TO R. K. NARAYAN
Eyre & Spottiswoode (Publishers) Ltd., 15 Bedford Street W.C.2
| [31 October? 1944]
Dear Narayan,
I am delighted to welcome you as an author to Eyre & Spottiswoode, and I very much enjoyed reading your new book. I think Pollinger has already written to you saying that I want to change the title to ‘The English Teacher’. The present title sounds in English ears rather sentimental and gives a wrong idea of the book.
We are taking over the cheap rights of ‘Swami and Friends’ and ‘The Bachelor of Arts’ and I hope that when the paper situation is eased after the war we shall be able to put these back into print.
It seems a very long time since I heard from you and I hope that you can spare the time one day to let me know how you are. I still hope when all this foolishness is over to see you one day in England.
Yours ever
Graham Greene
TO EVELYN WAUGH
15 Bedford Street | W.C.1 [January 1945]
Dear Evelyn,
Just a line which please don’t bother to answer – to say how immensely I enjoyed Brideshead. I liked it even more than Work in Progress which was my favourite hitherto, & I find it grows in memory.
Yours,
Graham
Graham later wrote: ‘… I, for one, had been inclined to dismiss Brideshead Revisited. When he had written to me [27 March 1950] that the only excuse for it was Nissen huts and spam and the blackout I had accepted that criticism – until the other day when I reread all his books, and to my astonishment joined the ranks of those who find Brideshead his best, even though it is his most romantic.’22
TO VIVIEN GREENE
Eyre & Spottiswoode | 14, 15, 16 Bedford Street| Strand,
London, W.C.2 | Tuesday [20 March 1945]
[…]
Had a grim evening with the Peakes. I’ll tell you about that and their persecution by a dotty old widow of an oldtime painter. I should hate to live in Chelsea. So dirty and the real fume of creepy evil. On Sunday I was lying late in bed and there was a huge crash, followed by a terrific rumble and the sound of glass going. The loudest I’ve heard. From bed I could see a pillar of smoke go up above the roofs. Actually it was quite a long way away and a very lucky rocket. Just inside Hyde Park at Marble Arch where the tub thumpers would have been later in the day. I went and looked. The blast had missed the Arch and swept though the poor old Regal which was on the point of reopening after being flybombed and knocked out the windows in the Cumberland. American soldiers fat with their huge meat ration stood around grinning and taking photos (which we are not allowed to do). I wandered around making anti-American cracks!
[…]
Graham
TO GEORGE ORWELL
Graham devoted considerable effort to The Century Library, his firm’s modern reprint series. Here he comments on George Orwell’s suggestions for the series.
Eyre & Spottiswoode (Publishers) Limited | 27th August 1945
Dear Orwell,
Forgive the delay in replying to your letter, but I have been away for a long weekend.
I am glad you have managed to get hold of the Merrick books and as soon as you let me know which you think we should include in the Century Library I will get on to the publishers. There will be no need whatever to keep the Introduction which was supplied in the collected edition.23
I am delighted to have suggestions from you for other books as I have very little time for seeking around myself. I will have a look at Barry Pain.24 I read two W. L. Georges recently and they were pretty poor stuff, but I will find a copy of Caliban.25 I should have thought that Guy Boothby26 was dropping a little too low – much lower than Richard Marsh who, I do think, can be very good indeed. I am not sure when The Beetle was published but I think it was before the century.27 However, there are several Marshes published later and I certainly agree we ought to have one.
Hornung’s books, other than Raffles have generally struck me as too homosexually sentimental. I tried the other day The Camera Fiend and Witching Hill, both of which I had liked as a boy, but they ring no bells at all now.28
Do give me a ring when you get back from your holiday and let us have lunch together.
Yours,
Graham Greene
TO JOHN BETJEMAN
As a publisher, Greene had to promote his firm’s books with reviewers, including Betjeman, who was then reviewing for the left-wing Daily Herald.
