Graham Greene (52 page)

In
Private Eye (13
February 1981) Waugh claimed that Patrick Jenkins had lied in the claim that there was an epidemic of alcoholism in Britain. Rather, figures from the World Health Organisation showed that drunkenness was at a dangerously low level. He suggested that Jenkins be thrown into a duckpond according to the old method of testing whether a man with three nipples is a witch
.

17th February 1981

Dear Bron,

I was painfully reminded by your Diary in the 500th issue of
Private Eye
of the fact that I have four nipples. A doctor when I was
examined medically at the beginning of World War II made the same remark that in the Middle Ages I would have been regarded as a witch. I haven’t addressed this letter to
Private Eye
because I would hate to think that 150,000 people who buy the paper might want to investigate my four nipples.

Affectionately
     Graham

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes| 13th April 1981

Dear Michael,

Forgive the delay in answering your letter as I have been away for a week in Jerusalem and was faced with a big mail when I returned. I am delighted to hear [of] the success of your Strindberg.
³⁸
I am coming to London on Monday April 20. Would there be any possibility of seeing it that night? I shall be alone and it would be nice if you would come with me but perhaps you have seen it too often now.

I did see Kagemusha
³⁹
and I am afraid beautiful though it was visually I was awfully bored by it. I seem to have been the only person to have had this reaction. No, I have great doubts about the Roger Hollis story and Mr. Chapman Pincher.
⁴⁰
It looks to me like a classical piece of disinformation and destabilization – perhaps engineered, who knows, by Kim.

Love to you and your daughter
     Graham

Writing to the wife of Anatoly (Natan) Scharansky, the Ukrainian mathematician and dissident imprisoned for treason, Graham expressed concern that if he accepted an invitation to the Soviet Union he might find his visit used by the government for propaganda purposes
.

22nd April 1981

Dear Mrs Scharansky,

Thank you for the documents you sent me. Alas, I hadn’t got your address in Paris or in London where I hope you had a useful visit. I have telegraphed as follows to the man
⁴¹
who had invited me to Moscow and Georgia:

‘Having met Mrs Anatoly Scharansky in Jerusalem and heard full details of her husband’s tragic case feel unable to visit USSR. With great regret and affection.’

I don’t know who was really behind the invitation which must have had some sort of object, but whoever he might be he will certainly have seen the telegram. It’s a small effort, but one never knows – it may be of some use.

I hope we shall be able to meet again one day and that soon there will be good news for you.

Yours sincerely
     Graham Greene

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur,| 06600 Antibes | 30th May 1981

Dear Michael,

I have always been meaning to ask you whether it would be possible for you to get my dossier from the FBI under the Freedom of
Information procedure. I would be quite ready to pay all expenses. It might even make an amusing article with my comments if there is sufficient material. I suspect with Vietnam etc. there might be sufficient material.

Affectionately
     Graham

Graham received a dossier of forty-five pages, of which sixteen were blacked out. The rest were mainly press clippings, including a two-page gossip piece by Walter Winchell. Amidst various inaccuracies, Graham was pleased to note that they got his weight right at
180
pounds
.
⁴²
Twenty years later Rob Evans and David Hencke, two journalists, made a new application under the Freedom of Information Act with better results: they learned that the FBI had indeed monitored Graham’s activities over a forty-year period (
Guardian, 2
December 2002). However, while the release of the thicker dossier merited a headline, it contained little that Graham had not already made public in his own writings. The FBI could have saved its money
.

As Graham was preparing to leave for a visit to Panama, he received word that Omar Torrijos had died in the crash of a small plane
.

⁷
August 1981

Dear Chuchu,

It’s difficult to write about Omar’s death. I really loved that man. What an extraordinary thing it was that a tiny country like Panama produced one of the great men of our time. Perhaps the Panamanians will miss him the least. I can imagine what a catastrophe his death will seem in Nicaragua, and San Salvador, and Belize – as far anyway as Price is concerned.
⁴³
I had already
packed my bags to come to you last Wednesday and the shock left me staggered.

I have an idea in which perhaps you will be able to help me when the time comes. I have a short novel about a Spanish priest Monsignor Quixote which I hope to finish before the end of the year. After that I want to write a short fiction book called simply
The General
. I have so many records of him in the three or four diaries which I kept in Panama with a lot of his conversation and I will try to draw a good portrait of him. I am sure I can depend on you to criticize the draft when once it has been made and to make suggestions.

You must feel terribly lost. Are you going to leave the National Guard and concentrate on the University? Please when your mind has settled a bit write me a few words to say how you are. Yvonne will want to add her love to mine even though she has never met you, but she always says that your voice sounded exactly on the telephone as she had always imagined it.

My love again
     Graham

Chuchu was convinced that there had been a bomb aboard the plane, a position Graham advanced in
Getting to Know the General
. The plane’s manufacturers concluded that the crash was accidental, the result of bad weather. Bernard Diederich conducted his own thorough investigation and reached the same conclusion
.

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes. | 22nd June 1982

Dear Barbara,

Thank you so much for your letter and your kind thoughts. Yes, this war has been going on a long time; we are now in our fourth year and I hope we are reaching a crisis. Anyway I have four writs against me, three of which have to be tried in Paris and I hope will
procure some publicity against our enemies. All the same it’s a tiring affair. I am asking Elisabeth to send you a copy of the pamphlet which will give you the whole story. Last week the Nice judges decided that the pamphlet in France was to be seized because it intruded on the private life of our enemy Guy. I knew nothing about the hearing because I was in Paris. The Bodley Head who are also concerned had received no warning nor my advocate. He is appealing against the procedure which is typical of Nice. When will the end come? Who knows? One hopes by the end of the year at least.

