The Man with the Golden Typewriter (36 page)

28th April, 61

My dear Ian,

I am in the middle of being
absorbed
by the results of your collaboration with Mademoiselle Viv (Bimbo) Michel – your best she-character up to now – and am annoyed at having to break off the process of absorption
to write a letter. But I do want to say that I think the book full of your usual brio and Schlauheit & to let you know that I am
much
enjoying as well as absorbing it.

If you like, I would like to look in on you next Wednesday morning at about 11.30. I could bring with me a very few notes & queries, & could tell you by then how the book strikes me as a whole. Send me two words to say

a)  if I may come & see you then;

b)  if I may hand the typescript over to Michael Howard on Wednesday;

c)  if there is anything else I can bring you.

When I do come, I will try not to exhaust you by prolonged loquacity.

I hope you are feeling as free as possible from anxieties & fatigue.

Your old chum Bob Howard asked me to give you his best messages & to say that he hadn't written to you only because he doesn't want to badger you with correspondence.

TO WILLIAM PLOMER

From Clinholm, 30th April, 1961

My dear William,

As you can imagine, your first reactions to the book were a shot of mescalin, but don't feel you have to be gracious about the second chunk for fear of plunging me beneath the sod. From you I need no placebos. Only the true verdict will do & I can assure you that my E.C.G. can stand anything now. Let us decide about Michael when we have spoken at 11.30 on Wed. If you feel there is much to be done, I would rather do the tidying up before it gets into the pipeline.

I am of course longing to see you & please bring nothing but your face! Your last visit was more beneficial than you can imagine – apart from other considerations, to hear other peoples' tales of woe greatly reduces the perspective of one's own.

Coming to Metropole, Brighton, on Monday, fortnight until Friday. With Annie. It would be lovely to fix a ‘déjeuner sur l'herbe', or ‘sur les sables couvertes de capotes anglaises',
⁸
somewhere between us. Please consider & deliver your instructions on Wed.

Am receiving the most extraordinary advices from various genii. “Be more spiritual” (Noël Coward), “write the story of Admiral Godfrey” (Admiral Godfrey), “Be sucked off gently every day” (Evelyn Waugh).

Over to you!

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

31st May, 1961

My dear Michael,

Many thanks for your letter of May 26th and also for the book which I liked very much at first sight. If I go on liking it I will certainly write you a short review for “Now and Then”.

I am now sending you the first two “volumes” of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Heaven knows what your children's book readers will think of them, but they are in fact designed for a readership of around seven to ten.

If you decide that you like them much will depend on the illustrator and I wonder if we couldn't get Trog. He is by way of being a friend of mine since he did the John Bind series in Fluke. I only fear that he might be too expensive.

Anyway please let me know what you think of the whole gambit and we will then decide what to do about it.

M.C.A, New York, liked the SWLM, but I haven't yet heard from Vikings whom I had asked for plenty of suggested corrections and I will wait for them before going over the ms again.

But I would be very interested to hear the reactions of your readers if and when you get any.

I am now gradually reactivating myself and I hope to be up in London for about two days each week. Though much will depend on a gigantic medical conference this afternoon.

Yours ever.

TO MRS. VALENTINE FLEMING, Hotel Mirabeau, Monte Carlo, Monaco

Fleming's mother, who since the war had flitted between various grand addresses, smart hotels and exotic destinations, had come temporarily to rest in Monte Carlo with her ancient beau, the ninety-eight-year-old ‘Monty', Marquis of Winchester.

1st June, 1961

Darling Mama,

I am now up and about again but still not supposed to write much so please forgive the dictation.

It was lovely to get your birthday present and I shall have great fun buying myself something to relieve the boredom of convalescence.

Brighton for a fortnight was a great tonic, and at a giant meeting of the various doctors yesterday they seemed satisfied. Though it does sound as if convalescence from one of these things is, in fact, more or less endless and that I shall have to “take care” for ever more, which is very much against my nature.

