The Richard Burton Diaries (113 page)

Saturday 14th
I love my wife. I love her dearly. Honest. Talk about the beauty, silent, bare ... Sitting on the Thames with the river imitating a blue-grey ghost. My God the very houses seem asleep. And all that mighty heart is ... lying still.
¹⁴⁷

My God, again, how easy it must have been in the early days of this language to write poetry. How easy to impersonate the false feelings of a shepherd like Wordsworth's ‘Michael’.
¹⁴⁸
Or impassive massive indifferent passion of my favourite lines. And I have felt a passion, a sense sublime, or something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of men.
¹⁴⁹

Among the extraordinary things that happened to me daily since I was a chuckle from the womb, yesterday the sound man asked me for a voice level. There were several hundred people around. Quayle said nothing [...]. The girl doesn't have a mind. Colicos is an invention of Churchill and is equally bereft. I mean as Quayle. Churchill himself would have given one a voice level which would have started a revolution in Scandinavia. I simply said: He had the ploughman's strength in the grasp of his arms. He could see a crow three miles away.
¹⁵⁰
Did you ever look at Welsh mountains? We grow from sea-level. And one of them is a man. And the man happens to be a woman. And the woman is my wife. And she will sit there, eternally, forever, and hover over all of us.

The silence among these assorted Dukes and Dustmen was absolute. Everybody was fascinated but acutely embarrassed. So was I.

Sunday 15th
I awoke this morning at about 7 o'clock. I stared at Elizabeth for a long time. I am worried about her and her little bum and the blood. I held her hand and kissed her very gently. Probably no woman sleeps with such childish beauty as my adorable difficult fractious intolerant wife. ‘When in sorrow,’ said T. H. (Tim) White, ‘learn something new.’ I decided to examine my reactions to all the men of talent I have ever met and which company would I prefer. After serious thought, lying on that silent bed, with that killing cigarette between my lips, how I love its round cool comfort, I dropped names all over my brain. Churchill? No! A monologist. Picasso? No! An egomaniac. Emlyn? No. A mind like a cut-throat razor and a tongue to match. Dylan? No! Brilliant but uncomfortable. William Maugham?
¹⁵¹
No! He cared only about playing bridge with losers. Gwyn Thomas? No! An impersonation of a chap who would like to be big strong and tough and who is actually fat weak and febrile. Camus?
¹⁵²
Possibly. But he had the infernal impertinence to die young. John Osborne? No! No leavening of humour. Gielgud? A strong contender for the Burton stakes, but I have a feeling that he finds me uncomfortable. Edward Albee? No! A week with him would be a life-time, and he'd feel the same about me. Anyway, why go on? I reduced it to two people. Noel Coward and Mike Nichols. They both have the capacity to change the world when they walk into a room. They are instinctively and without effort and un-maliciously witty. They are both as bland as butter as brilliant as diamonds and never speak with the forked tongue. Noel is an old man and I think he plans to die shortly. Mike plans to out-last Methuselah. What they have, and what I envy, is their absolute assurance. They are totally unafraid. When Noel totters – and he actually does totter – into anyone's presence, their faces light up like lamps. Including
mine. Including Elizabeth's. Both E and I have a remarkable capacity of inculcating the idea of fear into people. I have actually seen people shiver as they cross the room to be introduced to Elizabeth. What the hell is it? Who did it to us? I know that we are both dangerous people but we are fundamentally very nice. I mean we only hurt each other. And we never hurt other persons unless they hurt us first. Somebody once wrote [...] that when Elizabeth walked into a room for a press conference which he happened to be attending, she gave the impression that nobody else was there. She answered, as it were, from outer-space.

A tall slim beautiful girl has just decided to join me on deck and have some scrambled eggs. She happens to be my daughter I think, quite clearly, that she is no daughter, actually of mine but an invention, carved in living marble of Praxiteles.
¹⁵³

Monday 16th, Dorchester
I am slowly coming out of my pit of despair. I am greatly helped by Elizabeth's understanding. I think that my daughter Kate loves me but is afraid of me whereas my wife loves me, j'espere, but is
not
afraid of me. Just afraid
for
me. Christ! I'm beginning to write like Queen Victoria. We are
not
amused. Take away our underlinings and our exclamation marks and we are illiterate. [...]

