The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  Wrote five letters yesterday and actually sent them off. Usually I write letters, which I like doing when in the mood and then find them in my briefcase six months later.

  [...] Still not in a bookreading mood. Anything else will do. National Geographic, Encyclopedia Britannica, Larousse, painful reading of French and Italian. Well Italian is painful. French is ok reading one Maigret after another but not a sustained word in English. Heard in Cadonau's this morning that Julie Andrews is in town also that John Kenneth Galbraith has just left.14 Wish it were the other way round.

  15th It's afternoon and am sitting on the lawn outside the library. Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards (husband, film director) came to dinner. They seemed very nice together. He had sent a book the day before by Kingsley Amis called the Green Man.15 It is, as one expects from Amis, expertly written but has ‘don’ written all over it. About ghosts which is never my cup of tea. But this one held my interest to the end which considering my inability to read at the moment is a fair old feat. They may use the house, this one at Xmas. Have ordered a lock-up filing cabinet to put away all the papers and diaries etc. Good idea anyway, even if we don't have visitors. Answered [...] letter from George Thomas, MP and wrote to David Harlech, Stan Baker and James Wishart passing on the message.16 [...] Why do we send such obvious mediocrities to the Commons when there are such brilliant chaps on every street corner at home? I suppose we are all so bloody lazy that we let the dull and insignificant – like Lord Llew Heycock for Christ's sake – who are prepared to go to party meetings in vestries and half-empty halls, do the job for us.17 [...]

  16th Received [...] telegram yesterday from the editor of Vogue.18 Why do notices and things similar about what little writing I do thrill me and notices for acting leave me totally indifferent? I was on air for the rest of the day after getting Miller's cable regardless of whether she has any judgement or not. Elizabeth played a trick on me which for a moment took me in completely. I [...] was awoken from a fairly deep nap by E brandishing the telegram and saying ‘Your first rejection slip. I'm sorry Rich.’ She said that my face for a second was a pathetic sight and ‘all scrunchled up’ as if I were about to burst into tears. Cheeky devil.

  [...] I am slowly recording on a Philips tape machine the whole of Assimil in English for our German masseur and his wife who are very anxious to learn English.19 The English is somewhat archaic – I imagine the text must be several decades old but it is good enough to start with. Also it means that I am getting a rough knowledge of German as I read the German listening to the English.

  Sunday 18th [...] Very sad article yesterday in Ici Paris about the death of Maria's grandmother and the torment her mother and father have been suffering since allowing her to go for adoption.20 Why don't the miserable French gutter press leave them alone. I have kept the article hidden away. Perhaps Maria will want to see such things one day.

  Headlines in all the papers and front page that Nixon is going to meet Mao Tse Tung in Peking before next May.21 Fancy Nixon graduating to statesmanship. Perhaps the office has made yet another man though I find it hard to believe. I dislike drunkards (and he was drunk as the devil the last time I saw him – before becoming President) having dominion over palm and pine and me and mine.22

  Lovely down here in the library with the fire going and the beautiful books all around in disciplined ranks. [...]

  We have our neighbours – who have been so generous with Maria, in for drinks tonight. They are Germans I think. [...]

  Monday 19th [...] The German neighbours called Kehl, he's a banker in Dusseldorf and comes here for weekends only. She very outdoorsy looking, blonde and a little weathered though she can only be in her thirties. Skiers, horse-riders, early morning swimmers etc. and mountain walkers and picknickers. Nice enough. He with a loud cracked voice which seems typically Germanic and suggests an underlying nervousness. Perhaps hysteria. They must have a fair amount of money as the chalet next door, though smallish, must have cost a pretty penny and he flies to Gstaad from Dusseldorf every Friday and flies back again every Monday morning. Made fun of the German Swiss. Naturally. So did we rather lamely and affectionately. [...] Shall go shopping for odds and ends in a minute. I'm getting to the stage where I have a hatred of being stared at so the time for shopping for me is the early morning while the tourists are still a-bed and only the Swiss are around who couldn't give a cuss who you are. [...]

