But I am, in fact, being reasonably sensible in following the instructions of my various mechanics. That is the reason why I did not come to New York last month as I had intended, and I am staying in London and Sandwich, where my more relaxed golf swing and an increased handicap (I happen to be on the handicapping Committee!) has confounded my enemies.
My strictly commercial love affair with the darling Marlow has gone slightly awry and I asked her to explain the circumstances to you. Briefly, a very big Bond film deal is in the offing and it could not go through so long as she had the option on my television rights, which I had given her over scrambled eggs and smoked salmon in Sardis East in a bemused moment.
She couldn’t have been nicer about the whole thing and surrendered her option. I sent her a small token from Cartiers to signal my love and appreciation. But, in fact, as I have told her, I shall try and see that if and when the film series gets successfully launched and the moment for television series comes along, her name will in some way be linked with the television production.
But naturally I cannot actually promise anything, but only use my best endeavours with United Artists, who are the putative owners of the Bond properties under various options. If they do not take up these options and seriatim the whole property reverts to me, I would once more propose to offer my hand, at least in television marriage, to Marlow.
The deal itself starts with a minimum payment of $150,000 amounting by $100,000 with each further film U.A. makes. There is no object in my arranging a Bermuda company for all these, as the film rights are owned by Caspar’s Trust and therefore avoid all tax. But, in addition, I get 5% of the producer’s gross, which is very carefully defined, and if this should look like getting too big I would consult you again about a Bermudan gambit. But as you know producers profits have a curious way of melting like snow in summer sunshine when anyone else has a share of them, and I think the days of my becoming a millionaire are still some way distant.
Meanwhile I observe the Dows index and remember your dictum that it would be a thousand before the end of the year. Unfortunately you failed to tell me which stocks to buy, so here again I have failed to benefit, except through some minor holdings in Flemings Investment Trust.
By the way, should I now sink back into Caribbean Cement?
No other news except the minor item that I think England is in the process of slowly sinking beneath the waves. She had a very good run and I only hope she does her sinking gracefully.
I am sending you a copy of an article as I think it may amuse you.12 It has just gone to M.C.A. with the suggestion that they offer it first to C. D. Jackson, though I dare say it will turn out to be too technical even for American publication.
Anyway I expect it will make you chuckle.
No other news except that if you bought some Drages shares at 120 you might be able to sell them at 200. But this is not five star guarantee but only from the mouth of two very reliable horses.
With best love to Mary.
TO MICHAEL HOWARD
16th August, 1961
My dear Michael,
Many thanks for your letter of yesterday about the new Courtelle advertisement.
I don’t really mind these but they rather annoyed me by writing a patronizing letter offering me one sweater, one pair of slacks, or indeed any one object from their collection instead of begging me to come in and take my pick of their stuff – which I naturally wouldn’t have done but which would have sounded rather handsomer.
In fact I would like them to invite me round some Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon to have a look at all this stuff I am sponsoring. I have absolutely no idea what it looks like.
In the present copy I don’t think they should suggest that Bond wears suits from Savile Row, which he doesn’t, or actually Courtelle shirts, etc., etc., though I don’t mind them saying that people like James Bond wear these things.
I don’t want to make a song and dance about it and I entirely appreciate the points you make.
TO MICHAEL HOWARD
For the endpapers of The Spy Who Loved Me, Cape had commissioned a black and white drawing of the situation in which the novel was set.
10th October, 1961
My dear Michael,
I like Lee Vernon’s sketch immensely, and I quite agree with you that it will admirably serve our purpose.
One or two small points which I had indicated in red:
The runaway car gets out of control and goes over the cliff to the right of the Motel. We do not need to see exactly where it went over the cliff, but could we move the rustic chairs and tables down to the right as I have indicated.
I forgot all about the swimming pool when writing the story, and as it would naturally come into the action if it is where Vernon correctly places it, could he please shift it to behind the Motel as I have indicated.
The saloon car should point towards Lake George.
I would rather do without the second sign board, as otherwise this also should have appeared in the book, notably during the fight with the gangsters where it would have been used as cover.
Otherwise I have no comments and I am much impressed with the sketch and particularly with the dark spikiness of the trees.
What a gift to be able to knock off something like this!
One last thought, could the artist vaguely indicate the ‘No Vacancy’ over the front door?
TO CAPTAIN E. K. LE MESURIER, National Rifle Association, Bisley Camp, Brookwood, Surrey
Fleming had invited Captain Le Mesurier of the National Rifle Association to comment on his short story ‘The Living Daylights’.
31st October, 1961
Dear Captain Le Mesurier,
Here now is the story we discussed on the telephone, and I would indeed be grateful for any corrections or suggestions you may have, particularly on the opening pages about Bisley.
Please be extremely tough and critical and don’t spare my feelings.
One particular point on page 25, half way down, is the expression “flash protector” correct? I have a feeling that my war time memory may have failed me.
It is extremely kind of you to allow me to take up your time and brains in this way, and I shall insist on sending you an editorial fee to cover general wear and tear, midnight oil and the heavy refreshment that I am sure it will call for.
