Graham Greene Read online

  I hope you have good news of Helga. We’re having Christmas at home, so Crowborough will be very quiet this year. How is Graham?10

  Love,

  Graham

  TO HUGH GREENE

  14 North Side, Clapham Common, S.W.4 | Dec. 26 [1936]

  Dear Hugh,

  A thousand thanks for the Book Token. I collected a shelf-ful of books this Christmas. A very nice old edition of Gibbon in 12 volumes and the new Boswell from Vivien – oh and Bryant’s anthology of Restoration letters, Frost’s poems and Dylan Thomas’s, and Rare Poems of the 17th Century, and the Letters of Byron.

  I’m thick in scenario. Medium Shots and Insert Shots and Flash backs and the rest of the racket. Korda, I’m glad to say, has given up the Robey idea and seems to be leaving us alone. Casting is proving very different. Menzies finds lovely people with appallingly tough faces, but when they open their mouths they all have Oxford accents.

  […]

  TO THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH

  Night and Day was one of the most impressive new magazines to appear in Britain between the wars. Writing to the Earl of Iddesleigh (1901–70) at the publisher Eyre & Spottiswoode, Greene names its prominent contributors and describes the audience it will appeal to.

  [Night and Day] 21st May, 1937

  Dear Lord Iddesleigh,

  I am writing as Literary Editor of a new weekly Night and Day which is to appear for the first time on July 1st. Among its regular contributors will be Peter Fleming, David Garnett, Adrian Bell, Theodora Benson and Anthony Powell. Modelled to some extent on The New Yorker, it will be addressed to a sophisticated and literary public, and although its main appeal will be humorous, a section of the paper will be devoted to serious criticisms. Evelyn Waugh will contribute a page each week on recent books and another page will be given up to shorter notices.

  I should be very glad, therefore, if you would add this paper to the list of those to which you regularly send your books for review.

  Yours sincerely,

  Graham Greene

  The magazine folded after only six months. Already short of money, it was sued by the managers of the child-actor Shirley Temple over Greene’s observation in a film review (28 October) that interest in her was exploitative: ‘Her admirers – middle-aged men and clergymen – respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire.’ The matter was settled on terms humiliating to Greene.11 The Shirley Temple episode may have influenced Greene’s portrayal of the whisky priest’s sexually precocious daughter in The Power and the Glory: ‘He was appalled by her maturity, as she whipped up a smile from her large and varied stock.’ (p. 81)

  TO JOHN BETJEMAN

  John Betjeman (1906–84) was a younger contemporary of Greene’s at Oxford. He contributed five instalments of his ‘Diary of Percy Progress’ to Night and Day, and Greene hoped that he would write on architecture as well.12

  Night and Day | 97 St. Martin’s Lane | London WC2 |

  19th August, 1937

  Dear Betjeman,

  Can I steal you for my end of the paper? I am starting a series under some such title as ‘Those Stately Homes’ to deal in an unserious manner with the big country houses, their architecture, their interiors and their what-nots. Lancaster is opening the series with an article on Osborne House. I don’t want to be too exclusively Victorian. Have you any ideas? The payment at my end of the paper, I am afraid, is rather smaller than in John’s.13 For an article of anything between 900 and 1,200 words, I could pay 4 or 5 guineas according to length. We would also, of course, pay any agreed expenses in getting the material. I very much hope you will do something for me.

  Yours sincerely,

  Graham Greene

  TO R. K. NARAYAN

  Night and Day | 97 St. Martin’s Lane | London WC2 |

  Oct. 13 [1937]

  Dear Narayan,

  I have this moment finished reading the new novel & get off this hurried line. I shall be very much honoured by a dedication. I like the book very much indeed. I wasn’t so immediately taken by it as I was with Swami, but like Chandran I feel I shall like it better with every reading. The ending I think is triumphantly successful. I think it may very well turn out to be your best book.

  As a matter of policy I shall go through it making a few corrections before I pass it on to Higham for Nelson’s.

