Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters Read online

  I expect that all sounds a bit soppy me sitting on a hill in France and not being in a lovely lane near Cockshott! But I do KNOW, I have been there myself … and I have never been surer. For me, at any rate.

  I think, to change the subject rapidly, that you had better switch off the Telly when that Tome Browns Thing4 comes on … you might just start having fantasies, like Daisy .... she is, by the way, all beautifully unswelled .. by that I mean her Dorothy Perkins Bra is no longer needed, and apart from constantly mounting Labbo, who resents it in a bewildered sort of way, she is as normal as any Bitch today … but alas! Off to the Nunnery in a month … but this time, when she goes, I think we’ll let Labbo have a weeks hols with her … Very likely the result will be tears, not to say Shaggy Dogs .. but they do like one another very much .. and I think that he can JUST reach her … which is useful … because they dont do what we do and lie about being Missionaries ..... Incidentally we found a Filthy Shop in Cannes the other day … full of erotica … Tote was livid that I would’nt go in but I had been reckergnized, as one say[s], and it’s too much being asked ones opinion of Death In Venice and Thomas Mann while one is fingering through packets of ladies and ladies and gentlemen and gentlemen and ladies and goats and packets of Spanish Fly. So I refused. But we were rather intrigued to find a packet, no larger than a Kellogs Corn Flake Box which contained a proper life sized Lady you could ‘inflate’ … and who would ‘Service you happily ..’ and could be dressed in pants and bra. and sit beside you in your car! ‘Surprise Your Neighbours!’ the packet cried!

  Surprise a good deal more than the neighbours I’d say … and she was’nt a bit expensive. 89 francs 50: Well … without the pump.

  The Attenboroughs, you probably know by now, are our neighbours in the little house next door … plus four hectars … they had to pay through the nose … within a few shillings of what I paid for this .... and they have everything to do … water, light, loos re-building .... but they fell so deeply in love with it that nothing could disuade them [ … T]heir happiness was super. And she has been here for a week or two at a time measuring, planning, cutting grass, and so on … Better for us than building plots which it was almost about to become … and I really could not afford the lolly .... so we have bought a million bamboo plants … and as soon as it is certain, I’ll be planting along the boundry like a Green Giant.

  Really; Totes Hoover is boring the shit out of me … it drones along like a bad actor playing Malvolio … and so I’ll stop now. You probably have’nt got this before Christmas .. but if you have … I hope [it] is gloriously lovely and good [ … ] and that you have the greatest happiness in the year to come.

  Of course you WILL … IF you come back to Clermont and suffer the creaking board … not to mention the creaking bed … and all the other things which await you … including the Cowshed .. the new diningroom floor … great black and white tiles which make it look like a Vermeer interior a bit … and of course Daisy and her probable family … all looking for Ratty. Ratty, I may add, is Back! At least another Ratty … just as silly as the last one.

  […] All love … always … as ever from Tote-The-Hoover

  and

  Dirk

  To Penelope Mortimer Clermont

  January 21st. [1972] Friday. In The Morning. In bed –

  Dear Tugger-Of-Heads. Please dont anymore … you’ll have nothing left on your head to put your hat on … and then how shall I know you at the airport? (I’ll be wearing a red velvet turban I bought in the Portabello Road. And Carrying ‘The Statesman.’) I mean, I dont think I have ever actually laid my eyes on you have I? Except for those Dorothy Wilding snaps on your dustjackets. Know the problem? I wish I could spell and punctuate like you do; it’s lovely .... but I cant, so you’ll have to go dotty with the dots .... I’m ILL. (That should be a New Paragraph.) Not seriously ill, I hope, an intestinal bug got, I believe, from a left over chicken liver which Marie chopped into a Rissotto last week and which sent me into a series of explosions and convulsions from which I seem not able to recover. A week is enough … so yesterday, wan, holloweyed, and aching in every limb … and the workmen retiling the bit of the roof immediatly over my bed … I called Dr Poteau who is from the Pas de Calais and does’nt care for any shit … Liquid Diet I’m on … (forgive the unintended pun) … and desertspoons of charcoal and antibiotics and bottles and bottles of a filthy tastless water called ‘Contrex’ which comes from a spring in the Vosges where it could quite happily remain. And nothing to drink like lovely Brandy or Champs or even a Kronenbourg. Fuck it; it is boring … and I do feel mouldy. Not to say weak.

