Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  She is, presently, asking £300.000. Wow.

  […] Stella1 and I continue our incestious affair. She cooks for me (impossible) nasty little crême brulé things, and I give her bits, aching with garlic which make her eyes water and force her to say, ‘Well dear. You DO like spicy food. I make do with a leaf of bay …’ So you can imagine how we cook! She sews brilliantly, irons marvellously, and leaves the Jiff in the most impossible places. But we get on terribly well and I love her, and she said last week that she only wished that she had had ‘this sort of life forty years ago. I’d have been a much happier woman!’ So I did’nt say anything and went on typing. Well .... what else?

  And thats it. My family well, squabbling, the usual. The heat goes on, I went by car, with Brock (who was invited) to Daphne Baths-Fielding birthday lunch which Alexander Bath2 gave for her at Longleat. Only thirty of us, her ‘most loved friends’. She was ninety! Brock and I were the only two commoners present. All the Dukes and Duchesses of G.B were crammed into Bishop Kents’ Library .. and Alexander, naturally, had a Mexican Peasant Band playing all morning and hitting sticks and bongo-drums and dancing bare foot. All through lunch. When Daphne sweetly and sadly, said ‘Alexander! I cant hear a single word my guests say to me!’ He just beamed and said ‘Fuckin’ bad luck Mum!’ .. and that was that. It was a long, hot, journey on the M4 … Like shingles, I dont think [I’ll] bother to do it again!

  Too hot & sweaty to write more – but do come home soon?

  Love. D. XOX

  To David Frankham Cadogan Gardens

  26 August 1994

  Dear David –

  It really was splendid to get such a huge letter from you! Apart from your hideious adventures with steak, and selling up AGAIN (Will the boy never settle?) it was all about me. Which, of course I enjoy disgracefully. To start with (we’ll come to the steak in a minute) I had an absolute ball doing the ‘Widow’.1 It seemed such a potty thing to do .. but, after all, if Glyndebourne ask you, you would be foolish, and churlish, to refuse! We did four shows in the awful Festival Hall .. and one supreme one in the vast (5,000 seater) new concert hall in Birmingham. That was a riot. We sold out months in advance and it felt like it. But EMI did’nt record there. They felt it would’nt ‘take off’. So when we got to London, trailing clouds of glory and appeals for a repeat, or repeats, they decided to mike the thing. But, quite properly, NOT the commentary. Which is why I am off mike! I understood this perfectly, and it was all arranged easily. BUT. The show is not long enough without a commentary, either for the disc or for the Concert Hall … so they re-instated me, to my dismay .. I had not ‘voiced’ for CD. There is a marginal difference.

  Anyway it was a wild success as you probably gather. The Princess Alexandra and sundry small Royals all trolled in in T shirts and jeans (It was a hot night, informal, and they did’nt want to alert our disgusting and dangerous press). Mr and Mrs Major snuck in too .. and various, what we all call here, ‘Luvvies’ of varying caliber.

  I must say that standing in the middle of a very big orchestra, with a huge chorous (SP?) was at first un-nerving to say the least. And Franz2 was cold and very distant .. he did NOT approve of Stoppard or me interrupting his musicians. But, five minutes in, I saw him leaning in the podium laughing .. so was Felicity3 and so was Tom .. and from there on in we all played together! Hugely delightful.

  Franz has handed in his resignation and leaves, next year, to take over Zurich. The London Critics have flayed him alive .. too young … to Austrian .. to everything negative. Now that he is leaving they are appalled and grovelling and had ‘discovered’ him in the ‘Widow’! I ask you! I hope he does piss off, he’s terribly nice and brilliant I think. He’s a child .. and slim and pretty and that can NOT be forgiven by our mealy-mouthed critics who expect every conductor to look like Beecham … ah well ..

  Funny that you could find ‘Daddy’. I think it is one of Taverniers best films and I am very glad I chose to ‘go out’ on that.

  Otherwise I might have ended up like [Jack] Nicholson or [Kevin] Costner who are now (here) being turned against! Typical.

