The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  Elizabeth says that Tony does the best impersonation of Gielgud that's ever been, that's deliberate. Better than me. Better than the two Peters, Ustinov and Sellers. I promised that I would find for Quayle an observation of Bacon's. It goes like this: ‘Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.‘218

  I am neither full, ready or exact this morning but I have created a base on which to work.

  Saturday 9th, Dorchester Sadly I was called to work yesterday after all, and just for one line. ‘All will be well now Anne, all will be well.’ Today is Bob Wilson's and Gwladys's wedding.219 I am to be best man and E the matron-of-honour or whatever the title is at Registry Offices. It is to be at Caxton Hall. I hope to god I don't get the giggles as I did at my first marriage at Kensington and E did at her marriage to Michael Wilding.

  [...] Word came yesterday from the States that the children's film Eagles has grossed over $21m and is still going strong. That is in the United States alone. I don't know quite what it means but McKenna told me yesterday that it's been running for months in Dublin and if it goes on running much longer he'll be forced to see it. Cheek. In London it has been returned to Leicester Square from Coventry Street and is the only film in the recent heat-wave, not only to hold its own but to actually out-gross itself by £700 a week. So maybe retirement is a feasible idea after all. The film was a disappointingly slow starter but it is snow-balling along. If Staircase does half the business, I can probably employ J. Paul Getty as a butler and Onassis as a Greek chef.220 Elizabeth top-less and mini-skirted, will serve me food and call me ‘sir’. That'll be the day! Jackie Onassis can be the tweeny and get her orders from Elizabeth. Noel Coward will be brought in every night to be witty and sing us songs. We'll get us a defecting Russian pianist, one of the great ones, to play every night. In chains of course. We'll pour white confetti on his hair and tell him he's in Siberia. [...]

  Sunday 10th, Kalizma, Thames The wedding went off without a hitch and there were a few moist eyes here and there. Quite a lot of photographers to give a tiny air of importance to the whole proceedings and last night we were all on the TV in the news. All good stuff and very nice for Bob and Gwladys. Not very nice however was the news that lovely Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski, was one of the victims of a mass-murder in LA.221 She was pregnant which somehow or other makes it worse. It is all very odd and perfectly like one of Polanski's films because all his films have bizarre sex killings etc. in them, and E wonders if it was some ‘nut’ who was carrying out in practice what Polanski preached in theory. In which case Elizabeth is due to be beheaded. The poor little thing was apparently strangled and then hung from a beam. We shall find out more details today from the newspapers. And then we must send off a letter of condolence to Polanski because E likes him very much and says he's a sweet little man. I do believe that Mrs Polanski is the only person I've ever met who was murdered. Friends of mine have been killed but not murdered.

  I have arrived at the stage, which E tells me is predictable, of being thoroughly bored by what I'm doing. The next three weeks are going to be torture. I have tried for several weeks, and all my friends have too, to make Gin Bujold feel like a desirable person. But it's a lost cause. It appears that she goes out to discotheques with her husband every night, ignores her child-son, and arrives at the studio looking like the end of the world. And smells like it. She is forever throwing up. She is only 27. She has re-invented biliousness. Why can't she learn to look splendid at 6 in the morning, even if she went to bed at 5.30. Elizabeth looks dew-dropped with 15 minutes sleep. [...]

  Monday 11th It has been very humidly hot again over the week-end and promises to be so again today. This too is the day when I lie in bed with Gin Bujold which is not going to be cool. In fact it's likely to be somewhat sweaty.

  Elizabeth has sweetly got up with me and is sitting opposite me at the moment making a deliberate nuisance of herself so I'll stop this entry right at this spot.

  Monday 18th [...] E is going down to Cornwall today to meet the polio victim – he who has walked from John O'Groats to Land's End on crutches. She has a strange journey. London Airport to St Morgans by jet, then ten minute flight in a prop plane to somewhere else, then a 10 mile car drive to Land's End where she will be met by the Mayor of Penworth. Brook and the two babies will be going with her. I wish Brookie, who is among the world's nicest men would start writing. The work he is doing is nowhere near his intelligence, and from his brilliant wit – as witty as Emlyn but without the malice – and use of language I would guess that he could become a fine writer. [...]

