This afternoon I worked with Bob Chetwyn on the play. Again I liked him very much and found him really intelligent in his comments and suggestions. It worries me a bit, though, that he now says that he doesn’t think he will do the other play—they are making too many conditions—and so he is now determined to push on with the casting of ours. Also, he added that he wished Don could be here when he hires an art director. So, suddenly, I begin to wonder if I shall leave on Wednesday, after all! Suppose Tom Courtenay unexpectedly says yes? And, even if I do go, how long will it be before Don and I have to come back here again?
April 25. More chilly rainstorms, and just now some thunder.
Supper with Tony Richardson last night was not a success. Tony was glum, and we courtiers—David, Peter, Neil, Bob and me— were too familiar and perhaps too attentive for his taste. I should never have let David persuade me to push myself in, especially as I am to go there tonight as well. I wouldn’t drink (which displeased Tony but has already got me back down to 154 pounds), and I felt dull. We went to an Indian restaurant (the Tandoori) and ate Tandoori chicken. Tony quite casually admitted that he has heard nothing from Albee yet and that Edward Bond’s Nijinsky script is useless.75 I couldn’t help hinting, very very discreetly, that I’d be happy to take a shot at it.
Afterwards we went to a queer pub, the Coleherne Arms, and obediently waited around in the huge pre-closing-time crowd, until our Leader, who was wearing a fringed leather jacket, decided that he would stick around for a while and perhaps collect another recruit. I was somewhat favorably impressed by the clients—nobody smashing, but lots of possibles. David was unwell; “I have a rotten headache,” he kept repeating, in dismay. Peter would have liked to go on the town.
Today I had lunch with [Marguerite and her companion] and with “Spider” Quennell76 (whom I quite like) at a little restaurant called Parkes on Beauchamp Place which Marguerite says has five stars and is one of the best in London—a place run by (I guess) queens. The food was certainly okay—but we merely had steak sandwiches. Marguerite says Ivan is back, and is off with Kate at some country house party; but she doesn’t believe there is a real reconciliation. Ivan looks very well and enjoyed himself in Spain and is inclined to think marriage is merely a habit and that maybe he has just broken himself of it. There was some discussion of his financial state; can he afford to leave Kate and just play around?
[Marguerite’s companion] seemed very pleased to see me, sorry I’m leaving England and altogether affectionate. He told a very curious story—how he heard two middle-aged Jewish business men (“They were Jewish,” [he] said, looking me in the eye and slightly underlining the word) in Fortnum and Mason’s, discussing the best way of travelling from Calais to Switzerland. This seemed ordinary enough, although they did it in great detail, showing off a lot of information about roads, hotels, etc. But then they discussed how best to travel from London to Eastbourne—disagreeing with each other in both cases. And then—one of them asked the other, “How would you get from here” (meaning their table in the tea room) “to your car?” and they discussed that!
April 26. More greyness and rain. I know that I shall have to leave before they have any spring here—so I’ll be doing the British a real service on Wednesday next.
Yesterday afternoon I went round to see Alexis Rassine. I’d resisted calling him simply because that infuriating old John [Lehmann] told me to, but really he is very pleasant to be with and I’m fond of him. A bald star of yesteryear in gracious and dignified retirement, with his old man’s face and his youthful well-made body, he is still sexy and by no means on the shelf—indeed he is planning to open a dance school of his own and already has backers to form a company which will take care of it as a business operation. He sipped bourbon and repeatedly tried to get me to join him. I stuffily refused, because of my efforts to lose those sinful pounds. (Was just below eleven stone this morning!) Alexis likes to talk about actresses, what was Garbo like when I knew her, etc. He had seen some beautiful legs from behind in a shop—and the lady turned and it was Marlene [Dietrich]! He had met Ava Gardner too, she looked “glamorous” but she drank a lot and her language was terrible. (He pronounced the name as “Arva” and, like nearly all the English, called Houston “Hooston.”) A big dog, referred to as “the Monster,” kept trotting in and out, wanting to be played with and fetching articles of clothing. Alexis brushed me up the right way by saying he thought A Meeting was one of the best of my books. I answered that John doesn’t think so; he much prefers the prewar ones, he once told me. Alexis protested. He also told me, “You never change—I always tell John you’re one of the indestructibles.” When we said goodbye, he kissed me warmly and I even think that, if I’d had that drink, a dissolve of ten minutes might have discovered us rolling naked on John’s double bed. It would have been sort of suitable and maybe a barrel of fun.
