TO JOHN MICHAEL GIBSON
John Michael Gibson approached Greene to provide a preface to A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle (1983). He had compiled this book in collaboration with Richard Lancelyn Green, whose bizarre suicide in 2004 was said to have been modelled on ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’.
20th October 1980
Dear Mr. Gibson,
Thank you very much for your letter of October 4. It is very kind of you to invite me to write a preface to your bibliography of Doyle’s writings and if you didn’t mind a very unscholarly and short one I would be pleased to do it. One point I would like to make is how good a writer he was apart from [the] Sherlock Holmes works. I can reread him as I find myself unable to reread Virginia Woolf and Forster, but then I am not a literary man.
Yours sincerely
Graham Greene
TO ANNE AND FRANCIS GREENE
51 La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06 Antibes. | Jan. 16. ’81
My dear Anne & Francis,
The splendid box of goodies arrived today (the box worthy of the contents). Thank you so much. I hastened to unpack it before Yvonne arrived in case it contained a bomb. One lives a strange life here. A week ago an anonymous type rang me up & asked whether I would receive 3 Brigades Rouges. I said, ‘No!’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because I would have to leave France if I did.’
There have been other dramas. Daniel, the ex-husband, attacked his mistress with such violence her nose was broken & she came to Yvonne & ‘told all’ (his corruption of the police & even a member of the procureur’s office. Also his obsession with murdering Yvonne by putting some explosive substance in the oil of her car.) I thought that at last we had to go to the top. So I sent a letter to the Chancellor of the Legion returning my insignia & saying that I wanted to be free to speak out against the corruption of justice on the Côte. I sent a copy with another letter to Alain Peyrefitte, the Minister of Justice.36 Immediate action. The Grand Boissieu37 returned my insignia & Peyrefitte wrote & spoke to me on the telephone, saying he was sending his Inspector General & a colleague down the next day. Two extremely nice men. He had expected to stay 24 hours & stayed four days – he was quite overwhelmed by what he found. Now I think action will not be long delayed. Light at last at the end of the tunnel.
Love from us both,
Graham
TO SHIRLEY HAZZARD
Alicja Wesolowska, who had been a doctoral student in New York, was on her way to a UN posting in Outer Mongolia when she was arrested on 10 August 1979 in Poland on an espionage charge, something that often happened to returning exiles. Despite protests on her behalf, she was imprisoned until 1984.
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur,| 06600 Antibes | 17th January 1981
Dear Shirley,
It was nice hearing your voice on the telephone. Perhaps by this time you have received my letter about cancelling my Polish visit. Apparently it did go off safely from London! In April I am getting something called the Jerusalem Prize which is given for the defence of the individual. I shall have to make a short speech apparently and if our hunger striker has survived and nothing has been done about her case I would like to introduce it into my speech. It might catch the attention of journalists. Could you send me not a lot of documents but a brief resumé of the whole affair in your own words. I would have to receive it before I leave for Israel on April 2. Do include in your resumé the attempts to get that awful man at the head of the United Nations to take action.
Our love to both of you
Graham
P.S. I notice that Kurt Waldheim omits from Who’s Who whatever career he had between 1939 and 1945. Can you give me details? Why does he omit all this from Who’s Who which is always provided by the character himself? P.P.S. This morning January 17 I have received the following telegram from Waldheim:
‘Dear Mr Greene. Your telegram of 13 January raises the problem of United Nations employees under detention. Particularly Ms. Alicja Wesolowska. I can assure you I have personally followed this problem very closely and expressed my concern both privately and publicly. As recently as 13 January 1981 I reiterated my appeal to the government of Poland to exercise clemency in Ms. Wesolowska’s case and requested access to her by a United Nations representative. My efforts will continue as long as necessary. Yours sincerely (Kurt Waldheim – General United Nations).’
One would like to know what reply he received to his appeal of January 13. The telegram is addressed to me at Résidence des Pleurs. Somewhat symbolic?
Graham’s remarks about Waldheim’s war years anticipated the revelations during his 1986 campaign for the Austrian Presidency that he had served in a German army unit guilty of atrocities in Yugoslavia. A prominent novelist, Hazzard wrote two books and a number of articles on the failures of the UN, most importantly The Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case (1990).
TO AUBERON WAUGH
In Private Eye (13 February 1981) Waugh claimed that Patrick Jenkins had lied in the claim that there was an epidemic of alcoholism in Britain. Rather, figures from the World Health Organisation showed that drunkenness was at a dangerously low level. He suggested that Jenkins be thrown into a duckpond according to the old method of testing whether a man with three nipples is a witch.
17th February 1981
Dear Bron,
I was painfully reminded by your Diary in the 500th issue of Private Eye of the fact that I have four nipples. A doctor when I was examined medically at the beginning of World War II made the same remark that in the Middle Ages I would have been regarded as a witch. I haven’t addressed this letter to Private Eye because I would hate to think that 150,000 people who buy the paper might want to investigate my four nipples.
