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Graham Greene & the needy Nabokov?
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Date: Sunday, April 11, 2004 1:46 PM -0400
http://www.sundayherald.com/41138
's Goddess
Books: In search of a beginning: my life with Graham Greene by Yvonne
Cloetta as told to Marie-Francoise Allain (Bloomsbury, Ј16.99) Reviewed by
Alan Taylor
Unlike the majority of writers today, Graham Greene was never seen in
public, gave very few interviews and abhorred literary festivals, signings
in bookshops and similar distractions. But when a new book by him was
published, it was an event because Greene was that rare animal, an author
who was critically acclaimed and phenomenally popular.
Inevitably, among his peers this was a cause of some resentment and
jealousy. Anthony Burgess, for example, took against him after they met in
Antibes. After Burgess?s piece appeared in The Observer, Greene had joked:
?Burgess put words in my mouth which I had to look up in the dictionary.?
In response, Burgess, who always insisted on having the last word, compared
Greene unfavourably to Evelyn Waugh who, he said, ?had more charity?.
He was not alone in his criticism. John le Carrй, with whom Greene shared a
passion for espionage, said he was ?a 1930s writer?, while Piers Paul Read,
whose father Herbert was one of Greene?s closest friends, accused him of
?living rather out of the real world?. Nor did Greene receive any kinder
treatment from his biographers, including Michael Shelden, Norman Sherry
and Selina Hastings, who seemed to go out of their way to emphasise his
alleged cruelty to women, his coldness and his tantrums.
Even friends, such as Shirley Hazzard, were not averse to sticking the boot
in. In her memoir, Greene In Capri, Hazzard said Greene was mean because
one night after dinner he insisted on catching a bus home rather than take
a taxi. In fact, says Yvonne Cloetta, Greene used the bus as an excuse to
avoid a prolonged evening of Hazzard?s company.
Cloetta was Greene?s mistress for more than 30 years, from 1959 until he
died in 1991. When they met he was 55 and she was 36, blonde, gamine,
French, chain-smoking, married with children. She was, a female friend of
Greene?s once told me, ?the perfect mistress.? Each day, she would arrive
at his flat in Antibes around noon, when he?d finished writing, and go to a
nearby restaurant for lunch.
They would spend the afternoon together, walk her cocker spaniel, and she
would leave around seven, having prepared him a suppertime snack. They
never married or lived together, but there?s no doubt Greene was besotted
by her. He dedicated Travels With My Aunt to her; ?For HHK? it reads, the
initials standing for ?Healthy, Happy Kitten?, Cloetta?s nickname.
Her book, which is in effect a long interview with Marie-Franзoise Allain,
is a corrective to much that has been written posthumously about the
novelist. Cloetta, who died three years ago, refers constantly to her
?carnet rouge?, in which she recorded conversations between herself and her
lover and which he himself annotated.
A very different picture of Greene thus emerges from that previously
painted by others. He is, in Cloetta?s tinted vision, a man of high
principle, affectionate, kind, modest, compassionate and generous, signing
away royalties to good causes and helping needy writers such as Muriel
Spark, Vladimir Nabokov, RK Narayan, as well as the likes of Charlie
Chaplin.
She even excuses his association with Kim Philby, who spied for the
Russians and whose betrayal led to the deaths of many British agents. For
Greene, it seems, it was not a case of ?your country right or wrong?,
rather an insistence on personal loyalty. If he had to choose between a
friend or his country, chances are he would have backed the former.
But that is perhaps too simplistic and Greene was clearly not that. Before
he met Cloetta his love life was complicated, and unsavoury. The list of
his former mistresses was formidable. He used to take one of them,
Catherine Walston, to brothels, with her disguised as a man or a boy.
Cloetta hints at nothing of that sort involving her. In that respect she is
a model of discretion, even declaring that Greene only ever spoke well of
the women he?d been involved with previously. She, too, is largely
circumspect, but she is also capable of sticking in a stiletto, noting that
one of his mistresses ? ?Poor woman? ? had become very fat. As she says,
?it?s fairly unusual to harm someone without intending to do so?.
Even to Cloetta, however, Greene remained an enigma. ?Was he as ?complex?
and ?mysterious? as all that?? asks Allain. ?For me,? replies Cloetta,
avoiding the question, as she is adept at doing, ?the real mystery of
Graham Greene lay in the power and variety of his creative imagination.
Occasionally, I used to take his head in my hands and say to him, ?How do
you manage to imagine all these characters in this head of yours?? And he
replied, ?They don?t come from there; they come from my bowels?.?
He, like she, knew how not to answer when he didn?t like the question. But
that?s no crime. In an age when writers are more seen and heard than ever
before, Greene?s ascetic regime has much to recommend it. His needs were
modest, his circle of friends small. Writing was torture but he knew it was
what he must do. It was like an incurable addiction.
While he was writing a book he would not countenance any interruption that
was not of his own making. He guarded his privacy and locked himself away.
John Updike said he was ?trapped in loneliness?. But it was necessary for
Greene to function as a writer and that is all he ever really wanted to do.
Everything else, one suspects, even his relationship with Cloetta,
passionate as it was, was secondary.
11 April 2004
Glasgow
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