The Man with the Golden Typewriter (17 page)

I shall certainly try and deal with one or two of your factual points on my way through the book at the end of this week. The point about the masseuse stripping is that they do in the Crimea, and I meant the reader, at the end of the chapter, to realise that he might have known where he was. But I think the point is too obscure and needs cleaning up. I will also try and clarify the fighting women though, as a matter of fact, Bond did not stop the fight.

If I let you have the final typescript at the end of August, could I have the proofs by the beginning of October or thereabouts? If I can get them done fairly quickly it leaves me a couple of months before I go to Jamaica to start worrying about the next one, which one really can't do until this one is finally out of the way.

If anything comes up while I am away, cables addressed to KEMNEWS NEWYORK and beginning PROFLEMING will be passed on to me wherever I am.

Meanwhile, many thanks again for reading the book so quickly and thoroughly. My swift riposte would not have been sent off if I hadn't had a ghastly fear that not a single chapter of the book appeared to have excited you. I am afraid all authors are sensitive and require that the pill shall be wrapped up with at least one grain of sugar!

TO JOHN CARTER, ESQ., C.B.E., 16 Bedford Gardens, London, W.8.

Having bought
The Book Collector
outright from Lord Kemsley the previous year, Fleming soon found himself at odds with the more pernickety members of the editorial board. On 19 November he had received a tart note from John Carter about a proposed advertising campaign –
‘
We ivory-tower dwellers (as I realise we are assumed to be) are sometimes puzzled by the ways of business men. Frankly, I'm puzzled now. Pray (as W.S.C. [Winston Churchill] used to minute) enlighten me on half a sheet of paper.' Fleming's reply went to a page and a half.

20th November, 1956

Many thanks for your splendidly acidulated letter, but was it really necessary to be quite so crushing?

None of us are “businessmen” and we all have to rely on the bits of each other's time and talents that are made available – John [Hayward] doing all the editorial work, Percy [Muir] writing a serial for us, me looking after the business side and Robert [Harling] lending a hand on lay-outs and promotion.

Eleven months ago, as you mention, we were all most grateful for your American promotion ideas and agreed with them. A leaflet was produced and it needed a guiding hand to get it run off and sent across the Atlantic into the right hands.

I believe John did ask if you would be willing to mother this little child of yours, but got the answer that you hadn't the necessary secretarial help. I offered to provide this, but the offer was not taken up.

Then you went to America, and the original impetus was lost.

As you saw last Tuesday, we were all chagrined that this American promotion scheme, in its two parts – to booksellers, and to the possible new subscribers, such as Friends of the Morgan Library, which were mentioned – has not got under way.

Bending us over your knee, though possibly justified, is not the answer.

The position at the moment is that Robert has undertaken to re-make-up the text, John has agreed to marry up a list of possible subscribers with you and James Shand [the printer] has agreed to help choose an illustration and get the thing run off.

All that is needed is a keen Man of Affairs with an intimate knowledge of the market we are trying to penetrate. Could that man possibly be you? And would you be very kind and take the fragments of this problem and co-ordinate them with that gift for symmetry we all admire in you.

We would all be deeply grateful if you would do this.

The alternative, I am sure, would be five still more hang-dog faces at our next luncheon.

To which Carter replied with further sharp comments:
‘
In short, my dear Ian, your manful attempt to saddle me with the responsibility for first
delaying, then smothering, and finally jettisoning my own promotion scheme does more credit to your ingenuity than to your memory.' Fleming just couldn't be bothered with this nonsense.

29th November, 1956

You really must not waste any more of your valuable time writing me abrasive letters about the promotional leaflet for
The Book Collector
.

One telephone call to Robert – God forbid that you should have made it – confirms that the leaflet is on its way to James Shand to be proofed. James will choose a couple of illustrations (Robert suggests the dirtiest and I agree) and the final proof will shortly reach you and John Hayward for approval. Any further circulation seems unnecessary.

