Authors: Richard Greene
You can draft this much better than I can. My experience in life assures me that the big lie always comes off & the barrow-boy will turn up in Washington.
Our love to you both from rainy Antibes.
Graham.
130 Boulevard Malesherbes, | Paris 17. | 24 June 1974
Dear Michael,
[…]
I’ve finished the first complete draft of my ghosting book –
An Impossible Woman: The Memoirs of Doctor Elisabeth Moor of Capri
. I don’t know whether you will be in the market for it? It’s a curious book, not like many others. Based on tape recordings translated from German into English and then altered again to suit the Dottoressa’s very individual style, plus large insertions by myself in her style, plus an epilogue by myself, you may find it a bit of a ragbag. Old Elisabeth is a bit of a combination of
Chaucer’s Good Wife of Bath and Mrs Bloom. She lost her last lover at the age of 70 and is now approaching 90. Her last feeling was that she didn’t want the book published while she was alive, but I suspect she will outlive all of us and I think she might be open to persuasion. Max and Polak of Zsolnay have the world rights. Anyway by September I may have something to show you.
Affectionately,
Graham
Korda declined the manuscript, which was published in America by the Viking Press
.
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06 Antibes. | Dec. 17 [1974]
Dear Muriel,
I’ve just received
The Abbess
55
with an undignified crow of delight. Thank you so much. I’ve been bookstarved by the postal strike & here’s 2 hours – no, an hour & a half – of pleasure before Christmas drops its melancholy pall. Don’t make your books any shorter, please, or you’ll disappear like Beckett.
Love,
Graham
I receive news of you from the Steegmullers. Why don’t you come & see us all in Capri?
In 1975, Raymond was suffering from throat cancer, requiring treatment with radioactive gold pellets, then cryogenic therapy, to get rid of tissue that would not heal
.
56
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | Jan. 30 [1975]
Dear Raymond,
I was so very sorry to hear from Elisabeth that you had to go back to hospital – by an odd coincidence I dreamed of you very vividly that night & woke worried & meant to write. It seems so awful that you now have to face yet another season of pain. I pray – literally – that this one will be shorter & you’ll feel the progression. You are the real heart of the Greene family & we have always depended on you more than you know.
Don’t bother to answer this. I wish I were in London & not so far away.
Love
Graham
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | March 21
57
Dear Mario,
Thank you so much for
The Malacca Cane
(you had given it me in Italian & I didn’t know it had appeared in English). It’s come at the best moment because no books are being published & I am being
driven to reread Proust – with less pleasure than 20 years ago & some impatience.
We long to see you.
Love,
Graham
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes. | [31 December 1975]
You are quite wrong. I’ve never tried to avoid seeing you – I would love to see you. But you are most of the time in Stockholm. I am most of the time – say 8/12ths – in Antibes. I go to London for a week perhaps four times a year, to Paris for a week perhaps six times, & in the summer – which was when you came here – I go away – for three years to South America, another year to South Africa – because this flat is impossible to live in during the summer because of the noise. So it is that the odds are all against us being within reach at the same time. But avoid seeing you – never. Whenever I’m in Paris – that is to say the colder North – I drink Swedish akvavit out of the little silver beaker you gave me & always with thoughts of you.
Love,
Graham
Ritz Hotel, | London | June 1 [no year]
Dear Elisabeth,
My plans for June remain rather uncertain – but I think I will be burying myself in Brighton
*
to fight through a writer’s block, & an American professor wouldn’t help, especially one who brackets me with the Murdoch & the Amis whom I consider two of the worst
novelists of the period! I’d love to see
you –
but somehow Biles of Georgia
58
– I doubt if it would be advisable. Love, Graham
* Royal Albion from the 14th.
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | Aug. 2 [1976]
Dear Muriel,
I got your book yesterday & finished it avidly today. The reason I didn’t get it earlier was because I was driving 3,500 kilometres in Spain in a tiny Renault with a priest & a student & two large boxes of wine. Now my back aches – but your book was good for it. Beware though of the whos & whoms & whiches – first sentence on p.217!
59
Affectionately,
Graham
1
Greene attempted to organise a mass resignation. See p. 308.
2
In
Travels with My Aunt
(1968) a Czech manufacturer of plastics offers Henry Pulling two million drinking straws for free (188).
3
Auberon Waugh was then the
Spectator
’s political correspondent. He wrote extensively against Britain’s moral and material support of the Nigerian government in the Biafran war. In 1970 he campaigned on this issue in the Bridgwater by-election but withdrew in favour of the Liberal candidate. (Information from Alexander Waugh.) He and Graham Greene, along with Muriel Spark and V. S. Naipaul, signed a letter of protest published in
The Times
(13 November 1968).
