Graham Greene Read online

  I wish you weren’t so futilely far off. I don’t mean the mile & a half between Magdalen Street & Thorncliffe Rd. Or I wish I weren’t in love with you. I’ve always enjoyed it before, even when I thought I was being miserable. So I could stand outside & write jangly verse & say to myself ‘That’s a good idea. That’s how I feel.’ But I don’t know how I feel now. I enjoyed this evening marvellously, but now I’ve got back I feel you are just as far away as ever, & that it’s just as hopeless that you will ever be more than mildly interested in that blasted non-existent soul of mine. This letter will help you to analyse the specimen won’t it?

  What it all comes to, I suppose, is that I’ve never really been in love before, only suggested myself into a state of mild excitement in which I could draw fifteen bob out of the Westminster for a piece of verse. I can’t do that now though. I can’t think nearly clear enough to fit anything into a metre. You wouldn’t expect me to write verse when I was blind drunk would you? All this is ‘absurd.’ Of course it is to you. You can’t sympathise I suppose, any more than I can with the excitement & scurry of ants. Though how you can expect to know anyone’s mind or soul or anything, when you are so far off, I don’t know.

  I don’t know why I’m being so heavy & horrid, when really I’m frightfully grateful to you for to-night. If you ask me to, I won’t say a single serious thing, when I next see you. I won’t even talk about you, if you ask me not to. It’s wonderful what you put up with. With love (which you won’t understand18).

  Graham

  The blot is not carefully arranged to show desperation, but my thumb slipped.

  Do send me the snapshot you half said you would. Nine days! If you do, I’ll even discuss the Budget or the latest books with you. G.

  TO A. D. PETERS

  On 1 May 1925, Basil Blackwell published Graham’s first book, a collection of poems. He had also finished a novel called ‘Anthony Sant’. Although Blackwell rejected it, the literary agent A. D. Peters liked it and tried, unsuccessfully, to find a publisher. In his last term at Oxford, Graham accepted a position in China with the British American Tobacco Company but resigned after a period of training.

  The School House | Berkhamsted [c. June 1925]

  Dear Mr. Peters,

  I must confess to a horrid crime. Being rather bored & not knowing how long I shall remain in England, as I am running for a post in China, I sent the volume of verse altered & revised, under the title of Babbling April, to Blackwell, who published it last month. Alas! I went & contracted for first refusal of my next two books, & sent the revised A.S. to him. I wrote yesterday asking him to come to a decision, & will write again today enclosing your letter, & asking him to let me know within a week. In any case, I shall be free of my contract I think by August, as I shall have a long poem ready for him by then. I have just started on a new novel, which I think will [illeg.] than the A.S. If I may, I will send it you, when finished.

  Yours sincerely,

  Graham Greene

  TO WALTER DE LA MARE

  29. Thorncliffe Rd. | Oxford [1925]

  Dear Mr. de la Mare,

  I hope it will not be presumptuous of me to send you this, my first book. I expect you’ve forgotten who I am, unless you remember our strawberry tea at Berkhamsted.

  Yours sincerely,

  Graham Greene

  TO VIVIENNE DAYRELL-BROWNING (LATER VIVIEN GREENE)

  Vivien had written, ‘Do you know you’ve had a letter every day this week? I shall appoint myself chairman of a Committee empowered to look into the matter & draw up a report.’

  [2 June 1925]

  On behalf of the shareholders of this Company I should like to state that we are fully satisfied with the management of the Chairman & Board, & would like the business of the Company carried on in the future on the same lines, which have proved so eminently satisfactory in the past. I should like to move a vote of very sincere thanks to, & confidence in, the Chairman & Directors of this Company.

  I can’t say this in the Board Room, but the Chairman is the most wonderful person in the world.

  You darling!

  TO VIVIENNE DAYRELL-BROWNING (LATER VIVIEN GREENE)

  On Friday, 20 June 1925, Graham and Vivien said a ‘final goodbye’ by the river at Wolvercote. However, the courtship resumed shortly after.

