The Life of Graham Greene (1904-1939)

by Norman Sherry

  I wonder if you’d take over a short story … now resting in the office of the Listener. Ackerley [assistant literary editor, later literary editor of the Listener] wrote to me & asked me for something & as I had just finished this story, called ‘The Innocent’, I sent it to him. Now weeks go by without any sign of life. As he had invited a contribution I think he should have come to a quicker decision. I had also sent a copy to The Mercury; Scott James had asked me to do an article & I sent this instead, but he insisted on the article & the story still reposes there. Could you inquire of Ackerley? I dare say if the worst came to the worst it would suit Time & Tide.21

  With so much on hand Greene might well have let the suggestion of providing a synopsis for the News Chronicle sleep awhile. Not so. The day after promising to think about a story he produced a synopsis called ‘Miss Mitton in Moscow’ and coupled it with the astonishing idea that he should leave for Moscow, almost immediately, his urgent deadlines for his two books notwithstanding: ‘Here is the synopsis of a 10,000 word story for the News Chronicle. If they feel inclined to commission it, could you hurry up their decision, as I want to get in the background and the satirical description of the tourists, as it were, on the spot. In other words, will they make up their minds so that I can book a seat for Moscow to leave in ten days!’22

  It is strange that on the suggestion of a commission for a serial Greene was willing to drop everything and go to Moscow. It could not be because the synopsis promised a brilliant story, yet he was prepared to follow his star to Moscow, chasing after background for a story about a bored, disillusioned journalist meeting up with an old lady’s naïvety and excitement in visiting Moscow for the first time; of how her absurdities become a topic of conversation; of how he has to help her out of the country ahead of the other tourists as she had tried the Moscow authorities too much; only to discover, when he finds himself to be a central figure in an advertised Soviet Trial that Miss Mitton was a dye expert and had carried out a smart piece of commercial espionage.

  The literary editor of the News Chronicle liked the synopsis and asked to see the first instalment, which Nancy Pearn thought encouraging, but this was not sufficient for Greene: ‘I explained it was dependent on a definite decision within ten days. The boat’s sailed now & there’s not another till the spring. Besides it’s a costly business & I wouldn’t take the trip without a definite commission. So we’ll have to wait for another story to come to mind.’23

  It would seem that Greene had an ulterior motive in his haste to get the commission, and depart, by ship, within ten days. A hint of it lies in the editor’s comment that she thought that when he returned from Moscow he would have got another idea for a story, for his whole plan is similar to his previous plans for travelling abroad – to get a commission to help pay his way so that he could get first-hand experience of one of the world’s trouble spots. In this case he might have foreseen a novel, not a short story, coming out of the famous purge trials in Moscow in which leading communists accused themselves of treason without being guilty and were promptly executed.

  ‘The Innocent’ was rejected by the Listener, the Mercury (though they asked Greene if he would like to call in to discuss the possibility generally of his writing future articles and stories for them), and the Fortnightly Review, and so Greene suggested to Nancy Pearn that it should go next to the literary editor of Time and Tide, whom he described rather snobbishly as ‘our old friend from the coalfields … they ought to pay five guineas’. They did not. He was sorry, he wrote to Nancy, that the story was causing her so much trouble: ‘I thought it was one of those sweetly pretty tales which would find a home easily.’ The year was coming to an end and Nancy Pearn invited him to call on her: ‘There are several things we might well discuss in the near future, I feel, such as the tendencies in the various markets which you might care to follow up.’ Greene had certainly found himself a devoted literary agent.

  *

  Greene kept his promise to complete his books: Journey Without Maps was finished just before the end of the year; A Gun for Sale ran over his target date by a few days. ‘Now today’, he wrote to his agent on 4 January 1936, ‘I’ve finished my thriller and can look round a little.’

