The Life of Graham Greene (1939-1955)

by Norman Sherry

  In another letter, Martindale wrote: ‘I imagine [Greene] has unconsciously put himself into the person of Scobie and expresses his own mind. If that is so, he must have suffered very deeply some time or other and have verified St Paul’s words: “I see the better, yet follow the worse.”’ Martindale went on to say of Greene, ‘there is an enduring good kernel in a man who surrounds it with husk upon husk of wrong, and that it is this heart of good which survives when Purgatory (in this life or the next) has scorched off all the husks’.26

  Taking notice of the advice, Vivien responded gently to Greene’s letter, which suggested that she wanted a judicial separation in order to take revenge:

  O what has happened to you, dear one? You have changed so dreadfully … Only think that you could write about ‘having to PROTECT YOURSELF’ from me and my ‘revenge’ … Those words seem to be from an hysterical malevolent woman not you, my friend for 20 years. You know absolutely and completely that I am your friend and you can TRUST me. You do know it in your heart, but you can’t completely trust the people about you and you are psychically ill, or poisoned or afraid … You, rich, famous, free to wander and return when you like, without the anxieties of your family – to want protection from me (cooking in the basement or painting a dolls’ house) – who has never in the whole of my life ever dreamed of hurting you or of doing you wrong or saying any word against you to friends or children.27

  Vivien was fighting hard for his return: ‘Long after I’d joyfully “forgiven” you about Dorothy I was loving and trusting you … and you can think of me in connexion with a wicked and vulgar notion of “revenge”. Something fearful is happening in your mind and your heart about me – don’t you realise what is being done to you … you are being made to hate someone who has only sadness and affection for you and you hit out to take away any last remaining feeling of security I have.’28

  And she almost won, for he replied from California, from the Hotel Bel Air: ‘I don’t care a brass farthing about being famous. I’m very unhappy too & have been except for brief intervals for nine years. I don’t believe this is the end of us … When I got your letter all my inclination was to throw everybody & everything up & return. Your pull was far greater than any other pull. But then I told myself hopelessly … what’s the use? As soon as I give up C[atherine] I shall feel the pull back & within a few weeks I should begin to cheat.’29

  On 3 June 1948 just before he went to Vienna with Carol Reed to start filming The Third Man, he sent Vivien an open and totally direct letter of the kind he felt a great need to write. He was at last writing as he’d always wished to; not tampering with a word, not altering a disagreeable fact: the lies in his life had to end. He discussed both his relationship with her and with Dorothy:

  You know I am fond of you. Quite apart from that I am aware of the responsibilities I owe you & the children. But, mainly through my fault, we have lived for years too far from reality, & the fact that has to be faced dear is that by my nature, my selfishness, even in some degree by my profession, I shall always, & with anyone, have been a bad husband. I think, you see, my restlessness, moods, melancholia, even my outside relationships, are symptoms of a disease & not the disease itself, & the disease,fn2 which had been going on ever since my childhood & was only temporarily alleviated by psycho-analysis, lies in a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life. Unfortunately the disease is also one’s material. Cure the disease & I doubt whether a writer would remain. I daresay that would be all to the good.30

  Greene then makes a full confession about Dorothy: ‘For nearly nine years … I have had a second domestic life in London, but the fact that that has been without the ties & responsibilities of a husband, has not made it any more of a success. I have failed there just as completely as at Oxford, so that especially during the last four years [since 1944], though the strain began much earlier, I have caused her a great deal of misery. So you see I really feel the hopelessness of sharing a life with anyone without causing the unhappiness & disillusion – if they have any illusions.’31 Greene then made Vivien an offer which was no offer, presumably leaving it to her to make the final break: ‘If you feel that a life is possible for us in which, though Oxford is my headquarters, there are no conditions, no guarantees or time-table laid down for either of us … then let us try it. But, my dear, if as you reasonably may feel this arrangement (or lack of arrangement) would only make for more misery, then I think we had better have an open separation which will be less of a problem & nervous strain for both.’32

