Graham Greene (35 page)

A friend of Graham’s, Hansi Lambert was the widow of Baron Lambert of the Belgian branch of the Rothschild family. She maintained a glamorous salon in Brussels, inviting scientists, artists, writers and politicians. When Greene decided to research a novel in the Congo, he turned to her for advice
.

C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 15th September 1958

Dear Hansi,

I wonder if you can help me. I want for the purposes of a book to spend some weeks in a hospital of the Schweitzer kind in West Africa or Central Africa (because already I have a certain knowledge of the background), but run by a religious Order. I have found a leper hospital in Bamaco,
¹
but this is the Sahara which I don’t know and it is run by nuns and I wouldn’t feel at ease with them! It occurred to me that there might be some place in the Belgian Congo. If you could help me I would be very grateful.

Love,
     Graham

Lambert directed Graham to Dr Michel Lechat (b
. 1927),
who in
1950
had attended a dinner she gave in honour of the novelist. In 1951, he bicycled about the central part of the Belgian Congo distributing sulphone, the first drug effective against leprosy. By 1958, accompanied by his wife, the artist Edith Dasnoy, he was operating a leprosy clinic at a religious mission at Yonda. In the years that followed, Lechat became one of the world’s preeminent authorities on the disease.
²

C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 7th October 1958

Dear Docteur Lechat,

It was extraordinarily kind of you to write to me in such detail about Yonda and the other leprosy stations. Your letter contains all the information that I need. In principle what I should like to do would be to come out and stay at Yonda for some weeks towards the end of January if you would allow me to. Then if I had not got all that I required at Yonda I might be able to visit one of the other stations by the Mission boat. I am just off to Cuba so I hope you will forgive this hurried note. I will write to you again when I return and ask your advice as to what clothes to bring. I have never visited the Belgian Congo but I have always wanted to and was at one time nearly stationed there during the war. It would be a delight, too, to renew my acquaintance with you.

Again a thousand thanks for writing so fully and interestingly,

Yours sincerely,
     Graham Greene

P.S. I will try and see Dr. Franck when I am passing through New York on my way back from Cuba. He sounds at any rate an interesting character.
³

24th October 1958.

Dear Hugh,

I sent you the rather cryptic message by Mrs Young because I don’t think it is realised at all in England the feeling created amongst the Cubans by the British government’s sale of jet planes to Batista. As you know I was there for some weeks last November and the change in Cuba between then and now is very striking. Castro has really succeeded in cutting communications inside the island to a minimum and his bands now are not only in control of the greater part of Oriente (capital Santiago) which is the largest state and from which a third of the revenue derives, but he also has stepped up operations throughout the island. For instance last November it was possible for me to motor to Cienfuegos, the naval port, and Trinidad, but now no car driver would take one more than a very few miles outside Havana itself. The murder of hostages by the government is an almost daily occurrence – bodies are found flung out by the wayside, and the activities of Captain Ventura,
⁴
the chief torturer of the Batista police, have been stepped up. Considering that Batista never came to power by constitutional means but by a coup d’état makes it all the more unreasonable, one would think, for the British government to supply planes for the bombing of his own population.

Two years ago Castro landed with a few men of whom only 8 survived to get into the mountains with him.
⁵
Last November conservative estimates of his forces were between 800 and 1200. This November his supporters would claim 15,000 and the sceptical would put the figure round 7,000. As one Cuban said to me, there is hardly a family in Havana who has not lost one member at the hands of the Secret Police.

Under the circumstances if only to prevent anti-British feeling on the part of the man who is likely to be the next ruler of Cuba, cannot you raise some opposition to the sale of these planes in the House of Commons?

This is rather a hurried note as I only got back from Havana two hours ago.

Yours ever,
     Graham

Delargy, the Labour MP for Thurrock, working on a tip from Graham’s friends in Cuba, later challenged the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs about a rumoured shipment of
100
tons of rockets from a British port. The Minister hotly denied the claim
.
⁶

C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 27th October 1958

Dear Dr. Lechat,

I hope you will excuse me writing to you again in English, but my French is too poor to write in that language. I have just got back from Havana and New York where I was able to see Dr. Franck. A fascinating study! I went also to two exhibitions of his pictures which turned out – a little to my surprise – to be of extraordinary interest. He spoke very warmly of you and of your station and confirmed my desire to visit you. My problem is when? I am just starting a film script of my last book with Carol Reed and I don’t expect to finish it until early in the New Year. I gather from Dr. Franck that the time I proposed – the end of January – is about the worst period possible because of the rains. On the other hand I would like to see something of ‘the worst period’. Ideally speaking for my purpose I would like to come a little before the end of the rains and stay on into the beginning of the dry weather. In all perhaps about six weeks, if this would enable me to visit also
Imbonga and Wafanya by boat. Would such a long period be asking too much of your hospitality and the hospitality of the other Missions? I warn you that I shall be a rather nervous observer as disease is always a little upsetting to me perhaps because I have been too lucky in my own health until now.

[…]

The book that I have in mind has a leper mission purely as a background and I have no intention, I promise you, of producing a roman à clef. Indeed the reason why I want to visit all three missions if that be possible is to produce some kind of composite picture which will not be a portrait of any one of them. Nor am I looking for any dramatic material. The more normal and routine-like that I can make the background the more effective it would be for my purpose.

I hope you are having a successful stay in Tokyo and I hope very much that I shall be meeting you at Yonda in the fairly near future.

