Graham Greene

by Richard Greene

  I was therefore left as an author without any personal contact with the firm of Heinemann, apart from Alan Hill on the educational side. I have never disguised from you my lack of confidence in your managing director (on two occasions during my period at Heinemann’s I very nearly left the firm because of the type of publicity he thought my books required). I have not even met Mr. Charles Pick, although he telephoned me yesterday morning just at the moment when I am leaving for the continent to suggest a meeting.38

  Please believe me when I say that I am quite certain no responsibility whatever attaches to you – I have become only too aware of how powerless in the whole matter is the President of the company. Under these circumstances what was I to do? Leave myself in the hands of strangers who showed so little interest in my books? I have had many years’ experience of publishing and I am a director of The Bodley Head and a personal friend of Max Reinhardt, so the decision to be taken seemed an obvious one. In spite of that after thirty-two years with Heinemann it has taken me many months to make up my mind, but a publishing firm to an author means a personal contact, a personal sense of confidence reciprocated, and this I can no longer find in a company of whom the directors are nearly all unknown to me. I am sure you will understand my motives and I am sure too that it won’t interfere with the very great personal friendship we have for each other.

  Yours affectionately,

  Graham

  After several more years of awkward relations with Heinemann, Graham finally moved to The Bodley Head, but the firms collaborated on the collected edition of his works. Frere himself left Heinemann and became an adviser to The Bodley Head (ODNB).

  TO EVELYN WAUGH (POSTCARD)

  Waugh looked on the Second Vatican Council with sadness, as it promised, in his view, to canonise uncertainty and vulgarity. In ‘The Same Again, Please’ (Spectator, 23 November 1962) he remarked that the supposed ‘voice of the laity’ was usually equated with the views of a minority demanding reform. As one of the middle rank of the Church, he dissociated himself from them and, in a veiled reference to Graham Greene, from the ‘doubting, defiant, despairing souls who perform so conspicuously in contemporary fiction and drama’.

  [25 November 1962]

  Do accept from one who has written about ‘the doubting defiant despairing’ my complete agreement with your ‘middle rank’ statement & my intense admiration for the lucidity with which you have made it. It’s always my hope & my trust that we are not very far apart. Affectionately, Graham

  And if you can’t read this, don’t ask my secretary to translate.

  TO RALPH WRIGHT, O.S.B.

  During three days of silence after taking his final vows at Ampleforth Abbey, Ralph Wright wrote to Greene assuring him of his prayers. Although Greene refers to him as ‘Father’ Wright, he was not ordained until 1970.

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | Sep. 28 [1963]

  Dear Father Wright,

  I have only just got your letter as I have been abroad. It moved & touched me a great deal & you can feel assured that I am always grateful for your prayers.

  The end of the middle period of life is always a difficult one. If I am in a crisis, it is a continuing one – I doubt if I shall escape it much before death. But I feel encouraged by your friendly signal.

  I do wish you all the happiness possible in your vocation – which is perhaps the only true one. Ours are [sic] a substitute for the real thing.

  Yours, with affection,

  Graham Greene

  TO AUBERON WAUGH

  C.6 Albany | London W. 1. | 8th November 1963

  My dear Auberon,

  Thank you so very much for sending me an inscribed copy of Path of Dalliance. I shall take it away with me tomorrow to read in what I hope will be the sun of Antibes. I feel sure that while being amused by your book I shall forget all those thousands of political prisoners in Cuba about whom you told me!

  Yours ever,

  Graham

  TO KURT VONNEGUT39

  10th February 1964

  Dear Mr. Vonnegut,

  How pleasant indeed it is to get a letter from you out of the blue. I first read Cat’s Cradle when it was published over here by Gollancz and then searched second-hand booksellers’ catalogues to find two other of your books, Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan. I’ve enjoyed them all immensely. Since Ray Bradbury turned whimsy and poetic you are the only writer of this genre whom I can admire. I hope that one day our paths may cross physically.

