The Life of Graham Greene (1939-1955) Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Illustrations

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Seeking Greene

  Before the War: 1904–1939

  PART 1 – War

  1. Rumours at Nightfall

  2. Enter Dorothy

  3. The Ministry and the Glory

  4. The Blitz

  5. The Destructors

  6. Trivial Comedies, Shallow Tragedies

  PART 2 – Africa

  7. School for Spies

  8. Return to Africa

  9. The Soupsweet Land

  10. Our Man in Freetown

  11. A Mad Cook, a Suicide and a Nest of Toads

  PART 3 – The Long War Ending

  12. Carving Brighton Rock

  13. Agents Three: Greene, Muggeridge and Philby

  14. From Spy to Publisher

  15. The Unquiet Peace

  PART 4 – Time of Catherine

  16. The Heart of the Matter

  17. The Third Man and Other Friends

  18. Love as a Fever

  19. Private Wars

  20. A Vulgar Success

  21. Boston Tea Party

  22. Wildly, Crazily, Hopelessly

  PART 5 – The Death Seeker

  23. War of the Running Dogs

  24. Bonjour Saigon

  25. Interlude on Elsewhere

  26. A Crown of Thorns

  27. A Quiet American

  28. Innocence Abroad

  29. Death in rue Catinat

  PART 6 – To America with Love

  30. Visa Not for Sale

  31. Drama and the Man

  32. Among the Mau Mau

  33. No Man Is Neutral

  34. The Honourable Correspondent and the Dishonourable Friend

  35. White Night in Albany

  Picture Section

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The years from 1939 to 1955 proved to be the most prolific of Graham Greene's life. In The Life of Graham Greene, Volume II, Norman Sherry continues his engrossing account, delving deeply and emerging with a portrait of the author at the height of both his spying and literary careers. Greene produced some of his best novels during this time – The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, The Quiet American – and saw the filming of The Fallen Idol and The Third Man. The same period encompasses his passionate affair with the beautiful American Catherine Watson, who was married to a British peer, the disintegration of his marriage, his long relationship with Dorothy Glover, his activities as a secret agent and his forays into the conflicts in Kenya, Malaya, and French Indo-China. As with The Life of Graham Greene, Volume I: 1904-1939, Norman Sherry succeeds in unlocking the mystery of Greene’s character and the alchemic nature of his creative genius.

  About the Author

  Norman Sherry, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Mitchell Distinguished Professor of Literature at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, was already an accomplished biographer when Graham Greene, having read Professor Sherry’s work on Joseph Conrad, asked a mutual friend to introduce them. Greene was impressed by Professor Sherry’s method of ‘literary detection’, and their meeting resulted in Greene asking Professor Sherry to write his authorised biography, an exhausting but fascinating task which has resulted in The Life of Graham Greene, Volumes 1, 2 and 3.

  Professor Sherry’s books on Conrad, Conrad’s Eastern World, Conrad’s Western World, and Conrad and His World, are, thirty years after their publication, still quoted by scholars as the standard texts on Joseph Conrad. Professor Sherry honed his skills as a biographer with Charlotte and Emily Brontë and Jane Austen.

  Professor Sherry received an Edgar Allan Poe Award for The Life of Graham Greene, Volume One: 1904–1939. The Life of Graham Greene, Volume Two: 1939–1955 was designated as ‘One of the best eleven books of 1995’ by the editorial staff of the New York Times Book Review, who confirmed their admiration by featuring Volume Two in Books of the Century: A Hundred Years of Authors, Ideas, and Literature (1998).

