The Unquiet Englishman

by Richard Greene

  Although he remained devoted to Vivien – in his fashion – Greene was ever more anxious to travel. A fugitive from fatherhood, he started planning a trip to Germany and Eastern Europe. At a cocktail party, he met Baroness (Moura) Budberg, H. G. Wells’s ‘latest flame’; she recommended that Greene go to Estonia, where she owned an estate, and told him that in Tallinn he could visit a brothel that had been operated by the same family for five hundred years.23 Delighted by the idea, he also hoped to extend the visit to Moscow, where he could meet with Nordahl Grieg, but this did not happen. Around 5 May, he flew into Berlin and was shocked at the contrast between the beauty of the lighted city seen from the air and, once he had landed, the horror of the swastikas.24

  In Berlin, he spent time with Hugh and with Albrecht von Bernstorff, both of whom would have briefed him on what to expect in the rest of his journey. The Soviet Union and Germany each wanted to install puppet governments in the Baltic states. The Soviets had recently concluded non-aggression pacts with Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In March, Estonia had declared martial law in order to purge Nazis from the government, and a major trial was expected to reveal how far they had infiltrated. Greene probably visited Finland and Lithuania, as Malcolm Muggeridge had provided him with introductions to people in these countries,25 but we do not have a precise itinerary. On 12 May, he left Riga for Tallinn. This was unlucky timing for someone seeking trouble: just after Greene’s departure, the Latvian premier Ka¯rlis Ulmanis declared martial law to deal with socialist and Nazi plots – in effect a coup, after which he set himself up as dictator.26

  On the flight to Tallinn, the only other passenger was a diplomat and spy named Peter Leslie. While reading a novel by Henry James, Greene noticed that his companion was also absorbed in reading The Ambassadors in the same edition; as he put it to Vivien, ‘we more or less fell into each other’s arms’.27 A lonely vice-consul in Tallinn, Leslie might have been one of Greene’s invented characters: an Anglican clergyman, he had converted to Catholicism and become an arms dealer. Moreover, Leslie was a highly regarded MI6 operative holding his own in a city of constant intrigue among Stalinist agents, White Russians, and Nazis. After the war Greene thought about a film script that owed something to his encounter with Leslie: the main character was to be an agent for Singer sewing machines in Tallinn. The idea was laid aside, but eventually came back in a new setting as Our Man in Havana. In 1969, the aged Leslie wrote to Greene, reminding him of their encounter and making him a gift of his first editions of Henry James, ‘thus’, as Greene wrote, ‘crowning one of the most pleasant chance encounters of my life’.28

  As for the brothel, Greene never found it. A waiter in Tallinn’s most elegant hotel was puzzled by his enquiries: ‘But there is nothing of that kind we cannot arrange for you here.’29 When they corresponded long after, Leslie told Greene that Budberg had it wrong; the place had been turned into a chemist’s.

  10

  IN ZIGI’S TOWN

  ‘I thought for some reason even then of Africa, not a particular place, but a shape, a strangeness, a wanting to know. The unconscious mind is often sentimental; I have written “a shape”, and the shape, of course, is roughly that of the human heart.’1 Greene had it in mind to do something dangerous: a journey on foot through Liberia to investigate modern slavery.

  As he looked back on it, it seemed almost a fashion in the 1930s to do such things: ‘ “young authors” were inclined to make uncomfortable journeys in search of bizarre material – Peter Fleming to Brazil and Manchuria, Evelyn Waugh to British Guiana and Ethiopia. Europe seemed to have the whole future: Europe could wait.’2 Part of his own motivation was likely a gentle rivalry with the adventurous Raymond, who had recently been involved in a successful ascent of Mount Kamet and a nearly successful one of Mount Everest – he set an extraordinary standard for daring, and the restless Graham was anxious to come out of his shadow. And yet, at its core, the journey to Liberia was, for him, a matter of principle.

  This West African state had been founded in 1847 by freed slaves from the United States, who established themselves as an elite living mainly near the coast. Indigenous villagers inland were generally impoverished and powerless. In June 1929, the American government accused the Liberian Frontier Force and various government officials of running a system of forced labour that amounted to slavery.

