The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  Gianni had a nasty little accident yesterday. He saw what he thought was a new kind of ball-point pen and fiddled with it to see how it worked. It was ‘Mace’ and he gave himself a faceful of it.256 He cried gas tears for about an hour. It was our fault for leaving it lying about without telling everybody what it was. It was the kind that ladies carry in their handbags and had been accidentally unpacked by the stewardess Eugenie. Could have been much nastier. [...]

  Friday 28th, San Ferraio, Elba257 I slept for 10 hours last night. I have rarely felt so tired. We got here about 3 o'clock after a smooth journey. [...] This is the little place from which Napoleon set out for Waterloo. It's a bustling, beautifully sheltered little port with not a throttle of tourists but enough to make the stroll past the yacht and the stare at its occupants worth a walk they think. There are lots of those gaily decorated horse and carriages which trot back and forth which afford the dogs – our dogs – great opportunities for barking. I was so tired last night that I had a vodka martini but it was of no avail and I struggled through a modest dinner almost too tired to eat and went to bed at nine! We are moored right opposite a Bar Roma which is next door to a Hotel Darsena Ristorante announcing itself in large yellow letters. Higher above are the words ‘Grand Hotel Darsena.’ I love the little port already and hopefully we will only have people and no paparazzi which will make it a little heaven, and we must go and see Napoleon's Prison or whatever they call it.258 Almost all the houses are pale yellow and all the shutters are green – without exception.

  John Heyman found us here last night having come by Motoscafola from Piombino.259 His news was that he had commissioned John Osborne to write two plays – a sort of Rashomon 1970 for E and I to do on TV for Harlech, which should get that lot off my back.260 Osborne starts work on Monday. I wrote him a short delighted note. I hope it's some good. We passed a barren little rock half way here yesterday called Gargoni a most inhospitable looking place and a place of terror I've no doubt in earlier days and a haven for pirate vessels.261 [...]

  Saturday 29th, Portoferraio [...] We had lunch yesterday in a charming sea-side trattoria called very originally Ristorante della Mare – unhonoured by the Michelin Guide. The food was magnificent. We all decided to go off our various diets and to hell with it. We had mussels to start, dipping into hearts of artichoke, button-mushrooms, salami and other sausages the while, followed by a sort of thick clam and tomato soup followed by spaghetti with a sauce called something like ‘pesti’ – I mean something that sounded like that. It is a local herb, apparently, this ‘pesti’ slightly bitter but delicious – quite unlike any other taste that I can think of. I had four glasses of the local wine.

  We bought in Portofino an immobile bicycle – one of those contraptions which when assembled presents you with a little bicycle on its own stand. One can adjust the height of handlebars and seat to one's own satisfaction. It has a kilometre attached which records your speed and after you've finished how much you have theoretically travelled.262 Also attached is a clock which you set before you begin at the amount of time you wish to travel. When that time is up a bell rings. I started off four days ago with five minutes and am now doing 15 minutes. It seems a long and boring time and I am trying to find a music stand or something of that sort here in town which I can set up in front of the bike so that I can read. The problem is that as you pedal so the handlebars move forward and back. I might try reading by holding a book with one hand for five minutes and then changing to the other, in order to give each arm its own work-out. Because the arms work too. But more satisfactorily it would be a stand from which to read turning over the occasional page. I will try something this evening. Am now reading in tandem The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson with Machiavelli.263 The parallels are again very amusing. I will try and record some. [...]

