by Unknown
I do hope you got a bit of loot from that transaction? I remember I paid the boys a lot of lolly to write it. They came to a nervous lunch in my posh-palace (It was a bit showy-offy I admit. 42 rooms … ) and scuttled off to write your piece. I was so frightened of them, the New Young Men, and they were so terrified about being served by a real Butler in white jacket with a silver platter an all, that nothing very convincing was ever going to come out of poor old ‘Dillon’. And, as far as I remember, did’nt.
But I did try. It was the only John OSBURNE I could afford. And of course it was ‘flawed’ as they say … you shared the billing I mean. Not pure, [—1], J.O …. never mind! I did have a shot. Bad luck.
This fucking machine has what is euphamistically called a memory. I dont need it to have a memory. Just to type and not flash lights [at] me and warn me that I have mis-spelled. Jesus! I KNOW that! And I can remember. Well. Most things. Not all. No. I give you that. But most. Essentials, like my address, the price of the evening paper, the name of the girl in Tesco who does’nt sneer and calls me ‘SUR’. I’m not that gaga yet. Just feel it.
I read you avidly in the Speccy. And am DELIGHTED that at last people are being nicer to you. About time too. Of course you will find it is something to do with generosity-of-spirit as one grows older. Suddenly they realise, these clever dicks, that there is nothing new and exciting about and that they are in serious danger of missing the trolly at last! Golly! They only now have discovered Hugh Grant (or whatever his name is) and are fussed and put-out that America decided that ‘Four Marriages ..’2 was fun and real and not about Out-Of-Work-Plumbers living under the M4 Fly Over. If you have read the shrugging, carping, ‘silly little film’ stuff they have un-blocked their turgid little minds to swill about, you’d quickly realise how LUCKY you and I have been with the shits! I loath and detest them far more than you ever did … and I do read your buks. I am not writing very sensibly on account of Frank (wallpapering) who is singing ‘You ARE My Sunshine’ for the fiftieth time, and George (hanging a picture-light) singing ‘I Belong To Glasgow’ for the millionth time. I am beginning to go spare in the head.
I dont think I’d care very much for the Derby Business3 .. all those horses and huge hats and silly faces .. and I really would not expect you to give me a tingle if you ever did get to Oscars pad. A far too fraught week, and I’d be the one to cause you distress, not you me. I’d be the most awful let down because I really AM dreadfully DULL and ill-read and un-social.
Lets just remain as we are. You cherished beyond anything .. and I your old Army Mate … I am busy with a new oeuvre.4 Picking up mates from the past now dead, alas! It is, can you believe, quite funny. Because they have gone, and apart from their middle-aged children, there is no one to distress. I speak of long-forgotten Colonels, Corporals, Privates .. not Actors and such. The Corporals and Colonels were much funnier. I dont think I remember a really funny actor after Rex [Harrison] and Coral B[rowne] .... oh dear! But how lucky to have had them. I MUST stop Frank from another stanza, Chorous, of ‘Sunshine’. You see? Tu voir! I can no longer spell … I am riven with angst and the stink of wall-paper glue .. but I do send you deepest love and affection. Give my love to the Long Mynde .. I climbed it many a weary time. In full pack and gaiters. Goodness me yes … and the Stepier (Stepper?) Stones? and a cherry brandy (dareing) on a freezing afternoon at the Lyggon Arms.1
Ever – 269.
To John Osborne Cadogan Gardens
26 May 1994
Dear 225 –
Rain. Blackness. Misery for three weeks, but the builders have gone. Gone, and left the sodding lift buggered up. You cant ‘call’ it, there is a fuse. So the whole building loath me because the thing is stranded on my floor and I’m on the top, He! He! He! Only I dont feel like that really. It’s tough to clamber up five fucking flights with two baskets of goodies and a bunch of flowers plus six nicotiana plants to stick out during this awful Holiday ahead. I bought some Rowantrees Fruit Pastilles, which eases the rage.
I loved your slew of cards .. terrifically good to know that you realise how much you are respected, and loved, by your Peers and, now at last, the Viscious Press.
They have, the Press, pricked you often enough, found themselves proved wrong about everything they said, and now have come to heel. Silly, ghastly, sods.