  The School House | Berkhamsted | 10 a.m. Mon. [22 June 1925]

  I haven’t written before. I haven’t had much time, except in nearly four hours of ghastly train journey, & anyway I hoped I might be able to write a bit cheerfuller this morning. I’m sorry if I can’t. Your letter was lovely.

  You were quite right about saying goodbye outside Oxford. I couldn’t have stood the bus journey back. And it is of value to have been the first person you’ve kissed. But it doesn’t make me feel a bit pleased with myself. It only makes me wonder how somebody like you can exist, who’s willing to do something you don’t want to do, just because a friend of yours is so mundane that he can’t do without it. And even if I can’t say as much, I can say that I’ve never kissed anyone I’ve wanted to really badly before, or held off for so long, for fear of offence. You are so precious that I’m afraid of doing or saying any thing which might prevent me seeing you.

  Now I’m writing a horrid depressing sort of letter, which will come just when you’ve got nice & cheerful again, & giving a free lift to your shoulders & saying ‘Well at last, he’s over.’ You see, our depressions are so different. You feel melancholy, because you think you may not see a friend again. I’m depressed, because I love you so frightfully, & even though I do see you again several times, I shan’t be able to feel that you are there, living in the same place, & that I can always ring you up at any moment & hear your voice, even if it’s an angry or a bored voice. It’s all so silly that I should love someone, whom I should want to marry, whatever conditions she might choose to make, but just the someone who wouldn’t marry me on any conditions. It’s bad luck at the least. […]

  TO A. D. PETERS

  Graham completed ‘Anthony Sant’ by November 1924, but revised it for submission to publishers. Of this novel he wrote: ‘The subject, like so many first novels, was childhood and unhappiness…. By a mistaken application of the Mendelian theory I told the story of a black child born of white parents – a throwback to some remote ancestor…. There followed in my novel a hushed-up childhood and a lonely colour-barred life at school, but to me even then the end seemed badly botched, and I can see that it was strangely optimistic for one of my temperament. I made the young man find a kind of content by joining a ship at Cardiff as a Negro deckhand, so escaping from the middle class and his sense of being an outsider.’19

  Balliol College | Oxford [c.

  June 1925] Dear Mr. Peters,

  Many thanks for your letter. I’ve been at work on ‘Anthony Sant’. I found a lot of small things I wanted to alter in the first chapter, mostly in the way of terribly banal adjectives.

  I’ve got Ch. IV properly sorted now, so that there’s no break in the narrative; I’ve also eliminated all the first persons.

  I’m just beginning on the last chapter. Do you think the public must have Anthony settling down somewhere with a woman? My idea now is so to alter the character of the prostitute, as to make her return to the old trade not particularly unpleasant to a soft hearted reader. A. would then recover not only from his attempted suicide, but also a little of his sense of humour. The whole drift of the story hitherto has been in the difficulty of reconciling his colour with his civilised sex instincts. Now he will find a perfectly happy compromise by cutting out any idea of the ‘love instinct.’ And he’ll be left in the stoke hold of a ship, finding happiness in physical fatigue, & in mixing with a medley of nationalities, where his colour does not give him any inferiority complex, & where he is completely cut off from his family & caste. The idea would wind up with a description of the furnaces etc. conveying the feeling that this in its way is like the forest, which he has been aiming at in his dreams.20 />
  It sounds very crude put like this, but I think it could be worked out all right, & seems to me more plausible than a sexually happy ending. Do you think it might go down all right?

  Then there’d be quite a number of titles one might have. What about ‘Escape’, ‘The Joyful Compromise’, or ‘Open Sea’?

  Yours sincerely,

  Graham Greene

  P. S. I hope I may have the chance of seeing you in the vac.

  TO A. D. PETERS

  Following the failure of the Germans to pay war indemnities, the French attempted to set up a ‘Revolver Republic’ in the occupied Ruhr in 1922. They assembled a loose army of German separatists, thugs recruited from brothels and French prisons, to assist the collaborators. Graham persuaded the Count von Bernstorff at the German embassy to finance a trip in the spring of 1924 for himself, his cousin Edward Greene (called ‘Tooter’) and Claud Cockburn, so they could write articles on the crisis from the German perspective. While there, the three conceived a novel after the manner of John Buchan, but nothing came of it.21 A year later, Graham made another attempt at the thriller. He returned to the subject in The Name of Action (1930).

