The Man with the Golden Typewriter (23 page)

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

Replying to Howard from Goldeneye on Richard Chopping's final dust jacket for
From Russia with Love
, Fleming was impressed.

Feb 4 – perhaps [sic]

My dear Michael,

I think the jacket's really splendid. Many thanks & congratulations. We ought to win some sort of a prize.

Have done nearly 40,000 of No 6. No idea what it's like. Set near Jamaica, called DOCTOR NO, I think. A simple tale. It shouldn't be longer than 60, you'll be glad to hear.

The policemen stationed round the property for the Edens have carved “WELCOME SIR ANTHONY” on all my trees. Who do I sue?

Greetings to all I'm working for in Bed. Sq.

Any news of anything?

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

Howard did indeed have news – to whit, Fleming's books had sold more than a million copies worldwide.

20th Feb, 1957

Dear Michael,

Many thanks for your advices.

For your ads, how about:-

“IAN FLEMING has written 4 books in 4 years. They have sold over one million copies in the English language. They have been translated into a dozen languages, including Chinese & URDU.

No. 5 is called FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (It will probably not be translated into Russian). Jonathan Cape etc.”

Just my ego at work! Al Hart has sold the Chinese, Thai & Urdu rights! With his & paperback figures & yours & world books & Pan – well over the mill!

However.

Back about March 14. One more chapter of No to go!

Forgive scrawl.

TO ANN, from the Hotel El Minzah, Tangier

In a gossip-strewn missive Fleming gave his wife the lowdown on Tangier and his progress on
The Diamond Smugglers
. The emphasis on ‘pansies' and ‘buggers' possibly reflects more the milieu in which Ann moved – as did Fleming to a lesser extent – rather than any specific homophobia.

Saturday [Easter 1957]

My precious,

Your letters have been lovely and have sustained me here. I simply couldn't write before because my brains have been boiling over with writing about five thousand words a day – a terrific job. But it has been very exciting and the story is sensational – at least I think so. Please don't say a word about it or we may be stopped publishing.

This is a pretty dreadful place and the weather has been ghastly, freezing cold and constant wind. The paint is peeling off the town and the
streets are running with spit and pee and worse. The Arabs are filthy people and hate all Europeans. My life has revolved around a place called Dean's Bar, a sort of mixture between Wiltons and the porter's lodge at Whites. There's nothing but pansies and I have been fresh meat for them. David [Herbert] is a sort of Queen Mum. He calls himself Lord Herbert and has that in the telephone book. Says he can't get them to change it as they don't understand ‘honourable'. He's been very sweet to me but I'm fed up with buggers. Jimmy Smith has arrived with Diana Campbell-Gray and they are staying with David and getting thoroughly depressed by the weather and the stagnation. Francis Bacon is due next week to live with his pansy pianist friend who plays at a bogus Russian restaurant. Otherwise there is Ali [Forbes] who lives secretively with his girl and is rarely seen. He has been a solace to me and we have had meals and walks. He knows he can't write and asks me how to. Rather pathetic. He is very frank about his disabilities but desperately lazy and the only hope for him is to marry a rich woman. He knows he is unemployable. He's now being recalled to London for ‘consultations' and fears the worst. There's a new editor and Eade has resigned. He's going next Tuesday. He's really got a sort of death wish about his job. The girl is very beautiful – a softer Barbara [Skelton] and calls him ‘Papa'. [. . .] They have a very nice modern flat looking over the harbour and I was very privileged to be invited there for drinks. He's an endearing but hopeless character. I suggested he should put an advertisement in
The Times
: ‘Experienced nest-fowler offers services. Can make jokes and drive car into walls.'

My Zulu [Collard] is an exceedingly nice man and a great boon. The town is madly intrigued by us and we have laid a false trail about a coelacanth. We even thought of carrying around a mysterious tin canister into which he would drop worms from time to time. Even my secretary, a good girl with a drunken nose, is besieged with enquiries about us. We go for immense walks along the wet windy beaches and I collect shells while he stamps on the Portuguese men of war that litter the beaches. They make a loud bang.
³
Some nice shells including small Venus Ears . . . [remainder lost].