  But this calm was only temporary and soon tempers were high once again. Some portion of the argument is revealed by Vivien to her Catholic lawyer in late September 1948, some three months after the publication of Greene’s bestseller, The Heart of the Matter. Greene had invited himself down to Beaumont Street and she gladly agreed to his coming as a guest on a Saturday and staying till Sunday after tea. At first she found him truculent, saying she would find it very difficult to bring proofs of adultery and that if she insisted upon a judicial separation she would only get a minimal allowance. If there were a private separation then he would aim at the maximum possible. Later in the day ‘he was entirely softened and wept very much and I felt very hopeful of the future, then’.

  The worst thing [was] still to come. Before he raised the question of the Personal notice in the papers he began to say ‘why don’t you divorce me; a judicial separation is the same as a divorce … You needn’t think it will break up my relationship with C.W.; we could decide anyway to go away together permanently. Why don’t you have a divorce and be done with it.’ I said we had both and he in particular most violently, had been against it and I thought it disastrous for the children, both at Catholic schools. Then he became slightly hysterical and said, ‘Well one good thing I have got out of Korda in America and that is five hundred Nembutal tablets and I can solve the whole business with that.’ As you know, this is not the first time I have had threats of suicide and I said only ‘whatever you have done to Francis, I can’t believe you would leave him a memory like that …’ He said ‘They’d never know and soon get over it anyway …’

  When Vivien spoke of these suicide threats to the Reverend Vincent Turner and the Weavers, their reaction was, ‘People who talk about it never do it.’ But Vivien was concerned because, as she told her lawyer, ‘he had attempted it twice before I met him, and he has this obsession that writers show in their writing the way they will die, and this is a strong feeling with him. If he took an overdose, as he has often threatened, it would be like Scobie in The Heart of the Matter and – as in the book – I as his wife would be blamed by everyone … Of course I realise that Mrs Walston and Graham can set up house together and she can change her name by deed poll to “Greene” and call herself Mrs Graham Greene. No one can stop that and it is done every day … But even more suicide threats won’t bully me into a divorce.’33

  *

  Greene’s continued passion for Catherine was having a serious, physiological effect on Dorothy. ‘I feel terribly sorry for her,’ he wrote to Catherine, ‘physically the whole thing shows.’34 Greene’s powerful sympathy for Dorothy came from knowing her condition: ‘When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity – that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.’35 Greene was in pain, and whatever Dorothy’s retaliation it was his intense conviction that he deserved punishment.

  To ease his conscience he took Dorothy to Paris. He and François Mauriac had to go to Brussels to speak at Les Grandes Conférences Catholiques at the Palais des Beaux Arts. Greene gave a brilliant address on the threats to Christian civilisation to an audience of 3,000. The photograph of them which appeared in many newspapers (though the Catholic Times missed the last ‘e’ in Greene) shows Mauriac with his slightly twisted face, and Greene with his powerful bulging eyes and pessi
mistic expression.

  Afterwards, Greene and Dorothy went on to Paris, but the trip was disastrous. He wrote to Catherine: ‘as for love (in the f-sense) we are two corpses’. In The End of the Affair, Greene applies a similar image to Henry and Sarah, when Sarah writes in her journal: ‘Henry and I sleeping side by side night after night like figures on tombs.’36 He told Vivien that he hoped to take a flat by himself in London, and that the present set up in Gordon Square would be materially altered: ‘though I am trying if it’s humanly possible to save some relationship there’.37 Greene’s method of saving part of the relationship, however, was unnecessarily complex.

  He decided to take Dorothy on a long trip, first to Paris again, then to Marrakech and during that time, he planned to give her a letter explaining that they must part, that he was in love with another, and that he felt he’d have to leave their home in Gordon Square. When I asked him why he used such a roundabout method – after all he was living with Dorothy and could have approached her in London – he admitted he suffered from moral cowardice.

