financial worry. Stocked with costly antiques, the house had stood as Vivien’s recompense for an unstable childhood. Graham felt more and more engulfed in a middle-class way of life, from which he had sought escape since adolescence. The destruction of the house brought these differences of temperament and expectation into sharper focus
.

From April–September
1940
Graham was in charge of the writers’ section of the absurdly bureaucratic Ministry of Information. In this letter he tells the novelist Anthony Powell
(1905
–2000) how the new Director-General, Frank Pick
(1878
–1941), formerly Managing Director of London Transport and the man responsible for the development of the Tube Map, had eliminated his position as unnecessary
.
⁴⁸

The Spectator | 99 Gower Street | London W.C.1 |
Dec. 16 [1940]

My dear Powell,

How good to hear from you. I have only had second hand news via Malcolm.
⁴⁹
I’ve been leading a chequered and rather
disreputable life. After passing the medical board for general service I was given till last July to amass some money for my family:
⁵⁰
then in April I was suddenly offered a job at the M. of I. – the job A. D. Peters once had. I stayed there six months, having resigned from the Officers Reserve … an absurd hilarious time I shouldn’t have had the vitality to break. Luckily Pick axed me at the end of September, and I am now literary editing this rag … which isn’t quite as I pictured war. However London is extraordinarily pleasant these days with all the new open spaces, and the rather Mexican effect of ruined churches.

I have a private ambition to do Free French propaganda in French Guinea and the Ivory Coast from a base in Liberia, but so far I haven’t [been?] contacted. All my family are parked in Trinity: my house has been blasted into wreckage by a land mine, and I sleep on a sofa in a Gower St. mews. As I’m under a skylight I go into a basement when the barrage is heavy. A direct hit next door and escaping gas and a midnight flit has been the most exciting evening yet.

I find it impossible to write anything except reviews and middles, but there’s nothing to spend money on and I find one can live admirably on about 500 … which I suppose is a fortune to a soldier. Would it be possible for you to work off some of your bile in book reviews? I wish to God you would do some for me.

If you ever get up to town, do ring me up and have lunch. Hope you get leave at Christmas.

Yours,
     Graham Greene

The Spectator | 99 Gower Street, | London, W.C.1, |
March 18 [1941]

Dear Mary,

I’ve been very remiss in writing to you, but as you can guess life is quite crowded. I’m literary editing this paper, acting as dramatic critic, reviewing a good deal, completely failing to write any books, doing some B.B.C. scripts, and at least three nights a week act as an air raid warden from 10 till 2 in the morning, or until the Raiders Passed goes. I’m glad to say I saved practically all my books from the house, though poor Vivien lost most of her Victorian furniture and objects. It’s sad because it was a pretty house, but oddly enough it leaves one very carefree.

The whole war is good for someone like me who has always suffered from an anxiety neurosis: I turn down work right and left just for the fun of not caring. The M. of I. asked me to return the other day which gave me an opening for a cheery raspberry … If you ever feel inclined to drop a line to Vivien her address is President’s Lodging, Trinity College, Oxford. She has the thin end of things. I have a most interesting and agreeable time in London. It all seems most right and proper.

[…]

Wednesday
, 16
April 1941, brought one of the worst raids of the war. One bomb fell on the Victoria Club in Malet Street where
350
Canadian soldiers were sleeping.
⁵¹
Graham was often in the streets as bombs were falling
.

The Spectator | 99 Gower Street | London W.C.1 |
April 18 [1941]

Dearest Mumma,

Just off for a weekend with the family at Blockley. You’ll have seen about Wednesday night. It really was the worst thing yet. On my beat which only consisted of about three quarters of a mile of streets we had one huge fire, one smaller fire, one H.E.
⁵²
and, worst of all, a landmine. The casualties were very heavy, as the landmine which got the Canadian soldiers’ home by the M. of I. blasted houses right through Gower St. The fires are not quite out yet. I got off with a cut hand from having to flop down flat on the pavement outside the landmine place. One thought the night was never going to end. Hardly three minutes would pass between two and four without a salvo being dropped. I feel very stiff and bruised … I think from carrying a very heavy young woman down from the top of the R.A.D.A.
⁵³
building in Gower St. and helping to carry a very fat, very vocal foreign Jew, who had had his foot crushed, to the M. of I. where they had an emergency dressing station. One’s first corpse in the Canadian place was not nearly as bad as one expected. It seemed just a bit of the rubble. What remains as nastiest were the crowds of people who were cut by glass, in rather squalid bloodstained pyjamas grey with debris waiting about for help. I was very lucky when the mine went off as I was standing with two other wardens in Tottenham Court Rd. We got down on our haunches, no time for more, and a shop window showered on top of us without cutting any of us. One felt rather pursued. I was having my hand bound up at my post under the School of Tropical Medicine in Gower St when a stick came down, and we were all over the floor again with the windows blown in.