  I am frantically busy, & very overworked, so forgive this hasty line.

  Yours,

  Graham Greene

  Though admired by critics, Narayan’s books did not sell. Like Hamish Hamilton after Swami and Friends, Nelson retreated from him, and the new manuscript went to Macmillan which brought it out as The Dark Room in 1938 : ‘I had the unique experience of having a new publisher for each book. One book, one publisher – and then perhaps he said to himself, “Hands off this writer.”’14

  TO DAVID HIGHAM

  On 7 January, Higham had sought Greene’s opinion of the cartoonist and designer Osbert Lancaster (1908–86).

  14 North Side, Clapham Common, S.W. 4 [c. 9 January 1938]

  Dear David,

  Osbert Lancaster is a charming creature with a heavy moustache looking like a miniature Guardsman. He wrote an admirable satirical description of a seaside place called Progress at Pelvis Bay. Like most amateurs his writing is not always reliable. He has a curious pompous style which is excellent when he is being funny, but is heavy when he’s serious. He draws very good humorous pictures of a satirical kind. Don’t hesitate to mention my name if you want to when writing to him.

  I hope you have had good luck with Frere.15 The other places I’m interested in are Paraguay – remains of old Jesuit missions, five revolutions or attempted revolutions since 1935, the totalitarian state transported to the centre of South America;16 and Ecuador a half unexplored country, opera bouffe politics, a purely Indian state. But I daresay we better not confuse the issue with these.

  Yours,

  Graham

  TO HUGH GREENE

  14 North Side | Clapham Common| SW4 [16 January 1938]

  Dear Hugh,

  Many thanks for your letter. It’s as bad as that, is it? I haven’t had time to read the thing. I envy you The Thousand and One Nights, which I shall give myself if I ever sell another film which doesn’t look likely as the whole industry, except M.G.M., is dead. Mexico is looking very doubtful – Sheed has dropped it because he says the Church doesn’t want it done any more (I think he’s probably short of ready), and though Longman’s are ready to take it on over here, I’ve still to find an American publisher. With fiction I’ve left Doubleday’s and gone to the Viking, but they aren’t exactly snatching at Mexico.

  I had, too, what I thought was a good idea: me and Muggeridge combining in a fairly light book on the Palestine civil war, me coming from Syria and Transjordania with Arab introductions, he from Tel Aviv with Jewish. Then we’d meet at the Holy Sepulchre and begin to argue, each supporting the people he hadn’t come across, idealistically, and being told by the other – ‘But you should have seen the buggers’. He’d therefore be pro-Arab and me pro-Jew. A little light relief too at a military court-martial. M. was delighted with the idea, but we can’t find a publisher to see the fun. They are all a bit scared of Muggeridge too. Did you read his Literary Pilgrimages in Night and Day? I thought they were admirable. Especially the one on Lawrence.

  My damned novel is giving me worse hell than any other – I suppose because I’ve never been able to give it two months on end; my nerves as a consequence are in tatters, and I want to get out of this bloody country.

  I’m glad you agree about S. T. The little bitch is going to cost me about £250 if I’m lucky. But see Captain January. That’s her great film. The Fox people went round to Gaumont-British to try and get them to withdraw all tickets from me, thus breaking me as a critic, but G.B. told them to go to hell, an
d I’m popping up in The Spectator again in the Spring – and, my God, won’t I go gunning.

  Did you see Herbert’s front page news story in the Daily Worker, Dec. 22. ‘I Was A Secret Agent of Japan’. Claud Cockburn wrote it, paid him nothing and borrowed 5 s. The general line was: This story must be true, because Mr. Greene is a real ‘pukka sahib’, not a mere worker like you, dear reader. ‘I felt it was time,’ Mr Greene writes, ‘to speak up, when the Empire of the Rising Sun laid fingers on the heritage of Princess Elizabeth.’ I gather from the same source that the book is to be called ‘Secret Agents in Spain’. There is a facsimile letter from a poor Captain Oko signing himself Arthur – I don’t know why.

