Contents 5 page

How is your throat? Have you yet had your operation? We are very sad that Charlotte didn’t come & see us as she half promised. Love to you & her from both of us,
Graham

P.S. First editions have gone up to 15/-!

TO GLENWAY WESCOTT

An American expatriate, Glenway Wescott (1901–87) established himself as one of the most promising talents of the 1920 s with his second novel The Grandmothers (1927), set in the midwest. He wrote to congratulate Graham Greene on The Man Within.

8, Heathcroft, | Hampstead Way, | N.W. 11. | October 11 [1929]

Dear Mr Wescott,

Thank you very much indeed for your kind & generous letter. Your praise is particularly valuable to me as I both know & admire your work. Hitherto I have been haunted by the ominous silence of all those whose opinion I respect, while listening to a chorus of praise from those whose ideas & beliefs I have always despised.

Are you ever in London? Because I should very much like to meet you.

Yours sincerely,
Graham Greene

TO HUGH GREENE

8 Heathcroft, | Hampstead Way, N.W. 11 [23 January 1930]

Dear Hugh,

What a bore! That O.U.D.S. is Macbeth, I mean. I don’t care for the Bard when he’s being all Bardic. And all the Scotch business. I always feel it was written at the command of Queen Victoria. The Bard at Balmoral. ‘This castle hath a pleasant seat.’ And Bertie – OUR PRINCE – acting Macbeth at private theatricals in kilts. His mother – the dear Queen – so liked to see his knees.

However, how I do ramble on. I suppose it’s because I’m feeling so autumnal. Youth gone. Garrulous. Yes, but then Donne is such a comfort isn’t he? ‘No Spring nor Summer’s beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one Autumnal face.’⁸– however, as I was saying, would you be a dear & get us two seats for the first night if possible, the Wednesday if not? Somewhere central between the second & sixth row of stalls? Directly tickets are available? Then let me know how much & on my honour you shall have a cheque by return of post.

Of course, easily the best talkie to date seems to me to be Atlantic. Wonderful & quite throbbing. Hallelujah is also good, but not to my mind comparable.⁹And of course it puzzles me that you like Java Head¹⁰better than ‘Tampico.’ A very good book, I grant, but rather encrusted.

Oh yes, & that reminds me. If the sea is reasonably low I go to Coblenz to-morrow.

Yesterday we went & had lunch & tea at the Windmill Press, Heinemann’s works in Surrey. A wonderful building, & they just let us choose a book each to take away with us.

Love,
Graham

TO MARION GREENE

The Name of Action, Graham’s second published novel, is set in Trier. With the manuscript nearly complete, he headed for Germany, hoping to reinvigorate his impressions of the country.

8. Heathcroft |Hampstead Way. N.W.11 [2 February 1930]

Dearest Mumma,

We so much enjoyed having you & Da to tea the other day.

I got back from Germany on Tuesday morning. Going I spent the night in the train between Ostend & Cologne. After Cologne, where I changed, the sun rose just as the train came alongside the Rhine, the water becoming the colour of this paper.¹¹There was also a ruined castle on a hill at the exact psychological moment, the whole affair being too like a stage back cloth for words. I spent one night at Coblenz, explored in the morning & evening, & in the afternoon walked across the river & out into the country behind Ehrenbreitstein.¹²The French have gone now. It was apparently Carnival time, & all the hotels were having masked balls, females in masks & fancy dress disappearing coyly into lighted doorways from round dark corners.

After Mass next day I took the train to Trier, a lovely journey following the Moselle. Trier of course was beautiful, & I spent the night there. It’s the loveliest place I’ve ever been to; it has a curious emotional effect on me every time I see it. I think it must have been my home in a previous incarnation. I had to drag myself away in the morning to Luxembourg. I had lunch there & came back by a night boat from Dunkirque. It was an awful crossing. I’ve never heard such wind. Every time a wave hit the boat it was like a collision & the whole boat shook. I wasn’t ill though.

[…]

TO MARION GREENE

The Name of Action was published on 6 October 1930. Reviews were negative and sales bad.

