The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  Saturday 25th, Kalizma [...] I'd forgotten that Dombey was written in serial form which accounts, a great deal I imagine, for the incredibility of the plot which is really beyond belief. No question but that E. M. Forster was right (he is quoted in the afterword by Alan Pryce Jones) when he said that Dickens was the most popular novelist of the nineteenth century and its greatest humourist.178 He is not however a great novelist because I don't believe half he says and his obvious ‘set-pieces’ set my nerves on edge and were it not for the fact that I am congenitally unable to skip passages I would have read the book in half the time. But he is good entertainment and ideal for reading on the daily helicopter trips and between shots on the film – something I was never able to do before. [...]

  Having seen Tito on Tuesday we were more than interested in the report in yesterday's Tribune of the meetings between Tito and Brezhnev.179 Looks like the old man is as tough and intractable as ever. He refuses to accept the idea of ‘limited sovereignty’ which is an absurd contradiction in terms anyway. Sovereignty is sovereignty and limited is limited and never the twain shall meet. The Orwellian double-think is evident in every arrogant word that Brezhnev says.180 He denies that he meant by ‘limited sovereignty’ the status under which Czechoslovakia lived and the excuse for the invasion. It says that Mr Brezhnev and Tito were going on a hunting trip but owing to ‘a slight cold’ affecting Brezhnev the trip had been cancelled. How the Russian bosses must hate Tito and how they will exult when he dies. And there is no ear nose and throat specialist who can prescribe for the kind of cold that Brezhnev has. [...]

  Monday 27th, Cavtat [...] Flew by copter to the location – took about 40 minutes. Then were asked by Popovi to go to Sarajevo to have a look at the inevitable ‘Tito’ house. It is the usual thing. A house divided into two floors the top one of which is two suites comprised of bathroom, bedroom with two single beds stuck together, and two minute sitting rooms for each suite. Why two? The helicopter attempted a landing in the grounds but it was impossible so we went off to the airport. [...] Knocked off three scenes as fast as I could and we were back on board the copter by 8.30pm. [...]

  Tuesday 28th, Sarajevo Sitting here in my ‘suite’ in the house in Sarajevo. It is as far as one can get from the city without being in the country. The mountains go straight up a couple of hundred yards away. It is, this house and the surrounding ones, again one of those little estates which we have found by now everywhere we go which contain hotels and adjacent houses for the exclusive use of VIPs of the Party. Last night, for instance, one of the boys said that two men appeared unexpectedly and were shown into rooms on the ground floor. That floor has about 8 small bedrooms. So I suppose the VIPs don't bother to book into hotels when on business outside the big cities; they simply report to the nearest Commie-complex.

  I finished work ridiculously early [...] about mid-day and was back here in the house by 1pm. Called E immediately at the house but it appears that she'd decided to stay on the Kalizma. Called again this evening after I'd been out shopping but couldn't get through. Will call again later. I feel terribly lonely without Elizabeth. Last night I had dinner as already said in previous entry and today I had lunch – wienerschnitzel, not bad, – just one course when Poppo [Popovi ] [...] turned up again with a very splendid brochure of an exhibition here called ‘Art on the soil of Yugoslavia from prehistoric times to the present.’ He is most insistent that E and I should pay a sort of state visit to it. I loathe the idea of a conducted tour around a museum. I loathe museums anyway and in my case they are a waste of time. The last one I went to was the big one in NY called the Metropolitan I think – it's on the east side of Central Park.181 There were a lot of large Rodins about I seem to remember and I wandered about dutifully enough and was stopped by only one thing – a painting of a large forest, the shot, as ‘twere, taken from one mountain top to another and in the far tree-covered mountain was a long thin waterfall. It was so excellently done that one wasn't sure whether it was smoke coming up from the bed of the valley or water streaming down. The woman I was with, a journalist who was supposed to be an aficionada, said it was a ‘nothing picture’. And by a ‘nobody’. So that was that. Next time I'm in New York I'll see if I can find it again.

  The shops close from noon to 4 and so this afternoon I read a book called The French Connection which is about the narcotics trade generally and about one case specifically.182 Not very well written but informative and though written with the co-operation of the NY Police Department showed the Police up in an unattractive light. They seem to be so stupid. A clever man would be able to defeat them every time. The only reason they were successful in this particular case was, it seems to me, because the criminals were equally stupid.

  Went out with Brook, Ron and Vessna the interpreter to buy books if any and biscuits and choc etc. for snacking. Found both. The bookshop, a small one was right near the University and was typical. There were many volumes of Ulysses, collected works of MacNeice, Auden, Keats, Byron, Shelley etc.183 Many Fowler's English Usage and dictionaries and Roget's and to my delight two Rex Stouts which I don't think I've read and even more delightful four different Anthony Powells.184 Also two Ngaio Marsh and The Confidence Man by Herman Melville which I've never read.185 So for a small shop in the middle of Jugoslavia it was a considerable haul. Why do the idiotic profs in universities recommend Ulysses – you must know your Ulysses and your Eliot and Pound in your English course here, I gather from Vessna and Yasmin – which, unless you have a really wide and fairly deep knowledge of the language in which it is written must be impossibly difficult to read and certainly to enjoy. They'd even have difficulty with that last sentence of mine. [...]