  Wednesday 21st Spent most of yesterday with Jugoslavians about the Tito film. Lots of fascinating talk about Communism and Russia but mostly about Tito. Talked to Aaron who said it would be alright to postpone the other film23 [...] We go, at Tito's invitation, to see him on the 28th instant. Should be very interesting to say the least. [...]

  I start the film on the 15th of next month and the other film about the 15th of the month after. The former near Dubrovnik and the latter in Jersey.24 Both places will be new to me and E.

  [...] Have become very busy with my hands – gout and all – and managed to find out how to operate a very elaborate and very expensive Japanese TV machine which takes instant movies. Great fun fiddling about with it taking pictures of Liza and Maria on the trampoline, swings etc. [...]

  Saturday 24th, Gstaad Leaving this morning by helicopter and plane for Nice and the Kalizma. [...]

  Just discovered to my fury that Toronado, in perfect shape sold for 5000 Swiss francs. And who to? To Solowicz who was in charge of its sale.25 Must investigate further.

  Sat in sun yesterday and did nothing much except read the Tribune de Genève and listened to the Italian records.26 Took Liza to the manege and walked E'en So for an hour while Liza went over the jumps.27

  The pound of chocolate that I ate the day before last has had no effect on my weight as far as the scales go. Still around 174. Should drop before long to 170.

  Am seeing Mazlanski, Shaffer, Berkeley and uncle Tom Cobly on the Kalizma on Tuesday re Absolution, the film.28 [...]

  Sunday 25th, Kalizma Journey here, both copter and plane very smooth and very fast. [...] E moaned all day long about the condition of the boat. Only two glasses out of scores left. Must have all been smashed I suppose. Big stain on the back of one of the chairs and two more on the bed-head and the facing wall. E tamping.29 Raymond with a face as long as a yard of ale because quite clearly the steward and stewardess don't know their jobs. The former at least doesn't know how to serve table and his wife says, if you please that she doesn't launder. There is a perfectly good laundry on board. All she has to do is stick the stuff in the machine hang it on the line and iron it. The new cook is amiable and good so far and oldish but Raymond says he is dirty around the kitchen. We shall see. Moved the yacht immediately from Monaco to Villefranche to avoid the gawkers who were slowly gathering.30 Parked a few hundred yards from the shore at Villefranche. Very pretty. Niarchos’ ‘Creole’ is a hundred yards away.31 E says that some one has bought it from him and he's going to buy another. [...]

  Monday 26th, Monte Carlo Beth's baby was born yesterday at 2am.32 A girl, as yet nameless. We didn't know until this morning as we spent Saturday and Sunday moored off Villefranche. Great excitement and I broke my drinking fast for the first time since June 15. Had a glass of nasty champagne and two or was it three stiffish martinis. Knocked me sideways and I slept for three or more hours this afternoon. We are off to London tomorrow morning and will stay until Thursday to muck about with the parents and baby.

  Watched a very spectacular fireworks display tonight. This one put on by the Germans. The Portuguese and English still to come. They'll have to be good to beat the Germans. But then the Germans never play at anything and are always at war.

  Telegram from Popovic to say we are expected in Pula at 10am Saturday 31st to meet Tito etc.33 [...]

  Tuesday 27th, Kalizma, Carlo Beautiful morning and early. [...] Excited at seeing the baby. Monte Carlo with all its new apartment blocks is becoming an eyesore. Towering block after towering block and also has become very noisy. [...]

  There a
re a lot of things I can do in London – the meeting with Shaffer et al. Find out from Wishart and Eagles what the hell is going on at 2, Squire's Mount.34 See Ivor and Gwen and depress myself. Call Kate if possible. Call Frosch if possible.

  Both E and I in good humour so far. Will continue if she's on time. [...]

  Have just received Deakin's book on Jugoslavia and the battle of Sutjeska.35 Shall read it in London and on plane, though probably will do French and Italian via cassettes Assimil. Passes the time wonderfully.

  Only one mention in the Express yesterday of the baby's birth. Thought there would be far more fuss. Might happen today with our arrival at London Airport. Just as well if there is none. [...]

