Graham Greene (9 page)

Graham’s first published novel was
The Man Within
, a work about smugglers set against the Lewes Assizes in the nineteenth century. It was accepted first by Charles Evans, chairman of Heinemann, and later by the American publisher George Doran. Although he retained an affection for the book, Graham said in
1980
that if he had been the publisher’s reader, ‘I would have turned it down unhesitatingly.’
¹

The Times | [7 January 1929]

Dear Mumma,

Great news! Doubleday, Doran & Co. have taken the book. £50 in advance of royalties & ten percent on all copies. They’ve promised to send it to the Book Society of America & if they take it as their book for the month (very unlikely of course) it sells about 80,000 copies straight away. It’s coming out in England in May. Evans this morning read me a letter from Clemence Dane in which she said that she liked the book immensely & that I was ‘a born writer’ & she thought perhaps a born dramatist too, as there was a fine play to be got out of the novel!
²
Evans sent me to an agent he recommended who’s going to see if he can do anything about dramatising it! Evans was very sweet again & told me that I must
get started on the next book as not more than a year should elapse between the two! I’ve got to go & see Doran, the American publisher, at the Savoy Hotel, as he’s on a visit to England. We still haven’t found a title. The m.s. is going to be sent to Tennyson Jesse
³
as apparently she has a flair for such. ‘Flight’ has too much of a Lindbergh suggestion. My latest idea is ‘The Man Within’ & quotation from Sir Thomas Browne ‘There’s another man within me that’s angry with me.’ We had lunch this morning at Montagu Sq.

With much love to both in haste,
     Graham

8 Heathcroft, | Hampstead Way, | N.W. 11.

[postmark: 13 January 1929]

Dear Raymond,

How sweet of Charlotte & you to write. I hope you are better & Charlotte well. We should love to come down for a week-end. The difficulty is to get one. Flu’ & colds are rampant at the office. Awful fate! I’m terribly afraid that I’m going to succeed Leslie-Smith as Court sub-editor, he being removed to more exalted regions. A hellish job without the compensations of hell, save I hope a ‘rise’. However nothing is settled.

It’s certainly fun about the book. I hoped that one day one might be taken but never in wildest dreams so to be received with open arms & told that in five years I should be at the head of the profession!! £80 in advance of royalties – £50 in America & £30 in England – & the possibility of a dramatisation. And the funniest part of the absurd, joyful situation is that the book is quite terribly second-rate.

I went and saw my American publisher at the Savoy. He was a darling. What one has always imagined the Virginian gentleman of
old family to be like. Tall & courteous with a little white imperial & advice as to exercising the ‘abdominal muscles’.

I’ve been told that I’ve got to have another novel ready within a year; great fun & great sense of importance!

Love to Charlotte & you

from both of us,
     Graham

The novelist Christopher Isherwood
(1904
–86), descended from the brewing Greenes of Bury St Edmunds, was Graham Greene’s distant cousin. His first novel
All the Conspirators
was published by Jonathan Cape on
18
May 1928
.

8 Heathcroft, | Hampstead Way, | N.W. 11. | April 15 [1929?]

Dear Christopher,

Will you forgive these terribly tardy congratulations on your fine novel & implicitly, therefore, my terribly tardy reading of it? I only wish I had been still reviewing when it appeared that I might have aided, if by no more than a tin whistle, to have trumpeted its praise. It is a far finer book than I believed that any of our generation could produce. I have but just finished it & must praise or burst.

Yours with admiration & envy,
     Graham Greene

Hampstead Heath, | Broiling gently. May 22[1929]

Dear Hugh,

You set me a terrible task. I know what I should get & if you would like to give me the money & thus save yourself wearing perplexity – But your lines of liking I do not know any longer. For
instance do you care at all for literary criticism – if so there is nothing better than
Avowals
by George Moore (Heinemann, 10/6). Or do you like biography –
François Villon
by D. B. Wyndham Lewis is good (Gerald Howe, 12/6?). Or travel in weird places
The Magic Island
(Seabrooke, about 12/6, publisher I’m not sure of) is an interesting work telling of black magic & Voodoo worship in Haiti.
⁴
Did you like
A Path to Rome
? Belloc’s
The Voyage of the Nona
, a bit of everything, travel, sailing, criticism, a medley, is good & can be got in Constable’s charming 3/6 series. Of novels I have read few that I like better than Joseph Hergesheimer’s
Tampico
, scene Mexico.
⁵
Do you like Aldous Huxley? You ought to try him –
Mortal Coils
Phoenix Library, 3/6, is a good introduction to him. Or
Chrome Yellow
if you don’t mind a novel without a plot.

