His publisher had suggested that he had better stay away from England for a while because of the Lord Chief Justice’s comments during the Shirley Temple libel case – ‘it looks as if I shall be arrested when I land if the L.C.J.’s bite is as bad as his bark.’68 Nevertheless, he sailed on the Orinoco, longing to see his wife and children again, arriving in England on 25 May 1938, only to suffer another culture shock: ‘one jolted through the hideous iron tunnel at Vauxhall Bridge, under the Nine Elms depot and the sky-sign for Meux’s beer. There is always a smell of gas at the traffic junction where the road is up and the trams wait; a Watney’s poster, a crime of violence, Captain Coe’s Finals … In the grit of the London afternoon, among the trams, in the long waste of the Clapham Road, a Baptist chapel, Victorian houses falling into decay in their little burial grounds of stone and weed, a coal merchant’s window with some fuel arranged in an iron basket, a gas showroom.’69
‘How could a world like this end in anything but war?’ He began to wonder why he had disliked Mexico so much, as he compared the religious observances in England with those in Mexico: ‘Mass in Chelsea seemed curiously fictitious; no peon knelt with his arms out in the attitude of the cross, no woman dragged herself up the aisle on her knees. It would have seemed shocking, like the Agony itself. We do not mortify ourselves. Perhaps we are in need of violence.’70
In London, the telephones were cut off, the anti-aircraft guns set up on the Common, and trenches were being dug. Air Raid Wardens had been appointed and Air Raid Posts set up in anticipation of the onslaught of German bombers. In spite of Neville Chamberlain’s attempts to avert it, war was inevitable – and Greene would welcome it, in spite of the disruption it was to cause. It would be a new experience, another way of escape.
fn1 Essay on Vauvenargues, a French moralist (1715–47), known for his Introduction à la connaissance de l’esprit humain with Réflexions et maximes appended.
fn2 Greene’s review of Evelyn Waugh’s Life of Campion and Pierre Janelle’s Life of Robert Southwell, the Spectator, 1 November 1935.
fn3 I visited Yajalon in 1978 and learnt that Fru Rasmussen had died in California, and her elder daughter, Astrid, had died before her.
fn4 Forty years after Greene’s visit, in 1978 nothing had changed. The marks in the verandah posts were made by bullets, though not from the guns of Villa’s men, as Greene suggested, since Villa’s army never got south of Mexico City.
Herr R./Lehr’s real name was Ernst Raiteke.
fn5 According to Gabriel’s brother: ‘Gabriel found himself cornered [by Garrido’s Red Shirts] and on 30 September he was butchered with machetes in front of the ranch “La Argentina” in the State of Chiapas in a place called “El Tigre” and his remains thrown into the river.’ Father Macario Fernandez Aguado, watching from the ranch, saw a canoe with the remains of the prisoner and from there he gave him absolution. The next day, Gabriel’s brother, not knowing what had happened to the body, picked up the bloodied soil, and gave it a Christian burial.
fn6 In the company of scholar and traveller Dr Richard Sinkin.
