Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  This house belonged to Lilly Langtry .. she had a special door for the King, when he was Wales .. it still has his feathers carved above it. The house stood in a pleasant garden (still does) and was secret. Secret enough for Langtry anyway … then they began to build on the fields all around her .. and the house, once called The Bridge House, became No. 2 .. and the garden was called Cadogan (after the ruthless but quite jolly Lord who owned all the land, and still does!) Gardens and so the rot started. It is an area of huge mansions, each one different from it’s neighbour, wonderfully built … and I live in the attics and what was once the Laundry and the Drying Yards is, are, now my sitting room and balcony.

  It’s a little bit like Parc de Monceau. My garden, I mean: huge trees and birds, silence, and NO children. Its four floors below me, of course, but that makes it all the more attractive .. and only at week-ends do the Young come in with their pic-nic baskets and rugs and hurl caution to the wind and take off (practically) all their clothes. You have to have a key to get in … which keeps the worst of the world outside. It’s very nice.

  I’ve never been down there! I much prefer the privacy of my terrace and to look down at the world below.

  Telephone at that exact moment to say that I am expected at the Hospital ‘for your Op, on the 18th ..’ So now I know and I am really very relieved. It is so wretched hobbling along as if I were a hundred, and to be in such pain. I get to the stage when I almost weep, helplessly, and that would not do! Especially as people will nod and smile at me in the street, or try to congratulate me on ‘Great Meadow’ when I actually feel very far from that heavenly place! However .. let us get on with the business.

  Reverting to a question you ask in your last letter. I WAS published, and well, in France by Albin Michel .. who did a splendid edition of ‘Une Aimable Occupation’ and latterly by Acropole. I was taken-up by a rather mad, but clever, woman called Hortense Chabrier .. she got the sack, for some reason, and I refused to do ‘Apostrophe’ simply because I was too scared of my French, the Owner (forgotten who at Acropole .. very unpleasant man) said he’d return to me the ENTIRE First Print. I told him to do so. And he did. Two camionettes arrived at the house and I directed them to a local quarry where they dumped the lot. I gave the surprised men a reasonable pour-boir and never saw any of them, books or men or Publisher again. So.

  Perhaps I was absurd to be so timid .. but I detest TV and was far too frail in my French at that time. Signoret did it and was terrified! And she was a froggy. Anyway, I have been published almost everywhere else. Even in Japan! Always in Italy, in Germany never (I am not kind to the Germans and do refer to Belsen and so on ..) Finland, Greece, and so on … nothing of great value. I dont make a fortune out of them, they pay very small amounts for ‘foreign’ books. I was sad about France .. because I was modestly beginning to do well with Chabrier … and I liked her. But I did NOT enjoy sitting in Printemps beside a woman demonstrating potato-peelers. That was sheer agony: another of the Acropole gentleman’s ideas .. I was pushed about Paris like a monkey on a barrel. I dont regret the quarry … But I do like it when I get letters from some Long House in Borneo .. (from a missionary or someone) or perhaps from a soldier in the last Gulf war (we seem to be on the edge of another one today. Oh God .. ) reading me in his tank. That I find most moving .. that someone can shove me into his pocket and take me into his battle, or else read me by the lamp light in the Long House with rats in the roof, so far away. I find it immensly rewarding.

  I have had to re-write a chunk of ‘Closing Ranks’ because my new Editor [Clare Alexander], who is adorable and is the Publishing Manager as well, seemed distinctly uneasy about my S/M husband and wife. She did’nt say so, but just winced when she got to the sex. So I rewrote it, because she correctly felt that my white-haired ladies in country towns (who make up a great proportion of my English readers, alas) would have a seizure in the local Library.

  So now they have a tidy, less explicit, and frankly better, version.

  […] But my white haired ladies are a problem. Sometimes at the Concerts I view their packed ranks with alarm. And wonder wistfully if I am writing books or planting cotton! So many beaming white heads. A harvest to die for … ah me. Incidentally I refuse to be published in America also! They will try to Edit me, re-arrange things. It drives me mad. Also they think that my work is too bland. And it worries them that I have retired from the movies. What, they demand, can they ‘hang my books on? You dont have a hook ..’ So now, in the States, if you really want to read me you have to go via Ottawa or Vancouver and have them shipped in. Madness.

