Graham Greene

by Richard Greene

  With a writer of your genius and insight I certainly would not attempt to hide behind the time-old gag that an author can never be identified with his characters. Of course in some of Querry’s reactions there are reactions of mine, just as in some of Fowler’s reactions in The Quiet American there were reactions of mine. I suppose the points where an author is in agreement with his character lend what force or warmth there is to the expression. At the same time I think one can say that the parallel must not be drawn all down the line and not necessarily to the conclusion of the line. Fowler, I hope, was a more jealous man than I am, and Querry, I fear, was a better man than I am. I wanted to give expression to various states or moods of belief and unbelief. The doctor, whom I like best as a realized character, represents a settled and easy atheism; the Father Superior a settled and easy belief (I use ‘easy’ as a term of praise and not as a term of reproach); Father Thomas an unsettled form of belief and Querry an unsettled form of disbelief. One could probably dig a little of the author also out of the doctor and Father Thomas!

  Anyway whatever the rights and wrongs of this book I do want you to believe that never for a moment have I felt other than pleasure or an interested dismay at your criticisms and never for a moment anything other than affection for yourself. I do hope that we can meet some time in the not too distant future. I heard rumours of your presence in London the other day which happened to coincide with one of my rare presences. I wish you would ring me up when you do come to town, but I know your hatred of the telephone.

  Yours with deepest affection,

  Graham

  Waugh found this letter pretentious and flimsy. On 5 January 1961 he wrote that he was not so dotty as to think Rycker only a portrait of himself, but that it was a caricature of a number of Graham’s Catholic admirers including himself who had failed to recognise the broad hints that he had now amplified into ‘a plain repudiation’ of faith. He said that he found the notion of an easy and settled atheism meaningless since an atheist denied the central purpose of his life – to love and serve God. Graham would notencounter hostility from Catholics so much as regrets for a ‘Lost Leader’: ‘God forbid I should pry into the secrets of your soul. It is simply your public performance which grieves me.’21

  TO EVELYN WAUGH

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

  My dear Evelyn,

  This is rapidly becoming a Claudel–Gide correspondence!22 I think you have carried your identification in this novel much too far. Must a Catholic be forbidden to paint the portrait of a lapsed Catholic? Undoubtedly if there is any realism in the character it must come from the author experiencing some of the same moods as Querry but surely, not necessarily, with the same intensity; I hope you don’t attribute to me Querry’s suicided mistress! I suppose, if one chose to draw the character of an atom-scientist traitor, there would be an element in one’s own character which would make the description of his motives plausible, but I’m sure that you wouldn’t accuse me, as Dame Rebecca West did both of us, of having a treasonable inclination.23 I suggest that if you read the book again you will find in the dialogue between the doctor and Querry at the end the suggestion that Querry’s lack of faith was a very superficial one – far more superficial than the doctor’s atheism. If people are so impetuous as to regard this book as a recantation of faith, I cannot help it. Perhaps they will be surprised to see me at Mass.

  What I have disliked in some Catholic criticism of my work, particularly some of the books which have been written about it in France, is the confusion between the functions of a novelist and the functions of a moral teacher or theologian. I prefer the statement of Newman. ‘I say, from the nature of the case, if Literature is to be made a study of human nature, you cannot have a Christian Literature. It is a contradiction in terms to attempt a sinless Literature of sinful man. You may gather together something very great and high, something higher than any Literature ever was; and when you have done so, you will find that it is not Literature at all.’

  I will match you quotations from Browning with Bishop Blougram:

  All we have gained then by our unbelief

  Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,

  For one of faith diversified by doubt:

  We called the chess board white – we call it black.

  Ever affectionately,

  Graham

  The quotations from Newman and Browning take Greene back to his exchange with Bowen and Pritchett (see pp. 147–58). However, Waugh seems to have made a deep impression on Greene, who wondered if he had gone too far in the expression of doubt.

  TO JOSEPH MACLEOD

  A poet and playwright, Joseph Macleod (pseud. Adam Drinan) (1903–84) was Greene’s closest friend at university. He qualified as a barrister, but pursued careers in radio, film and theatre. Eventually, he settled in Florence.

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 6th February 1961

  Dear Joseph,

  I’ve just come back to England for a couple of nights from France and found your night letter telegram. How it brought back the dayswhen you would leave in my room a new poem for the Oxford Outlook. Even your writing hasn’t changed very much. I’m proud and flattered after all these years to receive another even though I have no paper to publish it in.

  Here I am talking on without even congratulating you and your wife on your son, but you had buried the news quite a number of lines down in the poem.24 Did I really make a ground plan for the future one day in the meadows?! I am glad I don’t remember, for how awful it would be to find it fulfilled.

  I have put the night letter poem into my copy of the Ecliptic25 which has survived all these years and the blitz.

  Affectionately,

  Graham

  TO CATHERINE WALSTON

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1 | Feb.13 [1961] | 9.30 p.m.