  In 1930, a League of Nations commission led by the physician and zoologist Cuthbert Christy confirmed that while one might not find ‘classical’ slave markets or traders in Liberia, slavery, as defined by a League of Nations Convention in 1926, was widespread. There was domestic slavery within and among tribes, and the pawning of relatives for the satisfaction of debt was a common practice. Moreover, slaves were used for building roads and military bases, and as porters ‘under conditions involving systematic intimidation and ill-treatment on the part of Government officials, messengers, and Frontier Force soldiers’. The government, in a manner ‘scarcely distinguishable from slave raiding and slave trading’, was sending people at gunpoint into labour on the Spanish island of Fernando Po as well as to Gabon.3

  In the 1920s, the American tyre manufacturer Firestone, closely associated with the Ford Motor Company, sought to break British dominance of rubber production by leasing a million acres of land for the cultivation of South American rubber trees in Liberia. As part of their deal, they also lent the government $5 million at 7 per cent interest to clear its foreign debts, but payments on the loan soon paralyzed the government – there was no money for anything else. Essentially, the corporation was running the country. As for slavery, the Christy commission could not find evidence that Firestone ‘consciously’ employed unpaid workers, who were, however, forcibly recruited by the government.4

  Liberia was, and remains, extremely poor. In the 1930s, it had no inland roads or other infrastructure. There were half a dozen doctors in the whole country, and no public health measures were taken against a variety of grave illnesses including plague and yellow fever. The League of Nations was worried; even so, in June 1934 a proposal for financial relief had failed as Liberia insisted on greater control of the suggested programme and the European powers were unwilling to tolerate what the British Foreign Affairs Minister Anthony Eden called ‘gross maladministration’ – Eden wanted the Americans to take a greater hand in a country with which it had such a long association.5

  As well as governments, private organizations were trying to influence events in Liberia. Charles Greene supported the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society, perhaps from a principled regret about his grandfather’s ownership of slaves on St Kitts and Monserrat.6 In any event, Charles seems to have encouraged Graham to become involved with the Society, and Graham volunteered to go as their representative to Liberia and find out what was happening. From late August 1934, he met weekly with Sir John Harris to be briefed for a journey from which he might very well not return. Harris was an extraordinary man. Inspired by Evangelical beliefs, he had investigated and publicized the Belgian exploitation of the Congo. He then travelled in many other countries, often risking his life, to report on enslavements of colonial peoples. He served a term in Parliament as a Liberal and was knighted in 1933. From 1910 to 1940 he acted as Parliamentary Secretary to the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society.7 Graham wrote to Hugh that he was being groomed as Harris’s ‘successor as Parliamentary Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society. But this in confidence. I have to be stared at and my private life examined by a committee of philanthropists; I’m afraid I shan’t get by this.’8

  Charles Evans liked the sound of this journey and paid Greene an advance of £350 for a travel book later given the title Journey Without Maps.9 The Times provided a letter of accreditation, but, disappointingly, no commission. Harris had access to the Foreign Office through his fellow campaigner Dame Kathleen Simon, whose husband, Sir John Simon, was Foreign Secretary.10 The Foreign Office had an ulterior motive: to make sure that Greene stayed ‘on our side’ –
that is, his eventual book or articles should be in line with British policy.11 In an effort to do a little freelance espionage, Greene asked Denyse Clarouin whether the French Colonial Office might pay him for a report,12 though there is no evidence that they hired him.