  Although Greene’s ‘Dear Dorothy’ letter has not survived, what has is Dorothy’s letter to Greene (the only one) upon her discovery that he was having an affair. Dated 14 April 1948, the letter reflects Dorothy’s direct, pungent style. It is sometimes indecipherable, sometimes ungrammatical, and reveals their disturbed relationship:

  I had lunch with Mr. Mellar today. Heard little except the story of you & Walston for an hour & a half. Everyone from Douglas [Jerrold] to the packers [at Eyre & Spottiswoode] it seems know you are behaving like a fool over an American blond [sic] as you have made no attempt to disguise it from anyone, everyone you know in London is talking about it too! Charles supplies the directors with information (he is in great demand as he has become part of the set up & drinks with you all) & your secretary deals with the lower orders & so on. They also know that you are prepared to break up Oxford for this woman.

  That Dorothy was unaware that Greene had left his wife indicates something of Greene’s secretiveness. She reported that although others had guessed about the Walston affair as far back as April 1947, their suspicions weren’t confirmed until that autumn (while Dorothy was away) when the affair grew more intense and Greene completely ‘lost his head’.

  They are of course ‘very sorry for the other woman’ [Dorothy] who they regard as a kind of Graham Greene specimen – something to be kept in private & never seen or mentioned … Mrs. Greene feels that you are going out of your mind as no man in his right senses would behave as you do over an American blond with a yearning for culture!

  Upon hearing that Catherine had gone to Venice with Greene, Dorothy did a little sleuthing to check ‘to see how far any of the story was true’. She saw little use in ‘trying to build up any kind of life … you are not to be trusted to help make one in any way,’ and then contemplated their future:

  I suppose we will go on living together for a while, checking our bags in & out & sleeping here between times. I feel I dont care either way; life has been so completely smashed for me during our time together & so much has had to be lost that nothing matters very much any longer. I’ll go on with it all as long as the parent [Dorothy’s mother] lives of course but I’ll be glad when it’s over.

  Now that Dorothy was made aware of the affair, it explained Greene’s thin excuses for many trips and his attitude towards her since her return from Africa, which she had found puzzling. She then questioned whether a promised holiday together would now be possible: ‘a week or two with me will fall very flat after three months with a woman you are so madly in love with so cancel it if you like, it would be awful too to lie with one woman when all your thoughts are on another. I am glad I know all this as otherwise I would have tried to perk things up with us again in several ways, now I can simply live my life apart from you …’

  Dorothy wrote the letter because she felt it was impossible to talk to Greene. Yet despite her bitterness and pain, she ended the letter by keeping the door of reconciliation open:

  I dont want a repetition of the last revolting afternoon with you, one only spits at someone you regard as a pretty low creature, not a woman who has lived so long with you & through so much …

  I will arrange as soon as possible for us to have separate rooms as I know you will prefer it, you couldn’t of course suggest it as it would have meant telling the truth.

  If at any time you want to make a life we can share, or this thing with Walston breaks tell me, but any advance now I’m afraid must come from you.

  D

  *

  On returning from Venice, Greene did not cancel his holiday with Dorothy, but set out for Marrakech. His letters to Catherine show how this baleful excursion developed. The first letter speaks of ‘too long & dreary scenes … have started again. I’ll take her to Africa, but the end is nearly on us.’38 And the next is a postcard written five days later from Rabat: ‘Everything fixed but life a bit grim – don’t like Muslims much.’ And then on 7 May he admitted: ‘Letter has been delivered. Pretty ghastly results, but we go on to Hotel Jamais, Fez.’

