Graham Greene

by Richard Greene

  You would love this boat, a tiny version unpainted & decrepit of a Mississippi paddle steamer & very pretty. Apart from the crew with some wives & sweethearts – one very attractive – there is nobody on board but Père Georges, the captain, myself & Père Henri, a convalescent taking the trip for a rest, tall & cadaverous & a joker.12 I have taught them to play 421. I have the Bishop’s cabin which is quite roomy with a nostalgic photo of a church covered in snow over the bed. Yesterday we looked in at Flantria where there is an Englishman (ex-Indian army) in charge of the Lever palm estate. His little girl excited by an English voice stood on her head & was sick. He looked awful but turned out nice & intelligent: his wife very pretty & intelligent too. I may spend a night on the way back.

  Now we are on the way to Imbonga, where there is a leproserie some miles in the forest: very primitive: no doctor: looked after by Sisters. I probably shall spend two days there & then on for another 3 days to Wafanya for my third leproserie – then home to Yonda.

  You would love this boat, the river is narrowing now to less than half a mile, unchanging forest. Very restful. I’m reading The Roots of Heaven (the film is on in London) about a man who makes war on the side of the elephants in this – more or less – part of the world. It would have been a very good book if Conrad had never existed, but the echoes are too strong.13 I’ve also got: David Copperfield, Tawney’s new book, Business & Politics under James I, Belloc’s The Cruise of the Nona, & the first volume of a complete Casanova.

  Last night I had one of my awful dreams about you: jealousy. You told me you had slept with Douglas Jay14 & three other men since leaving home, & what right had I to be jealous anyway? In revenge I started making love to someone – not a bit like the person she was supposed to be – in bed in front of you. Then you became angry & the third person was amused & malicious. In the end we almost had made it up, & you said something profound about real love being always on the border of domesticity.

  Dear, dear, dear.

  We got to Imbonga before dark. Tomorrow a four mile walk each way to the leproserie. I’m in better condition than for a long time. If you were an X ray, you wouldn’t recognise my liver – 2 glasses of whisky at most after sundown, otherwise soda water. And I brought 10 bottles of whisky on this trip!

  Feb. 18. 7.30 a.m.

  We had two nights at Imbonga, & the first morning I walked over ten miles – good way in this climate. A far more primitive leproserie than Yonda, & I was glad to see around it alone without any white people. A nice leper brought me back through the forest carrying a dish of eggs – bad lesions on the face & one eye nearly gone, but chattered cheerfully in French. In spite of modern drugs there are still some horrors: an old man cheerily waving goodbye with hands & feet, but without fingers or toes. Half one hut was in complete darkness – one could just make out an enamel pot. My black companion called & one heard movements. Presently an old woman crawled into the half light like a dog out of a kennel – no fingers or toes or eyes of course & she couldn’t even raise her head.

  It was odd last night 500 kilometres in the bush hearing of the disturbances at Brazzaville. One rather feels the end of European Africa is coming quickly. A lot of the people in Coquilhatville where there are about 300 whites are very nervous & sleep with guns beside them, & that’s the chief danger, that somebody in a panic will make an incident. Some of them are far more nervous than the lonely settlers were at the time of Mau Mau in Kenya. The French, after Algérie & Indo-China, a little laugh at them.

  We should get to Wafanya tomorrow, stay a few days & then start back towards Paris & you. The current will be with us then & we’ll move quicker.

  […]

  3 p.m.

  It really is too hot. The river’s narrowed from about a mile & a half to fifty yards & there’s no air at all. And of course we eat roast meat & lots of boiled potatoes!

  5 p.m.

  Started rereading David Copperfield. My goodness, the first two chapters are perfect. I don’t believe there’s been anything better in the novel – & that includes Proust & Tolstoy. One dreads the moment of failure, for Dickens always sooner or later fails.

  Fr. Georges, the captain, sits stringing a rosary, & Fr. Henri plays Patience. He & I will have our whisky in an hour & then I shall be beaten at 421. Rather like the University of Notre Dame at football, their daily communions seem to ensure their victory at dice.

