Graham Greene (8 page)

Mon. 3:30 [7 December 1925]

Darling, I’m writing again, not because I’ve got anything to say, but because I’ve got to.

I want you so terribly.

I tried to read a novel, but every sentence nearly reminded me of you. Phrases that you’d used. Small points of character.

It’s when this comes on me, this wanting, that I almost wish I’d never answered that first letter. I didn’t know it was possible to want someone so badly.

And yet it would be so horribly ungrateful to say that I wished it had never happened. You have been so good to me, my darling. Sometimes the whole of my mind & my brain & even my body seems tired out with it, when you aren’t with me. And I want to sleep & sleep & sleep, & forget all about you & everything. And then I almost wish I was in China, only I’ve never got the courage to take anything to its logical conclusion.

And now I’m writing to you gloomily, worrying you, when I want more than anything else that you should be always happy. It’s all so tortuous & paradoxical.

Often I’ve half made up my mind that I wasn’t strong enough to cling to so flimsy & crazy a hope. Once I even got as far as a letter to end it, pretending I’d found that I didn’t love you after all, so as to prevent you writing to me, being rude & unpleasant. And then I couldn’t post it.

Darling I love you. I love you. I love you. I’ve never loved anybody before as I love you, & I never shall again. I should be careful not to be a fool twice.

Oh my darling one that sounds horrid, what I’ve just written.

Darling, you must try & not let yourself be worried by this. It’s only a selfish desire to get relief by talking, not caring about the unfortunate person, who has to listen. To-morrow I shall be better I expect. Things will not seem quite so empty. I’m probably tired & peevish.

Darling, I’ve got nothing to say & yet I daren’t stop. I feel there’s something awful in sealing up the envelope, not being able to add to this. I feel as if I must go on talking, talking, talking to you hard, until I’ve got back control. Chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter. On & on &on.

You were so lovely on the platform & in the firelight & coming out of No. 23 this morning. You were so lovely all the time. For Goodness sake! Talk, darling. The only two methods I’ve had to fight emptiness I can’t use since I’ve loved you. I suppose in time I shall discover a new & proper way of doing it.

Don’t you ever wonder, in moods, now & again, what the use of going on is? Religion doesn’t answer it. One can believe in every point of the Catholic faith, & yet at times like this hate the initiator of it all, of life I mean. Justice can be just as hateful as injustice, more so often enough, because injustice puts us on a level with the wielder of it, whilst justice is more hateful because it emphasizes our own inferiority.

[…]

In support of striking coal miners, the Trades Union Congress called a general strike, which lasted from
3
to
12
May 1926. The government, fearing the worst, made preparations against a revolutionary uprising. Most of the country’s newspapers were unable to publish, but
The Times
, which Graham had joined in March as a sub-editor, printed and distributed a reduced edition.
²⁶

11.30 a.m. | May 6. Thurs. 1926

No letter from you to-day, darling. I hope I get one to-morrow. I’ve
written
every day, but I don’t suppose you’ve got them.

Great triumph! Last night we got off a properly printed four page
paper, with one machine working. The only paper in London to do it. The strikers are getting nasty though. Last night about 9.30 they set us on fire with the help of some petrol & a squirt, but we got it out all right, almost before the brigade arrived. We had a bit of trouble about 1.30 this morning. The police seemed to have disappeared & we had to carry parcels of papers to private cars lined up along Victoria St. to carry them into the country, Oxford, Margate, Bournemouth, Dover etc. There was a bit of a scrimmage then. I didn’t get hurt at all, but one man got slight concussion from a blow on the head from his own parcel – they tripped him up & got hold of it – & another had his jaw cut & there were a number of bruises.

Later the police arrived in greater force & they were held at a distance, but they’d already tampered with some of the cars. The ridiculous thing is that most are our own men, who were awfully decent, cheerful & contented, when one had met in the canteen etc. They didn’t want to strike, but now they’ve struck they’ve entirely changed, & of course no filth is bad enough to describe us & our parentage. We are trying to produce a five page paper to-night. But either there’ll be no trouble at all or else last night’s fire & scrimmage will be a mild opening. It’s all very exciting.

[…]

Friday. 12.15 p.m. | May 7th 1926

[…]

Last night & this morning (!) were fearfully disappointing after the previous excitements. We’d got properly organized for trouble this time. The 20 of us who are acting as ‘storm troops’ were divided into two parties. One party escorted a car round from Queen Victoria St. into the square, & then after it was loaded escorted it as far as Blackfriars Bridge, whilst the other party loaded. Then for the next car the two parties changed places & so on. We had a doctor ready to deal with casualties & about 1 a.m. a dozen M.P.s came
round from the Commons to join in the fight – but the rioters never showed their faces, & they had to content themselves with talking to the peaceful pickets. Darling, you talk as if I was labour. I’m not. I’m really conservative now – especially after labour tried to burn us all.

[…]

On
5
October
1926
Graham underwent an appendectomy in Westminster Hospital. During his recovery he witnessed deaths in the ward
.

