by Unknown
It’s not hotter, and as nasty really, as New York in August. And as humid. But the British wilt and jam the roads and beaches and complain and HAVE TO BE the MOST UN-CHIC people on the streets. If you could see the floppy shorts, the brown socks and sandles, the shapeless florals, the red necks and arms, the sweat under those arms, the STENCH of them at the check-out … SHIT!
It’s cooler today .. 75°. But on Monday it was 96° in the hall here and all the lemons in the ‘decorative’ bowl on the table shrivelled up like marbles.
I did too … sleeping at night was horried. Is horried. Wet throat and rumpled bed. But I dont whine away like the others, even if my Milk Tray has melted into a solid block of squidgy, nasty, oozing nuts and stuff. Ugh.
Stella is very well, she says her basement flat is cool, and if she did’nt come to work for me she’d do away with herself. ‘Whats the point in me otherwise? I’d have no one to care for and no one would care for me.’ So I did’nt sack her. Finding the Jif IN my bed is tiresome. But I just lift it out. No fuss.
We had VJ day. Ages of it. I kept reeling back with shock to think that I was ancient as the old sods marching. I am too. It was all very well done and very moving in it’s descretion. No […] Vera Lynn or that capering capon Sir Cliff [Richard] … just the bands and ENORMOUS crowds. Never seen so many .. the Queen almost human for once, and standing for over two hours as everything marched past from Prince Phillip (!) to a scatter of 1939 taxies .... but it was a good day. Thank God it’s all over now. Until the next lot.
It’s frankly been too hot to go anywhere much. Have’nt set foot in the Connaught or Bibendum for over two months … I hate the tourists .. most of all the Japanese. They, incidentally, fled on VJ day, I really cant blame them, the hate was palpable. But I have to record tomorrow, in a small and air conditioned studio, off Shepherds Bush. A selection of bits from all the Bios on filming. Should’nt take long. I did the WHOLE of Death In Venice, a literal translation from the German by a professor at Oxford,1 in a day and a bit. Did’nt understand a word, dear. Not a word. Nor did they in the control room. We even had a crib-sheet to help us pronounce the words in English! I ask you. It’ll rock Pinner and Sidcup to the very foundations. I’m going out to lunch with Simon [Hopkinson] at Bibendum. He asked me to join an elegant luncheon party. Why not? It’s for free.
[ … ] Someone asked me the other day why I did’nt pack it in and have ‘a lovely holiday’ … I wondered vaguely where the lolly would come from if I did!
[ … ] just you come home.
And soon!
Your devoted mate
Dirk XXX
To Christine de Pauw Cadogan Gardens
12. Mars.’96
Chere Christine –
Thank you for your charming letter, which brought back so many (too many!) memories. At least the photographs did.
It is clear that you and Alain have worked a miracle at the house, and it must be large enough, now, for all the family! Do you remember the very first day you saw it, and decided to buy it, that you also were a little worried ‘about where all the children’ would sleep? You, or was it Alain, said ‘Oh! we’ll put them on shelves.’ So perhaps that[’s] what you did!
But please, and do understand gently what I say, please dont send me any more photographs. Every time I see Clermont it breaks my heart.
I love what you have done, and admire your good taste, but it is still full of ‘phantomes’ for me. So many years of ‘remembering’, so many people on the terrace, so many dogs (You must have found some!) and such a very different life to this I now live, saddens me. I try to forget, but I suppose at 75 (which now I am!) one seems to remember more. I am just so happy that it belongs to you: I pray you will remain happy and contented there.
Dear Christine, thank you, and very
much love.…
Dirk X
To Susan Owens
(Postcard) Cadogan Gardens
1 April 1996
Dearest S.O.
It1 was a very strange day! 375 cards & letters – and more flowers than a Jewish funeral. They now start to stink! Off to the sink & Fairy Liquid!
Thank you & love DB
Dominique Lambilliotte, a Parisienne who had worked in publishing, began writing to Dirk after she had read, and been much moved by, A Short Walk from Harrods in 1995. His initial and characteristically cautious replies, on postcards, developed with this letter into what became his final, all-too-brief ‘particular friendship’.
