The Man with the Golden Typewriter

by Bloomsbury Publishing

  Again many thanks for your letter.

  4

  Notes from America

  ‘It seems to me that much of the factual reporting on Ian Fleming, however accurate, leaves undescribed much of the fellow I knew.

  ‘I knew him better than most; in the classical sense we often tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky, and for that matter, the moon, too.’

  Ernest Cuneo Papers – Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, New York

  In 1959 Fleming wrote an article describing his friendship with Raymond Chandler, at the time a Titan in the world of thrillerdom. He could never have suspected that he himself would be held in the same regard or that his long-time friend Ernest Cuneo1 would write about him in the same way. What follows has been constructed from a series of notes that Cuneo wrote in the early 1980s.

  It was in 1942, at the New York apartment of Sir William Stephenson, head of British Intelligence in the western hemisphere, that the two men encountered each other. Stephenson occupied a palatial penthouse suite at the Hotel Dorset on W54th Street, where every evening he hosted meetings to discuss the latest intelligence reports. As Cuneo recalled, ‘The drawing room was two-storied, there was a huge fireplace in which logs always glowed, and the lighting was subdued. It was an elegant and spacious room of warm shadows, and this being war and I of a foreign service, was acutely aware of them. Here, as the lights of the metropolis blinked on, visiting great and near-great of the British High Command gathered. It was here I met Ian Fleming.’

  A straight-speaking ex-football player, lawyer and journalist, Cuneo was a new recruit to America’s security service, the Office of Strategic Security (OSS), precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. Fleming, meanwhile, was a faintly aloof member of Naval Intelligence, rather junior in rank to the officers who congregated at these meetings. When Cuneo remarked on this, Fleming said, ‘Do you question my bona fides?’ To which Cuneo replied, ‘No, just your patently limited judgement.’ They both laughed. And when Stephenson’s meetings devolved, as they often did, to the 21 Club, they came to know each other better.

  ‘Oddly,’ Cuneo wrote, ‘as I saw him, he was more easily classified, from a physical standpoint, as American rather than British. He had a fine head, a high forehead with a head of thick brown, curlyish hair, parted on the side and neatly combed over to the left. His eyes were piercing blue and he had a good, firm jaw. His nose, however, had been broken and unrepaired. This gave him the look of the Philadelphia light-heavyweights of the Tommy Loughran school. [. . .] Fleming carried himself like an American more than an Englishman. He did not rest his weight on his left leg; he distributed it, his left foot and shoulders slightly forward. This is a typical American athlete’s stance, and contains more of a hint of the quick boxer’s crush than the squared erect shoulders of the Sandhurst man.’

  Fleming, he discovered, knew very little about wine but could tell good from bad. He did, however, seem to be an expert on caviar and had a keen sense of fantasy. ‘He told me, for example, the old Russian boyars used to carry a small solid gold ball to test it. They dropped it from a few inches and it was supposed to imbed itself half-way. I asked him why the hell he didn’t have one, and I relished a small sense of victory when he just sniffed.’ And then there were the martinis. ‘Of all the maddening trivia through which I have suffered, nothing quite matched Fleming’s instructions on how his were to be made. [He] was painfully specific about both the vermouth and the gin and explained each step to the guy who was going to mix it as if it were a delicate brain operation. Several times I impatiently asked him why the hell he didn’t go downstairs and mix it himself, but he ignored me as if he hadn’t heard and continued right on with his instructions. Equally annoyingly, he always warmly congratulated the captain when he tasted it as if he had just completed a fleet manoeuvre at flank speed.

  ‘All but tirelessly, we taxed and challenged each other over the years, each accusing each other for what he himself was. I fancied myself the realist and he the romantic. He fancied me as the romanticist and he the realist. [. . .] I explained to him after the manner of the cold-blooded Genoese of whom I am born, that the romantic was the reality, and in no case more than his. Unflaggingly, he on his part, declared that the harsh physical world was the reality and that romanticism was an escape. Immersed in the American school of Walter Winchell and Damon Runyan, to me the world was a vivid, magical, series of adventures, New York a Baghdad on the subway. Fleming vividly accepted this – as a fascinating fiction. He reminded me of a certain 19th Century boulevardier of Paris, who, it was said, would lapse into melancholy pensiveness, unable to reconcile himself to the death of Henry of Navarre, four centuries gone. Fleming, though he did not know it and would not accept it, was a knight who could not reconcile himself to the fact that women were not Elaines in ivory towers, and that the world was not one of black and white values.’

