The Life of Graham Greene (1904-1939)
Page 94
26 A Sort of Life, p. 60.
27 Extract from an address given by Graham Greene on receiving the Shakespeare prize from the University of Hamburg on 6 June 1969.
28 The Ministry of Fear, Penguin edition, 1972, p. 43.
29 A Sort of Life, p. 60.
30 Ibid.
31 ‘Prologue to Pilgrimage’, pp. 80–1.
32 England Made Me, p. 83.
33 Brighton Rock, Penguin edition, 1975, p. 106.
34 ‘Prologue to Pilgrimage’, p. 94.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., p. 75.
37 The Confidential Agent, Penguin edition, 1971, p. 24.
38 A Sort of Life, p. 55.
39 ‘Prologue to Pilgrimage’, p. 133.
40 The Ministry of Fear, pp. 203–4.
41 The Berkhamstedian, March 1921.
42 Ronald Matthews, Mon Ami Graham Greene, Desclée De Brouwer, 1957, pp. 49–50. ‘On ne savait pas où on en était, et cela pourrait faire une bonne définition du cauchemar. Le monde du cauchemar est un monde sans défenses, parce que chaque défense peut y être tournée. A quoi sert de se préparer, de prévoir une attaque, quand notre meilleur ami peut, tout soudain, sans aucune raison, se muer en notre pire ennemi?’
43 A Sort of Life, p. 56.
44 Ibid., p. 55.
45 The Man Within, Penguin edition, 1977, p. 67.
46 ‘Prologue to Pilgrimage’, p. 78.
47 A Sort of Life, p. 60.
48 ‘Prologue to Pilgrimage’, p. 170.
49 England Made Me, p. 86.
50 ‘Prologue to Pilgrimage’, pp. 72–3.
51 The Lawless Roads, p. 14.
52 A Sort of Life, p. 62.
53 Ibid., p. 64.
54 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 1925.
55 A Sort of Life, p. 64.
56 The Old School, pp. 250, 252.
57 Ibid., p. 286.
58 See Derek Winterbottom, Doctor Fry, Berkhamsted, Chanbury Cotterall Press, 1977.
59 A Sort of Life, p. 60.
60 Interview with Eric Guest, 1976.
61 The Man Within, p. 74.
62 Ibid., p. 71.
63 Interview with Elisabeth Dennys, August 1983.
64 A Sort of Life, p. 61.
65 ‘The Young Dickens’, Collected Essays, p. 83.
6 Psychoanalysed
1 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, pp. 67–8.
2 Ibid., p. 64.
3 Interview with Zoe Richmond, January 1985.
4 A Sort of Life, p. 73.
5 Interview with Zoe Richmond.
6 A Sort of Life, p. 74.
7 Interview with Zoe Richmond.
8 A Sort of Life, p. 73.
9 Interview with Ave Greene, 1976.
10 Interview with Zoe Richmond.
11 Interview with Ave Greene.
12 A Sort of Life, pp. 74–5.
13 Interview with Ave Greene.
14 Spectator, 20 June 1941, p. 657.
15 A Sort of Life, p. 75.
16 Interview with Zoe Richmond.
17 A Sort of Life, p. 73.
18 Journey Without Maps, Penguin edition, 1978, p. 181.
19 Ibid.
20 A Sort of Life, pp. 73–4.
21 Journey Without Maps, p. 181.
22 J. D. Beresford, W. E. Ford: A Biography, Doran, 1917, with Kenneth Richmond; a semi-autobiographical fiction.
23 The Confidential Agent, Penguin edition, 1971, p. 147.
24 A Sort of Life, p. 74.
25 Ibid., p. 43.
26 Ibid., p. 74.
27 Ibid., pp. 75–6.
28 Interview with Zoe Richmond.
29 Ibid.
30 A Sort of Life, p. 80.
31 Ibid., p. 72.
32 Letter written in 1921 but dated only ‘Wednesday’.
33 A Sort of Life, p. 24.
34 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 11 December 1925.
35 This letter was shown to me on my last visit to Zoe Richmond in 1986.
36 The Old School, Jonathan Cape, 1934, p. 256.
7 Realism and Fantasie – a Reconciliation
1 Letter, 29 June 1948.
2 Interview, June 1977.
3 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, p. 75.