To Dominique Lambilliotte [Cadogan Gardens]
Good Friday. [5th] April. ’96
How can I chide you! Apart from the fact that you are persistant, and one usually has to give in to that! Like flood water … I was ravished by the book.1 Thank you.
Of course it made me wildely nostalgic and, to some extent, sad .. I knew it so well … from the first moment that I stepped into the terrace through the great door I was lost in delight. It never changed. And that must have been 1950– 51 I suppose. We had no money. The ‘allowance’ was £25 for whatever one did. No Hotel du Cap! No lunch at the Colombe either. A drink at a table and Titine suggesting that one stayed for lunch. I told her it was impossible, she suggested with enormous logic (French) that we ordered the hors d’ouvre … that would make a perfect lunch for three and not cost much .. and we did, and I never stayed anywhere else all the time I travelled in France. When she died I took a big pot of pink (all that I could buy) flowers of some kind, and placed them on her white tombe in the churchyard. I visited her always, until I had to leave. The kindness of the Roux family to me was extraordinary. I was gradually ‘absorbed’ into it. A glorious feeling. Friends, not ‘Clients’. I imagine they are the same today. But I have never gone back, and never will. Finish is finish.
So it was pleasurable to see the pool again and remember how we all helped dig it out of the cabbage-patch of the house next door! And the painting! The arrival of that particular green instead of hideious turquoise was greeted with horror by most, with delight by those who had done it so brilliantly.
For that, thank you.
You might not have liked the Asquith Diaries … but I am sad about the corrected version (?) of ‘Chips’, he was SO loathsome … it must have taken a lot of editing, a lot, a lot .... what a pity! Actually the Gladwyn Diaries (Jebb)2 was amusing in it’s snobbery. But she was not a fool and, I’m told, a good Ambassadress. We had need of one after the Coopers3 ...
I should, respectfully, drop the word ‘sneering’ from your extensive vocabulary. It is something I have never done and I detest it in others. So must you.
‘Victim’ was courageous. I was noted for that! Idiots .. it was a very dull little film which I perked up with a good scene between the husband and wife when I admitted to wanting the boy in question.
It caused a HUGE shock in the UK .. got the film banned in the US and brought me sacks of thankful Fan Letters. The contrary to what they all believed would happen. I was determined to break the Fan-Worship thing I’d got into. It did that, but a more adult one came in. They are now my ‘Readers’ .. because after ‘Victim’ I was gradually taken seriously, thank God!
I dont think that I care a great deal for Fiona Shaw1 .. rather a lot of noise. Unlike today. Brilliant sun, cool wind, London gloriously dead. Where DO they all go? The airports are busting .. off to some hideious Canary Island.
Some weeks ago, the end of January to be exact, I suddenly felt a bit strange .. I was putting in my cuff-links ready to go to some wedding. So I went to bed and stayed there for a week. Odd. I was perfectly happy, I read a great deal, ate nothing, had my scotch at six and a beer at noon. And slept. My ‘bonne’2 (who died yesterday of cancer .. what a world … ) made me dreadful creme camarels (for nourishment) and I just sat, or lay. Happy, as I say, but helpless.
Finally I got my Dr to come round one evening, and he said nothing was physically wrong but (he knows me for years … twelve or fourteen) I might have had a mild breakdown. Some days before the wedding I
was off to attend, my Editor, Fanny, was sacked with no reason, by the American Boss of Viking. His excuse was that she did not put enough ‘in put into the Firm’. She was wrenched away from me, in the middle of a difficult book, and banished. I was expected to stay. I have been their top best seller for eight years. Since I joined them. I think that loosing her was the final straw. I lost my land in France, my whole life there; there was a hideious period in Paris trying to find somewhere to live, back to London (hateing, hateing) cancer and the awful Parkinsons, and finally this flat and total, relieved in a way, solitude. Everyone said how courageous I’d been! (Again this word) to start a new existance and write. I wrote successfully, with Fanny to guide me as Editor, until that dreadful day at the end of January. She was sacked two days before Christmas. She has three small boys [ … ] Tough. This saga, the Dr thought finally ‘found me out’. The strength I had tried to keep was taken by the simple removal of my Editor. Does this make any sense to you? It does, in a strange way, to me. All is well now. Fanny was permitted (can you believe the vileness) to remain and ‘edit you from home’, but it did’nt work. I hated it. I wanted to get back into the House. So I sacked Fanny! She had cleared off to Hanoi on a trip … and I have new editors, and am back in the House which is what I absolutely need. Security. I am a Company Man … from the Army (six years) to the Rank Film people, (18 years) to Chatto and Windus and finally to Viking. And so one goes on fighting. I have picked up my pen again, in a metaphorical manner, and the book3 has lurched ahead.
