TO EVELYN WAUGH

Waugh was distressed by A Burnt-Out Case, which, on the heels of the bleak short story ‘A Visit to Morin’, suggested that Greene was finished as a Catholic. The book also struck Waugh as technically deficient, repeating the main character’s predicament three times, once ‘painfully’ in a fairy story. He regarded Deo Gratia’s attempted escape as poorly handled and the death of Querry as ‘absurdly melodramatic’. On the whole, he thought Greene’s skills were ‘fading’.¹⁸He refused to review it and apologised for his own Rycker-like behaviour in promoting Greene as a Catholic author.¹⁹

C.6 Albany, | London, W. 1 | 4th January 1961

Dear Evelyn,

A typewritten letter always looks so formal, but I know you can’t read my handwriting. I’m very sorry to hear that you won’t be reviewing A Burnt-Out Case (I’m afraid I committed the indiscretion of suggesting that you should do so to Father Caraman),²⁰but I quite understand your feelings in the matter. I was all the more anxious that you should review the book because I realize it will cause a certain amount of hostility in the Catholic press and, although I expected severe criticism from you, I felt sure that it would be at least founded on genuine unemotional principles. Whatever Querry may have felt about his Catholic critics, I have certainly not felt at any time about you. I have always found our points of disagreement – as in the case of The Heart of the Matter – refreshing and enlightening and miles away from the suburbia of The Catholic Herald or The Universe. I do really assure you that never once have you behaved like Rycker!

With a writer of your genius and insight I certainly would not attempt to hide behind the time-old gag that an author can never be identified with his characters. Of course in some of Querry’s reactions there are reactions of mine, just as in some of Fowler’s reactions in The Quiet American there were reactions of mine. I suppose the points where an author is in agreement with his character lend what force or warmth there is to the expression. At the same time I think one can say that the parallel must not be drawn all down the line and not necessarily to the conclusion of the line. Fowler, I hope, was a more jealous man than I am, and Querry, I fear, was a better man than I am. I wanted to give expression to various states or moods of belief and unbelief. The doctor, whom I like best as a realized character, represents a settled and easy atheism; the Father Superior a settled and easy belief (I use ‘easy’ as a term of praise and not as a term of reproach); Father Thomas an unsettled form of belief and Querry an unsettled form of disbelief. One could probably dig a little of the author also out of the doctor and Father Thomas!

Anyway whatever the rights and wrongs of this book I do want you to believe that never for a moment have I felt other than pleasure or an interested dismay at your criticisms and never for a moment anything other than affection for yourself. I do hope that we can meet some time in the not too distant future. I heard rumours of your presence in London the other day which happened to coincide with one of my rare presences. I wish you would ring me up when you do come to town, but I know your hatred of the telephone.

Yours with deepest affection,
Graham

Waugh found this letter pretentious and flimsy. On 5 January 1961 he wrote that he was not so dotty as to think Rycker only a portrait of himself, but that it was a caricature of a number of Graham’s Catholic admirers including himself who had failed to recognise the broad hints that he had now amplified into ‘a plain repudiation’ of faith. He said that he found the notion of an easy and settled atheism meaningless since an atheist denied the central purpose of his life – to love and serve God. Graham would notencounter hostility from Catholics so much as regrets for a ‘Lost Leader’: ‘God forbid I should pry into the secrets of your soul. It is simply your public performance which grieves me.’²¹

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 595