The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  Thursday 16th [...] For some reason, even more than usual, I made my entry in the diary yesterday like the beginning of a rather portentous autobiography, an apologia. Must save such fragments, properly written for the real thing which is about the only thing I'm ever likely to write – apart from the usual occasional snippet written for mags.

  I read all day apart from the diary entry. Changing from the biography of Mussolini by somebody called John Collier – very journalisticky – with lots of ludicrous bits read out to E, and the first volume of Toynbee's History to Spengler's Decline of the West to a detective story by Erle S. Gardner.153 [...] Have decided too, though whether I keep it up or not I don't know, that life is infinitely more rewarding without booze. At least my kind of boozing. It's been approx three months now I think though unless I look back in the diary, which I never do and can't anyway in this case as the preceding volume is in Gstaad, my estimation of time like estimating distances over water is absurdly inaccurate.

  [...] the Italians are a race of opera-comics. [...] I pointed out to E that the more the Nazis bombed Britain the tougher morale became, and the more we bombed the Reich the tougher they became, but in the Musso book it says that when the first raid on Rome occurred, and compared with Dresden, Cologne and Berlin it was a nothing, thousands of Italians ran out into the streets waving white flags improvised from pieces of stick and vests, shirts etc. but not, I'm sure, underpants which by this time would have been the wrong colour. I once saw a group of teenage Italians set on a lone colleague and finally get him on the ground. When he was down he put one hand over his face and one over his testicles and submitted. The others then proceeded to kick him but the kicks were unbelievably ineffective as they took turns to do running kicks at him but in their anxiety in case the man who was down happened to grab an ankle and pull one of them down with him they kicked from as far away as possible so that they couldn't possibly get any purchase, any power into the kicks. This was in or rather outside a bar somewhere in Rome many years ago and I was with Johnny Sullivan and a lot of other stuntmen who would have enjoyed joining in but the whole thing was so balletic and coy that all we could do was laugh. Of course the stories of Italian cowardice are legion – they even tell them against themselves – and indicate a highly civilized and very witty and healthy respect for life especially their own lives but, childishly, it's not a reputation I would like the British, and certainly not the Welsh to have. I was informed from birth that the toughest thing on earth was a Welsh miner. I believed it and it got me into more fights than one would have thought possible. I'm still likely to have a go though I know that at my age and condition I stand not a chance. I suppose that's what happens to the Irish too. The Scots are far more sensible, like the English they just know they are the best and don't bother to prove it.

  Friday 17th [...] We sat and read again all day. [...] I finished off Mussolini. What an ignoble end to a fairly ignoble life. And extraordinary how his weaknesses, inferiority complexes, had the effect in other people's eyes, of giving him strength. He had the unthinking cruelty of a child and it seems that any really dirty work was unconsciously delegated and atrocities were committed without his knowledge. Fundamentally he was a weak but decent man. This man, Collier, though he mentions Mussolini's physical ailments, does not give them the importance they should have had in the book. Quite clearly, and I believe it more and more after that slight but important book The Pathology of Leadership, his physical illness had a great impact on his conduct of the war and in fact his going in to it at all.154 I'm sure that Hitler wasn't at all pleased that Mussolini joined him in the war at all. It would have suited him much better to have Italy on the sidelines and supply him with materials, raw and finished. Some German General is asked before the war: ‘Which side is going to win?’ and the answer was ‘The side that doesn't have Italy as an ally.’ This gem is quoted in the book.155 Yet another Italian-cowardice joke? Well let's see. If it were not for Italy's, or rather Mussolini's idiotic adventure into Greece – a blatant piece of idiocy to show Hitler that he too could go to war without informing his partner – there would have been no need for the Germans having to go into Jugoslavia to get at Greece. He could have chosen his own time later. Greece might never have come into the war at all as Turkey never did.156 If the Eyties had not marched on the British and Egypt, Hitler need never have wasted his great troops in the long desert war.157 When they were involved in the Russian War they were also having to defend Italy after her capitulation against the Allies. If Italy had stayed out of the war or come in on our side after she was sure, and everybody was, that the Democracies were going to win she would have had herself a seat at the carve-up table as a belligerent member of the winning side. She might even have kept Ethiopia. And Mussolini would have ended up with a state funeral amidst the weeping of a nation instead of being urinated on by Italian women in a square in Milan.158

  Perhaps because it's my own time but this century's politics and wars seem to me to be the most fascinating of all time. Never in history have events followed so fast on each others’ heels, never have politics been so copiously documented and never before has the final move, potential move so far meant the destruction of the entire human race and indeed all living things. Indeed the year of my birth is as good a time as any to begin a modern history. Because although the Great War was terrible and horrendous – more so perhaps than the second – the great disintegration of world values didn't begin until after the dust of the war had settled and the monsters began to appear. The new monsters.