8 Heathcroft. | Hampstead Way. | N.W. 11| October 20[1930]

Dearest Mumma,

Many thanks for your card. I hope Michael Sadleir¹³will prove quotable. So far The Times is the only valuable review I’ve had. All very depressing. The Oxford Mail’s (C.F. I presume is Fenby,¹⁴the editor) is the most understanding review, I think, I’ve ever had, but it cuts no ice. I’m getting tired of kind friends who tell me they like this, but of course they much prefer the other!! The Man Within, I’m convinced, is a moderately bad book, while this, I’m equally certain, is a moderately good one. I don’t agree with you about Elizabeth in the other. I don’t think she’s a character at all, but a sentimental complex. But though I sez it as shouldn’t I think Anne-Marie Demassener quite adorable!

There was a painted old woman I used to see occasionally wandering about Oxford, rather a revolting spectacle. I used to wonder who she was. Now she’s suddenly cropped up in the form of Lady Ottoline Morrell & invited us to tea. It appears that Aldous Huxley recommended her to read The Man Within! The bugbear again! I’m beginning to hate the sound of it!

[…]

The literary hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938) became a friend and supporter of Graham in the early years of his career. Sometimes cruelly drawn, her portrait appears in novels by D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh. Graham modelled the sympathetic character of Lady Caroline in It’s a Battlefield (1934) on her.¹⁵

TO HUGH GREENE

at The British Library | Nov. 15 [1930]

Dear Hugh,

Forgive a. these tardy good wishes & b. the pencil. I have practically speaking no money & therefore can send you no present. I hope by Christmas that I shall be better off & be able to give you two in one. You find me, as it were, deeply engaged working on my magnum opus, ‘Strephon: The Life of the Second Earl of Rochester’ – that is to say I am waiting in patience while half a dozen books of varying shades of indecency are brought to me. I’ve forgotten my ink so I can’t go on with my third novel – now 1/7th [?] done!

[…]

TO DENYSE CLAIROUIN

‘Writing a novel is a little like putting a message into a bottle and flinging it into the sea – unexpected friends or enemies retrieve it.’¹⁶So Graham wrote of his friendship with Denyse Clairouin, his first translator and then his agent in France. Her translation of The Man Within under the title L’homme et lui-même was published by Plon in the Roseau d’or series, edited by the Neo-Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), who decided to cut some sexual references.

Clairouin’s fate was a sad one: ‘when the war was over I learned how she had worked in occupied France for the British Secret Service. In 1942 in Freetown, where I was working for the same service, I received news from London that a suspected spy, a Swiss businessman, was travelling to Lisbon in a Portuguese liner. While he queued up at the purser’s for passport control, I sat in my one-man office typing out, as quickly as I could with one finger, the addresses in the notebook which he had been unwise enough to leave in his cabin. Suddenly, among all the names that meant nothing to me, I saw the name and address of Denyse. From that moment I feared for her safety, but it was not until the war was over that I learned she had died after torture in a German concentration camp.’¹⁷

8 Heathcroft, Hampstead Way, | N.W. 11. | Friday [March 1931]

Dear Mlle Clairouin,

Your letter makes me feel very guilty, as if I had been selling the fort to the enemy. The fact is that I received what I thought a most courteous letter from Maritain the day after I wrote to Plon & you, & the consciousness that I had written very differently of him in the heat of the moment made me conscience-stricken. Also I assumed (perhaps wrongly?) that he is the Jacques Maritain, for whose work as a Catholic philosopher I have the greatest admiration. I, therefore, while asking him to reconsider the passages you suggested, think (I have no copy of the letter) that I left the decision with him. But I insisted on the inclusion of a note. How difficult it is to be fair & to see clearly with all the Channel between. Now I feel that I have betrayed you, & that my letter may mean that your work (just as much as mine) will be tampered with, & I am not insincere when I say that yours has probably the greater value. However my insistence on the note may save all, as I will now write to Plon & withdraw that demand altogether if the five important passages are restored.

I feel that I have muddled the position & owe you many apologies. My excuse is that my nerves are in pieces at the moment as the result of writing against time, at the same moment as letting a flat & seeing to a removal into the country.

Our address after March 30 will be ‘Little Orchard’, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. I hope that you’ll let me meet you in town or in the country when you are over here.¹⁸

I admire tremendously your phrase ‘flesh haunting hating man’ & regret exceedingly the weak courtesy of my rejoinder.