However, as everyone says, it might have been much worse and you will be amused to know that The Times had actually written my obituary when it seemed that the tomb was about to yawn! I am doing everything I can to see if I can't get hold of a copy.

Please don't worry too much about the house [Sevenhampton]. I am not happy about it myself but it's quite impossible being married unless you are prepared to compromise, and I shall just help Anne as much as I can with it and go fifty/fifty on the cost. At least it will be a good solid base in the country, and I expect fairly soon after it is finished we will forsake Victoria Square, and I shall take to planting lupins, or some
other elderly and responsible pursuit, as it seems that strenuous golf is now out for always.

It sounds as if you have at last got your Monte Carlo life more or less straight, and I am delighted that the Rolls is being a success, and I do hope that the maid will be a real help. As for Monty, I do beg you to leave all the grisly nursing to nurses and not wear yourself out carrying bowls of soup (and other hospital ware!) around.

It is sweet of you to offer the Villa Mary, but it doesn't look as if we shall be able to get away for some time. Why don't you move into it yourself, or are you really happier in that small cell in the Mirabeau?

Caspar is getting on very well at [his school] Summer Fields and curiously enough being pushed rapidly up the school. He has even been made head of his dormitory, from which I can only guess that the other inhabitants must be the most appalling collection of little monsters. Anyway he is looking wonderful and one of the factors that decided us on Warneford was that he simply adores having a place to run about in, and it will be close by both for Summer Fields and Eton, and it has the Thames nearby for expeditions.

Please don't worry any more about me. I shall just have to adjust myself to “growing old gracefully”, which will be a most entertaining spectacle for my family and friends!

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

Howard replied on 5 June to Fleming's letter of 31 May: ‘CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG's adventures have me enthralled. She is truly an invention of genius, and I trust that you can reel off at least ten more episodes with no trouble at all.' He was less certain about an idea that Fleming put forward in the interim, that they should be published under the pseudonym ‘Ian Lancaster'.

6th June, 1961

My dear Michael

Very many thanks for your letter of yesterday and I am delighted that you like the first two CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANGS. I must confess that
I have no idea what to do with her next, but I suppose it would be possible to keep up to a book a year.

So far as the illustrator goes, if Trog were interested I am not sure it wouldn't be desirable to enter into some kind of partnership with him by which he would be assured of, let us say, a third of the royalties. This would give him enthusiasm in the project and make the thing a joint effort, which such books should really be. If you think well of the idea and you see no objection, I would not be worried if you were to have a talk with him on this basis. Perhaps the best idea would be to have a triangular lunch together if you can fix that. He is an extremely nice man and great fun, and from the quality of his cartoons in the Spectator I am quite sure he has the graphic qualities we need, though he would have to bend his mind rather carefully to the original drawing of the car which must, I think, not look
too
funny.

I doubt if you will get much reaction out of William. I mentioned the project to him but he can't bear children's books and it will be much more important I think to get the judgement of your regular children's books advisor.

One small point while it crosses my mind. I find that in these children's series the parents very often can't remember if little Billy has had just this particular adventure. So might I suggest that each volume should be in a distinctive colour and that the number of the adventure should be emphasised?

Of course I have no objection to being linked with the books in a vague way, but I am not sure that that will necessarily help their sales!

I will press on with correcting TSWLM and will hope to have it with you by the end of the month, though of course Vikings may come in with a shower of suggestions and criticisms.

By the way, although it is something of a trade secret which you should keep to yourself, The Sunday Times is going to break out into a shiny paper colour supplement instead of its magazine section towards the end of the year, and it is quite possible that they would like to serialise these CHITTY-BANG-BANG stories. Although this would gobble up a lot of your readership, not everybody in England reads The Sunday
Times, but you might bear the possibility in mind from the point of view of timing the illustrators' work.