  Sunday 30th The sun is temporarily out but generally it looks like a continuation of yesterday, grey and dull. We went dutifully to Napoleon's house which was very pleasant and middle-class, not at all grand. A garden that could be lovely and a magnificent view of the ocean. The only place of real interest to me was the library but naturally, as in all such musées it was roped off. The bike is a marvellous idea. I ‘rode’ for twenty minutes this morning, sweated like a bull, and hot and cold showered for a further twenty. Makes one feel magnificently virtuous and fit. We are going by car, not our own – hired Hertz – to Rio Marina today and stopping somewhere en route for lunch.264 [...] I have read so many books recently about Lyndon Johnson and nowhere does he seem a likeable man, with an ego so vast that it almost approaches mania, genuine madness. We are getting the English papers again and as before, after a long absence, they seem so stiflingly parochial. Huge headlines announce ‘Mutiny in the Navy’ and it turns out to be 1/2 dozen seamen who got stoned drunk and refused to obey orders and re-enacted Bligh and the Bounty taking all the parts between them.265 Mutiny indeed. Picture of Onassis kissing Callas and a snidey-snidey article accompanying it. It is monstrous that such a magnificent pulpit as the press could be has such moronic preachers. Apart from a couple of sportswriters and the occasional political article and the literary critics there is hardly anybody who can write a plain English sentence. Even the Times has become a bit of a rag with gossipy columns yet! One can always rely of course on the crossword puzzles which maintain their standards!

  SEPTEMBER

  Tuesday 1st, Calvi, Corsica Missed yesterday as I was more less stupefied with drink all day long. We left Elba at 1 o'clock in the morning and the sea was as smooth as a dream. We watched the departure and the slowly disappearing lights of Portoferraio and then went to bed. Suddenly we were awoken by heavy pitching and an occasional combinatory roll and pitch. We dozed but were kept more or less awake by the occasional huge dip until suddenly again a particularly heavy wave broke over the bows and we had omitted to shut our forward port-holes as the sea had been so smooth when we set out and our air-conditioning had broken down – it is being repaired today here we hope – and burst into the bed-room so that our highly expensive pure wool carpet was awash. By this time the sea was really throwing us around and it was quite an effort to close the portholes against further inundation. We went out on the poop deck and or sat in the lounge. And that began my day of drinking. I had several straight martinis and goodbye yesterday. However I did my ten kilometres on the bike sweating like the tropics and then drank endless restoratives, alka salzer [sic] and some Italian equivalent that Gianni carries around with him. The day was superb, as indeed it is today, and the carpets are hanging out to dry having been washed again with fresh water, so that the damage might be negligible. One lesson learnt and a lesson that I knew but didn't apply. Never take the sea for granted. She can change from the sweetest smoothest lady into a mad termagant in two minutes. So always keep the port-holes closed while travelling – especially at night. We acquired however a new passenger, with the great wave into our bedroom came a tiny creature, some kind of sea-snail known already as Ari – after Onassis. He lives in a glass of salt water on the living-room table. This morning we found him outside the glass having obviously climbed out through the night. I was afraid I might kill him if I tore him away from the glass's side as he clung on very tenaciously, so Gianni found a jug which we filled with salt water and put the entire glass and snail inside. If this goes on we'll have to build him an entire aquarium all to himself.

  We went to Rio Marina and had lunch in a restaurant 5km outside. It was a splendid lunch of antipasto followed by spaghetti alla marinare followed by delicious chicken flambée with brandy followed by the local cheese and grapes. I drank no wine but the others said it was delicious and they gave us a case for the yacht. Another restaurant not included in the Michelin Guide. Today we are going to lunch in town where we had a very good steak au poivre the last time we were here. I hope it's as good today.

  [...] I discovered a way of passing the time while cycling. You prop a crossword against the shaving mirror in the boys’ room and do it in your head. The time flie
s by.

  Read nothing yesterday – simply stared about in a generally stunned way. E was sweet and handled me with great affection and wisdom. She really is a superb woman. What I was suffering from was of course a slight case of guilt at not having closed those damned portholes. The drink compounded my irritation so that I was snarling at everybody. [...]

  Wednesday 2nd, Calvi-Ajaccio [...] Went out for lunch yesterday to a hotel that we'd been to before called Les Aloes, I think.266 Had what we hoped would be the same steak au poivre but the chef had obviously moved on to better places because the steak was indifferent. Bought a hammock for Elizabeth to lie on. Odd that we never had one before. Back in our own bedroom but it still ponks a little from the sea-depths. Afraid we'll have to have it all changed. Perhaps we can do it cheaply and temporarily in Ajaccio and do it up properly when we get to London. Little boats, mostly lobster fishers passing us all the time. Thought we might stop at Porto for lunch.267 We have never visited the place, so it will be nice to see it.

  Still hard at Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson. Surprisingly fat book. He does not get any more attractive [...]

