The Life of Graham Greene (1939-1955)

by Norman Sherry

  Orwell and Greene were not destined to be friends for long. Orwell could not really stand Greene’s Catholicism and wrote a powerful condemnation of The Heart of the Matter in the New Yorker in 1948. Orwell suffered from fierce blind spots, yet he was remarkably honest. A year after his harsh review, he wrote to T. R. Fyvel: ‘You refer to [Greene] as an extreme Conservative, the usual Catholic reactionary type. This isn’t so at all … Of course he is a Catholic and in some issues has to side politically with the church, but in outlook he is just a mild Left with faint C[ommunist] P[arty] leanings. I have even thought that he might become our first Catholic fellow-traveller …’27

  Greene’s last review for the Evening Standard appeared on 4 October 1945. Speaking of Inez Holden, he stressed that her best stories ‘leave in our minds the stirring and excitement that comes from the genuine creative act’, which was what Greene longed for passionately. But after the war, work on The Heart of the Matter went slowly and he sought in the interim to bring out a collection of short stories.

  Greene’s earliest volume of stories was The Basement Room (1935), which included eight. Some of these were worthy of inclusion in the new collection – ‘The Innocent’, ‘A Drive in the Country’, ‘When Greek Meets Greek’, and ‘A Little Place off the Edgware Road’; some were undistinguished and should not have been considered.

  Greene was scraping the bottom of the barrel. To Nancy Pearn he wrote on 23 August 1946: ‘I enclose a couple of short stories [“The Second Death” and “The Lottery Ticket”] which I dug out of a drawer. They have not yet been published and I propose to include them in my volume of short stories. I suspect you have already tried them out before, many years ago when my books had not started booming!’ Originally he collected eighteen, intending to call them Eighteen Stories, but finding another (‘The Innocent’), he changed the title to Nineteen Stories.

  He wrote a modest foreword: ‘I am only too conscious of the defects of these stories … The short story is an exacting form which I have never properly practised.’ The best are still those which appeared in his first collection – ‘The Basement Room’ and ‘The End of the Party’, both written in the compulsive shorthand of a terrified child.

  Early in 1946 Heinemann decided to bring out a number of Greene’s books in a uniform edition. Frere wrote to the printer: ‘Greene is now a Director of Eyre & Spottiswoode, and from that position of eminence he has some ideas about production himself.’28 Nevertheless, the uniform edition was appallingly produced. The first two titles published were A Gun for Sale and Brighton Rock, then Stamboul Train and England Made Me. Journey Without Maps was published in 1949 and The Lawless Roads followed. By 1952, It’s a Battlefield, The Ministry of Fear, The Power and the Glory, and The Heart of the Matter had also appeared.

  Bringing Greene’s non-fiction into the uniform edition was unexpected. It happened because Greene wanted Heinemann to surrender the rights to Journey Without Maps, which was out of print. Greene wrote to Louise Callender at Heinemann reminding her that Journey Without Maps was withdrawn soon after it was published in 1936 (because a libel case frightened Heinemann).29 ‘My own view is that it would be only equitable for you to surrender the rights back to me personally, in which case I should probably give a licence for three years to either Pan Books or Penguin [he gave the licence to Pan Books], and after that, if I was still a publisher myself, I would bring it out with Lawless Roads through my own firm.’30

  With eight books brought into a uniform edition, Greene believed Heinemann wouldn’t have the paper or the inclination to reprint the travel book. Heinemann knew Greene had them over a barrel. They renounced the rights to Journey Without Maps, but kept some hold over the book by publishing it in the uniform edition. It is unquestionably one of the best travel books of the period.