4
In a review of Philby’s
My Silent War
and Hugh Trevor-Roper’s
The Philby Affair
, Charles Stuart recalled that Greene at SIS had discouraged conversation ‘by
rebarbative
silence and repulsive demeanour’.
(Spectator
, 27 September 1968)
5
These novellas were not published in English until 1977 when a Canadian firm, Anson-Cartwright, in which Greene’s niece Louise Dennys (b. 1948) was a partner, put out an edition. Dennys remained Skvorecky’s publisher for a number of years in her new firm, Lester & Orpen Dennys.
6
Greene’s trip was complicated by Skvorecky’s being unexpectedly granted permission to leave the country. He sent his friend Jarmila Emmerova to the airport with a letter explaining the situation. She helped Graham through the early part of his visit, and he gave her what she supposes was a gift intended for Skvorecky’s wife, three bottles of Chanel No. 5 (e-mail from Emmerova to RG, 13 March 2006).
7
Father Jean-Claude Bajeux, who was working with Haitian refugees. ‘Duvalier had killed his family and he was not talkative on our border trip.’ (Bernard Diederich, e-mail to RG, 29 January 2006.)
8
The Ortolan
(1967). The play was written in 1951 and had recently been revived. Its subject, the lot of the woman artist in northern Sweden, limited its appeal.
9
Rosemary’s Baby
(1968), a horror film directed by Roman Polanski and starring Mia Farrow.
10
Yours etc,
141–5.
11
The Poet allen Ginsberg (1926–97) had visited Prague in the mid-1960s. He and Skvorecky had a series of adventures until Ginsberg was expelled from the country by the police (Josef Skvorecky, e-mail to RG, 6 February 2006).
12
Ian Thomson, ‘Our Man in Tallinn’,
Articles of Faith
, 165–79.
13
In his letter of 16 October, Leslie remarked that Budberg’s brothel no longer existed but had become a chemist’s shop by his time.
14
The text of this telegram is taken from Korda’s article, ‘The Third Man’,
New Yorker
(25 March 1996), 48. The original may be archived with files from the literary agency ICM at a warehouse in New Jersey (information from Mitch Douglas).
15
Waugh specified these two points in his review (22 November 1969) as minor flaws in
Travels with My Aunt
. Otherwise, it was ‘a spanking good collection of short stories, portrait-sketches and funny happenings’.
16
Prebendary of St Paul’s and a devotional author.
17
Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001), poet and philosopher who was the first president of Senegal.
18
Graham suffered from Depuytren’s contractures, which cause the fingers to stiffen. Readers of Patrick O’ Brian may recall that in
The Hundred Days
(1998) Stephen Maturin acquires, as an anatomical specimen, a hand afflicted with this rare condition; the sailors see it as a talisman and call it ‘the hand of glory’.
19
Jean-Felix Paschoud, Greene’s Swiss lawyer.
20
Victoria Ocampo was Greene’s South American publisher. They had first met in 1938 and were close friends.
21
In Capri.
22
Sir Hugh Greene was 6‘ 6; “Graham was 6’ 2”.
23
Graham dined at Gemma’s from the 1940s, and walked in her funeral procession in 1984 (Hazzard 34–5).
24
The Driver’s Seat
(London: Macmillan, 1970).
25
Elisabeth Moor. See pp. 268 and 331–2.
26
Presumably the Canadian scholar Philip Stratford, a friend of Greene’s and an important critic of his works.
27
Apparently, her daughter.
28
An attempt had been made to overthrow General Alejandro Lanusse, the liberalising president of Argentina, while he was meeting Allende at Antofagasta (see
Reflections
, 275–6).
29
Saunders reminded him of an announcement Charles Greene had made: ‘“I have here a request from some boys who want to see the film “Tarzan of the
Alps”,’
said Charles breathing over the note. Masters to right & left & rear lean toward him and gratingly whisper,
“Apes”.’
30
Arthur Mayo suffered terribly at Berkhamsted School. It was his daughter, Hilary Rost, a county councillor and governor of the school in the 1970s, who contacted Graham about
A Sort of Life
. She says that her father spoke of one master in particular who ‘would make the scholarship boys stand up, while he told the rest of the class that they must watch these characters carefully as their fathers were paying their fees and they should make sure that they were not wasting their money. They were verbally abused and most of the staff evidently condoned this. Graham Greene would make a point of coming up to my father after these sessions and would engage him in discussions about some academic subject, making it quite clear that he respected him and would have nothing to do with the invitation to bully’ (Letter to RG, 12 March 2006).
31
Saunders remembered Carter: ‘pale red hair, snake-like skull who curled the lip & distended the lip at the approach of buggy Saunders et al.’
32
Saunders noticed that Greene referred (152) to a meeting between David Copperfield and Mr Squeers, but Squeers actually appears in
Nicholas Nickleby
.
