by Unknown
Out now to water; the evening chore. My garden sere and bleached .. yours I hope not too rampant since you have been away.
My roses are faded almost to white, and spill like fallen cards in the heat.
Thank you again: love to you both as always …
Ever
Dirk
To Norah Smallwood Clermont
29 September 1981
Dearest Norah –
A NTBRT letter this: written simply because I have wrenched the remains of the petunias from their pots, cleared a few beds of debris and sodden leaves, and cant be bothered to do anything else for a minute or two. And you need not even read this: which makes the excercise absolutely relaxing for me!
Day of torrential storms; really very, very bad in the valley and, you’ll be delighted to know, at St Paul de Vence, where EVERYONE had to leave their rooms, or beds rather, and gather in the diningroom because the roof seems to have fallen in. Or something. Anyway: that bad.
Mr F. was shaken out of his bed by thunder, and the garden is now ruins of autumnal-tints. The russety-muck you so feel romantic. Some people! Happily, for me, we are hill-perched, and we had no landslides, as others have, nor mud … four feet thick everywhere inside the house. So I am very grateful indeed. And, apart from being struck by lightning, which would have sent you scampering in a second, we are more or less ship-shape.
Is that the phrase? Or with all this mud and flood about us is it too, perhaps, apposite?
I am trying, extremely hard, to set my Parents on the written page.
Awfully difficult. Practically impossible in fact. How can one be so far removed from them as to be dispassionate? As well as tactful …
I’m not awfully enjoying it I confess.
But we drive on slowly. And I rip out page after page reminding myself constantly that it is MY blasted Bio. and not theirs that (which?) I am writing. Trouble is that without the parents there would not be a son. I have inherited so much from both; supressed rigourously, that which I feel came from Mamma as far as I can, and polished up the fragments from my secretive Pappa for personal use. Difficult I am certain you’ll agree. Anyway, as soon as this ‘hump’ is flattened, or bridge crossed, I’ll be in freer waters.
Not that THAT makes it easier! Bio’s bore me witless .. The past, as far as I am concerned, is very much the past.
Fearful interlude this morning. I made a shameful record many years ago called ‘Lyrics For Lovers’. I did NOT sing the damned songs .. but spoke them to a ‘tinkling piano’. Someone, I am told, played one of them on his morning show on BBC 2, I imagine as a bit of a send-up … and the BBC are so innundated with requests for the rest that Decca (as was1) has now asked me if I mind them re-issuing the thing.
Well: I dont mind. What the hell. I’m an Entertainer first and last I hope … and although I am some little way towards shame about the way I did the thing, under rehearsed etc, I know that it is yukky and sentimental, but equally know that there HAS to be a revival of sentiment soon, so why not give the patient the medicin it requests?
But it’s all the past.
So long ago … but in those days we did’nt have Thatchers and Benns2 and newspapers closing about our heads daily, it would seem. We did’nt even know all that much about weapons and Aldermaston … although a scattered lot of people, led I rather think by Idiot Foot,1 trudged along the main roads protesting.
And a fat lot of good that did.
I really do think that if someone put on ‘The White Horse Inn’2 again it would be a ‘smash’. And all those beady eyed young ladies and gentlemen on the smart papers could writhe and press for ‘Godot’. Or something.
Timid letters on pale blue Basildon Bond, and worse, are beginning to flop into the mail box saying that they think ‘Voices’, in their phrase, ‘just lovely.’
So thats one achievement! My Old Fans are not yet dead it seems .. and if they think that the thing is ‘lovely’ who am I to say ‘What a lot of fat fools …’
I only wish they’d stop putting their names on the library lists! One blasted woman has been waiting eighteen months for ‘Snakes and Ladders.’
Meanwhile .. apart from filliting my parents bones and wrenching up the leggy petunias, I struggle with A. Burgess and his vast volume.3 I must confess to amazement at achievement but am weary with the result.
And I detest books which muddle up the ‘real’ people with the fictional ones. He’s pretty tiresome about that.