Unless you actually need the money DONT join them. My Pa, a journalist all his life, was so shamed by what he called ‘the fouling’ of his profession by the new un-couth that he removed ‘Occupation’ from his new Passport! At the age of seventy six. I was amused. No longer. I’d rather say I cleaned the shit house than was a ‘journalist’. We have both, you and I, met those deceptive little girls with SW1 or SW3 or Chalfont St Giles’ accents who seem so pleasing and shit on you from a great height a day or two later. Sad really. Because they need one, one does’nt, (unless just starting and callow) need them! And there are one or two Worthy Ones. Not the cruddy Lynn Barbers and Julie Burchills … sneering and fearful and LOCAL! God, so local! But there are a couple who were good, clever, useful even .. but they seem to be swamped now. Barber writes about squirrels and lamp shades (for some reason) and Burchill writes about spleen. She’d not be very good in Time Out now. They are better, ruder, younger, and, without comparisons but learning. Enough. Basta.
I am battering away at the Bakers Dozen of a book. Autobio. They say they sell better than novels; which is boring, because you have to stick to facts.
This new effort is a series of essays remembering a vast range of people (from my first ‘mucker’1) in the Army, in Normandy in fact, (there is, by the way, never a sexual connatation in the word ‘mucker’. It is something hard to explain, and far harder to explain to women. And it aint that god-awful American word, Bonding) to Ingrid B. and Losey and even Kathleen Tynan with whome I have always had a close relationship inspite of the fact that Ken detested me and all that I was. It did’nt bother us! Odd. But gathering all these people together makes one realise, in this silly little office looking out onto a wet Cadogan Street, just how fortunate one has been in life. Anyway: I have. With the very few chums I have had, saved up, and still have. You, for example, speak of trust in your slew of cards. I have never doubted yours for me or mine for you. It is just a fact. Same with Robert F[ox]. A different, younger, chum. But we trust each other. I have, in a modest way, taken over from Robin … it is tremendously rewarding for me. I only hope it has helped, or been useful, to him. And there are others. I have NO old friends. Well: a couple. But I had to junk them when I got back to the UK for fear of being gobbled up and destroyed. God! They are SO boring sitting waiting to die. I mean, of course I will one day .... but not before I have done everything I want to do. Dont be amazed that people are starting to ‘look kindly’ on you! They just missed out at the beginning.
I did’nt.
I have always known what true greatness was, and I have always known that you had it in you. So did Graham Sutherland, Henry Moore, Dilys Powell, even Rex Harrison etc, all sorts of odds and sods. Greatness is not given lightly .. not always recognised in a lifetime. Hold on to yours: it’s rare; practically undiscovered, and quite the most wonderous thing one can be given.
Lucky old you.
Sorry about the typing .. but at least, if you wish to, you can almost read it! Love to the Long Mynd –
Ever
Dirk
To John Osborne London –
21 June. ’94 (Raining, of course)
Dear 225 (Cpl)
Your splendid, undated, letter flopped onto my mat this am along with a plea to ‘Save The Children’ (Why the hell should I?) and a card from some firm in Bond Street offering me a 50% cut in their latest furs. Honestly.
But your letter gave me huge pleasure. I have shingles, can you believe, and am sad and miserable and itch and will be in this condition for at least another fucking month. So it’s not exactly conducive to a tip tap at the typewriter. I drag about whining softly and read bits of books. Do you know wha
t I mean? Bits. Not whole, proper books. Bits.
Lack of concentration I suppose.
People, in the shops say ‘Oh! You look so well ..’ little realising the agony I suffer, and that High Bloodpressure is the reason for my ruddy good health. Aint life a bitch?
And you taking ‘leave’ in the middle of the Big Race!1 Poor H.2 must fret terribly. I mean, I would. Anyway you got back to Oscars, and that was a relief.
I dont know when you wrote this missive so can only conjecture when you went to the Palace.3 You DO mean The Palace? Not the one in the Kings Road or on Brighton Pier? What a lark … I mean if it was the proper Palace. Rather pleasant in the private quarters, rather awful elsewhere. I think the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed was the sign at the top of the Grand Staircase which we climbed to get annointed, or whatever it is. It bluntly said Last Gentlemans Lavatory. So you knew that if you missed it it was dribble dribble for two sodding hours … more if the Hong Kong Police were being given gongs.
And they were.
