The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  Thursday 2nd, President Hotel, Geneva There is no way of knowing how infinitely nostalgic and irrevocable this street is. Jesus, when I remember how often and how long I paced this particular quai waiting and watching for a baby, both of whom are alive and one of whom is dead. And nobody knows the soft touch of a soft skin of a soft mind on a hard hand. An unsympathetic hand. A hand that doesn't understand. Wherever I turn I find that I don't know what exactly I'm doing.

  That was written last night and indicates my temporary insanity. I was in a fearful state and I don't understand quite why. I didn't drink very much and apart from missing the autoroute after Bulle the day – physically at least – went smoothly enough. We arrived about 4.15, booked in at the Hotel which is nicer than I remember and took a cab to the Musee des Beaux Arts to look at E's paintings. Would you believe it but they were not on display but down in the basement. This angered us both, but E more than me. To make matters worse the oils we did see and which were hung were horrible. E's decided to take them out and hang them on the yacht, suitably weather-proofed by Sotheby's. Madame Favez, who showed us around the cellar-basement, was a shrill screaming harridan with a dreadful accent. She sounded like somebody from Tiger Bay.251

  Afterwards we went to the hospital to see Rossier. He was very sweet and showed us the new machine we'd bought him. It really works. I asked him about arranging a bed for Ivor at Gstaad and he will start to work on it shortly. He let slip that the last time he talked to Walsh two weeks ago, they were worried about Ivor's heart.252 He covered it up pretty quickly by saying what a remarkable recovery Ivor had made and how ‘phenomenal’ it was and so on but the knife had already gone deep into my stomach.

  When we came out of the Beaux Arts the cab-driver had vanished, but he returned in a few minutes having very sweetly bought a single rose for Elizabeth. Somewhere between the hospital and dinner brooding set in. Between long silences deadly insults were hurled about. At one point E, knowing I was in a state of nastiness, said to me at the lousy Italian restaurant we went to: Come on Richard, hold my hand. Me: I do not wish to touch your hands. They are large and ugly and red and masculine. Or words to that effect. After that my mind was like a malignant cancer – I was incurable. I either remained stupidly silent or, if I did speak, managed an insult a second. What the hell's the matter with me. I love milady more than my life and I adore Brook. Why do I hurt them so much and spoil the day?

  I am very contrite this morning but one of these days it's going to be too late cock, too late. E has just said that I really must get her the 69 carat ring to make her ugly big hands look smaller and less ugly! Nobody turns insults to her advantage more swiftly or more cleverly than Lady Elizabeth. That insult last night is going to cost me. Betcha! [...]

  Friday 3rd, Gstaad [...] E says that last night in my sleep I was winding-up and pitching baseball, going through all the motions, spit-balls, change-ups, curves. All done in deadly seriousness, while fast asleep and lying on my back! It must have been occasioned by my explaining to Brook a couple of days ago some of the subtleties of baseball and pitching. In particular the latter. Thank God I wasn't playing rugby in my sleep or E might have been crash-tackled a few times.

  Winter is definitely coming in with a decided nip in the air. It's early in the morning, not a cloud in the sky and the sun is just tipping the peaks, notably the snow capped Diableret, with blue-gold.253 The table-tennis has arrived and we shall erect it to-day. The floor and bookcases are ready in ‘Richard's Room’ and the long hidden books will start to breathe again. I can't wait to see their serried ranks. (From the french verb ‘serrer'; to squeeze or press. ‘Serrez à droite.’)

  I am delighted to be home again after only one night away. The yacht is in Monte Carlo – our second home (the yacht, not Monte Carlo) and we join it there next month while we go to a party given by the Rainiers for Scorpios. Grace and I are both of that dangerous sign. Everybody has to be in black and white. It'll make a change for us to move in ‘society’ again and have a good laugh afterwards. [...]