I was impressed, but left ice, by Miss Spaak4 … brilliant, sharp, simple. But who will care?
It’s something to consider today alas.
[ … ] Miserable, wretched news about The Sunday Times and now the Times too5 .. David Bailey (photographer of great renown and VERY nice as well as being brilliant) was here yesterday to do photographs. For The Times.
Big stuff: but I had to warn him that we may never see the light of day.
He went on anyway, clicking … but it is foul for us all. […] David, who was just settling into a pretty super position with The Times (did you see his excellent ‘snap’ of Freddy Ashton among his box trees?) now looks to loose it. If he does he says he’ll clear off to New York.
Where else, for Heavens sake, should he go? They’ll use him there.
But I HATE the drain on brilliance which no one seems to care about in Britain now.
The sun is growing pale, the hills soft, the evening is on it’s way. We have lost the hour too: same time, for a while, as you.
But shortly, if you dont fall over a conker in the Auvergne, you’ll be here by a crackling fire. That’ll be VERY nice.
I’m off now to get some kindling for tonights bonfire … and have another silent wrestle with my parents.
I bet they’re laughing.
With love
Dirk
To Roald Dahl Clermont
18 October 1981
Dear Roald –
You may never get this: or if you do it’ll be late because we are riding out the storm of a whopping great Mail Strike, which is why your splendid letter of the 7th only got here yesterday at five (!) in the evening.
Funny, is’nt it, how Socialism always seems to induce strikes right away?
The French are getting quite worried and wonder, among themselves, if they have really done the right thing this time.1 I wonder too.
Gruesome tales you have to tell of the Epic and all the tarrididdle that goes with it.
I have ABSOLUTELY NO intention of going out to flog my book.2
It’s died the death there anyway, as far as I can gather. Poor old Knopf. So there is no point in flogging away at a maggoty horse …
They don’t have any irony or satire, the Americans. You have to spell it all out loud and clear, pubic hair and all.
Glenda telephoned yesterday to say that she had been left a message while out at work (filming in Cricklewood. Is it possible …?) that Pat has now seen the film and is ‘excited’.
Which we both feel is hardly the right word, really.
I expect, by now, you’ll know all the truth and facts.
But it is not anything that I want to contemplate: trolling over there and junketing. I am pretty CERTAIN that Glenda feels the same: but you know actresses, as you say, as well as I!
But I am all for keeping strictly away.
I have to come to London next week to meet Higgins3 of The Times and do a TV Talk thing: I feel it is justifiable because the book got sent off on it’s own, without any help from me, and has done well enough for me to support it now … if thats what they want. Chatto do anyway .. so. Then Paris for the French Edition which will be harder because I cant speak French and they are SO bloody intellectual that I get dreadfully confused. However it gets me out of, or rather it just delays, clearing up the debris of summer in the garden and digging over the beds. I’m getting old now: I really think I’ll slosh cement over everything and plant strawberries in pots, or something.
Goodness yes! Writing is a sod.1 You DO ha
ve to squeeze the tube so hard now. I mean I do. One is too aware of the mistakes .... it was much easier at first ‘try’! I am now so desperate about cliché, adjectives and adverbs and, with Fowler glowering at me from the shelf, I am quite straight-jacketed. It’ll pass, I hope .. but it’s wretched. [ … ]
Just put my splendid (EXHAUSTING) Norah Smallwood of Chatto on a London plane .. after a week here, which was fun but draining. I hope I have that energy at 70. So I’ll now wander off and see if I can find anything that yells out for dead-heading. It’s a fairly calm job, after all.
Thanks so much for writing: if you get any really horrifying news will you let me know? I don’t trust the Soapflake People any more than the rest [ … ]
Ever – Dirk –
To Norah Smallwood Clermont
22 November 1981
Dearest Norah –
I was so bloody angry after your call on Friday2 that, instead of bashing on with Bio 3, we went off up to the hills and walked a rather surprised, but delighted, Bendo. Quite unaware of the business which had got him such a treat.
