by Unknown
Being ill, as I once said to you before, in your own tongue is very, very, important indeed! However, it all costs a great deal of money, worry and moving about … and even though I love Paris, as I do, eating out every day, morning and night, is expensive and boring too … but there is not much alternative. The hotel restuarant is like a morgue … and the food awful. One must eat. So …
The Television play1 was shown to the Press yesterday in London on a huge screen; not on that terrible box, and recieved a big ovation .. which is pleasing. It will be shown to the public on the 23rd … and then we shall see what the Press really thought about it. One never can tell with them I fear. ‘Backcloth’ is in it’s fourth edition already and Christmas looms … and perhaps the TV will help to boost the already excellent sales. No one knows, for certain, in England, that I have left my beloved Clermont … although there are suspicions, but so far the papers have not got the story. Yet …
I suppose that when they do find out they’ll be round this hotel like flies … so far I am being very discreet and staying away from Prisunic or Casino! .. I hurry along little streets and do what shopping I must, whiskey, beer, biscuits, etc, at Felix Potin and no one cares.
I have at last unpacked everything, the cupboards are full, I wear a tie and a shirt every day; tres comme il faut after years of old jeans and sweaters, and am trying to adjust to a new life rather late in my life .... next medical check is in London in early January … if that is satisfactory then I might perhaps take a small appartment here if I can find anything which suits my pocket. We’ll see … meanwhile my love to you, and apologies for this typing and for the long delay in finding peace, or time, to write to you … thank you for your letter which came the other day … take care, and be valient too .. I must go and wash, or have a bath perhaps? and then trail off to find a restuarant I can afford and which is quiet. Two of the hardest things to find in Paris. I was spoiled for 18 years by the peace of Clermont … the new owners, the Belgians, are apparently doing quite a lot to the place to accomodate their five children. But they have in no way altered the house, thank God …
All my love –
Dirk
To Penelope Mortimer Hotel Lancaster
17 January 1987
Dearest Penny-Lopey –
Here’s where I am now. Got back from London yesterday with a fat package of mail sent on from Chateauneuf, and your letter of December 11th, sweet heavens … Clermont sold up in July; Forwood ill with a cancerous polyp, then Parkinsons, and so on. No need to write more of the story, it’s all been bloody.
So since then I have been too-ing and frooing from clinics and Harley Street and Wimpole and the Devonshire and all the other ghastly streets of that ilk. And inbetween ‘tests’ and ‘scanners’ have been in the Connaught or here … and now, since last week and a clearance, thank God, it’s got to be here from now on in. An apartment somewhere, if I can find one that wont completely ruin me.
I am becoming rather institutionalised, if that is how it is spelled, by living in hotels and pressing buttons … but it is a limited life and one sits in two modest rooms with eight suitcases and two type-writers overlooking a courtyard, the Sacre Coeur, and an ivy covered wall full of roosting starlings … spending a fortune.
Become so entrenched here that the entire staff gave me a drink party on Christmas Eve which moved me greatly, and especially so when the Head Concierge presented me with the two crossed keys of a Night Porter in gold and said I was now ‘in the Union’.
But apart from moments like that, it is rather sterile and I find it almost impossible to type, or write, in a bedroom … with unmade beds and old clothes scattered among the foolscap and envelopes ..
I have a novel in hand, but have done nothing to it since the troubles started in the summer. It sits resentfully beside me, and I have rather lost interest … one day I’ll pull myself together. One day .. God knows when.
In the packing up of Clermont I came across a complete file of your letters from many addresses and lands, and have guarded them jealously .. perhaps, one day, you’d like them back? At present they are in store somewhere in Cannes. But one day … they were super to read and so funny. Never read the Queen Mum book,1 but know that she is NOT all chuckles and merangues. I expect you were dead on the nail, you usually are, and that always makes people unhappy, silly farts.
I got a huge packet, this time in London, from Viking with ALL the reviews for my last effort (Backcloth) which are rather hilarious to read after so many months. It came out in September, and I went and flogged it all over the place … read a few reviews and shrugged .. as well I might, as we were selling a cool 39.000 up to December. But reading this lot of bunk was fun. So contradictory … the provincial press super and understanding of the work, the London Press, so sophisticated that they bust with spite, furious that I played ‘my hand too near my chest’, whatever that really means … but which was EXACTLY what I meant to do .. so they complain, and forgot to read between the lines. Suppose that might have happened to the Queen Mum book. The British simply hate being criticised for anything but love tearing others apart, from the French to poor sodding Prince Edward and on … oh well.
Thats enough for now .. I’m trying to catch up on this packet of mail and not to loose old freinds. There was no time, ever, to send out change of adress cards, for I have NO adress yet, and most people think I’m still in Provence. Well: now you know better!
From your affectionat – Dirk
To Laurence Harbottle Hotel Lancaster
3 February 1987
My dear Laurence –
After a great deal of heart-searching and head scratching I have, at last, come to terms with the problems which beset us and submit a ‘plan’ for your, I hope, approval.
