Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  [ … ] I finished most of D. Cooper2 and enjoyed it greatly .. but grew to so dislike Duff that he nearly choked me with anger. Prickly, pompous and jolly well self satisfied. I grew to link him, like a book-end, with Harold Nicholson … and that is as tiresome a thing as I can do. And does’nt make for a good nights sleep after you have closed the book. Irritation makes one sweat with fury!

  But she clearly did write a lot herself. What a job for an Editor THAT must have been … but he, they, still failed to make it clear what on earth the golden lady saw in that bellicose little man.

  And with that I’m off.

  With greatest affection as ever.

  Dirk.

  To Jean Lion3 Clermont

  29 March 1980

  Dear Mrs Lion –

  It is difficult to tell you of the intense pleasure your letter, and the splendid photographs, gave me today as all ‘Nore’ was suddenly once again before my eyes. A house I loved with a deep and lasting passion.

  It seems so very long ago that it once was mine .. bought, indeed, from the rather un-likable Mrs Baker […] I got the house away from her and her decorations. Lots of fake Louis, Royal Doulton and so on .. it took a small fortune to strip everything away. After I sold it, to a young couple who seemed extremely rich but who never, I understand, ever moved in, it all rather fell apart.

  The gardens became a wilderness, the ponds silted up, the woods quite unkempt and the swimmingpool a ruin. I dont know if this is so .. it was gossip from local people. But it saddened me greatly that the house was neglected and unloved .. and that the gardens, on which I had spent a modest fortune (twelve gardeners in team three times a month!) had reverted to field and brush-wood.

  How splendid it now looks again. Sad about the elms, but lovely that you left poor Sinuhe1 where he is … beside countless cats, two fat pekenese (which belonged to my Cook) and a small flock of birds of one sort or another. These had wooden place names which have long since rotted away … but were smothered in bluebells and daffodils .. and set about with primroses. We always called it the Chestnut Walk and Cemetary Lane … it led, does it still? to the little pools down among the azaleas .. both pools stocked with fish, one an enormous monster with scarlet fins; and toads.

  The whole house was one, so to speak. Nore and East Nore .. which was then the guest wing and frightfully cold! I bought the two little cottages up in the woods and converted them into the Pheasantry as a possible ‘retirement’ home for myself .. but realised that living so close to a house which I had loved so well would be a foolish thing to do … so that became a secondary Guest House .. I found all the floor bricks and timbers up in the woods on the site of a long demolished woodmans cottage, and we humped them down in a jeep .. most of the beams came from the old bake house at Scaynes Hill!2 That was a hell of a journey … but the oven-bricks were glorious.

  The little temple was, you are correct, brought over by Goodwin Austin, and when I found it, buried in brambles, it had a rather curious, and very detailed, phallic symbol standing erect in the very center!

  So I am not absolutely certain that it was only spirits who went there to worship … there were four lion-dogs at each corner and a heavy round ball on the very top … lost in neglect I expect.

  The carp pond, with the cherry, was a source of constant delight to my nephews and neices who used to fish there, the largest I ever landed, carp I mean, was about a six-pounder. We always let them go again .. and there were great fat eels there also.

  I still have, to this day, a great sheaf of barley which I picked on my last day at Nore .. from the field below the swimming pool .. it still stands in a great luster jug in my present dining-room. A dusty, but nostalgic, reminder of England.

  One curious thing, but not mentioned by you, was our Ghost.

  We always used to think that it was Austin Goodwin himself .. but later came to believe that it was a more recent owner known to many of my guests but not personally to me. A rather sad and very tiresome fellow called Brian Howard (Brian Howard. Portrait of a Failure.) published by Blond in 1968 .. a good deal about Nore in this for it was then owned by his mother, Mary Chess.

  However: he used to bash about up and down the big staircase, lock us into rooms, scatter records all over the drawing room .. OUT of their sleeves, and cut the heads off any large flower he fancied and stick them in the ashtrays .. the dogs loved him! They leapt and danced after him .. un nerving to many guests, I may add, but we all got perfectly used to him in time. He was more of a begnin poltagist (cant spell it!) than a ghost … although some people swore that there was an icy draft during his appearances. I never found this myself.