  This letter now I come to look at its constipated and ungrammatical sentences looks just the sort of letter in which some silly little official would read things between the lines.17 I mean my letter, not Capt. Oko’s. So you might let me know if it arrives. Our love to you three. I hope Helga’s having as easy a time as before.

  Love,

  Graham

  From 1934, Herbert had been working with Japanese naval intelligence, and, like Wormold in Our Man in Havana, feeding them bogus information – he was reporting to a Captain Oko, codenamed Arthur. The article was an advertisement for his book Secret Agent in Spain. Herbert did visit Spain, and Claud Cockburn says that Ernest Hemingway pointed to him in Madrid and said he was going to shoot that man because he was a spy. Cockburn recognised him and said, ‘Don’t shoot him, he’s my headmaster’s son.’18

  TO DAVID HIGHAM

  14 North Side, Clapham Common, S.W.4 [17 January 1938?]

  Dear David,

  I’m sorry if I’ve been rather irritating and changeable over Mexico. The truth is I didn’t want to do a book for Heinemann that they didn’t really want. One would feel awfully uninterested oneself. So when I talked to Frere and found that really under the surface that was the position, I offered to drop the whole thing as far as they were concerned and if I did the book at all publish it through Longman’s. With such a big amorphous overwritten scene as Mexico the only treatment, I’m convinced, is a particular one – in this case a religious. And Frere admitted that he hadn’t the faintest idea how to sell a religious book. Why, they even have to sell the Bible as literature!!

  So I think the thing to do is wait on Mary.19 If she can’t place the book soon, I’ll give it up. If she can get £250 for it, then, I think I can manage on £200 from Longman’s plus a definite commission from the Tablet. I think I’d better have a word with Burns too from that point of view.20

  The novel in its last 5000 words has turned round and bit me (I’ve never had such a bother with a book: I suppose because I’ve never been able to concentrate on it for two months together), so I’m going off to a country pub, I hope, tomorrow evening to finish it. Frere proposes to publish in July – which sounds good to me. I’ve made him quite happy about the title which I’m convinced is a good one. I’ll let you know immediately I get a cable from Mary.

  Yours,

  Graham

  ‘Brighton Rock I began in 1937 as a detective story and continued, I am sometimes tempted to think, as an error of judgement… how was it that a book which I had intended to be a simple detective story should have involved a discussion, too obvious and open for a novel, of the distinction between good-and-evil and right-and-wrong and the mystery of “the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God” – a mystery that was to be the subject of three more of my novels? The first fifty pages of Brighton Rock are all that remain of the detective story …’21

  TO HUGH GREENE

  14 North Side, Clapham Common, SW4 | Jan. 22 [1938]

  Dear Hugh,

  […]

  Mexico has suddenly come off after all. Longman’s here, Viking in America. I’m off with V. at a week’s notice to New York on the Normandie on the 29th; then I’m taking her to New Orleans; she’s finding her way home; I’m going to San Antonio, Texas, where there’s a mission college for Mexico, to get some dope, and then go on down. Back middle of May. I wish you could meet me in Mexico City. If a miracle should happen between now and April cable Thomas Cook’s.

  […]

  TO RAYMOND GREENE

  Shushan Airport | New Orleans, La. | Feb. 27 [1938]

  Dear Raymond,

  It’s taken much longer getting away from America than I had planned, but I’m off tomorrow & Vivien by boat on Monday. We spent about nine days in New York, stopped a day in Charlottesville to see the University of Virginia – a startlingly lovely place – & then came here, a rather disappointing spot. We’ve escaped from the town itself to this airport on the edge of a lake.

  I have suddenly realised that proofs of my novel will be waiting for me in Mexico, & I’ve left a blank space in M.S. for the official name – which would appear on a post mortem report – for a kind of heart disease which might kill from shock a man in the early forties, physically – apart from his heart – C3 with drink and smokes. Could you write it me on a card & post it to me c/o Thomas Cook’s, Mexico City?