My very best birthday present was a letter from Viking to say that I had sold OVER a million copies of my 12 books in paperback and that was very rare. I agree. I only got them all in Penguin (they bought all the earlier titles) six years ago. So over a million in six years gives me joy. It pleased them too … as indeed it should.
So that was how I drifted into my seventy fifth year. If I am secretive that was the one thing I could not hide … but I refused TV and Radio and all the tra la la that goes on .. but could’nt dodge the flowers and cards … after 250 I gave up counting and binned the lot. They go to be recycled somewhere. A comforting thought.
Now you see what persistance gets you. I do not apologise .. it is a Holiday and I cant be bothered to pick up the book again.
Could’nt write you an admonishing card because my handwriting has gone crazy … thats a bore. That is, I fear, the result of a small, tiny, stroke? Ah well … you have to expect that .. I’m an old man now!
With thanks for nostalgie –
DB.
To Dominique Lambilliotte [Cadogan Gardens]
Good Friday. No.21
30 April 1996
The last day of April. Lilac everywhere, tulips in the window boxes, leaves starting on the trees .... and I have been spared to see another spring! Amazing. On Sunday I had to go down to the studios where I started my career in early ’48. A curious feeling. I was required to unveil a plaque to a series of funny (?) films I had made there from ’50 to ’70.2 I took no part in the latter ones, I had long since backed off. But I was the one to open the curtains. A gruesome experience. Everyone was there either dying on their feet or dead already, or pretending to be ‘young’. Which is objectionable.
I was looking in a mirror really! People who had been jolly and young with a future apparently before them, with whom I worked and drank were all there in elastic stockings and carrying sticks!
I felt humbled and horrified. I knew then that I was now ‘old’ .. the newspapers, which I avoid like dandelion wine, call me ‘Veteran’.
I dont know which is worse. But inside, inside you see, I know that I am really sixteen. And the image which the mirror portrays does not in the least match the image of ‘me’ which I prance about with before entering a room or taking my seat in a restaurant. Hell! […] On May 15th I go to meet ‘our’ President. Poor man will be in London for some official reason. The French Consul has invited five or six ‘French-English’ to meet him. For a ‘cup of tea’!at the Consulate. I am delighted to go … the last President I met was De Gaulle in ’45 and he was’nt the President. Then came the others and amazing Claude Pompidou, and I had to leave during Mitterand’s office. He liked me in ‘Death In Venice’ I gather: which is probably why I received my promotion to Commandeur. I’m more proud of this than ANYTHING I have.
Is’nt that strange.
I am struggling with this wretched book … it has a worrying theme which slightly worries Viking/Penguin. The forced repatriation of the Cossacks and White Russians to the Russians across the river Duro in Austria. In 1945. We valient British promised to repatriate them to Italy. We cheated and sent them home. Home! My God! They were all instantly massacred. A not delicious story. It will upset a lot of idiots who are ‘proud to be Brit.’ This ugly word, ‘Brit’, was coined while I lived abroad. It shocked me when I heard it first. In, can you guess? Monte Carlo, when I opened a theater there for Princess Grace. I was called ‘a brit’, Edwige Feuillier (SP?) was the ‘frog’ and Vivica Lindfors an ‘Eyetye’.1 Oh the elegance ...... (Dots. What else?)
Yes: I found another ‘bonne’ [Lily]. Nice little child (I think) black as a witches cat, comes from Abyssinia. Or somewhere about. Maybe Somalia. Works hard, speaks perfect English, and is jolly. She is fairly lost about what I do. Writing is not something that comes easily to her imagination I feel. It does’nt come easily to mine either.