TO WILLIAM PLOMER

14th March, 1957

I am now back having completed a further stint on the behalf of English literature. It will require a great deal of tidying up before it is in adequate shape for your glazing eyes, but I will keep you informed of progress so that you can set aside the necessary two or three hours in the early summer.

Meanwhile, I came across this book in America and, as it comes from an obscure publisher, it occurred to me that it might have been missed over here.

The stories have a nice macabre touch in many cases but some suffer from the naivete which you will know so well from your Japanese existence.

On the other hand, it might get by as a curiosity and I told Michael Howard I would send you my copy, which herewith.

Please let us have lunch almost immediately.

TO WILLIAM PLOMER

Having warned Plomer that
Dr No
would shortly be upon him, he now handed in the MS for
The Diamond Smugglers
, which he provisionally titled
The Diamond Spy.

29th April, 1957

As I promised you in Lewes, here is another book for you to read.

It isn't very long – only about 40,000 words – but it will be bolstered up with plenty of dramatic photographs, maps, photostatic documents, etc.

There is no hurry for this so far as Capes are concerned, but what I really want, of course, is your view of the stuff.

It hasn't been read here yet but will be this week, and the plan is that we should serialise it in September.

This would allow Capes, if they were interested, to bring it out in time for Christmas, though probably not till early November as we would be wanting a clear run with it. Perhaps, in the circumstances, Capes would rather hold it over until later.

Anyway, please send me one of your enchanting judgments as soon as you can.

Incidentally, it is all absolutely true with the exception of the man's name, and it is very important that we should say nothing about it until September as we don't want to have an injunction slapped on us by De Beers or anyone else, so could you please ask the others also to keep the whole project under their hats whether they decide to publish it or not.

See you soon I hope.

TO WILLIAM PLOMER

7th May, 1957

A thousand thanks for the fat and cheering bulletin. How extraordinary about the Fugu. I must go to my Plomer shelf and look up the reference. Presumably you did not consume the sex glands.

All your comments on
The Diamond Spy
are noted and particularly the libel points which, of course, we will go into very carefully. I have already marked two passages for libel and I discussed them yesterday with Blaize [Collard] who is now reading the typescript with his old friend and booby, Sillitoe.

Incidentally, Blaize had a very unfortunate time at Monte Carlo. I gave him an infallible system which nearly broke him and when he did get a number “en plein” a French tart pinched his stake and he practically started a riot.

But curiously enough he is exactly as I have described him and an extraordinarily nice man.

I will keep your factory informed of progress with the series but you might ask them to let me have the typescript back as soon as possible as I shall need it to work on pretty thoroughly from now on.

My other opusculum will be coming to you around the end of this month – I hope not too soon to build up an allergy.

TO H. W. VALLANCE LODGE, ESQ., 4, Bloomsbury Square, W.C.1.

Having transferred his literary rights to Glidrose, Fleming sought to offload as many expenses as possible on to the company. In a letter to his accountant he tried, rather wildly, to explain why his latest sports car should qualify as a tax-deductible item.

12th June, 1957

Many thanks for your message and here is some ammunition which you may or may not care to use in reply to the Inspector of Taxes.

“It might be thought extravagant that the Company should have purchased a rather expensive sports car for Mr. Fleming in preference to a modest family saloon were it not for the nature of Mr. Fleming's highly successful books. These are Secret Service thrillers in which the hero and other characters make frequent use of fast cars and live in what might be described as “the fast car life”.

This may seem a far-fetched explanation but, in fact, the success of Mr. Fleming's books has depended in considerable measure on their verisimilitude and extracts from reviews, from The Times Literary Supplement downwards, and evidence of this literary virtue can be produced in quantity.

