Graham Greene (54 page)

In a letter of
10
October
1985
Philby thanked Greene for the gift of
The Tenth Man
and remarked that if it and not
The Third Man
had been filmed he might have been spared some personal notoriety. He joked about Graham’s numeric titles, remarking that seven and thirteen would have a cabbalistic significance: ‘you seem to prefer ordinals to cardinals’. He wished that the Pope would not talk about birth control and that ‘the White House phoney wouldn’t talk, period’
.

24th October 1985

My Dear Kim,

Many thanks for your note of October 10. I am glad
The Tenth Man
reached you safely – not that it was a very valuable gift! You know how much I share your views not only about a man in Washington but about a man in Rome. He is the most political Pope we have suffered for many generations.

I am just back from Washington where I went for a question and answer session at Georgetown University. I had hoped that there would be some questions about the man in Washington and his policy in Central America above all, but unfortunately no questions emerged, although through a question on the Pope I was able to give my views in a small way about Nicaragua.

I wish I was a fly on the wall when there is a meeting between your man and the B-Film actor.
¹

Yours ever
     Graham

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes [November 1985]

My dear Malcolm,

Thank you many times for your letter.
Night & Day
has brought many memories back to me too.
²
Including ‘Dream Land’. I think some of the best things in it were your voyages with Hugh Kingsmill – perhaps best of all the Wordsworth interview.

I’m so sorry about the deafness (even though part a blessing). And near blindness I couldn’t take with your courage. I had the Reagan cancer six years ago which alas! means that he may survive it as long as I have done.
³
You have a blessing in Kitty (to whom all my love) & I for the last 26 years have had a blessing in Yvonne. Alas! that I can’t take her with me next week to Panama & Nicaragua.
⁴
I wish you could come with me to laugh in another Dreamland.

Anyway all my affection while we march almost shoulder to shoulder towards what end?
     Graham

Now an Associate Professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of San Francisco, Alberto Huerta’s scholarly interests include Miguel de Unamuno and Cervantes, both of whose works loom large in
Monsignor Quixote
. Huerta wrote to Greene about the novel in
1982
and the two struck up a close friendship. Unlike the conservative Father Durán, whom Greene admired and relied on for other reasons, Huerta belonged to the Jesuit order and shared his opinions about politics in Central America
.

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes |

15 February 1986

Dear Alberto,

Many thanks for your letter. Of course I would like to make a second visit to San Francisco, but it all depends what I am doing and what I am feeling like! About Unamuno whom I read of course in translation: I have read
Our Lord Don Quixote, The Agony of Christianity, The Tragic Sense of Life, Ficciones
and
Novela
.
⁵
I think I have attempted
Don Quixote
several times in the far past but never succeeded in getting right through. The first was in the translation by a contemporary English writer, I mean contemporary with Cervantes, and finally when I was planning my book I managed to get through Cohen’s translation. I do find the Interludes very boring.

Forgive a hasty note, but I have only just come back from abroad.

Affectionately
     Graham

Perhaps embarrassed by A. J. Ayer’s woefully indiscreet memoirs, Rickards wrote her own autobiography
, The Painted Banquet: My Life and Loves (1987).

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | 21.2.86

Dearest Jocelyn,

Thank you so much for your letter – one of the few out of about 100 which has given me real pleasure.
⁶

I’m so glad your book is ready. I long to read it – not because of what Freddie says. I have read his two volumes – the only thing I liked in the second was your photograph. He seemed to have no idea of what to leave out & I found it hard to finish. Names dropped like rain on a windless day – I longed for a mistral to chase them away. Poor Freddie – you mustn’t wear yourself out with boosting his morale as you nearly did with Chandler.
⁷

Much love to you & affectionate greetings to Clive.
     Graham

[On envelope flap:]
I always return with pleasure to your two paintings in Anacapri – especially the nuns. Are you painting still? I hope so.

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | 28.2.86

Dear Diana,

Only yesterday did I get your letter of the 12th (French post or English post or the horrible weather). Thank you so much, but I find myself depressed, even though pleased, by the award. It’s like writing Finis at the end of a book.

I wish I could say that I was the Graham who sent you the Christmas message. At that season I close the doors & the windows – no Christmas cards, no replies to Christmas cards. It’s a season I
hate – good for the shops, good for Harrods. I want to be alone. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think of my friends – & of you.

Affectionately,
     Graham

I wish that dear Evelyn had got that O.M. I would rather have followed in his footsteps than those of Jolly Jack Priestley.
⁸

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | May 23 86

Very dear Jocelyn,

Thank you so much for sending me the autobiography which I read in one gulp as I’m off to Switzerland tomorrow. I was glad at the happy ending, though a little sad earlier. How much simpler & easier things seemed in the fifties – the early fifties. I found myself remembering a disappointment in Battersea Park during the Festival of Britain & a strange train journey from Southend.
⁹
Why should remembering happy times make one sad?

Very Affectionately
     Graham

In a letter of
24
September 1986, Kim Philby wrote to thank Graham and Yvonne for their visit. He was himself suffering from ‘an acute attack of the esprit d’escalier’ and Rufa, his fourth wife, felt that the three days they had spent on and off together were among the happiest of her life. In a PS he noted that after Graham and Yvonne had left the flat, he found that Yvonne had left half her whisky-and-soda: ‘Naturally, I drank it.’

