Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  who love you

  or is it I who love you?

  anyway from

  Dirk

  Next Day. 10 Aug.

  I wanted, simply, to say that I started on LD and was delighted … if at first a little unsteady on my local etc .... but am getting into Kafka?Land very spiritidly. And see you so startlingly clearly, as in a Follow Spot [ … ]

  I have now to go and do another chore … finish off a book by, is it Ackroyd ACKERLEY about ‘My Father and Myself’1 which some idiotic producer (stage) wants me to adapt for him as a play. Quite impossible I find. Also I rather detest the book and the writer .... If one wants to blow off Guardsmen ok. But I dont, honestly, want to know anything about it … and I’m sure an audience wont either. And I am rather bored with premature ejaculations in elderly men from the BBC ..... oh dear! I want a lovely, funny, dear, gentle, pretty film about lovely people like Gable and Lombard … or Colbert would do. Actually nearly got one off the floor last month … ‘Aide Memoire’… a frog play written for [Delphine] Seyrig ..... we wanted to do the script as a movie … and actually your ‘ex’2 was approached to do the English thing … translation … but it came to nought. The exhibitors wanted Giradout or Bardot or Vitti3 .... not Seyrig. Ah well.

  I’v bored you stiff again.

  caio.

  Dirk.

  To Penelope Mortimer Clermont

  September 7th. ’74. After lunch.

  They have all gone at last. The summer really seems to be over. After all; it starts here in April .... and staggers on through the heat and the vine-shadows and clinking ice in glasses, dragging with it various people who seem to become part of ones life for a few weeks .... all running-into-each-other, as it were. A sort of blurr of faces and laughter, and odours of old sun oil and Pastis.

  For the last two weeks this house has been a clutter of sandy bathingsuits, towels with lumps of tar smeared across their anchors and capstans patterns, half eaten apples, empty packets of Rowantrees Clear Gums, record sleeves scattered about the rooms like old, and very tatty, confette … covered with dirty faces and repellant names like ‘The Prudent Nuns Group’ or ‘Blazing Hot With Kung Fung Ho.’ Or something.1

  [ … ] It tired me. But, worse than that, it shattered any illusions I ever had that YOUTH was fun, interesting and alive. Whats happened to them all? Draped in poor copies of Carol Lombard from Biba, listning only to the dreary throb of electric Guitars and boys with spotty faces and Neasden-Negro-Voices .... no one had heard of Pavlova … or Cyprus, or Toulouse Lautrec, or Pipperade, or pickled mushrooms, or .. oh, sweet God … anything.

  However they’v gone. And thats why I’m so long in replying to your long, lovely, too humble, letter of the 24th. And the N.Y. Magazine .... which I loved. The story2 I mean, and hope you got jolly well paid for it. […] It sounds a titchy bit like Garlands Weaving Place … even if you pretend it does’nt. Or is’nt. But then I begin to think that America must be all a bit like that … The verdegris rot of California on one side .... the gleaming Colonial-Tidiness of the East Coast. All those ghastly little trees on Long Island … the Freeways … the bits of rock I feel sure they ‘imported’ to landscape the Fall Colors .... and in the very middle a sort of Squash of Yaddos and wheatlands and red Barns and Grandma Moses and elms in picket fences ..... I could’nt live there. God no. Nor could I die there. Thats one of my most uncomfortable nightmares. I dont honestly think that I could even bear to go back there … it was bearable as long as I knew that the ‘Queen Mary’ or ‘Elizabeth’ or ‘The France’ or even the elderly ‘Mauretania’ was moored, weekly, off that benighted coastline … but now.

  And tomorrow, I believe, Evil Kneival (or something)3 does a jump across the Canyon. Oh what a debased land it is. I cant believe that it was better before the 1880’s before the center of Europe burst it’s seams like a rotting bag, and hurled all those debased rag-pickers into the Free World. But perhaps it was better. I dont know. And have no real way of telling. But it is a very aquired taste I feel … like Fernet Branca or Tripes a La Mode or salt with your porridge. Is’nt it? Or does one settle down there? I know people do. I have a dotty, and very, very, English cousin who went to L.A twenty years ago and got a job mending china for a couple of Queer Antique Gentlemen (Is there any other kind, I ask?) … now in San Fransisco and adoring it all, she is the happiest of mortals and still desperatly English but utterly adjusted and has only come ‘home’ as she calls it once, and then to see the source of the Thames before ‘they moved it away’ ..... So if Maureen can do it … I suppose it is possible.

