by Unknown
Mike Cain pulled the Movie Star bit a bit much .. the big cigar, black glasses and fat Cadillac … but he was pleasant if dull and has to have the ugliest voice in the business .. and pop eyes. And that was a surprise too […] I don’t think I could go through it again for anything. Even the lolly. A woman from the New York Times ruefully mumbled that doing something as crappy for so much loot left ‘a kind of stain.’ I wonder if she was right. Holland was hell. Amsterdam dull with hippes and free sex and enormous dilldolls and rubber penis outside every shop … plus those tatty ladies sitting in their windows offering a dose of clap at fifty guilders a throw … toss? blow? .. I dont know. Apart from the van Goghs, Rembrants and the Vermeers it is all a lot of crappy horror .... We stayed in a ‘dainty’ little hotel in a wood where dinner started at six thirty pm and was off at eight forty five. THAT went down like a cup of cold sick as you may imagine. Especially as the prices were identicle to the Lancaster in Paris! However we had three weeks there and flew back on a beastly Caravelle, which bounced all the way to Nice .... and then off to Paris for the above mentioned chore.
‘Providence’ is a stunning experience! One of the most beautiful films I have ever seen … if not THE … I dont know what the hell it is all about … and feel that Mercers script is a lot of pretentious crap which we ALL play beautifully .... Johnnie G. steals the film, of course. But he is so smashing that one does’nt care .. and is only glad that such a fantastic performance should be honoured, at last, by the cinema. Burstyn is marvellous … the surprise is Stritch who is astonishing and hurts like hell … David [Warner] does his grovelling Saint Act excellently, if you can bear it, and I camp about in St Laurent quite effectivly. But no one knows what it is all about … and it wont make a nickle in comparison to the Disney-War up the road in Deventer, Holland. Thats always the way though, is’nt it? They are speaking of it in Paris in whispers as Resnais Masterpiece … but one never takes any notice of that. His best film ever, yes. The other I can not be sure about. Who can. It is impossible to be objective.
But I need a rest now. I have refused, during an hysterical weekend exchange, to replace Stephens1 in ‘A Little Night Music’ and had the most lovely time doing it! It was SO super to say .. ‘I’m sorry, I just dont want to do it … tell Miss Taylor I have a book to write.’ I could have ‘named your own price’ (Which WAS a bit tempting ..) but I don’t replace anyone – yet.
After the end of this month in Holland .... then to London for two short days to see my Mother … I come back to start work on my second book [ … ] ‘Enter Demons …’2 Which has to be done ready for the Autumn release next year. ‘Postillion’ (which looks very pretty but will probably bomb badly) comes out in March … just sent off the Cover design and an additional line drawing for the Title Page. It is all my own work, so to speak … so I’ll really crumble when the Critics bash me this time. Oh well. I should’nt have stuck out my neck so far.…
My Sister and bro’ in law were here for five months and sobbed at the parting. They can only now think of coming here to live for ever and sod England .... but it is a might harder to do than to say. I may be able to build them a little house up here on the hill and they could just look after the land and the house and me … and guard things when I am off ‘doing’ the money earning ...... but how much longer will THAT last?
We have had, unlike you, a soaking summer … everything green and lush … while the great trees in the Luxumbourg Gardens are all dead. And now Tote is out mowing acres of white dasies and autumn crocus and I think I’d better go and help him … regretfully. I am so lazy and full of reaction … odd.
It WAS lovely to hear from you about you … super about old neuro-Ian … give him a bashing great kiss and tell him to keep brave, sane and far away from Frankenheimer. Thats what did it in the first place!
My electric typewriter … for my ‘book’ you know .. is a sod .. it just has a will of it’s own and the subtilty of a Combine Harvester with added weight .. and I am making more and more mistakes because I want a pre-lunch drink.
God bless you, pretty Sno …
all love as ever for ever ..
as you
know.
Sno.
YoR
Dirk.
After thirty-seven years, Dilys Powell retired as film critic for The Sunday Times. Dirk wrote an appreciation, published on 10 October.