Sincerely yours,
Graham Greene

TO DENYSE CLAROUIN

Little Orchard, | Campden | Glos. | April 25, 1931

Dear Mlle Clairouin,

I received yesterday from Plon a copy of L’Homme et Lui-Même. The appearance is really very attractive, & they had (I suppose with tact) removed the label which called me the Stevenson of the Soul! I haven’t yet more than dipped into the translation, but what I have read makes me much prefer the book in French.

I was amused to read in a review in the Lit. Supp. this week of one of Maritain’s books several sentences which seem to fit in with your picture of the ‘flesh haunted hating man.’ They speak of a general impression ‘of a powerful nature powerfully suppressed …, an excessive tension of soul: not a liberation of the mind … but a strained attitude.’¹⁹Which is the same thing in Times rather pompous English!

Yours sincerely,
Graham Greene

TO HUGH GREENE

Rumour at Nightfall was published by Heinemann in November 1931. In retrospect, Graham remarked of this novel and its predecessor: ‘Both books are of a badness beyond the power of criticism properly to evoke – the prose flat and stilted and in the case of Rumour at Nightfall pretentious (the young writer had obviously been reading again and alas! admiring Conrad’s worst novel The Arrow of Gold), the characterization non-existent.’²⁰Indeed, his disgust with these novels was such that he left several letters instructing his heirs not to reprint them.²¹

Little Orchard, | Campden, | November 15 [1931]

Dear Hugh,

[…]

How splendid that Headington is doing well. I doubt if my book is. A good & longish review in The Telegraph, a short & bad review in the New Statesman, a short & meant-to-be-good review in Everyman, a good review in the Nottingham Guardian are all so far. I may be going up to town with a half-day ticket on Thursday for a cocktail party at my American publishers. There’s trouble in New York, as they are trying to cut out two pages as ‘impious’ & showing ‘a lack of knowledge of the Catholic faith’! They don’t know I’m a Catholic! There’s nothing like a fight to cure depression!

Love,

G.

TO LADY OTTOLINE MORRELL

Little Orchard, | Campden, | Glos. | Nov. 19 [1931]

Dear Lady Ottoline,

Your encouraging letter was a joy to receive, especially at this moment. I think myself the book to be my best, but I seem doomed to please no one after The Man Within. It has been out nearly three weeks & has received only three reviews. The Lit. Supp. which has always before been both kind & prompt remains grimly silent; one does not expect anything from The Observer, but The Sunday Times seems to have abandoned me. After praising extravagantly my first book, it never reviewed my second at all & looks like ignoring this one. Altogether I am feeling depressed. Books are a labour to write & a hell to publish; why does one do it? The grim spectre of a return to journalism looms on the horizon.

This catalogue of woes is a poor return for a letter which was the bright spot in my week. You have certainly understood the motif. Even Caveda was meant to be a kind of third part of a more than Siamese twin.

My wife sends her regards.

Yours very sincerely,
Graham Greene

TO LADY OTTOLINE MORRELL

Little Orchard | Campden | Glos. | December 17 [1931]

Dear Lady Ottoline,

It was very nice of you to write & I found your letter very encouraging. The wave of depression at the book’s failure has passed, now that the next one is forming in the mind. ‘Rochester’ I have just got packed off to Kenneth Bell,²²of Balliol, to be vetted for historical blunders, & I believe it’s coming out in April. It’s not the book it ought to have been, as I was writing against time. It will be amusing to be reviewed by a new set of people for a change! I wish I could have been in town to-day. I miss Thursday teas!

Thank you very much again for writing.

Yours very sincerely,
Graham Greene

As it turned out, he was not ‘writing against time’. Rejected by Heinemann owing to its sexual content, Lord Rochester’s Monkey was not published until September 1974.

TO R. N. GREEN-ARMYTAGE

‘The reviewing of novels at the beginning of the thirties was at a far lower critical level than it has ever been since. Gerald Gould, a bad poet, and Ralph Strauss, a bad novelist, divided the Sunday forum between them. One was not elated by their praise nor cast down by their criticism …’²³The last sentence need not be believed, as Greene certainly resented Gould’s mixed review of Rumour at Nightfall (Observer, 13 December 1931). Writing to Vivien’s maternal uncle, a lawyer and sometime poet in Bath, he takes a run at Gould for his praise of Guenther Birkenfeld’s A Room in Berlin, and at a more substantial target, the diplomat, biographer and diarist Harold Nicolson (1886–1968), who had raved over Lady Eleanor Smith’s now-forgotten Flamenco, a novel about gypsies.