The town sounds lovely.
⁶
If the novel proves a best seller we must visit you. Next month we go to a Musicale in Mayfair! given by my American publisher, which necessitates the buying of tails, alas! Write again of your experiences & how life is with you.

Love,
     Graham

8 Heathcroft. | Hampstead Way N.W. 11 [28 June 1929]

Dear Hugh,

So many thanks for your letter. I’m very glad you liked the book. It’s selling fairly well & gone into a second impression. I’ve had very
good reviews so far in
The Times, Times Lit Supp., Sunday Times, Bystander, Piccadilly
(with photo!),
Spectator
&
Daily Telegraph
. The provincial papers have been inclined to sniff. We went to a terribly grand party at the American publishers the day before publication, with people like the Duchess of Devonshire, Rudyard Kipling etc. floating about. We drank a lot of champagne & felt happy.

[…]

8 Heathcroft, | Hampstead Way, | N.W. 11.

[postmark: 3 July 1929]

Dear Raymond,

[…] The book continues to sell well – about 5,000 have gone & Heinemann hope to keep it going through the autumn & are optimistic of 15,000–20,000. What a joke! How is the world fooled! But most amusing of all – I lunched with my managing director yesterday & he is preparing to give me a fixed yearly salary, in advance of royalties, of say six hundred in order that I may do nothing but write. No binding conditions. Just a book when I feel like it!

Summer in England & winter in the South of France seem within reach. He has to discuss the plan with Doran of USA & I hear their decision next week. Apparently they did this for many years with H. M. Tomlinson until he became a best seller with
Gallion’s Reach
.
⁷

How is your throat? Have you yet had your operation? We are very sad that Charlotte didn’t come & see us as she half promised. Love to you & her from both of us,
     Graham

P.S. First editions have gone up to 15/-!

An American expatriate, Glenway Wescott
(1901
–87) established himself as one of the most promising talents of the 1920 s with his second novel
The Grandmothers (1927),
set in the midwest. He wrote to congratulate Graham Greene on
The Man Within.

8, Heathcroft, | Hampstead Way, | N.W. 11. | October 11 [1929]

Dear Mr Wescott,

Thank you very much indeed for your kind & generous letter. Your praise is particularly valuable to me as I both know & admire your work. Hitherto I have been haunted by the ominous silence of all those whose opinion I respect, while listening to a chorus of praise from those whose ideas & beliefs I have always despised.

Are you ever in London? Because I should very much like to meet you.

Yours sincerely,
     Graham Greene

8 Heathcroft, | Hampstead Way, N.W. 11 [23 January 1930]

Dear Hugh,

What a bore! That O.U.D.S. is
Macbeth
, I mean. I don’t care for the Bard when he’s being all Bardic. And all the Scotch business. I always feel it was written at the command of Queen Victoria. The Bard at Balmoral. ‘This castle hath a pleasant seat.’ And Bertie – OUR PRINCE – acting Macbeth at private theatricals in kilts. His mother – the dear Queen – so liked to see his knees.

However, how I do ramble on. I suppose it’s because I’m feeling so autumnal. Youth gone. Garrulous. Yes, but then Donne is such a comfort isn’t he? ‘No Spring nor Summer’s beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one Autumnal face.’
⁸
– however, as I was saying,
would you be a dear & get us two seats for the first night if possible, the Wednesday if not? Somewhere central between the second & sixth row of stalls? Directly tickets are available? Then let me know how much & on my honour you shall have a cheque by return of post.

