Graham Greene
Page 21
I don’t know what to do about next year. One wishes over & over again that one of these planes will crash & they never do. I so long for your company – I don’t, at this moment, want to make love. I want to sit on the floor with my head resting between your legs like at the Ritz & be at peace. The telephone pulls at my elbow but what’s the good? My dear, I never knew love was like this, a pain that only stops when I’m with people, drinking. Thank God, from tomorrow there are lots of engagements.
For God’s sake, dear, don’t hold this letter against me, & be sweet on Thursday. You can always cure this pain by coming in at a door. You don’t know how I need you.
Pray for me.
Graham
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
5 St. James Street | London S.W. 1 | Monday [30 January 1950]
Dear heart,
I’m so sorry that all the trouble has started again. Please remember that I love you entirely, with my brain, my heart & my body, & that I’m always there when you want me.
I don’t like or approve of Harry’s judgements. When a man marries, he is like a Prime Minister – he has to accept responsibility for the acts of a colleague. My marriage failed (only God can sift all the causes), but the responsibility for failure is mine. One can’t lay the blame on one’s wife. Your marriage, intrinsically, had failed before I knew you, & the man must accept responsibility – which doesn’t mean guilt. It had failed because marriage isn’t maintaining a friend, a housekeeper or even a mother. The Catholic service says ‘with my body I thee worship’, & if that fails the heart has gone out of it.
My dear, any time you say I would lay out a plan of action for living together. I’m certain I could make you happy, & the church would not be excluded. You would be unhappy for a time – that’s all, but the division would be over. Harry could not divorce you without your consent & therefore he could not shut down the doors between you & the children. You could insist on sharing them in any separation, just as if I chose I could insist on mine. He is not legally in a position to lay down terms or a way of life for you.
Dear, this letter may make you angry. Don’t be. I must, at times, present a practical plan. It’s the dearest wish I have – the only wish – to have you with me & to make you happy with me. I believe I could do it, after the bad period was over. I love you now so infinitely more than even a year ago. I have great trust, admiration & gratitude (because of the amount of happiness you have given me & patience you have shown during my bad period). I want you to come away with me for six months & test me. That was what Vivien suggested to me – I think in the long term she is proving more generous5 & more loving than Harry. I’m sorry (& this will anger you) I don’t believe in Harry’s love for you or anybody, but his small unit of power.
Dear heart, the cabins [?] are there. Come with me on the 15th & stay with Binny6 until you are rested & can sort things out. I’ll stay with you & look after you for weeks, months, years, a lifetime. (Strike out the phrase not required!) I want to grow old with you & die with you.
Your lover, who loves you for ever. God bless you & pray for me.
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
5 St. James’s Street | London S.W.1 | Monday 2 p.m. [30 January 1950]
My dear, if things are getting bad, & the curtain is liable to fall, you must forgive me for presenting my case. I wouldn’t love you so much if I wouldn’t fight to the last ditch.
My previous letter was one to be burned. This one put in the black box because it really is the sketch for a plan of action – & though you may not need it now, you may need to consider it one day.
How I want to be with you when you are in trouble, & put my arms round you, with your face turned to my face, & hear you sleeping.
Dear dear dear
Graham.
Order of Battle in the unlikely event of your choosing me.
During the ‘unhappy period’ we would consider basing ourselves on Achill and Anacapri,7 or we would take a long trip into strange territory with the help of the Express – South Seas, India, Palestine, what you will.
We would immediately begin steps to see whether I could get my marriage annulled on two possible grounds.
In the meanwhile proper arrangements would be made for you to have access to your children.
While the annulment proceedings went on, it might be worth while considering changing your name by deed poll to mine, for two reasons
1) I think it would make the whole business go down all right with your family.
2) It would enable us to economise when we travelled in only taking one room!
I would hand over to you half my controlling shares in the new company which would in effect give you 1/3 of all film and theatrical earnings in perpetuity. (After all a husband can be expected to make financial provision).
Our finances – apart from my arrangement with Vivien & the children – would be in common, & we would make a mess in common or a success in common.
Wherever we settled for any length of time, we would have two rooms available, so that at any time without ceasing to live together & love each other, you could go to Communion (we would break down again & again, but that’s neither here nor there).
I love your children, & you would spend any time you wanted with them.
My love for you will go on till death, & I would guarantee never to break up our relationship except by your wish. No ‘tipsy frolic’ would make me walk out. It might make me sore as hell for 24 hours, but so far I don’t think I’ve managed to be sore that time!
I would tell the truth to you always. Your part of our life should be yours. I trust you as I trust no other living person. I am yours entirely. I love you & will always love you. As I said in Paris you are the saint of lovers to whom I pray. God bless you & treat this seriously.
TO MARCEL MORÉ
A greatly condensed version of this letter to a French scholar was published in Dieu Vivant (17 November 1950) as a sequel to two other pieces on Greene. It constitutes Greene’s most detailed statement on the Catholic dimensions of The Heart of the Matter.