  All the same, Cuneo admitted that Fleming was quite happy to ignore the ivory tower if it suited him. On a wartime visit to London he brought a selection of nylon stockings, at the time all but impossible to obtain in Britain. ‘One day I dropped by Commander Fleming’s desk and threw on it a half dozen pair. “Long, medium and short,” I said. “I assume you’re playing the field.” “Actually, I’m not,” he said, and feeling I might have invaded his sensibilities, I said, “Good, there are others who are,” and reached for the packet. With a card-sharp’s fleetness of hand he was stuffing them into his Navy jacket. “No,” he said. “I’m not but some of my friends are.” He assumed his attitude of thoughtfulness and added beatifically, “They’ll be glad to have them.”

  ‘We roared with laughter. It seems to me we were always roaring with laughter and this is how I principally remember him. [. . .]

  ‘We almost suffered emotional “bends” the day the war ended. Tension went out like a power line turned off. When I came into Bill’s office the next day, he shoved at me a copy of the London Times and pointed a finger to a single line. It read, “The Home Secretary told the Commons last night that the emergency having ended, habeas corpus was restored”. “I guess that’s what it was all about,” he said. “I guess it was,” I said, and we both went over to “21”.

  ‘Like it or leave it, aside from its horrors, you miss the frightful challenge of war. I think Fleming missed it as much as most; he seemed both grumpy and disconsolate.’

  Their friendship continued after the war and became even closer when Cuneo was appointed President of NANA, the North American Newspaper Alliance, a once-famous news agency in which Fleming and his friend Ivar Bryce became involved and which they hoped might still have legs.

  TO ERNEST CUNEO, North American Newspaper Alliance, 229 West 43rd Street, New York 36

  As Vice-President of NANA’s European branch, and with Bryce as a roving Vice-Chairman, Fleming arranged for an office to be opened near his own, into which moved one Silvia Short who acted as both London Editor and Manager. While co-ordinating transmissions from Kemsley Newspapers he also embarked on a succession of deals to develop new outlets for NANA’s services (the details of which are, alas, unrecorded), and to organise contributors. He sought, too, to clarify the rates that their correspondents received.

  8th June, 1953

  Dear Ernie,

  In great haste.

  1. Please see my letter of May 29th. The suggested payment to Manor was twenty dollars, not pounds. No wonder the collective hairs of N.A.N.A. rose on its global head. I will sort the matter out somehow.

  2. Ivar and I have had a preliminary talk with [Paul] Gallico about a weekly or monthly column, and the omens are favourable, but he has now buried himself in Devonshire, and I think further progress will have to await my return.

  Perhaps we could talk this over in New York and send him a joint letter.

  3. Noel Barber2 will resume his Paris column under the name of “Noel Anthony”. I gather this will start up in two or three weeks time.

  4. The Truman news is most exciting and I
will throw an expensive fly over my proprietor before I leave.3 This seems to me an extremely valuable property and, as I have told Ivar, my first reaction is that the whole syndication should be handled by the best agent on a 10% basis, thus you will squeeze dollars out of many tiny papers around the world, as well as out of the big ones.

  I propose to suggest to K[emsley] a price of $300 per article for the “Sunday Times”, which is about what a Sunday paper would bear. I will bring all my findings in this matter with me.

  5. Please tell Mr. Wheeler4 that the Carol series is now running in the “Sunday Empire News”, of which he should examine the last two numbers. The remainder is not yet written, but I will try and bring over some more in draft form.

  6. The Gallico series here was a resounding success. I am sending Schell [the editor] full cuttings, as they may assist the Pulitzer Prize project on the grounds of helping to further Anglo-American relations. I am delighted that the project was so supremely successful.

