Graham Greene (29 page)

[…]

In his work Graham depicts in various guises the figure of Lionel Carter (b
. 1904),
a boy who attacked him physically and subjected him to ingenious mental cruelties. Carter offered him friendship, then withdrew it and taunted him as a traitor in the dormitory. In
The Lawless Roads
he is called Collifax, ‘who practised torments with dividers’
(14
). The most detailed account of these episodes is found in
A Sort of Life (59
–62), where Augustus Henry Wheeler (b
. 1904)
is given the name Watson. As David Pearce, a retired housemaster at the school and an authority on Old Berkhamstedians, notes, Wheeler’s father, a military officer from Eastbourne, was dead by
1916
and his mother sent him to a distant private school, a recipe for bullying. Sherry
(1
: 75), relying on information from Carter’s widow, says that Carter died in 1971. Pearce remarks: ‘The Wheeler mention of an earlier death sounds like the blarney of an alcoholic OB. “Dead, my dear boy, dead.”’

Hotel Majestic | Kuala Lumpur | Jan. 7 [1951]

Dear Francis,

I got back from Kalantan & the China Sea (where I bathed twice in big breakers) to find a small parcel which I think was in your handwriting – it contained a very pretty plaque of St. Christopher. Was this from you? Thank you very much indeed if it was – otherwise you must pass on the thanks to the real giver.

There’s really no news, & I’ve had no real adventures since I went with the Gurkhas. The nearest I’ve come to an ambush was when a convoy that had taken me somewhere last week was ambushed on the way back (when I wasn’t with them). It was a very small ambush – one soldier had a finger shot off. That’s all.

Will you let me know when you go back to Ampleforth? I shall be back about mid-February – I go to look at the war in Indo-China on the 25th.

Lots of love,

Daddy.

P.S. I’ll send you soon a photograph of myself all dressed up like a Gurkha officer!

After a brief visit to Vietnam in January 1951, Greene received a request from Hughes
(1920–82), then articles editor at Life, to write on the country. However, the magazine rejected an important piece that subsequently appeared in Paris Match
(2 July 1952; reprinted in
Reflections, 129–47). During his first visit, Greene had met the ferociously anti-communist Colonel Leroy, who controlled the area of Ben Tre near Saigon, and the Bishop of Phat Diem, Le Huu Tu, who ruled his diocese like a medieval prince-bishop and maintained a small army. After an initially warm
reception, the French Commander-in-Chief General de Lattre concluded that Greene was a spy.
²⁴

5 St. James Street | London S. W. 1 | 15th February 1951

Dear Emmet Hughes,

I shall try and get down to a Malaya article this week-end and send it to you as soon as possible. I received your telegram about Indo-China, but although I think this is a fascinating and interesting country I was only there for ten days and I don’t feel I could write any general article on it. I concentrated mainly on seeing some of the queer little private armies that are operating there now for the moment in support of the French. For instance, I visited a young ex-Catholic Leroy in the south who is keeping the islands round his own estates clear with an army of 2,000 Annamite catholics;
²⁵
I spent a night with the Annamite Bishop of Phat-diem who is Commander-in-Chief of a small army of 2,000 to protect his diocese. This was both interesting and moving as here there was some genuine antagonism to Communism. I also visited the Caodaists, a new Annamite religious body who have a highly disciplined army of 25,000 men, who worship by means of spiritualism, Buddha, Christ, and Confucius, and have three lesser Saints, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, Victor Hugo and an ancient Chinese philosopher! The whole place was very reminiscent of the middle ages with the barons juggling for position according to the skill of their armies and the border towers, similar in structure to our own Welsh border fortresses, going up every kilometre along the roads.

This might make one particular article, but if at any time you felt it worth while and if the fighting intensified again, as it certainly will before long, I should be very ready to go out there again and to study the country properly. The months I would most favour are March–April or August, but of course [the] Viet Nimh may not
decide that those are suitable months for attack! The French received me extremely cordially and I had cars and ’planes whenever I wanted them, and General de Lattre I am quite certain would give me every facility if I returned.

