Graham Greene
Page 42
24th October 1985
My Dear Kim,
Many thanks for your note of October 10. I am glad The Tenth Man reached you safely – not that it was a very valuable gift! You know how much I share your views not only about a man in Washington but about a man in Rome. He is the most political Pope we have suffered for many generations.
I am just back from Washington where I went for a question and answer session at Georgetown University. I had hoped that there would be some questions about the man in Washington and his policy in Central America above all, but unfortunately no questions emerged, although through a question on the Pope I was able to give my views in a small way about Nicaragua.
I wish I was a fly on the wall when there is a meeting between your man and the B-Film actor.1
Yours ever
Graham
TO MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes [November 1985]
My dear Malcolm,
Thank you many times for your letter. Night & Day has brought many memories back to me too.2 Including ‘Dream Land’. I think some of the best things in it were your voyages with Hugh Kingsmill – perhaps best of all the Wordsworth interview.
I’m so sorry about the deafness (even though part a blessing). And near blindness I couldn’t take with your courage. I had the Reagan cancer six years ago which alas! means that he may survive it as long as I have done.3 You have a blessing in Kitty (to whom all my love) & I for the last 26 years have had a blessing in Yvonne. Alas! that I can’t take her with me next week to Panama & Nicaragua.4 I wish you could come with me to laugh in another Dreamland.
Anyway all my affection while we march almost shoulder to shoulder towards what end?
Graham
TO ALBERTO HUERTA, S. J.
Now an Associate Professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of San Francisco, Alberto Huerta’s scholarly interests include Miguel de Unamuno and Cervantes, both of whose works loom large in Monsignor Quixote. Huerta wrote to Greene about the novel in 1982 and the two struck up a close friendship. Unlike the conservative Father Durán, whom Greene admired and relied on for other reasons, Huerta belonged to the Jesuit order and shared his opinions about politics in Central America.
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes |
15 February 1986
Dear Alberto,
Many thanks for your letter. Of course I would like to make a second visit to San Francisco, but it all depends what I am doing and what I am feeling like! About Unamuno whom I read of course in translation: I have read Our Lord Don Quixote, The Agony of Christianity, The Tragic Sense of Life, Ficciones and Novela.5 I think I have attempted Don Quixote several times in the far past but never succeeded in getting right through. The first was in the translation by a contemporary English writer, I mean contemporary with Cervantes, and finally when I was planning my book I managed to get through Cohen’s translation. I do find the Interludes very boring.
Forgive a hasty note, but I have only just come back from abroad.
Affectionately
Graham
TO JOCELYN RICKARDS
Perhaps embarrassed by A. J. Ayer’s woefully indiscreet memoirs, Rickards wrote her own autobiography, The Painted Banquet: My Life and Loves (1987).
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | 21.2.86
Dearest Jocelyn,
Thank you so much for your letter – one of the few out of about 100 which has given me real pleasure.6
I’m so glad your book is ready. I long to read it – not because of what Freddie says. I have read his two volumes – the only thing I liked in the second was your photograph. He seemed to have no idea of what to leave out & I found it hard to finish. Names dropped like rain on a windless day – I longed for a mistral to chase them away. Poor Freddie – you mustn’t wear yourself out with boosting his morale as you nearly did with Chandler.7
Much love to you & affectionate greetings to Clive.
Graham
[On envelope flap:] I always return with pleasure to your two paintings in Anacapri – especially the nuns. Are you painting still? I hope so.
TO LADY DIANA COOPER
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | 28.2.86
Dear Diana,
Only yesterday did I get your letter of the 12th (French post or English post or the horrible weather). Thank you so much, but I find myself depressed, even though pleased, by the award. It’s like writing Finis at the end of a book.
I wish I could say that I was the Graham who sent you the Christmas message. At that season I close the doors & the windows – no Christmas cards, no replies to Christmas cards. It’s a season I hate – good for the shops, good for Harrods. I want to be alone. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think of my friends – & of you.
Affectionately,
Graham
I wish that dear Evelyn had got that O.M. I would rather have followed in his footsteps than those of Jolly Jack Priestley.8
TO JOCELYN RICKARDS
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | May 23 86
Very dear Jocelyn,
Thank you so much for sending me the autobiography which I read in one gulp as I’m off to Switzerland tomorrow. I was glad at the happy ending, though a little sad earlier. How much simpler & easier things seemed in the fifties – the early fifties. I found myself remembering a disappointment in Battersea Park during the Festival of Britain & a strange train journey from Southend.9 Why should remembering happy times make one sad?
Very Affectionately
Graham
TO RUFA AND KIM PHILBY
In a letter of 24 September 1986, Kim Philby wrote to thank Graham and Yvonne for their visit. He was himself suffering from ‘an acute attack of the esprit d’escalier’ and Rufa, his fourth wife, felt that the three days they had spent on and off together were among the happiest of her life. In a PS he noted that after Graham and Yvonne had left the flat, he found that Yvonne had left half her whisky-and-soda: ‘Naturally, I drank it.’