  Having drunk a good deal of champagne at Hugh’s wedding on 24 October 1934, Greene asked if ‘someone, anyone’ among his cousins would join him on his Liberian trek.13 All the likely candidates, including his childhood companion Edward (‘Tooter’), said no, but Barbara, a twenty-seven-year-old Hall Greene, said yes, even though she had no idea where Liberia was. At least this is the version of the story that they both told afterwards; however, Hugh had been staying with Barbara in London before the wedding, and already in August Graham was including her in his travel plans. There was a certain amount of flirtation between them, as on one occasion he left a café drunk with his braces in his pocket and her belt around his waist.14

  On the day after the wedding, when Graham had sobered up, he tried to undo the deal by sending Barbara the League of Nations report. She was unbothered, but said he should not worry – her father would certainly forbid the whole business. Uncle Eppy did nothing of the sort. ‘At last one of my daughters is showing a little initiative,’ he said and wrote a cheque to cover her share of the expenses.15 Having led an unsettled life and suffering occasionally from depression, Barbara brought one considerable, though unnoticed, qualification to the enterprise: she had trained as a nurse16 and would be largely responsible for Graham surviving the journey. A good writer, she, like Graham, would produce a travel book, to which she gave the now cringe-inducing title Land Benighted, misquoting a phrase from the Liberian national anthem;17 later editions substituted the title Too Late to Turn Back. This book is highly readable, and while it reproduces a number of the stereotypes common at the time, it repeatedly strikes a note of thankfulness to Liberians for their generosity and an appreciation for the beauty of their country.

  Sir Graham Greene arranged for a Foreign Office official named G. H. Thompson to meet his nephew in December. Thompson did his best to talk Graham out of the whole business, pointing out how easy it was to pick up a fatal illness in the back country. Clearly, the Foreign Office was not sending Greene as any sort of agent. He did have a vague invitation to meet Thompson again on his return, but was formally advised that the government could take no responsibility for what he was doing.18

  Thompson sent word ahead to the chargé in Monrovia but Greene suggested that he did not like the idea of a British diplomat, the well-named Mr Yapp, informing the Liberian government of his itinerary for fear they would put a stop to it. Yet the journey was hardly a secret. On 4 January 1935 the News Chronicle headline read: ‘Beauty of 23 Sets Out for Cannibal Land’. In the article, Barbara looks uneasily at a revolver she now possesses, and muses about the likelihood of contracting yellow fever. The article makes very clear that the Greenes are going to investigate slavery, as Sir John Harris is quoted: ‘I should think they ought to get through, and their information, if they do, will be very valuable.’ His optimism was restrained, to say the least.

  In assembling his gear, Greene had the help of a shipping agent, who scanned the long list of requirements and added one item: a tin opener.19 Sailing from Liverpool on 5 January 1935 in the Elder Dempster cargo ship David Livingstone, they stopped at a number of ports, including Tenerife, where they discovered ‘Orient Express from the novel by Graham Greene’ playing at the cinema. At Las Palmas, they returned from a party at 3 a.m. in a rowing boat with a dead-drunk man of 17 stone who had to be got onto the companion-way without being dropped into the harbour.20

  They reached Freetown on 19 January.21 Barbara wrote about Graham in her journal: ‘His brain frightened me. It was sharp and clear and cruel. I admired him for being unsentimental, but “always remember to rely on yourself,” I noted. If you are in a sticky place he will be so interested in noting your reactions that he will probably forget to rescue you.’ She saw that he had a shaky hand and would likely miss his shot against any attacking animal. ‘He seemed somewhat vague and unpractical, and later I was continually astonished at his efficiency and the care he devoted to every little detail. Apart from three or four people he was really fond of, I felt that the rest of humanity was to him like a heap of insects that he liked to examine, as a scientist might examine his specimens, coldly and clearly. He was always polite. He had a remarkable sense of humour and held few things too sacred to be laughed at . . . It was stimulating and exciting, and I wrote down that he was the best kind of companion one could have for a trip of this kind. I was learning far more than he realized.’22

  In Barbara’s view, they were ‘two innocents, our ignorance was abysmal’.23 For Graham, the venture was an opportunity to play Russian roulette with a live round in the chamber. He most certainly knew he was putting his life in danger as he had read the Foreign Office Blue Book and been tutored by Harris. They could be shot by soldiers, poisoned, bitten by snakes, infected by rats, or savaged by larger animals; they might catch elephantiasis, leprosy, yaws, malaria, hookworm, schistosomiasis, dysentery, lassa fever, yellow fever, or an especially cruel thing, the Guinea worm, which grows under the skin and must be gradually spooled out onto a stick or pencil – if it breaks in the process, the remnant may mortify inside the host, causing infection or death.24 Greene knew all this, and set out in spite, or more likely because, of the risk.