  Thursday 21st, Dorchester [...] Two events of family importance: An astonishing and lost and lonely and ‘God-written’ letter from young Michael in Hawaii.222 [...] Poor little bastard. We must cwtch and cuddle him a lot when he arrives. We sent for him immediately. [...] I think we should keep him with us at Gstaad and/or the Kalizma for the next term and sort things out with him without too much of a rush.

  Second event: A piece of crude but unsentimental doggerel from Kate which means, I hope to God, that she'll go on writing. She obviously has inherited the Jinks’ gift for words. At least it's a gift, I hope.

  Only a week to go now on the film and shan't I be glad.

  Thursday 21st It's the same day but later of course, much later. I have finished work and am home and am supposed to go to a party given by Michael Hordern which surprisingly enough, knowing that we all in the film business have to get up at dawn or just after, doesn't start until 9 o'clock, which means 10 o'clock if I know Elizabeth, and two o'clock if I know me. And if I really know me it might be 2 in the morning or straight to work. That kind of thing. And also after an orgy of story-telling and an eternal dressing-room full of people for weeks on end I prefer to settle down to a little, in my case, rare silence. And talking is a disease that somehow or other I have to cure. I find for the most part that if I have a room full of people which I invariably have, unless I talk nobody else will. And I'm damned if I'm going to go through it all again tonight. I will talk to this machine only. [...] The trouble with a diary is that you have to pound it out, slam it in, there is not time to make corrections. That's why I know E to be right when she says that I should pack it in for a bit – acting – and start to think. We both tend to forget, though we never really do, the tremendous combined impact of our arrogant personalities and fame and wealth on poor blokes who are just wondering where they can get the next job. I am quite sure, for instance, that, without meaning to, I, and in a supporting role, Elizabeth, have turned John Colicos into a drunken conceited maniac who believes himself to be as desirable an actor as I am and that his wife should be as desirable as Elizabeth. ‘Vroom’ as the Yankee comics say, and he has lost his wife and the next film. And a lot of money. It is only a question of time before he will elect to kill himself or somebody else, hopefully not one of us, and which river he will choose in which to hide the body. I feel immensely sorry for him but nobody else seems to share my sorrow. After all he has those two lovely little boys.223 [...]

  Friday 22nd Well, not long now boys, not long. One slight haul over the next hill and we're home again. I suppose there is no word quite as evocative in the English language as ‘home’, especially if you don't have one. Perhaps ‘nevermore’ is as good as any or ‘over the hills and far away’ or ‘Will ye no come back again, son o’ mine’, or, my sister's favourite, ‘Oh where is my wandering boy tonight, he is weary and far from home. Oh where is my boy tonight? For I love him he knows, wherever he goes. Oh where is my boy tonight.‘224 They used to sing the latter about my father when he disappeared for a few days or weeks and, we discover, not with women but, as Liza would appreciate, with horses. [...]

  Sunday 24th, Liz and Brook's Cottage It's 7 o'clock and the place is as quiet as a country village which of course it is.225 What a remarkable pleasure it is to be able to walk down the village street and stop at the tiny supermarket, minimarket, and buy a choc-ice or an iced lolly without anybo
dy giving so much as a second glance. I played a great many games of ‘pool’ with Brook and munched a great deal of Lillabetta's food – she is a fine cook – and had Sherry off the wood at some friend's house and went to the pub and drank a vodka or so, and saw Brook's garage and met his partner in the enterprise which is bound to succeed and altogether had a splendid day. The nights are as chill as cuddling up. We will almost certainly meet Molly today, and possibly Emlyn.226 It will be odd to see them or one or the other down here after all these years. It was only 1943, only 26 years ago, that's all, when I first came here. The little baby is a delight, helpless as she is, and I love her gurgles and hysteria as you wheel her in her pram over rough ground. And her delight in the sound of click and pot of pool and the harsh hurry of the balls to get back to the lower end of the table while she grinds her teeth and attempts to kick her fragile legs. I am in love with her. She has a mind and makes noises, unlike Jessica, poor bastard. I generally shut Jess out of my mind but sometimes she re-enters with staggering agony.

  Well anyway, forget that. Ignore that. Obliviate that. Nowt you can do bachgen bach. Honest to God. All you can do is make her rich, Rich. And she is rich, Rich. [...]