  I am so happy that the house is now in such good hands and so well loved … happier too, because young people are once again running in it’s gardens.

  Thank you for writing to tell me, and for the photographs .. I enclose one or two as it was in my time ..

  I am sorry that I cannot tell you the second part of ‘Snakes’ will soon be out!1 I have just turned it down .. such a wearying business and I have never heard that anyone, except yourself, has ever heard it! So … my present work-table is heavy with unfinished business and I must sort myself out … also the summer is upon us here on the hill, and the garden cries out for my spade, fork and clippers ..

  I hope that you will continue to enjoy many more seasons at Nore, and that it will go on giving you the pleasure it so clearly does.

  When I remember England up here on my limestone hills, I only really remember Nore. Thank you so much ..

  Very sincerely

  Dirk Bogarde

  On his return to England to launch A Gentle Occupation Dirk had visited his mother. She died, unexpectedly, two weeks later.

  To Norah Smallwood Clermont

  2 April 1980

  Norah dearest –

  When I was a very young Officer, I was once left to guard, all on my own, a very large empty hotel on the front at Worthing.

  Acres of empty floors, endless corridors leading to infinity, silent rooms, dust .. a tap dripping in the deserted kitchens .. Nothing; not even a mouse. All about me silent, dead, no echoes of the past, of laughter, bells, music, knives and forks a-clatter, no rattle of the lifts .. only the distant sea soughing and my bedside clock tick-tocking as I tried to comfort myself, uselessly, with Wyndham Lewis and, I believe, ‘Tarr’1 … an odd choice. Perhaps I found it in the silent library below?

  All that preamble to say that in just such a state today .. for the bustle and hustle and mild hullabaloo is now over and an odd emptiness is all about me .. a letter from you, with two black feathers and full of generous delight.

  And the gloom, sort of, faded and I felt extremely happy.

  Such a feeling, like the empty hotel, comes simply because for the last two months, about, I have been thinking and breathing ‘the book’, which I suppose is natural .. and really dreading the London Trip .. which was dotty in retrospect as it happend, but nasty at the time!

  Now the book is off my head .. launched at least .. we can not tell yet if it founders: how I pray it does not.

  As I said before, not only for myself .. but you and the Office and for your belief and all that … We’ll see.

  I should be out in the garden digging in my peat in the new bed I hacked out of reluctant turf last evening .. but the man who brings the peat, and the terre de brouyare,2 and the pots for the seedlings and all manner of other things, has not yet arrived although he said faithfully he’d be here at the ‘debut de l’apres midi’ .. which at nearly three o’clock I think it must be. However: no sign.

  And I cant do anything much until I have my blasted peat. So.

  Vast piles of awful Fan Letters about the Parkinson Show and the other junk-stuff .. birthday cards galore, Pussies, Doggies, bunches of wild flowers in red ribbons and that wearying ‘Hay-Waain’ by Mr Constable: but all tremendously kind and loving .. and all of the senders have ‘put our names down at the local library but there is a terrific wait
ing list already. Are’nt you lucky?’

  Am I? I’d far rather the buggers bought the thing.

  Golden day here. Hot in fact. Dogs pant, bees idle, trees glow with pale green buds and tiny leaves, wild garlic in frothy white clumps, pear, cherry and crab dazzling against the blue sky … and I’m trying to get a shape into the terrace for May …

  The week has not been entirely empty however.

  Sadly my Mamma died, very suddenly and without pain, on Saturday evening, so there has been too-ing and fro-ing trying to get me to England for the funeral tomorrow. No luck. Easter week and not a seat anywhere from Paris, Brussels, Zurich, Amsterdam or Geneva .. booked solid.

  So Elizabeth and Gareth, my brother, are coping .. quite marvellously, and I sit here feeling guilty, of course, but resigned.

  I was glad, indeed, of the London Trip for the main reason that I got down to see her that Sunday before I started ‘work’.