  The School House | Berkhamsted [1925]

  Dear Mr. Peters,

  I enclose the first 20,000 (circa) words of the ‘shocker’ in the hope that you may be able to serialise it. Is it necessary to give a synopsis of the whole plot? Once again I do not like the title, but at present I have been unable to think of anything else. There is another point also. Try as I would I could not introduce a love interest before, at the very earliest, Ch. VI. Will this militate against its being taken as a serial? I expect you will find the whole story rather derivative, though the main theme of the German Separatists has, I think, not yet been taken in this type of fiction.

  Re Anthony Sant’s title. What do you think of ‘Crouching Dust’ from Blunden’s lines (I quote from memory)

  ‘And all my hopes shall with my body soon

  Be but as crouching dust & wind-blown sand.’?22

  Yours very sincerely

  Graham Greene

  P.S. Let me know if you require a synopsis of the rest of this story.

  TO VIVIENNE DAYRELL-BROWNING (LATER VIVIEN GREENE)

  37 Smith St. |Chelsea, S.W. | Aug. 7 [1925]. 6.30 p.m.

  Darling,

  I got your second lovely letter when I got back from work this evening. It was lovely, but it made me feel the most utter beast that ever was, because you talked about looking forward to my letter, & I know that you’ll have got two rotten ones. I ought never to have sent them, especially the last. I tell you that I don’t want to give you pain, & then I go & write like that. But, my darling, it is true, only sometimes I can’t help whining.

  Darling, it’s wonderful when the person one loves most in the world encourages one in what one loves next best (even though far less).

  I’ve never met so complete a companion as you. Those winter evenings you describe seem to me the only thing worth having. It’s companionship with you that I want & just that sort of companionship. You see somehow I feel as if you’ve pushed me through a door, so that some things, as you say, do seem a bit trivial & second rate now. What I long for is a quite original marriage with you, companionship & companionship only, all that Winter evenings part, & to have someone worth fighting for. And you would go on holidays, when you liked, & see your mother when you liked, & I should share your companionship. I shouldn’t grumble if it was a less share than your mother had. You could work too if you wanted to. There’d be no domestic tying down, & you’d always keep your ideal of celibacy, & you could help me to keep the same ideal. I didn’t know six months ago that I should ever want to keep that ideal, but as I say you’ve shoved me through a door. And besides having some of the Winter evenings with me, as well as having some with your mother, we should have our own adventures together. Because sometimes, when I’d been good, you’d come for a holiday with me, & we should have that night train journey across Europe. Do you remember talking about it?

  And the whole thing would be an adventure finer than the ordinary marriage, because it would be two, not merely fighting for each other, but for a shared ideal. Darling, it sounds fantastic, but the fantastic is often wildly practical, as when Columbus put out from Spain. And I remember you wrote once that you did love me, though it wasn’t in a way I understood, but, darling, it’s a way I do understand, & it’s the final because there’s no reason why it should ever end, which is very different to the other. I wish to God (& I mean that literally) that this dream could come true. You talked about how pleasant it would be to round off our friendship properly. Then you meant making a clean break, & leaving no ragged ends, but suppose God did make us come together, & the rounding off was as I’ve imagined, & that he brought us together, in order to strike out together across this new country. For it would be new country, & perhaps even the kind of promised land to which people have really been aiming, though they didn’t know it, & they’ll follow us in. This is still another thing I could not have believed six months ago, that I should write a kind of religious letter. But I can’t help it. I’ve been wanting to say this for a long time now. O my dear, if you only made it true – this ‘monastic marriage’ – then it would be goodbye to business in China, & there’d be something more than money in the future.

  I can’t write anymore. Lots of love (& can’t you believe that it’s not love, just because you are beautiful?)