  Wednesday 29th Talked to E at last yesterday evening about 9 and we exchanged loneliness – one for the other. Ate many sweetmeats and drank much water and read Nero Wolfe. He writes so urbanely that after a diet of ordinary thriller writers he cuts the palate with a nice astringency, a neat pungency. [...]

  I have decided, even though this is my first visit to a communist country, that the Slav is not made for Communism – at least, not the South Slav. I think it must be as atavistically alien to them as Puritanism would be to the South Irish. It doesn't seem to fit somehow. They seem uncomfortable in it. I have heard so many tales now of the really staggering rudeness of shop-keepers to people, particularly foreigners, that I can only think that they are a very unhappy lot. Raymond, for instance, went into a shop to buy something and when his turn came to be served he was asked for whatever it was he wanted and the shopkeeper said, What nationality are you and Raymond said Italian. Why don't you go and buy it in your own bloody country? was the gracious response. They are just as bad to their own countrymen. Vessna went to buy some drawing pins in a shop and was kept waiting 11/2 hours. The shop wasn't particularly crowded. The assistants simply took endless time, sometimes disappearing into a back room for 15 minutes in the middle of someone's order. Apart from the rudeness on the shopkeeper's part, where was Vessna's and the other people's independence? Where was the shouting and bawling which would have been automatic in any western country? She just shrugs. They also seem a most un-curious people. Though they have never been to the West, they have no curiosity about it. And those who have been to England or Italy or even, one or two like Vessna, to the USA, they never talk about it. [...]

  I did a longish scene with two hopeless Jugo actors – hopeless in both languages – and then waited for hours for Heavy Luger to turn up. He had driven from Kupari and it had taken him about seven hours. In the meantime I finished my Nero Wolfe and started Anthony Powell's A Question of Upbringing which is very droll so far.186 I've only read a chapter and a bit and I seem to remember that ‘Witherspoon’ or whatever his name is comes up again very largely in the later volume of The Music of Time.187 It must be quite some time since I read that volume. I had a lot of coffee and had forgotten how shaky it makes you feel. However, nobody noticed and I used it in the scene to give a tensity to it which I hope will wor
k. [...]

  Thursday 30th [...] Finished the Powell and started another – got a little tired of that, I mean his style, – and changed to Life at the Top by John Braine.188 Tired of that quickly too so tried a detective thriller. Got tired of that. So put out the light at 10 and went to sleep immediately. [...] Vessna and the chauffeur went out last night and bought two kinds of coffee and two tin jugs to boil water in and some strange looking tea so we'll be able to brew up on the mountain top. Also, from my memory of the bookshop, I wrote out a list of books for Vessna to buy which I suddenly decided would be a neat addition for the library on the Kalizma. I asked her to make it paperbacks as much as she could as ‘good’ books become mildewed from the salt air. So we now have a complete Shakespeare in separate paperbacked volumes, complete Keats, Shelley, Wilfred Owen, Louis MacNeice, Wystan Auden and a Larousse English dictionary which I can keep in the bedroom on the ship.189 And a fat Penguin paperback of Ulysses which I read this morning and immediately after only four or five pages it brought back bleak memories of having to read it so many years ago. I have never looked at it since it was part of the syllabus laid out for me by Phil Burton. It's such a pleasure to read now knowing I won't have to answer questions about it. Having re-tasted it this morning, merely an aperitif of five pages, I shall devour it from time to time.

  Ron came back by car last night as we were forced out of courtesy to invite Hardy (Heavy Luger) Krüger and wife to fly down with us in the copter and with Ron as well we would have been overloaded. [...]

  Poppo has spent all day trying to persuade Brook, Vessna and Ron to persuade me to go to the Exhibition of Jug Art through the Ages. Normally I suppose I would have gone, but his persistence is so great and his urgency to have the Mayor there together with TV and snappers while I look at the exhibits has made me as recalcitrant as a wild horse. [...]

  OCTOBER

  Friday 1st, Sarajevo Have read myself into a stupor and practically a standstill. I tried all kinds of books last night and settled for thinking instead after throwing them all aside. I can't remember what I thought about altogether but I remember thinking how much I would like to have E there. I had gone for a walk through the forest – a planned walk laid out by the gardeners in gravel – and thought that much as I liked walking it is not quite as interesting if when you come back there is nobody to confide in. [...]

  Sunday 3rd, Kalizma–Cavtat [...] it's a beautiful morning and I'm in love with my wife and apart from seeing a chap called Terence Baker at 10 o'clock I have a whole day with E and books ships and cabbages and kings.190 It is also a sparklingly lively lovely day. And my rheumaticaly anthroidic but beautiful child is still a-slumber and E'en So is snoring and the boat moves in a slow circle on its anchor and now you see Dubrovnik and now you see the hotel here and the church-bells are ringing and a plane is coming in to land at Dub airport and I shall have a cup of tea or coffee and smoke a cig and read and waste myself indolently down the day.

