Graham Greene (13 page)

Do you know anyone in England who owns a revolver? The consensus of opinion seems to be that one must have a revolver. My own feeling is that it would be more dangerous to me than to anyone else, and I certainly can’t afford to buy one. An amusing result of this trip seems to be that one is likely to be offered the most amazing variety of jobs, varying from the most august to the most farcical, adoption by old Harris as his successor as Parliamentary Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society. But this in confidence. I have to be stared at and my private life examined by a committee of philanthropists; I’m afraid I shan’t get by this. On Wed. I have tea with Lady Simon.
⁸¹

How are Helga
⁸²
and the flat and you and the Grafin’s maid?

Love,

Graham.

P.S. The best I can get from the mean
Times
is a letter to all whom it may concern that I may be doing a series of articles for them on Liberia. The whole trip gets more & more fantastic every day; at last I’ve managed to get a fairly [?] large scale map; most of it blank white with dotted lines showing the probable course of rivers! I have to take [illeg.] cases of food, & a book I’ve read on Sierra Leone says cheerfully that several Europeans have recently gone across the border but none of them have returned! This, of course, is not to be repeated to the family!

R. K. Narayan’s friend and former neighbour Kit Purna was studying at Exeter College, Oxford, and had promised to find a publisher for Narayan’s first novel. After a series of rejections at precise six-week intervals, Narayan told Purna to ‘weight the manuscript with a stone and drown it in the Thames’. Purna approached Greene in Oxford, and shortly after sent Narayan a cable: ‘Novel taken. Graham Greene responsible.’
⁸³

14 North Side, Clapham Common, S.W.4. | August 1 [1935]

Dear Mr Narayan Swami,

My friend Kit Purna
⁸⁴
sent me your novel the other day to read, and I should like to tell you as a fellow novelist how much I admired
it. I took the liberty of sending it with a covering letter to a publisher, Hamish Hamilton, and I have heard from him to-day that he wishes to publish it. You couldn’t, I think, have a better publisher. His is a young firm with a very good literary reputation and his connexion with the American publishers, Harper’s, may make it possible to find a publisher for it too in the U.S.A. He also advertises well. With this book published too we may find it easier to place your short stories, for some of which I felt an almost equal admiration. It is a real joy to be of use to a new writer of your quality.

There are a few things I should like to ask you. Have you any objection to a few alterations in the English? It’s very good on the whole, but at times the grammar and sense need tightening. Then it will need a simpler and more taking title than the one you have given it. Last as to terms. I am seeing Hamish Hamilton on Tuesday, Aug. 6, to discuss them. You can rely on me to get you the best possible terms, but with a first novel I’m afraid you won’t get a large advance on royalties. But if the advance has to be small, I hope and believe that the book will sell well enough to earn you a satisfactory amount in royalties.

Of course the proposed contract will be sent to you for your approval and signature.

I hope this will be only the first of a long series of books.

I wonder if you have come across the books of my friend Dennis Kincaid
⁸⁵
in India?

Yours sincerely,
     Graham Greene

14 North Side, Clapham Common, S.W.4. | Aug. 23 [1935]

Dear Mr Narayan Swami,

Many thanks for your letter. The pleasure is all mine in having read your book. I daresay the contract may already have reached
you. Hamilton will pay 10% on the published price on all copies sold up to 2,000 and after that 12½%, with an advance of £20 on publication. These, I’m afraid, are not princely terms, but if this first book is a success you will be able to command better terms for your next book. He intends to publish it this autumn at 6/-as it’s rather a short book. The title he wants to put on it is
Swami and Friends
. Another point (I consulted Purna on it): your name. Have you any objection to the Swami being left out and your being styled R. K. Narayan?
⁸⁶
It’s a silly thing to have to say, but in this country a name which it is difficult for the old ladies in libraries to remember materially affects a book’s sales. I saw an excellent novel by a German completely fail because of the supposed difficulty of his name: Erik von Kuhnelt-Leddihn!
⁸⁷
But, of course, if R. K. Narayan is absurdly incorrect in Indian eyes, we won’t dream of using it.