I went on to Tony Richardson’s, where I found Patrick Woodcock. We had had a little conspiracy about this, Patrick was to ask if he could come by for a drink—because there seemed no other chance of our meeting—and hope he would be asked to stay to supper. But he had never had the chance of talking to Tony, who was now upstairs resting.
Patrick was in a rather naughty-boy mood, rarin’ to get drunk because he wasn’t on call that evening. We immediately got onto the subject of dieting because I wouldn’t drink, and exchanged confessions of our gluttony. Patrick doesn’t eat any breakfast, but then he’s apt to break down and stuff himself with cakes and candy. Tony came in and found us giggling and, I think, suspected some conspiracy against his dictatorship, but he became gracious and held forth to Patrick about a theory he had formed last night in the Indian restaurant—after looking through David Hockney’s glasses he decided that they filter out color, and that this is why David’s colors are so “cool.” Tony also talked of his terror of blindness. And of his untidiness; he simply refuses to put his clothes away, just throws them on the floor, because “life is too full of things to do.”
Then the two other guests came in, [. . .] Billy McCarty [and a friend]. They both seemed to know me or Don or both, I couldn’t quite be sure. [The friend] is a very good-looking oldish youngish man with a slim strong figure, conservatively dressed. Billy McCarty is a decorator, pretty but not very, extremely tall, with a messy physique, skinny with a belly on him, hips too wide, wretched arms, no torso—dressed in a white sweater with a big fancy belt. However he melted me by praising Don’s show—he had been out there when it opened, visiting the Duquettes. And he was jetting over to New York tomorrow to take on some extremely chic job; he’s an American who lives in London but earns his money in the States.77
Tony talked amusingly of his awful experiences, years ago, when they took Look Back in Anger to Moscow and were at first treated like mud, given no transportation and almost nothing to eat—with the food served hours after it had been ordered—and then, much too late, when the bureaucratic machine had at last registered the fact they were VIPs, given the red carpet and the grandest suite in the biggest hotel and “the best table” in the restaurant—which was right under a blaring band!
[Billy’s friend], who seemed to be an authority on such matters, told us that, for a tourist, Stockholm is the most expensive city in the world.
Billy then began bragging about his girlfriends, including a man who’d had a sex-change operation. “Has she a proper cunt?” Patrick asked. “Oh yes,” said Billy, “I know, because I’ve fucked her.” “Has she a clitoris?” I asked. “Well no—no, not exactly,” Billy admitted. “Thank you,” I said, “the case for the Crown rests.” Patrick, now quite fairly drunk, drove me home. He denounced [Billy and his friend]; they were ruthless spongers. Billy would latch on to anyone of either sex, if he or she was rich. They had both been living in Tony’s house and had without doubt got money out of him. “Aren’t I a shit?” said Patrick, repenting. “Tell Don I’m still a shit.” “He doesn’t think you’re a shit.” “Oh,” said Patrick, as we hugged each other goodbye, �
��Don knows me very well indeed.”
A talk with Jean Cockburn on the phone, this morning. She says it’s quite untrue that the journalists got her to go to a performance of Cabaret and meet Judi Dench; she refused to do so. She thinks it was Claud Cockburn who gave her away. But she says that Claud’s son (by his present wife) who is now in college is often asked if Sally Bowles is his mother!78 She told me that Sarah had liked me and said I was “very self-contained and quick on the uptake” and that she’d asked Jean, “Was he always like that?”
This morning, some facts of life. Norman Prouting came down to talk about the amount he calculates I owe for telephone, heating, gas. We decided on $200, to be adjusted later, if too much or too little. This seems to me conservative, considering all those phone calls. What I do begrudge are the $173 I shall have paid out for the largely unneeded services of Mrs. Gee. This means that the (not quite) eleven weeks I shall have spent in this apartment will have cost me about $34 a week. Well—and suppose I’d lived in a hotel? Don’t be such a miser, Dub.