  Dearest Catherine,

  The last two days I’ve been missing you more than usual – perhaps it’s just the melancholy that comes from working over & over again on that stale subject, The Living Room, to satisfy Rex Harrison, but I don’t think so.26 Apart from loving you as I’ve never loved another human being, it’s not really apart from that, you are the only person I can talk to – except for gossip or work. Tonight I’m very aware of how disorganized I am – but I feel as though I’ve come to the end of a long rope with A Burnt-Out Case & that I’ll probably never succeed in getting any further from the Church. It’s like, when one was younger, taking a long walk in the country & at a certain tree or a certain gate or the top of one more hill one stopped & thought ‘Now I must start returning home.’ One probably went on another mile to another hill or another tree, but all the same …

  TO THOMAS ROE

  Thomas Roe (b. 1917) was a solicitor and tax consultant with Mafia connections, who swindled Greene, Noël Coward and Charlie Chaplin. On his advice, Greene and Heinemann entered a deal with Penguin for paperback rights in ten of his novels, bringing Greene an advance of £33,750. This was to be paid into Roe’s company, Co-Productions Roturman S.A., which would, in turn, agree to pay Greene an annuity, then transfer both rights and obligations to Verdant S.A., Greene’s holding company in Switzerland. The object of the transaction, which came to involve more and more offshore companies, was to allow Greene to escape at least surtax and perhaps other tax obligations.27 When Roe’s operation came to the attention of the authorities, Greene found himself in a dispute with the Inland Revenue, which ended in his becoming a tax exile from 1 January 1966.

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 28th September 1961

  Dear Tom,

  I have now spoken to Laurence Pollinger and to Frere and there seems no reason at all against my selling to Roturman’s my paperback rights on the basis which we discussed, i.e., that I should receive in effect a pension beginning at the age of 60 in October 1964 of £1,500 a year for 15 years payable to myself or in the event of my death to my next of kin or anyone to whom I assigned the sum in my will. Perhaps now you would make a contract with m
e on those terms.

  Yours ever,

  Graham

  TO FLANN O’BRIEN

  Flann O’Brien was the most famous of the pseudonyms of Brian O’Nolan (1911–66), an Irish novelist and journalist renowned for his prose, his wit and his consumption of whiskey.

  25th October 1961

  Dear Mr. O’Brien

  I was delighted this morning to receive a copy of The Hard Life from your publishers and to find it dedicated to me. I’m a proud man! At Swim Two Birds28 has remained to my mind ever since it first appeared one of the best books of our century. But my God what a long time it has been waiting for the next.

  Yours

  Graham Greene

  TO EVELYN WAUGH

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 27th October 1961

  Dear Evelyn,

  I wish I could come with you to British Guiana29 – it would really be a most rewarding experience. Would we remain friends at the end of it? It would be worth the risk if I were free to go, but now I have promised to remain in Europe this winter.

  Thank you so much for your extremely generous review in The Spectator. I expect you saw that Miss Macaulay wrote in her letter that we always praised each other in writing.30 I think I once reviewed a book of yours – Campion – and that well, but I can’t remember any other review, oh yes, Knox! and as for you you have never hesitated to speak your mind, thank God, which makes the notice in The Spectator the more gratifying.

  […]

  Love,

  Graham

  Waugh’s review of In Search of a Character (Spectator, 27 October 1961) is a masterly mingling of kindness and correction. He praises Greene lavishly and draws attention to how expertly he created the setting for A Burnt-Out Case but does not praise the novel otherwise. He suggests that there is no spiritual state analogous to that of a burnt-out case of leprosy. At the end, he expresses the hope that Greene has ended ‘his long exploration of the fever-country on the unmapped borders of superstition and apostasy’ and that he is about to enter a serene and creative maturity.

  TO ZOË RICHMOND

  An important figure from his youth, Zoë Richmond was the wife of Kenneth Richmond, who had psychoanalysed Graham in 1921.

  13th November 1961

  Dear Zoë,

  How nice after all these years to hear from you. Terrible to think that it must be more than 40 years ago that you sheltered an unhappy schoolboy in your house! My stay with you and Kenneth remains among my happiest memories.

  I was very interested to hear of Nigel’s book which I will try to get hold of. I don’t remember him, but only your two daughters whom I used to look after on Sunday evenings when you and Kenneth went to a rather strange church near Lancaster Gate. Nigel must have been born just after I left you.

  All good wishes

  Yours sincerely,

  Graham

  TO RALPH WRIGHT, OSB

  A poet and literary scholar, this Benedictine monk, trained at Ampleforth Abbey but transferred to the St Louis Abbey in Missouri, detected hope at the end of A Burnt-Out Case. Greene’s response seems a coda on his exchange with Evelyn Waugh.