I have been through the book a second time, making a very few alterations in words (your style is admirable and I can promise you the alterations are verbal and negligible in number) and I enjoyed it at a second reading quite as much as I did at the first. I hope you will presently give me news of a second novel. When this one is published I hope we shall be able to do something with your short stories, though the market for good short stories here is absurdly limited.

I look forward one day not too far ahead to meeting you.

Yours sincerely,
     Graham Greene

14 North Side, Clapham Common, S.W.4. | Oct. 25 [1935]

Dear Denyse,

Many thanks for your letter, dated Oct. 11 & for the cheque. I love that kind of letter!

By the way I suppose they sent you my last novel,
England Made Me
? Liberia won’t be out till March or April. The title so far is ‘Journey Without Maps’. Then I’m going to have ready for the spring a thriller, opus one of the works of Hilary Trench:
⁸⁸
proposed title: ‘A Gun for Sale.’ This is in the
Stamboul Train
vein, only even more melodramatic!

If the riots come on, I’ll be over. I want a few days holiday badly.

Yours in haste,
     Graham Greene

¹⁴
North Side, Clapham Common, S.W.4. | Jan. 28 [1936]

Dear Hugh,

Many thanks for your letter. I believe I only thanked you both by proxy for the book token. I loved the account of the sexual detective; he would be of admirable use to me, so I hope he turns up.

I’m having sherry at the Camerons next week and will mention what you say, but I’m surprised. I thought you were permanently wedded to journalism. I’m getting deep into films, so deep that Grierson sounded me the other day on whether I should be interested in a producing job.
⁸⁹
I hope he is picturing me as the head of the proposed B.B.C. Film Unit! I’m on a kind of advisory committee on television as it is! Altogether I seem to have cut into the racket at the right angle. Last night we were at quite an amusing party given for Lotte Reiniger
⁹⁰
with a programme of trick films.

But I’m hellishly busy; two books of my own coming out in the next few months (great enthusiasm on Heinemann’s part for the shocker)
⁹¹
and I’m doing things for three symposiums. I’ve never written so much in my life.

If Cameron says anything enlightening I’ll let you know.

I suppose you get the news of Mumma. She seems to be making very good progress, but it must be the hell of a dull time, lying flat on the back with nothing to do. The operation too must have been pretty ghastly with only a local anaesthetic. I think I’d almost rather lose the sight of an eye.

Love,
     Graham

Did you see my sob stuff in the
Mail
? They suddenly rang up on lunch time & asked whether I’d go along that afternoon & do it: 15 guineas for about 700 words!
⁹²

H. R. Westwood, associate editor of
The Fortnightly Review
and an admirer of Greene’s film criticism, invited him to write an article on censorship for the magazine. Although no article appeared, the letter makes clear what his views are
.

¹⁴
North Side, Clapham Common, S.W.4. | April 10 [1936]

Dear Nancy,

Many thanks. I wonder if I could trouble your office to give Westwood a ring to say that I left for Dartmouth for ten days on Easter Monday and will give him a ring directly I return. I think an article could be made which would be by no means stale. I shouldn’t hinge it on the
Peace Film.
⁹³
What I propose to do (if he commissions it) is really to go in to its constitution, its record of foolish acts, and its personnel. I should like to interview several of the censors, the old ladies and the retired colonels, and give their
views on films quite untouched up. Then there’s the curious anomaly in their treatment of the big American companies and the small British companies: the question why they should allow the attractive, but wildly sexual and lascivious dance in the new Cantor film
⁹⁴
and insist on cutting scenes from the G.P.O. film,
Citizens of the Future
, which was urging cleanliness and washing on the people! I think a really amusing article could be made, which would not need a topical peg.

Yours,
     Graham

The Royal Castle Hotel, | Dartmouth. | April 20 [1936].

