Alas, this is going to mean at least another month in the Clinic without moving and then two or three more behaving like an old man. But after that I hope I shall be quite all right again, though I shall never be able to pack quite so much into my existence as I have foolishly been trying to do.
Anyway all is well and I am splendidly looked after, and in a week or two when I am allowed to see people I do hope you will come by and tell me more of these exciting plans.
As I am not supposed to be writing I will ask my secretary to sign this and send it off. In the meantime thank you again for taking me firmly by the hand!
TO WILLIAM PLOMER
From ‘Shrublands’, April 1961, Sunday
My dear Wm,
I have been here for nearly a week, condemned to four more, & then 5 months inactivity. Heart! I think telling all those funny stories in Glasgow6 was the last straw!
Now, forgive me for adding one more pat on the poor dung-beetle’s back but this is going to stop me doing much work on “the S who L’d me” and as I have grave doubts about it would you be an angel & read it in its present, not bad, typescript – but entirely privately – & then tell me what you think. You see, there is an excellent opportunity to kill off Bond, appropriately & gracefully, & though when it came to the point in the story I forbore, I feel, and have felt before this address, that the time has come.
If you would read it, would you be an angel & call here on Wed a.m. if you can manage (sleep in p.m.) & I will explain more & give you the shovelful to take away.
Forgive this whiff of miscellaneous grapeshot & fear not for my health which in fact is quite excellent & will become far better for this very necessary little jog in the ribs from the Holy Man.
P.S. No primroses from Bob Howard, please!
TO MRS. VALENTINE FLEMING, Grosvenor House, Park Lane, London W.1.
24th April, 1961
Darling Mama,
Forgive me dictating this but they still refuse to let me do any writing.
I adore the splendid anthurium and its buds are already showing a fine form. It was a terribly clever idea as it’s such fun seeing how it changes every day and thank heaven it will outlast my three or four more weeks in this dump.
As for caviar and smoked salmon, they just about keep me alive!
Next week I shall be allowed to have an occasional visitor, so please come in and tell me that you have found yourself a good expensive maid to look after you.
With stacks of love.
TO THE RT. HON. CHRISTOPHER SOAMES, C.B.E., M.P., Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Whitehall Place, London, S.W.1.
24th April, 1961
My dear Christopher,
You may have seen from the public prints an exaggerated account of a mild malaise that is keeping me away from the bridge tables. (By the way poor old Dovercourt passed on in the next room last Saturday!)
Now the point is that I am condemned for the rest of my life to three ounces of hard liquor per day, and since I have to be really rather careful about it I wish to concentrate on the purest and finest liquor obtainable in England. This vital piece of information will be known in your Ministry – i.e. which is the finest refined spirit, gin whisky or brandy on the market at any price.
Do you think you could possibly extract this vital piece of information on the absolute understanding that this is for my private information only?
I am so sorry to bother you with this picayune enquiry, but it is just conceivable that you also may be interested in the reply.
TO MICHAEL HOWARD
To keep Fleming’s mind busy Michael Howard sent him one of Cape’s latest – Mad Shadows, a tale of dysfunctional family life by the twenty-year-old Canadian author Marie-Claire Blais.
24th April, 1961
Thank you very much for the charming note and I can assure you that I shall be firing on all cylinders again before too long. Meanwhile I am writing a children’s book, so you will see that there is never a moment, even on the edge of the tomb, when I am not slaving for you.
I read the Canadian prodigy last night and was macabrely fascinated. I suppose this is the sort of best fairy story our children will all be reading in the future.
As always a beautifully produced and jacketed book, again the jacket so good it deserved an author to it!
Hope you are not getting too stuck with Thunderball. Do please let my secretary know from time to time how you are getting on with it.
TO HUGO PITMAN, ESQ.,7 Willmount, Ballingarry, Thurles, Co. Tipperary
25th April, 1961
Dearest Hugo,
Thank you for your lovely letter which was just the glass of champagne I needed.
My doctors are delighted with me and I think I only have another two or three weeks here before being allowed to go down to Brighton to sit in one of those blasted shelters and look at the yellow sea.
After that I shall gradually get back into commission and the only difference in my life will be that you and I have to have lunch on the ground floor of Scotts instead of the first!
With much love to you and kisses for any women who may be around you!
TO THE REVEREND LESLIE PAXTON, Great George Street Congregational Church, Liverpool
In between letters to family, friends and editors, Fleming found time to rebuke a vicar in Liverpool, who had recently lambasted Bond as the epitome of worldly vice.
25th April, 1961
Dear Mr. Paxton,
I see from the public prints that the Sunday before last you preached a sermon against the leading character in my books, James Bond, and, presumably by association against myself.
Now, having had a Scottish nonconformist upbringing and considering myself at least some kind of sub-species of a Christian, I am naturally very upset if it is thought that I am seriously doing harm to the world with my James Bond thrillers.
Would you be very kind and let me have a copy, if you have one, of your sermon, so that I may see the burden of your criticisms and perhaps find means of mending my ways if I feel that your arguments have real weight behind them.