  ‘Looking round a little’ is a deceptive phrase, untypical of Greene with his energy, ambition, and tendency to depression and boredom. As late as April 1936 he wrote to his mother that he had ‘been buried in that rather empty supine between books, with two books in proof and nothing to write’.24 And in spite of his attempt to get off to Moscow for material, he obviously did not want to start another novel so soon; yet he had to support his family, and so he threw himself into finding outlets for other forms of writing. Nancy Pearn suggested that he write the occasional editorial piece for Time and Tide’s column ‘Notes on the Way’. This he did – ‘It’s quite well paid, isn’t it?’ he enquired of Nancy.

  He quickly produced a second synopsis of a story entitled Return Home: ‘Here’s a synopsis and 2,000 words to try out on the News Chronicle’, he wrote, adding that she could not say that he did not work hard these days. Nancy Pearn agreed that he was working hard but had her reservations about the synopsis – ‘negroes in black republican settings! I wonder if that may not be testing your “popular” editor too far.’25 And she was right, but let him down lightly: ‘There have been many changes and upsets down at the News Chronicle recently and I rather doubt the likelihood of getting any new stuff through with them at the moment.’

  In January he came into conflict with R. J. Minney, the managing editor of the Sunday Referee, over what he saw as an issue of injustice. Minney had commissioned a Sunday gossip article from him, which he then rejected. Graham wrote to Nancy:

  I sent him a perfectly good one which he now returns and wants re-written, keeping off books altogether: this wasn’t specified in his original letter. I really haven’t the time or the inclination to write another article: the payment is seven guineas and he’s had seven guineas worth of work. I don’t feel that for me the Referee is an important market, therefore I should like to insist on payment for my work. He can print the article or not as he chooses.

  He pointed out to Nancy, sending her the commissioning letter, that Minney had sent him examples of recent contributions and asked him to touch on five or six topics in the article. He had also been advertising the forthcoming article every Sunday. He had touched on five topics – ‘anonymous letters, small town atmosphere, the BBC, women novelists, and a ms. from India’.fn4 Why then would Minney not pay?

  Minney’s argument was that while each paragraph was about a different subject, ‘they were yet all connected with novels, and in such a way as to make it too purely personal in application’. Greene’s attitude to Minney was not personal:

  I’m not cross or offended. He wrote quite nicely and I liked his book about Hollywood! Only it simply wouldn’t be economic for a slow writer like myself to spend any more days on the article. I simply can’t afford it. It’s business.26

  Minney was adamant. He was not paying Greene for that article. But he did temper his response by saying that he would be willing to wait a considerable time for revised copy; that he was hoping Greene would be able to co-operate on further work – ‘he’s glad you like his book and he likes yours and all that’, wrote Nancy. At this point Greene gave up: ‘All right. I surrender. I’ll do him something which doesn’t so much as mention a book or an author. Only I can’t name a date. A lot of work seems to be flowing in.’27

  He was indeed busy. On 20 January 1936, King George V died and three days later Greene had a patriotic article published in The Times about the King’s lying in state in Westminster Hall: ‘The white plumed soldiers, the tall candles burning at every corner, the Crown, the cross, the empty throne do not disguise the fact that he is closer now to his people than he has ever been, closer even than on Christmas Day when his deep, rather husky voice made him familiar to millions. This is his dock and this is his trial, and it is the ordinary man now wh
o judges him – the city clerk, the unemployed workman, the woman from the suburbs – who will pass round the catafalque. Their silence and grief are his acquittal.’28

  On 28 January, the day of the King’s funeral, Greene observed, no doubt from the window of his study overlooking Clapham Common, a rather different event which he recorded in his diary begun as soon as A Gun for Sale was finished:

  Dark and drenching rain: a couple on the Common: the man respectably dressed: holding themselves mouth to mouth, bodies pressed together, the man holding the girl with one hand, an umbrella over them both with the other. This was romantic pathos, but you could tell from the attitude, the prolongation, the pressure, real carnality.

  This was the writer’s observation at work, as it was in the first entry in this diary:

  Jan. 4 Returning late from town by tube, I sat opposite a fat prosperous man of the shopkeeping class. He had pretence lilies of the valley in his button hole. When the train stopped at a station he let out a piercing whistle, like a police whistle and then was quite still and expressionless again. A look of subdued horror on the faces of the other passengers who after one startled glance looked away from him. A distinct atmosphere of apprehension at the next stop in case he whistled again.