As for Malaya, I never want to see the place again!

Yours ever,
     Graham Greene

On
17
March 1951, Waugh wrote to thank Greene for sending
The Lost Childhood and Other Essays
, especially praising those on Henry James, but he added that the praise of Lawrence ‘sickens me’. He suggested that Greene sometimes confused the terms ‘artist’ and ‘genius’
.

5 St. James’s Street | London S.W. 1 | 19th March 1951

Dear Evelyn,

How nice it is to know you are back in England. Rumours of it reached me a day or so ago from Dame Robert Speaight.
²⁶
I don’t suppose you knew that she knew! I long to see you again and to hear about the Palestine trip – my trip in Malaya was rather dreary and wet, but I loved Indo-China and finding a new Eastern religion in which Victor Hugo is venerated as a saint.

I feel sure we would not agree about many people, but don’t you like Rider Haggard? I am puzzled by your reference to my praise of Lawrence as I don’t like the man much. Surely it must have been a very incidental reference and I imagine I was using genius in a particular way. It seems to me genius is not a term of praise but a psychologically descriptive one. It always seemed to me that Lawrence was ruined as an artist by his genius.
²⁷

I wish that I could be at Downside with you
²⁸
even though I hate the headmaster so much, but I am going to be in France at that time. Do let me know when you have any plan to be in London. I shall be back here sometime in April.

Naturally I rather liked Moré’s article in
Dieu Vivant
, but I thought like everything about him it was a little bit exaggerated. I don’t really like these Léon Bloy
²⁹
converts.

Yours affectionately,
     Graham

26th June 1951

Dear Hugh,

[…]

Paris Match
is pressing me for [a] definite date for Indo-China and I have told them that I am prepared to go after July 20 but I am still waiting to hear from Trevor Wilson in Hanoi. He is taking a holiday sometime and I definitely don’t want to go when he is away as he gives me free accommodation in Hanoi as well as being an immense source of information.
³⁰

I seem to have missed the bus in the last few weeks when Ho Chi Minh put on a big offensive to cover the infiltration of guerillas in an attempt to steal the rice crop. My nice Bishop was completely surrounded in his diocese and had to be rescued by parachute troops. It would have been fun to have been
with him and seen him in a crisis. I will let you know directly I am certain when I am going to be there and it will be enormous fun if you can make the excuse of a tri-partite conference to come too. The weather will be foul but I suppose one can put up with that.

Love
     Graham

5 St. James’s Street | London S.W.1| [10 August 1951]

My dear,

In this nervous condition, speaking on the telephone, it seems impossible to convey a meaning without over-emphasis or abruptness.

What I want to say is this. A human relationship, like ours has been, is inextricably physical & mental. I have no
real
belief that the physical side is seriously wrong in the particular circumstances, but you will remember that for the last two years I’ve urged you to go to confession & communion between our meetings. I can see a great benefit in that. Communion might help to reduce the occasions
happily
. All
that
I would support to the hilt.

I don’t however believe that as long as there’s strong desire it’s possible to tease oneself while we are together without nerves, anger, impatience – all the things that ruin a relationship finally. You know the peace & quiet we had last time in Anacapri. That was only because the relationship was complete. Do you really think we could go back there now, & live in separate houses for safety, without even the friendly silly cheerful drinking together, working together atmosphere disappearing.

You say the last 4½ years have been a fairy tale. Thomas
³¹
has probably said that, but he hasn’t lived them. It was at least a fairy
tale which might have lasted another five before one side of the relation died slowly & naturally out. The fairy tale you are substituting is one in which one will be afraid to come into the same bedroom, afraid to kiss, afraid to touch you, when we shall be so self-conscious that the body will be always in one’s mind because never at peace. I don’t know what kind of ‘intellectual companionship’ we shall get out of that.