I can, of course, myself see what you might mean about my books, but it occurs to me that you may have put forward profounder arguments than those which are already known to me.
Forgive me for troubling you in this way, but I am sure you will agree that the prisoner in the dock should at least know the burden of the charge.
FROM WILLIAM PLOMER
28th April, 61
My dear Ian,
I am in the middle of being absorbed by the results of your collaboration with Mademoiselle Viv (Bimbo) Michel – your best she-character up to now – and am annoyed at having to break off the process of absorption to write a letter. But I do want to say that I think the book full of your usual brio and Schlauheit & to let you know that I am much enjoying as well as absorbing it.
If you like, I would like to look in on you next Wednesday morning at about 11.30. I could bring with me a very few notes & queries, & could tell you by then how the book strikes me as a whole. Send me two words to say
a) if I may come & see you then;
b) if I may hand the typescript over to Michael Howard on Wednesday;
c) if there is anything else I can bring you.
When I do come, I will try not to exhaust you by prolonged loquacity.
I hope you are feeling as free as possible from anxieties & fatigue.
Your old chum Bob Howard asked me to give you his best messages & to say that he hadn’t written to you only because he doesn’t want to badger you with correspondence.
TO WILLIAM PLOMER
From Clinholm, 30th April, 1961
My dear William,
As you can imagine, your first reactions to the book were a shot of mescalin, but don’t feel you have to be gracious about the second chunk for fear of plunging me beneath the sod. From you I need no placebos. Only the true verdict will do & I can assure you that my E.C.G. can stand anything now. Let us decide about M
ichael when we have spoken at 11.30 on Wed. If you feel there is much to be done, I would rather do the tidying up before it gets into the pipeline.
I am of course longing to see you & please bring nothing but your face! Your last visit was more beneficial than you can imagine – apart from other considerations, to hear other peoples’ tales of woe greatly reduces the perspective of one’s own.
Coming to Metropole, Brighton, on Monday, fortnight until Friday. With Annie. It would be lovely to fix a ‘déjeuner sur l’herbe’, or ‘sur les sables couvertes de capotes anglaises’,8 somewhere between us. Please consider & deliver your instructions on Wed.
Am receiving the most extraordinary advices from various genii. “Be more spiritual” (Noël Coward), “write the story of Admiral Godfrey” (Admiral Godfrey), “Be sucked off gently every day” (Evelyn Waugh).
Over to you!
TO MICHAEL HOWARD
31st May, 1961
My dear Michael,
Many thanks for your letter of May 26th and also for the book which I liked very much at first sight. If I go on liking it I will certainly write you a short review for “Now and Then”.
I am now sending you the first two “volumes” of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Heaven knows what your children’s book readers will think of them, but they are in fact designed for a readership of around seven to ten.
If you decide that you like them much will depend on the illustrator and I wonder if we couldn’t get Trog. He is by way of being a friend of mine since he did the John Bind series in Fluke. I only fear that he might be too expensive.
Anyway please let me know what you think of the whole gambit and we will then decide what to do about it.
M.C.A, New York, liked the SWLM, but I haven’t yet heard from Vikings whom I had asked for plenty of suggested corrections and I will wait for them before going over the ms again.
But I would be very interested to hear the reactions of your readers if and when you get any.
I am now gradually reactivating myself and I hope to be up in London for about two days each week. Though much will depend on a gigantic medical conference this afternoon.
Yours ever.
TO MRS. VALENTINE FLEMING, Hotel Mirabeau, Monte Carlo, Monaco
Fleming’s mother, who since the war had flitted between various grand addresses, smart hotels and exotic destinations, had come temporarily to rest in Monte Carlo with her ancient beau, the ninety-eight-year-old ‘Monty’, Marquis of Winchester.
1st June, 1961
Darling Mama,
I am now up and about again but still not supposed to write much so please forgive the dictation.
It was lovely to get your birthday present and I shall have great fun buying myself something to relieve the boredom of convalescence.
Brighton for a fortnight was a great tonic, and at a giant meeting of the various doctors yesterday they seemed satisfied. Though it does sound as if convalescence from one of these things is, in fact, more or less endless and that I shall have to “take care” for ever more, which is very much against my nature.
However, as everyone says, it might have been much worse and you will be amused to know that The Times had actually written my obituary when it seemed that the tomb was about to yawn! I am doing everything I can to see if I can’t get hold of a copy.
Please don’t worry too much about the house [Sevenhampton]. I am not happy about it myself but it’s quite impossible being married unless you are prepared to compromise, and I shall just help Anne as much as I can with it and go fifty/fifty on the cost. At least it will be a good solid base in the country, and I expect fairly soon after it is finished we will forsake Victoria Square, and I shall take to planting lupins, or some other elderly and responsible pursuit, as it seems that strenuous golf is now out for always.
It sounds as if you have at last got your Monte Carlo life more or less straight, and I am delighted that the Rolls is being a success, and I do hope that the maid will be a real help. As for Monty, I do beg you to leave all the grisly nursing to nurses and not wear yourself out carrying bowls of soup (and other hospital ware!) around.