Also talked on the phone to Dodie. She told me that (as I already knew) she’d met [Don’s friend] and had told him I’d told her he didn’t like our play. He had denied this strongly—and had repeated this story about having been shown it by Don “in the middle of the night” (who but a born mischief-maker would say that?) and how he’d had no chance to consider it properly. But that didn’t stop him writing me that idiot letter, suggesting that it should be given as a sort of dramatic reading. Dodie thinks that he was a bit shaken because she had praised it so much in his presence.
Nearly midnight. Have spent the latter part of the afternoon talking to Bob Chetwyn about the staging of the play. Then I took him and Howard Schuman out to supper at The Hungry Horse, where we found ourselves next to Tom Courtenay, who recognized me at once; I didn’t recognize him, he had a beard. So, at the end of the meal, Courtenay told me he’d heard his agents had a play of mine for him to read—this after we’d been told he’d been reading it for the past week! He vowed to get to it at once.
The relationship between Chetwyn and Howard is now clear. Howard giggled when offered treacle tart, saying Bob had told him to take off ten pounds. And, snooping along their bookshelves, I opened an edition of Donne and found it inscribed to Bob, “The reason for this is explained by the great Donne on page nine, H.” The poem on page 9 was, “For God’s sake hold your tongue and let me love.”79
April 27. This from Dicky Buckle’s Sunday Times article on the Polish Mime theater’s ballet program at Sadler’s Wells: “There are four outstanding performers . . . Stefan Niedzialkowski, the blond shepherd boy, whose little nose might cause a Trojan war, and whom I should confess to being a little in love with if I were not afraid to embarrass my grandchildren.” I’m going to see them tomorrow night, if possible, with Bob Chetwyn and Howard.
A sad letter this morning from Harry Heckford. He really hasn’t a chance of getting his book published, I fear—must call Cullen a bit later to find out about this—and now he needs money to take a degree at the University of Liverpool. Do I know of an American scholarship which could help him?
April 28. Today it’s a “beautiful” morning, but I don’t trust it. This foul climate will probably assert itself as we drive to Cambridge. Bob [Regester] is coming to pick me up in about an hour, and we’re to see Morgan and I hope Bob Buckingham, who wrote me he was coming down today.
David (who, like all of us, has the defects of his virtues and simply can’t understand why we friends shouldn’t want to get together in any conceivable combination at any time) has wished Peter on to us as a passenger; he isn’t able to come himself. I don’t feel this matters as far as Morgan is concerned; he likes bright eyes and bushy tails around him, as I do. But Bob Regester may well resent it, and by the worst of luck his phone is out of order this morning so I can’t reach him and explain. Bob may well want to be alone with me to talk about his domestic situation. While he was at Le Nid de Duc, after most of us had left, he went down one evening into St. Tropez alone and met a French-American boy named Barry and this was a very big thing. Bob says he’s never had such absolutely mutually perfect sex in his life, and of course Barry is already getting a bit possessive and starting to influence him. Barry doesn’t like hippie clothes and long hair, so Bob is going to cut his hair and shave off his moustache and dress more conservatively. (He took me to a wholesale warehouse where they sell the latest in way-out shirts and pants, and it was amusing that he bought exactly the same more or less sober things I’d picked out for Don!) Neil objects to all this, strenuously, though he is trying hard to be reasonable. (My remarks to him the other day seem to have made an impression.) However, the other night, he announced that he was bringing a boy back to the house. (N.B.: It is the injured party who always behaves worse than the other!) So Bob, hurt by this proposed violation of the sanctity of the home, said he’d spend the night with a (non-sex) friend. And then of course Neil wouldn’t go through with it, which merely made Bob angry.
During our time together, we passed Cranley Mansion (It is still Mansion, not Mansions) and got out to look at it. It’s a very well-preserved tall brick building with nicely designed ironwork on its balconies (flowers in, maybe, the manner of William Morris). I noticed that the balcony rails were rather low and not very massive—so no wonder Frank felt vertigo while standing by them.80
Had lunch with Nick Furbank, who brought me a (very poor) xerox copy of Forster’s story about the lovers on the ship.81 He is a strange pallid sly little thing and I imagine he’s expert at winkling information for his Forster book out of his informants. From me he got a memory of the Spanish Civil War period—how, when everyone was planning to go out to Spain and showing off a bit, Morgan was asked, “Why don’t you come?” and he answered, quite simply, “Afraid to.”