  Illustrations

  PLATES

  1Greene with the Finnish edition of Brighton Rock

  2London in the blitz

  3–414 North Side before it was hit by a bomb and shored up afterwards

  5 Greene in London, 1945

  6Catherine Walston’s christening

  7Dorothy Glover and Harry Walston

  8Greene at the City hotel in Freetown, Sierra Leone

  9Freetown

  10–12Agents three: Graham Greene, Kim Philby and Malcolm Muggeridge

  13Carol Reed discussing a script with Graham Greene

  14The giant Ferris wheel in Vienna

  15A kiosk entrance to the Viennese sewers

  16Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles in The Third Man

  17Greene with François Mauriac

  18Correcting The Heart of the Matter at Thriplow

  19Catherine Walston

  20Catherine Walston, Greene’s ‘Bacall profile’

  21Greene on Capri

  22Greene and Catherine at Anacapri

  23Greene with John Hayward at Thriplow

  24Norman Douglas with Graham Greene

  25Greene at Achill, County Mayo

  26Greene and Catherine on Capri

  27The Elsewhere, Alexander Korda’s yacht

  28Alexander Korda with Graham Greene

  29With Catherine aboard the Elsewhere at Antibes

  30Catherine as barber

  31In Malaya with Major McGregor Cheers and two gurkhas

  32The Continental Palace hotel in Saigon

  33In an opium fumerie

  34–5On patrol with French troops at Phat Diem

  36René Berval’s apartment on rue Catinat

  37Phuong and René Berval with their black dog

  38Larry Allen, the original for Granger

  39Greene with Colonel Leroy and Leo Hochstetter

  40The bell tower at Phat Diem

  41Phat Diem: ‘The canal was full of bodies’

  42A ceremony at the Cao Dai temple

  43Dedan Kimathi, leader of the Mau Mau

  44Greene at a wild animal farm in Kenya

  45–7Death in rue Catinat: the massive bomb explosion outside the Continental Palace hotel

  48Greene in Saigon with the Mathieu sisters

  49The bishop of Phat Diem and Trevor Wilson

  50Charlie and Oona Chaplin with Catherine Walston and Graham Greene at Vevey

  51Our Man in Havana

  LINE ILLUSTRATIONS

  Greene’s identity card for Sierra Leone

  Greene and Douglas Jerrold at Eyre & Spottiswoode

  The giant Ferris wheel in Vienna

  General de Lattre de Tassigny

  Greene on stage with Eric Portman and Dorothy Tutin during rehearsals for The Living Room

  PICTURE CREDITS

  Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material. The publishers apologise if inadvertently any sources remain unacknowledged.

  Associated Press, pl. 43; British Film Institute, pl. 16; Larry Burrows/LIFE Magazine/© Time Warner Inc., pl. 13; Bonte Duran, pl. 19 (studio portrait by Harlip); Carole Foote, pls. 14, 15, 36, 41, 42; Special Collections Division, Georgetown University Library, Washington D.C., pls. 1 (photograph by Douglas Glass, © J.C.C. Glass), 10, 21 (photograph by Islay Lyons), 23, 24 (photograph by Islay Lyons), 25, 27, 34 (Leitation Photos);
Graham Greene, pls. 8, 9, 18, 22 (photograph by Islay Lyons), 26 (photograph by Islay Lyons), 29, 30, 31, 35, 37, 40, 44, 48, 49, 50; Vivien Greene, pl. 4; Genevieve Hochstetter, pl. 39; Hulton Deutsch Collection, pls. 2, 11, 12 and image here; Copyright © J-P Kernot, pl. 5 (photograph by Bill Brandt); Michael Korda, pl. 28; Tom Peck, pls. 38, 45–7; William Scanlan, Jnr., pl. 32; Peter Stackpole/LIFE Magazine/© Time Warner Inc., pl. 51; Belinda Straight, pl. 20 (studio portrait by Harlip); Sud-Est Asiatique July 1951, pl. 33; the Reverend Vincent Turner, pl. 6; Oliver Walston, pl. 7.

  for

  Max Senyi, a great bookman

  Harry Smith, a true gentleman

  Ian Watt, a superb scholar

  The Life of Graham Greene

  Volume Two: 1939–1955

  Norman Sherry

  If anybody ever tries to write a biography of me, how complicated they are going to find it and how misled they are going to be.

