The Man with the Golden Typewriter
Page 16
By the way, the jacket of my present book is going to be a trompe l’oeil, painted by the only English master in the art, called Chopping,2 who really paints things so that you can pick them straight off the canvas. The picture will consist of a revolver crossed with a rose and it should be a very handsome affair. I have looked in vain for a Beretta .25 which would obviously be to the point but, if I fail to find one, would you care to have your own Smith & Wesson made forever famous?
It is such a very handsome gun that, although it has nothing to do with the story, it would look so splendid on the jacket that that would not matter.
You might care to turn the matter over in your mind and let me know at your leisure.
I suppose the artist would probably need the gun for around a month – possibly for the month of September. You send me a bill for the amount. Chopping is an extremely reliable and sensible man and you would not have to fear for its safety while in his keeping and, as the Deputy Commissioner of Scotland Yard is a close personal friend, we would have no complications over fire-arms certificates.
This is only an idea and I may be able to find a Beretta in New York. But you might care to let me know what you think in principle of the suggestion.
By the way, have you ever heard of that extraordinary Frenchman who appears in “Firearms Curiosa” with the breastplate covered with pistols? He sounds an intriguing character and I would be very interested in any line on him from you or your friends.
Again, with warm thanks for this most profitable correspondence.
On 31 August, Boothroyd commiserated with Fleming for having been unable to buy a gun in New York. ‘From what I gather from correspondents in N.Y. it is more difficult to obtain permission to own a hand gun unless one is a politician or prepared to pay the customary graft to the local Precinct police than it is anywhere in Britain.’
He added, too, some notes about life in his new home (just a few steps from his last in Regent Park Square, Glasgow). ‘Since my last letter to you I have been married and the time has been fully occupied by painting and finding a home for all my guns. My wife has allowed me the use of a very large room and several pieces of peculiar furniture at the local sale rooms ensures that all ammunition and hand guns are under lock and key together with my ammunition specimens.’
FLEMING TO BOOTHROYD
4th September, 1956
Very many thanks for your most helpful letter and let me at once congratulate you warmly on your marriage. It is wonderful news and, from what you tell me, she must indeed be the ideal wife if she is prepared to be married to your guns as well as yourself.
I got a letter from Richard Chopping by the same post as yours and he is coming up on the 7th, and says that the picture will not take him more than a fortnight. On the strength of this estimate, to which I will keep him, I can guarantee that the gun will be back with you at the latest by the 26th, even if it means interrupting the painting.
I will see that you get a reproduction of the original, signed if you wish by me, and I dare say it will make an acceptable decoration for your gun room.
Chopping’s work is really remarkable. His trompe l’oeil really does deceive the eye. You feel that you could pick the object up out of the canvas. Jonathan Cape’s are most enthusiastic and I think, with your co-operation, we shall achieve a really fine book jacket.
I am sorry I shall not be seeing you on your next visit to London but, if you are anywhere in the neighbourhood of Gray’s Inn Road, I shall take it amiss if you don’t find 10 minutes to drop in and have a talk.
With best wishes to you both for a very happy life together, and again with my warm thanks for putting your shoulder so staunchly behind James Bond’s problems.
The following day Boothroyd wrote to say he was happy for Chopping to borrow the gun provided it was back by 26 September. He reassured Fleming, too, that the marriage was going swimmingly: not only had his wife no objection to his turning their ground floor into a shooting range but one evening she had helped him blast off 174 rounds. The neighbours heard nothing (or at least were polite enough not to mention it) and she put up ‘a most creditable performance despite that disadvantage of a high noise level which often causes flinching’.
Understanding of her husband’s obsession though she may have been, Mrs Boothroyd probably flinched ten days later when the police came knocking at her door. On the night of 15 September, in what would become infamous to Glaswegians as the ‘Burnside Murders’, three women – mother, daughter and sister-in-law – were shot dead with a .38 calibre pistol. Boothroyd, who lived in the vicinity and had just such a weapon, was high on the list of suspects.
BOOTHROYD TO FLEMING
18th September, 1956
I have just had a visit from our local CID who wanted to know where my .38 pistol was. The reason for this uncalled for interest in my collection is due to a very misguided character who slew two ladies and a girl on the outskirts of Glasgow on Sunday night using a .38 pistol.
Believing that honesty is the best policy I told the two CID chaps that the pistol was not in my possession but was in London in your possession. They saw my receipt which showed them when the pistol was posted and your telegram confirming safe arrival.
The chaps that called are unknown to me and it is possible that the wheels of the Law may (a) call upon you in London to make sure that the pistol is where I said it was, and (b) if they are bloody minded, ask you if you have a Firearms Certificate which allows you or your agent to have the pistol in your possession. A further possibility is that the Police may come to me and ask why I let the pistol out of my possession not knowing that you did hold a permit.
The section of the act which applies states that anyone not having in his possession a firearms certificate is liable to three months in clink or a fine of £50 or, worse still, both. I am liable to the above imprisonment but only a fine of £20.