  7. Miss Short and her secretary have moved into a neighbouring office to mine today, and they are very comfortable. We are having our first European N.A.N.A. meeting at 11.30 tomorrow with the Vice-President sitting on the Vice-Chairman’s knee, the London Editor and Manager on the Vice-President’s and a pretty secretary on the London Manager and Editor’s. This is known in some circles as a “Turkish sandwich”.

  8. (Next day). K, as I cabled you, will play, but of course is most anxious to know when the series will start. I said in a few weeks time, and that I would try to learn some more in New York. You might have got a higher price elsewhere in London but Ivar was most keen that K should have first refusal, and this is the top price the “Sunday Times” will pay. More about this and other projects when I see you.

  9. Ivar adds to my paragraph 2 that Gallico is much firmer than I suggest. He would write a weekly column on anything that caught his eye in the news, and he suggests that we try out some of the customers to see what the traffic will stand.

  10. We had this arrangement with Gallico on the “Sunday Times” and also on the “Daily Graphic”. His copy is always acceptable to the middle of a paper’s readership, and it is always punctual. It won’t set the Mississippi on fire, but it will always command space. I think we would do well on a fifty-fifty basis. Perhaps Mr. Wheeler would like to talk to some of his friends.

  10 [sic]. I have looked into O.N.A.5 and I attach the report of my very well-informed Berlin man. Without knowing all the facts, my impression of O.N.A. is that we might be buying a poke without even a pig in it.

  11. Your splendid letters have delighted both Ivar and me – at any rate the front pages. I have noticed that it is a trick of very rich, powerful and important men to write letters with a ballpoint pen on both sides of airmail paper. We will both hear what you had to say on your second pages when we meet.

  This is positively my last word before we meet in the flesh.

  FROM ERNEST CUNEO

  Among the items that NANA highlighted in 1953 were the Kinsey report on the sexual habits of Americans and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Fleming’s own article for the Sunday Times on the Pierre St Martin cave in the French Pyrenees.

  September 9th, 1953

  Dear Ian,

  I followed with avid interest your speleological expedition. I know there were high elements of disappointment attached to it: as Kinsey could have told you it is a hell of a lot more fun to take a girl to a hotel than to go off into a cave by yourself. All of this you will learn as you grow older.

  I agree completely with your thesis on payment. Schell is on vacation and I shall call it to his attention when he returns. I find it aesthetically revolting to ask a man to do something, which perforce must be of excellent quality, and then ask him to accept shabby compensation which is as much a burden on your self-respect as it is on his.

  On the same date Fleming sent Cuneo a long list of topics that might interest NANA that included the following: ‘I have only one more thought and that is to do with “Scrabble”, a word-making game which, I gather, is being a great success in the States. Is there any strip or pictorial representation that could be built out of this game with the same name?’

  TO ERNEST CUNEO

  In December 1953 Fleming paid a fleeting visit to New York, where he stayed in Cuneo’s apartment. It was at the height of McCarthyism, and although Fleming may or may not at that time have met either Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, or the newly elected President Dwight Eisenhower, he appreciated that Senator McCarthy’s persecution of perceived Communists was newsworthy and that advantage could be gained by interviewing two ‘turned’ spies, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers.

  3rd December, 1953

  Dear Ernie,

  Life seems very quiet and humdrum without you, but without any effort I can hear a steady roar coming from your room in NANA punctuated by Ivar’s racking cough.

  As usual, it was heaven to stay in your apartment and renew acquaintance with Caractacus, my favourite of all cockroaches, and be lulled by the sweet music of the house next door being pulled down, as I sipped your pre-McCarthy Bourbon.

  I long for you to come over here so that I can provide you with a pale shadow of these delights. Perhaps one day you will condescend to leave your kingdom.

  I spoke severely to the White House before leaving and I am glad to see that Dulles and the President have acted so promptly on my advice. Last night I went into the whole situation with Rebecca West6 and she would very much like to go over and have a look at it all. I suppose it won’t be worth your while to have her do a series for NANA? She sees a Communist under every single bed and to have her interviewing Bentley and Chambers would surely be a great feather in your cap.