  Oh yes! ‘Victim’, the gender-bender film, I made in 1961, was a desperate effort to kill the ‘matinée idol’ roles. It did too! And I wrote the key scenes … just to make certain it was all stated. First time ever on a TV, or any other, screen. It was BANNED for years in the States! We showd it last night as the Film Of The Day on the main channel. But it was on […] too late for me. I was fast asleep, but once again it had wonderful reviews. I remember when I was asked to take over from the original actor who refused it finally because it would ‘prejudice his chances of a Knighthood’ that Capucine, who was staying with me, asked plaintivly Why the English thought that nothing went on below their chins? My father said he agreed with her, but wished I’d do a ‘really juicy piece of Trollop’ instead. Perhaps I should have done? But no. No. It got rid of all those wistful little fellows I’d been playing for years … for ever!

  Dont clean your teeth tonight with shaving foam, although the Christian Dior is rather pleasant.…

  Love

  D.

  Dirk was admitted on 18 September to the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers, where surgeons performed an angioplasty to ease his circulation problems. The operation was successful, but on the 20th he suffered a severe stroke, resulting in serious handicap. Henceforth his correspondence was restricted almost exclusively to brief notes, dictated occasionally to a secretary but more often to Brock and to a friend, the photographer Gabrielle Crawford. Dominique Lambilliotte received a number of these, in addition to one at Christmas 1996, written fully by Dirk, in which he described the stroke as ‘8 on the RICHTER SCALE!’.

  To Olga Horstig-Primuz

  (Dictated, but signed) Cadogan Gardens

  7 January 1997

  Dearest Olga,

  Happy New Year. I am now back in my flat, even though I am in a wheelchair which will be my fate for some time to come! I have no use in my left side but have just about managed to correct my speech. It was a very surprising shock in September and I was in intensive care for two weeks. However I am trying now, with therapy and a nurse day and night in the flat. Rather restricting. I might just have well got married after all!

  Much love, as ever

  Dirk XXXX

  To Olga Horstig-Primuz

  (Dictated, but signed) Cadogan Gardens

  16 November 1997

  Dearest Olga,

  I am amazed by your news of your pacemaker. I had no idea you were in hospital – anyway I hope everything is alright now. I have been taken off Prozac and am much better myself – I lost so much weight I looked like an El Greco Saint! – but with no saintly feelings at all! Either. The weight is going on and I nearly have my left leg – so we ‘walk’ every day and I feel much more optimistic. My new book (a collection of all my book reviews of the past three years)1 will be published in June – I will send a copy.

  [ … ] I’ll sign off by wishing you a very happy Christmas and say that I’m back off into hospital for Christmas at my own request. Believe it or not, I do want a rest from this wheelchair and all the telephone calls – I do dread being left alone in this flat for the five days the English take to enjoy themselves.

  The nurses are off – one to Ireland one to India, so I’ll go into hospital and avoid all the problems.

  I wish you love – as ever and for always.

  Your loving –

  Dirk XXX

  To John and Rebecca Harrison1<
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  (Postcard) Cadogan Gardens

  30 November 1997

  HAD A STROKE – HENCE DICTATED.

  How splendid to get your letter about DG. I loved her very much. I expect you’ve got her Vauxhall Mirror her closest confidant – she told it all her sadnesses and all her grief. She never spoke of anyone at Yale – and in all the years & all the letters, I knew only of Carol2 – whose permission I had for the letters. I know she had good friends at the University but she was forbidden to tell anyone about me! It was a kind of love affair without the carnality – strange but true.

  Best wishes

  Sir Dirk Bogarde.

  Although he would not walk again, and never wrote more than a sentence or two by hand, Dirk continued to produce an occasional book review and to sign the cards he dictated. When he died on 8 May 1999 he was in the best spirits since his stroke in 1996. His ashes were scattered at his beloved Clermont.

  DIRK’S OUT-TAKES

  A selection of remarks from letters which did not make the ‘final cut’.