I am assuming that our local gendarmes are fully engaged in tracking down the murderer, however, I never trust Policemen to do the sensible thing so it is possible that some chap with knowledge of the Firearms Act might wish to get himself some promotion by unmasking my villainy so I am letting you know what has transpired so that you can take the appropriate action should you think this necessary.
It is a funny world, the most unlikely events cause repercussions all over the place and our gunman friend would have to choose this time to go shooting people and he would have to use a .38. Incidentally, no one heard the sound of the shots which goes to prove my point about firing off guns.
Sorry this should have happened but I thought the best plan would be to let you know in case anything untoward happens. Perhaps you will be able to get a special dispensation from your friend the Deputy Commissioner, I to my regret only know Inspectors and Sergeants.3
FLEMING TO BOOTHROYD
20th September, 1956
Well, well, I am so sorry that the shadow of James Bond has fallen across your path so decisively.
But have no fear. I have a valid Firearms Certificate, number 109950, and an alibi for Sunday night.
Of course the long arm of the law may now take a swipe at the unfortunate Richard Chopping, but the gun will be back in my possession on Monday and I think I will be able to stall them without involving our distinguished artist.
Anyway, have no fear. The gun will be back in your possession by the 26th and this sticky passage in your life will have ended.
Incidentally, Chopping is very happy with the way the picture is going, though the finer points of the gun have been causing him pictorial agony.
FLEMING TO BOOTHROYD
1st October, 1956
Many thanks for your letter of the 25th and I am glad that everything has now calmed down.
The final chapter was really splendid. Chopping had arrived in this office and delivered the picture and I was just telling him the story of our little case of murder when the telephone rang and there was Chief Inspector Blake of Scotland Yard very full of “ums�
� and “ahs” and “on the 16th instants”. Fortunately I was able to give him the number of my revolver licence which also covers a .38 colt Police Positive, and I explained at length that you were very much an innocent party to what was, in any case, quite within the law, and he retired satisfied.
I naturally never mentioned Chopping’s name. He assumed that the pistol had been in my possession throughout.
Meantime Chopping sat wide-eyed and obviously expecting to find the Black Maria on its way for him.
However, now all is quiet again and I enclose a photograph of Chopping’s picture which I am sure you will agree is superb. The rose, incidentally, is red.
You might care to tack this to your wall pending the production of a coloured lithograph from the original which will probably take some months. But you will also receive a copy of this in due course.
Incidentally, would you please send me a note of your expenses in connection with all this. Please don’t be obstinate about this matter as, in any case, they will be deductible from my expenses in connection with the book.
Again with my warmest thanks for your help in all this.
By now Fleming was in the final stage of editing From Russia with Love, in which Bond’s trouble extricating his silenced Beretta nearly proved his downfall. In the next book, Dr No, all was put straight when the service’s Armourer, one Major Boothroyd, confiscated his ‘lady’s gun’ and gave him a proper weapon. Following publication in 1958, Boothroyd wrote to thank Fleming for his fictional promotion but felt obliged to point out a few mistakes. The M.1. carbine used in Dr No, should have been a Winchester not a Remington. And although Bond had been equipped with a Berns Martin holster it could only be used with a revolver, not the Walther automatic with which he had been issued.
He suggested an alternative holster for the Smith and Wesson: the Tom Threepersons model. ‘Tom Threepersons,’ he explained, ‘was a full blooded Cherokee Indian who had quite an adventurous life. His father was shot down in cold blood, Tom avenging the killing when the killer came out of jail. Tom went to Canada and served with the R.C.M.P. [Royal Canadian Mounted Police]. He then returned to Texas and served with the Pershing expeditionary force against Pancho Villa. He put in several years with the Border Guards and the El Paso police. How many gunfights he had and how many people he killed no one knows.’
Boothroyd clearly knew his man, but despite this intriguing snippet Fleming’s reply gave a faint indication that he had had enough of gun lore for the moment.
FLEMING TO BOOTHROYD
2nd April, 1958
Thank you very much for your splendid letter of March 23rd and I am glad that you are pleased with your second personality.
I am very much put out that I have made further technical errors in your realm of knowledge and I shall try to correct them in subsequent work in line with your most interesting and informative recommendations.
Thank you very much for the Smith & Wesson catalogue which I shall be delighted to keep, and I now return the Myers catalogue which has been most informative. Tom Threepersons must have been a remarkable man and we must try and keep his fame alive.
I am surprised to find you still in Glasgow instead of having been promoted Chairman of I.C.I. by now. It is time we brought pressure to bear on London headquarters.
With kind regards and again many thanks for your various advices.
In March 1961, Fleming travelled to Glasgow, where he and Boothroyd were scheduled to appear on Scottish Television. It wasn’t Fleming’s standard bill of fare, and to compound his unease he had ‘the baffling experience of being interviewed by a young man who had never read any of my books’. Afterwards the Scottish Daily Express held a party in which he and Boothroyd posed for the photographer shooting at each other with revolvers.