A mailing list will be, or could be, immediately co-ordinated by you and John, and off the leaflet will go.

Robert agrees with alacrity to accept full responsibility for the delay and, if it will add to your satisfaction, I will accept full over-riding responsibility for Robert's irresponsibility.

And now let's get our feet back on the ground and our noses back to our many and more pressing grindstones.

TO MICHAEL HOWARD

One of the grindstones to which Fleming referred in his letter to Carter (above) was the prospect of writing a new book.

27th November, 1956

Dear Michael,

I shall be very interested to hear if sales go up but I doubt if there will be any effect, except to increase the rentable value of my property!

I'm afraid I certainly shan't be able to clean up another book by April and I shall be very relieved if I am able to write one at all, as the fountain of my genius is running pretty dry.

On the other hand, Al Hart writes as follows:

“You have surpassed yourself! The new one is far and away your best, from the very first page right through to that altogether admirable cliff-hanger of an ending. Pearl White
⁶
was never more effective.

“Seriously, I mean it: ‘From Russia with Love' is a real wowser, a lulu, a dilly and a smasheroo. It is also a clever and above all
sustained
piece of legitimate craftsmanship. My chapeau is not only off to you, it is over the windmill.”

This may cheer you up.

Moreover, your Mr. Williams seemed quite honestly to put it his number three favourite.

I think if you put aside your misgivings and decide it is going to be a smashing success, it will be, and I sincerely hope you aren't thinking of reducing your print below 15. I am sure, irrespective of the book's merits, that would be a mistake.

Howard, however, was not letting his author off the hook. As Fleming wrote on 12 December, presumably in reply to a dispiriting note about trade opinion, ‘What are you trying to do, break my nerve? If you can find some obscure bookseller who is prepared to say a kind word about the book, I shall be delighted to have it. [Hatchards] tell me that your chief traveller likes it very much. If so, this welcome piece of information has been withheld from me!'

TO WREN HOWARD

Fleming had written on 28 December 1956 to clarify the terms of a serialisation in the
Daily Express,
to thank Daniel George fulsomely for his comments –
‘
I think the book has been greatly improved as a result'
 –
and to assure Howard that he had no intention of changing publisher. But he cast a warning note:
‘
Incidentally, when you talk airily of future books, I do beg you to believe that the vein of my inventiveness is running extremely dry and I seriously doubt if I shall be able to complete a book in Jamaica this year. There are many reasons for this, which I need not go into, but I am finding it increasingly difficult to work up enthusiasm for Bond and his unlikely adventures.'

2nd January, 1957

Dear Bob,

And a very happy New Year to you.

I was greatly heartened by your letter and by your judgement on the new book. Personally I agree with you and I think it has been still further improved by re-writing. I am quite certain that you will sell 20,000 copies if only because, thanks to World Books and Express serialisation, etc., my name is much better known.

I think some people will find it tough but then Russians are very tough people and I wanted to make them so. I think the plot is a good one and there's no harm in letting Bond make a fool of himself for a change.

I am also encouraged by your last paragraph and certainly intend to keep Bond spinning through his paces as long as possible. The trouble is that I take great pains with the factual background to these stories and my source material is running rather dry. It is also very difficult to find new ways of killing and chasing people and new shapes and names for the heroines. However these are my problems and I will try and cope with them, though perhaps not with the same monotonous regularity as I have achieved so far.

Thank you for being so understanding about the royalty position. I can assure you that I am very happy with Jonathan Cape and I have no desire at all that the partnership should be an unbalanced one. It is mostly for that reason that I have eschewed agents
⁷
and left subsidiary rights to you.

Many thanks for the contracts and I am returning your copy which you seem to have sent me inadvertently.

I now depart, weighed down by my secretary with about two hundred pages of blank foolscap and a new typewriter ribbon!

