The Man with the Golden Typewriter (11 page)

2. Ivar and I have had a preliminary talk with [Paul] Gallico about a weekly or monthly column, and the omens are favourable, but he has now buried himself in Devonshire, and I think further progress will have to await my return.

Perhaps we could talk this over in New York and send him a joint letter.

3. Noel Barber
²
will resume his Paris column under the name of “Noel Anthony”. I gather this will start up in two or three weeks time.

4. The Truman news is most exciting and I will throw an expensive fly over my proprietor before I leave.
³
This seems to me an extremely valuable property and, as I have told Ivar, my first reaction is that the whole syndication should be handled by the best agent on a 10% basis, thus you will squeeze dollars out of many tiny papers around the world, as well as out of the big ones.

I propose to suggest to K[emsley] a price of $300 per article for the “Sunday Times”, which is about what a Sunday paper would bear. I will bring all my findings in this matter with me.

5. Please tell Mr. Wheeler
⁴
that the Carol series is now running in the “Sunday Empire News”, of which he should examine the last two numbers. The remainder is not yet written, but I will try and bring over some more in draft form.

6. The Gallico series here was a resounding success. I am sending Schell [the editor] full cuttings, as they may assist the Pulitzer Prize project on the grounds of helping to further Anglo-American relations. I am delighted that the project was so supremely successful.

7. Miss Short and her secretary have moved into a neighbouring office to mine today, and they are very comfortable. We are having our first European N.A.N.A. meeting at 11.30 tomorrow with the Vice-President sitting on the Vice-Chairman's knee, the London Editor and Manager on the Vice-President's and a pretty secretary on the London Manager and Editor's. This is known in some circles as a “Turkish sandwich”.

8. (Next day). K, as I cabled you, will play, but of course is most anxious to know when the series will start. I said in a few weeks time, and that I would try to learn some more in New York. You might have got a higher price elsewhere in London but Ivar was most keen that K should have first refusal, and this is the top price the “Sunday Times” will pay. More about this and other projects when I see you.

9. Ivar adds to my paragraph 2 that Gallico is much firmer than I suggest. He would write a weekly column on anything that caught his
eye in the news, and he suggests that we try out some of the customers to see what the traffic will stand.

10. We had this arrangement with Gallico on the “Sunday Times” and also on the “Daily Graphic”. His copy is always acceptable to the middle of a paper's readership, and it is always punctual. It won't set the Mississippi on fire, but it will always command space. I think we would do well on a fifty-fifty basis. Perhaps Mr. Wheeler would like to talk to some of his friends.

10 [sic]. I have looked into O.N.A.
⁵
and I attach the report of my very well-informed Berlin man. Without knowing all the facts, my impression of O.N.A. is that we might be buying a poke without even a pig in it.

11. Your splendid letters have delighted both Ivar and me – at any rate the front pages. I have noticed that it is a trick of very rich, powerful and important men to write letters with a ballpoint pen on both sides of airmail paper. We will both hear what you had to say on your second pages when we meet.

This is positively my last word before we meet in the flesh.

FROM ERNEST CUNEO

Among the items that NANA highlighted in 1953 were the Kinsey report on the sexual habits of Americans and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Fleming's own article for the
Sunday Times
on the Pierre St Martin cave in the French Pyrenees.

September 9th, 1953

Dear Ian,

I followed with avid interest your speleological expedition. I know there were high elements of disappointment attached to it: as Kinsey could have told you it is a hell of a lot more fun to take a girl to a hotel than to go off into a cave by yourself. All of this you will learn as you grow older.

I agree completely with your thesis on payment. Schell is on vacation and I shall call it to his attention when he returns. I find it aesthetically
revolting to ask a man to do something, which perforce must be of excellent quality, and then ask him to accept shabby compensation which is as much a burden on your self-respect as it is on his.