  Feb. 19

  We’ve been going up the river now for a week & it’s about enough! We should arrive at journey’s end tonight – 8 days. A lot of tsetse flies, but few white people get sleeping sickness.

  […]

  The frontier has been closed between Leopoldville & Brazzaville on the other side of the Congo River because of the troubles, & unless it’s opened again by March 5 I’ll have to find a different route to Douala or leave it out & come to Paris Sabena via Rome. But I’ll telegraph any change & I’ll aim to keep to March 13 unless I hear from you.

  Père Georges has just shot a beautiful fishing eagle. He always shoots a sitting target & even then it’s only winged, so one of the crew swims ashore & finishes it off with the branch of a tree.

  […]

  Feb. 21

  So encouraged because I got through all I wanted & gained a day. We started back (for Paris!) after lunch – but then we hit a snag in the river, damaged the steering. We are tied up in the forest & Lord knows whether the thing can be mended. Frustrating! Too hot to write. All the more frustrating because I had a most erotic dream of you last night when I fell asleep in the middle of a tropical storm.

  2 hours later – they’ve managed to get the rudder on shore & now they have to build a fire to bend it. No chance of getting on tonight.

  Feb. 22. Sunday

  They got the rudder straightened & on again – with a great deal of singing – just by dark. I was never so hot in my life as yesterday & it was wonderful when dark came, in spite of the big ‘vampire’ bats creaking away over the forest. This morning off again at 6 – towards Paris & you. At Mass I noticed that one of the crew, who had a prayer book, had a holy picture, when he was reading – but when I looked closer it was Tom Mix or another in a big cowboy hat!

  […]

  9.15 a.m. It’s too dark to write. There’s going to be one hell of a storm in a few minutes.

  There was!

  Oh, how tired one gets of trying to speak French. Mine gets worse & worse. All the same I’m very well. Only I have to take a sleeping pill every night because otherwise it’s too hot to sleep. For a holiday I’d prefer Tahiti.

  Even in this remote spot one has to sign books. A young planter came down to the shore with a cargo of oil & brought with him a copy of The Power & the G.! I don’t a bit mind signing in these remote places. He had had his first holiday in Europe after 12 years in the Congo & had visited Capri.

  Feb. 23

  We are making good time & I should be back in Yonda the day after tomorrow: tomorrow Imbonga. The day after Flandria where I’m spending the night with the English plantation manager & getting a lift next day by car.

  Bad night last night owing to a cold, but in the middle of the night I woke up & wrote down the last sentences of the new novel. I wonder if I’ll ever get that far. (I’ve abandoned four in my time).

  […]

  TO NORA GREENE

  Upon hearing of his mother’s death, Graham immediately wrote to his aged aunt who had been dependent on her and indirectly upon him.

  Hotels St James & D’Albany | Paris | Monday [21 September 1959] 10.30 p.m.

  Dearest Aunt Nono,

  I have just been speaking to Raymond on the phone. I feel that this is far worse for you than for Mumma’s children because it creates a greater gap for you. Perhaps as a Catholic I am more ‘cold-blooded’ because I believe there is a future & that she is probably happier at this moment than any of us. I’m glad that death came gently.

  What I want to say now is hard to phrase. I want to be of any help I can & I want you to fee
l that anything I was able to do for Mumma at the end, I would like to transfer to you. Please between us of the School House days, between the favourite aunt & the most difficult nephew, don’t let’s have any shyness. I’ve told Raymond to speak to you about this. All of us feel an enormous debt of gratitude to you in these years – particularly the years since her accident. I know how much she depended on you & worried about you, so you must let me help.

  […]

  So much love,

  Graham

  TO LUCY CAROLINE GREENE

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1., | 26th October 1959

  Dearest Carol,

  I’ve just come back from my walk with Francis. We did about sixty miles, but the Roman Wall where we started in Carlisle was the worst end and most of the time it was a case of trying to identify which farm track was the wall or which pile of stones. We were also in deadly fear most of the time of bulls and bullocks and tore our clothes over barbed wire. In the end it rained so hard that we gave up altogether about two miles from where the wall became really interesting. Wet through, with blistered feet and Francis having lost his brief case containing his pyjamas, washing things and my whiskey flask, we got into a hired taxi and drove to the nearest comfortable inn. However it was fun in a way.