Nothing to be said about it all now. Anger has cooled a bit and it is ‘all over and done with’ .. I suppose some other poor person is being readied for the knives next time around …
What a perfectly filthy world we seem to inhabit now, when all grace, all decency, all honour is sacrificed for a tuppeny, two penny?, bit of paper.
What amazes me, and always will, is that there are people who actually read the damned thing.
Of course you wont forget the savaging: for a while. I know that very well from personal experience; but I try not to let it show.
Like you.
But the pain lingers; the cruelty, the un-justness hurts.
The thing, apart from the dispicable cruelty to you, that bothers me a great deal is that it’s an inside job, so to speak.
There must be a mole, as they call it, comfortably snuffling along in the Publishing Garden. That is always terribly alarming.
At least this filthy thing has brought to your notice just how much you are respected and loved. I am perfectly certain, in your tight Scots way, that you knew that anyway. But it is, or surely it must be? very pleasing to have it literally brought before you, as it has been, in so many different ways and from so many different people.
Even if you had to suffer such distress before such a manifestation of affection could take a physical form.
This is a very ill-written letter: but it is only one other to stick on the pile of wrath.
With my love, as ever –
Dirk
To Kathleen Tynan Clermont
31 December 1981
Kathleen –
Got you loud and clear. And with a measure of relief.
I mean, one KNEW you were’nt dead, because there would have been an Obit in The Times, but one wasn’nt certain where you had finally got to, or even if you had reached N.Y.
Well now one knows.
[ … ] Whats on here? Nothing terrifically important really.
Book, ‘Voices’ hit the 36,000 mark which, during a recession, is not so bad … and better than Muriel Spaak by a long chalk. Now being ‘done’ by the BBC, but I dont want to know.
Into Bio 3, a toughie, because the last twelve years are a haze.
Also writing another chunk of ‘childhood’ because the first effort was so successful that it has now become a ‘standard’ and is used in the L.C.C. Schools for some kind of exam. Fame?
Glenda and I did our nuts in the Epic and it really aint that bad … it’s Telly, not Movie, but considering we shot the whole fucking thing in 20 days, and on location with children, seems to me a minor miracle.
I bought a HUGE Video Thingummy which plays all three kinds of tapes and so, on Christmas Night, we had a packed house and My World (of a kind) Premier of the thing here. First time I’d seen it.
I’m a sucker for sweeping Theme music and Cadallics and all that jazz so I quite enjoyed myself. Especially as no one smoked, went for a pee or even coughed. Gratifying.
Unless they were asleep.
We had a full house [ … ] Glorious, blazing, weather. Lots of Perrier Jouet on the terrace and not a trace of Noel to be seen [ … ] now we gird our loins for New Years Eve this evening. Oh dearie me …
I went and opened, or helped to open, a new Theater1 for Princess Grace in Monaco; could’nt quite resist shareing the honour of being Godparent to it with Edwige Feuillier … and Valentina Cortese as the Italian one. Tremendous nonsense. But glamorous, if you think that Tel Aviv’s inhabitants are. We had two thirds present dripping in sable and gold. I said to Edwige that it seemed the very least bit frivolous to be opening a, to all intents and purposes, Toy Theater in a Toy Principality while Poland got wrenched to bits. But she, with her great sagacity and French sense pointed out that we could’nt really HELP Poland by NOT opening the thing and so we had better do our duty as professionals.
So we did.
And Valentina gave us her ‘Day For Night’ act which was wonderous. She in white chiffon and diamonds doing a GIGANTIC piece from some bloody Italian Poet with a crouching Lady Prompter in the wings.
Happy evening. Grace not as boring as one might think but deadly Royal. Caroline looking like a Vermont Co-ed escapee, the Prince fat and bored. But we supped until four am .. and I promised to go back one day. What for? Goodness …
We heard the news of Natalie Wood’s death2 on the BBC World Service and went into a state of dis belief. She was an adored chum.
