The Life of Graham Greene (1939-1955)

by Norman Sherry

  If he was planning to confront the Customs and Immigration Service, his letter to Catherine just before his departure from Haiti, where he had been on holiday, doesn’t reveal it:

  I’m coming back by Puerto Rico and New York … I have 8 hours at the airport, but Mary Pritchett is going to come out to lunch and the strange Truman [Capote] has written to some American girl whom he swears is ‘a mutual fate’ – ‘no doubt of it: you’ll only take one look at each other. I can even tell what dishes she’ll choose from a strange menu.’ I don’t believe in this, but she will be a very odd girl if she does present herself at the airport for lunch.24

  But it was a ‘mutual fate’ that they should not meet, for Greene was not allowed to go beyond Puerto Rico and was deported the next day.

  Greene described in detail what happened, giving the impression that he was not testing the McCarran Act but merely saw his return to England by the quickest route as being first to San Juan, then New York and then to London. It seems that when in Port-au-Prince he asked the American ambassador if he could grant him a transit visa without application to the Attorney-General. The answer was no. The ambassador told him it was legal to be in transit without a visa if he had no objection to being locked in a room at the airports in San Juan and New York. Greene had no objections, but had a strong instinct that the ambassador’s plan wouldn’t work, which it didn’t. However, he was not locked in a room at the airport at San Juan but was treated by the authorities with commendable respect and kindness: ‘If you give us your word of honour not to escape you can spend the night at a hotel in San Juan.’25 Greene was to be put on a plane back to Haiti the next morning. Two plainclothes detectives were to be in the room next to his and would wake him up at 6.30 in the morning to take him to the airport.

  Greene invited the officers to drink with him in the bar of the hotel. They had whiskies and more whiskies, and then one of the plainclothes officers felt it would be a shame if Greene didn’t see something of San Juan. They didn’t see much – save for a lot of bars. The next morning one of the officers was suffering from a bad hangover and Greene was not on his way back to Haiti. The captain of the plane took pity on him and took him on to Havana instead.

  Was it deliberate? Was Greene having another go at the American leviathan? It had become a game or rather that is how Greene treated it in his own account: ‘It was, I think, in 1954 that I was deported from Puerto Rico, an occasion I shall always remember with pleasure.’ It was certainly news that flashed round the world and no doubt embarrassed various officials: ‘I expect you’ve heard how I hit the front page in the war against U.S.’, he wrote.26

  Part of Greene’s attitude towards the United States was that of having fun baiting the authorities. But it wasn’t all fun, for when he arrived at customs invariably he was made to wait long periods at the port of entry and that can seem more painful than any punishment.

  If I wished to visit the United States I had to get special permission from the Attorney-General in Washington – this took as a rule about three weeks and my stay was limited to four. I had to inform the authorities on which planes I would arrive and leave, and mysterious letters and numbers were inscribed on my temporary visa which always ensured a long delay at Immigration. I rather enjoyed the game.

  He did not always enjoy the game, however, for if you play with authorities sometimes you get burnt. Jacques Barzun, the writer and scholar, recalled meeting Greene in the early 1950s at a small cocktail party given by Viking Press:

  I was present and curious to meet the author of what he called ‘entertainments’ and what I thought of as a hybrid genre of crime fiction.

  After standing about for some time, chatting with literary friends and the Viking people – Marshall Best, Pat Covici, and Harold Guinzburg – we were told that Mr. Greene had been delayed by Immigration officials and would be a little late. He finally arrived, looking grim and not at all appreciative of the proffered hospitality. After possessing himself of a tall glass he made the rounds of the small groups, piloted by Marshall Best, who was trying hard to impart some sociable ease to the occasion.

  In vain: Mr Greene could speak only of the indignity he had suffered on entering this country. He was under suspicion of being a Communist, his name apparently on a list. He was questioned hard and long about his connections, his writings, his purpose in coming, his sponsors and publishers. He made a point of saying that the Viking Press had not been known to his examiners, who looked as if they thought it an underground and subversive printing press …

  There was very little the guests could say except to express their commiseration and regret, and assure Greene that the rest of his visit would be ‘one continuous welcome’: ‘These promises fell on deaf ears. Mr. Greene did not smile and manifestly did not believe: he had come to an unfriendly and bigoted philistine country.’27

  31

  Drama and the Man

  Close the drama with the day.