[…]

The battle went on for two more years, but the litigation eventually turned in Martine Cloetta’s favour. She won clear custody of the children by the summer of
1984
and moved to Switzerland. As a test of Graham’s character, the episode has important implications. Nearly eighty years old, he was willing to risk, on the one hand, violence, on the other, mockery and condescension, to protect a person he loved. Part of his sacrifice was that after
Monsignor Quixote (1982
) he had the stamina to finish only one more novel
, The Captain and the Enemy
, which he had begun in the mid-
1970
s
.

A woman (her name withheld here) who had recently read
The End of the Affair
wrote to Graham about her own dilemma. She was married to a civil servant who permitted her to conduct an affair with a writer. She said that she loved both men and they loved her. Unlike Sarah, she did not have faith to fall back on and she had no intention of dying. She asked what she should do
.

2nd August 1982

Dear Mrs.—,

You ask me a question impossible for a stranger to answer. I can only suggest that you do nothing hurriedly and let the situation
continue as it is for as long as possible. Perhaps you are too bored with security, but I can tell you from my own experience that insecurity can be very boring too. Companionship is not something to throw over lightly, but of course nor is love – if it lasts.

All this is no answer, but I can hardly be expected to find one.

Yours sincerely
     Graham Greene

The following letter was written on the occasion of Muggeridge’s reception into the Roman Catholic Church
.

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | Nov. 3 82

My dear Malcolm,

I don’t know whether to congratulate you or to commiserate with you on making your decision, but I can sincerely wish you good luck & I can also hope that you will make a better Catholic than I have done. Anyway you will both be in my thoughts at 12.30 (French time!) on Nov. 27.

My love to Kitty & yourself,
     Graham

15th December 1982

Dear Mr. Corey,

Thank you for your letter and the nice things you write about my work. I think you have a little misread the opening chapter of
The Quiet American
. Fowler records the conversation with Vigot, which,
of course, is a very carefully phrased one, to guard himself. But until Vigot’s questions show him that Pyle is dead he is not certain of it. Although he has signalled to the Vietminh an indication of Pyle’s movements that night he hopes against hope that Pyle will have escaped.

So in a sense he is still waiting for Pyle, hoping that he may after all turn up. You have to remember that the point of view throughout is Fowler’s and Fowler’s motives are mixed. Jealousy of Pyle over Phuong is one motive and his horror at the bomb outside the Continental in which Pyle is obviously concerned is another motive. The telegram from his wife [is] a cruel irony at the end. I wouldn’t describe his remark at the end as being a demand for forgiveness. It’s only a regret that he has no religious faith and therefore he can’t ask for forgiveness.

Yours sincerely
     Graham Greene

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | Dec. 30 82.

Dear Vivien,

Many thanks for the fire extinguisher! I realise that I have lit a fire in Nice, but I don’t want to put it out!

The Christmas holiday was a little shadowed by the death of poor Raffles.
⁴⁵
Now I’m off to Nicaragua (as the guest of the Sandinista government) to light a small fire under the fool Reagan.

Affectionately,
     Graham

La Résidence des Fleurs, | Avenue Pasteur, | 06600 Antibes | 2nd February 1983

Dear Bernard,

I did a piece on regional television about that hatchet job in
Time.
⁴⁶
It struck me too as completely unconvincing and I said on screen that I did not believe a word of it and that it read like the attempt of a young deserter to please his new friends. I also showed on screen photographs of some of the unpleasant bombs being used from the United States including the Micky Mouse. I was very surprised
Time
printed it as they have been on the whole quite good about San Salvador and previously about Nicaragua. And they don’t either seem to be very pleased with the Washington administration.

I had an amusing meeting with Fidel in my twenty-four hours in Cuba. He looked to me much younger than he had done in 1966 and much more relaxed.

Affectionately
     Graham

[…]

Although he admired Castro, Greene was aware of the denial of human rights in Cuba. He cooperated closely with the Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN, which supplied him with information on detainees. The committee arranged for this letter to be translated and delivered
.

[14 February 1983]

Dear Mr. President,

It was a great pleasure for me to meet you again after sixteen years, and I am grateful to Colonel Diaz and Colonel Noriega
⁴⁷
who made my journey possible. You and I had a great mutual friend in General Torrijos whom I had grown to love almost as a brother, but I was happy and encouraged to feel that his line was being followed in Panama in spite of superficial difficulties.

Will you forgive me if as a writer and a member of International PEN I put in a plea for two writers Angel Cuadra Landrove and Jorge Valls Arango. I know nothing of their offences, but I feel that an amnesty would have a good and useful effect in Europe at this time when we are suffering from the stubborn policies of President Reagan.

Yours in most sincere friendship
     Graham Greene

Angel Cuadra Landrove (b
. 1931
) was a poet and activist released in May
1982
after fifteen years in prison; he was refused an exit visa and required to report weekly to the police. It was feared that he would be re-arrested. In 1984, he was finally allowed to leave. At the time of this letter, the poet Jorge Valls Arango was being confined incommunicado and had had no family visits in two years. He is now in exile in the United States
.

One of the founders of
Private Eye
and for many years its editor, Ingrams (b
. 1937
) has become the world’s authority on pseuds
.