Yes: I know that I have the brain of a newt, but Gods Honour I do find it frantically difficult to get a book to actually READ. A jolly good read. I have told J. Coldstream (To whome you do owe a book, by the way, you agreed to review something on Merrick.4 He’s waiting in anguish.) that I wanted ‘out’ from reviewing. I simply get lost in the welter of ‘good writing’ and do find it absurdly difficult to like anything. I avoid Ms Brookner, even in the street. I’m trying hard with Hilary Mantell at the moment .. and had a tiny look at the new Julia Blackburn, and Coldstream sent me Andrew Sinclair and I itch more than ever.5
I am sick to death of aboriginies .. Chatwin did them splendidly but thats enough .. and I dont actually go a huge bundle [on] the Blacks in Seth Efrica; so I have two bum-books here. The Sinclair, with a quite revoltingly common, really common, cover might be possible … but I am hesitant. I just wish someone would write something I could’nt bear to put down. My last essaies (SP?) in that direction were you and A. Clark.1 Un-putdownable and greedy-for-more stuff.
But woe is me. All this Brookner, Mantell, Trollop (Aga)2 stuff swamps me. I did’nt terribly care for Potter. Was deeply embarressed by what I saw of the Bragg Braggadacio3 .. I had actually seen all that up close for myself. I saw no point in making a public spectacle of the business. One way, I suppose, of getting your play on? I did’nt care for a lot of his stuff .. ‘Singing Detective’ was fun, but after that it was showing off because he knew what fuck meant.
He got involved, briefly, with Losey […] and I begged him, Losey, to reconsider. Pinter was not, I said, Potter.4
No way.
V. Common indeed to turn the page, but I have a gentleman coming to lunch and am in a sort of mild ‘state’ .. you’ll have to put up with me.
I am terrifically glad that all manner of people are taking the road to ‘blue remembered’.5 I cant see why you consider it less than your due. You have NEVER been out of fashion, as you say .. never been set aside and forgotten. Your blistering truth has seen to that .. and the Speccy Bits are read avidly. I know that. And no one on God’s earth could confuse you with Sir (Jesus!) T. Rice … I mean who is he? I dont think I could whistle a single thing he’s wrote .. can I? And Derek Whatever … camping about as a Detective Monk!6 Shit … I have instructed my lot (Viking) and everyone else I can lay a hand on, NEVER to use my idiotic knighting. I feel so cheap after years and years of trying to get my name known as a player.
It is in Europe .. but here I am less than the worst TV Host-Show-Chap.
Boring … but I really do prefer being Mr B … and that is how I am known in the street and the greengrocer or fishmonger . .
‘Kept four really lovely scallops for you Mr B ..’ shouted across Cale Street gives me infinate pleasure .. We are all, I suppose, snobs of differing sorts. I just did’nt want to be lumbered up with some of these hideious Knights. But I was assured that it would be ‘a terrible slight to the PM … you are his personal choice. Give it a weeks thought ..?’ so I did. Idiot.
[ … ] I’m off to Manchester (Library or Royal Exchange? I never can recall. It’s in the round1 and was great fun last year ..) then, of all places, Woking who have a new 900 seater Theater (I wont play less!) and then somewhere north, and ending at the Olivier again.
And that’ll be that. I do try and flog the goods … it’s harder to write the fuckers.
All great love to you … did you watch any, or all of D day2 on the Telly? I was trapped in bed, so lay there for two days blubbing … what a cunt.
Dont fall about again .. but if you do, try and do it somewhere calm, and not near energetic gentlemen (?) in Wimbledon.3
Your very affectionate
& respectful –
225
No! Thats You!
I’m 269.
4.15 pm P.S. Gentleman gone, done the washing up, feel filleted and dull, and it is raining and I’m glad I loathe tennis, so will mail this, get the Evening Standard, and crawl off to bed.
To Jill Melford Cadogan Gardens
29 July 1994
Maudie – oh! my love –
I got a letter from that fearful [–] this am saying ‘let’s be friends’ and she’d like to help me in my campagne to try to stop the building of a road across the prettiest part of Sussex. Never mind! YOUR disgusting card, naked-ape-on-beach-at-sunset, arrived at the same time. So I feel better. Or betterish.
I think I’ll put this all down in numbers? Okay? You really HAVE been away too long. So. No. 1. Yes, ta. Shingles almost all gone. There are two fucking scabs which wont fall off. Got it? Most tiresome. When I whined to my Doctor last week he assured me that my attack was ‘medium’. His most recent patient was literally smothered in blisters and screaming with pain. And she was just ten years old. So I shut up. At least, as he pointed out, I had not yet asked him for Death Pills. Apparently it is quite common. I must admit I was ready, at one time, for the things. I have never in my life been so depressed and suicidal … and you actually DO know me! But with this unaccustomed heat, and it has been in the upper 30’s .. (that is nudging the nineties in old fashioned speech) it has [been], is still, difficult to bear. So, Angel, dont bother to have them. Shingles.