  Wednesday 28th, Dorchester [...] Yesterday, apart from the little baby – six pounds born – was a terrible day. Michael started it by announcing point-blank that he had no intention of continuing as Gianni Bozzacchi's assistant and that he was going to be a pop-group musician. Since he plays no known instrument with anything like proficiency and neither do any of his friends this is a hazardous prospect at the best. When he hurts and disappoints E as he does time after time I sometimes really feel physically violent. [...] The house is a mess apparently and is full of spongers and drifters. This we settle for but it hardly seems a fair place to take a child who is exquisite and Beth, also exquisite, who quite clearly loathes the atmosphere [...]. There is nothing to do but wait for him to grow up and think for himself. And the gaps in his knowledge are alarming. I had hoped that, when he quit school, that he would fill up the crevices by self-education but he still reads only what's currently fashionable among his friends. Mad Magazine and the inevitable Hesse, a phony, and Alistair Crowley, who is a joke.36 He had professed a fascination with the Book of Revelations which I had talked to him about in Cuernavaca – particularly the 13th chapter.37 He couldn't wait to read it he said. Yesterday I asked him if he'd thought about it any more, or if he'd read more Blacke.38 Nothing. He had done nothing.

  Ivor is very near the end. Death is written all over his face. He did not know me when I saw him yesterday. He can barely speak. He is already dead. I wish he were. The sight of Ivor, after the emotional disturbance of baby and Beth and Michael, finally reduced E to tears and she sobbed all the way back to the Dorchester and sometime afterwards. Liza was an angel to Elizabeth and cwtched her as the positions were reversed as ‘twere and Liza was the mother and E the child. I love that child. She can be a bit of a bastard at times but she is fundamentally an angel and great in a crisis. So that was something splendid out of the day. Oddly enough the day had started in Monte Carlo by Liza and E having a quarrel about clothes which ended with E slapping Liza. Liza is going through a period where she thinks she is fat and ugly. Everybody but she thinks she is ravishing but there's no way of persuading her. And so to business and meeting Kate at Ivor's and buying books and thank the good God back to the Kalizma in the morning.

  Thursday 29th, Dorchester A long long day. I waited for the Brass to turn up at 11 o'clock yesterday morning but they didn't and when I finally called I gave Ron Berkeley a severe tongue-lashing for making such a mess of the appointment.39 I saw them at 6 instead and they were pleasant enough and it seems we shall go ahead with the film on September 15th as planned. Shaffer is a fat man biggish with prematurely grey hair and something wrong with his left eye. He told strange stories of being a Bevin boy in the last war but by no means an ordinary one – he was in intelligence and was a counter spy, he says, on the look out for infiltratory agents intent on sabotage.40 Did you catch anybody asked somebody and if so what did you do with them? I shot them he said, or rather arranged for them to be killed. This is very easy in the mines he said. I didn't believe a word of it and said so. He said he had written it up he said but was not allowed to publish because of the official secrets act etc.41 I shall see a lot of him in the next few weeks and shall delve further. It all seems a little too fantastic. But it could it seems be true. The British Secret Service is famous for its amateur idiocies. He insisted that it was still top secret and should not be repeated. But, I said, you have just told it openly to four perfect strangers. Yes but you must promise me not to tell any one else. I shall tell everybody immediately I said.42

  Christopher Miles – brother of Sarah Miles, the actress – and the director of the film is a tiny fellow with bright sharp humouress eyes.43 He looks as if he knows what he wants and will insist that he gets it. The film is to be shot in Jersey where I understand the natives are bilingual. It will be interesting I hope. The snaps they showed me of the locations seem quite right. Mazlanski seems to be out of his depth in the film world of high finance.

  The delightful Kate was with us from noon on and was her usual charming self. Giggles a great deal and pretends to be appalled by my occasional irreverencies. She is a joy and went to the hospital to see the nameless one while I went to Claude Gill's to buy books for the yacht.44 Maria came with me and I bought a very catholic selection of books. A couple of Dickens and a few thrillers and horror stories for Liza and Hornblower for Chris and a few volumes of poetry in French, Welsh and English for myself. The French ones have prose translations which will save me a lot of bother. Also brought a lot of pocket dictionaries French Italian Spanish German. Also brought books for the chauffeur Charles Simpson's sons who are showing interest in school work.

  Another telegram from Sarajevo [...] God knows what to expect in Brioni with Tito and his lads.45 [...]

