Graham Greene (5 page)

From the 1950s, Greene’s correspondence was so burdensome that he dictated letters onto dictabelts, which were then sent to his secretary, who kept stocks of signed letterhead. Where letters were produced by a secretary listening to tapes, accidental features have limited authority. In this volume, I have retained a minimal style of punctuation but adjusted it where necessary. Some very long
paragraphs have been divided. Errors resulting from faulty transcription of the dictabelts are noted where they occur, but otherwise I have corrected obvious errors silently. Some addresses and postscripts have been deleted and, where the source is a carbon copy, the signature is added – both types of emendation occurring silently. I have added all necessary punctuation to telegrams and regularised the presentation of titles of books and articles.

In the late spring of
1921
, Graham suffered an emotional collapse, and from July he undertook a six-month course of psychoanalysis with Kenneth Richmond at his home in London.
¹
During his treatment, he took a brief holiday with his aunt Eva – she was going to Lisbon to meet her husband, Edward Greene, who ran a coffee business in Brazil. Graham describes some of the characters on the ship with a skill astonishing in a sixteen-year-old
.

R.M.S.P. ‘Avon’ | Sat. Sep. 3. 1921

Dear Mumma,

We are having another glorious day; the Bay of Biscay not fulfilling its reputation. I’ve been having a most energetic day, with deck tennis and bowls etc. and am getting back a sea-side appetite. We’ve got a most amusing table. There’s a large fat profiteer, who had the title, probably nominal, of captain during the war. He has practically no chin, the fat of his neck [?] drowning it in one colossal ‘bulge’. He has cultivated a critical twist downwards to his mouth, and snorts at every dish. Having ordered three bottles of champagne at dinner, he snorted and ‘peeved’ for ten minutes until at last the waiter realised his dreadful mistake. He’d brought him champagne – but, in ice! No good! Besides the admiring chorus of his Spanish wife, he has an attendant satellite in the person of a little, old
gentleman who does nothing but flatter him. We have also a very thin, silent dour Scotchman, who interjects a meaningless joke about every quarter of an hour.

The Irish clergyman who shares my cabin comes fully up to expectations. In answer to a remark about the amount of food they give us, he answered ‘Yes, keep your stomach full, and then, if you are sea-sick you’ll be quite all right!’ When he was at a University (Manchester, I believe he said) De Valera took him in mathematics. Nothing evil can be said of De V. for ‘he is a devout man, a good layman.’
²

Father Roach comes from the South, from Tipperary and, though he has no desire for a republic, is very indignant at the idea of the Northern Parliament.

Altogether there’s an amusing ship load and, of course, there was an invasion of French people at Cherbourg. I had never dreamed of such a wonderful harbour as C. We got quite far in, so that we could see a lot of the forts.

Tomorrow we get to Vigo, and hope to go ashore for a few hours. But it’s rather uncertain, as we have not got a Spanish visa on our passports. We also pass close into Corunna, and will probably be able to land at Leixoes.

It will seem funny coming back as we will be quite a large party, six in fact.

Aunt Eva sends her love to all,

love from
     Graham

Graham and his aunt visited the grave of General Sir John Moore
(1761–1809),
a distant relative and a hero of the Napoleonic wars. He was killed in the retreat to La Coruña and buried, according to the poet Charles Wolfe, ‘darkly at dead of night, the sods with our bayonets turning’
.

Graham revisited the grave sixty years later when he was planning
Monsignor Quixote.
³

Here, Graham describes a service at Westminster Abbey on
17
October
1921
, during which the American Chief-of-Staff General John Pershing
(1860–1948)
laid the Congressional Medal of Honor on the tomb of the unknown warrior. The ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Lloyd George
(1863–1945),
Winston Churchill
(1874–1965),
then Colonial Secretary, and Earl Haig
(1861–1928),
who had commanded the British Expeditionary Force
.

Tuesday [18 October 1921] | At 15 Devonshire Terrace W.2

Dear Mumma,

Thanks very much for the foolscap, and letter. I’m afraid the story is no use for a magazine. It’s much too short. I’ve sent it in for the school competition. Yesterday Aunt Eva came to see Mr Richmond about Ave;
⁴
to-day in the distance, while reading in the gardens, I saw Raymond’s friend Crompton,
⁵
and two other people, doing experiments of some kind.

Yesterday I went to the American ceremony. I got into the Abbey for the service, but as far as the actual service went, I should have preferred being outside, as I was too far away to see anything, but a glimpse of Winston Churchill’s head, and to hear anything but a monotonous drone. I had a dreadful man next me, who expatiated to me the whole time on the League of Nations and insisted on reading a long poem on its ideals, written by a friend of his. But it was worth being bored by the service because of the waiting period beforehand.
The Abbey itself lighted up brilliantly, but outside the door nothing but a great bank of mist, with now and again a vague steel helmeted figure appearing, only to disappear again. The whole time the most glorious music from the organ, with the American band outside, clashing in at intervals. Then the feeling of expectancy through the whole people, the minds of everyone on tip-toe. It got back the whole atmosphere of the war, of the endless memorial services; I’d never realised before how we had got away from the death feeling.