  [ … ] Of course you are right, sort-of, about me being ‘only an actor’ … but we do have to use some of our experiences of life, just as you do, to ‘write’ our people. I mean Pinter does a great deal to make a person … but it is up to the actor to flesh that person out with his own inner experience, his own knowledge of pain, of joy, or of despair. Sometimes and it happens so often, there is not even a ‘shape’ written by the writer to flesh out .... So we have to use all our old experiences to make the most impact. To move an audience, to disturbe, to hurt sometimes .... this is often NOT done by the playwrite .... the actor does it himself. So the idea of ‘wearing a sort of suit’ does’nt always work out. You get some damn drear ‘clothes’ that way. ‘Death In Venice’ was a good suit … but had to be filled with my body … or rather Aschenbachs body … and I had to feed an audience all the essences of pain through LONLINESS that I could muster. The fact that I might have succeeded in some part was the way that younger people got the lonliness in one go. And were smashed that Aschenbach was having it too. It was the recognition of lonliness, and apartness, which won that film an audience of young people. An extraordinary experience was to watch it with a full house here in Cannes, for example; there were 3,000 people in the place. At the moment when Aschenbach decides, at the railway station, to return to the Lido .... a look and a timid smile only, 3,000 people stood up and cheered and cheered and applauded. Visconti and I were quite shattered. And very silent and very respectful. But we knew that together we had worked. Not Thomas Mann.

  […] I was thinking in bed the other night about starting something … I dont write for only pleasure or luxury. It is also a dire necessity to me. I always have done … published poet, I’ll have you know … Times Lit. Poetry Today and some anthologies yet! And not to mention all those fucking scripts … however in bed I was thinking How To Start.

  And I invented a slightly alcaholic sister for your Mrs B. And brought them back to one or others flat in Queens Gate after a cremation of a long-ago-school-friend at Golders Green. Widows, I suppose, Rose Lover with Canasta Lover … or maybe she writes cookery books like nice Elizabeth David .... and then I got rather interested in the school-friend. Was it a she? Or could it have been a He? And when do we find out … how long will it take to talk about someone without giving the sex away.

  Oh dear God! What in the name of hell am I doing. Chattering at my plots for you? I thought it might have been fun if we had both used the same premise and seen what happened. Nothing I suppose. I think, actually, it sounds like a bad first act by Rattigan. Or even the Unspeakable Waugh. Enough. I’m sorry. Later –

  Sweet Christ! What a ghastly long drivel-thing. You said of your letter that it said something with every appearance of nothing. Quite untrue … I mean, not untrue, but, oh shit .... anyway THIS load of old cobblers really says Nothing with every appearance of Something.

  I’d better chuck it. I’v done the dogs dinner. Meat and last nights pasta … fed them. Next is the Typhoo tea tips and flies-cemetary biscuits. And then it’s the bit on the terrace; watering the starting-to-get-shabby pots. The day is golden and still. I can see the little white prick of Antibes Lighthouse right through the olives. The sea is like a blue tin tray.

  By the way, when I did my Dover bit1 I was’nt entirely, that is physically, alone. No. You are different there naturally. But I was alone inside. And it stayed like that for rather a long time. I mean
the alone-inside bit. After all I was just fifty. Very settled in a pleasant English Life. Family and friends and safety all about me. Servants and dogs and horses and my onions to harvest and my Sweet peas to dig trenches for and nothing much to trouble me. I was different of course. But I realised that if I stayed comfortably like that I would be done and finished. And that a new life had to be made. The old one not just made-over, but chucked, completely ..... and started anew. Cold and frightning with no tongue save Sloan Square English. And fucking lonely mate too .... and in the move I fear a lot of the sweet Chums went down the plug hole with, as they say, the bathwater. And that all had to be reckoned with. Strangely, and one cannot see why it should matter, one has still not been forgiven.