  [ … ] It was lovely that you liked me in ‘ICGOS’1 … JUST the sort of fellow I would like to be if I could … actually I am nearer Barret in the ‘Servant’ which was why it was so easy to do him .... people dont realise. Never mind. However I have’nt got a trilby hat … so cant wear that … but do have a certain moment when I can generate white hot rage. (I remember, you see.) But would’nt do that to you. Ever. But God! That [ICGOS] was a hell of a film. Five attempts at suicide in the seven weeks we shot together … and when I had finished my work … she left the movie and flew home to L.A. And we had four more weeks to do ..... with a double … and the awful thing was that I loved her terribly. And she, alas, me .... but thats another story. The very last scene in the thing, which runs eight minutes, I wrote especially for her. We sat in her trailer for six hours and rehearsed every line, tear, and move … and Mr Neame had the full grace to tell the Press that he had just put up a camera and ‘let her be Spontanious’. Shit!! I corrected that impression in public at a recent NFT thing I had to do and showd the clip to 2,000 kids in an audience who had hardly heard of her, and who, at the end, sat stunned with silence, except for sobs and sniffling, and THEN the thunder broke … and I wished, oh! how much I wished, that she could have been there to hear it. She always thought that ‘she would be found out’ for not being able to act ..... oh the secret miseries.

  New paragraph. Why bore you with all that? It’s all over and done .. I suppose my beloved monster is not even dust now. Ah yes .... possibly dust.

  Alas no possibility of a 78 Show … but goodness what a collection you got! I remember, I remember … L. and J.1 singing ‘My Baby Went Away And She did’nt Say Why’ on a punt in, of all Places, Twickenham .. and my Father and Mother doing the charlston on the lock at Boulters … with their chums … to ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ .. (I believe I was fishing for a dead roach) … Summer days of infinate happiness … No 78 possibilities here but masses of Gertie and Bea and Noel … and Conversation Piece and ‘Someday I’ll Find you’ … and Jessie Mathews and ‘Evergreen’ and, if you really like madness, Melbas’ Farewell at Covent Garden in 1926 and Lillie Elsie Gertie Millar (!) singing ‘Chalk Farm To Camberwell Green’ … so if we find that we cant talk to each other we can put records on and cry for our various memories. I know, almost by heart, the Noel bit … is’nt that odd … and the final toast from ‘Cavalcade’ which still makes me blub .... but then I blubbed at Katie Kendall too .... so.

  My Americain lady2 is miserable that I wont meet her or speak to her … on the phone I mean .. but that would destroy all … this way it is lovely and uncomplicated and we have glorious ‘images’ of each other which would be shattered in seconds like Baccaret Glass. You and I are different. We know too much about each other in a way … and of course simply NOTHING in another. But it’s fun this way. I mean if you had’nt had that idea about Miss D. you would’nt have written, would you? And I would only know you as the lady whose books I could never get to film .... ‘Daddy’s Gone’ I think I loved best .... and oddly I wanted to do a directing job on that … not play in it … I just sort of felt the tug of odd recognitions which I felt sure that I could film … however. Another time, as they say. And dont, as you say, be ‘terrified’ when we do meet … pretend that you are coming to ‘do’ an interview … it wont seem so awful then .... I’ll tell you all about making ‘Death In Venice’ and
how ill it made me … and how I did’nt do ‘Sunday Bloody’ and how I have been asked to play opposite a Baby Elephant in a sickening bit of G. Durrell … and how I make lampshades, cook coq au vin, Keep My Image … my Fathers name … my ambitions for the Future. And why I did’nt marry Capucine. I mean, if you have all those things in your mind we can get rid of a super little evening: you’ll feel no pain, except when your tape recorder goes on the blink … they always do .... and I’ll be solicitious and help you to mend it and we’ll smile a lot, and I’ll offer you Framboise on a walk round the Grounds to ‘get’ the feeling ..... oh!Penneylope … you know the kind of crap!