  All my dialogue with Jane was ad-libbed and written by me! Need you ask … the original dialogue was ghastly. Full of ‘Pussykins’ and ‘Pattykins’ and ‘Daddy’s little angel’. He was written, originally, as a much older man. So I switched that and made him a bit of a shit. More fun that way … we did the famous car scene months later after the rough-cut. In a parked car, with black velvets and some ‘rain’ sprinkled on the windscreen. The film lacked a punch. So I was forced to write the scene, in bed here with flu! and fly to Paris and do it months later inside because I had a temperature of 102. Amazing what you can get up to in fillums!

  […] I am now on another bit of Bio … just using up things I did’nt dwell on last six times! It’s working title is ‘Cleared For Take-Off’ but I might change that later. Viking like it, the book so far .. so we’ll see. Glad you saw the ‘Damned’ again. I’d love to see it … it really was based entirely on fact. […]

  The locations, and the great house, were all for real … thats why it cost so much money. I got cut to shreds but was given DIV as a consolation prize so I dont complain. Forget Listz … I dont even mention it in my Concerts. All recorded, by the way, but I dont want them released. They belong to the National anyway really:1 and run two to three hours2 […]

  I am shocked beyond belief that you choked! I nearly did in a chic resturant called Bibendum, but managed to cope … Emlyn Williams’ funny wife, Molly, did’nt. She croaked at the Ivy on a piece of ..... steak! So watch it .. keep to expensive gruel.

  [ … ] I have to go, next month, to be Host at the Best Young European Musician Award.3 Very prestigeious .. and Princess D. will be there, if she’s not in the bin, then it’s the Olivier to open the Tour of the book [ … ] I think I will make this the last one. I have, after all, twelve books to my credit, and I really, at seventy four, dont feel like proving ANYTHING!

  I’ve been rather ill since May with a bad bout of shingles which, in turn, led to a peculiar heart problem. Not at all pleasing. It has been specialists and so on and massive pills and inhalers at GIGANTIC cost … getting better now otherwise you’d have had to do with a post card! But to be able to walk … and breath .. again is marvellous. And I HAD to get better because everywhere, even the Olivier, is S.R.O. You really cant ‘pull’ the National!

  I must go now and get some work done. Thanks again .. dont buy the book. I’ll send you one as soon as Bank Holiday (Monday) is over.

  Be careful how you masticate …

  Ever

  Dirk.

  To David Frankham Cadogan Gardens

  31 October 1994

  Dear David –

  Halloween! But thank God we dont do a thing about that in England.1 The Scots and Irish go potty .. we sort of hang about until November 5th and burn Guy Fawkes instead. [ … ] My ageing body has been going through hell since May and shingles … that was a six month stint and left me, when it finally did leave me, only a month or so ago, with a ‘fluttering heart’. The bloody thing was out of kilter and raced along like a mad clock. Exhausting, sometimes frightening, very depressing as well! I kept on wondering if this was IT. Like the Big One in L.A.

  Mercifully we got it under some kind of control with filthy pills which gave me TRIPLE vision … however I had the Tour to do, and did it. Very tiring. But ultimatly successful [ … ] Sold lots of books, which is the idea, did a whacking S.R.O at the Olivier and collapsed with fucking flu! I ask you!

  I finished the last anti-biotics yesterday and am now a weak, shaking, old man, and loathing the sights of Christmas which, can you believe it, are already on show in Peter Jones, Harrods and etc … it is all so hideious, expensive and as you know OUR holiday here lasts from the 24th until the end of the first week of January. No wonder we are in the shit. Really: no wonder.