As from Little Orchard | Campden| Glos. |

December 26 [1931?]

Dear Uncle Bob,

A thousand thanks for my share in your exquisite present. The second poem I already knew & admired: indeed I had a cutting from the Westminster ragged & worn in my copy of The Veil.²⁴To have it in beautiful print is a delight.

I’m in the last desperate throes of the final revision of a life of Rochester which is to come out in the spring: on January 1, I have to begin another novel for the autumn. The life of a novelist, alas, is not all beans & bacon. Apropos of which my Ballade against Certain Reviewers.

‘Ugly but beautiful,’ the critic said,*
‘A masterpiece of incest, poverty,
Life in a German slum,’ but then I read
The agonising scene in chapter three
When ‘little Anna’ leaves her family
To go with baby out into the rain,
And sin so nobly & incessantly:
I have mistaken Gould for gold again.

True, Mr. Nicolson must earn his bread,
And Lady Eleanor may know a gypsy,
But can’t he go & boil his head
Rather than call her Borrow²⁵in epitome?^x
‘Another Fielding, Smollett, Dostoievski’ –
They never tire of taking names in vain,
Describing Herr von X; I read so hopefully –
I have mistaken Gould for gold again.

Are critics, when they go upstairs to bed,
Ever affrighted by the fantasy,
At a dark corner, of the mighty dead,
Whose names they’ve dealt in so dishonourably?
No, if a hand stretch out, more probably
It’s that of Mr Ernest Potts,²⁶whose ‘Drain,’
‘Ugly & beautiful’ was lent to me:
I have mistaken Gould for gold again.

Prince of the Pen, your masterpiece I flie,
Hearing the unbalanced praises of some men,
Who laud C’s plot & W’s poetry.
I have mistaken Gould for gold again.

*A favourite expression of Mr G… ld G… ld, who used it in particular in describing A Room in Berlin.

^xof ‘Flamenco’ Mr H… ld N… n said ‘It is impossible to get more out of a novel than out of this.’

Ever yours,
Graham

TO HUGH GREENE

Little Orchard, | Campden, | Glos. [20 July 1932]

Dear Hugh,

We should love to have you, but

Frankly! –

we are on the verge of bankruptcy, & we had someone to stay last week, whom we didn’t want to see nearly so much as you, & we can’t afford to put you up for four nights; we have been trying since we lost £250 a year to make p.g.s²⁷the rule at 2/6 a night, but it’s difficult. But do come for two nights, if you can manage to stay a day longer at Crowborough & go to R.²⁸a day earlier. One can manage two nights without increasing housekeeping.

Love

G.

TO HUGH GREENE

[7 November 1932]

Dear Hugh,

Many thanks for your letter. We were given an unexpected lift into Oxford last Friday, but found you were away. We tried to go to Wedding Rehearsal²⁹but times were wrong & we had to go to Love on Wheels³⁰– which was just seeable in spite of Hulbert & the caricature of Clair.³¹

Do come over some time.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal, & R.K.O. all seem biting at Stamboul Train.

We are dreaming of a flat in Oxford if we get rich. We looked at one the other day in Broad St., but it was too large.

Love

G.

TO HUGH GREENE

Little Orchard, | Campden, | Glos. | Nov. 30 [1932]

Dear Hugh,

Stamboul Train is not appearing till the 8th. On Monday Priestley appeared at Heinemann’s and said that if it was published as it stood he would bring an action for libel. He remained adamant and I had a frantic day on the phone arranging for alterations. 13,000 copies were all printed and bound and they all have to be unstitched and some pages printed over again.

Yours in exhaustion,

Graham.

J. B. Priestley (1894–1984) spotted a portrait of himself in the character of Quin Savory, a popular novelist. Greene was forced to rewrite offending passages at the last minute, dictating revisions in a phone booth.³²He came to admire Priestley for his wartime broadcasts but never for his books.