We went to Emma Jenkins’ christening yesterday. She is the daughter of Wendy and Derek Jenkins, who, despite his name, is an Englishman.
¹⁵⁴
She carried on like a she-wolf. The service was so banal that I approved of every scream and mentally applauded her total rejection of the vicar's platitudes. How can an intelligent man believe that tedious rubbish? I don't mean me. I mean the vicar. ‘You god-parents must realize that it's not the physical [
sic
] of the child but also the spiritual.’ The cracks were unquestionably directed at us. He was giving us a lesson. He was showing us that because we are rich and famous we are nevertheless not particularly desirable as parent in God. [...]

How can anybody believe such nonsense? I vomit from my brain such self-indulgent shit. You are invited to swear that you are a Christian, which I'm not, and E is a Jewess. I noticed that the vicar looked only at and directed his homily only at our party. Another child was also being wetted but she and her family might as well not have been there. But otherwise it was a day of pleasure. The baby, Emma, is enchanting. Elizabeth was an angel and looked like one. She suits a mini-skirt very well and I lusted after her. It was a warm and sunny day, there was a green garden hanging on to the house, and all the friends of Derek and Wendy are amiable. Gwyneth was so proud and nervous – she's the grandmother – and said to me at one point: ‘If anything happens to one of those two,’
meaning Elizabeth and Emma, ‘I shan't know what to do.’ How sweet of her to include E. [...]

Saturday 21st, Dorchester
We arrived back in London last night after five pleasant days in Kent. We stayed at The Leicester Arms Penshurst.
¹⁵⁵
They had done very hasty alterations to make a suite for us with a private bathroom. We worked at Penshurst Castle and later at Hever Castle both of which are a delight and the hosts – Astors in one case and I've forgotten who in the other – were equally delightful.
¹⁵⁶
Kate was with us and was another delight. She was obviously fascinated by the whole business and was offered and accepted a role of a kitchen maid. [...]

JULY

Saturday 19th,
Kalizma
, Thames
Christ Almighty, in whom I firmly believe not, what a week, what a fortnight, what a month. There is no question but that I must stop acting. It is dementing me. The thought of going to work in the intolerably early mornings is like a physical pain. It is all so perfectly boring. Anybody can play Henry VIII – I mean even Robert Shaw who should be consigned for the rest of his life to playing ping-pong against ageing former champions – has played it.
¹⁵⁷

There have nevertheless been a few rewarding things. Gielgud gave E an enchanting dog the day before yesterday which is described, discribed [
sic
] as a Shidzoo – at least that it how it is vaguely pronounced.
¹⁵⁸
[...]

It is funny that a man who pretends to no recognition of the Holy Trinity will still refer to Christ and God – that is, I suppose, the weakness of background. Even the Holy Ghost. I suppose there is some atavistic fear bred in the bones that gives one a ridiculous prop to lean on, despite the fact that one doesn't believe a word of it. The American astronauts are due to land on the moon tomorrow sometime. I think there are three of them. If you combined all of their three brains together I doubt whether they could solve a quadratic equation – brave and stupid like Columbus who was so great a navigator that he never found himself in the same place twice.
¹⁵⁹
He set out for Jamaica and found himself in Cuba. He set out for Cuba and found himself in somewhere like La Guaira.
¹⁶⁰
I think he only found his way back to Spain by running
aground in the middle of the night against a land mass which he thought was a new passage to the East Indies and China, and turned out to be Cadiz. The Welsh, of course, discovered the Americas. You know that, don't you? Can one imagine a mankind that has produced a Christ (there I go again) a Da Vinci, an Einstein, a Newton, a Darwin, an Erasmus, a Turgenev, a Shakespeare, a Pushkin, an Aristotle, a Pythagoras, a Freud, a Strindberg, a
Fleurs du Mal
, a Mallarmé, a Socrates, and endless others, including the multitudinous Huxleys, producing a product into outer space that can say nothing except ‘A-O.K’.
¹⁶¹
They are nothing but humanized monkeys. Their wives and children would not agree with that. And so they shouldn't. Get there and get back boys. You worry me. You are doing a perfectly useless and perfectly splendid thing. I envy you your stupendous courage.