I have signed to do a film1 for BBC TV which will commence shooting on March 31st and end sometime about May 15th. I shall come over to London some days ahead of the start-date, on the 8th March to be exact, for I still have 30 days of this fiscal year in hand, and when ‘shooting’ is completed should have about 50 in hand of the new period.
During the time I shall be in London it is my intention to try and find somewhere to live, and to move myself, once and for all, back to the U.K.
We have had a pretty reasonable try at trying to find something here in Paris which would provide us with a new existance, but it really is not going to work. The cost of a moderate apartment is very high, and if I hired a live-in ‘bonne’ as I should have to, her wages would cost as much as the rent of the entire flat! Social Security takes care of that, without her food or keep! So that’s out.
Paris is lonely if you have no friends, and although we HAVE a few who are pleasant and loving, no one wants to live in peoples pockets so to speak, and at our ages, 72 and 66 I honestly feel it wiser to get back home and try again among friends and family and in a language which I can speak.
There is always the constant nagging worry that a Doctor may be needed, and I frankly dont want to have to go through the miseries of last year again.
I know that this is going to mean a pretty hefty sacrifice financially, but, frankly, this style of living, in an hotel, simply cant go on any longer; the money just swirls away, and I’ll have to face up to the facts, unpleasant though they may be and, with your help, try and make them as palatable as possible.
I think that this quite long period of time should give us a breathing space to get something worked out now that I have really made a decision. I am sorry that I have havered about for so long, but the decision has not been easy to make.
[…] I have no idea what sort of income I can expect to live on: which is a worry. We have been spending here at the most absurd rate, even though we have both done our very best to economise … I dont even eat a breakfast! But at least a third of my French fortune has gone, and I owe tax on the TV film I did for Yorkshire last spring: so there will be a chunk taken from what is left.
However perhaps in the weeks that I am in London we c
an have some kind of discussion together and try and resolve things once and for all.
This letter is merely to alert you to the decision I have made, and to help you prepare the ground a bit on my behalf.
Sorry to be so tiresome and to have been so indefinate in the past, but one simply has to try things out for oneself, and if they dont work try something else.
Thats what I’m doing now: wish me luck!
With very warmest wishes,
Dirk
To Penelope Mortimer Hotel Lancaster
17 February 1987
My dear Penelope –
At the grave risk of boring you witless I am once again writing. This time to say that I finally finished the Q.M book and simply had to write and say how terrifically I’d enjoyed (and admired) it.
Christ knows how you managed to wade through all the stuff which you obviously HAD to, and how you managed to make your little ‘notes’ so that you could remind your reader from time to time where he was.
I cant help feeling [ … ] that you must be damned near the facts, and the picture you paint, for use of a better phrase, of that miserable family is tremendous.
What an unhappy lot they are.
No wonder the Queen looks so grumpy and slouchy at times … she’s actually quite fun when you meet her privatly, but the fun goes out the window at the drop of a hat. Or whatever.
And as for the Consort: Christ. He’s as jolly as an open coffin.
I think that it is a masterly book, and, as always with your own brand of ‘riting’ it is wonderfully readable and races along, a thing which is rare in a biography of this kind. But you dont clutter. Super!
A thing en passant .. when David was being buried1 I saw a bit of Frog Newsreel which we did NOT see in London, of the Ladies draped in black standing together in a huddle like partridges. The D. of Windsor at the back. She was far from ‘at ease’ and, at one moment pulled anxiously at the Queens sleeve who suddenly turned on her with a scowl which would have sent me back to Boston there and then. The dislike was so intense that it shimmered off the screen. The Queen Mum knew all that happened but merely stood stock still looking the other way. I felt that afternoon tea that day was going to be tough. Even the French commentary caught it’s breath .. and all one heard was a whispered gasp.
Anyway: I’ve had a marvellous time, and thank you.
I’m off to London in a few days to start work on a rather good TV play .. so I’ll have to start packing in a minute .. it’s snowing again. What do they SEE in Paris? Certainly winter aint fun …
Have you finished your book? Dont answer .. retorical question. (SP?)
And thanks again .. with infinate love ..
Dirk –
II
THE LONDON YEARS
Dirk and Tony rented a house in Chelsea from the actor – and, later, Oscar-winning screenwriter – Julian Fellowes, who lived in the basement.
To Hélène Bordes
(Postcard)
15 Moore Street
21 March 1987
Hélène –
A very pretty little house built in 1820 .. with a very small, but green, garden and a lot of cats plus two blackbirds! But we are off to the miseries of Cardiff (an industrial estate) for the film1 in two or three days, and I shall be there, except for a weekend now and again back here, until the end of May. […] I have been in various clinics having Radio and so on on my lungs .. all clear but I have a viral-infection and cough all the night, which is exhausting and irritating! Age! Lord ..
Today London is like Lovely Limoges .. wet, grey, silent and dreary, but the fire is warm and the house welcoming so I do not complain. I’ll write from Cardiff when I can .. I have to work EVERY DAY! What a fool I am.
