The Man with the Golden Typewriter (42 page)

Would you be terribly kind and re-write this passage as you think fit, but including as much of your famous expertise as you can without clogging up the prose?

Sorry to beg this service from you, but it was as a result of your instructions that Bond changed to this car and the idea of adding a supercharger amused me.

I am also not sure if the Continental has a red line at 5000 revs.

With more apologies.

“He leant forward and flicked down the red switch [the moan of the blower died away] and there was silence in the car as he motored along, easing his tense muscles. He wondered if the supercharger had damaged the engine. Against the solemn warnings of Rolls Royce, he had had fitted, by his pet expert at the Headquarters motor pool, a supercharger. Rolls Royce had said the cylinder head [camshaft bearings] wouldn't take the extra compression [load] and, when he confessed to them what he had done, they regretfully but firmly withdrew their guarantees and washed their hands of their bastardised child. This was the first time he had notched 125 and the rev counter had been [hovered] dangerously over the red line at 5000 [4500]. But the temperature and oil were okay and there were no expensive noises. And by God it had been fun!”
³

I don't see the need for maker's name, but if you feel it adds something, it should be Arnott supercharger controlled by a magnetic clutch. This has been done with a 4¼ engine.

FROM AUBREY FORSHAW

5th April, 1962

Dear Ian,

Extreme pressure following a long-weekend accounts for my delayed answer to your note regarding this Bond's Bastard Bentley.

I feel a bit of a hit-and-run daddy if the car born in THUNDERBALL was sired by any remarks of mine. My own idea of a special toy was an
R-type 1954 chassis with the latest series 2 engine – the Vee 8. The THUNDERBALL vehicle is using the chassis I would
not
have chosen – the S2 and an engine I've never heard of a Mark IV. But it's all so very ‘special' particularly with a 9.5:1 compression ratio, that nobody is likely to crib.

However, let's get down to legitimising the bastard and meeting your wish to pour on more power by the casual flick of a dashboard switch.

I've got this planned and am entertaining the Rolls Tech. Expert next Thursday so that we can make this love-child a genetic possibility.

In your new copy you mention cylinder head (singular) so you have still the straight six engine – presumably 4.8 litres and I'm basing the engine treatment on this supposition although I'll cover an alternative for the twin heads of a Vee 8.

You mustn't add puff without lowering compression, particularly from your stated 9.5:1 – so the car should use 7.5:1 with a couple of Weber carbs, normally aspirated, which will give you lashings of docile power, but for le moment critique we will fit a by-pass to the manifolds, feeding from a Shorrocks supercharger the clutch engagement of which is effected by solenoid from your little switch. In fact, your bearings (big-end and main) are more likely to complain than are well-fitted cylinder heads but the proposition of a ‘special' capable of, say, 140 or so is quite feasible, assuming a suitable back-axle ratio.

I imagine it is the B's sheer size and weight under unfavourable circumstances that will allow the girl-friend to get away in a less potent, but more wiggle-worthy machine – this could easily be, but she'd better have something pretty good; not so quick of course, not so accelerative, but with a better look and roadability.

I hope you can await my further thoughts and we will then put you in a position to confute any criticisms – always supposing that “Headquarters motor pool” enjoys happy relations with the Exchequer.

TO AUBREY FORSHAW

11th April, 1962

My dear Aubrey,

Thank you a thousand times for the priceless gen which I am afraid I find myself quite incapable of working up into prose as I must obviously start again and get the whole thing right from the beginning.

Would you be an angel and just take that extract from the book and dictate to the secretary how it should run, using your own choice of the R-type 1954 chassis with the series 2 engine – the Vee 8.

I know this is greatly imposing on you, but if I try and translate your high grade stuff into English I shall only get it all wrong again.

Please don't pay any attention to what I have actually written. What I beg you to do is to re-write the piece so that it is according to your specifications and technically possible.

Forgive all this labour I am asking of you and just put it down to the hazards of being my publisher.

Happy Easter!