But when Pershing and the rest arrived, there was a ghastly anticlimax, people standing up on the seats, and peering over other people’s shoulders, the whole dramatic effect lost, and the service did nothing to restore it. I rushed out afterwards and managed to get a good view of the inspection, Pershing and Haig and a lot of other generals whom I didn’t recognise. I’d never realised what a militarist face Haig had got before. As bad as Hindenburg. Lloyd George, before the inspection, drove off amidst very feeble cheers, and a great deal of laughter and chaff. I got another good view of the others driving off, Pershing amidst great enthusiasm, but Haig in practically silence. Altogether it was quite worth seeing.

Love to all,
     Graham

15 Devonshire Terrace | W.2. | Tuesday [25 October 1921]

Dear Mumma,

I hear you are going to stay a week-end with Aunt N.,
⁶
but I suppose you won’t have room for any books. If you should have room to spare could you bring my Warner and Martin? (History) If Mrs O’Grady would ask Guest,
⁷
he’d get it from my locker in the library. But don’t trouble about finding room, if it’s at all difficult, because it’s
not necessary. It is so to speak a ‘luxury’. Tell Hugh, if he would like to send me our stamp swops, I’d try and exchange them for a few we haven’t got at Stanley Gibbons.
⁸
Of course, as most of them are very common, we’d only get a few for them. It’s just as he likes.
⁹
If he wants to, he must also send me Stanley Gibbons’ address. I expect you’d have room for them, as they are only in a small sort of notebook, which would take up no room at all. But again, if it’s any bother don’t.

I hope to see Walter de la Mare
¹⁰
soon. Mrs. Richmond has promised to ask him to tea, before I go. I hope soon to blossom into the Saturday
Westminster
. ‘The Creation of Beauty. A study in sublimation,’ by H. Graham Greene. Ahem! Ahem! Mr. Richmond is going to thrust it before the Editor’s eyes, and thinks he’ll accept it. The cold weather at last! It is a gloriously sharp, raw day today.

Love to all,
     Graham

P.S. Hugh will find S. G.’s address on the stamp catalogues. I remember passing the shop a day or two ago, but I forget where.

Graham went up to Balliol College, Oxford, in the autumn of 1922. He had an appetite for pranks and helped to launch a candidate for the general election on 15 November
.

Oxford Union Society [c. 12 November 1922]

Dear Mumma,

There’ve been great excitements here lately. Armistice night was on the whole a rather wet show after the first exhilaration had worn
off. There was football with tin trays down the High, & with a bucket up St. Giles’s, where I cut my ankle on it, getting it wedged in the bucket & tripping up on it. Last night was a much better organised show. There was a bogus candidate, Jorrocks, up, & a bogus committee room, from which he made speeches in a mask. The townees imagined that he was a real candidate, & there were several scrimmages as a consequence, with the Liberal element in the crowd. I enclose a Jorrocks pamphlet…

The campaign pamphlet proclaimed: ‘Old Wine in Old Bottles! A Plague on Promises! Personality Pays!
…
Ask the Returning Officer where to put your X for Jorrocks The Independent Independent! Only Triangular Candidate for Oxford.’

Balliol College | Oxford [March 1923?]

Dear Elisabeth,

I hope you haven’t got this. You hadn’t last holidays. It’s not as good as
Peacock Pie,
¹¹
but some of them are quite good. Are you having a birthday party? Is Hugh still spotty? Have you & Katherine acted any more plays? I think you might act one of Kipling’s
Just So
stories, & let Hugh take part in ‘How the Leopard got his Spots,’ or write a modern musical comedy & call it ‘Spot & Carry One,’ or an ancient play of the brave & wicked ‘Hugh the Rash,’ or a puzzle play called ‘Spot the’ no, that’s quite enough plays.

Love from
     Graham

Balliol College, | Oxford [March 1924]

Dear Elisabeth,

Here is a little memento of this auspicious, nay, may I say epoch making, occasion. For the first time you leave the single state (no, not to enter into matrimony, but into double figures). Double figures! What a thought is there! To think of the time that must elapse before you leave them. To be exact, if my mathematics does not fail me, ninety years. Did I say ninety years? Yes, ninety years. Though there’s always a trick about these numbers somewhere. For instance, the other day I was adding up the number of days between the first of March & the fourth. One from four, I said to myself, leaves three. Why, I learned that on my mother’s lap, I added (to myself). It was the first thing that my baby lips learned to lisp, I continued. But, would you believe it, I was wrong! There are not three days between. In the same way I have an awful suspicion that in some queer way you will only remain in double figures for eighty-nine years. Think of that! As the Americans say, it won’t be no freight train. Only eighty-nine years!