Graham Greene (44 page)

Affectionately,
     Graham

P.S. Here is a technical point which may interest you as a novelist. I had to choose whether Pulling’s mother should be a mystery to him
or to the reader or to both. I decided that there would be very little interest in the mystery, and it’s not a very important part of the book, if it remained a mystery to the reader. Therefore I hoped that the reader would guess on page 16 and there would remain the minor interest of when Pulling would guess. Pulling, in fact, of course, guesses long before he refers to her as mother at the end. He begins to realize the situation after the scene with Miss Paterson and in the prison cell he is mainly checking up on the dates to see whether his impression is a true one or not. Perhaps he would never have disclosed his knowledge if he hadn’t had the imperative desire to draw his mother’s attention after the discovery of Wordsworth’s death. Imagine how different the book would have had to have been if the mystery had been kept from the reader. The mystery would have loomed larger and larger and become much too important. Like in a murder story one would have had to have sown the tale with false clues. Unlike the detective story where the detective must be in advance of the reader, it was essential here that the reader should be in advance of the detective.

The dramatist and playwright Julian Mitchell (b
. 1935),
best known for
Another Country (1981)
and numerous episodes of
Inspector Morse
, reviewed
Travels with My Aunt (New Statesman, 21
November 1969). In a letter he asked whether the episode of the Doggies’ Church (chapter 6) was based on Ronald Firbank’s
The Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli (1926),
which opens with a canine baptism
.

1st December 1969

Dear Mr. Mitchell,

Thank you for your amiable letter as well as your amiable review! No, I hadn’t been thinking
of Cardinal Pirelli
when I wrote about the doggies’ church. It’s a very long time since I read it. Of course it may have been in the unconscious. But these affairs still happen. I was sent the other day a leaflet for an animals’ service in St. Paul’s
Church, Covent Garden, where the world famous dog Goldie would speak to the congregation on biblical matters. The congregation were invited to bring their pets for blessing – dogs, cats, rabbits, goldfish, hamsters, tortoises and guinea-pigs. The service would include animal prayers and hymns with an address by Canon Clarence May,
¹⁶
‘The Lesser Brethren.’ That is one of the sadnesses of writing, isn’t it? One can’t go too far. Life always goes further. Yours sincerely, Graham Greene

This translator at the United Nations wrote to Greene, claiming that children were being kidnapped in Haiti and sent to a canning factory. He attributed this story at second hand to the Papal Nuncio
.

130 Boulevard Malesherbes, | Paris 17. | 2 February 1970

Dear Mr. Spector,

I find it a little difficult to swallow the canned children, though of course almost anything is possible in Haiti and one must remember that even Apostolic Delegates can be gullible. Unless the situation has changed there is no Nuncio in Haiti as the Nuncio was expelled by Duvalier and there is only a kind of chargé d’affaires. I am going to send your letter on to friends of mine who know more of the situation than I do, but I think it would be very dangerous to use such a story. Its apparent incredibility would only make people suspicious about stories of the very real massacres taking place there.

Yours sincerely,
     Graham Greene

130 Boulevard Malesherbes, | Paris 17. | 5 February 1970

Dear Michael,

It’s true that Senghor
¹⁷
is probably the best living French poet, but I doubt whether that would make your stay any more interesting. I don’t know anyone in Dakar which is a big modern city now. Why don’t you go further afield to Madagascar where at least you might have the chance of seeing one of the dead bodies which are dug up on their anniversaries, carted around in taxis and entertained by the family?

Yours ever,
     Graham

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06 Antibes. | Feb. 10 ’70

Dearest Caroline,

I hope you had a nice visit from your friend & that all goes well with Jonathan. I feel a bit flat after Barbados & St. Kitts.

On the 13th (O dear, Friday the 13th!) I fly to London (Ritz) & then on Monday I go into University College Hospital for the small operation on my finger.
¹⁸
Back here with my arm in a sling on the 21st, & I have to keep the beastly hand up in the sling for nearly two weeks & then back to London to have the stitches out. I never imagined it would take so long. Paschoud
¹⁹
is coming here for a
night on March 7. Is there anything you want me to discuss with him?

Much love,
     Daddy.

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06 Antibes. | May 9 [1970]

Dearest Catherine,

[…]

I hope you got my note from the Argentine. I spent four days with Victoria
²⁰
at Mar del Plata. The town is horrid but the house very pretty and colonial with a lovely garden. We walked on the beach and went to the movies every night and it was rather cold. Then I went up to Corrientes near the Paraguay border which I’d seen from the river boat on my way to Asuncion two years ago. Nobody could understand why I was going there. It’s very hot and humid, they said (and that was true) and nothing ever happens there. (That wasn’t). I flew up in the same plane as the governor who passed a decree making me the guest of the province so I paid for nothing … hotel, drinks all free. In 8 days there was an archbishop under arrest, a priest excommunicated (I liked him), a murdered man in a field (I photographed the body), a bomb in a church, a consul kidnapped, four churches closed by the archbishop, and a man who committed suicide with his whole family by driving his car into the Parana river just opposite my hotel. So I still seem to bring trouble …

[…]

Francis seems to be doing quite well. I like his girl friend and hope he’ll keep her. He does scientific films for the B.B.C. freelancing and he’s a scientific correspondent of
Time
Magazine. He has a reddish beard, is very stylish and good-looking, and we occasionally smoke pot together.

130 Boulevard Malesherbes, | Paris 17. | May 19 [1970]

Sir,

With regret I ask you to accept my resignation as an honorary foreign member of the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters. My reason – that the Academy has failed to take any position at all in relation to the undeclared war in Vietnam.