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | Oct. 6. 86
Dear Rufa & Kim,
Thank you so much for your letter. We loved our visit to you & the strong feeling of how our friendship has survived all these years untouched. It was a great dividend too to see you twice more. Yvonne tells everyone that her visit to Russia was the greatest adventure of her life.
I was so happy to meet Rufa & to feel her fondness for you. A party of four fond people is a rare [?] experience. I do hope the opportunity of seeing you both will come again before too long. Yvonne is glad that you finished her whisky.
With great affection from us both
Graham
[Yvonne adds a postscript calling their gathering ‘une soirée inoubliable’.]
TO JOCELYN RICKARDS
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | 5th November 1986
Dearest Jocelyn,
Your letter took 9 days to arrive! The posts here are really dreadful or is it in England? Thank you so much for it. Forgive a dictated letter on a beastly new machine to which I am slowly becoming accustomed but Yvonne and I returned a bit exhausted by Russian hospitality. All the same it was a wonderful journey and full of interest. We even met the cosmonaut who had made the record time of three months in space and he presented me with his marked copy of a Penguin of Our Man in Havana which he had taken with him into space!
I sent off a few lines to John Curtis10 for his cover and I hope they are suitable.
Yvonne sends her love and so do I.
Graham
TO JAMES GREENE
Upon hearing that Hugh was near death, Graham hurried back from Moscow and reached the King Edward Hospital shortly before his ‘favourite brother’ died from cancer on 19 February 1987.11 This letter to James Greene (b. 1938), Hugh’s son by his first wife,
refers to Sarah (née Grahame), Hugh’s fourth wife, and to James’s brother and two half-brothers.
Antibes | Feb. 26 ’87
Dear James,
I don’t need to tell you how shattered I was by Hugh’s death. I tried to return more quickly from Moscow, but there was no plane. It was terrible sitting beside him the day I returned, in his coma, and when you rang me up at Bentley’s it was a sort of relief, knowing he wouldn’t have to struggle any more with his breath.
I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the funeral, but Moscow and Hugh’s death had knocked me out. I still find it difficult to do anything – the last sight of his face comes between the lines when I read.
Elisabeth tells me how splendidly you spoke at the church. It was more than I could have done. Please forgive me for not being there. I couldn’t bear the thought of all the strangers.
I found Sarah wonderful.
Lots of love to you – and your family.
Graham
I’ve tried to telephone you, but I seem to have got the number wrong. I can’t write (bad hand) to all four of you so would you convey my sympathy to the other three?
TO JAMES GREENE
10th March 1987
Dear James,
I think our letters crossed. Thank you very much for sending me Hugh’s little poem which I think is rather good.12 Many congratulations on the birth of the little girl. I hope she won’t take after Hugh in height.
Yes, the death was a bad shock. We had shared a great many experiences including the war in Malaya. I had also interested him in pirates and read aloud to him when he was six years old. I found the sight of him very painful, and the breathing was so heavy and strained. I find it difficult to get it out of my mind.
Love to you both
Graham
TO HON. JULIA CAMOYS STONOR
Jeanne Stonor (Lady Camoys) was enraged by a passage in Anne Sebba’s biography Enid Bagnold (1986) suggesting that she had once had an affair with the novelist’s husband Sir Roderick Jones. Her daughter thought the threat of a lawsuit foolish and destructive and so sought Graham’s advice. Curiously enough, the book turned Graham’s thoughts to an old friend, Count von Bernstorff, the diplomat who had financed his trip to the Ruhr in 1924.
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes| 30th March 1987
My dear Julia,
Thank you very much for sending me the life of Enid Bagnold and kindly pointing out the dangerous page! It is quite absurd to start a libel action on such tiny grounds. Your mother will lose a lot of money in fees and not gain in anything. I do hope you can persuade Thomas13 to call in John Mortimer14 to advise her.
You can be quite assured that my mail is not opened. Things haven’t gone as far as that in the Nice war yet. I wouldn’t entirely trust my telephone. That is all.
I was glancing at the book and was amused to read about Enid’s love for Bernstorff. I knew him too in the early 20s and later had a last meeting with him in a hotel in Berlin after Hitler had come to power. I liked him but he was such a complete homosexual and haunter of homosexual clubs that it is difficult to believe that a woman would take to him. He was, of course, a very brave man and died in Dachau15 after saving a number of Jewish lives.
Don’t hesitate to write to me.
Love Graham
TO FATHER FRANCIS J. MURPHY, S. J.
On 16 February 1987, Graham gave a widely reported impromptu speech at the Moscow Peace Forum, where he shared a podium with Mikhail Gorbachev. Father Murphy, a historian at Boston College, wrote asking for the text of his remarks.