  – BISHOP BERKELEY

  DESPITE THE DISASTER of the production of The Heart of the Matter in 1950, Greene told journalists in Boston that ‘the idea of doing a solo stage play was actively in his mind’.1 He began writing what was to be his first play, The Living Room, in Vietnam: ‘21 Nov. [1951] Worked on play … after dinner. 6 pipes. Sat up to 3 talking.’ On 28 December: ‘Did a little work on play. Less depressed.’ And by 8 January 1952, when he was in Kuala Lumpur, he recorded in his journal, ‘Finished play.’ As was usual with Greene when he had nothing further to write, he became depressed: ‘v. depressed with nothing to do’.

  There are no further references to the play until Greene sent a telegram to Catherine dated 3 April 1952: ‘LIVING ROOM TAKEN FOR IMMEDIATE PRODUCTION AM I CLEVER’. The following day he sent her a letter: ‘Isn’t it exciting about the play. I wonder if you got my wire. Peter Glenville is going to produce [he directed the play as well]. The book must be dedicated “To Catherine with love.” May it be?’ And that is the dedication in both the British and the American editions of the play. Greene then added, ‘And you’ve got to hold my hand brazenly on the first night.’

  Greene had had the play in mind years before he began writing it. In Peter Glenville’s personal copy Greene wrote: ‘For Peter with great gratitude & affection, from Graham, June 1, 1955. Begun in Achill, continued in Anacapri & finished in Kuala Lumpur.’ The first sketch of the play was written on the back end-papers of Greene’s copy of the Devotional Poets of the XVII Century (one of the Nelson Classics). The sketch was the briefest of notes in pencil:

  The Living Room

  Act 1. Sc. 1.

  Arrived. Living Room. 1 hr.

  Then keeping things dark. Curtain.

  ‘Oh yes, I said his wife’

  Scene 2. The family conference. Curtain – ‘But this was not a confession’

  Scene 3. The willing of communications. The brown party. Lover old now, priest no guts. Giving the religion?

  Act 2. Scene 1. The appeal to the priest. The wrong word.

  Scene 2. The shifting of the furniture.

  On the other back end-paper he wrote the cast. Apart from calling the psychologist Henry Dale instead of Michael Dennis, and not giving the daily woman a name, the cast of characters had already been worked out. Part of the play is based on the untitled (and unpublished) typescript of a novel now housed in the Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas, which contains two chapters: ‘The Funeral of a Father’ (in the play the funeral is changed to the funeral of the young heroine’s mother) and ‘The Oldest Friend’. In the play Rose, the young, pretty, sensitive girl gives herself adulterously to Michael, her mother’s executor, and the oldest friend of the family. Rose is an innocent, ardent for life. She cannot bear the pain of leaving Michael, who is married to a Catholic woman who refuses divorce.

  Rose knows about the marriage, but has never met Michael Dennis’s wife. When she does she is profoundly disturbed by the meeting. When she asks her uncle (in a wheelchair – the symbol of paralysed goodness
) to advise her, he replies: ‘And if I say, “Leave him”?’ She answers that she could not bear the pain, and he says, ‘Then you’d better go with him, if you’re as weak as that.’ Her dilemma is that she cannot bear the wife’s pain either. Not until Michael’s wife arrives unexpectedly to persuade Rose to give him up does she become real: ‘She was just a name, that’s all. And then she comes here and beats her fists on the table and cries in the chair. I saw them together. I’ve seen him touch her arm.’2

  Greene’s play had its premiere in Stockholm in October 1952 when his personal fame was at its height. He wrote to his Swedish friend and publisher Ragnar Svanstrom that ‘it might be rather fun to come over for the first night’, especially since the play had been postponed until the spring of 1953 in England. Critical response was mixed – from the sublime to the remorseless.