This has nothing to do with the N.R.A. as such and I am consulting you privately and using your spare time, so please don’t argue about accepting it.
TO GRAHAM SUTHERLAND, ESQ., O.M., The White House, Trottiscliffe, West Malling, Kent
Fleming had commissioned the distinguished artist Graham Sutherland to provide a picture to accompany his short story ‘The Living Daylights’ in the Sunday Times colour supplement. In the end it was never used.
7th November, 1961
My dear Graham,
The first reactions, while enthusiastic, are that the green is too gay giving the whole thing rather too much of a pastoral quality with which, I expect you have now read the story, you will agree is off-key.
Would you be an angel and take up your brushes again and try a background to the heart of perhaps a window frame or barbed wire and perhaps a gunmetal background.
Also the pontiffs think that the arrow should come from right to left.
Don’t bother about leaving space for lettering as whichever way you do the design it will anyway leave plenty of room.
You are terribly kind to submit to this boring chore and all I can do in exchange, apart from the meagre hundred guineas, is to hand you over the whole bestiary idea without any strings whatsoever.
My pleasure of having thought of a theme that stimulates you is ample reward, apart from your kindness over this blasted jacket.
If you are both not too fed up with me by now I will in fact come by around midday on Friday for some more sausages and mash, but naturally countermand me if it doesn’t suit.
I hear that Douglas is back at the chateau with Richardson.
TO SIR WILLIAM STEPHENSON, 450 East 52nd Street, New York
7th November, 1961
Many thanks for your chastening cable which actually fetched up at the right address. Please use it frequently.
Not much news from here. My host of medical advisers seem to be delighted with my recovery and, as you can imagine, I am losing no time in loosening up on their counsels of moderation in all things.
The film deal with United Artists is going ahead and they are going to film ‘DR NO’ in Jamaica in January and February, and the advance party has already gone out to prospect for location. But, as usual with show business, no actual money has actually changed hands yet.
I shall be coming out to Jamaica around January 18th and will be paying you my usual visit around the middle of March. So please warn The Pierre to lay in plenty of oysters.
TO ANTHONY COLWELL, ESQ., 30 Bedford Square London W.C.1
13th December, 1961
Dear Tony,
Very many thanks for the proof of the jacket which in general I think is splendid though, apart from the points you make, it does seem to me that the background wood has turned rather pink.
You are right about the spelling of Adirondacks, but this may have been my mistake in writing the blurb.
Should not the copyright line “Jacket design by Richard Chopping” be “Ian Fleming”? As it was with the last book and since the picture is my property.
One final point. On the back of the jacket I think typographically the joke slightly misfires. How about putting “Verdicts of THE TIMES!”
Incidentally, Victor Weybright has done a brilliant promotion pamphlet on the Bonds which I am sure will entertain all of you. Unfortunately I haven’t got a spare copy, but perhaps you would like to get one from him.
P.S. And above the credit to Chopping mightn’t we put “Commando dagger by the Wilkinson Sword Company” if that is their right title?
TO D. R. C. BEDSON, ESQ., Executive Council, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Mr Bedson had read The Spy Who Loved Me while spending a weekend with Sir William and Lady Stephenson, and raised a few points. Stephenson, no doubt with some glee, insisted he write to the author. Which he did, stating that Fleming’s description of French Canada and its various groups bore no resemblance to anything he had experienced. Also, if Bond was going from Toronto to Washington he’d have gone via Niagara Falls, Buffalo, then on to the highways through western New York and Pennsylvania. He’d have gone nowhere near Lake St George.
19th September, 1962
Dear Mr. Bedson,
It is extremely kind of you to have taken so much trouble to write to me so helpfully about my last book.
I quite agree with you that I dealt very cursorily with the French-Canadian problem. I should have delved more deeply and not relied on a casual talk with a French-Canadian friend of mine.
You are of course absolutely right about James Bond’s route, but I had to get him to Lake George somehow and I think we must assume that he was taking a leisurely sightseeing trip.
Anyway, it was very thoughtful of you to have written and I am delighted to hear from any friend of my hero, ‘Little Bill’.
FROM WILLIAM PLOMER
6th April, 1962
My dear Ian,
How good of you to send me my special copy of The S. who l. M. Best thanks for this tenth knock-out. Of course I have dashed out from under my immense load of dung, & have beetled into a corner & begun to re-read you, which is fatal, because one goes on. “. . . and everyone froze” – and of course one freezes with them.
I notice the New Morality is beginning to appear. Perhaps you saw the letter in the Lit. Sup. about the new novel by Christopher Isherwood (wh. I haven’t read). You must perhaps expect increasing attacks on the grounds of morality. Now that Non-Smoking is coming in too, you will soon find that you mayn’t mention cigarettes. . .
I am hoping to see you – or should I say watch you – at the gathering at Bedford Square on Wednesday. In the meantime let me wish you as I always do, an enormous sale for this book.