To Dilys Powell Clermont
17 October 1976
My dear –
I am glad that you were pleased. Surprised, too, that the S.T. even printed it … I was up to my eyes being one of Attenboroughs Wax-Figures at the time, and felt such a sense of grevious loss when I read your, typically, gentle ‘bow out’ at the end of the column. My own note to you was written on the back of a bouncing jeep in a rain-storm … so maybe it was as incomprehensible as usual. But well meant. As you know. You would be SO gratified to see the stack of letters which I have recieved in this week appropos the letter. People, ordinary people for the most part, who loved you tremendously, and were as saddened as I. I only hope that some of them have written to you .... your face would have been alight with pleasure that the many years had not been at all in vain, and that they had given such enormous pleasure.
For my self I feel, in a strange way, a sense of almost relief. It has been very difficult, as you will imagine, to write to you as a very loving friend, which I am, while you were still a Critic. I was terrified of appearing to ‘curry favour’ … although I know very well that this would never have occured to you … but many things which I wanted to say to you had to be left unsaid because of Our Positions! Do you know what I mean? Awfully complicated really. That is why I was so desperatly tongue tied at our few meetings .... clumsy, idiotic, banal. The dreaded fear that one might, even unconsiosly, be influencing you in your work was abhorrent and frightening … and consequently I was never able to say very much. Only generalities … oh! shut up! I KNOW what I mean … but it is impossible to explain. Now that you have no longer the responsibility of ‘guiding’ me, as you have done for so many years, I am free to say just what I jolly well like without fear of scorn or of favour! I feel a little lonely now .... who to help me? Certainly not your repellent Substitute!1 Alas! The standards are gone .... even Hobson,2 for all his nonsense, was a Lover of our craft .... [David] Robinson on ‘The Times’ perhaps … [Derek] Malcolm on ‘The Guardian’.… I dont know. Anyway I did do the Resnais for you … hoping for ultimate Command at last! And your approval can be written, or not written, just as you wish now, if and when you see it. However, just remember, and this is one thing I could NOT tell you before, if one can ever dedicate a picture, no …. a performance … to any one person then Claud Langham in ‘Providence’ is, and was, completely dedicated to you. And you can do what you like about that! There! I have said something as dreadful as ‘District Nurse!’ (Do you remember ‘Dear Octopus’ by Dodie Smith?) I am getting boring .... so I’ll shut up.
Terrific amount of garden work to do here after six months of neglect … semi neglect that is … acres of meadow to mow and keep down for the winter … ‘gourmands’ round all the olive trees (350 of the buggers) and the sad, withering stems of daisy, dahlia, and lavander … the vine was stripped last week by the Daily Lady and her husband who make a fairly repellant wine from the ‘tons’ they cart away … and all about the terrace late toads scramble for the flies and wasps among the fallen leavs and crushed fruit … a big deal with broom and hose today in the golden sun, cooled now by the first fall of light snow up on the hills behind the house.…
Resnais leaves Paris today with a skeleton Crew for New England where he is to ‘shoot’ additional ‘athmospheric’ moments for ‘Providence’ of trees, bushes, roots, and vague, un-connected buildings. The Producers must be pleased with the very un-box office film it is … for this will cost a pretty penny! Heaven knows WHAT he wants shots of New England for … it is all a dream I suppose, the film, so he wants the flamboyance of the Fall colours to mix
in with the summer at Limoges … I do love him. And respect him. And cross fingers for him.
Dont think, for one second, that I am starting a Pen Pal situation … with you I mean. I’m not. And you dont need to reply ever. Very tedious if you do … feel forced to … it is simply that I do absolutly adore you … and now I am able to tell you. To your face.
Off to correct the ‘proofs’ of my book. Chatto are very demanding and bullying … and I’m terrified. How DO you correct ‘proofs’ I wonder? The terrace will have to wait a little longer.
Always My Love
Dirk
To Lucilla Van den Bogaerde Clermont
10 November 1976
Cilia love – et al1 –
Well: said Tote after reading your delicious letter, They Seem To Have Got Off To A Slightly Shakey Start!2
I did laugh though; not at that, but at your letter … the sick bags in the hall … What the fuck was Brock throwing Up for? Is he sensitive?