TO DENYSE CLAIROUIN

Little Orchard, | Campden, | Glos. | January 27 [1933]

Dear Denyse Clairouin,

But I should be terribly pleased if you translated ‘The End of the Party’. I send it in its most portable form. Don’t trouble to return this copy.

Yes, ‘S.T.’³³has done well. A week ago it had turned 15,000. It’s all rather dull because it all goes to pay the yawning deficit of Heinemann on the last book. So I have no hope of a holiday in Burgundy this year.

I do hope you are successful with S.T. But how I wish it was Rumour at Nightfall, which obstinately in spite of publishers & public I so much prefer. You heard I expect how J. B. Priestley sabotaged S.T. at the last moment with a threatened libel action, costing Heinemann £400!

Yours sincerely,
Graham Greene

TO MARIE ADELAIDE BELLOC LOWNDES

Best known for her crime novels, Marie Lowndes (1868–1947) was the sister of Hilaire Belloc. Her husband, Frederick Lowndes, was a staff writer on The Times, where Graham had met him.

Little Orchard, | Campden, | Glos. | April 4 [1933]

Dear Mrs. Belloc Lowndes,

So many thanks for your letter. I’m glad you liked Stamboul Train: I’ve never been more uncertain of a book. It was nice of you to send me the cutting which I had not seen. The book seems to be doing as well in America as one can expect: it came out the very week when the banks were closed.

We’ve been down here in the country for the last two years & are now struggling to find a flat in Oxford for a year. Do come & see us if you are ever near. Everybody seems to turn up in the Cotswolds at least once a year. Do please remember me to your husband.

Yours very sincerely,
Graham Greene

TO R. N. GREEN-ARMYTAGE

During a holiday in Wales, Vivien learned of the death of her very forceful mother, Muriel Dayrell-Browning, who had suffered an embolism following a broken leg.³⁴

at Sea beach, | Horton, | Pontcynon, | Swansea, |

May 23 [1933]

Dear Uncle Bob,

I’m so sorry about this. It came as a terrible shock. Unfortunately we left Campden early yesterday morning before your first wire, & both wires were delivered together to us here just after tea.

Vivienne, actually, was terribly upset, & the worst of it is that she’s going to have a baby. She was bent on going up to town for the funeral; I was a little worried – three journeys of over five hours each within about four days, so I telephoned through last night to Uncle Vivian & explained matters.³⁵He said that she should certainly not come up; it was useless to try & persuade her last night, so I waited till this morning, when I got a local doctor to see her & advise her. He said if she did travel up, she would probably feel too sick to attend the funeral. That & Uncle Vivian’s advice have persuaded her.

I do hope you feel I’ve not done wrong over this. If we had been at Campden it would have been very different; I didn’t like to bring pressure on her, for the reason that her mother & I did not care for each other & it looked as if I was carrying the feud on after her death; so I left it to the doctors. But if I had always been as fond of her mother as you all are I should have felt exactly the same. I shall come up as Vivien’s representative by a train on Thursday morning & will go straight to Golders Green. I’ll be catching an evening train home, as I don’t want to leave her alone for the night. I expect I shall see you at Golders Green.

With all my sympathy,

yours affectionately,
Graham Greene

TO MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES

Little Orchard, | Campden, | Glos. | June 17 [1933]

Dear Mrs Belloc Lowndes,

How nice it is of you to remember us. I should be delighted to come to your party on Thursday. Alas! as we are moving to a flat in Oxford the next day, my wife has to be in Oxford laying the ground for our furniture. You may be amused to hear, too, that we are going to have a child in December, so she cannot leap from one spot to another with any celerity. May I enlist your kind heart in the cause of this book, Love on the Dole? I had it for review the other day³⁶& was so deeply impressed by it that I wrote to the author, a thing I have never done before. He is a man of 29, who has had a terrible life on the dole & off it in Salford, & now works at 30/-a week. But the book is brilliant. Do read it & encourage others to read it. Yours very sincerely, Graham Greene

TO VIVIEN GREENE

Graham was planning a new novel, later entitled England Made Me, based on the story of Ivar Kreuger, a Swedish tycoon whose vast wealth was founded on the production of matches. He shot himself just as he was about to be revealed as a swindler. With Hugh, Graham took a trip that included Oslo, Gothenburg, Stockholm and Copenhagen. They returned on 7 September.

