It’s sad that you have left Montreal because now as my daughter is living there I make regular trips. I always remember our evening together at the amusing striptease joint which has since been closed down!
Yours ever,
Graham Greene
TO MICHEL LECHAT
130 Boulevard Malesherbes, | Paris 17.| 25 February 1966
Dear Michel,
I was so glad to get your letter and to hear that you found The Comedians readable. I am always rather apprehensive of the reactions from those who know Haiti as on the last occasion I spent far too little time there. I would have liked to have gone back two or three times before writing the book and I feel my lack of impressions in reading it.
[…]
I’m so sorry that you are feeling empty. Perhaps your menopause has come a little early. I went through a year or two of that in the 1950s, but I seem to have emerged and my melancholy now when it does rear its ugly head is quite bearable. I suppose that is one of the consolations of age.
My love to you and Edith,
Graham
TO R. K. NARAYAN
March 15 1966
My dear Narayan,
Do forgive a note dictated over the telephone and signed in absence, but I am heavily embroiled in the film script of The Comedians. I’m glad you liked the book. I am sure that Jones at least would have enjoyed Malgudi!
I read your book16 a few days ago. I don’t want to give a considered judgement until I have had time to read it a second time, as I have always found with your books that the second reading gives far more. To speak frankly I was a little disappointed with this one. The story line seemed to me to wander a bit and it needs a good deal of editing as far as English is concerned. There’s practically no changes required in the first fifty pages but after that it was as if you had grown a little tired and inattentive. I sound like a school-master in the Lawley Extensions! May I urge you to cut the last sentence of all on page 248. ‘She was a good girl’ seems to me the perfect ending. It might even provide you with a title?
Please don’t be discouraged by my frankness. I am certain I shall like it far better at the second reading and when the little obstacles of English are corrected which at present impede a free reading. Nothing alters my opinion that you are one of the finest living novelists […]
TO JOSEPH MACLEOD
Boulevard Malesherbes, | Paris 17. | March 30 [1966]
Dear Joseph,
Letters from you arrive miraculously – not only letters but once a night telegram poem – at five year intervals but always when one has a need of a friend, of a past. I’m in exile from England now like you, partly for ‘sexual’ reasons, partly because a C.B.E. stole half my savings & is now imprisoned (not by me) in Switzerland. Thank you for liking The Comedians – I half like it, but I find now that the effort of writing robs one of confidence, pleasure, everything. So the private life – as I hope you find – is the happiest.
‘The dust is laid & the wet sand is clean.’
Do you recognise the line – my favourite in The Eclipse [sic]?17 But it’s not my sign. My sign produces only
‘Halfway between fidelity & adultery we enjoy our neutral dreams.’
(It’s 11:30 at night & I am a little drunk & I’ve only just opened your letter – with such pleasure. The pleasure I felt too when I read in 1924 ‘The Bank Clerk Drowned at Sea’. That I haven’t got here with me – but I’m certain I’d still love it. I find the Meadows18 stay.)
What has happened to the theatre? That I suppose belonged to the Meadows too. But I wish you’d tell me a little more of your life now. Do you see anything of poor Harold Acton – I say poor only because of his operation? Let’s meet again – not at a Gaudy – but in Florence or Antibes where my life is mostly spent.
Love,
Graham
TO LAURA WAUGH
Evelyn Waugh died suddenly after attending Mass on Easter Sunday, 10 April 1966.
130 Boulevard Malesherbes, | Paris 17. | Easter Monday [1966]
Dear Laura,
I was shocked more than I can find it possible to write by the news of Evelyn’s death. As a writer I admired him more than any other living novelist, & as a man I loved him. He was a very loyal & patient friend to me. What I loved most in him was that rare quality that he would say only the kind things behind one’s back.
Please don’t answer this letter, but do believe there is a real community of grief for him.