Affectionately
Graham
TO MICHAEL MEYER
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes| 13th April 1981
Dear Michael,
Forgive the delay in answering your letter as I have been away for a week in Jerusalem and was faced with a big mail when I returned. I am delighted to hear [of] the success of your Strindberg.38 I am coming to London on Monday April 20. Would there be any possibility of seeing it that night? I shall be alone and it would be nice if you would come with me but perhaps you have seen it too often now.
I did see Kagemusha39 and I am afraid beautiful though it was visually I was awfully bored by it. I seem to have been the only person to have had this reaction. No, I have great doubts about the Roger Hollis story and Mr. Chapman Pincher.40 It looks to me like a classical piece of disinformation and destabilization – perhaps engineered, who knows, by Kim.
Love to you and your daughter
Graham
TO AVITAL SCHARANSKY
Writing to the wife of Anatoly (Natan) Scharansky, the Ukrainian mathematician and dissident imprisoned for treason, Graham expressed concern that if he accepted an invitation to the Soviet Union he might find his visit used by the government for propaganda purposes.
22nd April 1981
Dear Mrs Scharansky,
Thank you for the documents you sent me. Alas, I hadn’t got your address in Paris or in London where I hope you had a useful visit. I have telegraphed as follows to the man41 who had invited me to Moscow and Georgia:
‘Having met Mrs Anatoly Scharansky in Jerusalem and heard full details of her husband’s tragic case feel unable to visit USSR. With great regret and affection.’
I don’t know who was really behind the invitation which must have had some sort of object, but whoever he might be he will certainly have seen the telegram. It’s a small effort, but one never knows – it may be of some use.
I hope we shall be able to meet again one day and that soon there will be good news for you.
Yours sincerely
Graham Greene
TO MICHAEL KORDA
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur,| 06600 Antibes | 30th May 1981
Dear Michael,
I
have always been meaning to ask you whether it would be possible for you to get my dossier from the FBI under the Freedom of Information procedure. I would be quite ready to pay all expenses. It might even make an amusing article with my comments if there is sufficient material. I suspect with Vietnam etc. there might be sufficient material.
Affectionately
Graham
Graham received a dossier of forty-five pages, of which sixteen were blacked out. The rest were mainly press clippings, including a two-page gossip piece by Walter Winchell. Amidst various inaccuracies, Graham was pleased to note that they got his weight right at 180 pounds.42 Twenty years later Rob Evans and David Hencke, two journalists, made a new application under the Freedom of Information Act with better results: they learned that the FBI had indeed monitored Graham’s activities over a forty-year period (Guardian, 2 December 2002). However, while the release of the thicker dossier merited a headline, it contained little that Graham had not already made public in his own writings. The FBI could have saved its money.
TO JOSÉ DE JESÚS MARTINEZ (CHUCHU)
As Graham was preparing to leave for a visit to Panama, he received word that Omar Torrijos had died in the crash of a small plane.
7 August 1981
Dear Chuchu,
It’s difficult to write about Omar’s death. I really loved that man. What an extraordinary thing it was that a tiny country like Panama produced one of the great men of our time. Perhaps the Panamanians will miss him the least. I can imagine what a catastrophe his death will seem in Nicaragua, and San Salvador, and Belize – as far anyway as Price is concerned.43 I had already packed my bags to come to you last Wednesday and the shock left me staggered.
I have an idea in which perhaps you will be able to help me when the time comes. I have a short novel about a Spanish priest Monsignor Quixote which I hope to finish before the end of the year. After that I want to write a short fiction book called simply The General. I have so many records of him in the three or four diaries which I kept in Panama with a lot of his conversation and I will try to draw a good portrait of him. I am sure I can depend on you to criticize the draft when once it has been made and to make suggestions.
You must feel terribly lost. Are you going to leave the National Guard and concentrate on the University? Please when your mind has settled a bit write me a few words to say how you are. Yvonne will want to add her love to mine even though she has never met you, but she always says that your voice sounded exactly on the telephone as she had always imagined it.
My love again
Graham
Chuchu was convinced that there had been a bomb aboard the plane, a position Graham advanced in Getting to Know the General. The plane’s manufacturers concluded that the crash was accidental, the result of bad weather. Bernard Diederich conducted his own thorough investigation and reached the same conclusion.
TO COUNTESS STRACHWITZ (BARBARA GREENE)
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes. | 22nd June 1982
Dear Barbara,
Thank you so much for your letter and your kind thoughts. Yes, this war has been going on a long time; we are now in our fourth year and I hope we are reaching a crisis. Anyway I have four writs against me, three of which have to be tried in Paris and I hope will procure some publicity against our enemies. All the same it’s a tiring affair. I am asking Elisabeth to send you a copy of the pamphlet which will give you the whole story. Last week the Nice judges decided that the pamphlet in France was to be seized because it intruded on the private life of our enemy Guy. I knew nothing about the hearing because I was in Paris. The Bodley Head who are also concerned had received no warning nor my advocate. He is appealing against the procedure which is typical of Nice. When will the end come? Who knows? One hopes by the end of the year at least.