TO MRS. FLORENCE TAYLOR, Ford’s Book Stores Ltd., 9 & 11 Market Hall Buildings, Chesterfield
Mrs Taylor wrote icily to say that she ‘did not care for your new book’, that it was ‘a great disappointment’, and ‘I do hope that this is not a new trend in your style of writing.’
18th April, 1962
Dear Mrs. Taylor,
It was really very kind of you to have taken the trouble to write to me and I was touched by your affection for James Bond.
The point is that if one is writing about a serial character one’s public comes to want more or less the same book over and over again, and it was really to stretch my writing muscles that I tried to write like a twenty-three year old girl and put forward a view of James Bond at the other end of the gun barrel so to speak.
But this is a unique experiment and I have just completed the next Bond book, I think the longest yet, in which he appears from the first page to the last.
Again with many thanks for the kindly thought behind your letter.
The brickbats continued. ‘What a let down’, wrote a Canadian reader. From H. S. Baker of New Bond Street – ‘in the sacred name of ‘Casino Royale’ and ‘From Russia with Love’, you hadn’t oughta have done it.’ From one David Ferney – ‘Now look here Fleming, this catering to fifth form eroticism must stop. Do you hear?[. . .] It’s inadequate Fleming, and you know it.’ From an attorney in Chicago – ‘This particular book does not belong in a library any more than a package of garbage does.’
Fleming was dismayed by these and other criticisms. As he wrote, ‘The experiment seems to have failed and I am suffering from multiple contusions as a result of the onslaught of my critics.’
TO MICHAEL HOWARD
19th April, 1962
‘The Spy Who Loved Me’
I am becoming increasingly depressed with the reception of this book although I don’t think the TLS was as harsh as you gave me to think. But obviously reviewers and, as you know, some of the book trade are upset by two factors. Firstly that James Bond makes a very late entry into the book and, secondly, though this I think weighs less heavily, with the alleged salacity of certain passages.
It is the second of these criticisms to which I am perhaps overly sensitive.
Both I and all of you have treated the whole of the James Bond saga with a light heart and so, with one or two exceptions, have the reviewers, most of whom for the first nine books have been very kind. But in the reviews of The Spy I detect a note of genuine disapproval. This surprises me because of the genesis of this particular book which should perhaps now be explained to you.
I had become increasingly surprised to find that my thrillers, which were designed for an adult audience, were being read in the schools, and that young people were making a hero out of James Bond when to my mind, and as I have often said in interviews, I do not regard James Bond as a heroic figure but only as an efficient professional in his job.
So it crossed my mind to write a cautionary tale about Bond to put the record straight in the minds particularly of younger readers.
It was impossible to do this in my usual narrative style and I therefore invented the fiction of a heroine through whom I could examine Bond from the other end of the gun barrel so to speak.
To make this heroine a credible figure and one who would be likely to come into Bond’s path, I had to explain her at considerable length and endeavour to make her worldly wise.
This I did by telling the story in her own words of her upbringing and love life which consisted of two incidents, both of which were of a strongly cautionary nature.
The trouble she then got into with the gangsters was of the normal American thriller variety.
Its verisimilitude and the language used were incidentally checked by a member of the University Library of Yale at his own request.
And, just to remove some further ‘heroism’ from Bond, he is depicted as making a consi
derable hash of his subsequent fight with the gangsters.
After the love scene with the heroine which Bond breaks off in the most cursory fashion, there follows the long homily from the chief detective warning the heroine and the readers that Bond himself is in fact no better than the gangsters. And on that note the book closes.
I haven’t bothered to explain my reasons for writing this book before and I only do so now because the experiment has obviously gone very much awry, and I am in general being criticised for doing almost the exact opposite of what I intended.
This being so, and though we may get more understanding reviews later, I would like this book of mine to have as short a life as possible, and the subject of this letter is to ask you to co-operate.
In particular I would like there to be no reprints after your present edition is exhausted, and I would ask that it not be offered to Pan Books through whom, presumably, it would reach a more junior audience than your hard cover edition.
This will mean considerable financial sacrifice by both of us and I must just ask you to accept your share of this loss in as friendly a spirit as you can muster.
Please don’t bother to reply immediately and perhaps we can talk the whole thing over when I see you after Easter, but I wanted to get this letter away to relieve some of the burden that is in my mind as a result of the book’s reception.
14
The Liebert Letters
In May 1961 Fleming received a letter from Herman W. Liebert,1 librarian at Yale University and a scholar on the works of Samuel Johnson. Having read Thunderball, Liebert was appalled by the language Fleming made his American characters use. Half the things they said simply made no sense in the US. He enclosed a long list of replacements for words like ‘sponge bag’, ‘damnably’, ‘gammy’, ‘arse-end’ and ‘chap’. He was particularly acerbic on the use of ‘by gum’. As he pointed out, ‘I don’t think an American has said this since the recent death of A. Lincoln.’ And what on earth was a ‘sixpenny sick’?
The Man with the Golden Typewriter Page 29