33
Saunders recalled Whitehead as no gentleman for having encouraged boys to sneak. Sunderland Taylor assigned the boys to parse and analyse
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
while he read a detective story. ‘The Oily Duke’, later called ‘the Devil’, was a master named Rawes who did not suffer fools.
34
Not to Disturb
.
35
Glenville.
36
Graham’s friend and neighbour in Antibes, R. Hudson-Smith.
37
Bernard Diederich, unpublished second volume of his history of modern Haiti.
38
‘Memories of George Orwell’, in
The World of George Orwell
, ed. Miriam Gross (1971); the essay is incorporated into Meyer’s autobiography,
Not Prince Hamlet
(1989). Orwell’s letter disputes the assertion that Greene is a Catholic reactionary, and describes him instead as mildly left-wing with Communist Party leanings – an accurate description.
39
See
Not Prince Hamlet
, 220–3.
40
Endo’s novel
Silence
has since been reprinted a number of times in William Johnston’s translation.
41
Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican dictator, was shot to death on 30 May 1961. Diederich’s
Trujillo: The Death of the Goat
appeared in 1978 and was republished in 2000 as
Trujillo: The Death of the Dictator
.
42
Part of
Live and Let Die
was filmed in December 1982 near Ocho Rios in Jamaica. One of the locations was a large crocodile farm.
43
Graham is referring to the American novelist Mike Mewshaw; the Czech novelist is the émigré Egon Hostovsky who died in May 1973 (information from Jan Culik); the South African is Etienne Leroux.
44
See p. 276.
45
The letter appeared in the
New Statesman
(28 December 1973) and is reprinted in
Yours etc.
,170–1.
46
On 11 September 1973 the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the government of President Salvador Allende, who was found dead shortly after.
47
Arturo Araya Peters was shot on the balcony of his house on 27 July 1973; the circumstances are disputed but it had the effect of further weakening Allende’s hold on one branch of the military. See Nathaniel Davis,
The Last Two Years of Salvador Allende
(1985), 183. In the typed letter, this man’s name is spelled Ayala.
48
Pedro Vuskovic Bravo initiated an aggressive programme of nationalisation and was held responsible for soaring inflation. He was removed from that portfolio in June 1972 but retained influence with Allende (Davis,
passim)
. In the typed letter his name is spelled Buskovitch.
49
Presumably a typing error, the word ‘room’ appears after ‘space’.
50
‘The Pirate Aeroplane
[1913] made a specially deep impression with its amiable American villain. One episode, when the young hero who is to be shot at dawn for trying to sabotage the pirate plane, plays rummy with his merciless and benevolent captor was much in my mind when I wrote about a poker game in
England Made Me’
(
A Sort of Life
, 40). Oddly enough, when the whisky priest is awaiting execution in
The Power and the Glory
, he too plays with a deck of cards while talking to the Lieutenant (192–7). Gilson may also have influenced the conclusion of
The Captain and the Enemy
(1988), which dwells both on pirates and small planes.
51
A series from the penny-dreadful mill of Edwin John Brett (1828–1895).
52
Herbert Strang was a pseudonym used by the collaborators Charles L’Estrange (d. 1947) and George Herbert Ely (d.1958)
(Who’s Who of Children’s Literature
(1968), 255–6). They were extremely prolific; one of their most popular works was
Round the World in Seven Days
(1910).
53
Editor-in-chief of the Viking Press and a good friend of Narayan’s. He once remarked of Narayan’s disorganised papers that he needed a curator rather than a secretary (RKN, 178).
54
A story possibly invented or exaggerated by Kit Purna: when Somerset Maugham visited Mysore as a state guest in 1938, he asked to see Narayan. A British administrator said that there was no novelist in Mysore, so Maugham declared his visit had been a waste. Word of this reached the
diwan
Sir Mirza Ismail (1883–1959), who invited Narayan to visit him and commissioned him to write a book about Mysore. Narayan travelled extensively and wrote quickly only to have the bureaucracy dispute his payment. (RKN, 115–24).
55
The Abbess of Crewe
(1974).
56
Information from Oliver Greene. Raymond seems to have had a lifetime of throat trouble; see p. 35.
57
No year is indicated. Gwyn Morris’s translation
of The Malacca Cane
appeared in 1973, but Greene did not use letterhead with the longer postal code until 1975.
58
Professor Jack I. Biles of Georgia State University wrote about twentieth-century British literature and conducted interviews with various authors, including William Golding and Iris Murdoch.
59
On p. 217 of
The Takeover
(London: Macmillan, 1976), Spark describes: ‘… a Swedish patient who had no relations who bothered with him, no friends, but who was apparently cured of the drug addiction which had landed him in that place two summers ago.’ Greene thought that good prose writers should conduct ‘which hunts’.