Wednesday | Oct. 13, 1926

[…]

We had an awful to-do yesterday evening – the first time I’ve ever been in a room when someone dies. Do you remember the small boy with the broken leg on the opposite side of the room? He had an operation yesterday afternoon apparently perfectly all right. In fact about six his mother & father came in to see him, & he spoke to them & they went off happily. Then about 8 the house surgeon on his round seemed to find his breathing almost non-existent. There was half an hour’s rush & scurry round his bed with oxygen apparatuses, an undignified scrambling for the tail end of his life & he was gone. Absolutely unexpected. No one thought he was in any danger. Of course they rigged a screen up round the poor little devil’s bed, but the terrible thing was when the mother turned up about 8.45. I’ve never seen any one with all their self-control gone before. She had to be supported in & she was calling out things at the top of her voice – what made it worse it was the sort of things people say on the cinema & which one had fondly imagined real life was free of – sentimental hackneyed things. ‘Why did you go without saying goodbye to your mother?’ & ‘Royston, Royston’ (the ridiculous name seemed to make it worse), & ‘What shall I do without him?’ ‘Sister, sister, don’t tell me we’re parted.’ All in a sort of scream. It was ghastly lying in bed listening to it. Then they half carried her out.

I’m afraid we’re going to have another death in the ward to-day. An emergency case was brought in yesterday evening before they found the child was going out. An old man of about 76, who’d been in a motor accident, head fractured, one hand smashed & both legs. I don’t think they expected him to last through the night. He’s quite quiet though. I shall be glad to get away – it’s all very morbid.

Are people who write entirely & absolutely selfish, darling? Even though in a way I hated it yesterday evening – one half of me was saying how lucky it was – added experience – & I kept on catching myself trying to memorise details – Sister’s face, the faces of the other men in the ward. And I felt quite excited aesthetically. It made one rather disgusted with oneself.

[…]

The Death Register of Westminster Hospital records that Royston Walker, aged nine, died on
12
October
1926
in Chadwick Ward, as did Thomas Lowe, seventy-six, on the following day. (Information from Robert Baker; see also
A Sort of Life, 133–5)

Handsome and charming when young, Herbert Greene spent most of his life between jobs. Despite annoyance with his alcoholic brother’s impositions on their parents, Graham liked Herbert and in later years provided him and his wife Audrey with an allowance. Graham modelled a number of characters on him, notably Anthony Farrant in
England Made Me (1935)
and Hands in the unfinished novel ‘The Other Side of the Border’ (c
. 1936).

Nov. 13 [1928]. | 8 Heathcroft, | Hampstead Way, N.W. 11.

Dear Herbert,

This is to wish you & Audrey a happy Christmas. How does the farm go? I do hope it’s a success. I hear you had a bad disappointment over a splendid crop of mealies.

V. & I took our summer holiday in Devonshire at Lynton & had lovely weather in July, bathing every day. We got another scrap of
holiday last month & went to Wells & Glastonbury. Having done England this year we have hopes, if we can get a holiday in the spring, of going to Corsica next year. But the General Election is likely to get in the way.

We are going down to Crowborough
²⁷
for Christmas Eve & Christmas Day – all I can get – to take the place of Raymond & Charlotte
²⁸
who won’t be there this year.

Life goes on peaceably. I’ve written another novel, but I don’t suppose it will be taken any more than the others. I haven’t yet seen Janet, except in photographs.
²⁹

I’m sending under a separate cover the Centenary
Spectator
. It has 188 pages of reading matter, so that you’ll have quantity if not quality.

V. sends her love to you both. I hope Audrey’s fit again.

Ever yours,
     Graham

8 Heathcroft, | Hampstead Way, | N.W. 11.[December 1928?]

Dear Hugh,

I have sent off your book under another cover. I can’t say that we are enthusiastic over the idea of learning anything by heart; we arrive jaded & way-worn for lunch on Christmas Eve which leaves little time. Unless of course you give us silent parts or such speeches as ‘My lady, the carriage waits.’

If you fell back on a form of charade what about taking a situation, say the murder of a greengrocer or some other bloodthirsty situation, & do it in parody of various authors, making the actors
³⁰
guess the authors. Shakespeare – you know the way the dear old
Bard has with death scenes, ‘Enter the Duke. Sound the sennets & take up the corpse’ sort of touch with the usual panegyric. ‘He was the noblest tradesman of them all.’ Etc.

J. M. Barrie. Elisabeth in pantaloons tripping. ‘Now he belongs to the fairies.’

Galsworthy. Should the murderer be blackballed by his club? Honour of an English soldier touch.

Edgar Wallace?

Georg Kaiser on one of the ‘modernists’. You know the kind of thing. Everyone is very triangular & talks geometrical nonsense.

Love.
     Graham

One hand-sketched play-bill survives from ‘Grand Guignol Theatre’ for ‘The Ape-Man’ by Graham Greene, a skit set on a wintry island off the coast of Norway, with the part of Olaf played by Graham, Grethe his wife by Vivienne, Frida his daughter, a moron, by Elisabeth, and a Sailor by Hugh
.