  Monday 25th, South Moreton To my delight Emlyn and Molly, both, came to lunch and to my added delight Emlyn and E got on very well. Emlyn was in first class order and as subtly wicked as ever. Age has not withered nor custom staled.227 There was a good deal of give and take. It is a hard task not to be overwhelmed by Emlyn. The slightest suggestion of mock-modesty, of false values, of sentimentality and with a couple of words he will stab you right under the heart. But it is possible to retaliate if you keep your wits about you – but – of course they have to be well kept. [...]

  So many delightful things happened yesterday that to write it all down would take a tome not much longer than Paradise Lost.228 We went to the ‘Bear’ twice, the second time with the two Lizzes.229 E played bar-billiards with a chap who said: ‘Wait till I get home and tell my old woman who I've been playing bar-billiards with.’ One youngish woman and her husband came up to me in the Bear and said how pleased she was to meet me, but added ‘Do you know Virginia Woolf? ‘Yes,’ I said.’ ‘Well’, she said, ‘Jack or Sam or Charlie (or whatever his name was) saw the film the other night in Oxford, and we thought it was ‘orrible.’ Well there you are.

  Brook and I brought back home (actually he drove us) the boss of the Bear to have a frame or two of ‘Pool’ with us. He is as rotund as the idea of circles and handles a deft cue. He did a couple or more shots that put one in mind of Minnesota Fats.230 [...]

  Tuesday 26th, Kalizma Last night I went to the ‘Talk of the Town’ which used to be the London Hippodrome and introduced Sammy Davis Jr to the audience.231 I have rarely been so nervous but managed to get me on with it alright. That kind of audience is a stranger to me and I wasn't absolutely sure that they wouldn't give me the bird but from the moment of the announcement and the reception I knew that I could handle them. I used E a lot. I said that I was wearing her frock (I wore the top half of a costume that I wear in the film – what we call the Nehru piece – with dinner jacket trousers) out of which she'd grown etc.232 Liza and Brook came with me and both were marvellous. Ron and Vicky and Craig were also there. Sammy was as minute as ever and as clever as ever. [...]

  Thursday 28th, Dorchester Michael arrived yesterday after a twenty hour journey from Hawaii. He didn't look at all tired and in fact looked the best I've seen him for a long time. He is now about 5ft 7 or 8 and looks like a very beautiful renaissance Christ. [...] I haven't really had a chance to talk with him yet to find out what's motivating him but I'm not as worried about him as I expected. He has matured vastly.

  Despite my protestations E is still apprehensive about Gin Bujold. It is a dangerous situation but the danger lies to Miss Bujold and not to us. I imagine she is going to find it very difficult to go back to Montreal to the suburban house after the false glamour of this particular production. Well hew to my line and let the chips fall where they may.233 Because of my insistence from the beginning that she must be given ‘star’ treatment, she has no idea how disliked she is. Because of their loyalty the lads, Ron, Jim, Bob (but not, repeat not, Gaston) have lunched her and dined her and wined her but they have palpably had it now up to the teeth. They will be as glad as I am when this show is ended and we can fold our tents and creep silently away.234 With a loud roar! Oh monsieur, elle est laid. Elle ne pas laide mais chacun a son gout.235 I will correct that French one of these days. As a matter of fact I might get a tutor to refine my French during the next year off – and my Italian too. It will only cost me a few quid a lesson and it will help me at Oxford in ‘71 when I'm faced with all those smart-asses. Nevill Coghill has offered to come and stay with us and bone me up about tutorials etc. The lectures I shall manage. The tutorials are going to be a sod. All those hippy bastards with awkward questions. I hope anyway that I shall in the 3 months at Oxford find out what makes them tick because I'm damned if I do at the moment. I'll do my best.

  Saturday 30th, Kalizma Well it's over. All I have is a couple of shots left to do and then I'll clean myself and go home and dry. I have rarely been so desperate. I remember waiting for the letter from Oxford and the terror of not being accepted. I remember the torment of choosing between Kate and Elizabeth. I chose the latter and perhaps I shall never forgive myself for it. Though I love them both very badly. E will not believe me but I have never done anything to betray her trust. Michael knows me not to be a liar and he believes me. [...]

  G. Bujold is quite clearly a fool. She has upset all of us very badly. So perhaps she's not a fool. She may have meant to upset us. Well good luck to you baby because the only one who is going to be upset is you. Vulgar and rubbish and ambition. And I hate all three. [...]