Strand Hotel | Göteborg | August 18 [1933] | 8.20 a.m.

Darling love, I’m almost glad you couldn’t come. Such a crossing. Not very rough, but a soft slow regular undulation for 30 hours on end which seemed much worse than the Channel. Though quite all right as long as one lay down. Yesterday by the time I’d dressed & shaved, I had to go back to bed; Hugh didn’t get up till the evening. Driven by the sporting spirit of the Wufflies I got up & had lunch (so as not to lose a bet), but then retired again till after tea. No supper. But by the evening I was getting used to it.

As for the ‘jolly girls’ – Ursula, the younger, very healthy & managing & girl-guidish … she was on the look-out for us at the barrier at Victoria & pounced; there was no avoiding them. The elder sister is quite tolerable but with a bad skin. They’ve just departed with their mother in a car;³⁷O darling such a lovely railway station where we took their luggage; beautiful plain modern brick with lovely proportions, & behind every buffer on every platform a little flower garden.

Hugh & I went & saw Mae West in She Done Him Wrong – an absolutely perfect film. The nineteeish atmosphere beautifully caught; showing up ‘[illeg]’s’ spurious literary period air. A completely original film in photography, acting, integrity: no sentiment to mar the amoral story. You must see it if you get a chance.

[…]

TO IAN PARSONS, CHATTO & WINDUS

Ian Parsons (1906–80) was a partner in the firm of Chatto & Windus and went on to become chairman of Chatto, The Bodley Head and Jonathan Cape. His offer of a job to Graham presented the novelist with a dilemma.

9 Woodstock Close, | Woodstock Rd., | Oxford. |

Oct. 11 [1933]

Dear Parsons,

Very reluctantly, because I’ve always wanted to be in a publishing office, I must lose the chance. If I had been living in London, I could have gone gently on with my own work of an evening, but as it is my evening would be spent in getting home. I have still half a year’s lease to run here, and as my wife is having a baby in December, I feel rather tied. It was very nice indeed of you to give me the chance which if I’d been in London I should have leapt at.

You spoke of an apprentice job being the one really vacant. I don’t know if it would be any good putting in a word for a brother of mine who has just gone down from Oxford and is anxious to get into a publisher’s? He was at a German university for a time and speaks German well. At Oxford he took a second in Honour Mods. and just missed a first in English. Edmund Blunden was his tutor and speaks highly of his work. His name is Hugh Greene, and his home is Incents, Crowborough, Sussex. But I daresay you’ve got dozens of apprentices to choose from.

Yours ever,
Graham Greene

The beginning of 1933 had seen Graham with a bestseller in Stamboul Train, but he was still deeply in debt to Heinemann, so his decision to earn his living solely as a writer was a risky one. He was, however, able to rely on a modest income as a reviewer for the Spectator, of which he became literary editor at the beginning of the war.

TO HUGH GREENE

9 Woodstock Close, | Woodstock Rd., | Oxford. |

Feb. 28 [1934]

Dear Hugh,

Many thanks for your letter and thousands of congratulations on your job.³⁸I wonder what salary you are getting. Nine guineas a week? I’ve heard nothing more from Cameron, and I didn’t have a chance to pump him at dinner, but I imagine that now you will have small interest in the F.I.³⁹How beautifully dramatic that you should have got so good a job a few days before your time ran out.

If I see Peter Fleming⁴⁰I’ll show him the photo!

I’ve just been in bed with a bad cold and am overwhelmed with acres of work. I seem to have gatecrashed into the highbrow citadels with the new book, and have got the new Eliot to write an article on for Life and Letters. ⁴¹Cape are publishing The Old School in the summer, paying me an editorial fee of £30.⁴²

Paris was extraordinarily interesting, though I failed to see a riot. I have now become passionately addicted to flying. I have never enjoyed a breakfast more than the one I had over the Channel. I got a 25% reduction from Imperial Airways which made the price about 5/-more expensive than 2nd class Dover–Calais.

I rejoice over the news about D.

In haste,
Graham

[Note on the envelope: ‘Father Bede is critically ill, so I can do nothing about intros yet.’]⁴³

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 609