  The next entry, undated but given a title, ‘A Nymph in the Hedge’, returns to his own experiences. It is an account of a dream he had in which a doctor he consulted ‘made a curious whistle that brought me dizzily to my knees and let off a little fart from a test tube. He said, “You have a nymph in the hedge” … The nymph in the hedge to my mind seemed to represent a small naked baby – a foundling … and I suspected him of wanting to impose some by-blow [bastard] of his own on me by trickery … But I was worried in case this strange baby should harm Lucy.’

  On 29 March he records: ‘From a scientific film show at the Film Socy, one gathers that the earthworm rather than man or the higher animals enjoys the greatest sexual satisfaction. Coition lasts for a whole hour and as the worm is hermaphroditic, the flow of semen proceeds from both partners during that time.’

  Nancy Pearn continued to forward his interests: ‘Why not, if you find you are now in the vein, write another story with the big magazine markets in view? I am thinking of “The Strand” primarily.’29 She had also succeeded in placing a short story in the Daily Mail which Greene was contributing to a collection to be published by Hutchinson: ‘delighted about the successful outcome with the Daily Mail. Herewith the cheque. The early Hutchinson date made it impossible to fit the story into any of the monthlies, while it was too long for most of the weeklies. In fact, there was really only one hope for it – with “Passing Show” [a weekly magazine]. And there we have met with luck, glory be! for they will be able to fit it in just in time before the book comes out, so there will be an extra fifteen guineas to come on this additional sale.’

  Greene replied with thanks for getting him the Mail and for working such marvels with the story: ‘I’ll try my hand at another some time, but [referring to the bitterly cold weather in London during February 1936] I can’t think in this cold.’

  By the middle of March Nancy felt she had brought off something rather special, and that just after having spent an evening at Greene’s home at Clapham Common: ‘Here’s fun – following so closely too on our merry meeting the other evening: “The Argosy [a fiction magazine] have spotted your story “The Basement Room” from the volume, and we are going to be able to collect Eighteen guineas from them for Second British Serial Rights … I told you I felt that the omens were all for a big short story push – and now you see! How soon shall we receive the first of the many destined for “The Strand”?’

  Greene responded on a domestic note: ‘What good news. It will pay for the curtains, a new ceiling and lino for the new nursery’fn5, 30, which indicates how far eighteen guineas once used to go.

  At the end of March, Nancy learnt that still further changes had taken place at the News Chronicle and that the new man handling the fiction side was an admirer of Graham Greene. Greene came up with the thoughts for a tale ‘about a Night Motor Coach which might swell out to ten thousand. I expect I could let you have a first instalment in the next week or two.’ Greene wrote this on the last day of March. And in line with his urge to do things at once, if not before, he wrote to Nancy the following day, 1 April: ‘At least you ought to praise my promptness this time. Here is a summary and first instalment. Do you think you could persuade the News Chronicle to be a little quicker this time in their decision? One loses interest when one is held up for weeks.’ Greene added a postscript – ‘It’s a damned good story.’ And Nancy responded, ‘I do – and it is!’

  But the decision did not come quickly from the News Chronicle and when it came it was a refusal: ‘I have just extracted a decision from the News Chronicle’, wrote Nancy, ‘on “In the Night Coach.” The man there who had particularly admired “The Basement Room”, says he frankly does not see this as a five-day serial at all, owing to its relative lack of action … Dost think that it could be turned into a straight-action story of “The Strand” variety?’31

  Greene replied the following day (9 May) that he was quite glad about the rejection by the News Chronicle as he had already incorporated the whole thing in a new novel he had begun. This novel, given the unlikely title of ‘Fanatic Arabia’, was to be another unfinished project, perhaps because, as he admitted to his mother, it was ‘with great reluctance’ that he began it; perhaps because the admiring editor of the News Chronicle had rejected it; perhaps because the editor knew what he was talking about. A portion of the novel has survived and is in the archives in Austin, Texas. It begins with a night coach trip to Nottingham and is without sparkle.