1 Portrait of Graham Greene by Bassano, 1939
2 Graham’s father
3 Graham’s mother
4 Graham, aged 9, and Hugh, aged 3
5 Graham holding a ball
6 Graham in a goat-cart on Brighton sea front
7 Graham, seated on a stool, with his brothers and sisters, c. 1916
8 Graham outside the potting shed, 1916
9 In fancy dress – Graham as a curate, his mother as a nurse and his father as a tramp
10 Dr Fry: ‘my father’s sinister, sadistic predecessor’
11 Charles Greene at his desk
12 Dr Simpson
13 Berkhamsted school
14 The canal at Berkhamsted
15 A school production of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Graham on right
16 The funeral of the young pilot, Wimbush, March 1918
17 Summer term, St John’s, 1920: Greene, standing third from left; Carter, fifth from left, back row; Wheeler, second from Carter’s left
18 St John’s gym VIII, 1920: Carter, front row left; Wheeler, back row second left
19 Graham as poet (second from right) in the school production of Lord Dunsany’s Lost Silk Hat, 4 June 1921
20 Kenneth Richmond, the psychoanalyst who treated Graham at 16
21 Kenneth Bell, Graham’s tutor at Balliol
22 Father Trollope
23 Graham in thoughtful mood
24 Ivy House, All Saints Terrace, Nottingham
25 Gwen Howell, nursery governess and Graham’s first love
26 Vivien, aged 17
27 Graham, aged 21, author of The Man Within
28 The General Strike: volunteers queue in the forecourt of the Foreign Office, May 1926
29 Police disperse rioters at the Elephant and Castle, 1926
30 Exploring the Amazon by hydroplane
31 ‘Shock troops’ at The Times awaiting orders – Graham is leaning forward, second from the right
32 Graham’s wedding on Saturday 15 October 1927 – Graham’s younger sister, Elisabeth, in pigtails
33 Running from a shower of confetti
34 Graham and Vivien at Little Orchard
35 Subeditors’ room at The Times, 1928
36 The thatched cottage, Little Orchard, at Chipping Campden, 1930
37 Police charge hunger marchers at Hyde Park, 1932
38 Father Christie
39 Lady Ottoline Morrell
40 Edith Sitwell, Neil Porter and Sengerphone
41 & 42 Barbara Greene (Countess Strachwitz) and Graham Greene before their trip to West Africa
43 Passengers, including Barbara (fourth from right) and Graham (second from right), bound for Sierra Leone, 1935
44 Graham and Barbara on board the David Livingstone
45 Freetown, Sierra Leone
46 Graham in Liberia
47 Crossing a rope bridge on his journey into the interior
48 Graham speaking to tribal leaders
49 The village of Pagan Mosambolahun
50 Duogobmai: The Horrible Village
51 The Big Bush Devil’s hut
52 Crossing the St Paul’s river in Liberia
53 Dr Harley, the missionary, and his children
54 A prisoner awaiting trial is left tied to a stake in Tapee-Ta
55 Filming Brighton Rock on location in Brighton. Richard Attenborough as Pinkie centre scene
56 Richard Attenborough and Carol Marsh on the set of Brighton Rock
57 Shirley Temple in the 20th Century Fox film Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
58 Geoffrey Wylde sketching Graham Greene for the London Mercury, 1937
59 Graham Greene sitting in front of his collection of miniature whisky bottles in his St James’s Street flat
60 The brothels in Matamoros Street
61 The Ruiz Cano at Frontera
62 A street in Yajalon, Northern Chiapas – Indians resting their enormous loads
63 Frau Rasmussen’s little blonde daughters, Astrid, aged 14, and Lala, 11 – ‘startlingly beautiful in a land of black and oily hair and brown sentimental eyes’
64 Frau Rasmussen with her two young daughters: ‘a tall woman with hollow handsome features and a strange twisted mouth’
65 Ernest Raiteke, the source for Mr Lehr in The Power and the Glory
66 Astrid Rasmussen, the source for Coral Fellows in The Power and the Glory
67 The German photographer in Yajalon whom Greene met in 1938 and Sherry met in 1978, his shop unchanged, the photographer no longer stiff and proud
68 Women bring religious articles to be publicly burnt
69 The smouldering remains of religious statues, burnt by the Red Shirts under the atheistic dictator Garrido Canabal
70 Tomas Garrido Canabal
71 A priest, first shot and then hanged, his feet just off the ground, facing his church – a sheet
of paper, stating his crime of being a priest, is nailed to his body
72 Shuttered Yajalon church
73 Procession of saints in Chamula, Chiapas
74 & 75 The execution of Padre Pro
76 Giant crosses of the Chamula Indians
77 Graham Greene, c. 1939
78 Vivien, a few years later
Notes
Wherever possible in the following notes I have referred to the Penguin editions of the works of Graham Greene because these are the most accessible and widely distributed. Although the pagination of some Penguin editions has remained unchanged for decades, others have been reset in recent years. Neither of these, however, contain the introductions in the Heinemann and Bodley Head uniform and collected editions. A full Bibliography of Greene’s works and the sources used in this book will appear in Volume Two.