[…]

I’m afraid I’m wholly on Browning’s side, ‘Better sin the whole sin sure that God observes.’
³²

I think the only way to stay together for life is to go back & back to Confession & Communion after every time or period, but I
don’t
believe – even Thomas doesn’t believe in the possibility, I think – of suddenly switching a relation onto the unphysical level. We should try, I agree, when we go away together not to think & emphasise in our own minds beforehand what it entails, there are other motives in being together, but a teasing affair of– let’s hold out another day, another two days etc, would only
prevent
the physical love from taking the right proportions.

And whatever the Church may say it gives a lot of scope to the individual conscience, & it goes dead
against
my conscience to believe that it hasn’t been far better for you & me to have been faithful to one person for four & a half years than to have lived as we were apt to live before.

Dear heart, if all you mean is this: that in future we should get back to confession & communion as frequently as we can, that we should want to want God’s will (which we don’t & can’t know), then I am with you all the way. I don’t question the value of an
eventual
intention, but if we are simply to cut off the whole physical side of loving each other, I can’t share the immediate intention & can’t go further than praying ‘to want to want’. And as I can’t share
that
immediate
intention, it would be better – if that’s in your mind – to cut right away.

I hope & pray you don’t because life would be a real desert without you, & God knows what shabby substitutes one would desperately try to find. But try & answer clearly, dear love.

I love you & I want you & I can’t separate the two.

God bless you,
     Graham

5 St. James’s Street | London S.W. 1 | August 20 [1951]

Dear Evelyn,

I’m typing because I know how impossible it is for you to read my writing. Your letter came as an absolute Godsend. Several times in the last day or two I’ve nearly wired you. Things have been battering one about like nobody’s business. Will you mind a semi-corpse who will try to work and will succeed in drinking? About dates I expect to go with Thomas Gilbey to Austria tomorrow or the next day until the end of the month. Could you after that put up with me for ten days? Say frankly if that’s too long. What I’d do would be to come down in the afternoon of Sep. 3 and leave on Sep. 14. Catherine might be able to come down for Sep. 11, 12, and 13. If you’d rather I came later than Sep. 3 tell me.

I had an awful time the other day with Cyril Connolly
³³
who said he’d been commissioned to do a profile of you for
Time
. He kept on saying what a friend he was of yours till I asked God to save me from such friends.

I like your Knox story. Could we meet? I hardly know him.
³⁴

I wish I could tell you how glad I was of your letter.

Affectionately,
     Graham

P.S. Shall I bring a dinner jacket?

5 St. James’s Street | London S.W. 1 | [22 August 1951]

Dear Evelyn,

Your account doesn’t in the least deter me. I like boiled or scrambled eggs and I can do without hot water indefinitely. I can’t drive as I haven’t a licence, but Catherine can and if she manages to come we could drive and see Knox. I will bring a supply of postage stamps, but as a matter of fact I like walking. Nor do I even mind a dinner jacket. The Swiss Family Robinson life is exactly what Catherine and I used to live when the world allowed us to. So that won’t put her off. We are both drinkers rather than eaters.

I’m off tomorrow to Salzburg with Thomas Gilbey until about the end of the month. I don’t know my address, but Mrs Young at No. 6 will by the time you get this. I’ll wire you on my return about trains. I’ll get a taxi in Dursley. I look forward so much to this visit. Perhaps I’ll be able to work again.

Affectionately,
     Graham

5 St. James’s Street | London S. W. 1 | Sep. 29 [1951]

Dear Evelyn,

Maybe we’ve been wrong about Perry Mason. I’ve just been reading an early one - perhaps the first.
The Case of the Velvet Claws
. He kisses Della right on the lips & when his client notices the
lipstick, he says ‘Let it stay.’ His client’s a girl & at one time he pushes her roughly onto a bed. He also makes her faint by third degree & slaps her with a wet towel to bring her round.
³⁵

Or maybe that was the turning point. Though in the next case he drinks some red wine with a little French bread.