  Saturday 4th Yesterday I spent most of the day unwrapping the books. By some lucky guess the bookshelves, measured by guesswork on my part, accommodate the books almost perfectly, leaving half a shelf spare for any additions that Dent-Dutton may dream up. Now comes the task, looked forward to, of putting them in order, either alphabetically or by subject matter. Alphabetically by authors is probably the most practical, though E would prefer them in colours. I protest that they will look like a pretty wall-paper, a decoration reminiscent of those shops in London where one goes in and orders two yards of books without knowing or caring what's inside them. We have mild side-bets as to who has the most volumes under his name. It's probably Dickens but there are a quite a few dark horses like Walter Scott, Gibbon and Grote (History of Greece).254 Shakespeare is in four volumes so he's out. The tomes are all beautifully bound in velvet green calf, red and blue calf, black and maroon morocco, grey calf. A sensuous delight just to hold and touch. There is a section for children, an encyclopedia, dictionaries of all kinds, history geography art science romances essays and all. The room when finished is going to be a dream and I shall probably spend most of my time there. There is a beautifully rough stone fireplace, log-burning, and the outside door leads directly into the garden. A couple of easy chairs, a small bar, a sofa, a desk and a chair and a couple of rugs thrown about the floor and a painting or two on the walls and you have the best cell ever for a literary man. It's so particularly delightful to have the time and the leisure (and the money) to do it without having to rush off in 10 days to do some ghastly film chore.

  The table-tennis has arrived and is installed in the long room. E wants to change that room into two rooms for the boys. I am trying to persuade her to leave it as a play-room and build a tiny two bedroom chalet adjacent to the house for the lads. [...]

  Monday 6th I knew it would happen. I knew that there was only going to be a short time before I would want to show-off again. I knew that minor ambitions were going to be resolved. So here they are:

  I shall play King Lear in East Germany with the Berliner Ensemble in German.255 I shall write and ask my friends who translated it best, and learn it phonetically.

  I shall play Sartre's piece Le Diable et le Bon Dieu in Paris, in French. And I shall ask Barrault to direct it.256

  After all, I have sought for that play for a long time. I shall start learning it today. My accent, because Goetz is a German and not at all French, will be acceptable.257 Now that I am an amateur, a dilettante, I can choose what I will.

  And then, with a little assistance, I shall do readings of Tolstoy in Russian.258

  Monday 20th, Gstaad We leave today for Geneva where we are guests of honour at some do with a lot of dignitaries and where I have to make a speech, God curse the mark, about the equipment we gave to the paraplegics section of the Hôpital Communal.259 Christ what a boring prospect. The stuff cost $50,000 but I would gladly give a tip if it would let me out of the speech. And to such an audience. Got to be done though.

  Tomorrow to England again and already I am depressed. A man who is tired of London is tired of life, said Johnson. Got news for you fatty. I am tired of London, and I am not tired of life.260 I really cannot analyse why I find the place so dispiriting. Perhaps I know the wrong kind of people. Perhaps I need fresh minds around me, or no minds at all but just a lot of books. And the weather there, the climate and a whole nation suffering from permanent catarrh and all with prison-pallor. And the snide press and the lamentable TV and we have to see Princess Margaret again at the opening night of Staircase and she is infinitely boringly uncomfortable to be around and I don't know how I can suffer to see myself in the film in front of such a snob-ridden load of shits as one always gets at premiers. Got to be done too I suppose. The following day we listen for the telephone call from NY to see if we have acquired the diamond or not. Then thankfully back home to walks, and cow-bells and raclette and all that and the new, marvellous book-lined room. [...]r />
  Tuesday 21st, President, Geneva [...] Christ what a night. All the things I dread came to pass. E and I went into a suffocatingly small room faced with scores of people and E with her usual aplomb looked cool and self-possessed. I, with my acute sense of physical inferiority became more and more nervous until every muscle in my body was quivering with panic. I felt like a small boy who has to walk down the aisle at morning assembly and explain to the whole school why he was late, or smoking in the lav. I made the proverbial aspen leaf look as steady as a rock.261 The President of the St Vitus Club.262 We paraded the paraplegic part of the hospital and it made us both desperate with pity. After a sweaty two hours – sweaty for me that is, everybody else was pretty cool to look at, at least – we went to dinner with Rossier and his wife in a splendid little restaurant which we must go to again. Faced with all that irrevocable tragedy I made a speech of stupendous banality blazing with failure.

  To hell with it. There are so many things to record and I don't have the time.

  NOVEMBER

  Saturday 1st, Gstaad I haven't written for ten days in this thing and a great deal has happened. What an oddity it is that when events tumble over each other I don't write it down. And now I don't know where to begin. I must record that E started taking her hormone pills yesterday!

