Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings

by Craig Brown

  That evening, the Kennedys attend a dinner at Buckingham Palace. It proves a minefield. The guest list has been the subject of negotiation: traditionally, divorcees are not invited, so the Queen has been reluctant to welcome Jackie’s sister Princess Lee Radziwill, who is on her second marriage, or her husband Prince Stanislaw Radziwill, who is on his third. Under pressure, she relents, but, by way of retaliation, singularly fails to invite Princess Margaret or Princess Marina, both of whose names Jackie has put forward. Jackie’s old paranoia returns: she sees it as a plot to do her down. ‘The Queen had her revenge,’ she confides to Gore Vidal.15 ‘No Margaret, no Marina, no one except every Commonwealth minister of agriculture they could find.’ Jackie also tells Vidal that she found the Queen ‘pretty heavy-going’. (When Vidal repeats this to Princess Margaret some years later, the Princess loyally explains, ‘But that’s what she’s there for.’)

  Over dinner, Jackie continues to feel awkward, even persecuted. ‘I think the Queen resented me. Philip was nice, but nervous. One felt absolutely no relationship between them.’

  The Queen asks Jackie about her visit to Canada. Jackie tells her how exhausting she found being on public view for hours on end. ‘The Queen looked rather conspiratorial and said, “One gets crafty after a while and learns how to save oneself.”’16 According to Vidal (who is prone to impose his own thoughts on others), Jackie considers this the only time the Queen seems remotely human.

  After dinner, the Queen asks if she likes paintings. Yes, says Jackie, she certainly does. The Queen takes her for a stroll down a long gallery in the palace. They stop in front of a Van Dyck. The Queen says, ‘That’s a good horse.’ Yes, agrees Jackie, that is a good horse. From Jackie’s account, this is the extent of their contact with one another, but others differ. Dinner at Buckingham Palace, writes Harold Macmillan in his diary that night, is ‘very pleasant’.

  Nine months later, Jackie pays another visit to the Queen at Buckingham Palace, this time by herself. She is more in the swing of things now. ‘I don’t think I should say anything about it except how grateful I am and how charming she was,’ she tells the television cameras as she makes her escape.

  HM QUEEN ELIZABETH II

  ATTENDS

  THE DUKE OF WINDSOR

  4, route du Champ d’Entraînement, Bois de Boulogne, Paris

  May 18th 1972

  The Queen is to pay a state visit to Paris to ‘improve the atmosphere’ before Britain’s entry into the Common Market. But before the visit takes place, word arrives at Buckingham Palace that her uncle David, once King Edward VIII, now the Duke of Windsor, has throat cancer, and is days from death.

  The Queen’s Private Secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, contacts the British Ambassador in Paris, Sir Christopher Soames, who in turn arranges a meeting with Jean Thin, the Duke of Windsor’s doctor. The Ambassador comes straight to the point. Dr Thin recalls: ‘He told me bluntly that it was all right for the Duke to die before or after the visit, but that it would be politically disastrous if he were to expire in the course of it. Was there anything I could do to reassure him about the timing of the Duke’s end?’

  Unversed in royal protocol, Thin is taken aback. He can offer no such reassurance. The Duke may die before, during or after his niece’s state visit to France, but he is not in the business of making predictions. The Palace is put out. Will the Duke prove as much of a nuisance in death as in life? As it turns out, the prospect of the Queen’s visit gives the Duke a new lease on life; more than ever, he seems determined to cling on.

  And so he does. He is still alive when the royal party lands at Orly Airport on May 15th. Each evening, Sir Christopher telephones Dr Thin to see how his patient is coming along. Dr Thin reports that His Royal Highness is unable to swallow and on a glucose drip, but still intent on welcoming his monarch.

  At 4.45 p.m. on May 18th, the royal entourage arrives after a day at the Longchamp races. The Duchess of Windsor greets the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales with a succession of shaky curtseys, ushering them into the orchid-laden drawing room for tea. For the next fifteen minutes, no one mentions the Duke of Windsor’s health. ‘It was as if they were pretending that David was perfectly well,’ the Duchess says later. She complains that the Queen was ‘not at all warm’, though she may simply be irritated by the Windsors’ jumpy pugs.