In order to write credibly about these things (and not incredibly as do some authors) Mr. Fleming's need of this sort of car has been accepted on condition that the Company bears only a proportion of its cost.

Apart from its use in England, Mr. Fleming has used the car on one Continental trip through Germany to the International Police Conference at Vienna in June 1956 and the circumstances of this journey will form the basis of one of his stories. [. . .]

In conclusion I might perhaps remark in regard to all Mr. Fleming's literary work that, although imagination plays a great part in the characters and plots, accurate reportage of things seen and experienced is the quintessence of their success and if the Company which owns his
manuscripts is to prosper, it will be necessary to foster the acquisition by Mr. Fleming of the necessary backgrounds and first-hand experiences with which to write his books, of which he has so far written six in six years, each with an entirely different setting for his plot.”

FROM WILLIAM PLOMER

18th June, 1957

My dear Ian,

I've greatly enjoyed
Doctor No
 – and so will, I hope, millions of other readers. A good brisk start, tension well maintained, Caribbean local colour most acceptable, wishful-erotic element, “physical exertion, mystery, & a ruthless enemy” all well up to standard – and
fresh
. In short, congratulations. I think my favourite moment is when Dr No taps his contact-lenses with his steel claws. (I've been practising with my Biro on my spectacles but it doesn't ring true.)
All
the detail is immensely enjoyable, & the trouble you take with it is
essential
.
I can't nag at you enough about the collection of fresh and precise & unusual detail when you are using what is, to some extent, a sort of plot-formula. But you know its importance & effectiveness as well as I do.

I got so fond of Dr No I was quite sorry to see him vanish under a mound of excreta. All that trouble of his for that! What a shower!

Very few adverse criticisms. I wondered if the dragon wasn't a bit pantomime-like, tending to produce hilarity instead of a frisson? Why wasn't the seizure of the table-knife & the lighter noticed? Why weren't they quickly missed? Wouldn't the wire spear in the trouser-leg be a bit inhibiting in the tube-climbing? And isn't the tube-climbing a bit reminiscent of
Moonraker
? Honeychile' (a spelling of which I disapprove) I regard as your Rima,
⁴
& the most attractive of your
leading ladies so far. I much regret the shrivelling up of the faithful Quarrel.

I enclose a list of small points. I notice there are more in the first half of the book than in the second, but I don't know whether this is because I read on in more & more excitement, or whether there are really fewer minutiae for me to carp at in the latter part of the book.

I now propose to hand over the typescript to Daniel. There is a smell of guano everywhere . . .

All best wishes for the greatest possible success of the book.

[PS] Isn't there some local slang word for a cross between a Chinese & a Negro? Or why not
invent
one? “Chinese Negro” doesn't sound quite right, somehow. What I shd. like wd. be some word like
dago
or
mestizo
 –
chigro
,
perhaps . . .?

TO WILLIAM PLOMER

19th June, 1957

I carefully weighed the envelope in my hand. If thin, it would mean two pages of exquisitely kind “not quite up to scratch”. If fat, then at least qualified approval plus the usual pages of corrections.

It was fat. With self denial I finished my breakfast and lit the first cigarette and then unfolded the green sheets, still with many qualms.

Now I am as sated as the wart hogs I visited at Whipsnade last night after their evening meal and the only hurdle that matters to me with these books has been scrambled over.

Of course I agree with all your comments and, in particular, chigro has entered the language.

I will attend to all the points you make but I think I am all right with the tarantulas whom I have carefully read up. I think we can assume that these are the South American variety, more puissant than your South African pets.

I had thought of a map of Crab Key and I'm sure it's a good idea if the Bedfordians agree.

I am ashamed to say I had forgotten the tube climbing in
Moonraker
and I will think of a way of altering at any rate the first lap.

I'm glad you liked Honeychild and relieved that you seem to have swallowed Doctor No. It is so difficult to make these villains frighten, like Fu Manchu and the other classical Schweinerei, but one is ashamed to over-write them, though that is probably what the public would like.