4 Ibid., p. 77.
5 Ibid., p. 78.
6 Letter from Colonel A. L. Wilson, 3 October 1976.
7 A Sort of Life, p. 33.
8 Peter Quennell, The Marble Foot, Collins, 1976, p. 98.
9 Interview with R. S. Stanier, 24 August 1977.
10 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 16 November 1925.
11 A Sort of Life, pp. 80–1.
12 Ibid., p. 81.
13 The Lost Childhood and Other Essays, Eyre and Spottiswood, 1951.
14 ‘The Tyranny of Realism’, The Berkhamstedian, March 1922.
15 Interview with R. S. Stanier, 24 August 1977.
16 The Berkhamstedian, March 1922.
17 Ibid., July 1921.
18 The Ministry of Fear, Penguin edition, 1972, p. 36. In the Authorised Version, Psalm 141, Verse 3, we have the phrase closest to Greene’s quotation:
‘Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth,
Keep the door of my lips.’
19 Interview with J. B. Wilson, 7 June 1981.
8 Freshman at Balliol
1 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, p. 87.
2 Ibid., p. 108.
3 The name given to a club of reckless young men early in the eighteenth century. Peter Quennell, ‘A Kingdom of Cokayne’, Evelyn Waugh and his World, ed. David Pryce Jones, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973, p. 35.
4 Ibid., p. 36.
5 Peter Quennell, The Marble Foot, Collins, 1976, p. 115.
6 Tom Driberg, Ruling Passions, Stein and Day, 1979, p. 55. The Hypocrites’ Club (fairly innocuous by today’s standards) was suppressed and the suppression was suitably celebrated: ‘The Club had given a funeral dinner at an hotel in Thame, and leading members had driven back to Oxford riotously in a glass hearse’, Claud Cockburn, I, Claud, p. 43.
7 Anthony Powell, Infants of the Spring, Heinemann, 1976, p. 182. (Penguin edition, 1967).
8 Ibid., pp. 167–8 and Peter Quennell, The Marble Foot, p. 117.
9 Oxford Now and Then, Duckworth, 1970, p. 56.
10 A Sort of Life, pp. 87–8.
11 Interview with Sir Harold Acton, 11 May 1977.
12 Letter, 24 October 1922.
13 ‘I had failed to win a scholarship, so why to Balliol? I think my father wisely plumped for a college which at that period was anti-athletic. Also the number of students there, as in a great city, offered the shelter of anonymity’, A Sort of Life, p. 87. Greene had lodgings in Beechcroft Road, north Oxford, during his first two terms. A Sort of Life, p. 89.
14 Interview with Claud Cockburn, 18 June 1977.
15 Interview with Sir Harold Acton, 11 May 1977.
16 Robert Scott became a distinguished Consular official and was High Commissioner for Kenya when Greene visited that country in 1963 and their friendship was renewed.
17 Interview with Lord Tranmire, April 1977.
18 Evelyn Waugh wrote: ‘There is a jolly problem Club run by some men at Balliol. Their last competition was to receive the offer of the queerest job’, The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Mark Amory, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980, p. 10. The editor’s dating of these letters (1922) is speculative and this could be a reference to the Mantichorean Society.
19 Interview with Lord Tranmire, April 1977.
20 Daily Telegraph, 15 November 1971.
21 Letter to his mother, November 1922.
22 Ibid.
23 Letter to his mother, 19 May 1923.
24 Interview with Lord Tranmire, April 1977.
25 Interview with Claud Cockburn, June 1977.
26 This fact remained in the mind of Graham Greene’s brother Raymond when I interviewed him. At the age of eighty he was still the most handsome man in London. He died in Decembe
r 1982.
27 Unsigned article by Greene in The Times, 27 December 1928.
28 Interview with Lord Tranmire, April 1977.
29 Interview with Sir Harold Acton, 11 May 1977.
30 Interview with Lord Tranmire, April 1977.
31 ‘The Trial of Pan’, The Oxford Outlook, V., February 1923, pp. 47–50.
32 15 November 1924.
33 Interview, April 1977.
34 Ways of Escape, Penguin edition, 1981, p. 25.
35 22 October 1922.
36 Letter to his mother, 3 May 1923, quoting from one of the judges, of whom Harley Granville-Barker was one.
37 24 January 1923.
38 Letter to his mother, 11 February 1923.
39 Interview with Sir Harold Acton, 11 May 1977.
40 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, January 1926.