  The only member of the royal visitors to have been here before is the Prince of Wales, who called by last October, hoping to patch things up between his black-sheep uncle and the rest of the family. The very next month, Uncle David was diagnosed with cancer, so the Prince’s account in his diary of his visit provides a glimpse, albeit a sniffy glimpse, into the Windsors’ life as it was lived, not long ago: ‘Upon entering the house I found footmen and pages wearing identical scarlet and black uniforms to the ones ours wear at home. It was rather pathetic seeing that. The eye then wandered to a table in the hall on which lay a red box with “The King” on it ... The whole house reeks of some particularly strong joss sticks and from out of the walls came the muffled sound of scratchy piped music. The Duchess appeared from a host of the most dreadful American guests I have ever seen. The look of incredulity on their faces was a study and most of them were thoroughly tight. One man shook hands with me twice, muttered something incomprehensible in French with a strong American accent and promptly collapsed into the arms of a strategically placed black footman.’

  The Duchess (dismissed by Charles after their meeting as ‘a hard woman – totally unsympathetic and somewhat superficial’ ) leads the Queen up the stairs, where the Duke is sitting in a wheelchair, crisply dressed for the occasion in a blue poloneck and blazer. These garments conceal a drip tube, which emerges from the back of the collar and then swoops down to flasks concealed behind a curtain. He has shrivelled to ninety pounds. As the Queen enters, he struggles to his feet and, with some effort, manages to lower his neck in a bow. Dr Thin worries that this may cause the drip to pop out, but all is well, and it stays put.

  The Queen greets her uncle with a kiss, and asks how he is. ‘Not so bad,’ he replies. From this moment on, the opinions of two of the witnesses to their meeting divide. The Duchess, who is by nature unforgiving, portrays the Queen as unsympathetic and coldly dutiful. ‘The Queen’s face showed no compassion, no appreciation for his effort, his respect. Her manner as much as stated that she had not intended to honour him with a visit, but that she was simply covering appearances by coming here because he was dying and it was known that she was in Paris.’ However, the Duke’s Irish nurse, Oonagh Shanley, remembers the Queen chatting perfectly amiably to her uncle, whose voice, reduced to a whispery rasp, is barely audible.

  Some say their meeting comes to an end when the Duke is overcome by a coughing fit, and is wheeled away. It is certainly a very short time before the Queen leaves the room, to rejoin the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales downstairs.

  Rightly or wrongly, the Duchess of Windsor senses that they wish to be off. She escorts them to the front door of the villa, where the four of them pose together for photographers. Inevitably, the Duke of Edinburgh attempts a few jokes. Equally inevitably, the Duchess considers them inappropriate. The royal party leaves. The entire visit has taken less than half an hour.

  Ten days later, the Duke of Windsor dies. Nearly 60,000 people come to Windsor to pay their respects. There is a question as to whether or not Trooping the Colour, scheduled for two days before his funeral, should be cancelled, as a mark of respect. But the Queen insists that it should go ahead, so it does.

  THE DUKE OF WINDSOR

  LOOKS ON AGHAST WITH

  ELIZABETH TAYLOR

  4, route du Champ d’Entraînement, Bois de Boulogne, Paris

  November 12th 1968

  Both now in their seventies, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor potter along as stately relics of their former glamour. They occupy their time either entertaining or being entertained by what has come to be known as the jet set. After jetting into Paris, and be
fore jetting out, their ever-changing friends – foreign aristocrats, shipping millionaires, misplaced royalty, international playboys, amusing bachelors, the higher echelons of show-business – are delighted to receive the call from the Windsors.

  Thirty years ago, they were the most glamorous couple in the world; that title, only ever temporary, is now held by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, who are, by chance, both making movies in Paris. The balance of fame, perhaps also of wealth,17 dictates that it is the Windsors who make eyes at the Burtons, though the latter are far from displeased, as the Windsors reinforce their sense of having arrived, their craving for being centre-stage, particularly when off-stage.