  Saturday 31st, en Route to Lupa, Yugoslavia [...] Lupa which was variously announced as being 21/2 hours by air then 11/2 and now we are told 65 minutes away.46 [...] Reading, in proof, Deakin's book about the partisans which is full of good stories. Must see him (Deakin) when we get back. [...]

  Arrived safely and were taken by car – Mercedes-Benz – to and through Pula where a boat awaited us. A mass of photographers and journalists and TV people at the airport to meet us. Usual questions – ‘What's it feel like to play a great man?’ ‘How much do you know about Tito?’ They have given us a villa not far from Tito's. Very hot – no air conditioning. [...]

  Madame Broz (she prefers to be called that to ‘Tito') was at the villa to meet us.47 Big woman and very peasant looking and utterly charming with a devastating smile. Speaks a little English and understands more. We were offered canapés (which I ate, removing the bread), and champagne which I refused and delicious Turkish coffee which I didn't refuse.

  Our ‘apartment’ upstairs consists of a large bedroom and large sitting room with two huge bathrooms. We understand that this was Jane Swanson's family house when this belonged to Italy up to 1945. Jane Swanson is our secretary who lives on 1/2 pay when she doesn't work for us. We shall take pictures of the house to show her. Now off to lunch with Tito.

  AUGUST

  Sunday 1st, Brioni A long but enjoyable day spent apart from a short nap in the afternoon and until 7.30pm – with Tito. We went to his house – a few minutes from ours about midday. He and wife and cameras were waiting for us. (Later we saw ourselves on TV being greeted). We sat in one corner of a large room, one end of which was the dining area. There were two tables. We sat at one with the President and Madame Broz and two interpreters and a couple of other unidentified people. We presented the President and wife with our present from Van Cleef and Arpels – a chunk of pyrite (?) with a clock set into it.48 I told Tito, after being asked what I thought of the script, that I thought he was weakly presented in it and should be stronger and that the part was too small. He said it was OK to make it larger which pleased the director Deli no end.49 So perhaps I'll have something better to do than just stand around and look like a man of destiny.

  The President is surprisingly small and delicate. Little short arms and legs and a small head with little features. He wears slightly tinted glasses and I can't really tell the colour of his eyes. He has quite a pot-belly but the rest of him is slim – no bottom and thin chest and legs. He walks slowly and with short steps. When he sits down behind a table he seems most form
idable. I'm slightly put out by the nervousness with which the servants serve us all. They live in remarkable luxury unmatched by anything else I've seen and [I] can well believe Princess Margaret who says the whole business makes Buck House look pretty middle-class. After lunch the President and I talked a great deal about the war and Sutjeska in particular. I asked him if he liked Stalin. He took a long time to answer and finally said he ‘liked him or rather admired him as a politician but disliked him as a man.’ Most of the time he talked Serbo-Croat but when we were alone talked slow but adequate English. I said I had read that he was fluent in French and perhaps he would prefer to speak in that tongue but he appeared not to have heard me and continued in English until, with obvious relief, the interpreter rejoined us, and he rattled away in Serbo-Croat again.

  He called for us at 4pm in a convertible Lincoln-Continental – ‘a present from the people of Zagreb’ I think he said – and started to drive – E in front beside him and me behind with Madame Broz. He immediately punctured the front right tyre by driving over a very sharp curbstone not 50 yards from the house. Instead of stopping and cutting the engine he revved-up and we jerked and jolted about for a nerve-racking 10 seconds or so. We left the car and went on foot to visit a small zoo with an elephant and ibex and elands etc. Gazelles too. He suddenly looked very old and even smaller after the car incident but was soon his old confident self again. He seemed a little apprehensive of the elephant when feeding it. To my horror – after about 15 minutes (and to E's horror too I found out later) – the Continental turned up again all mended and we took up the drive once more. He drove at a funeral's pace but my (and E's) heart was in my mouth for the rest of the journey, which was a tour of the entire island. I was very glad to get back to his villa. He was obviously used to power-steering and power-brakes and we all threatened to go through the windscreen every time he stopped to show us something or other. But he and Madame were so charming that one forgives them anything. He loves animals and trees and has a huge collection of both on the island and elsewhere, we gathered.