  Nevertheless, Greene went on location looking for material. On 20 April, after a holiday in Devon, he wrote to his mother, ‘when I get home I have to go up north to Nottingham and York by one of those night motor coaches as the new novel begins that way!’

  The most interesting insights into his life at this time come from his letters to his mother. Both he and Hugh, in their letters to her, give, understandably, their immediate personal responses to their experiences in their individual efforts to succeed. Greene wrote to her an account of an editorial dinner put on by the Spectator to honour its contributors:

  We sat at six tables … Rose Macaulay on one side, and a nice retired soldier and authority on Abyssinia called Athil on the other. Peter Fleming, a big stiff called Sir Frederick Whyte, a rather silly old man, Beach Thomas who made a speech appealing quite seriously for more sentimentality in the paper, and a very nice gentle creature who was Empire Marketing Board and started Grierson’s [film] unit and is now B.B.C., Sir Stephen Tallents. The editor [Wilson Harris] made a long and rather dull speech saying that he wanted the policy of the paper throughout to be left centre. J. A. Spender made a nostalgic speech. The Dean of St Paul’s a gentle amusing speech. Sir Bernard Pares a pathetic, old-time Liberal speech. Mrs Williams-Ellis a very trying fluent motherly speech – flinging me a big bouquet! … a lot of nice people scattered round: Rupert [Hart-Davis] and Monica Redlich and A. L. Rowse and H. E. Bates and Herbert Read …

  Journey Without Maps failed to make the Book Society – too much sex, they said – though they’ve given it first recommendation for May [it actually was not published until 11 May and failed to make the Book Society]. In America the thriller is coming out first in the early summer. [ This Gun for Hire came out in June and appeared in Britain in July.]

  He then told his mother about the Henry James chapter he had written for the English Novelists’ Series – a survey of the Novel by Twenty Contemporary Novelists and edited by his friend Derek Verschoyle, which came out in April; the story which Hutchinsons were bringing out and which his agent had quickly sold to Passing Show, and the fact that ‘The Basement Room’ story had been sold again, this time to Argosy – ‘that story will have made me nearly £70’. He then played his trump card to his mother as to the way he was climbing: ‘Al
together I’m having a hand in four books this year as well as my own two!’32

  On 1 May Greene writes to his mother that the publisher Collins had asked him to write a book about Oxford: ‘I think for financial reasons I may have to do it.’ But he was wrong for a tremendous windfall was ahead: ‘Great excitement,’ he wrote to her on 14 May 1936. ‘Cable came last night from Mary Leonard, New York, who has been trying to sell film rights of “A Gun for Sale”, “Closing for twelve thousand [dollars] whoops.”’ So the novel was sold to Paramount pictures even before it had appeared in either Britain or America.

  There had been straws in the wind that it might be very successful. On 28 January he had written to Hugh of the ‘great enthusiasm on Heinemann’s part for the shocker’, repeating this on 4 March, and writing also of the future birth of his second child. He had written in an earlier undated letter, ‘expect you’ve heard about the increase in our family’, which Hugh apparently had not understood, for in the next letter he writes; ‘The addition is an infant in September! I’m trusting to the thriller to pay for it. There seems to be huge enthusiasm about it (the thriller I mean) at Heinemann’s and Doubleday!’ The possibility of A Gun for Sale being made into a film was on the cards as early as 19 May, when he wrote to Hugh: ‘Basil Dean wants to see me about a possible play in my thriller and cables to do with film rights come regularly across the Atlantic.’

  But while Greene was jubilant, and even when writing to Hugh on 11 June about the birth of his son Graham Carleton:fn6 ‘A thousand congratulations. Everyone we know seems to be having infants this month’, he did show a strange parsimoniousness: ‘I didn’t answer your last letter as I thought I’d wait and save a 2½ penny stamp. It’s no good being extravagant over stamps just because one has sold a film.’