  [...] E still asleep and now must wake her up as she, at least, has to work today. She models for a furrier-artist so called, called Soldano who furs out of Genoa as one might say and who afterwards gives her the furs, and others, that she models.159 Bozzacchi calculates that the furs on the market would bring in $150,000. I wonder what happened to the pledge that E signed in common with other famed ladies that she would never wear the furs of anything in future except pest furs and vermin. Must ask her and will record the answer tomorrow.

  And now back to The Decline of the West.

  Saturday 18th [...] E said that her declaration about furs, done through John Springer, was carefully worded. It said that she would continue to wear furs from vicious creatures like mink who were specially bred to be de-furred but would ban the buying, advertising or wearing of fur that came from genuinely wild creatures since, as a result of the trade in furs, they were in danger of extinction. She pointed out that she would wear Persian lamb since she still eats lamb chops. Personally, I said, I couldn't care less about the fate of wild animals and that I was far more concerned with the fate of wild human beings. And particularly with the fate of my wild human family. [...]

  E did her fur reportage yesterday under great difficulties as they couldn't shoot out of doors as there was a continual downpour. I went over about 1.30 and was fitted for Trotsky and had a bite to eat. Couldn't wait to come back here to the warm intimacy of the yacht and with the two volumes of the Shorter Oxford on the sofa and Decline of the West across my knees I settled down together with endless cups of tea to a long read until E came home, quite late and slightly the worse for wear, about 7.30. She has just given me a graphic description of the delight of over-eating kippers and the particular joy of their repeating. She is the only person, certainly the only woman who will tell you – not anybody I mean, just me – details of the internal workings of her body. She knows it appals me which is why perversely she enjoys telling me. Liz la Perverse.

  I'd forgotten how readable Spengler is even in translation or maybe the translation makes it more readable than the original. He really comes out with all guns firing. The fury in the professional philosopher world must have been joyful to watch. What, I wonder, did people like Bertrand Russell and lesser lights like C. E. M. Joad and economists like Keynes feel like when they read the cold dismissal of them all by our friend Oswald.160 To turn from the vigorous dynamics of Spengler to the distant urbanity of Toynbee is almo
st comical. And so it was Spengler all afternoon and evening and Toynbee in bed and A. A. Fair for a night-cap.161 [...]

  Monday 20th [...] Did not write in this yesterday but spent a thoroughly lazy day reading Palmerston a biography by Jasper Ridley.162 I didn't know much about Palmerston before and didn't know how loathsome he was. The kind of English that causes me bright fury and arouses all my usually sleeping hatred of the English. And now poor bastards they are worse than ever, their two or three centuries of arrogance as a right having turned into pathos. They flared up for a year or two as a result of Churchill and the war but the post-war debacles killed them stone dead. How I enjoyed Suez and the fools they made of themselves. How I enjoyed De Gaulle and his more English than the English ‘NO’ to the Common Market.163 I watch their every humiliation with great pleasure though I don't much like reading other people writing about them as I am now. [...]

  Have worked and, as usual on this film, rather eccentrically. [...] Took off 9.50. [...] We understood from the pilot that we were flying right to the mountain-top for the location. However, to our surprise, he landed us at the bungalows and immediately took off again leaving us with three locked bungalows. Brook eventually found keys at the hotel. We opened up, put the heaters on, boiled water for coffee and sat in the sun by the window and I continued to read Solzhenitsyn's One day in the life of when the helicopter returned about 11.50 and we set off again.164 It was a short trip as we circled the valley and landed again. Why? They wouldn't need me for another hour. More Solzhenitsyn and off we went again about 1.30 I suppose. Finally to work which consisted of being strafed by planes and explosions going off all over the place and is indeed the scene when I am supposed to be, i.e. Tito is supposed to be injured. Did it umpty-nine times. Became tetchy again when they pegged the poor Alsatian down and chloroformed it so that it would lie dead in the shot.