[…]
The battle went on for two more years, but the litigation eventually turned in Martine Cloetta’s favour. She won clear custody of the children by the summer of 1984 and moved to Switzerland. As a test of Graham’s character, the episode has important implications. Nearly eighty years old, he was willing to risk, on the one hand, violence, on the other, mockery and condescension, to protect a person he loved. Part of his sacrifice was that after Monsignor Quixote (1982) he had the stamina to finish only one more novel, The Captain and the Enemy, which he had begun in the mid-1970s.
TO — —
A woman (her name withheld here) who had recently read The End of the Affair wrote to Graham about her own dilemma. She was married to a civil servant who permitted her to conduct an affair with a writer. She said that she loved both men and they loved her. Unlike Sarah, she did not have faith to fall back on and she had no intention of dying. She asked what she should do.
2nd August 1982
Dear Mrs.—,
You ask me a question impossible for a stranger to answer. I can only suggest that you do nothing hurriedly and let the situation continue as it is for as long as possible. Perhaps you are too bored with security, but I can tell you from my own experience that insecurity can be very boring too. Companionship is not something to throw over lightly, but of course nor is love – if it lasts.
All this is no answer, but I can hardly be expected to find one.
Yours sincerely
Graham Greene
TO MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE
The following letter was written on the occasion of Muggeridge’s reception into the Roman Catholic Church.
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | Nov. 3 82
My dear Malcolm,
I don’t know whether to congratulate you or to commiserate with you on making your decision, but I can sincerely wish you good luck & I can also hope that you will make a better Catholic than I have done. Anyway you will both be in my thoughts at 12.30 (French time!) on Nov. 27.
My love to Kitty & yourself,
Graham
TO MR. COREY44
15th December 1982
Dear Mr. Corey,
Thank you for your letter and the nice things you write about my work. I think you have a little misread the opening chapter of The Quiet American. Fowler records the conversation with Vigot, which, of course, is a very carefully phrased one, to guard himself. But until Vigot’s questions show him that Pyle is dead he is not certain of it. Although he has signalled to the Vietminh an indication of Pyle’s movements that night he hopes against hope that Pyle will have escaped.
So in a sense he is still waiting for Pyle, hoping that he may after all turn up. You have to remember that the point of view throughout is Fowler’s and Fowler’s motives are mixed. Jealousy of Pyle over Phuong is one motive and his horror at the bomb outside the Continental in which Pyle is obviously concerned is another motive. The telegram from his wife [is] a cruel irony at the end. I wouldn’t describe his remark at the end as being a demand for forgiveness. It’s only a regret that he has no religious faith and therefore he can’t ask for forgiveness.
Yours sincerely
Graham Greene
TO VIVIEN GREENE
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | Dec. 30 82.
Dear Vivien,
Many thanks for the fire extinguisher! I realise that I have lit a fire in Nice, but I don’t want to put it out!
The Christmas holiday was a little shadowed by the death of poor Raffles.45 Now I’m off to Nicaragua (as the guest of the Sandinista government) to light a small fire under the fool Reagan.
Affectionately,
Graham
TO BERNARD DIEDERICH
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | 2nd February 1983
Dear Bernard,
I did a piece on regional television about that hatchet job in Time.46 It struck me too as completely unconvincing and I said on screen that I did not believe a word of it and that it read like the attempt of a young deserter to please his new friends. I also showed on screen photographs of some of the unpleasant
bombs being used from the United States including the Micky Mouse. I was very surprised Time printed it as they have been on the whole quite good about San Salvador and previously about Nicaragua. And they don’t either seem to be very pleased with the Washington administration.
I had an amusing meeting with Fidel in my twenty-four hours in Cuba. He looked to me much younger than he had done in 1966 and much more relaxed.
Affectionately
Graham
[…]
TO FIDEL CASTRO
Although he admired Castro, Greene was aware of the denial of human rights in Cuba. He cooperated closely with the Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN, which supplied him with information on detainees. The committee arranged for this letter to be translated and delivered.
[14 February 1983]
Dear Mr. President,
It was a great pleasure for me to meet you again after sixteen years, and I am grateful to Colonel Diaz and Colonel Noriega47 who made my journey possible. You and I had a great mutual friend in General Torrijos whom I had grown to love almost as a brother, but I was happy and encouraged to feel that his line was being followed in Panama in spite of superficial difficulties.
Will you forgive me if as a writer and a member of International PEN I put in a plea for two writers Angel Cuadra Landrove and Jorge Valls Arango. I know nothing of their offences, but I feel that an amnesty would have a good and useful effect in Europe at this time when we are suffering from the stubborn policies of President Reagan.
Graham Greene Page 40