  Yours sincerely,

  Graham Greene

  TO EVELYN WAUGH

  At the request of Lord Birkenhead, chairman of the Royal Society of Literature, Waugh asked Greene to reconsider his refusal to become one of its Companions. He said he had himself once turned down a CBE as not good enough and now felt ashamed: ‘Pocket pride & accept “C.Lit.”’40

  130 Boulevard Malesherbes, | Paris 17. | May 14 [1964]

  My dear Evelyn,

  Your letter has only just caught up on me. Really you old school prefect come off it. I share the view of Mr. T.S. Eliot & The Times leader-writer on the subject of these companionships, & why should I swallow my views – & my words frequently expressed – because half a dozen quite respectable people, including two good writers, think otherwise? I am not snubbing the society, for I have been a fellow now for nearly 20 years – like most writers – as a means of contributing to their charitable funds. The Fellows were not consulted before these companionships were founded & it seems to me pretentious nonsense that ‘a body of well-intentioned people’ should assume the right to separate ten authors from the multitude for special honour. This is less pride than principle – & sanity – a wish not to look absurd. Many people have expressed surprise to me at your acceptance & I have defended it as an outbreak of eccentricity.

  I too have refused a C.B.E. & am not ashamed of the fact. From your letter now, I judge that you would accept an O.B.E. Kipling refused a knighthood. I prefer his attitude.

  Come off it old warhorse. You have made yourself a little absurd by joining the octogenarians, but we love you for it.

  Love,

  Graham

  Waugh responded by postcard that he knew it wouldn’t work and signed himself ‘Unamuno (Junior Prefect)’.41

  TO FRANCIS GREENE

  Graham describes as a ‘pirate’ the publisher and Labour MP Robert Maxwell (1923–91) who, of course, walked the plank near the Canary Islands on 5 November 1991. Francis was seeking work from Maxwell’s firm, Pergamon Press, as a translator of Russian physics texts. There is a passing reference in the letter to Thomas Roe, a pirate whose practices were not so evident to Graham.

  27 May 1964

  Dear Francis,

  Here is another pirate who would be interested if you got in touch with him. His name is Robert Maxwell (address: Headington Hill Hall, Oxford) and he is very interested in anyone with a background of physics who knows Russian. He is a very successful business man and his name disguises I think a Central European origin. I met him at Boy Hart’s, the director of the Ansbacher Bank.42 It would be worth sending him a note and having at any rate a word with him. He said himself of his own accord that he would like to meet you. Roe has several ideas which I suppose he will put out when we meet for dinner.

  Love,

  Graham.

  P.S. Not a very nice man I think, and a Labour politician, but you want piracy!

  1 In Mali.

  2 See International Journal of Leprosy 70:1 (March 2002), 49–50.

  3 At Lechat’s suggestion, Graham met in New York with Frederick Franck, an oral surgeon and artist who had visited Yonda in 1958. He had worked with Albert Schweitzer and written a book about him, which Graham reviewed warmly (see Collected Essays, 276–8). Deeply impressed by his drawings, Graham also wrote an introduction to his African Sketchbook (1961).

  4 The notorious Esteban Ventura was often photographed in a white linen suit as he went about his duties in Havana’s fifth precinct. He fled to Miami when Cast
ro took power and died there in 2001 at the age of eighty-seven. In Our Man in Havana, Graham portrays a police torturer to whom he gives the name Captain Segura.

  5 Castro actually landed on 2 December 1956 with eighty-two men in Oriente province; all but twelve were killed. That group reached the mountains and launched the revolution (information from Bernard Diederich).

  6 The Times, 16 December 1958; Ways of Escape, 190.

  7 Sitwell had encouraged John Lehmann to publish the British edition of The Miracle at Carville (1952) in which Betty Martin describes her recovery from leprosy through the new sulphone treatment that had made the disease curable. References to that treatment occur throughout A Burnt-Out Case.

  8 A palace near Florence owned by the memoirist Sir Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969).

  9 Hilaire Marie Vermeiren (1889–1967), a Belgian-born missionary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who was by this time the titular Bishop of Gibba and would soon become Archbishop of Coquilhatville. Belgian missionaries play a significant role in the novel.