Poor loves … Immigration is a bit of a wrench even, if as we all did, one wants to go … for whatever reasons. And there is nowhere, to my mind, more foreign than America. I am less at ease there than in India, Greece; or even the darkest parts of Tibet! Which I visited in 1945 and thought I had hit Mars. Even that; prayer wheels, Lamas, Everest like a gigantic ice cream cornet, butter in the tea, lice all over the walls … even that was more familiar than standing on the corner of 5th and 58th New York, where, the first time I arrived, I went into a total panic of homesickness and wanted ‘out’ as soon as I had landed. But it passed. Gradually. I loath America .. and dont awfully care for the race even tho’ some-of-my-best-friends etc. But that is not the point at this moment.
Everything is bound to seem dreadfully strange just at first. But as soon as you get your house and the furniture arrives, and all the familiar feelings come back within the walls of your ‘life’ you’ll be fine. I promise. You ARE both doing the right thing, of that there can be no possible doubt; taking Castor Oil is good for Constipation and some forms of sickness (or poisoning I mean) and tho’ not at all pleasant is the RIGHT THING to do .... for that particular malady. Or maladies. Imagine your lives if you had stayed on in the U.K. Bugger a little job on Welsh Telly! Who wants it! It may not even be there in a year or so … not Wales, but the Telly. England is slowly crumbling away into a sand heap of envy, spite, dislike, jealousy and apathy. I CANNOT think why. But it is … and there is simply no point in you all hanging on for the Sunrise at your ages … and at the ages of your children. You and G. have both given up SO much for your children that you might just as well go the whole hog and give up the rest. It will be marvellous for them. Even though, tragically, one knows, as in the past with other friends, they will all become Americans in the end.1 Quicker than either of you.
It is an inevitable process … and the mixture is not at all unattractive. The good British background marries well with the flip, whiz-kid innocence of most Americans. Especially in the Middle West. Which always reminds me, religiously, as well as climatically, of Mid-Lothian or the Black Country. But I’m told it is charming in the summer. You go to the Lake and have picnics and things. Or something. And join patchwork Clubs for company during the long winter evenings.
And you will make friends, you know … it seems impossible in an Hotel of course, but once you are in what they call, euphimistically, A Neiborhood, you will start to ‘exist’. But do try it for a while … dont panic as I did and try to come back. Too soon: anyway. I know one girl who did the same as you; minus children. They went to New York, marginally more civilised. She cried for the first three years solidly. Her patient, very loving husband, did all that was possible to ‘help’ her .. but three sodden years passed before their First Leave back to the U.K. She was the original ‘child Bride’ suddenly … happiness, delight, joy. For two or three days. After one week of Hemel Hampstead and all the family, she begged her patient and loving husband to return to America IMMEDIATLY! NOTHING, and I use Capitals, would induce her to stay in Britain again. The rest of their leave they spent in France (some with us) in Italy and got the boat back from Genoa early .. so there.
No. I’m positive that, like Steve Sondhiem says, ‘Your’R Gonna Be Alright.’
I bet by the time we meet again you’ll be busy as a bee with your gold paint and rabbit glue,2 your spaghetti parties, and there will be more painted crab shells up on the walls ..... bet you.
As for us here. Well. All is as before. We have just about settled back again after seven months away .... Tote had an aged Aunt to stay for two weeks … agony. Recently widowd, ex-Sudan, totally bigoted, kind, tiresome. Church every Sunday (Cannes, naturally … Grasse has no English Church) and long discussion every evening round the fire about long-dead relations, of whome I had never heard, and details of everyones life in Khartoum and Cairo during the war. Unbelievably boring. But she had a simply lovely time … and actually got nicer as the days went on. We did’nt make any alterations in our lives … and she found that rather ‘amusing’. But we were pretty tried [sic] after it all .. especially with poor old Tote trailing down to the Clinic in Nice three mornings a week (six am call) to have his bum pierced with some terrifying electronic ‘ray’ thing which is fearsome as well as undignified. It’s getting better, thank the Lord .... another four weeks to go … and then, if all is well, we plan that delayed trip to London simply to see his father and for me to clap eyes on my wretched Charlstoning Mother. For the moment we are painting out the New Studio … we have converted the empty store shed at the end of the house into a proper Studio … tables, lamps, electric typewriter … paper and pencils … all the paraphanalia of a Proper Writer. I have another book to deliver to Chatto by March. However, if Mexico, and ‘Under The Volcano’,1 DOES come off .... and it may … that’ll have to be set aside. I shall have to be there mid-January-Febuary I think. Something to do with the weather and the fact that the Volcano claps on it’s hat at the end of April until next January. Nature is irritating. And it is raining like hell here. So all the wallflowers, stocks, foxgloves and millions of tulip bulbs (all white this spring) are starting to rot because I cant get them in.… a small worry.