5 St. James’s Street | London S. W. 1 | 12th July 1950
Dear Mons. Moré,
Very many thanks for your letter and for the copy of Dieu Vivant with the two articles. I did not realise that I was quite so dogmatic at the Table Talk, but it is nice to be made to appear to speak French so fluently and well! Your article on ‘Les Deux Holocaustes de Scobie’8 interested me very much and it seemed to me to be a very close and acute study of the character, enlightening me a little. A few points I would like to point out –
On page 91. If I said at lunch that the point of the child’s death had no other purpose than to show Scobie making a gesture natural to any man under the circumstances I was talking loosely. You know how it is with authors – in conversation we feel embarrassed at talking about our own books and are apt to try and cut the conversations short by an abrupt half-truth. Obviously one did have in mind that when he offered up his peace for the child it was a genuine prayer and had the results that followed. I always believe that such results, though obviously a God would not fulfil them to the limit of robbing him of peace for ever, are answered up to a point as a kind of test of a man’s sincerity and to see whether in fact the offer was one merely based on emotion.
I knew very well what I was about when I used the Portuguese captain’s daughter as a comparison with Scobie’s dead child, but I had not thought of the explanation which you give on page 94 of his first act of faith. It seems to me an admirable point and I wish it had been consciously in my mind as it certainly explains an otherwise rather abrupt revelation of character.9 Curiously enough the book I am writing now deals also with a holocaust and I have been very discontented with the psychology of the moment of holocaust. In this case it is a prayer of a non-Catholic and a non-Christian, and I have not satisfactorily explained how it came about. Your remarks on page 94 have given me the clue to the whole situation and will make, I hope, all the difference to the
book and I am very grateful to you for that fact.
I have not read the passage from Père Surin10 which you quote on page 99 and I am grateful, too, for your drawing my attention to it. It seems to me to be a remarkable description of a state of mind which comes home to many of us: a kind of religious schizophrenia.
Page 101. Scobie’s last prayer has lost the point that I intended in the French because of the inability to translate into French ‘Oh God, I love.…’ without adding the subject of the love. My own intention was to make it completely vague as to whether he was expressing his love for the two women or his love for God. My own feeling about this character is that he was uncertain himself and that was why the thing broke off. The point i would like to make which is probably heretical is that at the moment of death even an expression of sexual love comes within the borders of charity. After all when a man knows that he is dying in a few moments sexual love itself becomes completely altruistic – pride can no longer enter into it, nor can the hope of receiving or giving pleasure, it is love pure and simple, and therefore there must be some confusion in the mind as to the object of love. This was what i intended but in the translation, owing to the exigencies of the French language, we are definitely told that scobie makes an act of love towards God which of course rules out the ambiguity of his future.
Page 102. I was very interested to see the parallels you found between certain passages in the book and the letters of Ste. Thérèse as I had not read the letters at the time that I was writing the book.
Page 105. I am fascinated and interested by the quotation you give from Marie Des Vallées.11 It is always pleasant to find one’s own thought confirmed in the work of people who know more about faith than I do. There is a parallel passage, I think you will find, to this in ‘La Puissance et La Gloire’ on page 314 where the terror inspired by the love of God is expressed.
Again very many thanks for so interesting and acute an essay.
Yours sincerely,
Graham Greene
TO EVELYN WAUGH
Greene discusses the plan that he should write a screenplay of Brideshead Revisited for the American producer David O. Selznick.
5 St. James’s Street | London S. W. 1 | July 17 [1950]
Dear Evelyn,
I completely missed the announcement in The Times of the new son12 and only heard about it at secondhand on Sunday. Very many congratulations.
Thank you so much for your card. I have in theory agreed to do the script of Brideshead, but it is with great trepidation. For one thing I am very anxious that it should not in any way damage our relationship, and as you know a script writer does not have complete control over a film! I would rather it had been any other man almost than Selznick behind this, because he is an extraordinarily stupid and conventionally-minded man. I told Stone13 that I would not agree to work in California and I urged him to get a French director for the film, by suggesting the man who made Gide’s Symphonie Pastorale. 14 This director, whose name I have forgotten, is a believing Protestant and the Protestants in France have somewhat a similar position as a minority religion to the Catholics in this country. He struck me when I met him as an extremely perceptive man. I don’t suppose however that Selznick will pay any attention to this suggestion. The trouble is that in order to get a good script one must work almost daily with a sympathetic director, and I can’t think of anyone in England who would have the faintest idea of what Brideshead is about. Anyway we might have a certain amount of fun if you would collaborate with me and I think it would be essential if one had to go to California to discuss this script with Selznick that we went together. One man is more easily talked round than two.
I expect I will see you at the D’Arcy15 dinner for which I am sending my cheque today.x
Yours,
Graham
xDo sit me far away from Jeannie16 & near somebody I like!