  Tuesday 8th, La Verniaz, Evian268 We arrived here on Sunday having felt that we needed to be alone together if the paradox is pardoned – for a couple or three days before the hurly-burly of London and work again. A horrendous night on the yacht much compounded by a mighty sullen drunkenness on my part prompted us after hours of accusation and counter-accusation to a reconciliation and finally to a resolution that we were both happier when we are utterly alone. This done and agreed we ordered the jet and got out of Ajaccio and off the boat and into Geneva and onto a helicopter and are here at our favourite little hotel with our favourite little chef who flatters Elizabeth so. When we arrived and walked through the ‘tea garden’ we were applauded! [...] We have a little house – 3 bedrooms and a sitting room, standing in its own ground – about 200 yards from the main body of the hotel. It is a perfect place, the only nuisance being that we have to leave tomorrow to go and see Ivor and fly to London the following day as I have to be fitted with costumes etc. and begin the film with dread at the pit of my stomach – on Monday.269 Be glad when the first day or so is over. Don't quite know what I'm going to do until I do it. It's about the only time when I miss rehearsals as in the theatre – the slow assimilation of the part, the pub in the breaks, the occasional small explosion of realization of what it's all about in a general mumbling of stage marks and lines imperfectly learned, the discarding of the book after a couple of weeks or three and BANG the whole thing falls into place. That's where it should end of course in a perfect actors’ world, right there at the final dress rehearsal, no performance in front of an audience, no critics, three days’ holiday and begin again on the next play. Or perhaps just one performance for friends. But on Monday, by 9.30am acting a strange part, peculiarly foreign to me, with actors that I think I've never met, there will be 30 seconds of my performance indelibly in the can, as they say. Perhaps I could persuade Elliott to persuade the director to persuade the actors to have a ‘read-through’ before Monday.270 It will make me very unpopular with my fellow ‘professionals’ who want to play golf or screw women or each other but at least I'll know who everybody is. In the last couple of films I knew at least two or three of the company. In this one none.271

  1971

  [Richard ceased making entries in his 1970 diary in early September as he was about to start making Villain in London. On 6 October Richard and Elizabeth attended the wedding of Michael Wilding Jr and Beth Clutter at Caxton Hall Registry in London, Richard acting as Michael's best man. In the same month they appeared with Joseph Losey at the Round House Cinema City Exhibition before a showing of Boom!, after which they discussed their work with the audience. Conversations took place at this time between Burton and Laurence Olivier, about the possibility of Burton succeeding Olivier as Director of the National Theatre. On 10 November 1970 Burton attended Buckingham Palace to receive his CBE. Elizabeth's long-serving secretary, Dick Hanley, died in Los Angeles in January 1971, but Taylor, then filming X, Y and Zee in London, was unable to attend the funeral. Burton and Taylor spent part of January 1971 filming Under Milk Wood in the vicinity of Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, Wales. In May Richard and Elizabeth began filming Hammersmith Is Out in Cuernavaca in Mexico. Richard began his 1971 diary in late June.]

  JUNE

  Sunday 27th, Gstaad Feel inordinately lazy and somewhat disappointed as the Tito treatment is not very good.1 A series of loud bangs like any other old war film. I will attempt to get them to make it more Tito than guns and local partisan heroics, which, though probably true, have been seen in every Hollywood film ever made. If they do not I shall have to withdraw. I will still struggle away with learning Serbo-Croat. I find it fascinating. [...]

  Monday 28th Have been up since seven. Two cups of coffee and it is now eight-thirty. Can't get up steam to do anything except loaf around. I am going through that period which I call my crossword-puzzle time. Can't read a book of any kind except illustrated art books and such stuff. Times, Telegraph and a collected edition of double-crostics from the Saturday Review and the puzzles from the Times and Telegraph are the present limit of my intellectual activity.2 And a bit of Serbo-Croat thrown in for good measure.

  Liza is at the most irritating and silly stage of her teens – at least I hope she is. It would be intolerable if it got worse. [...] Am getting another extra day off from Heathfield for Liza.3 Don't like to do it but she is so persistent that I give in just for a quiet life. Like W. C. Fields I really have no patience with young people.4 I find them all inordinately boring.