My book comes out in March. I’ll send you a copy so that you can know how your husband arrived. Holt are publishing in America. I got a huge advance and a promise that they would not edit anything. And although I did’nt want it published there (they have screwd me so often in business I regret to say, the Film Chaps, not Publishers) I felt that since I was bound to make a cunt of myself in England in March I might just as well go the whole hog and be an International Cunt. So there we are.
Ages Later.
Stopped there to hear the mid day news from the poor old BBC. You really are well out! Healy2 has now promised misery, extra taxes, and God alone knows what else, for the next two years. The next five or six, he said, would be grim. I cannot imagine what he thinks the last four were like. Then, much pleasanter news .... The Holt deal is definate, The Book Society have ordered a ‘print’ of 5,000 copies, and Penguin have bought the book. Modestly. But still .... I’m really rather pleased. Until those sneering Critics on that Sunday in March. Never mind. I did it. I made it. It’s mine … cover, words, and ‘sketches’ ..... I think you have to have a bash, dont you? As you both have. It’s so EASY to sit about and do fuck-nothing with your lives …
Welsh Telly! Perish the thought. When I left England seven years ago now, I was fifty .. and out of work. There was very little Capital left. All I had was Clermont. Could’nt really speak the language … and for a while it was very worrying, strange, even frightning. I was homesick, for an hour or two. Scared of getting ill and not being able to drive … of a million things. But I was not alone. And neither are you. Together is one thing. Alone is very much another. You can go-it together .. and there are a lot of you to be together with .... it ismuch tougher on your own. Remember that.
Now, my dear, wild horses and a million pounds, or dollars or whatever, would never, ever, ge
t me back to that Fabled Realm. I’m French now. Taxes as well .... I’m happy, alive, and pushing along. Had I stayed behind .... God knows what would have happened. A Telly Series, perhaps … a Tour of Shaw or Wilde, perhaps just ‘No Sex Please, We’re British.’ ...... Thank Heavens I left.
So, I venture to think, will you all be. Love, end of page and enough lecture …
Your very loving Dirk XXXXXX
On 1 February Dirk met Norah Smallwood. She handed him the first two bound copies of A Postillion Struck by Lightning. The next day he recorded a further interview with Russell Harty.
To Norah Smallwood Clermont
5 February 1977
My dear Nora
I dont actually remember that you ever gave me permission to call you this, however I am presuming … and you may rap my knuckles when next we meet … Got home to find the mimosa in frothy bloom (filthy stuff: smells like a Maids’ bedroom) and violets, wallflowers and toads mating like anything in the pond. But sun. And calm.
I hope that it was a useful week for you … from the point of view of the ‘jobs’ I was able to do … worked bloody hard, which must be a goodish sign? and got the whole of the Telly Programme to myself and the book. And plugged Chatto and everything like mad. Think it was alright. Enjoyed it … usually a good sign with me … and reeled onto the plane at filthy Heathrow with the nagging feeling that poor Lally might very well be splattered over peoples T. Shirts and Chocolate Wrappings in the near future!
Awful thought.
Sent Elizabeth a copy, which you gave me, of the book, in STRICT SECRECY, to be read only in the lavatory or somewhere … and rather dread her voice when I will telephone on Sunday.
This is simply to ‘thank you’ for being so splendid, kind, warm and, I dare say it, loving. It made me feel tremendously ‘safe’.
My most affectionate gratitude,
