The End of the Affair
From “A Life in the Margins,” on the personal library of Graham Greene, by Robert McCrum, The New Yorker, April 11, 1994:
Greene had many important relationships with women—with his wife, Vivien (from whom he eventually separated); with Yvonne Cloetta, the companion of his later years; with his sister, Elizabeth—and the habit of annotation provides many insights into the most secret love of Greene’s life, his long relationship with Catherine Walston, the C to whom he dedicated ‘The End of the Affair.’
Walston was an American and the wife of Henry Walston, an English peer. On the flyleaf of Elizabeth Bowen’s history of Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel, Catherine recalls the beginning of their affair: “To Graham in January 1952. It was at the Shelbourne almost five years ago—C.” The inscriptions in Catherine’s gifts betray passion, devotion, and a love of mundane detail (“500 lire for Bananas!”) In a copy of “Nothing” by his contemporary Henry Green, she writes, “In a thunderstorm on the train to Milan … June 13th 1950.” Added, in a different pen, are the words “Catherine Greene—pen name for all novels.” She also seems to have acquired Greene’s taste for subterfuge. In a copy of Wilde’s “De Profundis” (“with love, Ritz December 2-4, 1949”) she concludes a long dedication with this coded message: “1. PTMP 2. ILYB 3. SIMB 4. ROF 5. LLEOFE 6. ILY 7. IHGOOTB.” … A dedication, dated Christmas 1949, in “The Life of Benvenuto Cellini” gives a tantalizing snap-shot of their relationship: “How happy I was today in Cambridge buying roller skates and drinking Irish whiskey and knowing that I shall read Vol. 1 of the Rosaio Press tomorrow”—a reference to the two-volume edition of Greene’s poems that he published privately for his friends.