Yours with so much sympathy,
Graham
TO VIVIEN GREENE
51 La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06 Antibes. |3 October 1966
Dear Vivien,
[…]
I’ve moved into this new flat in Antibes (thanks to the film company who are making The Comedians) and I have a problem which you would solve better than I. A small black cat has adopted me, coming from God knows where. She seems to have a home as she departs at night and only appears at the worst possible moment when I am beginning work in the morning and sits down firmly on my paper and sucks at my pen. I give her an occasional saucer of milk but she doesn’t seem under-nourished. I have to go up to Paris in a fortnight’s time and I wonder whether I shall lose her friendship in my absence. The greatest pleasure she has at the moment is an empty cardboard box which once contained a bottle of cognac into which she can just insert herself and pretend to be hidden. Obviously until I have got her under control I shan’t progress much with the articles for the Weekend Telegraph!
Affectionately,
Graham
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
Please tell me how you are & how you are walking.
51 La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06 Antibes. | Oct. 3 [1966]
Dearest Catherine,
A line to wait for your return. Cuba was exhausting with heat & lack of sleep (I averaged about four hours a night over three weeks) but very rewarding. This time all the doors suddenly opened to me. I had a Cadillac & a French speaking chauffeur – & they wanted to put me into the grand house where they put heads of state with a butler, servants, swimming pool & a guard at the door, but I refused & stayed in a hotel. I came back loaded with presents (a crocodile brief case from the woman I met in hiding in 1957 who is now in charge of Latin American relations),19 a Milian painting from Milian – a strange obsessed artist I like very much, & another one by him from Franqui who is writing Castro’s autobiography,20 a drawing by Portocarrero21 from himself & a beautiful flowers painting by Portocarrero from Fidel who inscribed it to me at the back. My last night I spent from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. with Fidel & we got on very very well. I liked him a lot & was very impressed. I was fetched away by a messenger from a private dinner with the British Ambassador who was quite jealous as he hasn’t spoken more than two words to Castro yet.
I saw more of Cuba than ever before, driving all the way to Santiago & Guantanamo, & Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother, gave me a military plane to take me to the Isle of Pines. Altogether it was quite a show […]
TO SIR WILLIAM HALEY
Here Greene complains to Sir William Haley (1901–87), editor of The Times, about the newspaper’s failure to report the mysterious murder in Morocco of Yves Allain, who had fought in the French Resistance and was known to Greene through his work in intelligence.
21 November 1966
Dear Sir William,
I was a little surprised that up till now you were unable to publish even the small obituary paragraph which I wrote to you on the death of my friend Yves Allain, one of the most heroic resistants in Brittany who was decorated by the English and American governments. I cannot help feeling that he deserved more than Peter Baker!
Your obituary editor apparently was disturbed by my phrase ‘brutal murder’, and wanted documentary proof which I now attach, in the form of cuttings from the Figaro and Le Monde. I had assumed that The Times were aware of what goes on in the French Press.
I enclose also a card of his funeral service which lists
Allain’s decorations.
I would like to have these cuttings returned to me whether or not you publish the paragraph, but I would like also to know whether it is to be published as otherwise I would wish to write at greater length elsewhere – it seems to me deplorable that not a single English paper should even mention the murder of a man who rescued during the war more than a hundred allied airmen.
Yours sincerely,
Graham Greene
Greene’s obituary of Allain was published on 24 November.
TO CATHERINE WALSTON
51 La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06 Antibes. | April 30 [1967]
Dearest Catherine,
[…]
Yesterday I went to the film of Ulysses – a deadly bore in spite of the verbal shocks which made people shout out ‘dégôutant.’ One came out depressed with a headache. I had tried to reread the book in preparation & found it a big bore like the film – really one of the most overrated classics. So instead I’m rereading Trollope’s political novels.