Love DB –
To Hélène Bordes
(Postcard)
Colombe d’Or
2 June 1987
Here for 2/5 days to see the INSTITUTE PASTEUR DOCTORS FOR FORWOOD AND SETTLE MY AFFAIRS. I HATE TO BE BACK. SO MANY MEMORIES AND SCENTS!
Love DB
To Hélène Bordes
(Postcard)
15 Moore Street
14 July 1987
The Quatorze! Hot, hot in London, and no air. I am sticky and miserable. You with summer bronchitis .. me with a very bad liver attack! I have been drinking too much from sad despair. Where to live? How to live? The prices here are crazy .. and every day I go to look at another awful house at mad prices .. maybe after the summer it will be easier. I cant settle to write, maddeningly, and have little in the way of concentration .. I read, and wander about, and lay the table, and wash up, and wander about, or just sit! Not very good for the soul you will agree .. but I feel now the full weight of the flight from France and my heart aches terribly. The furniture is all in England so is the bank account, so the break has been made. But I still have my Carte de Residence! So I cheer up a very little when I think of that: at least until 1994!
Be of good heart, I think of you too .. but I am not in a writing mood, as you can see .. but there is all my strong affection still ..
& love Dirk.
To Hélène Bordes 15 Moore Street
21 August 1987
Belle Hélène! –
[…] I was so happy to get your card [ … ] another year of holiday passed and the summer hurries towards the awful autumn and the falling of the leaves which I really DO detest!
A sign, I am certain, of ageing. Ah well … My Ageing!
Here in London we stifle in a temperature of 30°! Can you believe it? The English certainly can not .. and hate it.
So do I. My bedroom is under the roof and it’s like trying to sleep in an oven. I have been, as you will know, in Calcutta, Java, Singapore, and many other places but they are not a bit different to dreadful London in unaccustomed heat. One sweats miserably and there is no air and I grumble. I lie on my bed and try to read: it is not comfortable. The perspiration runs under my chin and dribbles onto my chest, and into my eyes and everywhere .. and I look at my fat tummy (I do not smoke since March 1st .. so I have put on DISGUSTING weight) and wonder what is happening to me.
Now: ‘Backcloth’, in paperback, has been No. 4 on the Best Seller list for six weeks. One giddy week it was No. 1! At the airports it is No.1 in non fiction … a clever decision of my publishers to put it out for the Holiday Season.
So now I will be read from Malaga to Malta and I know I have been spotted in Bar sur Loup and St Tropez! I am, of course, very happy … the book has worked better than the others even though the Press was not so kind to it, and said it was ‘dull and dissapointing ..’ Obviously from the letters I get, the reading public do not share that view.
I stopped there for a moment because a great storm has hit the city. The sky is black the thunder roars and the lightning rips into the darkness of the rooms. Maybe it’ll be cooler after? I do hope so.
The family in the house opposite my ‘Office’ here are French and the daughter has just hurried out, her head in a coat, to find their cat. Which is sitting in MY dining room down below! Cats! They are so indifferent to our love for them. I will call from the window and tell the girl … pardonnez moi …
She was very relieved. And said that she had seen me on Tv last night. True. And very dull I was!
The other piece of news which is good, or which feels good for all is not certain yet, is that I have found a house.
A farmhouse built in 1707 in the old village of Kensington which is now, as you know, massive, but the house is small, white, with no garden, just a little patio with pots at the back .. inside the vibrations feel good, as they should in an old house which has seen generations of people come and go. It is simple, modest, and faces north onto a garden which belongs to the Carmelite Convent (so it is all green) and south onto a big Studio and a lovely ancient tree and roofs … it is simple, very quiet and was VERY V E R Y expensive! God! But the furniture from Clermont will fit, it is all the right period .. and although I will have to sell off many many pictures
(I had too many anyway) the few I really love will look very well in Queen Anne House (it’s name.) We are supposed to exchange contracts on Monday … and they promise to move out on the 30th Sept .. so I SHOULD be able to move in in the first week of October which will be exactly one year since I left Clermont to the days!
But I cross my fingers. I expect something will go wrong, it is almost sure to do so.
I can not tell you what awful places I have had to look at. Flats where one would die a day after moving in from sheer sadness … houses full of damp, misery, children, and the feeling of divorce! Awful .. At the least this little house feels well and happy and quite seemed to like me. Alors … on verra ..
The storm has stopped, the light comes back, the cat is wandering below in the garden avoiding, very delicatly, the puddles of water. I must leave you and continue with my 3.000 word piece for the Sunday Times Travel section on … The Riveria!
Off I go [ … ]
Love comme toujours
Dirk.
Dirk and Tony moved to the house in Duke’s Lane at the end of September.
To Hélène Bordes
(Postcard)
Queen Anne House
12 November 1987
The patient1 is ill. Everything suddenly blew up about 3 weeks ago. More Clinics, more ‘tests’, more ‘Scanners’ & this time it is, alas, positive. I have been too busy to even think or write, but loved your long letter & card today. We carry on – what else? I’ll write when I get a desk! All love. DB.