  Also on business, I am trying to get an offer of the American rights of Ribbentrop’s memoirs which are being published next week in Berlin, but there are so many vultures sitting round the carrion that I am not optimistic.

  I don’t think that we shall be coming through New York in January but flying direct to Jamaica to save money and days. Would you please tell Ivar this. But I shall be with you on my way back in March and perhaps I could pick up Ivar in Nassau and bring him along. [. . .]

  I long to hear news of the book7 and I hope you will drop me a line directly there is anything solid to tell.

  I must go along to Scott’s8 now and toy with some oysters and a roast grouse and discuss matters with a disreputable spy of my acquaintance.

  Fleming later wrote to ask if Cuneo could lean on his legal client and journalist acquaintance Walter Winchell to review Live and Let Die.

  TO ERNEST CUNEO (undated)

  Your old friend James Bond would be vastly obliged if his sub-agent Cuneo could persuade that delicate source W.W. to give this volume of his autobiography nationwide publicity.

  Pray fail me not!

  The next year Fleming was on his way to America to research Diamonds are Forever. He sought Cuneo’s company for a trans-continental rail trip that would take in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Chicago.

  TO ERNEST CUNEO

  29th September, 1954

  My dear Ernie,

  This has nothing to do with our various negotiations, but on a still more pleasant topic.

  If you are still willing I would like to fly over on November 5th and after a few days with you in New York make our trek to the West for a week or ten days, getting back to New York in time for Ivar’s arrival on November 23rd.

  Then spend a couple of days with him and you and then fly home.

  Do you like this idea?

  I would love to see Las Vegas and then perhaps the Hollywood world very briefly if you can spare the time to chaperone me.

  I would also very much like to make the trans-continental trip by train in the luxury to which you and I are accustomed and then perhaps fly back.

  What do you think of all of this?

  It would take you away from your desk for about ten days and I wonder if you can spare the time.

 
I do hope so, as my education is now only incomplete with respect to the West Coast of America.

  Hope all goes well with Bill.9 Play the game entirely your own way and forgive me if I have slightly overcooked the goose before presenting him to you.

  Our warm encouraging thoughts will be with you next week but even if both deals end up by falling through it will be pleasant to think that if two such big fish were after the Corporation in one year, there will be others in the future.

  Good luck.

  From this and other visits, Cuneo discovered that Fleming had an insatiable capacity for physical exertion. He recalled in particular an occasion when Fleming visited his home, near Bryce’s Black Hollow Farm in Vermont, and insisted they climb the 880-foot Goose Egg Mountain. By the time they had raced up and hurtled down, Cuneo was a wreck. But Fleming simply dived into the nearest pool of ice-cold water, splashed around for an hour or so, then casually walked the mile and a half back to Black Hollow Farm. ‘His strenuous exercises I took to be the hair-shirt phase of his knighthood, akin to the Gotham monks who by starvation and self denial sought to exorcise by sweat and exertion the devils within all men. He would and did plunge into this everyday world; but at a pause, he became himself, a knight again.’

  He also became alert to the diligence with which Fleming researched the facts that underpinned his novels. ‘For the most part our conversations were animated, but they were subject to a peculiarly Flemingesque characteristic. Detail fascinated him, as it not only bored, but actually enraged me. If he ran across a trick of the trade, a nuance, a fillip, he would pursue it like a ferret, for example, how cowboys on the range made a barbecue sauce with sugar, ketchup and Worcestershire sauce. God, he’d pursue the detail like Sir Edward Carson cross-examining a murderer. The temperature and appearance of the fire, kind of wood burned, the size of the pan – all of these things he’d scribble down with the avidity of an explorer taking notes on the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Time and time again as these interrogations wore on, I’d say “Come on, Ian, the hell with it.” For the most part he’d shoot me a reproachful glare and keep on scribbling. He explained this to me. He said that at the end of each day, he had compiled notes. These he amplified and typed out, no matter what the hour, at the rate of about 800 [words] a day. “Figure it out for yourself,” he said. “At the end of a year, I have about 250 or 300 of these daily memos,10 and when I go down to Jamaica, I weave them into a book.”’