Nick wanted to know how intimate Wystan had been with Morgan. I said not very, and added that Wystan has always found it difficult to be intimate—he’s shy in that way. Even this little confidence I somehow regretted as soon as I’d made it. But perhaps I’m being unfair to Nick.
Dicky Buckle told me that David Hockney likes Don’s paintings far more than his drawings—says they’re so much freer and more original. I went out with him last night to the ballet; it was Giselle—with its They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?82 scene at the end of it.*
Dicky had an art student with him named Ian Lewis, a brown-eyed tall boy with heavy cheeks and shoulder-length hair (nearly) who was quite pleasant but rather stupid-looking, like a dull girl. (Actually I don’t believe he is dull at all. Probably Dicky reduces him to silence by his ill-advised showing off, he parades his literary and artistic knowledge but never really tries to entertain Ian on Ian’s own terms as he should—for he claims to be in love with him.)
Later we had a quite horrid snack of scrambled eggs and tepid mini hot dogs at the flat of Dicky’s secretary, David [Dougill]83 and his friend Richard Davi[e]s.84 I didn’t mind the scantiness of the snack, however, for it was all in aid of my dieting—am now almost down to 152 again. And the boys are both bright and friendly. (Don thought David Dougill would be a nice playmate for me while he was away; and David is indeed the kind of playmate that someone’s lover would pick for him under such circumstances! He’s adequately nice-looking but just quite hopelessly un attractive.)
The boys are late; it’s ten to ten. Have just talked to Neil on the phone. He is a bit mournful. Said the older he gets the more he hates to be alone.*
April 29. Again a “beautiful” morning, like yesterday which ended in rain however. But we did have a fine drive. Bob didn’t mind having Peter along and Peter was as sweet as usual. He admitted he had sulked during their weekend with Cecil Beaton. Cecil, he said, always treats him as the boyfriend of the great painter, and when Cecil was photographing David he made Peter stand a few paces into the background. Dicky Buckle and Ian Lewis had been there for a meal. Cecil had described Ian as having “a Brontë face,” which I find a quite brill
iant, if flattering, description.
At Cambridge were Mark Lancaster, Richard Le Page, Richard Shone (whom I met with Nancy Ackerley on March 19) and a tall dark boy with beautiful blue eyes named Paul Wheeler. He is a singer, who composes his own songs. Richard Le Page is maybe stuck on him. Anyhow they are planning to come out to Los Angeles together, when Richard lectures at UCLA later this year. Paul hopes to earn money singing.
Of course the boys wanted to see Morgan, but they obviously couldn’t sit round him for hours. So I arranged it that they came in to get me, just before 4:00, when we had to drive back to London and Morgan had to go out to tea with an Indian.
Nick Furbank had told me he was sad, and Morgan told me so too; he admitted to being sad and lonely and said he hoped he’d “go” soon. I asked him why he was sad and he said he felt “so empty.” He kept repeating, “There’s nothing new in this room,” and, “I’ve got nothing to show you.” But he also repeated, “I’ve had such a nice sleep, I feel so comfortable,” and he showed me how he napped on his lopsided broken-down sofa (quite a feat) with one foot on the floor, a sort of sidesaddle position which prevents him from rolling off. I sat down on the floor beside him and tried to reassure him that I didn’t have to be entertained; but the problem wasn’t so easily solved. We are simply in different predicaments. “We perish, each alone,”85 is too melodramatic for this case, but, let’s say, we are both awfully busy being ninety-one and sixty-five respectively.
Morgan was pleased when I told him how much I like his story about the lovers on the ship. And he was perfectly aware that Howards End has just been performed on T.V., though he hadn’t seen it. Indeed, as when I saw him last, he seemed well aware of everything, and the boys, when they came in, found him much more alert and generally in better shape than they’d expected. Bob said later that Morgan laughed at me, when I was switching off the electric fire for him, “As if you were the village idiot.” I do clown for him a lot—that’s largely my nervousness.
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