Our Man in Antibes
1 Malcolm Muggeridge, Like it Was, Selected Diaries, ed. John Bright-Holmes, Collins, 1981, p. 374.
1 Beginnings – Comfort and Fear
1 Graham Greene, ‘Behind the tight pupils’, The Month, July 1949, pp. 7–8.
2 Raymond Greene, untitled typescript.
3 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, p. 43.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., p. 57.
6 Ibid., p. 12.
7 Letter, 14 January 1926.
8 Steedman booklet, ‘All About Baby’.
9 A Sort of Life, p. 14.
10 Ibid., p. 13.
11 Journey Without Maps, Penguin edition, 1978, p. 36.
12 The Confidential Agent, Penguin edition, 1971, p. 73.
13 Journey Without Maps, p. 36.
14 MS ‘Fanatic Arabia’, housed at the Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas.
15 The Lawless Roads, Heinemann uniform edition, 1955, p. 6.
16 Interview with Sir Hugh Greene, 19 May 1981.
17 A Sort of Life, p. 15.
18 Ibid., p. 22.
19 ‘Sad Cure’, ‘The Life and Death of John Perry-Perkins’, The Cherwell, 20 February 1926.
20 A Sort of Life, p. 37.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., p. 24.
23 Ibid., p. 13.
24 The Quiet American, Penguin edition, 1975, pp. 110–11.
25 Brighton Rock, Penguin edition, 1975, p. 186.
26 A Sort of Life, p. 18.
27 Ibid., pp. 23–4.
28 The Ministry of Fear, Penguin edition, 1972, pp. 137–8.
29 Ibid., p. 88.
30 A Sort of Life, p. 28.
31 Marion Greene to her husband Charles, Easter 1909.
32 The Ministry of Fear, p. 68.
33 The Quiet American, p. 108.
34 A Sort of Life, p. 19.
35 Letter, 2 October 1912.
36 The Berkhamstedian, 1913.
37 A Sort of Life, p. 47.
38 Ibid., p. 40.
39 ‘The Lost Childhood’, Collected Essays, Penguin edition, 1970, p. 13.
40 A Sort of Life, p. 46.
41 Ibid., p. 39.
42 ‘The Lost Childhood’, p. 13.
43 A Sort of Life, p. 40.
44 ‘The Lost Childhood’, p. 15.
45 The Ministry of Fear, pp. 88–9.
46 Ibid., p. 11.
47 ‘The Lost Childhood’, p. 16.
48 The Power and the Glory, Penguin edition, 1977, p. 12.
49 Letter, 1926.
50 A Sort of Life, p. 14.
51 Marion Greene to her husband Charles, Easter 1909.
52 Interview with Eva Greene, 23 January 1977.
53 A Sort of Life, pp. 18–19.
54 Ibid., p. 28.
55 Ibid., pp. 52–3.
56 Ibid., p. 34.
57 Ibid., p. 29.
58 Ibid., p. 37.
59 Letter, 1926, to Vivien Dayrell-Browning.
2 Personal Map
1 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, p. 12.
2 ‘The Innocent’, Twenty-One Stories, Penguin edition, 1973, pp. 47–8.
3 ‘Across the Border’, Penguin New Writing, Vol. 30, 1947, p. 72.
4 A Sort of Life, p. 23.
5 Ibid., p. 35.
6 Ibid., pp. 12–13.
7 Ibid., p. 35.
8 Ibid., p. 11.
9 Ibid., p. 12.
10 Ibid., p. 26.
11 Ibid., p. 33.
12 ‘Across the Border’, p. 70.
13 A Sort of Life, pp. 34–5.
14 Ibid., p. 25.
15 Ibid., p. 42.
16 Interview with Mrs Mervyn Peake, January 1976.
17 A Sort of Life, p. 45.
18 Ibid., p. 42.
19 Letter from Olga Franklin, 26 November 1980.
20 A Sort of Life, p. 11.
3 Charles and Marion Greene – and Dr Fry
1 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, p. 15.
2 Ibid., p. 22.
3 The Ministry of Fear, Penguin edition, 1972, pp. 63–4.
4 A Sort of Life, p. 15.
5 Interview with Trevor Wilson in 1976.
6 A Sort of Life, p. 19.
7 Ibid., pp. 33–4.
8 Ibid., p. 21.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., p. 20.
11 James Hilton, Goodbye Mr Chips (Macmillan, 1934), a best-selling novel of the 1930S, later a box-office success as a film.