  Well now, we went to the hospital in Geneva and stood like wooden statues in a small room, insufferably hot, while people made speeches. The ultimate speech was mine and I made a total failure. My French was hideous, my English worse. I am supposed to be the bloke who is glib and gifted with tongues of men and of angels but boy was I a cop-out that night! I stammered and stuttered, stuttered, and generally made a fool of myself. Nevertheless the evening was received with joy in the Swiss newspapers. [...]

  Then to England and Ivor and he looked to me that he was dying fast. He is, of course, but I should expect it and not be as stricken as I was. It threw me for a long time lasting until this minute. I am not used to death and Ivor has always been a kind of God to me. He never treated me harshly, despite his short-temper, all his life. He only hit me once and then I deserved it.

  We are having desperate trouble with Michael. We do our damnedest to help him but it is impossible. We allow him every possible latitude but nothing avails. [...] At this moment I can hear mindless pounding music going on and on in his room. It says nothing, it means nothing but presumably fills up some void. All it creates in me is unspeakable fury. [...] So far it has been going on for two hours since we arrived back from lunch and has probably been going on for much longer before that. [...] However we will do our best and love him a lot and have patience with him as Phil instructed us in a sweet letter a couple of days ago.

  But now on to other things: I bought the ring for Elizabeth. Its acquisition was a tremendous excitement. I had set a ‘lid’ on it of one million dollars if thou pleasest and Cartier outbid me by $50,000.263 When Jim Benton called me and told me (we were at the Bell Inn visiting Ivor and Gwen) I turned into a raving maniac and insisted that he get Aaron on the phone as soon as possible. Elizabeth was as sweet as only she could be and protested that it didn't matter, that she didn't mind if she didn't have it, that there was much more in life than baubles, that she would manage with what she had. The inference was that she would make do. But not me! The relief in Jim's voice was unmistakable and, an hour later when I finally got him on the phone, so was Aaron's. I screamed at Aaron that bugger Cartiers, I was going to get that diamond if it cost me my life or 2 million dollars whichever was the greater. For 24 hours the agony persisted and in the end I won. I got the bloody thing. For $1,100,000. It will take two weeks or more to get here. In the meantime it is on view in Chicago and has been in New York and 10,000 people a day go to see it. It has also been a star on the Ed Sullivan Show and both Jim Benton and Aaron Frosch have entirely changed their mind about the wisdom of my buying it.264 It turns out that one of my rivals was Ari Onassis but he chickened at $700,000. But apart from the fact that I am a natural winner, I wanted that diamond because it is incomparably lovely. And it should be on the loveliest woman in the world. I would have had a fit if it went to Jackie Kennedy or Sophia Loren or Mrs Huntingdon Misfit of Dallas, Texas.

  Monday 17th, Monte Carlo It has been a very bizarre few days. First of all [...] there was the affair of the diamond! It created a sensation from the word ‘go’ starting with the fact that it was bought under strange circumstances, that Onassis was our chief rival, that Cartier out-bid me, that I got it from them, that Aaron, with his usual caution made the transaction on board a transatlantic airliner, that it arrived here to the Kalizma with several armed guards one of whom had a machine-gun.

  Elizabeth's delight in it is a joy to behold and a very quaint thing to witness is the obvious pleasure that other people take in her wearing it. Even Hjordis Niven and Princess Grace, who are coldish fish, seemed to enjoy her enjoyment.265 Even the ordinary public seem to like the idea. Even hard-boiled photographers applauded her and it. And of course, nobody can wear it better. The miraculous face and shoulders and breasts set it off to perfection. She made an enormous success and I am frantically proud of her. [...] It has also created a sensation in New York and Chicago where it has been on exhibition, without its wearer, naturally, for a few days in each town and where many thousands of people went to see it every day.

  In complete contrast is the fact that my nephew, Anthony Cook, has been just sentenced to 3 years in prison for ‘stealing cars in order to buy sex’ – I quote the Daily Mirror.266 He is a tall, handsome feller so why did he have to do that? [...]

