Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  And now to pack some clothes and get the house ready for my two guardians, young with a baby, who come here and look after the place and feed the dog.

  I hope that the baby leaves SOME of the china intact!

  I try to remove all that she could reach with her horrible little hands … but sometimes I’ll go and forget something in my hurry.

  Ah well … à bientôt

  DB.

  P.S. Wednesday 20th. The Press in England have, just this morning, put out a Press-Report that I am to be awarded an Hon.Dr.Litt. in July. By St Andrew’s (Scotland) University.

  So now I am free to tell you: and you are the first person I have told! So. A ‘Mercie’ for everything. C’est pas de tout mal, je crois?

  DB

  To Elizabeth Goodings Clermont

  7 March 1985

  Dearest LuLu –

  Your sweet card with the pensive lady leaning on a telescope with a sailor, is here before me.

  It arrived, as you must have seen, at the Connaught eventually .. and now is here on my desk to remind me just how long ago all that week seems!

  A long week for me: somehow it was one of stress and worry rather more than worse ones have been: I think that Tote was in a very miserable state: he hates that suite because it reminds him of wretched times; so the next time I’ll have to change around a bit .. and for some reason he was depressed, and terribly tired all the time.

  Stress, of course. And waiting for the results of blood-tests and all the other damned things. Also the fact that he is slowing up distresses him terribly, and of course he is slowing up. I cant pretend, much as I would like to, that he is not. So all in all it was not the most cheerful of weeks even though the final results were satisfactory, and the Parkinson Type of problem has not, they assure him, progressed much since the last visit, if at all.

  However: slow he is. And constipated! And it was a drag of a time.

  We eventually got back home in fairly good form. He was quite calm about the trip and I managed to carry both bags leaving him only the briefcase and a light packet which had two frocks for the Isoardi child.

  I even got a trolley! So that we had no great problem with luggage and he seemed to cheer up very much as soon as we were crossing the Alps and is now, three days later, a different person! He is relaxed, happy, hopping about the kitchen and cooking things. I’m afraid that he so loves this house that nothing else will ever be able to take it’s place.

  We had a worry, the first day we got back, with a letter from our Tax People here, with the wrong this-and-that. Nothing that couldn’t be dealt with eventually, but he was instantly in a fidget and fuss, and got the ‘shakes’ and so on.

  It cleared up the next morning: but it’s a hell of a haul really.

  I hate it for him because he was always the one who shielded me from the problems of daily life so that I could just get on and do my job .. and now it is me who must do it for him: and I sometimes feel that I’m not terribly good at it! I get so impatient, which, of course, I must not be, thats the very worst thing. But watching him try to put three pears into a plastic bag at Timy’s is pretty difficult. I have suggested now that he puts them in one at a time. Which he says he’ll try next time he has to buy fruit … he was trying, as he said, not to be so slow … but of course was much slower!

  However now that we are home he is happy, and has slept well, and gone to the lav easily and is less shakey … which is strange. We had some other problem, the sort which normally sends him off like a jelly, but for some reason he was perfectly calm and easy, and not a shake in sight.

  So I think that home is where we have to stay.

  Bendo greeted us with two eyes like enormous blood-oranges!

  Just before we left for London I threw his sodding ball into the bramble thicket by error … it bounced off a tree … and he tore in to search for it. I heard a sharp squeal of pain, but thought nothing of it really. In the evening his eye was bloodshot … the day we left it was swollen, I bathed it, left Optrex and stuff for Marie-Christine … and came to London. But the eye was infected.

  So.

  The day after we got back off to the Vet. and we waited (we had no sort of appointment) in a room with a crowd of grumpy ladies with cats and little dogs. Anyway we finally got in and it is discovered that he has scratched the eyeball badly with the thorns of a bramble … SO. Eye baths, six times a day, drops, four times a day, anti-biotic pills three times. I’m getting to be a walking Vet. But the eye is better, and the other eye, which was infected, has almost completely cleared up.