  Must do something about Tito today or tomorrow. On reflection I think I could do something with it if I can persuade the writers to agree.

  Wednesday 30th Missed yesterday as I have a gouty or arthritic left wrist, exquisitely uncomfortable. Usually I get it in the left ankle and foot. Better today but still uncomfortable and since Christy Brown wrote a whole and good book typing one letter at a time with one toe I argue that I should manage with one finger and an elbow.5 Or rather two fingers.

  Raymond found the lost volumes of diaries in the wine cellar where I had put them before leaving Gstaad last time for England and Villain which I think is a goodish film but so far isn't doing very well in the States but has not yet opened in Britain and the Commonwealth where it should do better I hope.

  Liza left for school yesterday inevitably forgetting to take her passport and ticket. A car was sent after her with the documents but she missed the plane and took the next one. It is a good 21/2 hour drive to Geneva from here. I hope Mrs Ladas (known and named by me ‘Snakes and Ladas') will not be too cross.6

  Have just had an offer, by letter, from Stan Stennett (very broad Welsh comedian) to play the Baron in a Cinderella pantomime to be staged in Porthcawl!7 Must say I'd love to be in a panto. I've done practically everything else. Impossible of course. [...]

  JULY

  1st, Gstaad [...] I was so uncomfortable last night that in bed the slightest movement made me to groan as if demented. Elizabeth says that I am the world's champion ‘conyn’ which is Welsh for moaning hypochondriac. [...]

  To my delight we were able to watch the Wimbledon male semi-finals on our TV set here all bright and beautiful in colour on eurovision. The matches themselves were badly one-sided – Gorman losing to Stan Smith and the formerly great Rosewall losing to Newcombe.8 The French announcer said they would, most of them, be playing at Gstaad next week so let us hope the weather keeps good.9 [...]

  It looks as if I will do a film written by Tony Shaffer, twin brother of the other playwright Shaffer, in September instead of Tito.10 Perhaps the Jugs can shift the Tito affair to next spring when they could have a script with dialogue. If not will have to forgo same. Oddly enough Joe Losey called yesterday and asked if I would play Trotsky.11 Trotsky and Tito in one week and both world famous communists. [...]

  9th, Gstaad Wrote the [...] article for Vogue and at the behest of the editor
, a lady called Beatrix Miller, who cornered me at the Snowdons’ party a couple of weeks ago.12 Left hand and wrist still gouty so am still typing with two fingers though can now use left hand for short periods. E did something bad to her back and is in agony. [...] We went out gouty and lumbered for half an hour to a cocktail party at the Palace hotel given for the tennis festival. There were no tennis players there as far as we could see but hordes of stupid middle-aged autograph hunters. E insisted on taking the masseur (Ulrich Behrens) and his wife to the party. They were frostily received by the management Messrs Scherz until they saw they were with us when their lofty scowls turned into beaming smiles of welcome. The Swiss are as snobbish as the British. You see Herr Behrens is a visiting masseur to the Palace Hotel. [...]

  Sunday 11th Liza arrived yesterday evening accompanied by a large thunderstorm. [...] The weather until about four o'clock yesterday has been superb and I do most of my writing, Italian, French and Serbo-Croat in the sun. [...]

  We go to see the tennis finals this morning. And then to lunch at the Palace perhaps. E's back much better. Liza looking like a cabbage out of which rises a beautiful face and wearing the most unflattering dress I've ever seen.

  Monday 12th Went to see the men's singles finals. Newcombe of Australia and Okker of Holland. Newcombe won in five sets.13 Half a dozen good rallies but mostly serve and volley. [...]

  Played table tennis with Liza after breakfast and again after lunch. Her conversation is entirely standard cliché and platitude out of Heathcliff, I mean Heathfield. Her accent is awful at the moment, a terrible amalgam of Berks and Kensington refained. She is quite puppy fatted and pretends to be going on a diet with me and E but I don't think she'll stand it for very long. What she needs is a thumping lot of exercise. She went horse riding this morning and plays a couple of hours of ping pong a day with me which is a good thing for all concerned.