12 B. N. Garnons Williams, History of Berkhamsted School – 1541–1972 (The School, 1980), p. 217.
13 Ibid., p. 210.
14 The following ten gave me valuable accounts: Raymond Greene (elder brother of Graham), Ben Greene (Graham’s cousin), James Wilson, in early life asst. manager of a huge cotton estate in Peru, R. S. Stanier (who became a distinguished headmaster himself), Sir Cecil Parrott (one-time British Ambassador to Prague), Eric Guest (retired London Magistrate), Anthony Nichols (a well known TV actor), Felix Greene (Graham’s cousin, an authority on China), S. R. Denny, (one-time senior minister of the Northern Rhodesian administration) and Claud Cockburn (one of the most brilliant journalists of his age).
15 Christine Keeler had an affair in 1963 with John Profumo, War Minister in the Macmillan government. She was also involved with Yegeny Ivanov, assistant naval attache to the Russian Embassy. It became headline news. When Profumo initially denied his involvement this was publicly accepted by Macmillan on the grounds that his War Minister, as a man of honour, would not lie to him.
16 Derek Winterbottom, Doctor Fry, Berkhamsted, Clanbury Cotterell Press, 1977, p. 28.
17 A Sort of Life, pp. 57–8.
18 Ibid., p. 57.
19 Alec Waugh was nineteen and wrote The Loom of Youth while waiting to go into the Army in 1917.
20 Letter to Marion Greene, 2 January 1905.
21 Interview, 19 May 1981.
22 Interview, 23 January 1977.
23 Telephone conversation, 6 July 1984.
24 A Sort of Life, p. 15.
25 Letter to author, January 1976.
26 A Sort of Life, p. 50.
27 Ibid., pp. 50–1.
28 Derek Winterbottom, op. cit., p. 8.
4 The First World War and the School
1 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, p. 18.
2 Raymond Greene, untitled typescript.
3 Letter from Cecil Hodges, 12 June 1981.
4 A Sort of Life, p. 52.
5 Ibid., p. 48.
6 Letter, 30 August 1925.
7 A Sort of Life, p. 51.
8 Ibid., p. 25.
9 The Berkhamstedian, November 1914, p. 132.
10 Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War, Cobden-Sanderson, 1928, pp. 15–16.
11 Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, OUP, paperback edition, 1977, p. 49.
12 A Sort of Life, p. 63.
13 Letter, 12 June 1981.
14 Letter, 4 May 1927.
15 A Sort of Life, p. 49.
16 Interview with Claud Cockburn, 18 June 1977.
17 A Sort of Life, pp. 83–4.
5
The Greening of Greene
1 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, pp. 58–9.
2 Interview with Countess Strachwitz, 1976.
3 A Sort of Life, p. 54.
4 Ibid.
5 The Lawless Roads, Penguin edition, 1979, p.14.
6 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Penguin edition, 1965, p. 120.
7 A Sort of Life, p. 54.
8 England Made Me, Penguin edition, 1970, pp. 17–18.
9 The Lawless Roads, p. 13.
10 ‘The Last Word’, The Old School, Jonathan Cape, 1934, p. 252.
11 Interview with Sir Cecil Parrott, 1977.
12 Interview with R. S. Stanier, 1976.
13 Interview with J. B. Wilson, 1977.
14 The Berkhamstedian, April 1919.
15 Ibid., December 1919.
16 A Sort of Life, p. 59.
17 Ibid., p. 55.
18 The Lawless Roads, p. 14.
19 ‘Prologue to Pilgrimage’ (typescript), p. 74.
20 England Made Me, p. 86.
21 Ibid., p. 85.
22 A Sort of Life, p. 47.
23 Interview with Sir Cecil Parrott.
24 ‘The Lost Childhood’, Collected Essays, Penguin edition, 1970, pp. 16–17.
25 Ibid., p. 17.
The Life of Graham Greene (1904-1939) Page 93