  We got back, as I told you on the telephone, to brilliant skies and a hot sun, all the daffodils out down by the pond and the grass a mass of violets and anenomies.

  Next day it started to rain and has poured ever since! And it’s cold!

  So there is no way that I can get to work in the garden, which is now a wreck after the snow and ice and desperatly needs some work done.

  But I really DO feel too ancient to cope just at present. So I’ll wait the rain out and then have a shot. Slowly!

  All the shutters will have to be repainted, the drive has got to be relaid, the oranges and other dead trees cut down and carted away … and when am I going to have time to get down to my OWN work? Writing is simply impossible just at present, so I’m breaking myself into the routine again by letter writing … hence this to you.

  [ … W]e none of us know what is going to happen to us over the years, do we? So it’s no good trying to look ahead, everything is mystery, with a big capital M!

  […] I dont suppose that we’ll be over before July … for my St Andrews caper. I hope not anyway … and I’m not very sure that Tote will come all that way up. He says he will, and wants to … but we’ll see. He managed very well at the TV thing the other night, and I really did’nt think that he would even make it to the Studios. So. We’ll see.

  Meanwhile I’d better go and feed Bendo, seal this, and split the logs, it’s a nasty, raw, evening.…

  but this comes, as usual, with all my love. Dirk –

  To Kathleen Tynan Clermont

  Sunday April 28th. ’85.

  Kathleen –

  [ … ] Devestation was the word for what we all suffered here1 … I am only surprised that T. Richardson2 was hit. I thought he was all pine and whatnot? Here we lost all the orange and lemons, the olives are leafless and all the palms are dead.

  Along the Croisette they look rather like poles: at the airport, Welcome To The Cote d’Azure, they look like old feather dusters .. and are rust red.

  That fills you in alright. Yes: Pinter is a different fellow I fear. He and I ‘hosted’ a party-cum-memorial-Service on a sound stage at Twickenham Studios for Losey last year, and he was very cool, and rather like a lama with disdain. She3 frightned the shit out of me, an agressivly faux-charming Lady. ‘I do SO love your books …’ Shit! What do you say? ‘Thank you, so kind.’

  I remember Harold in the days of yore. Timid, because I had questioned him about Lobster Thermidor which continually arrived in the Script of ‘The Servant’. I was bewildered, and in awe of the Intellectual Writer. So I picked my way with care.

  ‘Why is it that every rich person in the film only ever eats a Lobster Thermidor?’ I asked bravely.

  There was a stricken silence from the assembled Cast, Losey and Harold. Who pushed his glasses up his nose, so to speak, and then said in a shaking voice, ‘What OTHER meal do the Rich People eat, then?’

  And he did’nt actually know. He and Vivien had been taken to dine by the Oliviers (or someone) and they had been given L. Thermidor. So that is what he imagined all the rich ate.

  We substituted the meal for others in the final Script.

  But that is who Harold was: once upon a time. And nice with it.

  But of course, we all change. And today he must be very, very happy and proud because he has recieved tremendous notices for the new revival of ‘Old Times’ in London, with Liv Ullman playing, and has been accepted, at
last, as The Great British Dramatist. Well: I think that he is. So thats alright. But I do wish that I had’nt lost him so completely!

  But news from here? Well: we continue. Went to London for the six-monthly checkup, which was satisfactory [ … ] London rather haggered and sad, like the elderly women one sees sitting sadly on the benches in the late sun on the Promenade des Anglais. Retired Governesses .. widow ladies .. ageing Gamblers .. There was no one there, in Town, that one cared to see, frankly. Family: thats really all. And to Hatchards for books and Trumpers for haircuts .. and oysters and scallops in white wine and rather too much Moet. Glad to get home; I’m off to St Andrews University in July to receive my Hon. D. Lettres!

  Mortar board, gown and hood. All very frightening! I graduate with Manny Shinwell!1 Who is 101. And have to make the acceptance speech for the rest of them. I quake with terror. But have found a splendid Speech written by Colette (!) on her being made a Member of the Belgian Academy2 .. so I’m paraphrasing that. Cheat.