  [ … ] I watched my Telly last night with a wan face … and saw all of ‘The Dam Busters’3 in French with the unspeakable Redgrave and Two Inch Todd … what a tatty film about a quite marvellous act. Afterwards, as is the habit in France, there was a two hour discussion with three survivors .. Barns Wallis … and the German team. Who clearly pointed out that the whole operation was a complete wast of time … it did’nt do a jot of good. Typical […] I bet [Kenneth] Tynan would’nt believe that … as infact he did’nt believe a word I told him, drunkenly, one night in Rome about Belsen … with sheer and utter disbelief he kept repeating .. ‘I never read that …’ or ‘It’s not in the Roper book’1 or something like it … and I nearly took a swipe at the pink tinted stuttering wet lipped face but Kath was beside me nursing her hepatitis .... so I did’nt.

  Pissing with rain outside .. they have finished the roof … and I hear Marie clambering up with my cup of vegetable boullion .... horrid. I must go. And will contact you as soon as all is well … or plans have changed or not.…

  No ‘ifs’ ...

  but empty stomached love

  from

  D.D.D.2

  Forgive all the Faults – its this bug bit –

  Love

  D

  To Penelope Mortimer Clermont

  January 26th … 27th .. not sure [1972]

  Christ! You found me out … that letter about the Petersfield-Trip and that Agonizing Decca.3 God! I really thought that that had faded into oblivion. [ … ] Me breathing heavily with a close mike and No Rehearsal. Too awful to contemplate. I think it probably sold five copies in ten years and is one of the Collectors Of Kitsch Editions, if you know what I mean […] You caught me with my knickers down … and I cant help that really because I did’nt know that anyone was going to open the door.

  Rome. Wowie! Rome was smash-ville ..... sometime ago I got a book4 ... least said soonest mended. So no title. Rather super book to be made with Ken Russellll. I said ‘No’ to that but suggested J. Losey would be super and that I would be happy, nay! most happy to do it thus. Time passes. Rome arrives. Dinner with Losey and Patreecia, in that aching palazzo-apartment. Candles gleaming … spaghetti drying in bowls … Vodka brimming in chilled glasses … various children about, in Portugese and Italian … no fire, the thing smokes, so a Japanese lantern in the hearth and barbaric hides scattered all over the bits and pieces. And a pretty Lasilo … (or is it Lazilo)1 portrait of the owners (Duc de Grammont naturally. Funny how the left of left curl up in the aristocratic houses.) late wife.

  Anyway. Dinner went on .. fitfully on account of children wanting Italian ‘Glasses of water’ … and vodka flowed .. not me … I’m brandy … and lots of talk about the ‘Trotsky’ film … and the problems with an Actor (?) and so on and then on to detailed examination of ‘the book’ which I had sent for selection … masterful talk. Brimming with ideas and suggestions and feelings … but, oddly (at least I felt oddly) not a word about me.

  I never seemed to be in the subject at all. I thought it might be forgetfulness .. or just that perhaps I should ‘take it for granted’ that we were discussing ‘my’ subject. But alas! It was another Actor Mr Losey had in mind. Not I. So the evening, from my point of view, not his ... he was supremely ignorant, I presume, of anything unusual ..... suddenly became a morseau Jokey. I realised that the Trotsky Actor who had been so bitterly discussed was now in the ‘book’! Huge Box Office even if he cannot act .... so: home I went in the wet Roman night … to the telephone to the American Agent who had ‘done’ the deal .. with questions and controlled rage … to find out that he had known for five days that ‘the Actor’ was going to do it .. and had never told me. So fired him there and then and hung up, and lay back on the bed and wondered what in hell one did now. And so gave an enormous dinner party next night for Losey and Patricia and Romey Schnider and an actor called Helmut Greim .. (The Schofield of W. Germany. I ask you!) and one or two others who were as pretty or prettier … and it cost a bomb, and it was all splendidly catered at El Tula … and Losey was in Agony because by this time he knew, because I had told him, and could’nt quite place the Englishness of the evening .. the good face and behaviour and the worldly-wise not-talking-about-anything-nasty-at-dinner. The Americans from the Mid West are still terrifyingly childish even after twenty years of European Exposure.