  *

  Greene was often edgy, especially if his personal or writing life was going wrong. Staying in an old hotel near St James’s, his nerves exacerbated by the noise of workmen drilling in the middle of the night, he took an electric bulb out of the bedroom light and chucked it on to the street.31

  Gillian Sutro recalled the time he promised to come to her husband’s birthday party in Belgrave Square:

  He said he was absolutely going to come, and then he said he wasn’t going to come, but he at least would come for dinner. I chided him, ‘You said you were going to come to the party, and you have broken your word.’ He replied, ‘I’m feeling very taut tonight and if you go on like that I will walk straight out again.’ So I shut up because I knew he’d walk straight out again – literally.32

  Although outwardly calm, Greene was a man of deep passions. When he reviewed Madame Maritain’s book, The Golden Measure, his anger rose at the publisher’s smooth empty words: ‘[a book for] those who love truth and beauty … [for those] who are solicitous of what is bound up with the destiny of the human person’, to which Greene responded: ‘Instinctively at the vague complacent phrases, with which we have so often heard an advertising man express his stifling reverence for the spirit, the reviewer feels for the safety catch of his revolver.’33

  Greene lived on his nerves, oscillating between periods of high excitement and moments of intense depression. Even Desmond Pakenham, a calm, cautious man who knew Greene in MI6, stressed Greene’s ‘inexpressible melancholia – it seemed as if all the sorrows of the world were known to him and he couldn’t get the horror out of his eyes. This was not noticeable in company but when he was walking alone, particularly then, his face always looked worn and sad.’34

  This duality is revealed in some of his publicity photographs at this time. His friend Mario Soldati, the Italian film director and novelist, recalled that in the late 1940s:

  [Greene] had what I would call a hurt, offended face, metaphorically bruised by events, the expression, not continuously but every once in a while, of an angry and hurt face even when something small went wrong … there was something unearthly in those eyes. I have always felt this, since the first time I met him. Blue fire in his eyes, the eyes of a demon.35

  As a way of reducing tension, which was often linked with his recurring excited phase, Greene would play compulsive pranks. We have seen the lengths to which he was willing to go to carry out a hoax – Mrs Montgomery is a monumental fictional figure, a true creation – but when Greene had a real hate on, as in the case of Wilson Harris, MP, the Spectator’s editor, he would be unrelenting in pursuit of his victim. Wilson Harris was an unpleasant, snobbish, pompous, superior man and Greene’s hatred never waned. To celebrate Wilson Harris’s birthday, Greene sent him a condom stuffed with sweets.

  Greene celebrated another of his birthdays by writing a note to the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary to the effect that the late Frank Harris, author of the notoriously pornographic work My Life and Loves, was the cousin of Mr Wilson Harris, MP, respected editor of the Spectator.36

  Immediately after the war the general election took place which resulted in a Labour Party victory and Winston Churchill’s defeat. Greene and Walter Allen had arranged to have a meal together at Rules, by chance on the day the results of the election were announced:

  He arrived and joined me at our table and almost immediately, his eye catching the banner-headline of someone else’s Evening Standard, said ‘Damn!’ I was amused by the tone of peevish irritation. ‘What’s the matter, Graham?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you approve of the election results?’ ‘Oh, I don’t care one way or the other.fn1 It’s just that I’d planned to make a telephone call at three o’clock and now I won’t be able to.’

  On this occasion, assuming that Churchill would win the election, Greene had intended to telephone the Reform Club, where Harris lunched every day ‘with his cronies’, to announce that he was speaking from the Cabinet Office and ask the telephone operator to be sure to tell Mr Harris that he was to call on the Prime Minister at 3.30.37 Such an invitation would indicate that Churchill was going to offer Wilson Harris high office.

  There were other episode
s. Once when Greene knew that Cyril Connolly was having a party at home, he rang him up at ten o’clock at night pretending to be a sweep:

  He came on the phone and I said, ‘Oh, Mr. Connolly?’ and he said, ‘Yes’, and I said, ‘Well I’ll be around as arranged at seven o’clock in the morning. You’ll be careful won’t you and put dust sheets over all the furniture because it’s a dirty affair.’ He said, ‘What is this, what is this?’ ‘Well I’m coming to sweep your chimney.’ ‘But I’ve never asked to have my chimney swept.’ ‘Oh yes, but this is the office. I’ve had these orders from the office and I’ll be around promptly at seven o’clock, but I do want you to have everything covered with dust sheets.’ ‘But I haven’t ordered it.’ I said, ‘Well I can’t help that, I’ve got my orders from the office and the office is closed,’ and I think it put a damper on the end of his party.38