  ‘The public who went to the play included the whole of literary Stockholm,’ said one critic, ‘[and they] appreciated to the full incomparably the most fascinating production of the autumn season.’ The critic went on: ‘when Graham Greene himself stepped on to the stage, I thought the applause would never stop. It was, perhaps, rather for one of the greatest novelists of our time, than for the dramatist, but either way, it was well-meant.’3 Greene was described as the ‘new world-dramatist’. Another reviewer called the play ‘positively agonizing’:

  How far can one go with scenes of sheer torture on the stage before the audience can endure it no longer? At the Little Dramatic Theatre last night there were, in fact, people who found it difficult to remain in their seats during the big scene in the second act of Greene’s drama of passions, The Living Room where a young girl is literally harassed to death. Olof Molander had so horribly readily lent the emphasized reality and hard discipline of his production to Greene’s sadism – an emotional state which seems essential to this author to awaken his creative genius … His play has been the incentive for a production of such power, magnitude and brilliant lucidity that at times it is positively agonizing … The world premiere gave the impression of a gala performance with the whole of Stockholm crowded about the object of gala – the author. But the predominant feeling of the audience at this most remarkable Dramatic Theatre first night was one of uneasiness, deep emotion and – as I said – sometimes agony.4

  There was one powerful and angry voice, full of deep hatred for Greene and an equal hatred of Catholicism – the voice of Artur Lundkvist. Lundkvist would pay Greene back for being Greene: such appalling fame, such success, such backwardness as expressed by his Catholicism, and such hatred, the critic felt, for modern psychology. Unfortunately Lundkvist, who had great power in the literary world of Stockholm, was chairman of the committee which decided future Nobel Prizes. He was on record as saying that Greene would only receive the Nobel Prize for Literature over his dead body. His hatred carried on for most of his life and his death in the same year as Greene’s barred for ever the possibility of a Nobel Prize.

  Admitting that the theatre public ‘appeared at times to be deeply moved’, he was troubled by an audience who ‘tittered delightfully every time the priest on the stage spat out the word psychology or the name Freud’. According to Lundkvist: ‘the play consists of Catholic propaganda of the most vulgar type, to which is added artistic and intellectual cheating’.

  He went on: ‘The most dangerous and unpleasant thing about Greene’s play is the way in which it attacks modern psychology. The means are clearly dishonourable – a number of foul blows below the belt.’ He felt that Greene’s dislike of psychology – which was not for a moment true – was shared by many in the audience, those who kept ‘guard over their tangled complexes, dread elucidation and analysis … And yet … it is psychology that we have to thank for the progress that has been made during the latter generations as regards candour, naturalness, inner freedom and increased consciousness.’

  He also thought that the priest often had the best lines. Whilst the priest rejected all claims to logic and psychological knowledge in the interests of paradoxical faith, yet it was he, not the psychologist, who was allowed to carry off the victories in this field also. The doctor of psychology in Lundkvist’s view didn’t command even the rudiments of psychological general knowledge and clear reasoning which should counteract the priest’s misleading mystifications. Not only was the play ‘a monstrosity of anti-psychology’, it was from start to finish ‘sadistic in the name of human sympathy’! Sympathy becomes terrorism, it falsifies its claims ‘so that only self-sacrifice is possible’: ‘This Jesuitically exploited sympathy coerces, oppresses, lies and is used as rank blackmail. The result is the girl’s suicide.’

  ‘The one person in the company who is most able to cope with life [Rose] must be sacrificed in order that obsolete dogma and morbid hysteria shall triumph … What sort of victory has been won? Catholicism’s claims to oppression have triumphed, the Church has been avenged against one who has dared to escape her, reason and human feelings have been trampled underfoot. Mr. Greene and his sympathizers should feel satisfied.’ Lundkvist averred that there must be few who refused to agree with ‘this cynicism or perverse charlatanism’. Yet he felt that the play unmasked itself as ‘a warning against Catholic distortion, its inhuman demand for sacrifice, its abuse of power behind its so-called solicitude for the soul’.