  – GRAHAM GREENE

  Seeking Greene

  As this work bears down quickly on the twentieth year, I am aware of the expense of spirit, and of the difficulties of transforming raw research into a life, but the compensation for this biographical endeavour lies in those serendipitous discoveries which, for one crazy moment, bring fate to heel.

  Whilst recognising that Greene still has that splinter of ice in the heart, remaining elusive, aloof, and inaccessible, I am seeking in the period following (1939–55) to move from his public reputation to an understanding of his inner vulnerabilities. Numerous and extensive interviews, as well as a study of his letters, diaries, journals and major novels, force a central question to the surface: why was life so impossible for Greene? Why was suicide a constant thought? Herein lies the paradox: that this author, thought by many to be the greatest novelist of his generation, and also the most successful (his books have sold more than twenty million copies and have been translated into over forty languages), should yet suffer from a despair that seemed beyond success, beyond money. At the height of his fame as a writer, and at the height of his grand passion for Lady Walston, he was suicidal. Sometimes he set the date for death, saving up his sleeping pills because he wanted a termination point for his unhappiness. Although he did not succeed in committing suicide, the fact remains that Greene had a formidable desire for self-annihilation.

  Clearly, the territory of his mind was radically different from that revealed in Volume One. He suffered from a deep-seated personal disturbance, a fall in spirit of an unalterable intensity, a kind of plague spot.

  During this period Greene produced his known masterpieces – The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair – novels which have a strong religious dimension and are conspicuous in providing us with a sense of human isolation, passion and death. It is a world where his scapegoat heroes have a capacity for damnation; where the flames of Hell seem to touch them; where others seem destined for Purgatory, and where some seem to be, in spite of their sins, candidates for sainthood. For the biographer, these novels are a rich mine, and if he can dig deep, striking that which is soft and that which is granite in Greene’s nature, he will be probing secrets that reveal the painful nature of Greene’s existence.

  Greene was a professional spy, working during the Second World War for MI6. By nature he was the perfect spy; he was an intensely secretive man. His whole life remained a mystery even to those closest to him: his brothers, Herbert, Raymond and Hugh, didn’t understand him; his mother and sister Molly were often mystified by him and even his favourite sister Elisabeth, loved and trusted by Greene, admitted to me that her favourite brother was not easily understood. His family were earthbound before his leaping mind.

  Who understood Greene? His wife? Shrewd as her comments were, he did not release his spirit to her. His mistress Dorothy Glover? Definitely not. His greatest love Catherine Walston? If anyone knew him, surely she did. His love for her was a fever: to her he confessed – but only selectively.

  Greene remained a mystery because the masks he wore, except with intimates, were very real and necessary to him. In the 1950s when he went to various sleazy night clubs and strip joints, he would present a business card which had printed on it the name of one of his characters. Two of the cards he used bore the names Major Scobie (The Heart of the Matter) and Mr Tench (The Power and the Glory).

  In life he was not willing to allow full entrance even to those familiar with his secret life. A man who would write two versions in his diary was not a man who would give up easily the secrets of his existence. When Greene was a leading contender for the Book Society award for Stamboul Train, he went to London while the committee was in session. Two separate pages covered the events of the same day giving two different versions. Greene intended to destroy the first, true version (and in part did) and replace it with the more conventional version. I believe his Vietnam diaries were also doctored, so I fancy it was not an unusual habit.

  In one version, after learning that he had won the award, he finishes his day by writing a poem and then goes quietly to bed. The first version begins in the same way: ‘Caught 7.15 to London’ – but adds that he telegraphed ‘A’ to expect him at 6.15 in the evening (this was Annette, one of two prostitutes he often visited when on business in London). We know no more since the rest of the original version has been torn out of the diary – only carelessness allowed this fragment to survive – but it seems likely that his evening was not spent as quietly as his rewritten version suggests.