Dear Narayan,

This is just a hasty note to say that Hamish Hamilton
hasn’t
yet sent me your novel.
⁹⁵
I’m away here on holiday, until the end of the week, but as soon as I get back to town I will phone him & let you know the result.

I doubt whether any more money will come due to you on
Swami:
it didn’t, I think, sell very well, (you’ll get the account of sales soon), but the next novel should earn you at least an equal advance. And should sell better. (I am assuming that it’s equally good). Everyone to whom I show
Swami
is enthusiastic: I lent a copy to Malcolm Muggeridge
⁹⁶
– you may have heard of him in connexion with the
Calcutta Statesman –
he is one of the most promising young writers here – & he was elated by it & said that he was writing a letter to the editor of the
Statesman
about it. I lent it a few days ago too to
Margaret Wilson whose novels you may know & expect the same enthusiasm from her.
⁹⁷

Congratulations on the birth of your child. I am expecting a second one in September.

I still look forward to the day when your books bring you to England, so that we may meet. If you are writing to Purna do send mine & my wife’s best wishes.

Yours sincerely,
     Graham Greene

P.S. If all is well about the novel I’ll get them to send a cheque as quickly as possible without waiting for your signature on the contract.

Greene worked with the theatre and film producer Basil Dean
(
1
888
–1978) on a script of John Galsworthy’s ‘The First and the Last’, a story ‘“peculiarly unsuited for film adaptation, as its whole point lay in a double suicide (forbidden by the censor), a burned confession and an innocent man’s conviction for murder (forbidden by the great public)”’
⁹⁸
The film was released in
1940
as
Twenty-One Days
, with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh playing the leads. At the time Greene promised never to write another screenplay
.

14 North Side, Clapham Common, S.W.4 [May? 1936]

Dear Basil Dean,

About
The First and the Last:
I should very much enjoy working on this with you. I think it has immense film possibilities. I don’t,
frankly, like Berkman’s
⁹⁹
treatment at all: both the opening and the ending seem to me wholly undramatic. I think I see, too, a way to avoid the double suicide without in any way altering the characters. I should be inclined to build up the elder brother into a figure of more complete selfishness and self-righteousness, so that he could be sacrificed at the end and leave a moderately happy ending for the more sympathetic figures. I haven’t worked out a treatment in detail as I’ve been very busy this last week, and I should like first to see you and find your reaction to my preliminary ideas. I feel strongly against B’s introduction of a second girl, and the whole party scene seems to me so banal that it could only be saved by the dialogue – and should a film need saving by its dialogue? It doesn’t give a chance to the director.

Then again the introduction of the actual murder, at any rate as Berkman places it. One loses entirely the fine dramatic surprise of Larry’s confession and gains – a piece of action which one has seen over and over again on the screen. But I think there’s a way of introducing the most dramatic part, the carrying of the body, after the confession. The story anyway has got me!

Yours sincerely,
     Graham Greene

¹⁴
North Side | Clapham Common | SW4 | Aug. 19 [1936]

Dear Narayan,

A hasty note of congratulation. Pearn, Pollinger & Higham have just telephoned to say that Nelson’s want to publish ‘Chandran’, & I’ve sent you off a cable to that effect. The terms & the contract have to wait a short while until the managing director returns from his holiday, but I think you may count at any rate on an advance of
the same amount as last time. They wish me to write an introductory note: I hope you won’t mind this. As for Nelson’s, they are an older, larger & more old-fashioned firm than Hamish Hamilton. Until about two years ago they published little fiction, but recently they have been going ahead with this. L.A.G. Strong, whose work I expect you know, is their chief fiction advisor.
¹⁰⁰

I’m overjoyed about this. Nothing could be more depressing than your set-back, but now I feel it was all for the best. Nelson’s is a firm which would be far readier to nurse talent than snatch-&-grab Hamilton. I hope to hear that you are on a new book. I corrected the proof of your story for
The Spectator
some weeks ago, so I hope it will soon appear.
¹⁰¹
I feel sure your star is in the ascendant now!