The Richard Burton Diaries (66 page)

But about the evening of the film and gala. It was an outstanding success and the Press coverage was enormous. The film is widely praised and apart from a carp or two in the
Herald Tribune
and one French paper – not very important – the critical reaction was joyous. E wore a diadem specially created for her by the De Beers company of Van Cleef and Arpel, designed by Alexandre, which cost $1,200,000. With her other jewellery she wore a total of roughly $1,500,000. When we left the hotel, surrounded by 8 guards, all the hotel guests were forming an aisle to the street. There were many photographers but at the Opera it was a madhouse. Despite the presence of 5 ministers of the Government, one of whom gave us a message purporting to come from De Gaulle himself, and numerous luminaries of the cinema, stage, and society and the arts E was unquestionably the Queen of the evening.
¹³⁶
They hardly ever photographed anyone else. I did quite well too and the flattery we were subjected to was very rich and heady. It however, I hope, has not gone to our heads. It was nevertheless sweet revenge for the social ostracism we endured such a relatively little time ago.

Later, worn out by the excitement [...] we fled with a few friends, Jacqueline de Ribes and husband, Curt Jurgens and wife, two Rothschilds etc. to the hotel where we had a few jars and talked (me) a great deal.
¹³⁷

We flew back on ‘our’ jet in 1.35 minutes and worked through the night though I finished by midnight but stayed up anyway.

OCTOBER

Sunday 1st, Capo Caccia
We slept ‘till noon while B. Wilson, Ron B and Gaston together with Bob's girl, Judy Hastings, flew in the jet to Nice to try and persuade the idiot chef to give up Sianni. After ten fruitless [...] hours arguing and cajoling and threatening – the Police joining in – they gave up. Now I will have to depose and it looks as if the man and his poor wife will go to prison. He has made us both so angry that I feel as if I could strangle him with my bare hands.

We sat in the sun in the afternoon and took Norma and David for a run in the speedboat which I nearly crashed on the way back against the
Kalizma
putting the Riva accidentally into reverse. [...]

Friday 20th, Capo Caccia
We flew in the 125 to Oxford last Friday landing, by special permission, at Abingdon and went straight to ‘The Bear’ at Woodstock.
¹³⁸
We were nerve-racked and nightmared at the prospect of
48 hours of solid public exposure. On Saturday we televised with D. Lewin, Alexander Walker, [...] N. Coghill, Lord D. Cecil, and a Professor Rosenberg of Berkeley California.
¹³⁹
The scholars were fine but the journalists, especially D. Lewin, were quite silly and shaming – on and off TV. Cecil was a joy and both E and I quite fell in love with him. He is the best kind of well-bred eccentric, sane, compassionate but acerbic brilliant maiden aunt – though married and clearly male. Nevill said, upon being asked on TV, that E would have made a fine scholar because she was among ‘the most intelligent creatures he'd ever met’ and was paradoxically ‘an instinctive intellectual.’ So there. He said that I was among the three greatest Welshmen he'd known, the other two being Dylan and David (
In Parenthesis
) Jones. He didn't realize – and I didn't correct him – that Jones is a Cockney.
¹⁴⁰

At lunch afterwards at Merton College D. Lewin, quite sober, further disgraced himself. His mind is poverty stricken, and rises only to the lowest levels of the
Daily Mail
, and nevertheless, fool rushing in, he dared to cross scholarly swords with Professors Coghill, Cecil and Rosenberg all of whom treated him with icy politeness. Once or twice his presumptive idiocy drew Nevill to the edge of open anger but like the near-saint that he is he drew back. Not so E. She let him have it with both barrels, both there and on TV. She became almost inarticulate with fury and malapropized freely.