  10 In the novel, Rycker sends his wife with an invitation for Querry.

  11 There had been riots in Leopoldville two months earlier. The journalists supposed that Greene had come to write about the political unrest (In Search of a Character, 14).

  12 Michel Lechat remembers Père Henri (Rik Vanderslaghmolen) dancing with Graham on the ‘barza’ or veranda at the Fathers’ house, and also riding the tricycle of Lechat’s three-year-old son, and on another occasion struggling comically with Graham to enter his room.

  13 This novel by Romain Gary was made into a film directed by John Ford and starring Trevor Howard.

  14 Douglas Jay (1907–96), later Baron Jay, a prominent Labour politician. Greene had once worked with him at The Times and Walston had recently had contact with him.

  15 See Ways of Escape, 231–7.

  16 Christie’s was holding a large sale of pictures and manuscripts on behalf of the London Library (Amory, 545).

  17 Ionesco’s Rhinoceros with Laurence Olivier directed by Orson Welles at the Royal Court Theatre.

  18 Waugh, 779.

  19 See Ways of Escape, 195–8, and Amory, 557–60.

  20 Philip Caraman, S.J. (1911–98), priest and historian, was, for a time, a close friend of both Greene and Waugh. He specialised in literary conversions, having brought into the church, among others, Edith Sitwell. He was not in a position to have Waugh review the book since he had been removed as editor of The Month in 1959. Graham came to despise him apparently for meddling in his relationship with Walston. See June Rockett, A Gentle Jesuit: Philip Caraman, S.J. (2004).

  21 Amory, 557–60.

  22 Selections from the monumental 1899–1926 correspondence of Paul Claudel and André Gide had been published in English in 1952. One of the main themes is Claudel’s urging of Gide to become a Catholic.

  23 Evelyn Waugh pursued libel suits as a means of raising tax-free money and as a hobby. In 1956, he had pounced on an expanded edition of West’s The Meaning of Treason, which had first been published in 1947. She had added a new chapter on Burgess, Maclean and the Korean War, observing that not all those who undermined affection for the classic virtues were on the left, but that Waugh, Greene and Mauriac had done their part. The edition was suppressed as part of the settlement. See Bonnie Kime Scott, ed., Selected Letters of Rebecca West (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 316–17.

  24 IAIN ANTONY MACLEOD WAS BORN 21 January 1961.

  25 A volume of Macleod’s poetry published by Faber in 1930.

  26 Rex Harrison (1908–90) was to have starred in this abortive film project.

  27 See West, esp. 190–201.

  28 Published in 1939.

  29 Waugh and his daughter Margaret were sailing in November.

  30 See Rose Macaulay, Letters to a Friend 1950–1952 (London: Collins, 1961), 180.

  31 The full phrase corruptio optimi pessima means the corruption of the best is the worst of all.

  32 See Amory, 583.

  33 A maniacally devoted scholar, Wilmarth Sheldon ‘Lefty’ Lewis (1895–1979) was the editor of the 48-volume Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence.

  34 Alroy Kear was the thrustingly ambitious literary biographer depicted in Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ale.

  35 Graham’s uncle Sir Graham Greene and other relatives had lived in Harston, Cambridgeshire.

  36 Rev. Donald de Candole advised that several steps were necessary: a legal process to incorporate a small part of the vicarage grounds into the churchyard, removal of an old and unsafe acacia tree, extension of the boundary wall, consecration of the new ground, issuing of a faculty and erection of a kerb to define a family plot. Death in Cambridgeshire evidently required a certain amount of paperwork and landscaping.

  37 Max Reinhardt (1915–2002) acquired the Bodley Head in 1956–7 and controlled it for thirty years. In 1973, he joined forces with Chatto and Windus and Jonathan Cape. In 1987, the group was taken over by Random House and he established a new firm under his own name (ODNB), where he continued to be Graham’s publisher. Reinhardt and his wife Joan (née MacDonald) were among Graham’s and Yvonne Cloetta’s closest friends. Judith Adamson’s forthcoming biography of Reinhardt is expected to contain much detail on Graham’s friendship with him and their business dealings.