  Forwood will have his checkup at the same time, but I dont think he’ll make the trip to St Andrews … it’s a bit too far and he gets rather restless in crowds. A chunk of plastic intestine is a real bore. One wonders how the Pope Copes? He’s got YARDS of it. Must be on a liquid diet.

  I have sold the film rights to my first novel; Edwige Feuillere is doing ‘Cuckoo’ in a radio adaptation (in eight parts) of ‘Voices In The Garden’ for France-Culture, and someone is taking an option on ‘West of Sunset’ which has done, thank God! extremely well … and is third on the Best Seller List in the Good Book Guide … Bruckner first with ‘Hotel du Lac’ and that ubiquitious Umberto Whatever with his Rose Book next,3 then me. I am constantly amazed.

  I have written two thirds of a new novel ‘Closing Ranks’ and chucked it! There is a brave gesture! It wont work … and rather than flog along on a no-go I’ve let it slide. I DO think I’m brave!

  So now it’s a bash at the 4th Vol of ’bio (which sell) .. and although one might think that there is no mileage left, there is. I think –

  I’m thinking of calling it ‘REGURGITATION’. But, of course, will try for something better. If possible.

  Forwood is still working on HIS EPIC (Longer than War and Peace by the sound of it, and far more people too) so one way and another we are ‘occupied’.

  The Festival starts next week … I’m avoiding everything this year like the plague but will go down to see Losey’s final film, which he had cut and mounted just before he died. It’s ‘Steaming’ .. and Nell Dunn wrote it from her funny play. I gather it is fine. But Joe and a comedy are difficult to put together. It is not in Competition, but just there as an Hommage to the man. All the Top Lot Intellectuals from Paris descend: I take Patricia. It’s at four in the afternoon so it’ll be informal, and jeans; rather than dinner jacket.

  [ … ] Sunday today. The Attenboroughs are down for three long weeks, he to run his British Film Nonsense at the Damned Festival, having now cut and edited ‘A Chorous Line’ … I’ve run out of spelling today.

  And I’m pretty short on typing too: sorry.

  So. Reverting to Sunday, I’d better go and get some glasses out, for they will be over for lunch in ten minutes, and I’ve garliced the lamb [ … ]

  Is Boaty still alive? I know that she’s an Agent: but that does’nt prove anything, does it?

  With devoted love

  Dirk

  To Hélène Bordes Clermont

  8 June 1985

  Chere Mme La Planche – or? de La Planche?

  How hard we writers have to work!

  Thank you so very much for the final ‘proof’ copies, and all your minute corrections!

  I am just the same as you. I ‘fiddle’ and change things about all the time in ‘proof’, and drive the publishers completely insane.

  But ever since I was warned that ‘words are not made of India rubber, you know!’ I have tried to prove that they are! By fitting letters into spaces and finding new words for old. [The proof ] looks extremely professional and important: I feel my head grow larger as I read, and it gives me great pleasure: as you know.

  Not that my head is growing larger; but what I read of my modest works.

  I was delighted to see again [a photograph of ] the pont St Etienne … how often I used to admire it as I drove south to the country for lunch on Sundays1.. to eat delicious food, to gather walnuts, to walk beside a glorious lake whose name I no longer remember. All I DO remember is my love for the Perigord, my intense dislike of the British who seemed to live in every hole and cave, and my distress in Oradour … to which I went very often: I wonder why I did?

  I remember one disgusting English journalist (a woman too) saying with great pride one day ‘Oh, we’ve QUITE taken over the village now, all the French have gone except for the woman who runs the grocers shop. Never hear a word but English: such a comfort.’ I hated her deeply.

  In Oradour, which I discovered by accident walking in the country near my little hotel while I was working with Resnais, I remember a fair May evening, with a light shower of rain falling, which drenched the lilac bushes in the Doctors garden and filled the still air with a glorious, sad, scent, and made the tram-car lines glisten in the cobbles of the street. No one was there but myself and … a nightingale! Of such memories are autobiographies born.

