Books
Graham Greene through the Looking-Glass
Malcolm Muggeridge
The Other Man — Conversations with Graham Greene Marie-Francoise Allain (Bodley Head £6.95)
In her long dialogue with Graham Greene Mlle Allain serves him a series of well researched, shrewd questions, but the old maestro sends the ball whizzing back with unerring aim. So that, though the dialogue itself makes fascinating reading, GG's in- scrutability remains intact, as, indeed, it has all through a long, successful, nomadic life now nearing its eighties. Take this, for in- stance, very early on in their exchanges: 'Don't go on asking me to explain myself. I don't know myself, and I don't want to.' Or, later, this: 'Some time ago there was an article in The Spectator about The Quiet American, which said that it made little dif- ference whether I inclined to the Right or the Left, since what I truly detested was American liberalism. That wasn't far wrong.' Or this, in answer to Mlle Allain's observation that his own voice seems to give him little peace: 'That's true, especially at night. That's when failure stares me in the face. I've written some bad books, but I've also failed in charity, in compassion, and I've been cruel.'
I could go on and on quoting; all is set for him to lay bare his soul, and then it turns out that he has only unwrapped it. Besides, mixed up with his words of wisdom and words of fatuity, there is the great mystery of his boredom — something that has troubled him all his life. Why should he, who has written so many live sentences, find living so burdensome? Despite his restless travels, his great and deserved suc- cess as a writer, his many friends and ad- mirers, he would seem to go on experien- cing a mood well described by Dr Johnson in a letter to Mrs Thrale: All here is gloomy; a faint struggle with the tedium of time; a doleful confession of present misery, and the approach seen and felt of what is most dreaded and most shunned. But such is the lot of man.
As it happens, I have known GG for more than half a century, going back to visiting him in his house on Clapham Com- mon when he was living there with his wife Vivien and two small children, and in- cluding odd experiences like exploring Margate's Wonderland together, walking up and down by the Sea of Galilee and discussing the New Testament, and wander-
ing about in the London Blitz, when, as he explained, he had made all the necessary liturgical arrangements for a sudden death, leaving me feeling like a traveller in a first- class railway carriage without a ticket. I know of many acts of kindness and con- sideration on his part that he would blush to acknowledge, and can recall many agree- able encounters — for instance, in what used to be called the Authors' Club in Whitehall Court; a rather shabby little joint whose members' authorship credentials tended to be rather shaky. A club after GG's heart. A propos the recent reception of my wife and myself into the Catholic Church, he sent me a particularly touching note which I shall bequeath as a special treasure to my grandchildren.
Despite this long acquaintance, however, I should not be able to help much in elucidating Mlle Allain's conundrums, and I suspect no one could, least of all GG himself. Is his face a mask? Or is his mask a face? I don't know. When, for instance, he seemed to justify Kim Philby's treasonable activities, was it because he really admired them, or just a rather elaborate practical joke? He is given to practical joking, sometimes on an elaborate scale, perhaps as masking a temperamental shortage of broad Falstaffian or Rabelaisian humour.
The theme of Philby inevitably arose in the dialogue with Mlle Allain. Did GG not think, she asks him, in the light of the little nest of Cambridge spies — Philby, Burgess, Maclean etc. — unearthed in Andrew Boyle's book, A Climate of Treason, 'that espionage is one of the less honourable pro- fessions?' To which GG replies that 'in time of war espionage is an essential weapon .. . In peacetime. I don't see why espionage should be any more disreputable than in war.' He does not, it would seem, make any distinction between spying for one's own country and spying for another, perhaps enemy, country. His attitude here is the more surprising because, when Philby tried to involve GO in his plot to get rid of his boss, Felix Cowgill, and take over his job, GG was so outraged that he resigned and took a post with the publishers Eyre and Spottiswoode. In other words, one's own personal treachery is reprehensible, but
treachery on behalf of another country, friend or foe, is permissible, and can even be estimable.
GG's admiration for Fidel Castro has veered towards downright hero-worship; at the same time, he admits that Castro has developed authoritarian tendencies which he deplores in the course of exercising power. But then all Communist regimes are authoritarian, and GG continues to affect a certain Communist tendency. Also, he con- tinues to see as the defenders of freedom the guerrilla fighters in Latin America, arm- ed and supported by Castro on behalf of the USSR. The Americans, on the other hand, ready with weapons and money to sustain the status quo, are sternly dismissed as promoters of dictatorship. As for the dispatch by Castro of Cubans to Africa to be, in effect, Soviet sepoys there — no men- tion is made of them, which is perhaps as well.
What a relief it must have been for Mlle Allain to turn from these confused political attitudes to GG on Catholicism — a contin- uing and consistent theme. As a newly bap- tised Catholic, he deliberately took the name Thomas Didymus, he tells her, because he knew his faith would be tempered with doubt — as, in my opinion, and John Donne's, all faith must. 'Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief,' remember GG telling me long ago was his favourite prayer, and I made it mine. He denies being a Catholic writer, but says he is just a Catholic who happens to write, so that in most of his novels there will be a religious influence. 'All writers,' he insists, `even the worst, are led into assuming a role vaguely comparable to God's, for they create characters over whom they exercise total control.'
In other words, the creativity of God, in so far as we humans can grasp it, is express- ed in art and literature, in the mediaeval cathedrals, in the Missa Solemnis, rather than in scientific and technological achievements. Shakespeare writing King Lear is an infinitesimal version of God creating the universe. 'Human beings,' GG goes on, 'are more important to believers than they are to atheists'. Correspondingly, 'very few good writers have emerged from Communist countries except Christian ono like Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, Sinyaysky. Following this vein, 'the Welfare State has driven God off the stage, just like the devil, but it has failed so lamentably that' have the impression God is making a timid reappearance.' Then a magnificentsen- tence: 'History tends to prove that Faith is reborn from its own embers.' Heretical declarations are inclined to make the unbelievable credible, but with GG it has been the other way round — reviving in him 'a deep faith in the inexplicable, in the mystery of Christ's Resurrection.' He goes on: `And I don't think I'm alone in having reacted this way There's something like a small miracle of grace there for We who are semi-lapsed.' He semi-lapsed? No, no, such words belong to holy men, which is what, deep down, he is.
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