The plan was abandoned, apparently because Waugh, who had initially been enthusiastic, felt that if he relinquished control of the script the studios would produce a horror.
TO REV. WILFRED HARRINGTON
The Roman Catholic chaplain at Whittington Hospital in London wrote to Greene about The Third Man saying that there is no evidence that diluted penicillin is dangerous. He also queried the role of an army orderly in the plot. He asked, ‘Is the story – as it seems to me – just a leg-pull?’
28th July 1950
Dear Father Harrington,
Yes, I am the author of The Third Man. The penicillin story is not a leg-pull as it was a definite racket of which a description was given me by the Chief of Police in Vienna. The same kind of racket took place I believe in Berlin. The point of danger in using diluted penicillin is the fact that even if you injected somebody with plain water the chances would be that you would cause death, or so I am told by doctors. There is the other point that in cases of meningitis very quick treatment with penicillin is needed, and in the case of the children in Vienna the diluted penicillin was not strong enough to work and it was too late for any other remedy, but in the cases of children losing their minds I am told that this might have been caused by the polluted water. The reason why a medical orderly was shown as taking part in this racket was that at the period of the film penicillin was only allowed to Military hospitals. There was therefore a big temptation to steal on the part of orderlies for the private and civilian market. I feel sure that there are several medical inaccuracies in the story but the general idea is based on fact.
Yours sincerely,
Graham Greene
TO MARIE SCHEBEKO (LATER BICHE)
After the death of Denyse Clairouin, her associate Marie Schebeko, who later married Jean Biche, became Greene’s agent in Paris. With absolute command of many languages and expertise in all matters pertaining to publishing, she was a formidable figure. She became one of Greene’s closest friends and devoted an enormous effort to his business and to his personal concerns.
5 St James’s Street | London S.W.1 | 27th October 1950
Dear Marie,
I got back two days ago from Stockholm where I spent the last week of the holiday. Strictly between you and me it was to nurse my constituency! I am one of the three candidates this year for the Nobel Prize, but the other two are much more the favourites in the running. Don’t tell Laffont or it will get into the press. As it was Stockholm papers made cracks about my having arrived two months too early. 17
As a result of a letter from my younger brother who has gone to Malay to conduct political warfare I have decided to spend a couple of months with him. He assures me he can lay on anything from a jungle patrol to a Chinese dance girl!
[…]
TO EVELYN WAUGH
5 St. James’s Street | London S.W. 1 | Oct. 26 [1950]
Dear Evelyn,
I only got back yesterday afternoon from three nice weeks in Italy & one rather wearing week in Stockholm & found your sumptuous present.18 Thank you again & again. I’ve read the book with enormous interest in The Month but from all accounts the untruncated version is better still. I shall now have to buy a reading copy though because one can’t mark a limited edition & I never feel as though I own a book until I’ve done | for approval & VVVVVVVVV for disapproval. I’ve never got to the Victorian point of ? & !!
In Italy we saw Harold.19 How nice & dear he is, & how I didn’t realise it at Oxford.
I’m planning to go to Malaya in December & January. I wish you’d come too. There are a lot of very proud Portuguese Eurasian Catholics in Malacca.
Affectionately,
Graham
TO SIR OSBERT SITWELL
Left Hand, Right Hand (5 vols, 1945–50), the autobiography of Sir Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969), describes an eccentric father, a genially domineering butler, a feckless mother, and three siblings of genius, through decades of bizarre entanglements. Though now neglected, the series was regarded at the time as a masterpiece of English prose. Graham’s comments on books written by his acquaintances were usually drawn fr
om the well of faint praise. Not in this case.
5 St. James’s Street | London S.W. 1 | Friday, Oct. 27 [1950]
Dear Osbert Sitwell,
I’ve returned home to find – as I confess I’d hoped – the last volume of your autobiography. How one wishes one did not say last. Thank you so much for completing a set which I value more, I think, than any other book of my time – Proust is before my time! I am not going to read it yet, for in three weeks I depart to Malaya for awhile & I feel I should need your sense of style & values deeply there.
With so many regrets that the book is finished.
Yours,
Graham Greene
TO EVELYN WAUGH
5 St. James’s Street | London S.W. 1 | [before 16 November 1950]
Dear Evelyn,
I must write you a hasty line to say how much I like Helena. The truncated version in The Month didn’t do it justice. It’s a magnificent book. I think particularly fine & moving was Helena’s invocation to the three wise men. How it applies to people of our kind – ‘of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents.’
With great admiration & affection.
Graham
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
After Communist rebels in Malaya killed three planters in June 1948, the British declared a state of emergency and found themselves engaged in a jungle war, involving constant attacks by guerrillas on civilians. Hugh Greene went to the country to organise psychological warfare and invited Graham to come out as well. One of the highlights of his trip was a patrol with the Gurkhas. The visit to Malaya led to a major article in Life (30 July 1951), later incorporated into Ways of Escape.