[…]
TO BERNARD DIEDERICH
as from: 51 La Résidence des Fleurs | Avenue Pasteur | 06 Antibes. | 30 May 1967
Dear Bernard,
[…]
Baptiste, to whom you introduced me in the lunatic asylum at Santo Domingo, came down here during the last days of the filming of The Comedians with a man whom I did not take to much. He had been an officer in Duvalier’s army until 1964 and I didn’t trust him a yard. Poor Baptiste under his influence seriously thought that he could get some 80,000 dollars out of the film stars to – partly – finance an attack on Haiti. Unfortunately our director had lost some 50,000 dollars in giving mistaken support to Père Georges and the news had got around. I did my best to help them, writing personal letters to the Burtons and to Guinness, but there was no response. I sent Baptiste a small cheque to help him continue his search, but with my responsibilities I could do no more. I was also very suspicious of the other man. Perhaps I am learning suspicion from the Haitians themselves.
[…]
Fred Baptiste was born in the town of Jacmel. His brother Rénel (sometimes spelt Reneld) was also a rebel leader. Graham first met them in January 1965 in their camp at an abandoned insane asylum near Santo Domingo. In 1964 Fred Baptiste led a failed invasion of Haiti. In April 1965 he and his commando joined and fought beside the Constitutional forces in the Dominican civil war. In 1966 he left the Dominican Republic to travel in Europe and went as far as China seeking support for a new venture against Papa Doc. The brothers were captured in 1970 when they infiltrated into Haiti. They then disappeared into Fort Dimanche, Duvalier’s place of torture and execution. Graham made repeated inquiries on their behalf, but Fred died, insane, of tuberculosis at the age of forty-one on 16 June 1974; Rénel would die, at thirty-five, of the same disease on 19 July 1976.22
Father Jean-Baptiste Georges was a former Duvalierist who tried to organise a small invasion from Florida. Peter Glenville gave him the $50,000 donation. Georges obtained more money by selling documentary rights to CBS for the hardly secret expedition. In early 1967, customs officials seized their equipment and arrested him. The episode came to be known as ‘The Bay of Piglets’.23
TO LUCY CAROLINE BOURGET
La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06 Antibes. | Aug. 22 [1967]
Dearest Carol,
[…]
I had a nice fortnight’s holiday in Anacapri, doing no work at all, but I arrived to find the island on fire, all the way along the mountain. I wanted to go down to Capri for dinner but found the road blocked, and we remained cut off for two days. I watched the fire till midnight, then went to bed and was woken at 3 by the sound of the flames which had spread to above my end of the village. Water, fire brigades, Bersaglieri, American soldiers and Carabinieri were sent from Naples and at last got the fire under control. Luckily there was no wind or the village would have been wiped out. The flames got to within 30 metres of a big hotel at the entrance, and all the guests had to pack and be ready to evacuate in the middle of the night. In Anacapri the priests brought out San Antonio to show him the fire and in Capri his rival San Constanzo. People queued up to kiss San Constanzo and wipe his face with their pocket handkerchiefs. […]
TO CHRISTOPHER SYKES
Graham wrote that many who dwelt on the cruelty of Evelyn Waugh’s character had left out another side which was extraordinarily kind and seen him only ‘as a sort of sacred monster’.24 This has been Greene’s own fate at the hands of some of his biographers. In this letter, he relates anecdotes about Waugh to Christopher Sykes (1907–86), whose Evelyn Waugh: A Biography appeared in 1975.
29 August 1967
Dear Christopher,
I was delighted by reading your broadcast programme on Evelyn in The Listener which could hardly have been better done. One or two points occur to me which may be of use to you as a biographer. Evelyn when he told me of the plane crash in Yugoslavia always said that he was flying to join Randolph. He remembered nothing of the crash, but after the crash found himself walking through a field and to his astonishment, because he had no idea where he was, saw Randolph walking towards him through the field carrying a drink! He never mentioned that Randolph was a fellow passenger. He also used to tell me that he found he was put off alcohol completely by sharing a hut with Randolph in Yugoslavia because the smell of Slivovitz coming from his companion was too strong for him.