  Home at last about 5 covered in mud and artificial blood. [...] was told that I too have to fly to Belgrade tomorrow to see Tito. I don't mind really but I feel guilty about the film again, though there is no way, short of insult, of getting Tito to let me off. We are taking him an Alsatian puppy of superior breeding from England.

  Tuesday 21st, Aboard Presidential Plane On our way to see Tito complete with Alsatian dog [...]. The plane is very posh, very presidential – two apartments with beds and sitting accommodation for about 40 people I suppose.

  This all came about when Tito told us in Tjentiste that his old Alsatian ‘Tiger’ had died and E suggested we get him a pup from England. He is very highly bred – the descendant of many champions including a few ‘best dog of any breed at Crufts’ and other 3 stars.165 He is very good looking – a very blacky sort of brown.

  It is also a good coincidence as Tito told us of Tiger II snarling and attacking the Russian Ambassador when he, the latter, brought the ultimatum from Stalin. Brezhnev arrives tomorrow for a state visit which I'm told by CBS and NY Times is a thinly disguised look-around for a possible puppet successor to Tito when the old man dies. So now he'll have another Tiger around. The western correspondents I've talked to – and because of the nature of the film and the part I'm playing all seem to be political rather than film commentators – say they expect a big explosion after Tito dies. All are worried that the various republics will want autonomy in which case they'll be dead ducks for Hungary, Roumania Albania etc. and ultimately, of course, Russia. We shall watch with more than fascination as we love this lot a lot and would hate to see them involved in another ‘Hungary’ or – even worse – another Czechoslovakia.166 [...]

  Wednesday 22nd, Kalizma–Cavtat A horrendous journey back from Belgrade as E was in great pain throughout the journey. Bite-on-bullet, tearful type pain. [...] One of the famed pink pills seemed to help which I've told her to take even if she does get woozy oh willy-nilly-she's-a-ruby. Brilliant morn and God's in his heaven all's right with the world. [...]

  Tito was obviously pleased with the puppy and chuckled richly when he saw it. The poor thing [...] followed him in from the garden once so that pleased him no end. I think he was genuinely moved. And so was the Madame Broz. He talked about Brezhnev coming today and how hard the work was going to be. E insisted that he, Tito, speak English for a while. He protested that he confused it with German but she would have none of it and indeed for about 10 minutes he laboured on in English. A few days and a few books and he'd be speaking it very well. We asked him the form for such visits and he sighed and said it would start with an hour or two tete a tete followed by lunch followed by a mass exchange between delegates from both countries. After this Brezhnev would lay a wreath on their cenotaph or visit a factory and then there would be a banquet in the evening. Fool! I would go mad. Three whole days of that with neither of them really saying anything and inferring mightily between the lines. He asked about the film and I told him that we'd been held up etc. but that the work we had done seemed to be good and that friends from London who'd seen the rushes dreamt of dollar signs. He said wickedly that dollar-signs weren't what they were. Well then I said ‘Deutschmarks’. Must confess that I didn't think 20 years ago or even 20 weeks that I would choose to be paid in DMs rather than dollars. Oh what a fall was there my countrymen.167 I asked him about the Fitzroy Maclean story that ‘you do this, and you that’ was Ti, To and thereby came his name. I persisted and asked him if he'd told that to Maclean as a joke. No, he said, he'd never said anything of the kind but somebody else may have. He said that Tito was quite a common name in some parts, maybe his part of Jugoslavia. He mentioned some other name which was equally short like Nikki or taka or something which he could easily have become.

  They want us to come back on Sunday to visit the War Museum but museums ought, as Dylan once said, to be put into museums and I can't think of anything more boring. One of the men there, a very suave under-secretary of the Foreign Office said that some ambassador had been to visit and after a couple of hours said that he had tears in his eyes. Lying bastard, I thought. Unless they were tears of boredom.

  [...] E wrote two letters last night while I read Dombey and Son. Years since I read it but page after page comes back to my memory. We had several volumes of Dickens at home. They were won by my brothers, principally Ivor I think, for good attendance at Sunday School or day school.