Yours very sincerely,
     Graham Greene

Samuel Marshak
(1887
–1964) was a prominent children’s writer and poet in the Soviet Union. In this letter addressed to Marshak at the Union of Writers, where it would have been opened by the authorities and its contents noted, Greene offers discreet advice to the Soviet leadership on the treatment of Boris Pasternak (1890–1960), who had been awarded the Nobel Prize five days earlier. He initially accepted the prize but under extreme pressure declined it on
29
October. Expelled from the Union of Writers, he became the object of persecution, and his last two years were spent in misery
.

28th October 1958

Dear Mr. Marshak,

[…]

Oh dear, oh dear. I wish that some of your authorities – and perhaps not the most important authorities – had not behaved so impetuously over the award of the Nobel Prize to Mr. Pasternak. I
have just finished reading
Dr Zhivago
and with all its faults as a novel it seems to me undoubtedly the work of a great writer. What a wonderful propaganda it would have been to the West if the award of the Prize had been welcomed in Russia, for surely the Revolution now is strong enough to recognize such work even though some of the ideas may not be welcome. For me the ideas were very welcome because it seemed to me a constructive and not a destructive book. So many of the speeches could have been put into the mouth of Father Zosima or Alyosha. I still hope this will turn out that it was only the minor functionaries who have turned against the award and that the Russian Government will put them in their place and welcome it.

Yours sincerely,
     Graham Greene

Hotel Metropole, | Brighton, | Nov. 15 [1958?]

Dear Michael,

[…]

Sorry you weren’t able to see Anita. It’s more than a month since I heard from her. She doesn’t even acknowledge house payments from Switzerland – or the play. A strange girl. I won’t ring up in case a stranger is now installed & I don’t feel I can write again. I wrote very warmly & was quite prepared to work out an arrangement, but I can’t
pester
the girl. If you see or write her, you can indicate that she’s still, unfortunately, in the blood stream & I’m quite unable to look for a successor. If only she’d taken a week’s holiday in London, but I expect she’s found a satisfactory successor. Anyway she’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, & my only regret is losing her.

[…]

Sitwell wrote Graham a wildly enthusiastic letter about
Our Man in Havana
on
15
November 1958. She added: ‘Osbert and I are horrified to hear of your proposed sojourn among the lepers. But we feel you ought to have a little preliminary experience, think of us as moral lepers, and come here on your way.’

C.6 Albany, | London, W.1. | 20th November 1958

Dear Edith,

Thank you very much for your long and encouraging letter. I am so glad you liked the book – this is rather more than I can say myself. I hope the film will be better. I have been working very hard on it the last three weeks with Carol Reed and now we are off to Spain to do the second draft in a more suitable atmosphere than Brighton.

I will try and get hold of the book you mention
⁷
as very much against my will I have got to read all I can stomach about lepers before I go to the Congo. I will really try hard to come to Montegufoni
⁸
on my way. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Sabena comes down in Rome on the way to Leopoldville.

I have only been in one slight earthquake in the West Indies, but I felt sick for the rest of the day. I hope it didn’t affect you and Osbert like that.

My love to both of you,
     Graham

15th December 1958

Dear Dr. Lechat,

You must forgive this rain of letters. I am not yet certain of when I can come to Yonda as it depends partly on a clean bill of health (I suspect that I may have a little ulcer trouble, though I think this is simply psychosomatic due to very heavy work during the last year). It also depends on when the rehearsals of a new play are likely to begin. It seems to me useless to come to the Belgian Congo for less than 6 weeks and therefore I have to await the right opportunity. But still in principle I want to make it by mid-February. Directly I know for certain I will write as you suggest to Monseigneur Vermeiren.
⁹

Please don’t worry at all about my comfort. I can assure you that after three months years ago in Liberia and fifteen months during a war in Sierra Leone and nearly a year in all acting as a correspondent in Indo-China I don’t expect, while gathering material, to live in grand hotels! My only fear is that I will be a trouble to you and your wife and I will certainly be a trouble if you take any special measures for my comfort. I want to see things as they are.

I want to reassure you about the subject of the novel. The real subject of the novel is a theological and psychological argument, which, for reasons I can’t go into for fear of destroying this still nebulous idea, should take place against a background of an African hospital settlement. If I can visit other stations besides Yonda there will be no danger of my composite picture being attributed to any one station.

Thank you so much for your advice about clothes etc. and I do
hope that I shall be on your doorstep in February. All my best wishes for Christmas to you and your family.

Yours very sincerely,
     Graham Greene

Yonda, | Feb. 4. [1959] | 7.30 a.m.

Dearest Mumma, Thank you so much for your letter. I had rather a chequered journey here. Held up for five hours by fog in London airport. Then taken across country by bus to Gatwick, & arrived in Brussels six hours late
without
my luggage. However it came the next day, but my plane
from
Brussels was 22 hours late in leaving! Then a good journey.

Leopoldville a dull modern city of apartment houses 14 storeys high – not like Africa at all. I was met by a Government Official & had a very crowded day. I tried to get a siesta during the afternoon, but I had no sooner lain down naked than there was a knock on the door. I put a towel round my waist & opened it to a young woman with so bad a stammer & so nervous that it took several minutes before I could find out what she wanted. Her husband wanted me to come to a meal but was afraid of asking me, so he’d sent his wife.
¹⁰
I lay down again: more knocks: a journalist this time: lay down – more knocks – two journalists & a camera.
¹¹
I got to bed finally at 12 & was woken at 3.30 a.m. to catch my plane here.

Met by Dr. Lechat, a very nice & amusing young man with quite a pretty wife who paints. I have some meals with them & some with the Fathers in whose house I have a room. I get up at 6.45 for breakfast, then walk down a little way to the bank of the Congo –
good for meditation: at 10 it begins to be too hot for much & stays so till about 5 p.m. when I get another stroll.