  38 Alan J. W. Hill was a Director of the company and Charles Pick the Managing Director.

  39 Kurt Vonnegut, jr. (b. 1922), prominent American author and graphic artist.

  40 Amory, 619–20.

  41 Amory, 620.

  42 Hart was a business associate of Max Reinhardt.

  7

  THE COMEDIANS

  TO CATHERINE WALSTON

  Villa Rosaia | Aug. 4 [1964]

  Dear dear Catherine,

  I did 600 words my first morning – the highest, I think, I’ve done on this novel,1 I suppose because I’m working somewhere far more familiar than Paris or Antibes. Perhaps the place where I’ve been happiest in my life. Everything is the same but a bit empty – the garden shabby with only the bougainvillea out. Not too hot – a nice breeze. In fact yesterday the wind was too strong for the helicopter & I took the slow boat. Last night dreamed of you.

  The usual ceremony at landing, but driven up by Aniello’s younger son who has a taxi which is put (rather embarrassingly) at our disposal, so the Dottoressa2 & I went down to dinner & came up in it. Tonight we shall escape to the bus. The D. much the same – she tells me she is 79 – but I thought she was over 70 when we first knew her. I worked hard at Gemma’s dispelling her melancholia – successfully. Gemma’s husband a few days ago went temporarily berserk during dinner, shouted that Gemma was a whore, & tried to strangle the waiters. Last night all seemed as usual – with the husband & waiters both there & Gemma affectionately inquiring after you. Cavalcanti is also here – much improved. He has become a stage director & had a success in America & France.3 Now I’m going out with the D. & her dog. The dog is causing much trouble by killing cats, & people are threatening the D. with the police.

  Just finished The Journal of Thomas Moore (the poet). Fascinating. Do read it. Batsford paper back. 12/6. In the plane I read Galbraith’s The Liberal Hour – he’s my favourite American writer, but at least he was born in Canada. The essay on Henry Ford enthralling. In Penguin. I hear the dog barking up the road.

  […]

  TO EVELYN WAUGH

  In his autobiography A Little Learning (1964) Waugh recalled how as a schoolboy he visited the house of W. W. Jacobs (1863–1943), author of ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, in Berkhamsted. Waugh became close friends with Jacobs’s daughter Barbara, who was engaged to his brother Alec. Her elder brother was a student at Berkhamsted School, but none of these early connections led to a meeting with Greene. At Oxford, the two were acquainted but not close, as they would later become, since Greene seemed to look down on his group as ‘childish and ostentatious’ (200). He noted with apparent amusement, that whenever Greene wished to p
ortray an unpleasant character with a pathetic attachment to a minor public school, he made it Waugh’s own school, Lancing (120).

  C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 10 September 1964

  My dear Evelyn,

  I was delighted to receive the autobiography which I have been anxiously awaiting. As always I have nothing but admiration for the style and content, though may I make two little personal corrections?

  I never knew Jacobs’s son at Berkhamsted as I was a boarder and he was a day-boy and as in so many schools a great gulf divided the two. Probably it was the same at Lancing! Or were you so buried in the depths of the country that you didn’t have any day-boys? I think I began to use Lancing as my symbol of a minor public school after being given the life of one of the headmasters to review in very early days.4 There seemed to be so much in common between Lancing and Berkhamsted that I thought I could safely depend on transferring impressions from one school to another!

  I was not suffering from any adult superiority at Oxford to explain our paths not crossing, but I belonged to a rather rigorously Balliol group of perhaps boisterous heterosexuals, while your path temporarily took you into the other camp. Also for a considerable period of my time at Oxford I lived in a general haze of drink. I’ve never drunk so much in my life since! There was also in the last two years a would-be Oxford Horizon called the Oxford Outlook to keep me occupied. Harold used to contribute to this and Eddy Sackville-West and Edith Sitwell. Alas I had no chance of printing anything from you.

  I’ve just been going through a horrible experience with a play which has determined me never again to write for the stage. In a few days the worst will be over and I depart to the peace of France.