  My love to Eleanor.

  Yours,

  Graham

  P.S. Mexico’s quite in the news here. Some chance of a Fascist outbreak.

  C3 was the lowest physical rating of conscripts in the First World War. In Brighton Rock, Hale’s post-mortem shows that he died of cardiac thrombosis, although Ida suspects suicide or murder. The report also indicates that he possessed, as did Greene, an appendix scar and supernumerary nipples (Brighton Rock 78–9; see also 371 below). Hale’s other identity is Kolley Kibber, a name based on Colley Cibber, a poet and playwright ridiculed in The Dunciad. It is hard not to think that in this character, Greene intended a mocking portrait of himself as a creature of Grub Street and is playfully challenging the reader to find the clues and make the connection: ‘You are Mr Kolley Kibber. I claim the Daily Messenger prize’ (p. 5).

  TO NANCY PEARN

  On his way to Mexico City, Greene met with General Saturnino Cedillo, who controlled the state of San Luis Potosí from his ranch at Las Palomas. Though not religious himself, Cedillo chose not to enforce anti-religious laws. Shortly afterwards, he openly rebelled against President Cárdenas, took to the mountains, and was shot by government soldiers.22

  Hotel Canada [Mexico City] | March 11 [1938]

  Dear Nancy,

  I’ve arrived here rather late – detained by an interesting political character in San Luis Potosi. I’m off again to Vera Cruz in a day or two: there to Tabasco, & then a fortnight’s ride by horse across T. & Chiapas to the road & the rail again. This should be interesting – almost untraveled [?] ground. Then I come back here to recuperate.

  Listen! I enclose a story which I verily hope may have enough action for the Strand. The title can be changed. I have sent a small descriptive article to The Spectator called ‘A Postcard from San Antonio’ & told them if they don’t want it to send it to you. It might do for New Statesman or Time & Tide. In a few days I am sending them another article – ‘A Day at the General’s’ – with the same instructions.23

  Mail address still Cook’s [?].

  Adios,

  Graham

  If anything should be printed – proofs to my wife.

  TO ELIZABETH BOWEN

  Graham spent five weeks in the country examining the effects of anti-religious laws in Chiapas and especially in Tabasco, where many priests had been imprisoned or executed. Here, he writes to his friend the novelist Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973); he had been glad to find one of her novels in the home of a Norwegian family on whom he based the Fellowes family in The Power and the Glory.

  Hotel Español | Ciudad Las Casas, Chis., Mex. | April 13 [1938]

  Dear Elizabeth,

  I can’t resist writing to you a line of gratitude. About 9 days ago I got landed in a rather wretched village in Chiapas called Yajalon waiting for a guide & mules to bring me here. (Why do they call this stuff ink?) I was driven distracted by rats when I discovered in the house of a Norwegia
n, the widow of an American coffee planter, a copy of The Hotel, the only book of yours I hadn’t read. – I must give up this ink. O, I’ve just discovered it’s really for rubber stamps. So all of two nights, I was able to sit up & read by an electric torch & drink bad brandy & quite forget the rats. Your book was so infinitely more actual than the absurd situation. After I finished it I had to fall back on Kristin Lavrandsdottir 24 (the husband had belonged to the Book of the Month Club), but that didn’t work at all – the rats beat 14th century Norway every time.

  This is an awful & depressing country for anyone like myself who doesn’t care for nature. And guides have a conviction – I haven’t enough Spanish to share it – that 12 hours is a reasonable ride per day. Thank Goodness in San Cristobal one’s back on the road again. I went to my first bootleg Mass today – in Northern Mexico & the capital some of the churches are open: no sanctus bell & the priest arriving in a natty motoring coat & a tweed cap, & the woman of the house immensely complacent.

  I found a cable waiting for me in Mexico City asking me to agree to apologise to that little bitch Shirley Temple – so I suppose the case has now been settled with the maximum publicity. How I shall miss your dramatic criticisms.

  Yours,

  Graham