  […]

  TO MARIE BICHE

  Biche reported that a man named ‘Peters or something similar’ had approached a young woman at the Hotel Prince de Galles in Paris and offered her a job as secretary to his friend and partner Graham Greene. Thinking this too good to be true, the young woman, who worked in a bookshop, checked first with Greene’s French publisher, Robert Laffont, and then with Biche, who confirmed that it had nothing to do with the real Graham Greene. Biche suggested she keep an appointment with the man and find out more, but she refused in the belief that she was being scouted by a ‘traite des blanches’ gang. Greene believed he had at least one impersonator and longed to catch up with him.15

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 18th December 1959

  PERSONAL

  Dear Marie,

  What a wonderful story and how I wish I had been in Paris to go along with your attractive young Frenchwoman. It would have been a wonderful scene. I narrowly missed the other Graham Greene once in Rome as I think you know and of course there was the character who was blackmailed in Paris and the gentleman who was in prison in Assam. Presumably this is the same character. I can’t help feeling when he starts trying to get hold of secretaries that the Police ought to be informed, but I leave that to you. It’s a curious coincidence that when I was on his track in Rome he was staying at the George the Vth. It might be worth enquiring whether Mr. Peters is staying there. Anyway I think you ought to introduce me to the heroine one day in Paris!

  […]

  TO GILLIAN SUTRO (POSTCARD)

  [Reno, Nevada] | Feb 4 [1960]

  Hope to be with you in less than a fortnight.

  Love to both,

  G

  Won our night’s lodging on the slot machines.

  TO MICHEL LECHAT

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 23rd March 1960

  Dear Michel,

  I wonder if you are back from Abyssinia yet. I am struggling towards the end of my novel which is now called A Burnt Out Case and I am wondering if I don’t as I am inclined to do put it in the fire whether you would allow me to dedicate it to you as a poor return for all your kindness. I have another request to make. If I sent you a roneo’d copy of the book in due course with pages turned down wherever there was some reference to leprosy do you think you could glance at these and correct any mistakes. Don’t hesitate to say that you are far too busy because I know what a burden this could be.

  If you will allow me to dedicate the book to you I shall do it in a form of a letter which will enable me to point out that the book is in no way a picture of one leproserie and that none of the characters are those of living people.

  My affectionate regards to you both,

  Graham

  TO LUCY CAROLINE GREENE

  C.6 Albany, | London, W. I. | April 18 [1960]

  Dearest Carol,

  Thank you so much for your delightful Easter card. I’m afraid I can’t come to you because I came back from Moscow awfully ill & the same night was put on a stretcher & carted by ambulance to hospital. Pneumonia! I’m still there after two weeks, but I’m leaving tomorrow. This is TOP SECRET. Mummy & Francis don’t know as yet. I didn’t want people to worry & I felt too tired for visits, so I kept the affair secret. Only about four people got to know. I feel very silly because I’m never ill.

  Of course it rather spoilt Moscow because I was feeling pretty poorly. However I went to the Bolshoi & to the Circus & to The Quiet American (very bad, & speeches & I had to make a speech from the stage). I’ve become a capitalist there & opened a bank account! Guy Burgess rang me up & came & had a drink my last night, & I had supper in a Russian home for the first time – quite quietly en famille which made me feel quite accepted. I kept going on vodka & everybody was very kind. I only did the public things (Bolshoi, Circus & Brit Embassy with the party).

  I must stop now because I’m rather tired. Off to Italy on May 1 where I hope to feel better.

  Lots of love,

  Daddy.