  As I told you, I think, she looked so astonishingly beautiful and vivid that I knew, in a strange inner way, that she was actually dying.

  I knew that she had made a supreme effort for me .. and was exhausted when I left. I knew, driving away from the pleasant house, that I would never see her again … and I am certain that she knew it also.

  However her happiness was that I was happy launching my book .. that I was busy and working … she knew, more or less, about the reviews, and had, she said, started to read the thing herself .. but when I left, on the Sunday .. she was so proud that I had been on the Television and that the Telegraph had given me a cover.

  Very important factors to an actress-mother!

  So the week had it’s double burden in a way .. I did my job and she got on with hers, and did it very neatly after supper, alone.

  It was a full time.

  And now I attempt to get back to the usual routine of work .. and it is really amazingly difficult … Cuckoo wont come back, sulking away somewhere, and Marcus and Leni1 are down on the beach .. where I left them ages ago .. my new people, on the yacht, being Italian are very impatient and tug my sleeve for attention .. glimmers of what must be done slip through into my fuddled head.

  Once the peating is done, the planting out finished, the last of the daffodils deheaded and the final strands of toad-spawn netted, I shall come up here and sort them all out. But I shall have to re-read the whole pack once again. Thats wearying!

  [ … ] Voila! Up the track comes M. Piedamento and his truck … and off I go to peat and dig and plant .. and edge the borders with something called Golden Glory .. which is a sort-of alyssium and should last well until you arrive here in May.

  Do hasten! So much to show you .. so much to say .. and the room is aired and beds made ready .. and gout-stool (is there an ‘e’?) goute-stool standing sentinal in the archway. No ‘e’ –

  And thank you for my swan feathers and for writing …

  & your love –

  & mine as ever –

  Dirk

  XXX

  To Jack Jones Clermont

  4 May 1980

  Dear Jack –

  I write in haste, (tomorrow starts the yearly Residents Rush .. the Festival opens in Cannes and the first of the guests, my publisher Nora Smallwood, arrives for ten days to be followed by a couple from Connecticut … to be followed by two more from London .. then my brother and sister in law and on we go until, from where I sit now, mid July … and they’ll continue until October!) So .. this, as I said, in haste before I am embroiled in all the bed making and washing up, to thank you for your splendid note about Mamma, and for the photograph which was kind of you to send. I have a copy, but small, and stuck in a fading album … it was taken in June ’45 .. while I was on embarkation leave for India …

  How long ago it all was .. and how we have all changed.

  The vivid lady in that photograph was finally a small, cross, sad old lady with the same marvellous eyes and the same mouth … but better by far to remember her as she was then … in her peak.

  I’ve changed, God knows! Still as skinny .. and still have a trim twenty eight waist .. and still wear, comfortably, a pair of breeches I had made at a County Tailors in Lewes in 1939! Tight then, and tight today .. if you stuck my head in a sack I look almost the same. But, dear God! I need the sack ..

  Thank you for offering to send a list of my errors in (AGO). But honestly dont bother to take all that time. Not, I venture, MY fault. I have two incredible Editors who alter all my spelling and all, nearly all, my punctuation .. they edit for V. Wolf, V.S. Pritchett, I. Murdoch and so on .. so they cant be TOO bad! And she, Nora, is the managing Director of C. and W … tough, brave, seventyish .. and adorable. But tough! So any errors, apart from Printers Errors which I failed to spot in the fifth reading of the sodding Proofs are not to be laid at my door! So if you have complaints send ’em to Chatto and Windus .. not me … I do try; really.

  I gather I am now No.1 on the Hit Parade. Which is comforting, if true … climbed over Carrier and Green1 .. in four weeks. Many letters now from all kinds of people who were there at the same time, and many who remember it well … including ex-POW’s who are grateful that I ‘remembered’, because no one else, I gather, has!

  Fortunatly all the characters are invented, and most of the events, so I wont be caught for libel! I hope … we opened in the U.S on the 29th … the American copy is tremendously elegant and the cover far better than mine .. paper and binding super: sad that we are so damned poor in England now and cant afford the ‘style’ we once had.