  His love-life included many lovers. Its essentially painful nature was revealed at the end of a weekend I spent with Greene at his sister’s. Early on Sunday morning, Elisabeth left us at the railway station in Tunbridge Wells and we waited quite alone on the platform. Greene suddenly told me in his clipped, slightly hoarse voice that he’d heard his wife intended to write a book about their marriage (they had been separated for many years). However, once Greene had said that, his face took on a look of total dismay, and he opened his mouth and sang high-pitched from an old music-hall song: ‘Shovel the dust on the old man’s coffin and take up your pen and write.’ He sang with such melancholy that I stood the entranced spectator of another’s mortal sadness.

  Between the completion of the first volume of his life (1989) and the writing of the second Greene died, joining what he once called ‘the dignified and disciplined ranks of the dead’. My hope is, at the end of the second volume, that readers will be able to say: this was a living man, described as many knew him, as I knew him. Greene is a literary creature of our historical period, revealing it and yet, in an extraordinary way, as typical of it as Churchill. I want to be able to say: here is the public man but here also is the tormented private man unadulterated. I have not, to repeat what Boswell said of Johnson, cut off his claws, nor made this tiger a cat.

  N.S.

  San Antonio, Texas

  1994

  Before the War, 1904–1939

  Born in Berkhamsted on 2 October 1904, the fourth of six children, Henry Graham Greene entered the cloistered world of upper-middle-class Edwardian society. His father, Charles Greene, headmaster of Berkhamsted School, was a man of sharp intelligence and naïve innocence. His mother, Marion, though somewhat remote in character, offered her children security and confidence. Although sheltered, the knowledge of death came early to Greene. He remembered how his sister’s dead pug was carried home beside him in the baby carriage and recollected witnessing a suicide.

  Greene was an odd child, given to nightmares and strange imaginings, painfully sensitive, and very shy. These qualities were an affliction when he moved from his family’s home at School House to become a boarder at Berkhamsted. His shyness and physical awkwardness prevented him from excelling at games, and the total absence of solitude made life beyond the green baize door, that separation between home and school, unbearable for him.

  His subsequent breakdown was brought about by a boy only three months older than himself – Lionel Carter, who looked even younger and more inoffensive. Beneath that
look of innocence lay Carter’s recognition of the conflict between Greene’s need to be loyal to his father and his desire to befriend the boys of his school. Carter was like some dark magician able to shut down Greene’s contacts, halt friendships, put barriers around him, so that on entering the classroom Greene experienced mockery from the chorus of Carter’s friends.

  Greene was different from the pack. He had a funny voice, with a bit of a lisp; he was the headmaster’s son who could be suspected of being a spy and driven out. Isolated, disliked, distrusted, and fearing humiliation, Greene saw death as a release from an impossible situation and the only way of escape was self-injury. He first tried to saw open his knee and, when that failed, swallowed different potions in order to poison himself, including hyposulphite, hay-fever drops, a whole tin of hair pomade, and even a bottle of eye-drops. He picked the deadly nightshade plant and survived after eating it. When nothing else worked, he took fourteen aspirins and swam in the school pool. He recalled his legs feeling like lead – but he did not drown. He did not know then, but he had found his theme for his greatest novels and stories: ‘In the lost boyhood of Judas / Christ was betrayed.’

  Charles Greene sent his disturbed son to a London psychoanalyst, Kenneth Richmond, and the six months Greene spent under Richmond had a profound effect on him. Richmond and his wife, Zoe, were Jungian psychologists, spiritualists, and involved in the London literary community. They presented Greene with his first experience of a family environment where every issue was open to conversation and debate. Under Richmond’s influence Greene explored the darker side of human nature and acquired his first literary contacts.

  On his return to Berkhamsted, Greene was surer of himself and became rigorously keen in his observations, a characteristic which helped to distinguish him as a novelist. In 1922 he went up to Oxford, to Balliol College, where he revelled in the escape from the conventionality of his middle-class home. He was a founder of the Mantichorean Society, the exploits of which included a number of episodes in disguise, and one in particular when he and his friend Claud Cockburn disguised themselves as organ-grinders and went unrecognised even in Berkhamsted. These escapades reflected Greene’s obsessive need to flee from the creeping boredom of everyday life.