FROM AUBREY FORSHAW

April 30th, 1962

Dear Ian,

I return your passage of motor mystique with the deathless prose intact but for detail additions which authenticate without inviting too many queries from the aficionados.

You may rest assured that Bond is now driving a Feasible Proposition (there have been stranger marques) the bits all being Bentley and susceptible of assembly into one car.

I am now off to the International Publishers Conference in Barcelona and shall not be back until third week in May. When I return I will furnish you with a kind of record card containing dimensions, ratios, revs. etc., so that questions to Headquarters Motor pool can be answered – but I'll undertake to deal with any such questions if you so wish.

Only one of your main requirements proved a bit difficult, namely the introduction of the Vee-8 engine. So you have an

‘R' type chassis (1955)

the big 6 engine 4.9 litres

an Arnott blower

a 13:40 back axle ratio

16 x 6.70 wheels (Dunlop RS/5 tyres)

which would give a theoretical 126–162 m.p.h.

at 4,500 revs (the red line). Actually

about your 125 m.p.h. Max revs in
top

would take an endless road to achieve without

a blower – so your addition is justified, and

your acceleration quite something.

Keep up the good work.

TO AUBREY FORSHAW

1st May, 1962

A thousand thanks for your letter of April 30th and for your wonderful help over the Bentley.

At last we will get Bond into the right kind of vehicle and he will damn well have to stay there until you let him out of it.

It was indeed kind of you to take so much trouble.

TO ROBIN DE LA LANNE MIRRLEES, ESQ., Rouge Dragon, The College of Arms, London, E.C.4.

25th April, 1962

My dear Robin,

I heard so late of the tragedy of dear Frances and am so bad at writing letters of commiseration, that I didn't write to you.

She was a dear person whom I came to like greatly and there is nothing I would rather have than some small memento of hers when you get around to sorting things out.

Now to the book. First of all many thanks about haemophilia, it was stupid of me to have got it wrong.

The book is a tremendous lark and while it has a bit of a rag at the expense of an invented Pursuivant called Griffon Or, Rouge Dragon then enters the story in fine style and plays a worthy part in tracking down the villain.

The text is now with the typist and should be ready in a couple of weeks or so. Then I would love for us to meet anywhere you suggest and slip you a copy sub rosa, which I would be most grateful if you would read for mistakes or improvements, making the freest use of your red ink.

You will find that your advices have been put to the most splendid use and the book is in fact dedicated to Rouge Dragon and a certain Hilary Bray, who, through you, makes a valuable contribution as a cover name for James Bond.

But please keep all this highly confidential and far away from the world of the College, who might prove stuffy about being dragged into a thriller, though they needn't worry and come out of it all most fragrantly.

I will get in touch with you as soon as the typescript appears.

TO WILLIAM PLOMER

9th May, 1962

Michael is coming to see me this evening about some drawings for the Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang series, so I am then going to deliver into his hands the gigantic volume, surely as long as the Koran, which I have just finished correcting.

Normally, as you know, I prefer you to see my oeuvres before anyone else in Capes, since it is always your verdict, and only yours, that I care about.

So please don't think that this break in continuity is a slur upon you, in fact it is sparing you an extra few days from the annual labour.

Thank you for your sympathetic note to Annie about the reviews [of
The Spy Who Loved Me
]. It has certainly been an uncomfortable two or three weeks having to digest a second breakfast every morning of these hommany grits – well deserved though they may be.

Only Wolverhampton and Bristol, bless them, have been kind. There live obviously the intellectual elite of England!

I hope at least some of OHMSS will bring a wry smile to your careworn features, and of course I long for the sheets of green bumph.

Let us have lunch soon please. What about Wednesday, 23rd May at the Charing Cross?

FROM WILLIAM PLOMER

10th May, 1962

My dear Ian,

I am so pleased to hear that the new oeuvre has been handed over & I shall seize it as soon as it comes within arm's length. I think it a v.g. idea that we should lunch together at the Ch. Cross Hotel on Wednesday 23rd May. If you will ask Griffie to be kind enough to book a table, I will be in that room upstairs with all those armchairs at about 1 o'c. I hope by then I shall have read the new typescript.