Eyre & Spottiswoode (Publishers) | 22nd August, 1946.
Dear John,
I am not going to pretend that you will like, from a literary point of view, this book I am sending you, The River Road by Mrs. Parkinson Keyes, but I think it may amuse you as a curious example of popular favour. For about ten years now, Mrs. Parkinson Keyes’ books have been selling in enormous quantities. In fact we cannot print enough to meet the demand. I do not think any of us feels able to explain this odd popularity. She does not tell an exciting story, the sexual element is there but is not really very pronounced and she gives in vast detail the every-day life of America. From this book, for example, one could almost learn how to run a sugar plantation and yet, as I say, she sells in a way that even Priestley would envy. I would not, in the ordinary course of events, send you this book but it occurred to me that during the ‘Silly Season’ you might be amused to do something on the ‘Popular Novel’!
Yours ever,
Graham
TO JOHN BOULTING
John Boulting (1913–85) and his twin brother Roy (1913–2001) founded Charter Film Productions in 1937. Working from a script by Greene and Terence Rattigan (1911–77), John Boulting directed Richard Attenborough in Brighton Rock (1947).
18th September, 1946
Dear John,
I have finished reading through Terence Rattigan’s outline treatment of Brighton Rock, and I agree with you that it provides a good skeleton to work on. There is no point in criticising small details of dialogue or scene at this stage, and I think my only major criticisms are as follows: –
(1) I think the boy Pinkie has got to be established as the solitary central figure of the film, and we must to some extent reduce the importance of Ida so as to throw him in solitary relief.
(2) This arises partly out of (1) and partly out of what you may consider a personal fad. I never feel that films that start on long shots are satisfactory. I feel the American practice of nearly always starting on close-up is much more imaginative. How often one has seen an English film which begins with a long shot of a holiday resort: to my mind the opening shot suggested here would stamp the film unmistakably as pre-war British. My own rough idea of the opening of the film is to present by a succession of close-ups the atmosphere of Brighton waking up for Whit Monday – curtains being raised or shutters drawn back in the shops: the day’s newspaper poster featuring Kolley Kibber being squeezed under the wire framework of a poster board: the fun cars on the pier being polished: all the shots close-up or semi close-up and culminating in a close-up of the boy spread-eagled in his clothes on the brass bedstead: entrance of Dallow: a newspaper spread in front of the boy’s eyes by Dallow with the headlines about Kolley Kibber: the boy sitting up in bed: cut stop. I express this very roughly and loosely but perhaps you will see the kind of tempo I feel the film should begin on. In this way the boy is established before Hale who is after all a minor character disposed of very quickly.
(3) I am very pleased at the way in which Rattigan has tried to keep the central theme of the book: that is to say, the difference between Ida who lives in a natural world where morality is based on Right and Wrong, and the boy and Rose who move in a supernatural world concerned with good and evil, but I feel this is sometimes a little over-emphasised (a small example is the play on the name of the horse Satan Colt), and in a more important place under-emphasised – that is to say I think somehow we ought to insert in the film after Pinkie’s death the notion expressed in the book by the anonymous priest in the confessional of ‘the appalling strang
eness of the mercy of God’.
(4) I like Rattigan’s idea of the murder in the Fun Fair train, but it does make the coroner’s verdict rather inexplicable.
(5) I like his idea of making Corkery into a bookmaker. This certainly tightens up the story.
(6) A last and really not very major point is that one has lost any point to the title. The title of the book had two significances: first, the murder of Hale took place in one of the small booths underneath the pier where Brighton Rock is sold, and secondly, a point we can easily introduce into the later treatment, the passage where the boy speaks of himself as knowing nothing but Brighton and the comparison with Brighton Rock which, wherever you bite it, still leaves the name of the place showing.
