Graham Greene (26 page)
Authors: Richard Greene
In Flight: American Airlines [July 1948] Dear Evelyn,
You’ve made me very conceited. Thank you very very much. There’s no other living writer whom I would rather receive praise (& criticism) from. A small point – I did not regard Scobie as a saint, & his offering his damnation up was intended to show how muddled a mind full of good will could become when once ‘off the rails.’
I’m on the way to N.Y. to draw up a contract! Thank you so much for your advice. I fly back in 6 days & on to Vienna. Can I visit you some time in July? My time is going to be freer. I’ll write & propose myself.
I thought the Canon rather complacent. Can’t one write books about moral cowards?
Yours gratefully,
Graham
Sunday [22 August 1948]. In plane.
Cafryn dear, you’ll have got my note posted by Carol. I feel bad at interrupting your retreat,
53
but not knowing how these things are run, I thought you might have telephoned & found it odd that I wasn’t at home.
I had rather a beastly 24 hours wondering whether all was up with us. Not by death which I wouldn’t mind but by sickness. An hour before going off to catch the plane I had a beastly hemorrhage, got in a doctor who said I mustn’t fly but must go into hospital for examination. Carol unwillingly went off & I lay drearily in The Medical Arts Centre Hospital,
54
wondering. One has seldom felt so lonely, but that came to an end with a blessed Nembutal.
Yesterday they first X rayed me, then put me to sleep with an injection (an extra heavy dose because I kicked so) to examine me more intimately. The result was ‘satisfactory’ – no alcohol for 10 days & rather less permanently, a certain amount of treatment. All yesterday I was dopy, waking only at intervals, & all yesterday I dreamed of you – I do so so seldom – & all ‘nice’ dreams. So often I have angry or suspicious ones. I would wake up & fall asleep & at once back you were – very dear & sweet. It was really worth being doped.
[…]
After a row at the Authors’ Club in mid-September
1948
over delays in publication of Powell’s
John Aubrey and His Friends
, which Greene described as ‘a bloody boring book,’ he agreed to release Powell from his contract to Eyre & Spottiswoode
.
55
The Board of Directors rejected this arrangement. Douglas Jerrold wrote to Powell on
29
October: ‘Graham has no more power to release you from your contract with this firm than I have to sell the company’s furniture and premises.’ The episode led to Greene’s quitting the firm
.
5 St. James’s Street, | London, S.W.1. | 14th December 1948
Dear Tony,
I am afraid I had just left for Italy when your letter came and so I can only answer it now.
I expect you have heard by this time that I have resigned from the board of Eyre and Spottiswoode. Your case really brought matters to a head but [the] boil had been growing for many months. It is quite true that I offered to release you from your novel contract and, between ourselves, I was not prepared to remain on the board of a company which kept any author to the letter of a contract. I did, however, very much hope after our meeting in the Authors’ Club that the whole thing might blow over and I had understood from David Higham that it was unlikely you would press the withdrawal of your novels.
Amongst the mass of letters waiting for me there is a letter from the Spanish Embassy and I suppose it is from your friend Carcer.
56
I will be writing to him.
Now that we are again in the position simply of friends and not of author and publisher, do look in for a drink!
Yours,
Graham
[Paris] | Saturday [22 January 1949]
57
Cafryn dear, I count the days in the quarter hours between engagements.
It’s all too fantastic. My books in every shop – a whole display in the Rue de Rivoli. Three different people writing books on me for three different publishers. The Professor of English at the Sorbonne has asked me to lecture & says that he can fill the hall twice over. Charles Morgan vanquished. Three of his post-graduate pupils writing theses on me, one on ‘L’Univers de
G.G.’
, one on ‘Le Malheur dans les Oeuvres de G.G.’ & one on ‘The Technique of the novels of G.G.’ Priests flock reverently around. I’d really be rather enjoying it if I believed it, but I don’t, quite … commonsense tells me it’s all a joke that will soon pass. But I wish you could see the joke too. I’d love to preen my feathers in front of you.
I was so glad to get your letter. Though now of course I take the opposite view to Scobie – that nobody can ruin another person.
58
Harry has been happy, really happy, & that’s your achievement. We others haven’t made such a staggering success of adult marriage.
[…]
Mieczyslaw Grydzewski (1894–1970), editor of the Polish-language journal
Wiadamosci
, asked Greene to discuss his views of Joseph Conrad
.
5 St. James’s Street | London, S.W. 1 | 5th April 1949
Dear Mr. Grydzewski,
I have always since the age of sixteen been a very great admirer of
the works of Joseph Conrad, in particular
The Secret Agent
and
The Heart of Darkness
. It is, therefore, very easy for me to reply to your first question, that I believe he has a permanent place in English letters which at least compares with that of Dostoievsky in Russian, and that the reaction against his work which was experienced in the thirties is very temporary. Certainly, I would place him far and away above Virginia Woolf, who, perhaps, was responsible for that reaction.
