TO FRANCIS GREENE

Graham describes as a ‘pirate’ the publisher and Labour MP Robert Maxwell (1923–91) who, of course, walked the plank near the Canary Islands on 5 November 1991. Francis was seeking work from Maxwell’s firm, Pergamon Press, as a translator of Russian physics texts. There is a passing reference in the letter to Thomas Roe, a pirate whose practices were not so evident to Graham.

27 May 1964

Dear Francis,

Here is another pirate who would be interested if you got in touch with him. His name is Robert Maxwell (address: Headington Hill Hall, Oxford) and he is very interested in anyone with a background of physics who knows Russian. He is a very successful business man and his name disguises I think a Central European origin. I met him at Boy Hart’s, the director of the Ansbacher Bank.⁴²It would be worth sending him a note and having at any rate a word with him. He said himself of his own accord that he would like to meet you. Roe has several ideas which I suppose he will put out when we meet for dinner.

Love,

Graham.

P.S. Not a very nice man I think, and a Labour politician, but you want piracy!

1 In Mali.

2 See International Journal of Leprosy 70:1 (March 2002), 49–50.

3 At Lechat’s suggestion, Graham met in New York with Frederick Franck, an oral surgeon and artist who had visited Yonda in 1958. He had worked with Albert Schweitzer and written a book about him, which Graham reviewed warmly (see Collected Essays, 276–8). Deeply impressed by his drawings, Graham also wrote an introduction to his African Sketchbook (1961).

4 The notorious Esteban Ventura was often photographed in a white linen suit as he went about his duties in Havana’s fifth precinct. He fled to Miami when Castro took power and died there in 2001 at the age of eighty-seven. In Our Man in Havana, Graham portrays a police torturer to whom he gives the name Captain Segura.

5 Castro actually landed on 2 December 1956 with eighty-two men in Oriente province; all but twelve were killed. That group reached the mountains and launched the revolution (information from Bernard Diederich).

6The Times, 16 December 1958; Ways of Escape, 190.

7 Sitwell had encouraged John Lehmann to publish the British edition of The Miracle at Carville (1952) in which Betty Martin describes her recovery from leprosy through the new sulphone treatment that had made the disease curable. References to that treatment occur throughout A Burnt-Out Case.

8 A palace near Florence owned by the memoirist Sir Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969).

9 Hilaire Marie Vermeiren (1889–1967), a Belgian-born missionary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who was by this time the titular Bishop of Gibba and would soon become Archbishop of Coquilhatville. Belgian missionaries play a significant role in the novel.

10 In the novel, Rycker sends his wife with an invitation for Querry.

11 There had been riots in Leopoldville two months earlier. The journalists supposed that Greene had come to write about the political unrest (In Search of a Character, 14).

12 Michel Lechat remembers Père Henri (Rik Vanderslaghmolen) dancing with Graham on the ‘barza’ or veranda at the Fathers’ house, and also riding the tricycle of Lechat’s three-year-old son, and on another occasion struggling comically with Graham to enter his room.

13 This novel by Romain Gary was made into a film directed by John Ford and starring Trevor Howard.

14 Douglas Jay (1907–96), later Baron Jay, a prominent Labour politician. Greene had once worked with him at The Times and Walston had recently had contact with him.

15 See Ways of Escape, 231–7.

16 Christie’s was holding a large sale of pictures and manuscripts on behalf of the London Library (Amory, 545).

17 Ionesco’s Rhinoceros with Laurence Olivier directed by Orson Welles at the Royal Court Theatre.

18 Waugh, 779.

19 See Ways of Escape, 195–8, and Amory, 557–60.

20 Philip Caraman, S.J. (1911–98), priest and historian, was, for a time, a close friend of both Greene and Waugh. He specialised in literary conversions, having brought into the church, among others, Edith Sitwell. He was not in a position to have Waugh review the book since he had been removed as editor of The Month in 1959. Graham came to despise him apparently for meddling in his relationship with Walston. See June Rockett, A Gentle Jesuit: Philip Caraman, S.J. (2004).

21 Amory, 557–60.

22 Selections from the monumental 1899–1926 correspondence of Paul Claudel and André Gide had been published in English in 1952. One of the main themes is Claudel’s urging of Gide to become a Catholic.

23 Evelyn Waugh pursued libel suits as a means of raising tax-free money and as a hobby. In 1956, he had pounced on an expanded edition of West’s The Meaning of Treason, which had first been published in 1947. She had added a new chapter on Burgess, Maclean and the Korean War, observing that not all those who undermined affection for the classic virtues were on the left, but that Waugh, Greene and Mauriac had done their part. The edition was suppressed as part of the settlement. See Bonnie Kime Scott, ed., Selected Letters of Rebecca West (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 316–17.

24 IAIN ANTONY MACLEOD WAS BORN 21 January 1961.

25 A volume of Macleod’s poetry published by Faber in 1930.

26 Rex Harrison (1908–90) was to have starred in this abortive film project.

27 See West, esp. 190–201.

28 Published in 1939.

29 Waugh and his daughter Margaret were sailing in November.

30 See Rose Macaulay, Letters to a Friend 1950–1952 (London: Collins, 1961), 180.

31 The full phrase corruptio optimi pessima means the corruption of the best is the worst of all.

32 See Amory, 583.

33 A maniacally devoted scholar, Wilmarth Sheldon ‘Lefty’ Lewis (1895–1979) was the editor of the 48-volume Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence.

34 Alroy Kear was the thrustingly ambitious literary biographer depicted in Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ale.

35 Graham’s uncle Sir Graham Greene and other relatives had lived in Harston, Cambridgeshire.

36 Rev. Donald de Candole advised that several steps were necessary: a legal process to incorporate a small part of the vicarage grounds into the churchyard, removal of an old and unsafe acacia tree, extension of the boundary wall, consecration of the new ground, issuing of a faculty and erection of a kerb to define a family plot. Death in Cambridgeshire evidently required a certain amount of paperwork and landscaping.

37 Max Reinhardt (1915–2002) acquired the Bodley Head in 1956–7 and controlled it for thirty years. In 1973, he joined forces with Chatto and Windus and Jonathan Cape. In 1987, the group was taken over by Random House and he established a new firm under his own name (ODNB), where he continued to be Graham’s publisher. Reinhardt and his wife Joan (née MacDonald) were among Graham’s and Yvonne Cloetta’s closest friends. Judith Adamson’s forthcoming biography of Reinhardt is expected to contain much detail on Graham’s friendship with him and their business dealings.

38 Alan J. W. Hill was a Director of the company and Charles Pick the Managing Director.

39 Kurt Vonnegut, jr. (b. 1922), prominent American author and graphic artist.

40 Amory, 619–20.

41 Amory, 620.

42 Hart was a business associate of Max Reinhardt.

7
THE COMEDIANS

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 796