  Monday 17th, Kalizma [...] Prince Rainier and Grace and Grace's sister and a friend are coming to lunch today and Rainier is bringing either a tiger or a panther as a present for E. That's all I need. [...] What the hell are we going to do with a PANTHER or a TIGER? It means that we can never work in Britain again. Imagine a tiger or a panther in quarantine or on a yacht in the Thames? Many sailors would be eaten a day, several vets would be munched for lunch; I may be nibbled myself. Dead dogs and cats in Gstaad and Johann Sebastian Bach will be prostrate as he tries to water the flowers, and Raymond will be forced to play ping-pong with him. Brook Williams may tell the animal a joke or two but I bet the animal won't laugh. The only two persons who will survive it are going to be Elizabeth Taylor Burton and Liza Todd Burton. Liza will saddle him and ride him, and Elizabeth will insist that he sleeps in the bathroom, which means she has slept with me for the last time – it's the atom-bomb shelter for me! I'm sure that I'm going to love him or her but I insist it's by telephone. ‘How big,’ I said to Rainier yesterday at lunch, ‘does a panther grow?’ ‘ About this size,’ he said, with a gesture that indicated something cosmic. I nearly struck him, but didn't because it would have been impolite, and also he might have struck me back. He had that look on his face which I can only describe as ‘smug’, that total assurance that the man to whom he is talking is absolutely terrified. I love the Prince and I love his wife and I love Monaco but if, every time we come here, we are going to be given a lion, I'd rather write bad books at home. And play with enormous jewels. [...]

  Tuesday 18th, Kalizma, Monaco This morning in the early hours the pot decided to have a go at the kettle and won handle down. E, the pot, gave this particular kettle, me, a savage mauling. I was coldly accused of virtually every sin under the sun. Drunkenness (true) mendacity (true) being boring (true) infidelity (untrue) killing myself fairly quickly (true) pride envy avarice (all true) being ugly (true) having once been handsome (untrue) and any other vice imaginable except homosexuality and ungenerousness. [...]

  Grace, Rainier, Grace's sister, Peggy, and a Lady Fford (I think) came on board for lunch and stayed until 5 so they cannot have been displeased.267 Also a 3 month old panther of great beauty but also of great wildness. Reluctantly we had to give him back to Rainier. Though, if we had a large enough piece of property for him to run around in I would have taken a chance and kept the little savage. [...]

  DECEMBER


  Friday 5th, Gstaad We leave for Paris tomorrow, regretfully. It is so beautiful here now – deep snow, brilliant sunshine, books to read and no work.

  Yesterday we held Maria's birthday party prematurely as she was born on the 8th which we would not have been able to attend. We had four child guests from her school. [...] We gave Maria a stamp album with about four hundred stamps to put in it. She was busy all evening. [...]

  Monday 8th, Gstaad [...] The thing we were supposed to do with Phil last night in New York, a special presentation to him or something, was called off because of the death of Mrs Winthrop Rockefeller's father.268 [...] Now perhaps we can get out of it altogether. Why, I wonder, do I dislike being a public spectacle? Other actors love it – even Elizabeth doesn't mind tarting up for a premiere of one of our films. [...]

  I will start early tomorrow and try and write all about the arrival of the diamond and the ball at Monaco's L'Hermitage.269

  We arrived back last Tuesday from M.C. and waited for Ivor and Gwen to arrive from Stoke Mandeville.270 [...] Ivor goes up and down, but catastrophically he had a stroke in his sleep last September, which was hidden from us. He has great difficulty in speaking and has retreated more and more into himself. Apart from an occasional spirited flash as of old, he has changed into another person. He is mortally afraid, he tells me, not of death itself but of leaving this world and all its varying excitements. The physical pain of death he discounts. ‘I will die in my sleep for sure anyway and won't know anything about it. My stroke in my sleep at Stoke Mandeville didn't wake me up and I didn't know anything had happened until the orderlies came in in the morning and I found I couldn't speak.’ What a blow on a blow. He'd have lived until he was 90 were it not for that trip in the dark at Céligny. [...]

  Wednesday 10th A choice of new furniture has arrived for the library. E and I are still in the top tens of the box-office which surprises me somewhat as, apart from Secret Ceremony for E and Eagles for me we didn't have anything out. Staircase hasn't been on general release yet so doesn't count. [...]