On the same date Fleming sent Cuneo a long list of topics that might interest NANA that included the following:
‘
I have only one more thought and that is to do with “Scrabble”, a word-making game which, I gather, is being a great success in the States. Is there any strip or pictorial representation that could be built out of this game with the same name?'

TO ERNEST CUNEO

In December 1953 Fleming paid a fleeting visit to New York, where he stayed in Cuneo's apartment. It was at the height of McCarthyism, and although Fleming may or may not at that time have met either Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, or the newly elected President Dwight Eisenhower, he appreciated that Senator McCarthy's persecution of perceived Communists was newsworthy and that advantage could be gained by interviewing two ‘turned' spies, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers.

3rd December, 1953

Dear Ernie,

Life seems very quiet and humdrum without you, but without any effort I can hear a steady roar coming from your room in NANA punctuated by Ivar's racking cough.

As usual, it was heaven to stay in your apartment and renew acquaintance with Caractacus, my favourite of all cockroaches, and be lulled by the sweet music of the house next door being pulled down, as I sipped your pre-McCarthy Bourbon.

I long for you to come over here so that I can provide you with a pale shadow of these delights. Perhaps one day you will condescend to leave your kingdom.

I spoke severely to the White House before leaving and I am glad to see that Dulles and the President have acted so promptly on my advice.
Last night I went into the whole situation with Rebecca West
⁶
and she would very much like to go over and have a look at it all. I suppose it won't be worth your while to have her do a series for NANA? She sees a Communist under every single bed and to have her interviewing Bentley and Chambers would surely be a great feather in your cap.

Also on business, I am trying to get an offer of the American rights of Ribbentrop's memoirs which are being published next week in Berlin, but there are so many vultures sitting round the carrion that I am not optimistic.

I don't think that we shall be coming through New York in January but flying direct to Jamaica to save money and days. Would you please tell Ivar this. But I shall be with you on my way back in March and perhaps I could pick up Ivar in Nassau and bring him along. [. . .]

I long to hear news of the book
⁷
and I hope you will drop me a line directly there is anything solid to tell.

I must go along to Scott's
⁸
now and toy with some oysters and a roast grouse and discuss matters with a disreputable spy of my acquaintance.

Fleming later wrote to ask if Cuneo could lean on his legal client and journalist acquaintance Walter Winchell to review
Live and Let Die.

TO ERNEST CUNEO (undated)

Your old friend James Bond would be vastly obliged if his sub-agent Cuneo could persuade that delicate source W.W. to give this volume of his autobiography nationwide publicity.

Pray fail me not!

The next year Fleming was on his way to America to research
Diamonds are Forever.
He sought Cuneo's company for a trans-continental rail trip that would take in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Chicago.

TO ERNEST CUNEO

29th September, 1954

My dear Ernie,

This has nothing to do with our various negotiations, but on a still more pleasant topic.

If you are still willing I would like to fly over on November 5th and after a few days with you in New York make our trek to the West for a week or ten days, getting back to New York in time for Ivar's arrival on November 23rd.

Then spend a couple of days with him and you and then fly home.

Do you like this idea?

I would love to see Las Vegas and then perhaps the Hollywood world very briefly if you can spare the time to chaperone me.

I would also very much like to make the trans-continental trip by train in the luxury to which you and I are accustomed and then perhaps fly back.

What do you think of all of this?

It would take you away from your desk for about ten days and I wonder if you can spare the time.

I do hope so, as my education is now only incomplete with respect to the West Coast of America.

Hope all goes well with Bill.
⁹
Play the game entirely your own way and forgive me if I have slightly overcooked the goose before presenting him to you.

Our warm encouraging thoughts will be with you next week but even if both deals end up by falling through it will be pleasant to think that if two such big fish were after the Corporation in one year, there will be others in the future.

Good luck.