As far as the other question is concerned, it is of course possible to detect in Conrad’s work a certain rhetoric which is not in the main lines of English prose style. I think it is possible to say that his books sometimes read as though they were extremely brilliant and understanding translations from the French, but this does not destroy in any way the value of his contribution to English letters.
Yours faithfully,
Graham Greene
Hotel Pont-Royal [Paris] | May 19 [1949]
Cher maître et ami,
I wanted to see you after the Conférence,
59
but you were busy signing books, & I had to leave the reception afterwards before you had arrived. May I say once again how much pleasure & pride I receive from knowing you, & how I regret the barrier between our languages? Your remarks in the
Figaro
were very generous.
60
Please believe that though I am no longer your English publisher, I am your admirer, your disciple & your friend.
Very sincerely yours,
Graham Greene
1
Ways of Escape
, 89–95; see also ‘The Soupsweet Land’ in
Collected Essays
, 339–45.
C/O Bank of B. W. A. | Freetown | Sierra Leone |
April 2 [1942]
Dearest Mumma,
I had a very pleasant surprise today with a letter from you and your present of books. Thank you so very much: the letter was as welcome as the books. My last mail missed me here and is now pursuing me up and down the coast, so I hadn’t heard anything for a long time.
1
2 Sir Hubert Craddock Stevenson (1888–1971) served as governor of Sierra Leone from 1941 to 1947.
1
3 Other letters at this time indicate that the area around the house was essentially an open latrine.
4
Elisabeth’s war years were divided between Cairo and Algiers.
5
James Greene, Hugh’s son, suggests that Graham’s letters to his mother were, in effect, letters to both parents.
6
The British assault on Vichy-held Madagascar quelled all resistance by 7 May.
7
Morgan’s novel
The Fountain
had taken the award in 1932.
8
The specific reference is not clear, but during the war, Raymond worked with SOE (Special Operations Executive), which specialised in sabotage, subversion and guerrilla warfare. He helped them with high-altitude and cold-climate military plans that, as a doctor, he was expert on given his Everest experience. He spent a lot of time at the SOE Station at Grendon Underwood and at Scapa Flow, from which a number of secret expeditions were launched across the North Sea. (Information from Oliver Greene)
9
Probably the Field Security Police, a branch of military intelligence also known as MI11.
10
After an on-and-off engagement, Elisabeth married an intelligence officer named Rodney Dennys in 1944. In the early days of the war, he had pulled off a daring escape from the Nazis in Holland. The couple met at Bletchley and again when they were both stationed in Cairo. (See Christopher Hawtree, obituary of Elisabeth Dennys,
Guardian
, 10 February 1999)
11
In August and September 1942 Hugh was in Stockholm trying to find out how the BBC might counteract the jamming of its transmissions. His eventual recommendation was that presenters should speak very clearly. (Tracey, 85)
12
A Sort of Life
, 20.
13
On 29 November 1942, Churchill had referred to Operation Torch, the landing of Allied forces in Vichy-controlled Algeria and Morocco, as a ‘majestic enterprise’.
14
The producer Bill Linnit.
15
The script was written by Frank Harvey.
16
Graham originally wrote and then amended ‘I wish I were dead’.
17
The allusion is to Matthew Prior’s ‘A Better Answer to Cloe Jealous’ (1718), which includes these lines:
What I speak, my fair Cloe, and what I write, shows
The diff’rence there is betwixt nature and art:
I court others in verse; but I love thee in prose:
And they have my whimsies, but thou hast my heart
.
18
In early 1942, Evans’s youngest son David had been shot down in a bombing raid and was posted missing. After five months his death was confirmed. The loss seems to have broken Evans’s health, as he died himself on 29 November 1944. (St John, 305)
19
Evans: see preceding letter.
20
See G. Peter Winnington,
Vast Alchemies: The Life and Work of Mervyn Peake
(London: Peter Owen, 2000), 166–9.
21
NS 2: 191.
22
Ways of Escape
, 200.
23
Orwell wrote a new introduction to Leonard Merrick’s
The Position of Peggy Harper
(1911), but the projected reprint did not appear. See ‘Introduction to “The Position of Peggy Harper”’,
in The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell
, ed. S. Orwell and I. Angus, 4:
In Front of Your Nose
, 1945–1950 (1968), 52–6.
24
Barry Pain (1864–1928) was a parodist and humorist well known for sketches of working-class life. His most successful novel was
Eliza
(1900).
25
Walter Lionel George (1882–1926), biographer and novelist; his
Caliban
was published in 1920.
26
Guy Boothby (1867–1905), Australian playwright and novelist, best known for
Dr. Nikola’s Vendetta
(1895) and its sequels.