[…]
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
Catherine Walston (née Crompton) was the American wife of the wealthy Labour MP Harry Walston (later Lord Walston). Although a stranger, she asked Graham to serve as her godfaher, since his books had influenced her decision to become a Catholic. Wihin a few months they had embarked on a serious affair that continued, with interruptions, for more than a decade. It is commonly said that she is the ‘original’ of the saintly and promiscuous Sarah in The End of the Affair. This is largely true, but not entirely so. Greene chose to set the novel in the war years and so, to some degree, was drawing on his relationship with Dorothy Glover, conducted at times under the bombardment. Sarah is much more passive than either Glover or Walston. In any event, the difference between the novel and the lives that inspired it is considerable.
Eyre & Spottiswoode [25 September 1946]
Dear Mrs. Walston,
This is a shockingly belated note of congratulation & best wishes. I gave my secretary a telegram to send, but in the rush of work (I had been away on the Continent for a fortnight) she never sent it! I feel I am a most neglectful god-father! I haven’t even sent you a silver mug or a spoon to bite.
I heard all about the breakfast from Vivien. I wish I’d been there. Again all my wishes for the future.
Yours,
Graham Greene
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
Eyre & Spottiswoode [c. October 1946]
Dear Catherine, I wrote off the other day – to a wrong address apparently, in Ireland – explaining my apparent chilling silence on the day of your reception, & now my sense of guilt is increased by your letter! However what would a novelist do without a sense of guilt?
I think the whole business of your becoming a Catholic was extraordinarily courageous – I became one before I had any ties.
How lovely the West of Ireland sounds. Do come & tell us about it in Oxford when you get back.
Yours,
Graham Greene
TO EVELYN WAUGH
Eyre & Spottiswoode | 14, 15, 16 Bedford Street| Strand,
London, W.C.2 [1947]
Dear Evelyn,
I was delighted & flattered by your letter. The sweetest form of praise comes from those one admires.
Who on earth told you I was going to Kenya? It was probably a half-hearted melancholy joke. I shall stay & be atomised [?] quietly with all home comforts. I should like to compromise & go to Ireland because I like the Irish & approve so strongly of their recent neutrality, but Vivien has an anti-Irish phobia, so I can never do that. We are looking for a Regency house – or Georgian, with a walled garden & a paddock to keep a pony in, & costing not more than £5000 – but that seems hardly likely to come our way.
Do let us see you before you go to Ireland.
Yours ever,
Graham
TO CATHERINE WALSTON (POSTCARD)
[Amsterdam | 3 March 1947]
I love onion sandwiches.
G.
Bendrix writes in The End of the Affair (44): ‘Is it possible to fall in love over a dish of onions? It seems improbable and yet I could swear it was just then that I fell in love. It wasn’t, of course, simply the onions – it was that sudden sense of an individual woman, of a frankness that was so often later to make me happy and miserable. I put my hand under the cloth and laid it on her knee, and her hand came down and held mine in place.’
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
Monday [5 May 1947]
You won’t be able to read this so I can put what I like!
I missed you so much on Sunday. Mass wasn’t the same at all. We went to 12 o’clock at St. Patrick’s, Soho, & had a drink afterwards at the Salisbury in St. Martin’s Lane. I just missed you all the time & felt depressed & restless. A bit of a row blew up before I left – she said I had changed so much in Ireland,29 but she still believes that it’s simply that I’ve come under influence of a pious convert! Tried to ring you from Charing Cross.
Got to sleep by reading about 1 still depressed, but woke up blissfully happy. You had been with me very vividly saying, ‘I like your sexy smell’ – & of course I had a sexy smell! It had been one of those nights!
Then there was a line from you (how beautiful your handwriting is), & then I got you on the telephone. Result I feel cheerful & I’ve written 1000 words! And you love me – you do you know. And I see you on Thursday.
[…]
TO RAYMOND GREENE
16th May, 1947 Dear Raymond,
Many thanks for your most useful letter. I begin to see how my character30 is going to commit suicide now. I should imagine that a man posing as having angina would have every reason to suffer from insomnia.