  Graham

  Graham was a man of strong appetites, often made utterly unmanageable by bipolar illness. His offer of a ‘monastic marriage’ was doomed from the start. His sexual life was conducted mainly outside the marriage; he was involved in many brief liaisons, sometimes with prostitutes, and he had several long relationships.

  TO VIVIENNE DAYRELL-BROWNING (LATER VIVIEN GREENE)

  With Vivien travelling on the Continent, Graham headed north for a job as tutor at Ambervale, Ashover, near Chesterfield. He was now anxious for a career that would allow him to remain in England.

  At St. Pancras | 1.10 p.m | Monday [24 August 1925]

  O my darling, you’ve forgotten all about me. My guardian angel’s gone fast asleep. First of all the glass of your frame breaks, then comes the taxi accident, & just now I’ve found I’ve lost my ticket to Stretton & will have to get another. O my dear, I hope you’ll send it back quickly. I’m feeling so nervous of my future ‘charge.’ I wonder when I shall hear from you, my dear love.

  I’ve just been to see the Editor of the Lit. Supp.23 A charming man. I’m to send him a card for books I want & he’ll try & send me some of them. I hit on a good stunt quite by accident. He said ‘If I asked you to do a front page leader on anything you liked, what would you do?’ I said the first thing that came into my head ‘The Prose of the Restoration.’ He was fearfully pleased, because he said that he had no specialist in that, & that someone he knew was publishing a book on Rochester soon. So I hope to get that. If I start doing a column or two in the Lit. Supp. it won’t be a bad start. And, my darling, he said there was an unrivalled opportunity on The Times just now. He said if I get on next year, I’d have a chance of doing leaders on home politics at once, & there was no reason why I shouldn’t leap into a good salary, a very good salary. […]

  TO VIVIENNE DAYRELL-BROWNING (LATER VIVIEN GREENE)

  Graham here proposes an engagement which is no engagement. A further concession, he announces his decision to become a Catholic. A decade later, in Mexico, he would discover some of the emotional aspect of his faith as he studied the progress of a persecution.24 By that time, his marriage was very much in decay.

  The Golden Cross [Oxford] | 8.45 a.m. | Weds. Sept. 16 ’25

  My darling love, thank you so much for the dear cinema note. It stayed under my pillow all through the night & slept when I did, which wasn’t very much.

  My very dearest sweetest heart. I wrote to you before the Capitol proposing a Marriage, which the world would not call a Marriage. Darling h
eart, can’t we have an Engagement, which the World would not call an Engagement. I would not ask that that one in fifty chance should be increased. I would wait until I was settled & then ask you whether you’d marry me, & I should be neither surprised nor angry, if you said No. And of course at any time you could write & say that you didn’t want to see me again. In fact, darling, really there’d be no Engagement at all. I should still be fighting for a one in fifty chance. But, darling, & this is a big but, it would make it so much easier for us to see each other. You could come for a week-end occasionally to Berkhamsted without feeling shy & out of place, &, my own darling, that would be lovely. I think you’d like my family a lot, my own love, & they’d adore you. And no one could object to things like the Thorncliffe Rd. plan. And, darling heart, I give you my word of honour that I would not build a single brick upon it.

  My dear sweet love, I seem to be always asking of you, & never giving. I wish to God I could give anything, which would make you even happier than you are. But I’ve got good precedents for asking, haven’t I, & being a persistent worry to you. ‘Ask & it shall be given.’ ‘Knock & it shall be opened.’ Dearest heart, I’ve but little hope that you’ll agree, but one in a million, when it means an easier sight of you, is worth a struggle.

  O my darling heart, I wish we could have wiped out everyone else for an hour or two last night, so that I could have got just one star. My dear, dear one.

  Now, I’ve got to fill up the time somehow, between now & 3.10. O dear, I hope I don’t have to wait a long time at Bletchley.

  Darling one, here’s a secret between us two. It’s my turn to be shy now of speaking. I couldn’t tell you out aloud [sic] last night, even in the dark. Directly I know that I’m going to be settled somewhere for a few months on end, I’m going to get instruction & become a Catholic, if they’ll have me.