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | Oct. 6. 86

Dear Rufa & Kim,

Thank you so much for your letter. We loved our visit to you & the strong feeling of how our friendship has survived all these years untouched. It was a great dividend too to see you twice more. Yvonne tells everyone that her visit to Russia was the greatest adventure of her life.

I was so happy to meet Rufa & to feel her fondness for you. A party of four fond people is a rare [?] experience. I do hope the opportunity of seeing you both will come again before too long. Yvonne is glad that you finished her whisky.

With great affection from us both
     Graham

[Yvonne adds a postscript calling their gathering ‘
une soirée inoubliable
’
.]

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | 5th November 1986

Dearest Jocelyn,

Your letter took 9 days to arrive! The posts here are really dreadful or is it in England? Thank you so much for it. Forgive a dictated letter on a beastly new machine to which I am slowly becoming accustomed but Yvonne and I returned a bit exhausted by Russian hospitality. All the same it was a wonderful journey and full of interest. We even met the cosmonaut who had made the record time of three months in space and he presented me with his marked copy of a Penguin of
Our Man in Havana
which he had taken with him into space!

I sent off a few lines to John Curtis
¹⁰
for his cover and I hope they are suitable.

Yvonne sends her love and so do I.
     Graham

Upon hearing that Hugh was near death, Graham hurried back from Moscow and reached the King Edward Hospital shortly before his ‘favourite brother’ died from cancer on
19
February 1987
.
¹¹
This letter to James Greene (b
. 1938
), Hugh’s son by his first wife, refers to Sarah (née Grahame), Hugh’s fourth wife, and to James’s brother and two half-brothers
.

Antibes | Feb. 26 ’87

Dear James,

I don’t need to tell you how shattered I was by Hugh’s death. I tried to return more quickly from Moscow, but there was no plane. It was terrible sitting beside him the day I returned, in his coma, and when you rang me up at Bentley’s it was a sort of relief, knowing he wouldn’t have to struggle any more with his breath.

I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the funeral, but Moscow and Hugh’s death had knocked me out. I still find it difficult to do anything – the last sight of his face comes between the lines when I read.

Elisabeth tells me how splendidly you spoke at the church. It was more than I could have done. Please forgive me for not being there. I couldn’t bear the thought of all the strangers.

I found Sarah wonderful.

Lots of love to you – and your family.
     Graham

I’ve tried to telephone you, but I seem to have got the number wrong. I can’t write (bad hand) to all four of you so would you convey my sympathy to the other three?

10th March 1987

Dear James,

I think our letters crossed. Thank you very much for sending me Hugh’s little poem which I think is rather good.
¹²
Many congratulations on the birth of the little girl. I hope she won’t take after Hugh in height.

Yes, the death was a bad shock. We had shared a great many experiences including the war in Malaya. I had also interested him in pirates and read aloud to him when he was six years old. I found the sight of him very painful, and the breathing was so heavy and strained. I find it difficult to get it out of my mind.

Love to you both
     Graham

Jeanne Stonor (Lady Camoys) was enraged by a passage in Anne Sebba’s biography
Enid Bagnold (1986
) suggesting that she had once had an affair with the novelist’s husband Sir Roderick Jones. Her daughter thought the threat of a lawsuit foolish and destructive and so sought Graham’s advice. Curiously enough, the book turned Graham’s thoughts to an old friend, Count von Bernstorff, the diplomat who had financed his trip to the Ruhr in 1924
.

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes| 30th March 1987

My dear Julia,

Thank you very much for sending me the life of Enid Bagnold and kindly pointing out the dangerous page! It is quite absurd to start a libel action on such tiny grounds. Your mother will lose a lot of money in fees and not gain in anything. I do hope you can persuade Thomas
¹³
to call in John Mortimer
¹⁴
to advise her.

You can be quite assured that my mail is not opened. Things haven’t gone as far as that in the Nice war yet. I wouldn’t entirely trust my telephone. That is all.

I was glancing at the book and was amused to read about Enid’s love for Bernstorff. I knew him too in the early 20s and later had a last meeting with him in a hotel in Berlin after Hitler had come to power. I liked him but he was such a complete homosexual and haunter of homosexual clubs that it is difficult to believe that a woman would take to him. He was, of course, a very brave man and died in Dachau
¹⁵
after saving a number of Jewish lives.

Don’t hesitate to write to me.

Love Graham

On
16
February 1987, Graham gave a widely reported impromptu speech at the Moscow Peace Forum, where he shared a podium with Mikhail Gorbachev. Father Murphy, a historian at Boston College, wrote asking for the text of his remarks
.

9th April 1987

Dear Father Murphy,

Thank you very much for your letter. I am afraid that my very short speech (about 4 minutes) at the Kremlin was not prepared and was more or less spontaneous so that it is difficult for me to give you any details of it. The main point was that I hoped the hundred year suspicion between Catholics and Communists was being buried in Central America by our co-operation in fighting against the Contras, the death-squads and Pinochet. I ended up with saying that it was my hope that there would be an Ambassador from the USSR to the Vatican, a hope not altogether improbable as the Pope had sent representatives to the Forum. I also pointed out that Marx had criticised Henry VIII and condemned him for the closing of the monasteries which at that period was the only resource for the poor. Alas I can’t give you the text of the speech because I had not prepared it.
¹⁶

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely
     Graham Greene

Meyer’s autobiography
Not Prince Hamlet
was published in 1989
.

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes|

Dear Michael,

I’ve only just got your typescript as I have been away in Budapest. Of course you may quote from my letters. What an extraordinary memory you have even without them. A few minor points.