  Friday 24th Exhausting work up in the mountains, physically exhausting. Running about at a half crouch and diving into fox-holes at 9000 feet is not only wearying but boring. Seemingly endless explosions go off all around us and at the end of each day I am covered with dirt, some artificial put on by Ron and some, the most uncomfortable kind put on by nature in all the bombing and slithering about. By evening time I am a mass of aches from the use of unaccustomed muscles. So much so that I missed two days in this diary. Too stiff to be bothered. [...]

  Still with Dombey and Son. Must confess that Dickens could do with some editing. Sometimes his discursiveness is charming but sometimes one is minded to skip. One can see him beginning a chapter with ‘now let's start this with some fine writing!’ Little Dombey is, let's face it, a bit of a pain in the ass. And the famous ‘death of little Dombey’ very contrived.168 I'd forgotten how often people cry in Dickens. Tears are for ever starting from people's eyes. But it's all good reading nevertheless. [...]

  We are going to go to an island supposedly very beautiful and sub-tropical 70% wooded etc. with interior lakes called Mljet.169 We shall paddle around it. Tea and off again in the egg-beater. [...]

  E told me tonight that she was always perfectly assured of herself in the early fifties when she knew that she was a sort of second string to Jean Simmons, Grace Kelly and Colleen Gray and Audrey Hepburn variously because deep down she could fall back on a sort of cultural or artistic background.170 She is vague as to exactly what she means and so am I [...] but she thinks that growing up as she did surrounded as she was by great works of art, by your Van Goghs, Monets, Renoirs etc. gave her a sense of proportion about the relative insignificance of whether she played ‘Young Bess’ or w
hether somebody else did – in this case Jean Simmons.171 E thinks that makes her sound like some kind of intellectual egotist but I don't think so at all. I was and to a certain extent still am, an awful academic snob. There was no mind, if G. B. Shaw will forgive the paraphrase, that I didn't despise in the film business when I compared it with my own.172 There was nothing much to compare it with. One can hardly describe Darryl Zanuck, Lew Schreiber, L. B. Meyer, Jack Warner and all their little satellites as being the owners of towering brains.173 As E says, for her it was a harbour in which she could watch with some dispassion the busy toing and froing while for me, much more arrogantly, it was a mountain peak on which I could look down on the despicable ants.

  I have been a little put out by something that Ron Berkeley told me and which I have yet to verify. I have predicated my still unwritten article or what ever it might turn out to be about Tito on the belief that he never ever ordered anyone, including captured Germans who had behaved with atrocity to his defenceless people and hetniks who betrayed and murdered the partisans, to be shot. Now Ron tells me that he was in a bar in Dubrovnik the other night and in the course of conversation with a group of Jugoslavs he said that I was particularly fascinated by Tito because of this. Whereupon two men immediately stood up from the table and left the cafe-bar without a word. Ron asked why this, as Jugoslavs are generally polite. The proprietor who is a cockney Slav believe it or not said that the fathers of the two men had been shot in the Jugoslavian ‘purge’ of 1948.174 I must now try and find out if these two killings (altogether, Ron says 41 people from Dubrovnik were shot at that time) were personal settling of scores or whether the orders came from the top. If so I shall be a disappointed man. I mean if the orders came from Belgrade. I must also find out if the people are willing to talk. So far, after countless conversations with all kinds of people I have never heard one bad word about Tito and very few pejorative remarks about communism, though quite a lot about bureaucracy and its attendant evils – particularly nepotism and the fact that a member of the party, though inferior in merit to a cardless Slav, will always get the vote. I asked Branko, a veteran Slav actor who speaks good English, why nobody, but simply nobody, spoke ill of Tito.175 Was it caution or fear perhaps. Branko said that it was neither, that Tito was still a father-figure. To the older generation – people of my age and his (57? 62?) – he and Sava had been the legendary saviours and to the younger generation – those of 30 and under – there had never been any other President.176 Tito and President had become synonymous. Rather, I suppose, the way in which Caesar came to mean King. Kaiser and Czar are probably etymologically derived from Julius and his namesakes. The young ones know that he saved them from [the] Boche beast and the Red Bear and those who might have opposed him in the crisis of 1948 – if Ron's story in the pub is to be credited – were presumably knocked off or incarcerated. I must ask more of Branko and find out if I can detect in him any signs of caution or fear when next he chats at my instigation. I think I'll be able to tell. I must ask about Djilas and whether it would be possible for me to meet him or even whether it would be advisable of me to ask somebody like Popovi who is a member of the party.177