9th April 1987
Dear Father Murphy,
Thank you very much for your letter. I am afraid that my very short speech (about 4 minutes) at the Kremlin was not prepared and was more or less spontaneous so that it is difficult for me to give you any details of it. The main point was that I hoped the hundred year suspicion between Catholics and Communists was being buried in Central America by our co-operation in fighting against the Contras, the death-squads and Pinochet. I ended up with saying that it was my hope that there would be an Ambassador from the USSR to the Vatican, a hope not altogether improbable as the Pope had sent representatives to the Forum. I also pointed out that Marx had criticised Henry VIII and condemned him for the closing of the monasteries which at that period was the only resource for the poor. Alas I can’t give you the text of the speech because I had not prepared it.16
With all good wishes.
Yours sincerely
Graham Greene
TO MICHAEL MEYER
Meyer’s autobiography Not Prince Hamlet was published in 1989.
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes|
Dear Michael,
I’ve only just got your typescript as I have been away in Budapest. Of course you may quote from my letters. What an extraordinary memory you have even without them. A few minor points.
Page 148.
Trevor Wilson belonged to MI6. I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend in MI5, thank God. Harold Lee was at Oxford but after my time. I didn’t know him there. I got to know him during my frequent visits to Hong Kong [going] to and from Vietnam.
Page 187.
I don’t know what this letter really means. I don’t remember ever making payments to Anita. Perhaps it was a mortgage on the house. It gives the impression that I used to pay her as my mistress which was quite untrue. She was and I am sure is an extremely independent girl. She even used to insist on paying for my lunches when I came to visit her in Stockholm. As these generally contained caviar I at last persuaded her to drop it. The final agreement to part came on the eve of one of my usual departures from Stockholm when we had friends of hers to dinner. After dinner I happened to say that I had enjoyed the Blitz, and the Swedes, not Anita, were deeply shocked by this. It was then I realized that it would be impossible for me to settle at all in Sweden and we discussed it in a friendly way afterwards. The next morning we made love before I caught the plane. By the way she has been down here recently with her friend Mrs Lam and we all had a meal together. She and Yvonne got on extremely well together.
[…]
TO KIM PHILBY
In late 1987 Graham and Yvonne Cloetta made another trip through the Soviet Union, which included a visit with Kim Philby. Upon returning to England he sent, as Philby requested, a copy of Peter Wright’s Spycatcher, the publication of which caused a controversy in 1987.
2nd December 1987
My dear Kim,
I am so glad that Spycatcher arrived safely even if it was two months late. I wonder where it spent the two months. The Minehead postmark doesn’t mean that Elisabeth has changed her address. Elisabeth was on holiday and so my cassette went to my old secretary Josephine Reid who lives in Minehead to be typed. They both of them have stocks of my signed notepaper because I find it impossible to cope myself without dictating onto a cassette as I find I get on an average about 180 letters a month to deal with even though a lot of them go into the wastepaper basket.
Yvonne and I both protest against your apology for Aragvi’s17 meal. We both enjoyed it immensely. Perhaps you mistook my lack of great appetite which is perpetual with me for a criticism!
We both hope that we shall be meeting again before too long and we both send our love to you and Rufa.
Graham
TO RODERICK YOUNG
Roderick Young was researching the figure of the Jew in twentieth-century English literature and had noticed that the uses of the word ‘Jew’ had been sharply reduced in later editions of Stamboul Train and Brighton Rock. He also told Graham a story about a poetry reading in the 1950 s, at which Emmanuel Litvinoff praised T. S. Eliot, who was in attendance, as a modern prophet but attacked him for his use of the Jew as a symbol of decadence.
28th March 1988
Dear Mr. Young,
Yes, the changes in Brighton Rock and Stamboul Train and if there is one in A Gun for Sale were made by myself. After the holocaust o
ne couldn’t use the word Jew in the loose way one used it before the war. Myatt in fact is one of the nicest characters in Stamboul Train, both brave and sympathetic. In the case of Colleoni I think I was wrong to have made him a Jew in the first place with such an Italian name. The casual references to Jews at one particular hotel is a sign of those times when one regarded the word Jew as almost a synonym for capitalist. Big business seemed our enemy and such men who happened to be Jewish as Zaharoff18 who indulged in the private sale of arms. Now we know that governments sell arms as recklessly as private individuals.19
I liked your Litvinoff story and wish I had his poem to read.
Yours sincerely
Graham Greene
TO MURIEL SPARK
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | April 10 ’88
Dear Muriel,
I have just returned to find your new book20 – no present could have given me greater pleasure. I write at once, because after the first three pages, I know that this will prove to be one of your finest novels since my previous favourite Memento Mori.
I have a great sense of guilt. You have sent me so many of your books & I don’t believe I have sent you mine. My last, I mean final, (& I don’t much care for it) I will be sending you in September. (I abandoned it 15 years ago). A poor return.21
I wish we could have met after all these years more than one brief encounter.22
Yours admiringly,
Graham Greene
P.S. I’m glad that the Russians are appreciating your books.