41 Interview with Joseph Macleod, 13 May 1977.
42 Letter to Evelyn Waugh, 10 September 1964.
43 A Sort of Life, p. 99.
44 Claud Cockburn gave me an account of his own drinking habits at Oxford: ‘I got up fairly early, 8 a.m., I would then drink a large sherry glass of neat whisky before breakfast and go on for an hour and drank heavily throughout the day. I drank approximately a bottle and a half of whisky every day, exclusive of wines and beers. God the amount of liquor one took on board. How the hell could I notice how much Greene had. I suppose I was two-thirds stewed the whole time. It seems to me I remembered everything – perfectly alert and so on. In those days it was all right.’ (Interview, June 1977.)
45 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 13 February 1926.
9 The Art of Spying
1 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, p. 104.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., pp. 35–6.
4 Interview with Ave Greene, January 1977.
5 Interview with Claud Cockburn, 18 June 1977.
6 A Sort of Life, p. 100.
7 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 24 September 1925.
8 Harper’s Magazine, April 1985, p. 44.
9 ‘The Revolver in the Corner Cupboard’, The Lost Childhood and Other Essays, Eyre and Spottiswood, 1951, and A Sort of Life, p. 95.
10 Letter to his mother, 9 June 1923.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 24 September 1925.
14 A Sort of Life, p. 100.
15 Interview, 18 June 1977.
16 Letter, 12 March 1924.
17 A Sort of Life, pp. 100–1.
18 Letter, 12 March 1924.
19 A Sort of Life, p. 101.
20 Interview, 18 June 1977.
21 A Sort of Life, p. 101.
22 Letter to his mother, 17 April 1924.
23 A Sort of Life, p. 102.
24 Ibid.
25 Letter, 17 April 1924.
26 A Sort of Life, p. 102.
27 Interview, 18 June 1977.
28 Letter to his mother, 17 April 1924.
29 A Sort of Life, p. 102.
30 Ibid., p. 103.
31 Letter to his mother, 13 June 1924.
32 A Sort of Life, p. 104.
33 Letter to his mother, 17 April 1924.
34 Interview with Edward ‘Tooter’ Greene, 19 December 1976.
10 Apprenticeship
1 In a letter to Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh writes: ‘Did you know that the Sitwells only trace their descent through the female line. The real name is Hurt. They took Sitwell quite lately – about 1800.’ (Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Mark Amory, p. 274.)
2 Oxford Outlook, February 1924. He also insisted on the catholicity of his taste: ‘There is no greater admirer of the Sitwells than myself, but I do not understand why this should prevent my being also an admirer of Mr. Drinkwater. Poetry would indeed be dull if all were revolutionaries, none conservatives.’
3 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 21 November 1925.
4 Twenty Five: Being a Young Man’s Candid Recollections of his Elders and Betters, Penguin, 1973, p. 38.
5 G. M. Trevelyan (1876–1962) was Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge (1927–40).
6 In spite of Greene’s comment, Quennell’s piece was by no means his best. It was entitled ‘Toad’: ‘The cuckoo, whose bed God has made of brass,/Rouses to wake his doubtful agony.’
7 Louis Golding (1895–1958) a popular novelist best known for Magnolia Street (Gollancz 1932), a provincial street with Jews living on one side and Gentiles on the other.
8 Letter to his mother, 4 November 1923.
9 Letter to his mother, 27 April 1924.
10 Here is a longer quotation from Cavafy’s ‘Come Back’:
Come back often and take me,
Beloved sensation come back and take me –
When awakens the body’s memory,
And an old desire again courses through my blood,
When the lips and the skin remember
And the hands feel as though they were touching again.
Come back often, at night, and take me
When the lips and the skin remember …
11 Letter to Hugh Greene, January 1925.
12 ‘Poetry by Wireless’, Oxford Chronicle, 30 January 1925, p. 15.
13 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, p. 91.
14 A. L. Rowse, A Cornishman at Oxford, Jonathan Cape, 1965, p. 206–7.
15 A Sort of Life, p. 91.
16 Ibid.
11 Love and Death – a Flirtation
1 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, pp. 89–90.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., p. 92.