  [ … ] Of course you must join the ‘voices of the two other needle women’, they gave me encouragment, and so do you. Thus you qualify Madame La PlanchE! With a big ‘E’ .. my typing is getting worse because the mistral blows and I hate it very much .. it disturbs me and confuses me and irritates me because it is ripping the branches from the lime-trees and tearing my glorious vine, which has struggled so hard to be good after the winter. The olives, Thank God! are recovering .. not all, but most.

  The ones in the valley caught it worst; on the top of the hill here they are NEARLY like they were last year. I am so grateful. A summer with an orchard of 400 brown olive trees would be dreadfully miserable.

  Your flowers which perished are just as important to you as my vine and my olives … so of course you must grieve for them. And grieve too at the appalling cost of replacing them! I refuse to pay five francs fifty for a small root of Impatiens! I really do. So the bed this year is barren .. I am far too mean I suppose. But five francs fifty for a tiny plant, which will be burned by the mistral anyway, is too much.

  [ … ] I dread already the advent of St Andrews, and all the bowing and the kneeling and things which I must do in my cap and gown. I am certain that I shall forget the ‘dance’ … it is so confusing and complicated and dates back to the fifteenth centuary … so I MUST get it right!

  A few months ago when they told me I would be so honoured I thought that it would be fun.

  But now that it is really near my heart leaps with panic like a frightened faun: it is SUCH a long way to go, and to be among people again and on trains and airplanes … I am really so rooted here .. I hate the wrench of leaving. Even to get such a glittering prize!

  I am about to start Chapter eight. If I can find the way to do so!

  Starting is terribly hard I find .. so is stopping: but the exact line to open a new chapter and catch the readers attention is a brute to get absolutely right. I sit in a haze stareing into space and look as if I were in hibernation.

  I often wish that I were. Sometimes, when I have read over some of the other chapters, I loose heart dreadfully … it is all rubbish, lacking in style, wit or elegance .. and then, another time, I’ll read it and sit here with a face as smug as a crapeaud! Pleased as pleased .. is there an ‘e’ at the end of crapeaud or is there even a ‘d’? Heavens! The man has lived in France for nearly twenty years and cant spell ‘toad’! But the bakers wife this morning complimented me on my perfect accent.

  She was FAR too wise to compliment me on my perfect French!

  But I gained courage and sailed down the street to the alimentation with high held head. Madame Roux said I spoke well. So .. what had I to fear? How
ever: it is still difficult to start a Chapter.

  I get a lot of letters from English people who have come to live in France from choice, but who find the French difficult to live with.

  They ask me how I have managed! I write back, in anger very often, and remind them that they must abandon their Englishness if they are to live here, they have not moved into an empty room! They have moved to a country which was far more civilised before them .. and I remind them that they would still be ambling about in woad and fur if they had not been invaded by William! I equally remind them to remember that France was Occupied, and how dreadful a blow that was to the soul of the country. If they dont know what Occupation means (and they dont) then at least they should try to understand what it meant to their neighbours and feel compassion for the pain and the distress that it caused. Sometimes people write back: and apologise for their stupidity, and say they will look at ‘things French’ with a different eye from now on.

  I may yet get the Leigeon d’Honneur!

  At least I do my best to bring the two, very different, countries together. The main trouble with the English is that they have never bothered to learn ANYONE’S language! They always considered that their own was enough all over the world. Well: perhaps in the days of the Empire it was. But there is no longer an Empire .. so it is about time they tried to speak something else! It is, I know, shyness to a great extent .. and they have an in-built certainty that the French detest them.

  Maybe they do: I confess I have never found it, except perhaps in Paris; but in Paris the French even hate each other! So it is not a good example. But otherwise I have found kindness and generosity of the spirit, and the fact that one even TRIES to speak the language, however badly, is appreciated greatly. It is a compliment after all to speak the language in the country which you have chosen for your ‘own’.

  I must leave you. This is an inept, badly typed, badly spelled, letter .. but it is nevertheless sent to you with gratitude and affection.