I only mention this now as C. D. Hamilton has just been on the telephone about something else and I mentioned our new venture and he was enthusiastic.

You may be amused to see what Macmillans have done with your jacket. Pretty good for them!

Yours Ever.

TO THOMAS H. GUINZBURG, ESQ., The Viking Press Inc., 625 Madison Avenue, New York 22

Guinzburg, head of the American publishing house Viking, was uneasy about Fleming's latest. He wrote on airmail paper (Fidelity Onion Skin) that, ‘the various readers feel this draft, while it is certainly acceptable Fleming, is not quite top-grade Fleming'. He suggested he put the manuscript aside for a while and write a couple of other books first. Cape, he pointed out, had already established a market for Bond but, ‘We, on the other hand, are only just beginning to establish the elements of the specific apparatus that surrounds and enhances the image of Bond, and we are afraid that this story, at least in its present form, does a disservice to that kind of emphasis.'

20th June, 1961

Dear Tom,

Many thanks for your piece of Fidelity Onion Skin of June 9th but I am indeed horrified to hear of poor Harold's troubles. Please give him my warmest wishes for a rapid recovery and urge him to take a decent and non-business holiday and not to hurry back to work.

Now, about “The Spy Who Loved Me”, oddly enough the very reasons for your doubts about it are those put forward by Capes for any special virtues it possesses.

All at Capes think the breakaway from the routine Bond both healthy and desirable and in his most recent letter Michael Howard expects to do even better with it than
Thunderball
, which is now just over 40,000.

As for your idea of holding up its publication until I have written a couple more conventional full length thrillers, you seem to think that I am a Rex Stout!
⁹
I have scraps of ideas for future books but nothing in the least firm. And heaven knows when these two imaginary thrillers will, in fact, get written.

Accordingly, I am afraid I must put the ball back in your court. Bond is after all the hero of this book and though he is seen through the looking glass so to speak, Capes are sure that the new gimmick is an excellent idea.

Meanwhile you have had a note from me about Mr. Liebert from the Yale Library, and, unilaterally, I have taken advantage of his offer and he is at the moment correcting the American lingo and the American background to the story with a delighted and very sharp pen. He has undertaken to return the corrected manuscript to me by July 6th, since Capes want to get it into page proof during August.

Perhaps it would be as well for you to put away the uncorrected typescript I sent you and wait to see Cape's page proofs before you decide what you want to do.

My own recommendation is for you to take the rough with the smooth and drown your doubts in strong liquor.

Incidentally, would you please activate your publicity people and ask them to send me some reviews of T'ball. I have had nothing from Vikings except a few meagre scraps early on, nor any news of how the book is going.

Macmillans, as you know, are producing their Omnibus on July 24th, and no doubt this will also activate your sales of
Thunderball
.

TO MRS. JAMES BOND, 721, Davidson Road, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia 18, Pasadena

‘It was inevitable we should catch up with you . . .' On which ominous note Mrs James Bond began her letter of 1 February 1961. Fleming had never made any secret of the fact that he had borrowed his hero's name from one
of his favourite books,
Birds of the West Indies
, by the American ornithologist James Bond. But now, almost ten years after he had written
Casino Royale
, news reached the Bonds that
‘you had brazenly picked up the name of a real human being for your rascal'.
They didn't really mind, as the real Bond had led an adventurous life, his colourful exploits being not too far, in the ornithological scale of things, from those of his fictional equivalent. ‘I told MY JB he could sue you for defamation of character,' Mrs Bond concluded cheerfully. ‘But JBBA [James Bond British Agent] is too much fun for that and JB authenticus regards the whole thing as “a joke”.'

20th June, 1961

Dear Mrs James Bond,

I don't know where to begin to ask your forgiveness for my very tardy acknowledgement to your letter of February 1st.

I received it in Jamaica and since I was almost on the way to Nassau I decided to telephone the Chaplins on arrival and get in touch with you and your husband.