4 Ibid., p. 90.
5 Letter, 1983.
6 The Ministry of Fear, Penguin edition, 1972, p. 130.
7 A Sort of Life, p. 90.
8 The Ministry of Fear, pp. 132–3.
9 Ibid., p. 67.
10 Letters from Conway Spencer.
11 In spite of his quiet manner, his unfailing modesty (to which many people attest), Greene, once having entered the lists, was and is a fighter. When he was sixty-seven he wrote to Hugh Delargy, M.P.: ‘It’s good to be fighting again if even in a smaller cause.’
12 Letter, 24 April 1982.
13 Babbling April, Blackwell, 1925, p. 14.
14 A Sort of Life, p. 91.
15 Interview with Graham Greene, 25 April 1981.
16 A Sort of Life, pp. 93–4.
17 Ibid., p. 92.
18 Ibid., p. 95.
19 Letter, 12 January 1925.
20 A Sort of Life, p. 94.
21 Interview with Claud Cockburn, 18 June 1977.
22 Babbling April, p. 32.
23 A Sort of Life, p. 93.
24 Ibid., p. 94.
25 ‘The Electric Hare’, The Month, September 1951, p. 147.
26 Interview at the Savile Club, London, 20 January 1977.
27 Marie-Françoise Allain, The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene, trans. Guido Waldman, Bodley Head, 1983, p. 49.
28 B.B.C. Television Omnibus programme, ‘The Hunted Man’, November 1968.
29 Interview with Claud Cockburn, 18 June 1977.
30 Interview with Sir Harold Acton, 11 May 1977.
31 A Sort of Life, pp. 94–5.
32 Interview with Lord Tranmire, 2 June 1977.
33 A Sort of Life, p. 93.
12 A Seminal Year
1 Interview with Joseph Macleod, 13 May 1977.
2 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 26 November 1926.
3 Ibid., 29 December 1925.
4 Journey Without Maps, Penguin edition, 1978, p. 36. Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit (1858–1924).
5 Journey Without Maps, p. 36.
6 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, p. 98.
7 Rumour at Nightfall, Heinemann, 1931, p. 235.
8 Brighton Rock, Penguin edition, 1975, p. 109.
9 A Sort of Life, p. 97.
10 Ibid., p. 98.
11 Letter, 6 March 1925.
12 Letter, November 1923.<
br />
13 Letter from Joseph Macleod, 24 November 1980.
14 Letter, 24 February 1924.
15 Letter to his mother, 14 November 1924.
16 Letter, 22 November 1924.
17 Letter to his mother, 29 November 1924.
18 Ibid., February 1925.
19 Ibid., August 1925.
20 Letter to his mother, 16 February 1925.
21 Ibid., 14 April 1925.
22 Ibid., 6 March 1925.
23 Ibid., 18 May 1925.
24 Ibid., 24 January 1926.
25 Ibid., 26 January 1926.
26 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 16 November 1925.
27 Letter to Evelyn Waugh, 26 October 1950.
28 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 11 November 1925.
29 Letter to his mother, 6 November 1925.
30 Ibid., 18 May 1925.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., 22 May 1925.
33 Ibid., 3 June 1925.
34 Ibid., 22 May 1925.
35 Ibid., 25 May 1925.
36 Ibid., 19 July 1925.
37 A Sort of Life, p. 106.
13 ‘Some Ardent Catholic’
1 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, p. 86.
2 Ibid., p. 87.
3 The typescript is housed in the Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas. Greene originally called the novel ‘Anthony Sant’.
4 ‘Prologue to Pilgrimage’, TS, p. 148.
5 Ibid., p. 149.
6 The Ministry of Fear, Penguin edition, 1972, pp. 66–7.
7 A Sort of Life, p. 88.
8 Ibid.
9 ‘The Innocent’, Twenty-One Stories, Penguin edition, 1973, p. 47.
10 Ibid., p. 50.
11 A Sort of Life, p. 25.
12 ‘The Innocent’, p. 51.
13 Ibid.
14 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 26 June 1925.
15 Oxford Outlook, March 1925.
16 Letter to author, 12 August 1980.
17 Ibid.
18 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 13 January 1926. This was the time when Graham Greene was becoming infatuated with the cinema – his innocence belongs to the days before high tech: ‘Dear Miss Dayrell … have you been to the Capitol cinema? It’s simply glorious. You are taken up to the circle in a lift!’ (Undated letter, probably early May 1925.)
19 Ibid., 18 November 1925.
20 Ibid., 19 May 1925.
21 Ibid., 21 August 1926.
22 Letter to author, 12 August 1980.