  Monday 4th Terence Baker, a large man with a lean face and a fat belly, somewhere in his thirties I suppose, came on board yesterday morn as expected and told me, as expected, that the company had not been paying me. I told him to tell the company that we had heard many tales of Yugoslavian perfidy in re the non-payment of actors or delayed payments of as much as 3 to 5 years that unless my money was in the bank on Monday (today) I would not work on Tuesday (tomorrow) and until the money has been paid would continue not to work. So that should be clear enough even to Poppo's muddy intelligence. [...] It is a shame that our dislike of the Poppo could mean a dislike of the entire Jugoslavian race were we dense enough to allow such an enormity. But from Tito on down we have found the South Slavs to be the most enchanting people it has been our pleasure to meet. They have only two rivals but the Italians are untrustworthy and will do almost anything for a fast lira and the Mexicans are so sad, so melancholy. And although the Jugoslavians are chauvinistic, they do not practise it as offensively as the French – particularly – and the English, Germans and Americans. [...]

  Terence Baker is the brother of an actor – English – called George Baker who for a time was thought to be a promising piece of beef-cake but had no talent, even for that, and has drifted into obscurity.191 T. Baker is a very different cup of cocoa and seems to live up to his reputation as a hard man with a contract. He is John Heyman's partner or assistant or co-producer or something of those and gives the impression that he will do well. He instructed Wolf Mankowitz to stay at home and not complete his assignment to finish writing the film as Wolf too has received not a penny-piece. In addition we have discovered that none of the lesser people, those being paid less money I mean, like Brook, Ron, Raymond, Gianni Bozz and, I expect, Vessna have been paid either. That is unforgivable. I could, after all, sell my paintings or E her jewels or something but what is Ron going to sell? His make-up box?

  I have now finished three of the first four volumes of Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time and have just started the fifth called Casanova's Chinese Restaurant.192 He gives the impression of a deliberately distant artist. His canvas is large but he stands a long way off and paints with a remote brush only in the corners and only miniatures. He is not exciting and his poetic impulse is firmly controlled. So much so, that it is rarely apparent. But he sticks with you and it is an interesting experiment in autobiography.

  I wonder if I could use that form. I couldn't use the style which is abhorrent to me. He over-punctuates and is at times otiose and I cannot really believe Widmerpool. I cannot believe that a man so stupid could be so successful. But there are another five volumes to go I think. He is not a writer for any mood. There are times when I find him impossible to read and have to put him aside for a day. Also, his coincidences are too pat and occur too often. Though Evelyn Waugh pointed this out and then apologized on thinking of similar coincidences in his own and Powell's life, I think that Waugh was right in the first instance.193 A coincidence that's true to life is not necessarily true to fiction. Also, another weakness it seems to me is that the coincidences are predictable. ‘Two people came into the room. Molly Blaides was going to marry a much younger man. The man turned and I saw it was ... Widmerpool.‘194 Don't believe you Tony bach.

  A brilliant morning again. [...] It is very hot in the sun and people from the seafront hotels swim from morn ‘til night. One massive German woman swam around the yacht yesterday for a couple of hours. She smiled at me so I waved at her and she answered me with a few gutturals and a wave that, perhaps accidentally, looked like a Nazi salute I swear to God. Who knows that the gutturals didn't contain a ‘Heil Hitler’ somewhere there.

  E is a much cleverer reader than I am. She is currently reading a book called Smith and Jones by Nicholas Monsarrat.195 It is quite a clever piece but she is asking me questions about certain anomalies in the writing which I don't remember asking myself. I read the book a week or so ago. I'll comfort myself by saying that she has a suspicious mind and I don't. I remember giving her The Murder of Roger Ackroyd of A. Christie and telling her that she would never guess the murderer.196 She got it at the end of the second or third chapter. I was amazed and furious.

  [...] There is a big ‘spy’ defector story in all the papers. A Russian has defected to the British.197 Yesterday, I said he had ‘defecated’, which is a good Freudian slip.

  [...]I did a scene this afternoon in which six planes, two at a time, dive-bombed us while we were crossing a very flimsy bridge across a roaring river. Explosions went off right, left and centre and were, of course, centred on me – we have to show the old man being under intense bombardment. So the bombs went off all over the place and many people were hit by ‘shrapnel’ one chap quite badly in the face and two men on the cameras were hit – Pinter in the belly – and several others got odd wounds while I, four times in the centre of the maelstrom, was only splashed with water. My family always told me from the toddling stage ‘Ma’ lwc y diafol arnat ti.’ Touched with the Devil's luck. Keep it up oh diavolo!

&nbs
p; Tuesday 5th, Mostar198 [...] I went to sleep last night to the accompaniment of a very raucous ‘group’ playing the awful noise that passes for ‘Mersey’ sound I suppose.199 [...]