Evelyn on Tito. Evelyn used always to say that Tito was a lesbian who had lived in Paris at the period when it was fashionable for lesbians to have their breasts removed!
I always disbelieved a little in the stories of Evelyn’s rudeness at parties and used to deny such stories until one evening when Carol Reed invited Evelyn, myself and Korda, who was then living with Alexa, to dinner. Suddenly at table Evelyn developed an extreme anti-Semitic rudeness towards Korda. The next day I was with him in a taxi and I said, ‘Why did you insult poor Alex like that?’ He said, ‘He had no right to bring his mistress to Carol Reed’s house for dinner.’ I said. ‘But I had my mistress with me.’ Evelyn’s reply was, ‘That is quite different. She is a married woman.’
It’s only after a good lunch and reading The Listener that I send you these notes with affection.
Graham
TO THE SECRETARY, SOVIET UNION OF WRITERS
After their writings were smuggled abroad and published in the West the dissident satirists Andrei Sinyavsky (1925–97) and Yuliy Daniel (1925–88) were arrested in 1965 for anti-Soviet activities. Their widely publicised trial in the following year ended in sentences of hard labour.
1st September, 1967
Dear Sir,
I would like all royalties due to me on my books, and any money deposited in my name for past royalties at the Grand Hotel, Moscow, to be paid over to Madame Sinyavsky and Madame Daniel to help in a small way [with] their support during the imprisonment of their husbands.
Yours very truly,
Graham Greene
TO GEORGE BARKER
The poet George Barker (1913–91) sent Graham a prayer candle and a sonnet.
130 Boulevard Malesherbes, | Paris 17. | Sep. 13 [1967]
Dear Mr. Barker,
Thank you very much for the candle. I half-believe myself in prayers & candles, & at least they do no harm – which cannot be said of many human activities. I like sonnets too – but rather as I like cheese. Not Roquefort, not Day-Lewis. Brie yes, & Hopkins – & sometimes Auden when mature.
I’m writing a small bit of autobiography myself. It’s something to fall back on when the imagination begins to fail. No more disgusting to my mind than old age itself.
Thank you again for the candle.
Yours,
Graham Greene
TO MARIE BICHE
Four months after the Six Day War, Graham visited Israel. In the company of UN observers, he visited the area of Ismalia on 27 September, only to be caught in an exchange of fire, which spread from there along the length of
the canal from Kantara to Suez.25
Dan Hotel | Tel Aviv | Sep. 29 1967
Dear Marie,
Returned here from the Canal to find your letter and C’s two. Thank you so much. I came back from a battle! I do seem to have a nose because I stumbled on the worst point of the worst incident in two months. For more than two and a half hours in the sun I had to lie with my companion & our driver on the side of a sand dune with artillery (anti-tank guns), mortars, & small arms fire. Alas. I’d only had lemonade for two days – I could have done with a whisky. As we were within a hundred yards of the Israelite artillery who didn’t know we were there & which was the Egyptian objective, I really thought I’d had my last game of roulette. However we survived! My companion had a small chip out of his cheek from shrapnel & I nothing worse than a sore on my elbow from all those hours on the sand!
Now I’m off to Jerusalem & the Syrian border. A ready made article on the Canal & the U.N. observers!26 Much cheered up.
Love
G.
TO PETER GLENVILLE (TELEGRAM)
The release of the film of The Comedians, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, drew a noisy complaint from Duvalier’s ambassador to the United States, who described it as ‘A character assassination of an entire nation’ presenting Haiti as a country of ‘Voodoo worshippers and killers’. Its object, he claimed, was ‘disgusting and scaring the American tourist at the beginning of the season. Haiti is one of the most beautiful, peaceful, and safe countries in the Caribbean.’ The producer and director, Peter Glenville, looked to Greene for a response.
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