  The next book .. if it ever gets finished .. will cost an extra quid already .. probably more, because of the Printers Union .. and the errors they make in the proofs defy belief! They dont deserve a raise of anything. If my Pappa could read his Times today he’d have passed out far sooner than he did, if you follow me! I get so fed up with trying to decipher the news, and re-placing lines and paragraphs, that I give up in anger … and it costs a packet here .. which does’nt make me happier.

  Grumble, grumble .. it’s really because of the Guest Arriving that I feel disorientated and cross! Never fear: I’ll enjoy them while they are here.

  If I can afford them!

  Must go … this to thank you for your letter and the care you took with the ‘snap’ … do burn all the rest of the junk you seem to have. I thought that you had? It is useless to me now, and all far far too long ago … today, I think, thirtyfive years ago, I was sitting in a pine-wood outside Luneberg1 waiting for Peace to be declared.

  Peace! Ye Gods …

  We really need’nt have bothered, need we?

  Yours

  Dirk.

  To Kathleen Tynan Clermont

  28 May 1980

  Kath –

  Boaty B.2 is here .. on sudden and very unexpected impulse .. for a few days, and last night we all spoke glowingly of you, and that has sent me to my machina this morning.

  Wondering really how you are after your sad little cryptic note of a few weeks ago … Since I can only hazard a guess, and a bleak one at that, I had better wait news from you and rummage about to see what news, he said laughingly, I have on offer for you.

  Not much as it turns out: and I’m too exhausted to invent any.

  Very nasty Cannes Festival ended two days ago in torrential rain which did not stop for one single day during the whole two weeks … sodden films, sodden Jury, sodden tempers.

  I saw nothing .. nothing, apart from ‘All That Jazz’ that I really wanted to see, apart from the new Resnais1 that is .. but we seemed to get the whole Cast up here trying to dry out, or wring hands, or sit in dejected heaps wrapped in thick wool and wellies. That sort of weather. And colder than you can believe.

  On the Final Night I went down to award the Palme d’Or .. as usual a fuck up between Bob Fosse and Kurasawa2 .. if that is how he is spelled from memory. Fosse declined to come for his award which insulted the audience and infuriated one Kirk Douglas, head of the Jury, who made extremely uncomplimentary remarks about said Fo
sse and won tremendous applause from the crowd. All v. embarressing, as Nanny would have said, and NOT to be repeated. I had a letter of apology, this am, from the organisers apologising for the ‘debacle’ due to TV and ‘rival’ gangs of hoologans. Whatever that means.

  We had two extremely tiresome women staying with us .. from the state of Connecticut. One of them a writer who had just come from London where she was flogging her book on cancer. I refused to either read the thing or discuss it: which made her v. cross indeed. So she sat for eight days in the rain drinking strong black coffee, smoking up a heath fire, and swallowing glasses of Glen-fiddich which made her extremely drunk in a very short time. Which I, personally, find boreing. Although I am well aware that I passed out once in your company not so long ago! But that was fear and exhaustion and elation compounded. Hope I am forgiven?

  Meanwhile, with all this nonsense, work on Novel 2 has ground to a miserable halt half way through. With a delivery date for September … but it is impossible, as you will know, to try and cope with a seething brain full of people and events when you have ice to fetch, tables to lay, beds to make up or down, dustbins to empty and dogs to feed … and then try to ‘glow’ with conversation until everyone wants to go to bed. Too late. The only pleasing guests, really of the lot, were Nat Wood and her rather dull, but very nice, husband Bob Wagner .. and Mark Cowley, who wrote ‘The Boys In The Band’ and a super chap who runs Jo Allans3 .. the resturant in London, not N.Y. We drank a great deal too much wine .. laughed uproariously at Nats ghastly stories of her trip to the Hermitage with P. Ustinov to ‘do’ a Telly on the Impressionists … which was sheer Waugh in it’s horrors.