‘Boothroyd, the expert, escaped unmarked from this duel,’ Fleming later wrote. ‘The thriller writer, less tough and rustier on the draw, was doomed, a very few days later, to suffer a heart attack which laid him temporarily as low as a real stopper from the Smith and Wesson.4
‘Mark you, I am not actually nominating Boothroyd as mine own executioner, but it certainly was a curious sequel to an already bizarre relationship!’
It was less a sequel than the beginning of a new chapter. Encouraged by their correspondence, Boothroyd had embarked on a book, A Guide to Gun Collecting, to which Fleming, when they met in Glasgow, had agreed to provide an introduction. At the time, Fleming had been enthusiastic about the project. But when Boothroyd wrote again in April 1961, reminding him of the offer and wondering if he would like to see the manuscript, he learned from Fleming’s secretary, the redoubtable Beryl Griffie-Williams, that ‘Mr. Fleming is away at present as he is suffering from slight tension due to overwork, and the doctor has insisted that he has complete rest for at least two weeks.’ The slight tension was a heart attack.
When Fleming mustered the strength to reply, it was in polite yet understandably weary terms – even so he couldn’t resist suggesting ways to make the book more sensational.
FLEMING TO BOOTHROYD
1st May, 1961
As from The Clinic
I have now seen your correspondence with my secretary and you are quite right, the last thing I want to do is to read through the manuscript which would be double Dutch to me. I will simply write an entertaining account of our relationship.
If the publishers don’t accept the book immediately please send it on to Jonathan Cape, my own publishers, saying that I shall be writing the introduction and I am sure they will be interested. In fact I think your agent might be wise to do that straight away.
I should certainly change the title, which is a bit dull. Why not call it “A Love of Guns”? And add a chapter, if you haven’t already done so, explaining your particular passion as best you can!
I will get around to the introduction in a few weeks’ time and make it as interesting and entertaining as I know how.
Please don’t bother to answer this until you have finally settled with a publisher, but I do suggest you take my advice and try Capes.
A couple of months later Fleming was back in the saddle and discovered that his introduction was longer and more detailed than expected. So much so, that he felt it had the makings of a full-length article.
FLEMING TO BOOTHROYD
12th July, 1961
Many thanks for your letter of July 5th, but I do so hope you will dig out the brief details of the murder case so that I can include them simply as a matter of record.
All the other brief references in my piece to this occurrence show the police in nothing but an extremely complimentary light, and I am sure you shouldn’t worry about them.
I have had a word with your publishers and I realise that your book is part of an instructional series, which sounds an excellent idea.
But, as you will see when you receive the draft, my introduction is a pretty heavyweight affair entitled “The Guns of James Bond”, and is really more of a feature article than an introduction.
Accordingly, I have had a word with the Sunday Times and though they haven’t seen the typescript they would, in theory, very much like to publish it as a piece of Bondiana, and it is probable that I may also be able to place it in the United States.
Now, this new idea would be infinitely more beneficial to your book and your general fame, I am sure it would delight countless readers, and properly timed publication in the Sunday Times would give your book a tremendous send off.
I shall be sending you a copy next week for you to add to as appropriate from your files, and then I would like to send it back for final typing and also, I hope, to agree with my suggested treatment of this business which seems to have grown rather larger than you may have expected.
Since the article is largely based on the expertise contained in your letters, I would pay you a fee proportionate to what I am able to extract from publication here and abroad, and it is quite possible that in the end you may make more money out of your contributi
on to this article than out of the book itself!
And then, of course, the article with some concluding phrases commending your book, could be used as a foreword by Arco [Boothroyd’s publisher] when they publish as they plan to do approximately in January or February.
I do hope the whole tale as I have written it will amuse you as much as it has entertained me. I have written to the Editor of the Daily Express, Glasgow, for copies of the various photographs which were taken of both of us, and it would be embellished with a suitable one together with a photograph of the Chopping picture.
Please don’t bother to reply to this until you have read the piece, but please try and dig out brief facts about that murder case so that we can round off the story appropriately.
I will have a word with your agent to tell him what I have in mind, but since this is an entirely friendly arrangement directly between you and me I don’t see why he should have a commission from you on the profits I hope you will make from this article.
The murder details that Boothroyd unearthed were indeed brief. Although rounding off Fleming’s article perfectly, they failed to mention that the culprit, Peter Manuel, was one of the decade’s most infamous serial killers. Born in 1927 in New York to Scottish parents, he had been in and out of prison for rape and sexual offences since the age of sixteen, and in 1956 embarked on a spree of bloodshed that earned him the name ‘The Beast of Birkenshaw’. He eventually confessed to eighteen murders before being hanged at Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow, on 11 July 1958.
‘The Guns of James Bond’ appeared in the American magazine Sports Illustrated in March 1962 and in November of the same year the Sunday Times (who had initially turned it down) ran it under the title “James Bond’s Hardware”. It sold well in America, too. In fact, so established had James Bond now become that the piece earned Fleming considerably more than the first UK paperback edition of Live and Let Die. ‘I have greatly enjoyed it,’ he wrote to Boothroyd, ‘and looking back on it all what fun we had!’