  Lundkvist’s last blows show a profoundly prejudiced man: ‘Graham Greene’s development (degeneration) has long been suspect. In this play he reveals himself as a morally dangerous writer in league with the darkest powers of present-day western reactionism. The plague flag should be raised over the Dramatic Theatre Studio.’5

  Greene himself was commendably modest in speaking to the audience: ‘I allow my characters to live their own lives once I have created them. They are, as a rule, full of contradictions and can be interpreted in many different ways. I myself, perhaps, had imagined some of them in another way than they appeared tonight, but I don’t know that my way of seeing them was the right one.’6

  On the first night, the audience was kept waiting for Greene – ‘It seemed as though the Almighty had borrowed one of Greene’s own dramatic tricks when He locked the author in Dr Gierow’s lift while the audience sat waiting in the theatre … The Almighty [also] allowed some imp of mischief to spatter candle grease over the famous author’s dinner jacket in order that he should not take his first night too grandly. Nor did he …’7

  Back in England, the play went on tour in the provinces before it faced a London audience. It went first to Edinburgh, then Glasgow and finally Brighton. To his brother Herbert Greene wrote: ‘I shan’t go to Brighton to see the play as I shall already have had to follow it around in Edinburgh and Glasgow for the purposes of making any changes that are necessary & I shall want to have a rest from it before the London first night.’8

  Greene learned that unlike a film script, where the writer is excluded from the act of creation once the script has been completed, the playwright doesn’t become a forgotten man. He thought he would be ‘an unwelcome stranger lurking ashamed in the stalls’, but it was not so. He discovered that with a play the writing continues after the play goes into production: ‘It would extend through rehearsals and through the opening weeks of tour.’ He thoroughly enjoyed rehearsals and was struck by the fact that the actors all played a part in suggesting improvements: ‘in the play as a whole … nearly a dozen lively informed intelligences criticising and suggesting’.9 He enjoyed the process more than dramatising his novels: ‘One newcomer has been very happy in the theatre, in the deserted stalls at rehearsals, at the note-takings on the stage after performance, in the corridors and the bars and dressing-rooms.’10

  He went to the first performance in Edinburgh. The play was a success and Evelyn Waugh wrote to him about hearing of one man’s response: ‘I was delighted to hear from an American, who journeyed to Edinburgh on your account, that your play is brilliantly successful.’11 Greene went to Edinburgh with his friend Mario Soldati, the Italian film director. He liked Sold
ati because he was unconventional, not stiff or formal. In a letter to his mother, he described him as ‘that nice but hysterical Italian film director’. While they were there, Greene, Soldati, and Greene’s friend John Sutro had an encounter Greene described as ‘bizarre’ in a Picture Post article:

  The theatre has brought even certain bizarre experiences the cinema never offered: a struggle on a hotel floor at two in the morning with a breeder of prize bulls.12

  After the performance on the first night, Greene, Sutro and Soldati returned to the hotel for a drink. Greene recalled that he was reading A Life of Chekhov which he had under his arm and that he was wearing a red tie (as he always did with a dark suit):

  a mysterious Scotsman began to glare at me and finally said: ‘Have you contributed to the flood relief fund?’ because there had been big floods in Edinburgh. I was taken aback and I said ‘no’ because, thank God, I’m only a quarter Scotch. He then came around behind me and seized my tie and pulled it down and so then we all went into a scrabble. And he was much heavier than I was and I thought I was winning but it was because Mario Soldati was pulling him from behind. But then Mario got a crick in his back and subsided on a chair, so that I was really the beaten one. But then there was a great scene of shaking hands.13

  Mario Soldati remembered the story differently:

  It was below freezing point and we were drinking black velvet which Graham had introduced me to – a mixture of Guinness and champagne and we were drunk and talking about fucking and cunt and a man on the other side of the room – we were talking loudly – was even more drunk than we were. After a while he came across to us and said: ‘You two must be communist buggers’ and Graham said ‘Why not communist fuckers’ and the man tried to hit Graham and they wrestled and I tried to separate them.14