Called L.A immediatly and found that they had only just heard the news themselves (time change and all) .. so that was a bit of a fuck up for us all, and this week at the Colombe I felt a desperate wrench of sadness when I saw that the stool, on which she always sat in the bar, was vacent … they were coming here for this week.
The sky is sullen with low cloud: far across the winter valley the sun gleams copper on the sea: I have a table to lay for eight .. and logs to split and tea to make.
I’m nagged by the thought: so I’d better stop this insane letter and get my arse up and out.
We are well: though you did’nt ask … and life drifts comfortably past with sudden bursts of alarming excitement, but I, like you, have a living to earn so I simply have to get down to things properly once this bloody Carnival Time is over.
Roald Dahl wrote last week and said he was just starting a book. ‘Fucking hard, is’nt it? To start?’ he said.
And it is … I am about to stop now. A blank sheet of paper faces me [ … ]
All love, always, and happiness in this daunting New Year …
Your devoted
Dirk.
To Molly Daubeny Clermont
8 February 1982
Molly dearest –
How absolutely dear of you to write to me about ‘VOICES’, I am so glad that it gave you pleasure.
I find that writing is a fearful chore! And it’s so difficult when you are in the middle of a ‘tough’ part, to be invited to lunch or something like that, when you know that everything will melt away! And people are wonderfully unaware that writing is a hell of a job; and always say ‘Oh! Well you can always pick it up when you get home … do come!’
Point is, you cant ‘pick the bloody thing up’ when you get home. It has usually fled! And holding on to people whome you have invented is terribly hard … Cuckoo faded away from my grasp as often as she could if I was’nt terribly careful!
All this I am sure you know about: writing is, like the Arts of other kinds, every bit as demanding.
Saw, by the way, [Peter] Brook’s version of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ (did you see it: I forget?) which was one of the most magical, moving and glorious two and a half hours I have ever had at a Theater!
I never knew, from English Productions, how gloriously Russian and amazingly human it was. Not dour and wistful; alive, brimming with laughter and life. Which, of course, made the sound of the axe on the trees at the very end all the more dreadful.
&n
bsp; It is re-opening next year. Do, if you did’nt, go and see it!
I hear that Thomas Courtney1 is now the Toast Of Broadway .. so that must be good.
At the moment we have a sort of false-spring. Almond is out, the mimosa (which I detest!) everywhere, violets, and the daffodils are all in bud … I suppose we’ll cop it with a terrible snowfall in a week or so. March, like many a girl, can be capricious and very dangerous!
[…] do please try and make a rendezvous (here!) in the not too distant future.
Your devoted
Dirk
In July, Dirk and Tony flew to London for the latter to see a specialist recommended by Norah Smallwood, as Forwood was showing early symptoms of Parkinsonism.
To Norah Smallwood Clermont
21 July 1982
Dearest Norah –
I ought to be struggling with all this mail which has arrived since ‘Death’ was shown on the TV.
A mass of it .. all wonderfully kind, understanding of the film, and amazed that they had never seen it AS a film.
Silly buggers.
Perhaps if some of them had gone to the Cinema to see it (and a lot did of course) we might have run longer, I might have got paid, and everything might have been different; anyway: better late than never.
But I am not struggling away with the little mountain of Basildon Bonds and nasty floral-pieces, or even the elegant University ones.
Suspicious elderly Dons who were, naturally, sympathetic and so on ..
It’s too hot.
Ninety in the shade at ten o clock in the morning … and a hopeless wait until seven in the evening. Impossible to do a simple thing during that time .. the sweat runs, most unattractively, and one does’nt want to eat or drink much .. anything .. and the land is brown and cracked and the big willow, all of fifty feet high, is dying for lack of water .. a sorry sight.
We got home, after a hellish time at Heathrow jammed with screaming children and frantic parents and lost luggage. Thank God we packed just enough to carry it on board ourselves … next time you really must try and do the same. It is astonishing that it is possible to pack clothes for a week in London (or longer, I feared ..) and still not wear them all! Easier for a woman: those light clothes you seem to be able to crunchle up and stuff into corners: like a pair of socks.