  [ … ] I’m off. I’v been terribly irritating. I cant write at all. But one thing I sure as Hell cant do is to write economically. I use words like a diarohea case uses paper … rolls of it .... anyway: there we are. You in Yaddo in the underwater light (it seems) of your room … the lilly pool … the dull brasses … the Dijon Mustard on pseudo-Gruyere. Ah! Maybe THATS what America seems like to me. Dijon Mustard on pseud-Gruyere. And it wont do at all, dear.

  Off to do the Typhoo tips … and the un-pseud Flies Cemeteries.

  I really must try and spell one day.

  Losey was up here last week for dinner with his vast son of 18. He said that he still liked me even though I used the worst grammer and wrote the worst spelling he had ever seen or ever heard. And I was really rather pleased. I mean that he still liked me inspite of that.

  But I must try.

  Dirk

  The Great Dane2 went back to England and died, happily, in Angmering On Sea at my sisters. Rome, and the heat, and a longing for England drove her away. But I stayed on. Still.

  To the Loseys Clermont

  3 November 1974

  Dearest Joe & Patricia –

  No; we never got to meet.1 I never saw the splendours of your much envied sitting room or Studio. Or basement. And I did miss you. [ … ] I thought of you a lot, as you may well imagine … but there really was not a great deal of time eventually. I have never worked so hard in my fucking life for a Film. I had hoped to be there only for two days and skip quietly off … but after the disaster of the N.Y. Press I realised that I had to stay on and ‘fight’ for my two women .. Lilly and Charlotte. Both utterly destroyed by the N.Y bit … and punchy with hate and bitterness.

  No way to handle a Press Deal in London! Anyway I stayed there with Flu and an abscess and had a ball. In so far as I did twelve interviews a day … Radio, Telly and God alone knows what else. After ten years away from that kind of exposure I was a bit scared. However my personal reception at the Press Lunch was so moving and genuine that I got the courage to battle through and thoroughly enjoyed it! I have never had so much cover .. and sincerely doubt if a film has! God knows what I was on about … but it seemed to work. And the Telly … an hour each time … was super. I think that might be my new career2 … except the lolly is lousy and the movies are a tiny bit more fun. If more effort.

  So far ‘Porter’ has grossed four million bucks in Italy and just about as much in France. The N.Y. bit is so far smashing … and we have broken all the records in London. And now the scripts are flopping in like dead leaves. And read like them too .... my money is superbely high. If I can get it! And the Zurlinei film3 folded in Rome as I pulled out .... which makes me sad on the one hand for him and delighted, child like, for me on the other! To topple a 5 mill. Production (dollars) seems to me to be almost SampsonLike in it’s splendour .....

  […] We are off to Vienna at the beginning of the year .... a simple Thriller4 with CIA over tones .. undertones? Anyway. No problems. Simple Kids Stuff. I have HAD the Polemic and the sexuality and the Messages. All I want is to chase someone in a fast car with a revolver. And thats just what I’m going to do. A ‘straight’ Gabriel5 … for rather a lot of money. After that it appears that I dont stop until November. Next. Where did all my strong resoloutions go? The October War6 dealt THEM a blow, love. Simone for supper last night [ … ] clutching a script in blank verse about (another) boys school and a teacher. I got her pissed and sent her home to the Colombe. With the script.

  Had flu and an abscess all week .. and we have a mail strike … hence the delay in writing to you .. to thank you for your wire … and to tell you that I shall be on the ‘set’1 on the 24th and expect to be treted like an Emperor. Or something. [ … ]

  I love you very much … be careful of your knee and Mrs Losey … and get the pizza ready for the 24th.

  Does Pamela2 eat Pizza I wonder? Perhaps I’ll make her a cheese Sandwich. She liked them on ‘Accident’.

  Dirk –

  Saw ‘The Servant’ on Telly. What a SMASHING movie it is. D.

  After Dirk’s interview with Russell Harty, Norah Smallwood instructed one of her senior editorial colleagues at Chatto & Windus, John Charlton, to ask Dirk whether he had ever considered writing about his life.

  To John Charlton Clermont

  6 December 1974

  Dear Mr Charlton

  I am terribly sorry for the delay in replying to your very kind letter of November the 1st. It arrived at the Connaught after I had got home here to a seven week Mail Strike, So I only finally recieved it today! Sorry. I do hope that you understood the situation. I must confess that I did’nt know it would be so bad .... seven weeks is a hell of a long time stuck up on a hillside without mail or telephones.