Of course, easily the best talkie to date seems to me to be
Atlantic
. Wonderful & quite throbbing.
Hallelujah
is also good, but not to my mind comparable.
⁹
And of course it puzzles me that you like
Java Head
¹⁰
better than ‘Tampico.’ A very good book, I grant, but rather encrusted.

Oh yes, & that reminds me. If the sea is reasonably low I go to Coblenz to-morrow.

Yesterday we went & had lunch & tea at the Windmill Press, Heinemann’s works in Surrey. A wonderful building, & they just let us choose a book each to take away with us.

Love,
     Graham

The Name of Action
, Graham’s second published novel, is set in Trier. With the manuscript nearly complete, he headed for Germany, hoping to reinvigorate his impressions of the country
.

8. Heathcroft |Hampstead Way. N.W.11 [2 February 1930]

Dearest Mumma,

We so much enjoyed having you & Da to tea the other day.

I got back from Germany on Tuesday morning. Going I spent the night in the train between Ostend & Cologne. After Cologne, where I changed, the sun rose just as the train came alongside the Rhine, the water becoming the colour of this paper.
¹¹
There was also
a ruined castle on a hill at the exact psychological moment, the whole affair being too like a stage back cloth for words. I spent one night at Coblenz, explored in the morning & evening, & in the afternoon walked across the river & out into the country behind Ehrenbreitstein.
¹²
The French have gone now. It was apparently Carnival time, & all the hotels were having masked balls, females in masks & fancy dress disappearing coyly into lighted doorways from round dark corners.

After Mass next day I took the train to Trier, a lovely journey following the Moselle. Trier of course was beautiful, & I spent the night there. It’s the loveliest place I’ve ever been to; it has a curious emotional effect on me every time I see it. I think it must have been my home in a previous incarnation. I had to drag myself away in the morning to Luxembourg. I had lunch there & came back by a night boat from Dunkirque. It was an awful crossing. I’ve never heard such wind. Every time a wave hit the boat it was like a collision & the whole boat shook. I wasn’t ill though.

[…]

The Name of Action
was published on
6
October 1930. Reviews were negative and sales bad
.

8 Heathcroft. | Hampstead Way. | N.W. 11| October 20[1930]

Dearest Mumma,

Many thanks for your card. I hope Michael Sadleir
¹³
will prove quotable. So far
The Times
is the only valuable review I’ve had. All very depressing.
The Oxford Mail’s
(C.F. I presume is Fenby,
¹⁴
the editor) is the most understanding review, I think, I’ve ever had, but it cuts no ice. I’m getting tired of kind friends who tell me they like
this, but of course they much prefer the other!!
The Man Within
, I’m convinced, is a moderately bad book, while this, I’m equally certain, is a moderately good one. I don’t agree with you about Elizabeth in the other. I don’t think she’s a character at all, but a sentimental complex. But though I sez it as shouldn’t I think Anne-Marie Demassener quite adorable!

There was a painted old woman I used to see occasionally wandering about Oxford, rather a revolting spectacle. I used to wonder who she was. Now she’s suddenly cropped up in the form of Lady Ottoline Morrell & invited us to tea. It appears that Aldous Huxley recommended her to read
The Man Within!
The bugbear again! I’m beginning to hate the sound of it!

[…]

The literary hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell
(
1
873
–1938) became a friend and supporter of Graham in the early years of his career. Sometimes cruelly drawn, her portrait appears in novels by D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh. Graham modelled the sympathetic character of Lady Caroline in
It’s a Battlefield (1934)
on her.
¹⁵

at The British Library | Nov. 15 [1930]

Dear Hugh,

Forgive a. these tardy good wishes & b. the pencil. I have practically speaking no money & therefore can send you no present. I hope by Christmas that I shall be better off & be able to give you two in one. You find me, as it were, deeply engaged working on my magnum opus, ‘Strephon: The Life of the Second Earl of Rochester’ – that is to say I am waiting in patience while half a dozen books of varying shades of indecency are brought to me. I’ve forgotten my ink so I can’t go on with my third novel – now 1/7th [?] done!