  ‘… being in love has two sides to it; one of complete and bewildering beauty, and the other of angry pain and soul tearing misery.’ (to Elizabeth Van den Bogaerde 20/10/45)

  On von Aschenbach, seven weeks after completing the role in Death in Venice: ‘I had no idea that I had got so tremendously involved with the man. Strange. I miss him terribly [ … ] and his wandering spirit, now that I no longer need him, is floating about all over me.’ (to Kathleen Tynan 24/9/70)

  ‘After all love is thicker than blood.’ (to Joseph Losey 25/11/70)

  ‘I’m really DREADFULLY DULL. How I ever got to be the age I am God alone knows.… and he must have been looking out for me somewhere along those thorny little paths we laughingly call the roads of life.’ (to Penelope Mortimer 12/1/72)

  On his father beset by power-cuts: ‘ … he was as cheerful as an Air Raid Warden.’ (to Penelope Mortimer 17/2/72)

  On himself, following a severe bout of gastric illness: ‘I have a sort of tortoise head grafted onto a long pale endive-body.’ (to Penelope Mortimer 28/2/72)

  ‘But I dont think that I have a troubled mind, darling. Or a troubled heart. Not really so. I have a heart that is constantly troubled FOR people I love who seem to be sad or worried or not tranquil … and to whome I can do no more than warm, or touch, or put out silent hands …’ (to Penelope Mortimer 28/2/72)

  On not having a proper swimming-pool: ‘I never was frightfully keen on being all that clean anyway.’ (to Ann Skinner 4/3/72)

  On being informed that Dorothy Gordon had died: ‘I felt rather empty and wretched. A habit of love suddenly whipped away like a dusty rug from under ones feet.’ (to Penelope Mortimer 21/5/72)

  On Annie Fargue: ‘Pretty. Gorgeous yet. Funny. And sharp as a box of knives.’ (to Penelope Mortimer 30/9/73)

  ‘After fifty three the face does’nt suit youth anymore. It all sort of falls in .. like a melting Walls Ice Cream with Chocolate …’ (to Penelope Mortimer 30/9/73)

  On not wishing to fly at short notice to New York: ‘I am, fearfully, a timid animal, and prefer the small hole I have made for myself up here on the hill.’ (to Lucilla Van den Bogaerde 5/10/74)

  On his mother: ‘It really is terrible. I have no filial love left there.’ (to Lucilla Van den Bogaerde 5/10/74)

  On the script for Losey’s The Romantic Englishwoman: ‘ … as witty as a strangled baby.’ (to Penelope Mortimer 10/6/75)

  On Alain Resnais: ‘He’s as naughty as a Victorian Nursery.’ (to Penelope Mortimer 26/6/75)

  ‘… a bit of a shove is all one really needs to get on sometimes.’ (to John Charlton 7/9/75)

  On his spelling and punctuation: ‘I just “bash” along I fear, and things get left behind rather.’ (to John Charlton 7/9/75)

  On agents: ‘I prefer dull honesty to evil Whizz-Kids. I know both.’ (to Edward Thompson 25/1/76)

  ‘I dont actually dig Method Actresses. It turns them into Virgins however much they get fucked.’ (to Penelope Mortimer 14/5/76)

  On working with the leading directors in European cinema: ‘Odd how I seem to be collecting the Intellectuals when my own, intellect, is that of a newt.’ (to Kathleen Tynan 4/11/76)

  On Noël Coward: ‘Not only was he the funniest man in the world [ … ] but he was also quite the most kind, generous and good. And thats saying a lot. No shafts of cruelty … malice a bit, but malice properly used in the stew of life can be fun … no evil, ever, respect and love constantly. He was a rum fellow. And deeply missed.’ (to Kathleen Tynan 6/12/76)

  ‘All I can say is that I am deeply grateful for those glorious, carefree, Bath Oliver Days … they will never come back. And no one will ever have them again.’ (to Nerine Selwood 18/3/77)

  ‘… super to be rewarded, but even better to reward.’ (to Brock Van den Bogaerde 29/6/77)

  On submitting short stories to magazines: ‘All mine came back like roosting starlings.’ (to Nerine Selwood 9/8/77)

  On needing inspiration in order to write: ‘One just has to sweat things out until that damned Muse trolls past again dragging a trolly full of ideas.’ (to Norah Smallwood 10/11/77)