No.2. I have been fairly sotto, naturally, so apart from a huge luncheon party for Boaty at Bibendum (where I sipped away at the Evian and made nervous attempts NOT to faint with the heat [ … ]) and one other lunch, I have remained within the building. Apart from a very jolly morning when, dressed ONLY in my underpants and shirt, no shoes, I took the elevator [ … ] to the hallway below to collect the Sunday papers. As I slid past my floor I said, aloud and sadly, ‘Oh! Fuck! I’ve done it. Locked myself out. Keys in pants pocket.’ So. What to do? Sloane Street on an early Sunday morning? No money, no Filofax .. no bugger all, but bare, bare, little feet. So along I troll to Partridges. Well: where else? I know that they bake all Saturday/Sunday night.
Knocked frantically. Was let in amidst huge laughter, and we called 999. I begged the very clinical lady not to send round a HUGE fire engine with ladders and blue lamps (it was still only about eight am) and she said where was I? and what was my name? and when it was all given she simpered with sweetness and said had I seen myself on TV the night before (and the night before that, frankly. A two part documentary) and anyway before I could get back bare-foot the engine had arrived, and pulled up noiselessly and no blue lamps and five quite ravishing young firemen who thought it was all the ‘gas’ of the week! They assured me that they’d just come off a ‘job’ in Leytonstone, twenty story block, huge fire, all ‘spades’, forty badly burned and ‘one silly fart got so fucking hysterical she just jumped from the thirtieth [sic] floor and cut herself in two on the balcony railings below. What a fucking mess!’
They were as jolly as clockwork clowns, and since they could only work IN the lift (it was the front door) we all sat about in the hall reading the Sunday papers until the two of them forced the lock. It took them forty five minutes. And they ripped open t
he door to do it. Great.
Laughing and joking, my particulars were taken down, date, time, place, and it was pointed out that a ‘modest Call Out’, was £180, to discourage the Yuppie piss-pots in the area, but I was certainly not a Yuppie, so could I give them my date of birth? I did, with relief .. I did’nt care how aged I was. But what was marvellous was that I did’nt have to pay a farthing because I was, ‘Well over the age, Dirk .. well over ..’ So they all got a tenner apice and I was left with an open door. Until Tuesday. They dont actually repair the damage. Never mind. I now wear two sodding keys on a vastly expensive chain round my neck AT ALL TIMES. If we ever do meet again and you think that I am bowed down with sadness or some ghastly form of arthritis, remember: it’s two heavy keys only. So far.
The heat here has, really, been marvellous and too much all at the same time. I mean, you sort of expect it in Palm Beach or Cannes .. but not in Cadogan Gardens. Sweating away at night is hell. I am barefoot from morn to night, and so are all the peasants in the street. If it ever occurred to you that the British Middle Class were UGLY UGLY you were absolutely right. Come and see them wobbling along Sloane Street, The Fulham Road, the Kings Road, or slumping about at those hideious little pavement cafe’s we suddenly invent. Christ! There is no one pretty alive here … they are all sickeningly plain, fat, ill-dressed, and junk-fed. But, I suppose, so are the Americans? A terrible woman, with ghastly teen-aged son wearing a sort of divided skirt with a baseball cap and a tee-shirt covered with ‘Free O. Sullivan!’ on it, asked me how to get to Harrods. I told her, and could’nt resist saying that it was a very long walk, and that if the young man with her was also going, they would’nt be admitted. She was in a sagging bra, sneakers, and patterned shorts. She asked, quite politely if Harrods was ‘like Buckingham Palace?’ or some place. Was’nt it just a store? Like Bloomingdales? And I had to say No, not quite. They have regulations. And she said that the Americans had Fought For Democracy and she was going up to Harrods. Which she did. I could’nt blame her really, but they are a dreadful lot. So are we, I gather, in Greece and Italy … oh well … [ … ] A lady below, Flat No 2, has ripped it all out and re-furbished it to a most alarming degree. Quite splendid if it was on the top with a view, but it’s the one on the right, facing the street and north, and is hell!