  Nor were the pranks limited to friends and enemies; complete strangers fell prey to Greene. Upon discovering another Graham Greene in the telephone directory, Greene rang the number: ‘“Are you Graham Greene?” “My name is Graham Greene, but – .” “Are you the man who writes these filthy novels?” “No, I’m a retired solicitor.” “I’m not surprised you’re ashamed to confess you’re the author of this muck.” “No, really, I assure you – .” “If I’d written them at least I’d have the guts to admit it,”’ concluded Greene.39

  *

  In October 1942 he had written to his sister explaining that his problem was that for the last four years he had been in love with ‘two people as equally as makes no difference, the awful struggle to have your cake and eat it, the inability to throw over one for the sake of the other’. By 1946 in a Britain of shortages, rationing, and irritations, he knew that he now loved neither Vivien nor Dorothy. His personal life was arid and he was not writing anything of importance. He was ripe for an affair, but what followed refused to remain a modest adventure. It entirely changed his life. He would know his greatest love and greatest torment: the lightness of being and the dark night of the soul.

  * * *

  fn1 At this time Greene was almost apolitical. His attitude is expressed in an undated letter to his mother. Writing about the political battle going on in his area, he tells her that they have a straight fight in St Pancras between Conservative and Socialist: ‘Reluctantly I shall vote Conservative. The Socialists are such bores! But if there were a Liberal I’d vote for him.’

  PART 4

  Time of Catherine

  The giant Ferris wheel in Vienna, used in The Third Man

  16

  The Heart of the Matter

  I can’t get you out of my heart. You’ve splintered inside it and surgeons are useless. They say one day I may die of the splinter, but it can’t be removed.

  – GRAHAM GREENE

  IN THE POSTWAR years Greene was to experience the most productive and the most emotionally wrenching period of his life. This was the time of Catherine. Catherine Walston dominated his thoughts for over a decade and her influence was paramount during his great creative period. She was the source of his creativity, for The Heart of the Matter would not have been completed without her and The End of the Affair would not have been started.

  Catherine Walston was described kindly by Kitty Muggeridge as ‘a sort of belle dame’, and acerbically by Malcolm Muggeridge as ‘sans merci but so belle’.1 However, it was the description of the Reverend Vincent Turner, SJ, the priest who received her into the Catholic Church, which hit the target unerringly: ‘She was determined not to be chaste and yet she was deeply religious.’2

  Catherine’s Catholicism was a serious matter. Lady Melchett remembers talking with her about religion: ‘I said I believed in Christ as a person and as someone incredibly good and a wonderful prophet, but I couldn’t even hope to believe in the whole package, and Catherine turned on me: “Then you are saying Christ was a liar and Jesus was a liar. You can’t believe in a person if you think they tell lies.” She said, “Either you believe and if you believe you accept it all. I believe.”’3 Greene was presenting the depth of Catherine’s convictions when Sarah in The End of the Affair says:

  I believe the whole bag of tricks, there’s nothing I don’t believe, they could subdivide the Trinity into a dozen parts and I’d believe. They could dig up records that proved Christ had been invented by Pilate to get himself promoted and I’d believe just the same.4

  Catherine, an American, was married to Harry Walston of Thriplow Farm, later of Newton Hall. Walston was a rich landowner and, soon after the time of his wife’s meeting with Greene, was agricultural adviser to Germany (1947 to 1948), attached to the Foreign Office. She was the daughter of David Henry Crompton and Lillian MacDonald Sheridan. Her father was English, though he lived in America. Essentially a gentle man, he was permanently saddened by the fact that his elder brother Paul, his wife and their six children were drowned when the liner Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland on 7 May 1915.