  Sunday 31st [...] Yesterday was another terrible day. I behaved in a way to make a banshee look kind good and sweet. Insulting Elizabeth, drunk, periodically excusing myself rather shabbily and then starting the rough treatment all over again. Sometimes I am so much my father's son that I give myself occasional creeps. He had the same gift for damaging with the tongue, he had the same temporary violence, he had the same fidelity to mam that I have to Elizabeth, he had the same smattering of scholarship, he had the same didactitism (bet I spelled that wrong),236 we wave the same admonitory finger at innocence when we know bloody well when we are guilt-ridden, when we have to attack when we know we're in the defensive position. ‘Banshee’, incidentally, I have used badly – it actually means an Irish or West Scottish faery who screams and laments at the imminent death of any member of a family which she protects. And, despite Staircase I am not a faery.

  Mike has turned into a very wise man. I believe in love otherwise I'd have to throw myself overboard, but I cannot believe in that massive magician upstairs. At least he doesn't believe in organized religion. He's a lovely boy and I cannot believe I never knew him. I wish he were of my blood but perhaps it's better that he is not. His father is great and a gentleman. And I sure as hell am not.

  Time to wake up Maisie. Life is a waste without her.

  SEPTEMBER

  Bank Holiday Monday 1st, Kalizma, Thames

  Facts:

  I don't have the shakes today.

  I saw the film Becket last night. And I was obvious and terrible.

  I heard Elizabeth say I was a bore. And right she is. When I'm drunk.

  I've had a bath and shampooed my hair.

  I've left my watch in the bathroom and the clock in the salon has stopped and so I don't know what time it is but it's perhaps about 9 in the morning.

  My eyes are slits that only a locksmith could open.

  I am going for a long walk all by myself.

  Michael said that in Becket my hair was too short which is a fairly stupid remark.

  He loves The Prophet which is a lousy lower-middle-brow piece of crap.237

  I am fairly stupid myself.

  It is a coldish but very beautiful morning.r />
  If I walk long enough I may come back to my senses.

  If I walk long enough I may lose them.

  I must not talk.

  Screw the other generation

  The love of God

  Is a sod

  And God

  Is a clod

  We should not have such veneration.

  No offence

  But defence

  Is the best form

  Of attack

  Jack.

  Tuesday 9th, Aston Clinton Yesterday at last I finished the fucking film. You'd think that would be a cause for rejoicing, but not a bit of it. It all started because of my absolute, almost feminine [...] passion for neatness. The place we live in is so small that all extras must be kept down to a minimum. Gaston came in like a porter from Paddington station loaded down with cartons, bags, a box full of booze. There were several of our own towels when all she has to is pick up the phone and they'll bring her a hundred clean towels. Does she not realize that we have been paying the Bell Inn an average of £100 a week for a year to keep Gwen in comfort?238 They'll turn cartwheels for us if you ask them. Well I went mad which ended up with Elizabeth smashing me around the head with her ringed fingers. If any man had done that I would have killed him, or any woman either, but I had sufficient sense to stop myself or I most surely would have put her in hospital for a long long time or even into the synagogue cemetery for an even longer time. I still boil with fury when I think about it. I took myself off on a long walk to some farms that are around the corner and thought of every possibility and its consequences. I decided that for a time anyway we are stuck with each other. I thought that what E needed was a long rest in a quiet place and that so did I and we might get together again. We are fighting and have been fighting for a year now over everything and anything. I have always been a heavy drinker but during the last 15 months I've nearly killed myself with the stuff, and so has Elizabeth. She has just come out to this minute back room where I type and we're at it again. Neither of us will give in and if one of us doesn't something is going to snap. And I'm not going to give in, I'm too small a man and not feminine enough. I prided myself on not having the shakes this morning but the minute E came out and sat down they started up again. Now what the fuck is the meaning of that? Anyway this naturally is one of the black Celtic melancholy days. I see nothing ahead of me but a long grey waste. This afternoon I may see a little colour in the desert and tomorrow perhaps even an oasis. But at the moment I am in despair. If we cannot understand each other or what is worst not stand each other we'd [better] go our separate ways pretty soon and go back to work ... She'll film again and I'll write.