The Richard Burton Diaries (75 page)

[...] My brother who had flown over as a representative of the family who had a whip-round for the purpose, was a tower of strength, fetching and carrying and doing a lot of the dirty work and occasionally having to hold me down.

Ron Berkeley and Valerie too were enormously helpful, particularly the former. [...]

The funeral was well managed though my gums ached to get hold of the Bible when the old lady whose teeth kept on dropping was reading from it. And the family behaved beautifully. E was dewy-eyed but in control. That old bastard of an Uncle Howard Young, who's been using and robbing Francis all his life was weeping worse than anybody
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He's 92 and perhaps could feel death's icy hands. He told me later over the funeral baked meats that he had $25,000,000. I hope you're going to leave it to the family, I said. ‘No,’ he explained, ‘You have made your name and Elizabeth hers but I will be forgotten unless I leave my money to an Institution with my name on it.’ ‘Good luck,’ I said with a smile like a death's head. Later Howard, of all people, said he felt sorry for the old robber, and in the car on the way home Eliz said the same thing. Now all these years I've been hearing what a mean monster this Howard
Young is, so in my inimitable way I blew my top. Irastosably so. Every four-letter word in the book and some that aren't. I do, of course, choose my moments well to shout at my wife, like after her father's funeral. Ah well!

[...] We had Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday night given by E. It went very well it appears, but we left early, me taken out by the ear by E, as we were still living half on California time and half European. Niven was there, smooth urbane witty and nice. [...]

Monday 2nd
Yesterday I awoke fairly earlyish and mucked around with the diary. I showered and shaved and reheated yesterday's soup for breakfast. Over the weekend, having started and put it down after a few chapters I finished
My Life
by Osbert Sitwell.
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It is a fascinating account of the political idiocy that was going on in my childhood. And what a brilliant egomaniac it was who could so delude himself about the temper of the naturally conservative British that he could preach Pacifism as his creed on one hand and dress his followers in blackshirts and uniforms, himself included, on the other. The latter to the suspicious and uneducated masses was symbolic of the thing they dreaded most, militancy and war. To add to the fear that everyone in my childhood suffered from, the fool allowed himself to be seen with Mussolini on the balcony of the Piazza Venezia taking the fascist salute in a march-past of the ‘might’ of the pathetic Italian Army. He let it be known that he had had many interviews with Hitler. But the maniac, and there is no question about it that the man was a little touched, if he'd remained in the Labour Party and become very remotely its leader, if he'd preached the same Pacifism from the by now reasonably staid Labour Platform with no Nazi and Fascist salutes and no private black-shirted army to frighten the ordinary bloke into ridicule, he might quite easily have swept the Tories out of power in 1935. And everything might have been very different. Some of his condescension about my class, the class that I knew so well, is pathetic and a perfect example of the total lack of understanding of the aristocrat of the then-called working class. I think in the end that though he was capable of a dazzling turn of phrase, he was essentially humourless. And the humourless man is in deadly danger, more than any other, of deluding himself. Hitler (1889–1945) and Mussolini (1883–1945), especially the latter with his posturing and his violin, obviously didn't have a grain. And they both deluded themselves cosmically. [...]

Tuesday 3rd, Paris
This is an entry just for the sake of an entry. Yesterday was desperate. I began alright but suddenly a drunken maudlin Rachel Harrison appeared with a drunk but not maudlin Elizabeth Harris. They both looked battered and both had very cheap looking dyed blonde hair. They both looked
like tarts. I fled from them to my room where I found Hebe Dorsey who stayed for
four hours
. Shortly afterwards Hugh French arrived and both of them plus Bob Wilson proceeded to get drunk. Bob asked me what I was going to do about Ron if I decided to holiday for the next six months. This in front of a journalist. Ron very quietly told him to shut up. During this time I was drinkless. How dumb and boring people are when they're drunk and you're sober. How dumb and boring I must have been for the greater part of my life. Finally in desperation I had a drink which only succeeded in making me cold and nasty. [...] I arrived home to find milady playing cards with Caroline. I sat down sullenly to read JBS – an autobiography, correction, biography of Haldane of those initials.
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Fascinating. [...] I felt nicely tired and went to bed about eleven o'clock. At midnight or a little later I was awoken by E who asked me if I wanted a sleeping pill! I nearly went mad. It turned out that I was talking in my sleep and she thought I was awake, but even so she knows I wouldn't take a sleeping pill anyway. Well after shouting at each other for a bit E went and made herself some soup while I continued to read Haldane. We turned out the lights about 2.30 or 3.00. This time I had difficulty in going to sleep but made it around 4.00 I would guess and slept like a log until 10.00. We made it up as, thank God, we invariably do and we cwched and cuddled.
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Rex gave me a hard time during the scene. He, in the course of the scene, has to give me artificial respiration and slap my face to bring me round. He is however so uncoordinated that he was really belting me. Since, as usual we had to do it many times, I felt at the end of the day that my jaw was unhinged. [...]