  The book has done well … Best Seller lists in the first four weeks, and then slid about a bit … but there is a
terrific amount against me. Alan Bennets super book,2 to start with. [ … Viking] are v. happy, and I don’t exactly feel sad. But the ‘sex’ in ‘Period’ has fussed some of my steady readers! So I think some will shy away from the thing. They only like autobiography ‘all about YOU and your house.’ See? Oh well … another on the way, and Viking have taken it. Thank God. It gives me something to do in the winter days .. and by Golly! They are long here as you may remember. However I have been the happy posessor of TWO books at the same time in the Lists. Gratifying. Although, of course, I am not known in the Literary World. Far too grand for me, and I manage to avoid them at all costs. So bloody precious and silly. I had enough of that when I was an actor .. I am SOOOOO glad I’m out of that scene! If you could see what they are doing to K. Branagh and his missus and his Frankenstien1.... it opens in L.A first (wisely) which enrages the British. But they did’nt give a toss for Four Weddings … and loathed Romantic Summer2 (or whatever it was. The one with old Blowright and the other ladies in an Italian villa in 1920) .. so Branagh is wise. All made here, all English Technicians, all English players (save de Nero) and a Hollywood opening with the P. of W. in attendance. And we are sullen with fury and have put him, and her, through unutterable hell in the Press. I dont think you have ever seen a real Tabloid, have you? They did not exist when you lived here. They were comic papers in comparison to even the worst you can summon in the U.S. I did a big show, European Pianist of the Year (Young, All under thirty) at the Festival Hall. When I say I did it, I mean that I introduced it. Princess D. is patron, and actually arrived! When I came to introduce her the whole Festival Hall exploded with delight. She ADORES all that. Worse than Garland! I must say she is radiently lovely, clever, a bitch, and knows exactly how to play the house. Poor Charles, a really decent man, has’nt a chance in hell with her. [ … ] Enough gossip.

  But that evening at the Festival Hall there must have been three hundred photographers on ladders, standing round the stage door from ten in the morning, waiting. And she was’nt due until 6.45 that evening! It’s all madness. No mention, at all, of the pianists, or the kid who won (Russian, from Tashkent, 21, and brilliant3) or the reason for her presence. Just headlines, ‘Is she sad?’ ‘Wearing Last Years Dress’ or ‘Business As Usual In Split Family’.

  It really makes me feel ill. I wish I was fit enough to crash off and go back to France. Writing about it is the only way I can keep close to it now.

  [ … M]ost reviewers now dislike the fact that I get on the List, have written twelve successful books, and Sell Out at every theater I go to. They never, therefore, give you a pat on the back and deliberatly, as this Sunday, avoid any mention of one at all! Quite clever to mention everyone, but me, reviewing Death In Venice! I dont honestly care, but realise that I am now set-aside quite happily. Anyway, the really good news is that the specialist (how I detest Harley Street!) on Friday said ‘Want to hear the good news? You wont have to have an Op. It’s sorted itself out on the tablets.’ Which left me weak with antibiotics and delight. The Op. in question is not huge fun. They stop your heart for a moment or two and then re-jig it. Or something. Not mad about the idea. However, so far, all is well.

  ‘Cast A Dark Shadow’ sometimes surfaces here at the N.F.T .. but rarely .. and it really was’nt a bad little film. I have been watching quite a lot of TV now that I have suffered a temporary (cross fingers) strickening! I never do normally, but have been rather forced this trip. Caught up on some really weird old films .. not of mine .. of all sorts, and seen a few that I missed years ago. I have a gigantic (for the size of my flat) Bang and Olfsen thing. Super, and splendid for selected Videos … awful for crooked politicians, you can see the hairs in their nostrils quivering with fear! Very off putting.

  […] Now I must get down to some readers mail … I get a lot at this time of the year. New book, Tour ended. One woman wrote the other day and said that she had sobbed all the way through ‘Harrods’ so that her husband had to take the book away from her. She found it so distressing to read about ‘your darling dogs’ .. I ask you! The end of a friendship, fifty years, terminal cancer, the loss of my farm, a stroke … and all she sobbed about were the sodding dogs! They were lucky. Did’nt know a thing. Are’nt people odd? I have had a mass of letters all saying the same thing: ‘how terrible for you to have to kill your sweet Bendo’ or whoever. Shit-aroo …

  Off now. Rain raging down, leaves falling like playing cards, drains swelling and spilling … ah well! Tomorrow is November …

  Thanks for clippings –

  & letter

  Dirk.

  To Helen Osborne Cadogan Gardens

  2 February 1995

  Helen dear –

  You were’nt supposed to write back.1 I said so specifically. However you ignored me and I’m glad.

  I was devoted to him, as I hope he knew. The strange thing is that I dont remember that we ever met again, after that initial amazing treck he made up the drive in pouring rain with ‘Look Back’ sodden in his hand. But we seem never to have eased away. Laterly we had huge fun with daft letters, and postcards (boast-cards really!) and I was always promised a ‘tingle’ when you arrived at ‘Oscar Wilde’.

  Never mind. Thats how our friendship was .. uncluttered.