I think you have had
quite
enough hominy (please note spelling) grits to be going on with, but, as my governess used to say, the higher one climbs, the thicker the clouds.

I hope you didn't think me tiresomely carping about the intro to the Hugh Edwards book.
⁴
It's simply that I want to protect you from laying yourself open to any more impertinence from reviewers. I didn't want them to say, “Look, he's telling us that he can
read,
” or “Why does he tell
us that about himself instead of sticking to the man & book he is introducing?” I was myself much interested in all you had to say, & I have a weakness for many neglected books & authors.

I am up to my clavicles in dung, but what are a dung beetle's clavicles for, if not for upholding many forms of that commodity.

Vive Wolverhampton! Vive Bristol!

TO LEONARD RUSSELL, ESQ., 14 Albion Street, London, W.2.

14th May, 1962

My dear Leonard,

You are always doing kindnesses for me, would you please do me one more?

Phyllis Bottome will be eighty on the 31st May and she is ill and low in spirits, and I thought it would be terribly kind if you could put a little paragraph in Atticus about her.

Her real name is Mrs. Ernan Forbes Dennis, and their address is Little Greenly, 95, South End Road, Hampstead, N.W.3. Telephone No. Hampstead 0579; in case an Atticus runner could have a word with him on the telephone to get some notes – the number of books she has written; copies sold; the most popular, etc.

A possible point of interest is that when Ernan was Vice-Consul for the Tyrol he took a few boys and taught them German for the diplomatic. It was our first contact with a ‘famous writer', and it may be that by a process of osmosis we imbibed some of Phyllis's undoubted talent, because of the very few boys who stayed with them in Kitzbuhel three, myself, Ralph Arnold of Constables and Nigel Dennis have ended up successful writers, though in very different spheres.

So far as I am concerned I wrote my first story at Phyllis Bottome's behest when I was about nineteen, and I remember my pleasure at her kindly criticisms of it.

I am afraid this is rather straw bricks, but it would be terribly kind if you could somehow knit together a paragraph about her and cheer her up.

Forgive this chore but I promise to repay with a book review if and when you find anything appropriate.

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

24th May, 1962

My Dear Michael,

I am having my portrait painted – so is [racing driver] Graham Hill – by a man called Amherst Villiers who invented the supercharger on James Bond's 4½ litre Bentley. He has been taking a course with Annigoni
⁵
and we are obliged to sit for him out of friendship.

Now, he is a motor car and guided missile designer of absolutely top calibre and, in fact, designed the crankshaft for Graham Hill's B.R.M. which has been winning lately. I put to him our problem about getting a good car drawn for Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, and he is amused and has agreed to have a bash.

We have obviously got to get this car right before either Trog or Haro can do the subsequent illustrations, and once they have something to copy it shouldn't be too difficult.

I guess Amherst will do a spiffing job and really make it look as if it will work. So I have written him the enclosed and sent copies of the stories, and we will see what happens.

TO AMHERST VILLIERS, ESQ., 48A Holland Street, London, W.8.

While sitting for Villiers, it occurred to Fleming that he might be able to assist with the illustrations for
Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang
.

24th May, 1962

My Dear Amherst,

Here are now the stories which it won't take you long to read.

The point is that while Jonathan Cape's have got one or two artists lined up for the figures, landscapes, etc., they can't find anybody with enough technical know-how and imagination to draw a suitable Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.

What I and Cape's would very much like from you is a design for the cover to run right round the spine of the book for each story, again showing the car, but in the first adventure with its wings spread, in the second adventure with its wheels turned sideways so that it can motor across the Channel, and in the third adventure soaring up into the air with wings and perhaps some jet apparatus in the rear end.

Also on those centre spreads it would be nice to have one or two detailed little sketches of the dashboard, the radiator grill open with the fan belt extruded to provide a screw for air and water, and similar little imaginative details such as you might presumably add in the margin of any car for which you were doing a first rough design.