I have to see Joe Losey and John Heyman tomorrow about
Man from Nowhere
and I'm going to have to tell them that E is too ill for me to do the film. This will be a nasty blow. [...]

Wednesday 4th, Studio Billancourt, Paris
A relatively easy day saying goodbye to Rex as he leaves for his trial.
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No face-slapping, no artificial respiration and only a couple of lines or so. We are now rapidly coming to the end of the picture which with a bit of luck from the weather in England, we should finish ahead of schedule. [...]

E cooked supper last night and then cut my hair for the Ball given by Guy and Marie-Hélène tonight at Ferrières. I said we would go only if we could stay the night. Hopefully, I or we might be able to sneak upstairs in the middle of the festivities and tuck into bed with a warm book. Elizabeth has a
magnificent frock made for her by Marc Bohan, glittering all over.
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She will be the belle I suppose as usual. If not I shall be furious. [...]

I continued to read the book about Haldane. Extraordinary how he could be taken in by any ideology when he obviously possessed a mind of such brilliance and
common sense
. Even I as a child in the valleys knew there was something not quite right about Communism. Mind you, the inertia of the so-called democracies between the wars was likely to drive anybody bonkers. But I would have thought that pure science was above mere politics. He thought differently.

[...] It seems that I shall have to fly to Washington to speak at a fund-raising dinner for the Kennedys and in memory of Bobby. I sort of wrote the speech in my head yesterday afternoon between shots and will put it down on paper the first chance I have. I'll base it all on
Henry V
I think and the idea of patriotism in its finest flower and the awful responsibilities of Kingship, and what after all is the office of President of the United States except the possession, even if only for a time of the most powerful Kingship that the world has ever known.

‘Upon the King let us our lives our debts our careful wives our children and our sins lay on the King. We must bear all.’ Etc.
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Thursday 5th, Paris
[...] It was not, in fact, a good idea to stay the night at Ferrières, because I found myself bidding everybody goodbye and I hope you had a nice time with all the desperation of a lost host. I thought that the Rothschilds had gone to bed, but I am assured by Elizabeth that they were simply in another room. Finally, at about 5 in the morning, having ushered everybody on his or her way to Paris, I managed to crawl my way to bed, wishing that the bed, with E in it, was crawling towards me. Anyway mutually we made it ensemble. I talked to so many people, endlessly, that I shall have to devote another issue to their confessions. Grace of Monaco and her husband, the Duchess of Windsor, Lady Caroline O'Connor, Rich man, Poor man, Beggar-man thief and Lili who has had a massive cerebral stroke, but who of course was not there but in hospital. We must go and see her tomorrow.

Friday 6th
Tonight we are entraining for Montreux and then Gstaad by car.
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I am very excited at the thought of going home and seeing the two girls in their various plays. I wonder if Mrs Trench will let them stay the night with us.
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Perhaps it's not a good idea as it might break school discipline.

Guy and Marie Helene have very kindly asked us to stay with them over Xmas but as E and I agreed, there are too many of us – the four children Simmy and her boy-friend, Sara and Caroline. So we are going to suggest that we would be delighted just to come down for the lunch. That will save us the trouble of ordering Turkey and all its trimmings from the Hilton. Also it will be lovely to go for a stroll after lunch in the forest. I hope it snows.