I have been in contact with all your foreign members in the hope of organising a mass resignation. A few have given me immediate support; two supported American action in Vietnam; a number considered that the war was not an affair with which a cultural body need concern itself; some were prepared to resign if a majority of honorary members were of the same opinion. I have small respect for those who wished to protect themselves by a majority opinion, and I disagree profoundly with the idea that the Academy is not concerned. I have tried to put myself in the position of a foreign honorary member of a German Academy of Arts and Letters at the time when Hitler was democratically elected Chancellor. Could I have continued to consider as an honour a membership conferred in happier days?

Yours very truly,
     Graham Greene

3rd August 1970

Dear Hugh,

Carmelina is expecting you
²¹
on August 23 and I hope all will be in order. You may when you arrive prefer to live in the little house
and have the big bed to yourself– there is a single bed there also. You might feel yourself a bit cramped in the double bed in the big house. Neither bed I am afraid will be very comfortable for you.
²²
Carmelina should come up and water the flowers in the evenings at least twice a week whilst you are there. She’s a nice woman and I am sure you will get on well with her. If her husband Aniello invites you to go down to the Grande Marina for a meal jump at the opportunity. One has a very nice meal at a farmhouse near the Bagno di Tiberio kept by a man called Paoli. It’s not really a restaurant – he just caters for his friends. Now for restaurants – we go very frequently to Gemma, up the steps by the Cathedral and turn right. Her food is not sensational but she’s an extremely nice woman with a nice nephew who talks English.
²³
She’s expecting you so do introduce yourselves. Another restaurant which for fish is a little better than Gemma in Capri is the Settanni in a little street running off from the piazza by the post office.

One of the nicest restaurants and the only good one technically in Anacapri is Ricco’s at the Grotta Azura. You can get a bus there from the little square in Caprili. Very good fish.

[…]

Villa Rosaio | Anacapri | Sat. [1970]

Dear Muriel,

Your book
²⁴
arrived just as I was getting into a taxi in Paris to come here. Thank you so much for always sending me your books. Only Evelyn & Osbert have done that & they are both dead.

I read it last night in Naples & I think I like it better than any except
Memento Mori
– & perhaps
Brodie
, but I want to read all
three again. One criticism – isn’t the lavatory in tourist class always
behind
?? And a question – would it have been better if the idea had first consciously come to her on the plane when she smelt her man? Probably not: probably it’s more grim as it is. Anyway I enjoyed it enormously, beginning it suitably in a restaurant crowded with old American couples on a cruise except for one solitary middle-aged woman who waited for me beside the lift & pounced – but I was warned by your book & saw the headlines ‘American Hostess Found Strangled in Author’s Bed’ & left her coldly at her door – on the same floor as mine, a sinister Sparkian coincidence, & I finished your novel in my bed, safe. Yours ever, Graham.

I’m here for a week to see Aunt Augusta, 85 & going strong.
²⁵

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06 Antibes. | Jan 9. 71

Dearest Carol,

That’s fine. I look forward to seeing you here. Did you say the 20th of Feb.? If the Hotel Royal is booked, we’ll get you somewhere in Juan-Les-Pins near to the Stratfords.
²⁶

One thing – I imagine you know I am not all alone here. I have a great friend, Yvonne – we have known each other for 12 years now – who lives at Juan. When you came here last time she was in Africa. She knows Elisabeth & Hugh & Francis, & she has always wanted to know you. She is a Catholic (she is the step grand-daughter of Madame Cloetta of Lausanne), about 45, & a very sweet person. She has done a great deal for me during the last 12 years & is a great
friend of all my friends – the Freres, the Reinhardts, the Sutros, Marie & Jean. Do you mind seeing her? I hope not because if you like her we can have fun together visiting places.

[…]

Both Caroline and Francis developed warm friendships with Yvonne Cloetta
.

As Greene was preparing for another journey to South America, he was visited by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda
(1904
–73), who had been appointed ambassador to Paris by President Salvador Allende
.

[Antibes] | 1st June 1971

Dear Victoria,

I hope by now you have received the letters in which I thanked you for your introduction to Neruda. I am never quite sure whether it is safest to send to you in San Isidro or to the office – I have a feeling that the office sometimes may suppress letters which are mere acknowledgements. Anyway I went and had lunch with Neruda and to my astonishment found myself rather liking him. Perhaps he was showing his best side. Within half an hour we were Graham and Pablo to each other. He has sent a telegram to Doctor Allende asking him to receive me and I expect I will hear the result in a few days.

My plans are beginning to form and I do hope you will be able to be part of them. I have to go to the States for a few days round about the second week of September and then I would propose to fly down to B.A. if you were there. I would rather like to get in touch again with those young would-be clandestine Catholics with whom I had spent an evening – do you remember? – on my first visit. They might be able to give me a contact or so in Montevideo because that is where I would like to go after seeing you for a short visit. Then I would like to fly over to Chile and spend three or four weeks there.
Neruda seems to think that by the beginning of October it would be warm enough to go down to the farmlands in the south which seems to be the trouble centre now. Of course if you were not around I might reconsider the whole programme because it is mainly an excuse to see you and San Isidro again.

Love,

  Graham

It is surprising that there was no earlier friendship between Greene and Neruda as Neruda had spent
1952
as an exile in a house in Capri owned by Greene’s friend the historian Edwin Cerio. The film
Il Postino (1994)
is based on this episode in Neruda’s life
.

[Chile, 1971]

Try & find this place on the map. It’s a very long & narrow country between the sea & mountains much higher than yours.

Love,
     Grandpa.

[Chile, 1971]

I am going to the sea this weekend. It’s called the Pacific Ocean – but the waves don’t look pacific. I wonder if I shall see a cart like this.