  On Snakes and Ladders: ‘ … all the people IN the book moved me on in life … the people NOT in did not.’ (to Norah Smallwood 28/1/78)

  On reaching chapter nine of A Gentle Occupation: ‘I’v got the lot of them on an airoplane and have a serious desire to crash it. Immediatly. With NO survivors.’ (to Norah Smallwood 1/2/79)

  On a thank-you letter from Princess Alexandra, who visited Clermont: ‘She really does want to come back. She thinks I have a simply “lovely Lav.”!’ (to Norah Smallwood 27/7/79)

  ‘I could no more fly to Australia than I could Hang-Glide.’ (to Norah Smallwood 6/8/79)

  ‘I think that writing is very difficult indeed […] I really do. Not, perhaps, as mentally exhausting as the Cinema (done properly!) but jolly nearly so.’ (to Norah Smallwood 12/8/79)

  On Iris Murdoch’s Booker Prize-winning novel, The Sea, The Sea: ‘I think it is an altogether “common” book.’ (to Norah Smallwood 12/8/79)

  On his performance in Permission to Kill: ‘I look like a cross between a turtle and Boris Karlof[f ] in “The Mummy”.’ (to David Frankham 22/8/79)

  ‘The vine has been stripped of grapes .. enough for 200 bottles of rosé. Which Daily Lady and her husband are about to start treading. One swift look at her feet and one stays with ones beer …’ (to Norah Smallwood 27/10/79)

  On the writing process: ‘Sometimes, if you passed the studio door here, you’d think that I was in need of a doctor or a strait-jacket: talking to myself, playing the scenes .. yelling oaths at the typewriter.’ (to Norah Smallwood 21/11/79)

  On John Gielgud’s An Actor and His Time (Sidgwick & Jackson): ‘ … what a pity that he always takes poor advice. Still, he may make a penny or two to help re-gild the pavilion which he inhabits and looks, to me, like a Hollywood version of Versailles. Done cheap.’ (to Norah Smallwood 27/11/79)

  ‘Fanny Craddock is a tiresome virago. But well intentioned as far as I am concerned.’ (to Norah Smallwood 27/11/79)

  On dieting: ‘Better be round and jolly than thin and dead.’ (to Susan Owens 29/12/79)

  On Cannes during the 1980 Film Festival: ‘it’s full of everyone you dont want to know or even remember … all looking older, uglier, meaner and fatter.’ (to David Frankham 5/6/80)

  ‘Bad manners I’ll not have from anyone.’ (to David Frankham, 18/8/80)

  ‘How I HATE picking olives. I always thought it was a rather Biblical thing to do; that you swung about in the sun with a bottle of wine and a straw hat and shovelled the little black berries into sacks … not a bit of it. Hands and knees, crawling among the prickles and last years long grass, if I have been idle enough not to cut it earlier … fingers frozen in the early frost, and knees wet from the bogs … and it takes hours to fill half a bucket, because you have to pick each one up individually and have a look at it to see the voles or rats have’n
t bitten off half.’ (to Susan Owens 25/11/80)

  ‘I am always nervous of people who “teach” writing or painting or even acting. Much is theory. And much is rubbish. If the rules are STRICTLY adheared to the “soul” goes out of the work.’ (to Nerine Selwood 24/2/81)

  On his writing: ‘I dont know what the hell I am doing half the time: I just sit at this machine and write. Could’nt tell you HOW! It happens.’ (to Nerine Selwood 24/2/81)

  ‘I am so sick of the British idea that every Frenchman wears a beret, smokes a Gitane, and walks about with a long loaf. They’ve come a long way since those days … further even than we have.’ (to Norah Smallwood (1/3/81)

  ‘I’m happiest in the silence I must confess .. but that makes one deadly dull!’ (to Nerine Selwood 8/6/81)

  ‘Actually I detest Autumn colours. Those beastly golds and russet tints … the angry purple of Michaelmas da[i]sies... and I DETEST all dahlias.’ (to Norah Smallwood 1/8/81)

  On Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers: ‘… it is a very good “read” .. and he is wonderfully over informative on everything from God to the back streets of Nice!’ (to Norah Smallwood 1/8/81)