Among other people we met at the Rothschilds’ was the writer Romain Gary. He, recently divorced or separated from his actress wife, Jean Seberg, seemed rather sad.
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We are going to have dinner with him when [...] I get back from London. It's going to be very strange without Elizabeth. It will be the first time I've left her for several years. She has had to leave me a couple of times: when her father had his stroke and when Gaston's son was killed in Paris when we were in Dublin. Only death in effect has kept us apart. I went to Geneva because of the suicide of my gardener and left her in a hospital in London. But apart from those few occasions we are constantly together. Fortunately I shall have the boys with me on Wednesday I think and they will stay with me until I return to my baby.

At the Rothschilds’ La Baronne Thierry de Zuylen asked me which writer I considered to be the greatest of this century.
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I said ‘James Joyce.’ She said: ‘You really are the most perverse man, because when I last talked to you of James Joyce you said he was a phony, and that
Finnegans Wake
was a wake only for James Joyce.‘
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I said: ‘Try me again next time and I'll attack him again with liberal quotations.’ She is very beautiful and is married to a most engaging man, splendidly broken-nosed. They are some connection of the Rothschilds I think. Dutch.

Grace told me that the party was the first
private
party she and Rainier had ever been to in Paris. Everything else she said was state stuff, receptions charity balls etc. She seemed much more relaxed than usual and nicer, [...] The Duchess of Windsor was in splendid form and got nicely tiddly. Elizabeth has [been] a great success with all these people. I am very proud of her and may marry her one of these days.

I dread work today. [...] Afterwards we are to be presented with two golden boats or something because we have won, for the second year running apparently, the Parisien award for the most popular actor and actress of the year. Then to see Lili in hospital and then to Gstaad on the sleeper 11.50. [...]

Saturday 7th, Gstaad
We arrived from Paris this morning [...]. We dropped off at Montreux. Simone was waiting for us and we were driven the rest of the
way to Gstaad. [...] There was a very light covering of snow on the lower slopes, hardly more than a suggestion of a heavy frost. How antiseptic La Suisse looks, everything made to order, the streets clean as a table, the mountains in perfect order, everything in careful cautious step. The people all look thoroughly scrubbed, apple-polished, and a bit homely.

The house was as clean as a spitless whistle. How comfy-beautiful it is, and as quiet as a whisper. [...]

This is a new typewriter which I bought this morning as I was assured by Jane Swanson that there was a typewriter here. I said there wasn't and I was proved right. So I nipped down to the toy-shop, papeterie, in the village and bought this one. The letters seem very big after the other one.

[...] Last night after work I went to E's studio where we were presented with awards. E was the most popular actress in France for 1968, and I was the equivalent male. I wonder if we'd have won if we hadn't been so conveniently in Paris. Two horrid little gilt plaques.

I have a record on of ‘five thousand Welsh voices’ singing ‘Mae d'eisiau di bob awr.’ Enough to drive you daft with nostalgia. I need you every hour. Oh yes boys.
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[...] Christ this hymn is driving me melancholy mad. This is the tenth time I've played it. The dead stand up in rows before my bloodshot eyes. Sod it all. Sod death. Sod age. Sod grief. Sod loneliness. ‘Gad i'm teimlo awel o Galfaria fryn.‘
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Sunday 8th
Well then yesterday we went to the school performance. As we walked into the cinema I saw, to my astonishment, Barry Norman of the
Daily Mail
. ‘What,’ I said, ‘in the name of God are you doing here?’ ‘You have to cover 1st nights,’ he said. Then a man from European Radio, we noticed with a stick microphone, was only recording when Liza was on. Obviously they thought that being E's daughter she was like her mother, starting early and was likely to become as great a star as her mother. Can one believe the Press to be as long-looking as this, and as venal. It was a lovely afternoon. When they spoke Shakespeare in American accents it was as much as I could do not to cry, as it was all done with the dreadful authority of innocence. Liza's vehemence against Shylock was murderously good acting. Did she let him have it. ‘Oh learned judge.‘
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