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 30th January 1962

  Dear Brother Ralph,

  Thank you very much indeed for your long and perceptive letter. You have disinterred my intention – you notice that Querry even makes a joke at the last moment which is also a sign of returning health. However the first hundred and seventy four pages were not intended in any way as a debunking. One must remember that technically the book is written through the eyes of Querry and it is Querry’s irritation with the facile Father Thomas and the bogus Rycker. These two are intended as a contrast to the really selfless and practical work of the fathers in the mission. I think you would find that if these two characters had been left out the book would suddenly have become extraordinarily sentimental. On the one side Querry rediscovering a bit of life, on the other a group of noble priests. To make even their nobility plausible one has to put in the shadows. After all even the everyday life of a Catholic is haunted by the corruptio optimi.31

  I don’t know why, but this book was the hardest I have found to write and left me in a state of exhaustion which still rather continues. Perhaps one is getting a little old to procure one’s material the hard way. On the chance that it might interest you I am sending you a copy of the journal which I wrote in the Congo.

  Thank you again for your very kind letter.

  Yours sincerely,

  Graham Greene

  TO EVELYN WAUGH

  The critic F. R. Leavis (1895–1978) and the novelist C. P. Snow, later Lord Snow (1905–80), conducted a feud at Cambridge in early 1962 over Snow’s theories on the separation of scientific and literary cultures. Various

  writers signed a public protest on behalf of Snow. Waugh supposed that Cambridge’s award of an honorary doctorate to Greene was intended to purge the shame of the whole episode.32

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | March 26 [1962]

  Dear Evelyn,

  Thank you so much for your letter which pleased me at least as much as the degree; I also never saw it in the papers, but it never occurs to me to look at university news. I’m rather daunted by the thought of the actual day – the walk in procession with someone called Lefty Lewis,33 who is presumably a character out of Damon Runyon.

  The Snow–Leavis affair is rather like the Algerian War – no sympathy for either side, but I was rather horrified by the way Snow had improved on the Alroy Kear 34 technique. Only an Organization Man could have produced those pages of supporters.

  I hate being photographed, but Catherine says they are inevitable, so I’ll send you one. You & your family are always on my mantelpiece.

  Yours,

  Graham

  TO HUGH GREENE

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1.| 21st May 1962

  Dear Hugh,

  Having reached my present advanced age I began to think about my eventual burial and not wishing to be interred in some vast Catholic affair in the north of London it occurred to me to reserve a patch in Harston35 churchyard as there is no objection from the Catholic point of view or from the Church of England. I therefore communicated with Mr. de Candole the vicar to see whether I could buy a small portion near the other Greene’s and it may amuse you to see the difficulties in the way. I enclose a copy of his letter to me.36

  It seemed to me a little bit extreme to put him to all this trouble for myself alone and I asked Raymond whether he had any feeling on the matter and Raymond seems to be rather inclined to be buried himself also in Harston – that I suppose includes Eleanor! Have you any views on the point? If we are all going to be buried there it will need more than a few feet of the vicarage garden, but on the other hand I would have less scruples in pressing the vicar, although as you see he is perfectly cooperative. One just wants to have a vague idea of the number of corpses or rather corpse space required. I don’t like the idea of a kerb, even a temporary kerb, and I thought of suggesting that a memorial stone could already be set up minus the dates, but I feel that Mr. de Candole would feel that that suggestion was frivolous. I told him that I would be quite prepared to pay all legal expenses.

  Love,

  Graham

  It is not surprising that the author of A Burnt-Out Case considered erecting his own tombstone, but he lived another three decades and was buried in Corseaux, Switzerland.

  TO A. S. FRERE,

  Short of capital, William Heinemann Ltd was bought by Thomas Tilling Ltd, of which Frere’s friend Lionel Fraser, himself a former chairman of

  Heinemann, was the head. After seventeen years as chairman, Frere was promoted to president and so made irrelevant to the daily operations of the firm.

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 16th October, 1962

  Dear Frere,

  I want to write to you to explain why I have, after a great deal of thought, come to a decision to leave Heinemann’s. You have been my publisher for more than thirty years and my gre
atest friend for close on twenty years, and I owe you an explanation.

  From the time the war ended until recently I have always had the sense that I was published by a friend who took a personal interest in my work. It is to you I owe the publication of my uniform edition; with each new book we have together discussed the problems of production and publication, and it isn’t easy, therefore, for me to abandon all the past and to go with future books into an unfamiliar region. I want you to know the circumstances which arose last year and determined my decision.

  An arrangement was discussed with Heinemann’s and accepted in principle one Sunday afternoon in I forget what month by your Chairman Lionel Fraser that I and Max Reinhardt37 should join the board of William Heinemann as part of a general reorganization which would have included The Bodley Head. On the Monday I received from Lionel Fraser a copy of the announcement he proposed to give to the Press and I approved it. On Tuesday I was informed that my presence on the board was considered undesirable by other members of the Heinemann group. This personal rebuff could have been laughed easily off if I had not become more and more aware of the fact that I no longer had any personal contact with anyone in the firm and that – to speak frankly – I could no longer depend on you to look after my work; from my agent and the rumours circulating in the publishing world I had learned that you were no longer in a position to do so.