  The woman who stole Greene’s trousers so he couldn’t leave home to visit Catherine was not likely to accept the situation gracefully. On 11 May from Fez he described what happened: ‘It’s been a pretty grim holiday … I gave her the letter 24 hours before we left Paris. Ghastly, scenes, but we went on.’ They arrived at Casablanca at four in the morning, to find the hotel closed. They then went to the railway station, where they had an accidental meeting with a French physicist called Boutry and waited together for the 7.50 train. It turned out to be a godsend since they were only able to get a room at Rabat through Boutry’s influence. Now that the fatal letter had been delivered, half of each day would be pleasant and the other half ‘an awful hell of tears, pain, melancholy …’ But Dorothy thought that perhaps the relationship could continue, at least on a trial basis:

  Yesterday morning, after the worst scene yet when I was reduced to a nervous pulp, M.G. suddenly hit on a compromise that satisfied her … I can’t see that it is much different from my letter … The idea is that I have the flat of my own, work there every day, spend the night there when I want to, go away when I want to, but still, except on these occasions, sleep at Gordon Square. The arrangement to be tried out for 3 months from when I come back from U.S.A. &/or Vienna, & if it fails – as of course it will – we split altogether. I shall test it out as soon as I return … by a weekend or midweek at Thriplow.39

  Greene was hopeful that the arrangement would not last three months, that Dorothy would again go off to West Africa and perhaps marry the captain of the Elder Dempster ship, and that the holiday would go on quietly without fuss: ‘Everything is quieter now, & last night we went & saw a couple of very bad naked dancers in a native brothel & smoked a pipe of hashish.’40 But fighting threatened to break out at any time: ‘Today I put on my corduroys & she spotted the guilt marks right away – in five seconds. She said she’d already found them on my grey flannels. However no scene – yet.’41

  By 16 May, Greene and Dorothy were at Marrakech, and thinking of Catherine, Greene would strike off the days on his calendar waiting for the moment they’d be together again. Little wonder, for the holiday was even more ghastly than he anticipated: ‘Yesterday we arrived here, hell opened again from 2 till 6 & I nearly got the plane back but the office was closed. There is no longer a chance, I think, of avoiding a complete split & this time has cleared my mind a lot about that & wiped out a good many memories.’ He was quite frantic: ‘No more lies or worries of that kind. No more telegrams … it will be a good time beginning & I’ll write my best book yet.’ What he wanted Catherine to do was to write, or wire, or telephone directly to him, whether Dorothy was there or not: ‘All the deception is over for ever.’42

  Greene and Dorothy moved on to Agadir, where there was a French Foreign Legion encampment, and life took on a certain pleasure: ‘Got here yesterday by plane & the sweet one-armed Commandant of the Foreign L
egion met us with his aide-de-camp & took us home to dinner. This a much nicer place than Fez or Marrakech: very like West Africa with a long, slow murmur of surf & one’s clothes damp with humidity.’ But to be with Dorothy was painful, for she had powers of persistence which recall Ida’s in Brighton Rock. Although aspects of the film star Mae West were used by Greene in the development of Ida’s character, Dorothy’s beery behaviour in pubs also corresponds with Ida’s. ‘I feel terribly cut off. I think one is now going through the “worst” time you prophesied, but before the end of the summer one will be quite clear. You can’t imagine the agonising boredom of these long strained days. I want to be with you & laugh & be silly & happy & write. Can’t write today, but I’ll have the story ready for when I get back. I think – so far – so good. Perhaps my last religious story before the great sex novel?’43

  He was to return, certainly to Port Royal, at 6 a.m. on 28 May, but while travelling by plane he must have at least toasted his new novel which appeared on the bookstalls on the 27th. He sent a card to Catherine to ‘drink to The Heart of the Matter on the 27th’.

  Soon after returning to Gordon Square with Dorothy, Greene wrote urgently to Catherine because he was immediately leaving for Vienna with Carol Reed. He’d seen Catherine only once since his return: ‘Cafryn dear, it seems about five years since Wednesday. Thursday proved an absolutely ghastly afternoon with the worst scene yet [with Dorothy].’ Catherine had found him the flat next to hers at 6 St James’s: ‘I long for the 1st drink at No. 5 … It is an odd smorgasbord feeling of insecurity, knowing that Gordon Square is over. How I wish the sea captain would persuade m.g. to leave me …’44 He also included a short note to Catherine’s husband, Harry Walston: ‘But I do want to tell you how I appreciated yesterday coming out of the storm to your welcome & your whisky. You were both so sweet to me.’