  TO EVELYN WAUGH

  C.6 Albany, | London, W. 1. | 22nd June 1960

  Dear Evelyn,

  Thank you so much for your letter and telegram. I think you are wise not to come to the sale but I can’t resist it. I admit that I shall be a little piqued if Nancy Mitford’s manuscript or a poem written out by Mr. Betjeman fetch more than mine!16

  I also looked for you in the theatre the other night. I waited till the lights went on watching approximately a spot where I had seen you last but couldn’t see you at all. I then went out and searched the pavements but I expect you had already gone. I agree with you about the second act – I’d really enjoyed the first, but when it turned serious the play went all to pieces. I couldn’t understand all this business about the heroic little man that the papers spoke of– he was only heroic after he had done his best to turn into a rhinoceros and failed.17

  I long to come down and see you. I’ve got into an awful jam with commitments because I went to hospital for two weeks with a pneumonia that I caught in Moscow and somehow those two weeks have not yet been caught up. I’ve also got to go back into hospital next month for a check up but would some time in August be a possibility? I know you wouldn’t mind if I brought a film script of The Living Room to work on.

  Yours ever

  Graham

  TO AUBERON WAUGH

  The twenty-year-old Auberon Waugh’s (1939–2001) first novel The Foxglove Saga appeared in the summer of 1960.

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | [July 1960]

  Dear Auberon,

  I hope my long friendship with your Father allows me to call you that. I have been reading your book in hospital – by a strange coincidence, I was, like Father Thomas, about to be given a bronchoscopy although I did not have an enema and the result was more satisfactory. I got to that bit half an hour before my sedative, so at that stage I was reading the book with mixed feelings.

  Now my feelings are not mixed at all. Only once this fifty years, I think, has there been a first night like this – and that too was in the Waugh family. It is superb, your book, in its fun and deceptive ease. Lady Foxglove and Stoat are magnificent; even the baby Tarquin.

  You are going to suffer a lot of irritation when every hack reviewer compares you to Evelyn, but The Foxglove Saga has only one parent and stands magnificently alone.

  A thousand congratulations.

  Graham Greene

  TO LUCY CAROLINE GREENE (LATER BOURGET)

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1 | Jan. 3 [1961]

  Dearest Lucy – I mean Carol,

  I was so overjoyed at your news & the fact that you sounded so happy – it has quite made my new year. I thought John [sic] sounded very nice too.

  I long for details. What
does he do in oil? Will you have to find a house or an apartment? How old is he – rumour says 35 which sounds ideal? A photograph please. Mummy will be asking you all the necessary questions about the wedding. Full name please for an announcement in The Times. Any ideas for wedding presents? Do I, oh horror, have to get myself tails & a top hat? (I hope it’s not the Canadian custom) What are you wearing? Can you find what you want in Calgary? Are you going to get the bishop? I shall come out on my way to Japan so let me know dates as soon as possible. How sad that Granny isn’t alive to hear – she’d have been so excited.

  […]

  Lucy Caroline Greene married Jean Bourget on 29 April 1961. They divorced in 1970.

  TO EVELYN WAUGH

  Waugh was distressed by A Burnt-Out Case, which, on the heels of the bleak short story ‘A Visit to Morin’, suggested that Greene was finished as a Catholic. The book also struck Waugh as technically deficient, repeating the main character’s predicament three times, once ‘painfully’ in a fairy story. He regarded Deo Gratia’s attempted escape as poorly handled and the death of Querry as ‘absurdly melodramatic’. On the whole, he thought Greene’s skills were ‘fading’.18 He refused to review it and apologised for his own Rycker-like behaviour in promoting Greene as a Catholic author.19

  C.6 Albany, | London, W. 1 | 4th January 1961

  Dear Evelyn,

  A typewritten letter always looks so formal, but I know you can’t read my handwriting. I’m very sorry to hear that you won’t be reviewing A Burnt-Out Case (I’m afraid I committed the indiscretion of suggesting that you should do so to Father Caraman),20 but I quite understand your feelings in the matter. I was all the more anxious that you should review the book because I realize it will cause a certain amount of hostility in the Catholic press and, although I expected severe criticism from you, I felt sure that it would be at least founded on genuine unemotional principles. Whatever Querry may have felt about his Catholic critics, I have certainly not felt at any time about you. I have always found our points of disagreement – as in the case of The Heart of the Matter – refreshing and enlightening and miles away from the suburbia of The Catholic Herald or The Universe. I do really assure you that never once have you behaved like Rycker!