I should talk.
But for the moment the house (I refuse to call it a flat) is together. My shirts are perfectly ironed, collars just so, cuffs stiff and correct. As I spend most of my days dressed as I dressed at home, open neck shirt, torn jeans (shorts were too dangerous when I had to use the huge German hay cutters … stones got chucked about and cut the flesh) and flip flops or filthy sneakers. I find it hard to adjust.
When I first got here, on my own, I was advised, by a number of polite people, that ‘in this area (tres Snob) it is usual to wear a tie and proper shoes. This is not Piccadilly you know …’ The reproach was gentle, but it was there. And after I got knighted the pressure grew. I refused politely, which is why, when I do wear a suit and go to dine there is a smattering of sarcastic applause .... they know that I have the costume. Just too lazy to wear it. Funny old lot.
I do not know why you seem to find what you need to know about my works in, of all things! The Economist! I have never seen a copy of the paper … I take The Spectator … and I have never heard that I was ever mentioned in the thing. I am not, as you must realise, at all accepted here as a ‘writer’. They almost dont recognise me as an actor .. or ex-actor, since I defected to Foreign Parts. Visconti, Resnais, Fassbinder et al, are not at all ‘correct’ in the UK.
It drives me frankly mad. And to have to live as an ignored creature is irritating. Audiences and Readers follow me with adoration. Too much so. Sometimes. But Critics and the Literary World smile very gently and pat my head. Sometimes.
So to appear in The Economist amazes me. However it will be some time before this book appears. If I ever get around to finishing it, that is to say. I begin to be bored with it .... it rather irritates me.
So. Maybe there will be another Good Friday and I can give you a time when you should hasten down to your Giggling-Boys1 and ask for a copy. But dont count on it.…
I’d better get back to work …
DB
To Dominique Lambilliotte Cadogan Gardens
4 June 1996
Good Friday 3.
Chere Dominique –
It must be a sign of madness that I send you this personal paper. Probably it is. However I finally finished the last word of the book on Saturday 1st, and am still lightheaded. I have yet to get my typist to ‘do’ it and send it to the big Boss2 who is flying to N.Y on Friday, and Chicago the Friday after, and I might have to wait a week extra for a result. While she (another she!) comes together from her jet lag. So it is imperative that she gets it to read in peace on the flight (far more peaceful than her office I assure you) and can make a
decision. I have a feeling that just perhaps she may wince a bit … the final chapter ends in an orgy of sado-machoism SP?, and the brutality, although remembered through the filter of years, of what we did to 70.000 men women and children when we yeilded to the Russians and the Yalta-Agreement. It was not pleasant. And I have had a job trying to steer my way between libel (the case against the two officers, accuser and deny-er still continues!) and melodrama.
British soldiers using bayonets (not to kill: okay, but ..) against children and women is hardly acceptable. And hardly known about to this day. Like the Jews in Drancy .... and Petain … and the Frog police. So much has been conveniently forgotten … and I was only 24 at the time. However …
So, having no one to think about constantly, no ‘Loveday’ no ‘India’ no ‘May’ or ‘Bob’ … takes a bit of getting used to after almost two or more [years] … well: more. I started the thing in 1982 … and it was thought to be ‘too soon’.So it’s hung around until the trial was over.
So now they, who have lived with me and lived a vivid life, are now no more. Useless puppets in the attic of my mind. Sad.
And this machine has finally broken down. It no longer will reverse.
Like me in a waltz.
I found M. Chirac most impressive.1 Eager, quick, relaxed and so MUCH better and more alive than anything we can offer. It was a huge breath of fresh air. Here was a Leader. Here, indeed, was France … whatever else a Governed country. WE really are hopeless … if I had not had that stroke I’d have been back in a flash after Forwood died. I dont belong here now, I was away too long, I dont ‘fit in’ here. I have no friends to speak of, and spend my time alone in my own company, which I much, much prefer. And I have a very pretty house, I cant bear to call it a ‘flat’, in which to indulge myself. Chirac may be all sorts of a shit: but he is at least positive!