It is sweet of you to offer the Villa Mary, but it doesn’t look as if we shall be able to get away for some time. Why don’t you move into it yourself, or are you really happier in that small cell in the Mirabeau?
Caspar is getting on very well at [his school] Summer Fields and curiously enough being pushed rapidly up the school. He has even been made head of his dormitory, from which I can only guess that the other inhabitants must be the most appalling collection of little monsters. Anyway he is looking wonderful and one of the factors that decided us on Warneford was that he simply adores having a place to run about in, and it will be close by both for Summer Fields and Eton, and it has the Thames nearby for expeditions.
Please don’t worry any more about me. I shall just have to adjust myself to “growing old gracefully”, which will be a most entertaining spectacle for my family and friends!
TO MICHAEL HOWARD
Howard replied on 5 June to Fleming’s letter of 31 May: ‘CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG’s adventures have me enthralled. She is truly an invention of genius, and I trust that you can reel off at least ten more episodes with no trouble at all.’ He was less certain about an idea that Fleming put forward in the interim, that they should be published under the pseudonym ‘Ian Lancaster’.
6th June, 1961
My dear Michael
Very many thanks for your letter of yesterday and I am delighted that you like the first two CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANGS. I must confess that I have no idea what to do with her next, but I suppose it would be possible to keep up to a book a year.
So far as the illustrator goes, if Trog were interested I am not sure it wouldn’t be desirable to enter into some kind of partnership with him by which he would be assured of, let us say, a third of the royalties. This would give him enthusiasm in the project and make the thing a joint effort, which such books should really be. If you think well of the idea and you see no objection, I would not be worried if you were to have a talk with him on this basis. Perhaps the best idea would be to have a triangular lunch together if you can fix that. He is an extremely nice man and great fun, and from the quality of his cartoons in the Spectator I am quite sure he has the graphic qualities we need, though he would have to bend his mind rather carefully to the original drawing of the car which must, I think, not look too funny.
I doubt if you will get much reaction out of William. I mentioned the project to him but he can’t bear children’s books and it will be much more important I think to get the judgement of your regular children’s books advisor.
One small point while it crosses my mind. I find that in these children’s series the parents very often can’t remember if little Billy has had just this particular adventure. So might I suggest that each volume should be in a distinctive colour and that the number of the adventure should be emphasised?
Of course I have no objection to being linked with the books in a vague way, but I am not sure that that will necessarily help their sales!
I will press on with correcting TSWLM and will hope to have it with you by the end of the month, though of course Vikings may come in with a shower of suggestions and criticisms.
By the way, although it is something of a trade secret which you should keep to yourself, The Sunday Times is going to break out into a shiny paper colour supplement instead of its magazine section towards the end of the year, and it is quite possible that they would like to serialise these CHITTY-BANG-BANG stories. Although this would gobble up a lot of your readership, not everybody in England reads The Sunday Times, but you might bear the possibility in mind from the point of view of timing the illustrators’ work.
I only mention this now as C. D. Hamilton has just been on the telephone about something else and I mentioned our new venture and he was enthusiastic.
You may be amused to see what Macmillans have done with your jacket. Pretty good for
them!
Yours Ever.
TO THOMAS H. GUINZBURG, ESQ., The Viking Press Inc., 625 Madison Avenue, New York 22
Guinzburg, head of the American publishing house Viking, was uneasy about Fleming’s latest. He wrote on airmail paper (Fidelity Onion Skin) that, ‘the various readers feel this draft, while it is certainly acceptable Fleming, is not quite top-grade Fleming’. He suggested he put the manuscript aside for a while and write a couple of other books first. Cape, he pointed out, had already established a market for Bond but, ‘We, on the other hand, are only just beginning to establish the elements of the specific apparatus that surrounds and enhances the image of Bond, and we are afraid that this story, at least in its present form, does a disservice to that kind of emphasis.’
20th June, 1961
Dear Tom,
Many thanks for your piece of Fidelity Onion Skin of June 9th but I am indeed horrified to hear of poor Harold’s troubles. Please give him my warmest wishes for a rapid recovery and urge him to take a decent and non-business holiday and not to hurry back to work.
Now, about “The Spy Who Loved Me”, oddly enough the very reasons for your doubts about it are those put forward by Capes for any special virtues it possesses.
All at Capes think the breakaway from the routine Bond both healthy and desirable and in his most recent letter Michael Howard expects to do even better with it than Thunderball, which is now just over 40,000.
As for your idea of holding up its publication until I have written a couple more conventional full length thrillers, you seem to think that I am a Rex Stout!9 I have scraps of ideas for future books but nothing in the least firm. And heaven knows when these two imaginary thrillers will, in fact, get written.
Accordingly, I am afraid I must put the ball back in your court. Bond is after all the hero of this book and though he is seen through the looking glass so to speak, Capes are sure that the new gimmick is an excellent idea.
The Man with the Golden Typewriter Page 27