  Greene had two maps of Liberia, one from the British General Staff that left large areas white and plotted conjectural courses of rivers, and another from the United States which inserted the word ‘CANNIBALS’ into the blank space.25 Maps are a way of imagining nations and peoples: these maps presented nothingness or a kind of fear. In practical terms, this occurred because cartographers had not yet done their job. But the message of emptiness has implications, as if the lives of those in the hidden places did not add up to much. Maps are potent things.

  Greene, for his part, was adamantly opposed to imperialism and, at that time, he despised the expats who ran British colonies such as Sierra Leone, though he had no idea how self-rule could be brought about without turmoil and long delay. His journey to Liberia was intended to find out as much as he could about an oppressed population, and he was particularly concerned to investigate how foreigners, notably Firestone, were benefiting from forced labour. While the psychological background to his trip is murky, his attitudes towards Africa were progressive for a white Englishman of his generation. For example, Barbara notes that despite having been advised by white men in Freetown to beat and harangue the men he employed, he spoke to them as he would to an Englishman. In addition to their tribal tongues, the Liberians spoke a distinctive form of English which retained some elements from the American South, and used terms such as ‘dash’ for payment and ‘chop’ for food. They sometimes found Greene’s bookish syntax impenetrable, but his tone of civility was apparently not, and their occasional disagreements with him were resolved amicably. He readily admitted that they knew far more about some things than he did. Knowing that his accounts would be dismissed by whites, he insisted that he had experienced intelligence, kindness, honesty, and diligence from them. For his part, he wondered whether their loyalty had allowed him to ‘victimize’ these men.26

  Tim Butcher has written an engrossing book on his own journey in Greene’s footsteps through Sierra Leone and Liberia. He believes that while Greene got a good many things right he was unfair to the Krios or Creoles, the freed slaves and their descendants in Freetown, who were caught between the white colonialists and the indigenous population. Although they were the product of a grim history, Greene saw them as merely corrupted by their contact with white men: ‘But one cannot continue long to find the Creole’s painful attempt at playing the white man funny; it is rather like the chimpanzee’s tea-party, the joke is all on one side. Sometimes, of course, the buffoonery is conscious, and then the degradation is more complete.’27

  What Greene saw in the League of Nati
ons report, with its binary emphasis on the conflict between the Americo-Liberians and the indigenous people, was a testing ground for a vision of civilization and of human psychology, a chance for ‘a smash and grab raid into the primitive’.28 Believing that modern culture was overwhelmingly corrupt, he trusted to the primitive as a source of vitality and insight. As a habit of mind, primitivism had been around since the early eighteenth century, but in Greene’s case it was mingled with Catholicism, anti-colonialism, and psychoanalysis. For Africans, the whole discussion of the primitive is frequently offensive and exasperating – the novelist Chinua Achebe has famously dismantled Heart of Darkness for its presentation of Africa and Africans, and Greene is indebted to Conrad.29 Coming a generation later, of course, Greene is a little more aware of just how absurd some common notions of Africa were: ‘ . . . you couldn’t talk of darkest Africa with any conviction when you had known Nottingham well’.30

  Butcher corrects some dates that Greene got wrong, and shows that the journey lasted about two months from their arrival in Freetown on 19 January 1935. It began with a creeping 230-mile train ride across Sierra Leone to the end of the narrow-gauge track and a further 40 miles by truck before crossing by foot into Liberia on 26 January. Graham and Barbara walked east through hill country and cut south-east for 65 miles across a southern protrusion of what was then known as French Guinea. Re-entering Liberia, they travelled south and west, reaching Grand Bassa (now Buchanan) on the coast on 2 March, the trek of about 350 miles having taken nearly twice as long as planned. At Grand Bassa they paid off their servants and carriers, and sailed in a small boat full of drunken politicians to Monrovia, where they boarded a cargo ship that eventually arrived back in Dover on 25 March.