27
Richard Marsh (Heldmann) (1857-1915) was a prolific mystery writer whose best-known work
The Beetle
was published in 1897.
28
The brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle, Ernest William Hornung (1866–1921) wrote a popular series at the turn of the century recounting the feats in burglary and cricket of A. J. Raffles. Two collections of the stories were reprinted in The Century Library. His other novels including
The Camera Fiend
(1911) and
Witching Hill
(1913) had no comparable appeal. Greene’s play
The Return of A. J. Raffles
was first performed at the end of 1975.
29
Graham had spent most of April with Walston in a cottage on Achill island in the west of Ireland.
30
Scobie in
The Heart of the Matter
.
31
The Walstons’ home was at Newton Hall in Thriplow, six miles south of Cambridge.
32
‘[Louise] had joined [Scobie] the first year of the phoney war and now she couldn’t get away: the danger of submarines had made her as much a fixture as the handcuffs on the nail.’
(The Heart of the Matter
, 7)
33
Reed’s most recent film was
Odd Man Out
(1947) about the last twenty-four hours of a wounded IRA man. The short story was made into
The Fallen Idol
, in which, in a memorable scene, Baines asks his wife for his freedom. The film also presents a symbolic emasculation when Mrs Baines destroys MacGregor, the little boy Philippe’s pet snake.
34
This typed letter was sent with another, handwritten, from the day before.
35
‘Once in sleep [peace] had appeared to him as the great glowing shoulder of the moon heaving across his window like an iceberg, Arctic and destructive in the moments before the world was struck …’
(The Heart of the Matter
, 50)
36
Early in their relationship, Catherine had organised on short notice a plane ride for Graham from her home in Cambridgeshire to Kidlington, near Oxford.
37
J. M. Synge’s travel book first published in 1907. Graham regarded his time with Catherine in Ireland as edenic.
38
The letter is written in pencil, and this sentence is especially difficult to read. Among several points of uncertainty is the word ‘character’ which could also be rendered as ‘chunks’ (see NS 2: 242). The dash between ‘train’ and ‘all’ has been added and may alter meaning.
39
Maude Royden (1876–1956) was a suffragist, social hygienist and preacher.
40
Hic jacet:
here lies …
41
The French novelist François Mauriac (1885–1970) had argued that the dilemma for Christian writers was to show readers the evil in human nature without tempting them.
42
Graham often quoted or alluded to Robert Browning’s ‘Bishop Blougram’s Apology’:
All we have gained then by our unbelief
Is a life of doubt diversified by faith
,
For one of faith diversified by doubt:
We called the chess-board white - we call it black
.
43
In 1946, Andrey Zhdanov, the Leningrad Party chief, denounced the poet Anna Akhmatova and the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko in a speech to the Leningrad Union of Writers. The two were immediately expelled from the Union and so could no longer publish.
44
The quotations are taken from Newman’s Discourse IX: ‘Duties of the Church towards Knowledge’, sections 7 and 8.
45
Hood’s poem opens:
With fingers weary and worn
,
With eyelids heavy and red
,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags
,
Plying her needle and thread–
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt
,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the ‘Song of the Shirt!’
46
Presumably, Greene is thinking of Paine’s remark in
Dissertation on First Principles of Government
(1795), ‘He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.’
47
Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger (
c
. 1521–1554), Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1538–1572) and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1565–1601) were all executed for treason.
48
Ezra Pound (1885–1972), under indictment for treason arising from his wartime broadcasts, was incarcerated at St Elizabeth’s Hospital for the Insane, in Washington, DC. Christopher Smart (1722–71), William Cowper (1731-1800), John Clare (1793–1864) and Nathaniel Lee (1653–1692) were all confined for madness.
49
The Heart of the Matter
was published 27 May 1948, with a dedication to Vivien and the children.
50
Greene’s bipolar illness had not yet been diagnosed.
51
The Tablet
(5 June 1948) and
The Commonweal
(6 July 1948). Cartmell’s remarks appear in
The Tablet
(5 June 1948).
52
See Amory, 280, and NS 2: 294–300.
53
Walston was staying at a convent in Surrey.
54
In New York.
55
NS 2: 200–01.
56
A second secretary at the Spanish Embassy who was writing an article on Greene.
57
See NS 2: 303.
58
Greene had told Waugh that the book showed not that Scobie was a saint but what happens when a person with good will gets off the rails (see p. 160). This letter suggests that at some point Greene shared Scobie’s basic views. Waugh may have been uncomfortably close to the mark.
59
Both Greene and Mauriac Were Participants in the
Grand Conférence Catholique.
60
Greene is referring to a tribute paid to him by Mauriac in
Le Figaro
(30 October 1948) and often reprinted. He remarks on Greene’s exploration of the realms of sin and grace and how grace utilises sin in
The Power and the Glory
.