  Anyway: it was kind, indeed, of you to speak, write, so warmly of the Television thing … I suppose it was the Russel Harty one? I did so much that week that I felt as overexposed as a blank negative.

  The facts are these. I am writing a series of Essays, if one can call them that, on some of the odder highlights during my career … part of which I did use on the Russel Hary thing … there are VAST problems about libel, of course, it is quite useless to try and fake this stuff … it does’nt work. So I get a bit hung up from time to time with worry! Ken Tynan said ‘write it and let the Publishers worry ..’ well.… I dont know. Anyway I am going on with it slowly, and without much incentive. I do feel that books by Film Stars are beastly boring … and the few recent ones which have thudded onto the market prove my point. I am not a David Niven .... so that is out … and I truthfully feel that what I have to say has all been said before and usually better. However if you want to discuss it I’d be delighted but I dont think anything I have to say is really much cop.

  This is simply to answer your charming note as soon as possible so that you wont think that bad manners are also a part of my work.…

  I shall be here until the end of the year … then Vienna until mid March.

  Yours sincerely

  Dirk Bogarde.

  To Dilys Powell Clermont

  6 January 1975

  So thats1 where you have been. I wondered rather. I always feel a titch bit uncomfortable when I see that Prouse is at it and not you.

  Did you care for India I wonder? I had two years2 there in the War. I quite liked it. Quite. Beautiful beyond description … Agra and even dreadful Calcutta … and the Taj Mahal is’nt REALLY like a biscuit tin as Noël always swore it was .... however eventually I was happy to leave it and go south to Java and Bali and Borneo. I rather hated the Raj bit, which still fitfully operated while I was there, and found, at twenty three, the poverty and the lepers and so on difficult to manage after a sheltered life in green, contented Sussex.

  I have just stripped off the Christmas tree. A job I detest almost as much as dressing the bloody thing. Another year over .. another Christmas. A god-son plus devine young wife and eleven month old baby.3 Not so devine, for two weeks. Quand meme. And then a strange assortment of people for lunches and dinners and even blasted tea, with crumpets and English Christmas cake imported from Richmond, Surrey, for some reason. The French find it rather delightful. I cant think why. I cut millions of cucumber sandwiches and they ate them all up as if they had been caviar. However; I gr
umble. Not really. I just have to cope without all those super servants of ones past. And if it had’nt been for the washing machine and a great deal of Persil I think I’d have gone spare before the endless weeks were over.

  Tomorrow I leave for Vienna until March. A daunting situation. I hate leaving here. I hate leaving the dogs and things, and I hate the idea of flogging, yet again, through another Movie. This time, however, it is a nonsense movie. Nothing at all cereberal here. A dull, if long, part … so that I shall not ‘do too much’1 .... and with Ava Gardner who is very dear and better than one would think as an actress … and sundry others. I adore Vienna and really decided to do the film for that reason. It is being made entirely in the city and on the Lake at Gmunden. And financed totally by the Austrian Treasury. So that cant be too bad, can it? And since the October War one is not sitting back with the pittance saved from the past. Now I have to work again for my living … which is something I had firmly decided not to do again in the Cinema of today. However, my dearest Dilys, all good plans end in compromise I find. So I start a sort of Thriller .... instead of doing ‘Coeur de Chien’2 … or ‘L’Histoir d’O’3 both of which I was begged to do. I just feel like having a bit of a lark after NP. I CANT go on explaining about the films I make. This time I have simply had to rattle, very pleasurably, through Le Carrier’s latest book instead of bashing away at dossiers on Prison Camps and the life histories of Himmler and Heydrich. MUCH easier! ‘Coeur’ might have been fun, but the prospect of ten weeks with a talking dog rather put me off! Working with children is a total delight … but working with trained dogs or cats or any other beast is horrid. And they usually treat them quite dreadfully which makes me wildly angry and causes ‘unpleasantness’ on the set. So better I’m out and Von Sidow (I cant spell that at all!)4 in. I think he’ll be excellent while I camp away in snow boots up the length of the Kartnerstrasser and back .....