  I wanted so much to come up with Robert and Edward,2 but I’d have been a problem to them … I have to pee every so often on long journeys by car, and that irritates everyone. Especially on the motor way. But I did want to be there. Very much indeed.

  Dont get soppy. I know you wont. Those foul idiots will keep your bile rising, cringing Wesker and Crighton.1 Christ! How the ravens collect. Not even good big vultures. Just ugly black creatures.

  We have’nt met, you and I, since (I think) Tunisia!2 In that house on the beach one dark night. So do give me a ‘tingle’ if you want to, and come up here and have a drink. I’m only yards away from Oscar.

  My love, and courage to you …

  Ever

  Dirk.

  At John Osborne’s Memorial Service in London on 2 June, Dirk read from Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Dying. A notice outside St Giles-in-the-Fields declared that the following would not be admitted: ‘Fu Manchu’ (Sir Peter Hall), Nicholas de Jongh, theatre critic of the Evening Standard, Albert Finney and ‘The Bard of Hay on Wye’ (Arnold Wesker).

  To Helen Osborne Cadogan Gardens

  3 June 1995

  Helen dear –

  Gosh. I bet you are whacked. I hope you are in some safe haven and being cossetted (SP?) or just ignored as you might wish.

  It was a very splendid day, and you behaved quite marvellously.

  It is’nt at all easy. But perhaps the overwhelming sense of love and affection and, perhaps above all, respect, that filled that pretty little church might have comforted you? I pray that it did.

  It was all so beautifully, I said to Roberto [Fox] ‘seamlessly’, ordered and so moving without being at all maudling or soppy.

  I hope you were pleased. At least about that part ..

  I pissed off sharpish because I had to write an Appreciation, can you believe, for my beloved Dilys Powell who has, I have just been informed, died an hour ago. So I barely got myself sorted out ..

  Good job you dont get champagne at Memorial Services. I’d have been well away. Thank you Helen dear. I know the road you walk, been that way not so long ago. It’s not a lot of fun: but if you are tough-minded, as you and I both are, it is possible to heal. Well, after a while. And in a ‘sort of’ way. It’ll come, promise you. Meanwhile we never got to have our drink: perhaps we can do that when things are not so pressing and wretched and everything.

  I’m pretty well always here, and if you are at Oscars it’s a short walk … just holler …

  With my love and admiration ..

  Ever Dirk X

  To Jill Melford Cadogan Gardens

  24 August 1995

  Dearest Maud –

  I hope you are not in a mental home. I am very near that state. I got your lovely card
with the seagrapes .. and cant really reply at length because I am whacked, and YES! I have been in ‘the middle of a chapter’. So I’ll do a sort of resume in one-line moments of delight.

  I burst a vein in my ‘good leg’ and am in consequence swollen up and in a degree of discomfort. I mean, I cant really walk. Well: I got to the Bank this morning. Basta. No one cares, they all smile knowingly and mutter about my age. I hate the lot of them. My sister [ … ] said that when it happened to her her foot went blue. Had mine? I said blueish. She said it wont go for at least six months.

  […] I have started another book (what else do I do? Now I cant even walk to the gents Department at P.J?) and there has been a titchy little booklet, four inches by four, sixty pages, sixty pence, to celebrate the 60th year of Penguin. We are all, well most of us, are on the list. I am proud to say that my effort, little scraps called ‘From Le Pigeonnier’ (bits of Harrods) is right up there with Auralius, Paglia,1 Woolf and Plato. I sold 100.000 copies in the first two weeks. No one cares of course, I am ‘film star’, but at least I did make the listings. Could’nt not with that haul. I dont get much in the way of Royalties … not expected .. I was happy to be included in the exhalted list.

  [ … ] My beloved old (92) chum Daph wrote today .. ‘.. the things I have loved most in my long and lucky life have been Reading, Riding, Rejoicing, and Rogering. In that order. All that now remains is Reading’. Dont you think thats pretty game? Her eyesight is now on the blink and blindness threatens. Oh dear, oh dear.

  We have, for 28 days, sweltered under a cloudless sky. Glorious for you and I but disaster for the British. They all behave as if the Second Coming was being announced. Perhaps it is? Gardens have dried up, lawns are brown, trees shedding leaves, and water is being rationed here and there. Not London.