On Sunday morning I read poetry at the Union with Wystan Auden. He read a great deal of his own poetry including his poems to Coghill and MacNeice.
¹⁴¹
Both very fine conversation pieces I thought but read in that peculiar sing-song tonelessness colourless way that most poets have. I remember Yeats and Eliot and MacLeish, who read their most evocative poems with such monotony as to stun the brain. Only Dylan could read his own stuff. Auden has a remarkable face and an equally remarkable intelligence but I fancy, though his poetry like all true poetry is all embracingly and astringently universal, his private conceit is monumental. The standing ovation I got with the ‘Boast of Dai’ of D. Jones
In Parenthesis
left a look on his seamed face, riven with a ghastly smile, that was compact of surprise, malice and envy. Afterwards he said to me ‘How can you, where did you, how did you learn to speak with a Cockney accent?’ In the whole piece of some 300 lines only about 5 are in Cockney. He is not a nice man but then only one poet have I ever met was – Archie Macleish.
¹⁴²
Dylan was uncomfortable unless he was semi-drunk and ‘on’. MacNeice was no longer a poet when I got to know him and was
permanently drunk. Eliot was clerically cut with a vengeance. The only nice poets I've ever met were bad poets and a bad poet is not a poet at all – ergo I've never met a nice poet. That may include Macleish. For instance R. S. Thomas is a true minor poet but I'd rather share my journey to the other life with somebody more congenial. I think the last tight smile that he allowed to grimace his features was at the age of six when he realized with delight that death was inevitable. He has consigned his wife to hell for a long time. She will recognize it when she goes there.
¹⁴³

And so to Sunday evening and the opening of
Faustus
. It rained like mad, as usual in that splendid climate, and there were lots of people outside the theatre in macs and under umbrellas who applauded etc. A nurse, it was a charity performance for the Nuffield Hospital, and therefore a nurse, presented E with a bouquet of flowers and if you please curtsied.
¹⁴⁴
E and I were delighted. I met Quintin Hogg and thinking him to be Boothby asked him ‘Where is your Sardinian wife.‘
¹⁴⁵
He replied that he was not Boothby. I recovered fast, told him I was pulling his leg and asked ‘Why aren't you the leader of the Tory Party?’ He: ‘They had their chance in 1963 and lost it. Now I'm too old at 59.’ Me: ‘Winston didn't become PM ‘til he was 65–66.’ He: ‘Hmm.’

The Duke and Duchess of Kent arrived and were all presented.
¹⁴⁶
The Duchess is adorable and both E and I loved her. She was frantically nervous as we all were but she showed it in close-up. Muscles twitched uncontrollably around her mouth. He was shy. The show went alright.

The party afterwards was alright but exhausting – between us we must have met a 1000 people. Incidentally when we entered the theatre we were greeted by a fanfare of trumpets, then silence as we took our seats and then another fanfare for the D and Duch of Kent. I record that because it shows the idiocy of fame. 5 years ago we'd have had a fanfare of raspberries. If we were lucky.

[...] Ken Tynan came up from London to discuss the Churchill play
The Soldiers
.
¹⁴⁷
Will write about that later.

The weather was dreadful and made me feel that I never wish to see England again. [...] Don't think out of choice that I would live in England again even if they paid me to.

Am in a violent temper. E, as usual, has to combat everything I do or say in front of the children. I wish to Christ she'd not contradict me in front of them and wish likewise that I didn't do likewise. But it's the status quo. I'd best shut up.

Saturday 21st, Alghero
Bettina and a friend Jorgen Wigmoller (?) stayed with us for two day.
¹⁴⁸
She is of course enchanting as ever and very giggly and, despite aging, essentially feminine. He is slim and Danish blond and is I'm afraid a little boring. Largely the latter because he doesn't have the capacity to listen. I also suspect that he's a nose ahead in the white-lying selling plate. [...]

Ivor and Gwen and the two girls are with us on the boat and today – J. Losey being ill and therefore no work – we sailed to Alghero. [...] We sat around endlessly talking of this and that – mostly about Kate and Sybil. At one point Ivor reached into the depths of his bowels and brought out a cosmic fart that shattered the eardrums. E was delighted and tried to respond but her netherhand [
sic
] was not talking.

[...] It's pleasant to sit around on the boat and remember with infinite nostalgia the days when a penny was a penny was a penny, and a green cap with a badge on it and membership of the secondary school was the height of human felicity. And selling papers, dung, blackberries, winberries, dewberries was almost the sum-total of one's life. How I remember that green sweater, that stinking green sweater. And the names of the houses on the way to school are like a roll-call of the dead. ‘Pleasant View’ for instance had a view of an exactly similar house in Abbey Road called ‘Rest Bay’ and ‘Sans Souci’ was a very careful house. And so now to Church and the mumbo-jumbo of Latin imperfectly spoken. And an obeisance to little Liza who bought, out of her allowance, a quite expensive present for Maria – our new Anglo-Welsh stewardess – and the conversation went like this:

Now you can't hardly be better than that.