From this and other visits, Cuneo discovered that Fleming had an insatiable capacity for physical exertion. He recalled in particular an occasion when Fleming visited his home, near Bryce's Black Hollow Farm in Vermont, and insisted they climb the 880-foot Goose Egg Mountain. By the time they had raced up and hurtled down, Cuneo was a wreck. But Fleming simply dived into the nearest pool of ice-cold water, splashed around for an hour or so, then casually walked the mile and a half back to Black Hollow Farm.
‘His strenuous exercises I took to be the hair-shirt phase of his knighthood, akin to the Gotham monks who by starvation and self denial sought to exorcise by sweat and exertion the devils within all men. He would and did plunge into this everyday world; but at a pause, he became himself, a knight again.'

He also became alert to the diligence with which Fleming researched the facts that underpinned his novels.
‘For the most part our conversations were animated, but they were subject to a peculiarly Flemingesque characteristic. Detail fascinated him, as it not only bored, but actually enraged me. If he ran across a trick of the trade, a nuance, a fillip, he would pursue it like a ferret, for example, how cowboys on the range made a barbecue sauce with sugar, ketchup and Worcestershire sauce. God, he'd pursue the detail like Sir Edward Carson cross-examining a murderer. The temperature and appearance of the fire, kind of wood burned, the size of the pan – all of these things he'd scribble down with the avidity of an explorer taking notes on the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb. Time and time again as these interrogations wore on, I'd say “Come on, Ian, the hell with it.” For the most part he'd shoot me a reproachful glare and keep on scribbling. He explained this to me. He said that at the end of each day, he had compiled notes. These he amplified and typed out, no matter what the hour, at the rate of about 800 [words] a day. “Figure it out for yourself,” he said. “At the end of a
year, I have about 250 or 300 of these daily memos,
¹⁰
and when I go down to Jamaica, I weave them into a book.”'

As they sped by rail across America, Cuneo was amazed by how this trait repeated itself. At every stop, even on the train itself, Fleming would talk to people, write in his notebook and formulate adventures in his mind.
‘He conversed with the crew and made his usual notes. When we arrived in Chicago the next morning, he was all joy. I at once discerned that he had something in mind that would infuriate me, and I was right. “Off,” he chortled, “Off we go to America's great shrine – the scene of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.” “Not me,” I said. “You. But before you go, let's drop in at a little place they have here in Chicago. Nothing much but something I think you should see.” I took him straightway to the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts, which in my view, is unmatched in all the world. Fleming was entranced, completely enveloped by the masterpieces. He commented in subdued tones; it was as near as I ever saw him come to reverence. He knew a great deal more about painting than I. I do not know enough about painting to say how much he knew about it, but expert or not, few I know have exhibited his deep feeling for it. He forgot St. Valentine's, I almost had to drag him out. Out in broad daylight, the enchantment evaporated. [. . .] He went off to the St. Valentine's scene – alone. They told him it was all changed, but he went anyway and scribbled away when he got back.

‘We pulled out in the Super Chief. The great train was almost deserted then, quite a change from pre-war days when it was crowded and gay as a cruise ship. We were half way to Iowa before the Super Chief's stewards had fully absorbed their instructions on how to make his Martinis. [. . .] I had arranged for him to ride the cab with the engineers, which to my amazement, took quite some doing. I went with him. He was all over the engine, went back into the inferno of noise in the Diesel room – alone – and interrogated the engineer and his assistant on everything from the block signal system to the “dead man control”. [. . .] Ian was delighted as he watched the great care with which they took the big train through the Raton Pass. He was off at every stop through New Mexico and Arizona,
talking to the men serving the train, walking briskly around the desert architecture stations, taking mental photographs by the score. [. . .]

‘Fleming was at this time all but unknown. He was, in his own words, “waffling about” not even conceiving remotely of the fame to come.'
Yet he managed to gain access to the Los Angeles Police Headquarters, where he was absorbed by their methods and by their narcotics operation. The same magic worked at Las Vegas, where he and Cuneo were given first-hand instruction on how casinos were run