  Anyway … end of histoire. Kissed them all on the pavement and sped off in the biggest black Mercedes you have ever, or I, seen! And that … really and truly .. is basta. Now I am sacking the English Agents … because they are Cunts too … and wail and squeal and never tell the truth. Why! Why in the name of God, cannot people have the full courage to tell the truth, even if it is unpalatable? I dont know. Anyway … I got home yesterday with not a Roman Mushroom insight … a better gut than before … and a bottle of champagne inside me … and found your letter about the Decca .. and the book.2 So to bed with that … and the first two chapters rather gobbled up … and loved! But anyway I DO KNOW your work … so I’m not one to hurl away from you with looks of wide eyed dislike or dis-belief … and you see, you are funny. Horribly, flintily, sideswipingly, funny. OH! God! One can see so clearly how some people wince and dont think it’s funny! So easily.

  [ … ] I protest! I was NOT bitchy about T.C.1 I adore him and have far too much respect for his work … I just wish that he would support Football less and himself more. Mai Zetterling.2 Oh! Lor! … those years ago when she was a dainty, Miss Sweedish-Vice and we did a play together … grubby, tiresome … rather marvellous in the play I thought … and then meeting her in L.A a couple of years ago .. agressive, plump … bursting out of tired brown leather with a face like a pumpkin and an abrasive laugh and that poor husband3 … Goodness me today. How we change.

  Am I one up on you now? I think possibly yes … a Roman Postcard from me .. and this, and are you coming to play with me? I’v seen your new ‘Dorothy Wilding’ with the short flecked hair … and anteater eagerness … so you neede’nt wear the red hat or carry the Statesman. What a silly letter this is. Unnerved by Decca. Apprehensive, Antibes.

  To Penelope Mortimer Clermont

  11 February 1972

  Motram dear –

  It rains. God! How it rains … a flat grey light, a mist hanging down to the grass like Miss Havershams Weddingdress … ragged, tattered, drifting … still. Swallowing all before and behind it … dense. Miserable. And I have a depression, with a capital D, which one (you) could carve with an axe. Just a depression. Depression. Too wet to pick olives … or prune the vine or start tidying up the geraniums in the pots … too wet to haul a mower over the terraces … walls suddenly sag, and tumble into the sodden grass, spewing tones of earth and stones into sullen heaps .. lying like giant marbles lost from a far-away Giants game … abandoned. Forgotten.

  The pond is rushing water in great runnels … tumbling in a sort of foam which reminds me of a melted Milky-Way or a Mars Bar … and I loath it all.

  It has rained since you left actually: not from sentiment or anything … just because it is the rainy season, so they say, and you were lucky to miss this part! At least there was a bit of sun to sip a Bloddy M. in .. was’nt there?

  [ … ] Gave Marie and Henri the two days off … and now am enraged to trail about the place and find all the silly little things which they have’nt done … oh! shit! What the hell.


  Pause. A telephone call from New York … (The outside world does really exist.) to ask if they, the Agents, could represent me ‘world wide’. Feeling as I do .. a bit like Margaret Drabble in a swamp, if you know what I mean, I said that I was un-saleable and had had enough misery. We talked for a length of time … they paid the call natch .. and I said ‘If you want me, find me something by tonight.’ And rang offish … We’ll see.

  Forwood has just dropped a gas cylinder on his already broken foot. Daisy was sick on a bone and I have cleaned it up with a bit of Nice Matin and stuck it on the fire … where it sizzled in a filthy way.

  It was nice to see you. Funny shaky-handed-lady … wondering how to cope with utter strangers .. and voluable too … and doing it marvellously easily. Clever you. I think you are so brave .. I’d hate to have to fly to Nice to see the other half of a rather unlikely combination … and then flit off to Crooked Mile and see the other1 .. and wonder if there is a joining … and having to put up with the Motel and it’s deathly still rubber tree and almost-too-punctual-breakfasts.

  Next time you’ll go into the village Pub .. much better for you and you’d like it .. but how was one to know? Perhaps you would rather have had the Crillon .. or a Caravan … one had no idea … books dont give you away any more than Acting for the screen does … it’s strange is’nt it? And lovely new discoveries are made .. gold is washed from mud they say … it’s a super feeling to have found myself a nugget.

  […] Should be writing to My Lady in Connecticut … but cant really get down to facing the correctness of the letter … it cant quite be like this one … not for absolutely real … sort of ‘edited’ … although none the less warm. But she is a different Lady. I think. Have’nt ever met her .... but I just thought I’d bash off to you. Tar-ra.