NOVEMBER

Tuesday 7th, Grand Hotel, Rome
Two weeks since I wrote during which time we finished the film in Alghero on Sunday morning the 22 October and sailed
to Costa Smeralda about 11am.
¹⁴⁹
[...] We arrived at dusk and, nobody quite knowing whether we had the right landfall, waited for a sign. It came we thought and hoped from a car which flashed its headlights on and off [...]. We lowered the
Riva
and crept slowly through the water to the shore. It was Jorgen with a Fiat. Sent Alberto and Raphael back to the boat to get E and Gwen (and the girls) and went in Jorgen's car to Bettina's house.
¹⁵⁰
It is lovely and open – except the bedrooms a bit cramped and monastic for my liking – in the living room; a sunbathing roof, several acres of land, a lovely patio, log fireplace and a floor made of log sections set into some sort of stone. A private beach with a small jetty and a fishing boat (converted). Blissful place. We ate well, beef and chips and braised onions and local wine. All immensely pleasant. Bettina is a dear woman.

We decided to stay in the bay (I believe it's called Liscia di Vacco – the place? of the cows) overnight and set sail tomorrow.
¹⁵¹
This after I'd talked with J. Heyman producer.

[...] We dine tonight with the Israeli Ambassador to Rome – Ehud Avriel – and his wife. He is, according to Bill Pepper –
Newsweek
correspondent in Rome – ‘the wisest man in Israel, much cleverer than the PM or Foreign Secretary.
¹⁵²
Was ambassador-at-large in Africa and formulated Israeli policy there. Formerly Ambassador to Austria. Goes on special assignments which is why he's in Rome now dealing with the Vatican. Born in Germany. Doctor of Philosophy. Translates Russian poetry.’

We left Costa Smeralda about 2–2.30pm on Monday 23rd October. And for the next 14 hours went through very rough seas on our way to Anzio.
¹⁵³
[...] We reported to Dino de Laurentiis’ studios that morning for shooting at 12.00 with Noël. It was his last day. We heard that Phil is to arrive on Friday and we looked forward to seeing him. The girls went reluctantly back to Residence Gardens, where they are staying with Ive and Gwen, and to school.

I like Anzio – it is not pretty but it's a ‘working’ harbour and everything that works has some kind of attraction even unto a cement mixer. I love the stalls along the quayside where they sell fresh shellfish, oysters mussels etc. It smells very fishy.

And so to cocktails with Ehud Avriel and dinner.

Richard ceased making entries in his 1967 diary in early November, and did not start his 1968 diary until late July. During this period he played the part of Mephisto in
Candy
, filmed in Rome at the end of 1967. He then travelled to Austria and back to the United Kingdom, working on the adventure movie
Where Eagles Dare
. During studio shooting in London Burton and Taylor stayed on a yacht, the
Beatriz of Bolivia
, moored at Tower Pier, which they were renting while the
Kalizma
was being refitted. Early in February they flew to New York for the American premiere of
Doctor Faustus
, attended by Robert and Ethel Kennedy, and later that month they attended the opening of the Paris boutique co-owned by their friend Vicky Tiel, in which they had invested. Elizabeth started work at Elstree Studios in March 1968 for
Secret Ceremony
, other scenes being shot on location in London and in the Netherlands.

In May 1968 Richard purchased the 33.19 carat Krupp diamond for Elizabeth, at a price of $305,000, when it was auctioned in New York. Late that month
Boom!
was released, to poor reviews.

In June Richard was best man to Gianni Bozzacchi at his marriage to Claudye, for whom Elizabeth was maid of honour. The marriage took place at the home of Alexandre de Paris at Saints, to the east of Paris. In the same month Burton and Taylor attended the wedding of Elizabeth's friend Sheran Cazalet to Simon Hornby, held near Tonbridge, Kent. Late in June Burton began working on Tony Richardson's adaptation of Nabokov's
Laughter in the Dark
. In controversial circumstances, the details of which remain disputed, Burton was fired by Richardson on 8 July and subsequently replaced by Nicol Williamson (1938—). Richardson and Burton had worked together before – on
Look Back in Anger
and
A Subject of Scandal and Concern
. But on this occasion their relationship broke down, and an attempt by Taylor to repair the breach was unsuccessful. The diary resumes with Taylor in hospital.