  The Windsors visit the Burtons on their separate sets, and the two couples dine together regularly. In honour of Burton’s Welsh roots, the Duchess makes a point of wearing her Prince of Wales brooch – the fleur de lys in white and yellow diamonds. Elizabeth Taylor looks at it covetously: she is celebrated for her jewellery collection.18 Dining with the Windsors and the Rothschilds before the European premiere of The Taming of the Shrew, she wears roughly $1,500,000-worth – so much that the couple have to be protected by eight bodyguards on their short journey to the Paris Opera House. Earlier the same day, Burton spends $960,000 buying her the jet plane on which they flew into Paris. ‘Elizabeth was not displeased,’ he confides to his diary.

  Elizabeth remains enchanted by the fairy-tale glamour of the Windsors, but Burton, less convinced that the world he has created is the world he wants, his unease fuelled and allayed by three bottles of vodka a day, is beginning to find them a little wearing. Unlike the Duchess, the Duke lacks zip: another of their acquaintances finds himself mesmerised by the way that he ‘always had something of ... riveting stupidity to say on any subject’.

  On November 12th, the Burtons grace a dinner for twenty-two at the Windsors’ home. As they enter the room, Burton recognises just two people, the Count and Countess of Bismarck, and then only by name. ‘He, the Count, looks as much like one’s mental picture of the iron chancellor as spaghetti. Soft and round and irresolute. He couldn’t carve modern Germany out of cardboard.’

  The Duke and Duchess seem, through his jaded eyes, much diminished. ‘It is extraordinary how small the Duke and Duchess are. Two tiny figures like Toto and Nanette that you keep on the mantelpiece. Chipped around the edges. Something you keep in the front room for Sundays only. Marred royalty. The awful majesty that doth hedge around a king is notably lacking in awfulness. Charming and feckless.’

  Elizabeth notes that she and Richard are the only two people without titles in the entire room. She is offended that she has not been placed next to the Duke, and Richard is furious that he has not been placed next to the Duchess. Instead, he is between another Duchess and a Countess, both ‘hard-faced and youngish’.

  One of them tells him that she saw him in Hamlet, and asks how he could possibly remember all those lines. Burton says that he doesn’t bother, that he improvises, that Shakespeare is lousy, that Hamlet’s character is so revolting that one could only say some of his lines when drunk. ‘I mean, the frantic self-pity of “How all occasions do inform against me, and spur my dull revenge”. You have to be sloshed to get around that. At least I have to be.’

  He thinks he may have shocked her. Another lady, ‘not a day under seventy, whose face had been lifted so often that it was on top of her head’, asks him if it is true that all actors are queer. Yes, he replies, and that’s why he married Elizabeth, because she was queer too, but they have an arrangement.

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Well, she lives in one suite, and I in another, and we make love by telephone.’

  After dinner, Taylor looks on in horror as Burton approaches the Duchess of Windsor and says, ‘You are without any question, the most vulgar woman I’ve ever met.’ Before long, he has picked up the seventy-two-year-old Duchess and is swinging her around ‘like a dancing singing dervish’. The room falls silent. Watching the event with the Duke, Taylor is terrified that Burton will drop her or fall down and kill her. Meanwhile, Burton, who has long suspected that his lifestyle is a betrayal of his origins, is overcome with self-pity and starts pining for the Welsh valleys. ‘Christ! I will arise and go now and go home to Welsh miners who understand drink and the idiocies that it arouses ... I shall die of drink and make-up.’

  Arriving back at the Plaza Athénée, Taylor is furious, and locks Burton in the spare bedroom. He tries to kick the door down, ‘and nearly succeeded which meant that I spent some time on my hands and knees this morning picking up the battered plaster in the hope that the waiters wouldn’t notice that the hotel had nearly lost a door in the middle of the night’.

  In the morning, Taylor berates him for his misbehaviour, complaining that they’ll never be invited again. ‘Thank God,’ he replies, adding, ‘Rarely have I been so stupendously bored.’

  That weekend, he reluctantly agrees to accompany Taylor to a grand fancy-dress party at the Rothschilds’ château in the country. Also at the party is Cecil Beaton, who spots them across the room. ‘I have always loathed the Burtons for their vulgarity, commonness and crass bad taste,’ he writes in his diary the next day. ‘She combining the worst of US and English taste, he as butch and coarse as only a Welshman can be.’