  A little stout as a child of six or seven, Catherine had blossomed into a great beauty by the age of thirteen. The children’s nanny, Frances McFall,fn1 knew that young ‘Bobs’, as Catherine was known to her family, was different. Catherine’s youngest sister, Belinda Straight, recounts: ‘On one occasion, Nanny took her from Rye (where we lived) into New York by train. She came back telling my parents: “I’m really worried about Bobs.” “Well, why are you worried about Bobs?” asked my mother. “’Cause when she walked down the aisle of the train every eye – all the eyes of the men were upon her. Every head turned, and I’m afraid that there’s going to be trouble ahead and she ought to be supervised very carefully.” My mother thought that was greatly exaggerated.’5 It wasn’t. At fifteen Catherine had acute appendicitis and was operated on in Philadelphia. While still recovering, she climbed out of a hospital window to meet the intern who had been assisting in the operation. She was a law unto herself, yet her charm and attraction were extraordinary.

  What was it that led people to look at her, since she often dressed simply?

  It was true that when she went into a restaurant, people would look at her. She had a marvellous carriage, for one thing. She held her head high. She was dark-haired, sort of an auburn colour – and wonderful eyes and – short hair – and cheekbones that were fine cheekbones, rather widely spaced eyes, dark eyebrows, and she wore her clothes with great flair. She never showed that she was frightened of anything.6

  As a child Catherine couldn’t be contained and was a bit of a daredevil. When her mathematics teacher told the class that it was dangerous to sit in the bathtub and pull a light chain because you could electrocute yourself, Catherine didn’t believe him, made the experiment and survived. She learnt early in life that she could get away with things and handle people.

  She did outrageous things, perhaps reacting against her sister Bonte (only one year older), who was favoured by her mother. Bonte, a serious child, was obedient to adults. When Bobs was eight and Bonte nine, they slept in the same room in twin beds. One night Bobs said to Bonte, ‘Do you know what’s very peculiar?’ Bonte said she did not know and Bobs asked, ‘Bonte, did you read in the paper the story about the little girl who died?’ ‘No, I didn’t,’ Bonte replied. ‘Yes, there was a story about a little girl who was lying in her bed and it was dark and all of a sudden a light appeared under her bed, and that meant she was going to die. Bonte, I see a light under your bed.’ At this point, Bonte ran screaming down the hall, rushed downstairs into the room where her parents were giving a dinner party and shouted, ‘The light! The light!’8

  According to Belinda Straight (Binny), Catherine showed no signs as a child of being interested in religion – although her sister Bonte went through a religious phase and painted pictures of Christ. The children’s religious instruction was negligible; David Crompton was an agnostic (he disliked the idea of papal infallibility) and his wife only a mild believer who occasionally went to the Unitarian church. As Belinda Straight recalls: ‘Our English nanny used
to take us to Rye, New York, to the Episcopal church at Eastertime or Christmas where the Reverend Henshaw would intone, and we would sing the hymns. I don’t remember anything about communion, whether Nanny went to communion.’9 At fifteen Catherine visited a couple of churches with her friends. Once she showed both Bonte and Belinda some communion glasses. Nanny came into the room and seeing the glasses asked Catherine where she had got them. She had stolen them from a Catholic church – an interesting beginning for one who became deeply religious.

  *

  Unquestionably, Catherine was vivacious, outspoken and intelligent (though through her waywardness at school, not well educated).10 She married Harry Walston when she was only eighteen. Her cousin John Sebastian Bach Booth had asked the Cromptons to arrange a skiing house party. Booth invited some student friends who had been at Cambridge University with him, among them Harry Walston. Belinda Straight recalled tagging along as the younger sister of sixteen:

  All these people were very bright, they sang a lot of German Lieder songs, they had read the Communist Manifesto and various other volumes of interest including Proust and Lawrence, and we were all embarrassed because my mother talked about believing work should begin in the community rather than on a world scale. I thought she was very provincial then.

  So they went skiing on Pack Monadack in the New Hampshire hills where the Cromptons had a farm; Harry, as Belinda remembers, hurt his back on the first day of skiing and had to stay at home. Catherine decided to stay behind with Harry and that was how they got to know each other and Harry to fall in love with her.11