I should imagine, too, that as you have to bury somebody within a few hours in Sierra Leone (there is always an awful scramble to get a coffin in time) they would not bother about a post mortem on somebody known to be suffering from angina.
I expect to be down at Oxford by Whitsun and I hope we shall meet some time after that.
Yours,
Graham
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
15 Beaumont Street | Oxford [29 May 1947]
O hell! darling. Achill looks like being the only good thing in 1947. One feels like investigating one’s policies. Perhaps the ban on killing oneself is only during the first three years of a policy. Something whispers the idea to me anyway. At the moment I’m feeling rather like a cornered rat (rat is probably the right word). Something else happened this morning. I’ll tell you about it when I see you. One would laugh if it was a book. I ought to write funny books. Life is really too horribly funny, but unless one’s an outsider looking on, it’s all such a bore.
Now about Thriplow.31 Vivien thoroughly fed up with the whole idea, & finally calmed & smoothed by having part of her own way – that is to say I can’t come till Friday & then have to be back Tuesday night. Any good? and how shall I get to you? Can you pick me up at Cambridge – or possibly Bletchley which is where one is delayed for hours? Or would you be in town & I pick you up? In return for these four days I have clamped the handcuffs on my wrists & said that in future I shall be spending all my weekends at Oxford (except for emergencies). ‘Am I happy?’ The answer is definitely negative.
I loved seeing you – on Tuesday especially, but what the hell is the use? I rather hoped that I wouldn’t love seeing you.
I can’t live permanently in handcuffs, so I suppose either the handcuffs will go again, or I shall.32
Love,
Graham
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
Sir Alexander Korda produced The Fallen Idol (1948), based on Graham’s short story ‘The Basement Room’, and The Third Man (1949), and he introduced Graham to Carol Reed (1906–76), who directed both films. As a reviewer, Graham had praised Reed’s work lavishly, and despite annoyance over his handling of Our Man in Havana (1960), he always believed that Reed’s skills were nearly unrivalled.
15 Beaumont Street | Oxford | Tuesday 7.45 [10 June 1947]
I’ve been in town all day seeing Korda & Carol Reed (‘Odd Man Out’): they are buying a short story of mine called ‘The Basement Room’ & want me to work on it.33 Once I suppose I’d have been excited & pleased by all this (it means about £3000), but I feel dreary. Thank you
for the keys, darling, & for the letter. I think a lot of it is self-deception. (I think perhaps your love for me is too. I don’t know.) If I’m going to tell the whole truth to Vivien, what’s the good of keeping us back? Within 12 months a new line of deception would have developed. The whole subject must be a bore for you, & I think we’d better drop it – unless I take action when I’ll report what the end of the affair is for your interest. Well, my darling, you may as well have these letters. I think they are quite sensible. I expect this is the end. If it is you’ve given me the best morphia I’ve ever had. Thank you.
Thank God, anyway that there’s somebody I can’t hurt.
With love,
Graham
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
Eyre & Spottiswoode | Friday morning [27 June 1947]
You are in the air, Cafrin, & I’m – very much – on the earth. This is just a note to pursue you as quickly as possible to Achill & to remind you of three things – that I’m still terribly in love with you, that I miss you (your voice saying ‘good morning, Graham’ at tea time), & that I want you. I want to be filling the turf buckets for you & sitting next door working, hearing the clank of washing-up, & your whistle, & I want to help you make lunch. I am thirsty for orange juice at 3 in the morning. I want to see you in your pyjama top nursing the sod of the fire.
Now I pin a lot of hope on India. It might be a way of being with you for 3 months, & by God I’d get into your skin before that time was over.
I kiss you, my dear, here, here – & there.
Graham
Have I written a love letter?
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
15 Beaumont Street, | Oxford | Sunday [29 June 1947]
Graham Greene Page 17