  ELIZABETH TAYLOR

  UNNERVES

  JAMES DEAN

  Marfa, Texas

  June 6th 1955

  She is the former child star, now Queen of Hollywood. He is the up-and-coming method actor, surly and unpredictable. Though Elizabeth Taylor is a year younger than James Dean, she belongs to an earlier generation of old-fashioned, glamorous, self-confident, untouchable stars, whereas he heralds a new generation: scruffy, grunting, brooding, callow. They are to act together in Giant, Elizabeth Taylor as the wife of a Texas cattle baron, James Dean as the troublesome ranch-hand who strikes oil.

  They are introduced a few days before filming begins. To everyone’s surprise, he charms her, and takes her for a ride in his brand-new Porsche. Taylor ends the day convinced that he is a perfect gentleman, and that others have tarred him with the wrong brush.

  The following day, Taylor, expecting a warm welcome after their pleasant introduction, goes up to Dean and says hello. He glares at her over the rims of his glasses, mutters something incomprehensible to himself and strides off as though he hasn’t seen her. It dawns on her that, after all, his reputation for moodiness may be justified.

  Their first four weeks are to be spent on location in the small, sleepy town of Marfa, Texas, where the temperatures frequently rise to 120 degrees in the shade. On their first day of filming, his friend Dennis Hopper has never seen James Dean so nervous on a set.

  Their first scene involves Dean firing a shot at a water tower, Taylor stopping her car, and Dean asking her in for tea. But Dean is so nervous that he can barely get the words out. ‘At that time there wasn’t anybody who didn’t think she was queen of the movies, and Jimmy was really fuckin’ nervous. They did take after take, and it just wasn’t going right. He was really getting fucked up. Really nervous,’ recalls Hopper. ‘Well, there were around four thousand people watching the scene from a hundred yards away, local people and visitors. And all of a sudden Jimmy turned and walked off towards them. He wasn’t relating to them or anything. He got half-way, unzipped his pants, took out his cock, and took a piss. Then he dripped off, put his cock back, zipped up his pants, and walked back to the set and said, “OK, shoot.”’

  This is not the sort of behaviour to which Elizabeth Taylor is accustomed. On the way back from the location, Hopper says to Dean, ‘Jimmy, I’ve seen you do some way-out things before, but what was that?’

  ‘I was nervous,’ explains Dean. ‘I’m a method actor. I work through my senses. If you’re nervous, your senses can’t reach your subconscious and that’s that – you just can’t work. So I figured if I could piss in front of these two thousand people, man, and I could be cool, I figured if I could do that, I could get in f
ront of that camera and do just anything, anything at all.’

  As the filming continues, Dean irritates the cast and crew with his habit of coming to a halt in the middle of a take and shouting, ‘Cut – I fucked up!’ He attributes it to the perfectionism required of a method actor. His co-star Rock Hudson, one of the old school, is less forgiving of the solipsistic neurosis that powers Dean’s acting. The director, George Stevens, also grows irritated by Dean’s random behaviour, regarding it as unprofessional. ‘I’d get so mad at him, and he’d stand there, blinking behind his glasses after having been guilty of some bit of preposterous behaviour, and revealing by his very cast of defiance that he felt some sense of unworthiness.’ Stevens is equally annoyed by Taylor’s obsession with her looks. ‘Until you tone down your veneer, you’ll never be an actress,’ he tells her.

  Their shared sense of directorial persecution may help forge a bond between Taylor and Dean: in time, the two stars grow to like each other. ‘We were like brother and sister really; kidding all the time, whatever it was we were talking about. One felt he was a boy one had to take care of, but even that was probably his joke. I don’t think he needed anybody or anything – except his acting.’

  Both Dean and Taylor are reliant on drugs of one sort or another: he smokes marijuana, while Taylor takes medications for her plentiful ailments, which Stevens regards as psychosomatic. ‘When Jimmy was eleven and his mother passed away, he began to be molested by his minister. I think that haunted him the rest of his life. In fact, I know it did. We talked about it a lot. During Giant we’d stay up nights and talk and talk and that was one of the things he confessed to me,’ Taylor says forty-two years later.19