Liz, I mean Liz Williams, who is among the most delectable ladies in the world of being alive, tells me that her little baby, with the assistance of an operation might be alright.
¹⁶²
How I am jealous of her hope, and Brook's. I would give half a soul to have Jess have the same hope. But it's hopeless, in my case, I mean with Jess. Quite hopeless. [...]
¹⁶³

Tuesday 22nd, Dorchester
The whole world, it seems, has gone mad because the American couple, Aldrin and Armstrong, have landed on the moon and got away again.
¹⁶⁴
Myself included. I have read more about the moon and watched on TV more about the moon than in the rest of my life put together. The three moments of unforgettable tension were the count-down to the landing, the count-down to the blast-off and the coupling together of the moon-ship with the mother ship. Now all they have to do,
all
they have to do, is get home. In a week or less I suppose I shall be heartily sick of the whole thing as a great many people are already.

I have more or less stopped drinking and the shock to my system is obviously pretty profound. It didn't matter in Puerto V where I didn't have to work, but the effect at the studios, I mean on me, is awful. I am fundamentally so
bored with my job that only drink is capable of killing the pain. The thought of doing a whole day's work with, for instance, John Colicos, which is my chore tomorrow, without at least half a bottle of vodka to ease back the yawns is like deliberately inciting a nightmare. It must however be done if I wish to live through the next fortnight. [...]

I have been like a mad and highly articulate bull in blinding flashes with all kinds of people that I normally have great respect for. I laid into Sheran yesterday at lunch for no good reason. I roughed up Brook and Bob Wilson and Jim Benton with a fine impartiality and to top it all I burned through and around E today at lunch, in front of the same Sheran, just after she had just come back from one of the most painful operations, the insertion of some dreadful machine up her behind. This is, or course, par for the course when I am drinking heavily, but I'm surprised that I still do it when sober. If it is still the same in a month I shall go back to old father booze and find out how long it will take him to kill me. I might as well enjoy what little might be left me. One of the oddities I've noticed before when I've stopped drinking is that when one starts again the smell of straight liquor is revolting, so much so that one either has to force it down like medicine to get over the initial shock, or mix it deeply with fruit juice or something that will camouflage the taste and smell. I made myself a martini before lunch today and could not drink it. I took one sip and shivered from top to toe. I've only been off it since Friday night and even now it is only withdrawal i.e. I still allow myself a couple of drinks a day. One forgets how delicious water is and milk. I shall continue these confessions of an alcoholic at a later date.

Wednesday 23rd
[...] The ‘moon-men’ are already out of the headlines and poor Teddy Kennedy is in them.
¹⁶⁵
I feel sorry for him and I suppose understand his panic and indeed it ‘could happen to anybody’ but unless he comes up with something extraordinary when he appears in court next week, he has had his presidential and possibly even his senatorial chips. The K family are of course notorious satyrs. (I was amazed when Bobby K took Margot Fonteyn off into a back bedroom at Pierre Salinger's house in B. H. and my asking Salinger, when they came back, ‘where the hell have they been?’ and Salinger's fat-faced reply which was a finger over the lips.)
¹⁶⁶
It was undoubtedly a hot party and Kennedy may have tried to save his friends. I doubt that he lacks courage, maybe brains though. We shall never know I suppose. Maybe they, the Kennedys do believe that they can get away with anything. Gawd Help
him. The press are ready for the kill. (I know too that when Jack Kennedy was running for President and stayed with Sinatra at Palm Springs, that the place was like a whore-house with President Kennedy as chief customer. Christ the chances those fellers took.) But they all got away with it except the last remaining baby. Perhaps somehow or other he'll be able to get out of it. E and I like the Kennedys, though, except through a phone call and a couple of letters we do not know Teddy K.

I am waiting for Alex Cohen, who produced my last
Hamlet
in New York, to arrive.
¹⁶⁷
I don't know what to say to him. I've changed my mind about doing another play. I don't deep in my heart want to do a play on the stage again for a long time, possibly never. I shall slide out with vague talk of other commitments etc.