TO ‘IAN FLEMING “ESQ” and/or his secretary' from an unknown ill-wisher

14th February, 1957

Somebody once said of Albert Schweitzer words to the effect that, in our poor world, there (meaning A.S.) went a truly great man. A man who has added something to the sum of love, dignity and beauty among us.

Having read a few pages of your revolting (and boring) writing, I see you as the exact antithesis of – for instance – a man like Schweitzer. You are doing your bit to make the world a beastlier place.

May I add this appeal to any others you may be receiving, and ask you, for the sake of anything decent and lovely you can think of, to stop.

I must also add that, if I myself ever had the chance (and if a much more exhaustive investigation confirmed: a) the dangerous beastliness of your writings; b) the width of their distribution) – I think I should try to kill you.

TO JONATHAN CAPE, from the above

I have never before in my life felt moved to write such a letter.

I imagine that many people feel on this subject as I do.

As his editors, you are co-responsible with Ian Fleming. And if you do not stop publishing his ghastly filth, I think pressure should be brought to bear on you (I suppose via your outlets and the distribution of your other publications).

TO THE EDITOR, The New Statesman & Nation, 10 Great Turnstile, High Holborn, W.C.1.

Following a piece in the
New Statesman
that bemoaned the apparent death of Bond, Fleming despatched what would become his standard reply to the many fans who expressed similar regrets.

29th April, 1957

Dear Sir,

The Late James Bond

As a result of Mr. John Raymond's poignant but premature obituary notice of Commander James Bond, R.N.V.S.R. there has been a flood of anxious enquiry.

May I therefore, as Commander Bond's official biographer, ask you to publish the following bulletin which, according to a delicate but sure source, was recently placed on the canteen notice board of the headquarters of the Secret Service near Regent's Park:

“After a period of anxiety the condition of No. 007 shows definite improvement. It has been confirmed that 007 was suffering from severe Fugu poisoning (a particularly virulent member of the curare group obtained from the sex glands of Japanese Globe fish). This diagnosis, for which the Research Department of the School of Tropical Medicine was responsible, has determined a course of treatment which is proving successful.

No further bulletins will be issued.

(Signed) Sir James Molony,

Department of Neurology,

St. Mary's Hospital,

London, W.2.”

In view of the above I am hoping that, despite the cautionary note sounded by Mr. Raymond and subject, of course, to the Official Secrets Act, further biographical material will in due course be available to the public.

Yours faithfully,

Following the publication of which he wrote again on 3 May 1957 to point out a spelling error.

The Late James Bond

In the last paragraph of my letter I said “biographical” not “biological”. The science of James Bond's physical life is after all only part of the story.

TO MISS GLADYS GALLIVEN, 1 Midhurst Drive, Goring-By-Sea, Worthing, Sussex

14th March, 1957

Thank you very much for your letter of February 7th and I am so sorry I have not answered it before. I have been away in Jamaica writing another James Bond adventure and your letter was waiting for me when I got back.

It is very kind of you to take the trouble to write and I am glad you like my books.

Why, I wonder? And, also, what do you dislike about them?

An author is always interested in learning these things from his readers and, if it would amuse you to put down in two or three hundred words the things you like and dislike about my books, in exchange I will send you an autographed copy of the latest one, “From Russia with Love”, which will be coming out in about three weeks' time.

Again with many thanks for having taken the trouble to write.

TO MISS RENÉE HELLMAN, 2 Acacia Road, London, N.W.8.

Renée Hellman (Miss) wrote joyfully on hearing that Bond was only suffering from Fugu poisoning. She'd been hoping to save
From Russia with Love
for a beach holiday in Santa Margharita but the temptation had been too much.

30th April, 1957

Thank you for your charming letter and I am delighted you enjoyed the latest volume of James Bond's biography.

I am sorry you did not save the book up to read on the sands at Santa Margharita. That is just the sort of place he would wish to be read – particularly by a girl. You must try and be more continent next Spring!