The Richard Burton Diaries (67 page)

JULY

Tuesday 23rd, Fitzroy-Nuffield Hospital, London
¹
I have just spent the two most horrible days of my adult life. There was nothing before, as I recall,
no shame inflicted or received, no injustice done to me or by me, no disappointment professional or private that I could not think away in a quarter of an hour. But this is the first time where I've seen a loved one in screaming agony for two days, hallucinated by drugs, sometimes knowing who I was and sometimes not, a virago one minute an angel the next and felt completely helpless.

Elizabeth had her uterus removed on Sunday morning. The operation began at 9.30 and ended at 1.00. Three hours and a half. I tried to read Holroyd's book about Lytton Strachey – what a vile, cruel, self-centred man he sounds – but during those hours I read about 5 pages and when I knew she was temporarily safe at least and back in the room I found I had to read them all over again.
²

But it's the nights that have been so harrowing. I took a room – next door to E's – to be near her until the pain had eased somewhat. The walls are like tissue paper and the first night I heard nothing but her groans throughout the night. It is not a normal hysterectomy – there were great complications – and she is suffering far more than normal. In addition they have given her a drug, which eases the pain, but gives her vivid hallucinations. And extraordinary shafts of clarity at the same time. She thought for a long time yesterday that she was on the yacht and, at one point, when flowers were brought in she told them to ‘put the flowers in Liza's room downstairs.’ She then sternly told me, looking up from her book (
Public Image
– M. Spark) that I must never shout at Raymond (the steward on the
Kalizma
) again.
³
I said that I wouldn't and she said, ‘Hush – he'll hear you.’ ‘Look’, she said at one point, ‘they're showing
Faustus
in colour on the TV.’ The screen was blank as a blind eye though a greetings telegram had reflected a red into the screen before which it was lying.

Last night she suddenly appeared in my room about midnight supported by a minute Latin nurse and said she was lonesome. She is not supposed to move at all except for the commode. I put her back to bed. Half an hour later I heard her scream ‘Jim’ – she was in the corridor. Back to bed again. I told her she was a naughty girl and she told me to fuck off. I said I would sit in the room with her. She told me to sit in the hall outside the door as she couldn't stand the sight of my face. She turned away from me. I waited 5 minutes and left the room. Then there was a shout of ‘Richard.’ The nurse and I arrived together. She was sitting on the edge of the bed. Another time she crashed against a chair in the next room. I shot up and out and she was sitting on the lavatory with the door closed.

I've asked them to give her a drug, if possible, that's not illusion-making. Christ I shall be glad when this week's over. And won't she. She finally fell asleep, or at least remained quiet, at about 4.00 in the a.m. I fell asleep but kept
waking with the sort of convulsive wide-awakeness of a man who's afraid of having a heart attack in his sleep.

[...]

The press has been pestering us night and day and we're in all the papers this morning. What a vile lot they are – especially the English. They're so smirky and sneaky and smug and provincial. They are not honestly scandalous with the awful dirty pornographic glee of the Italians. They are merely snide.

Kate is here – she arrived a week ago, and is as joyous as ever. Within a day Liza was calling me ‘Daddy!’ I must see her today sometime. Them days are slipping by and she has only 3 weeks left.

The most alarming lesson I learned about this whole thing was the extraordinary effect that hallucinatory drugs have on the brain. E looked at me on occasions yesterday with a malevolence that made a basilisk look like a blood hound. I can only hope that in vino veritas doesn't apply to drugs. She looked at a poster of the Mona Lisa on the wall and said very hostess-like, ‘Vicky would you like a drink?’ She called me a ‘stuffed shirt’ at one point – and she's right. That'll teach me to be smug in future.

[...] 2.45 and E is awake and perfectly normal. She is completely aware of everything she did last night! God save the mark!
⁴

Wednesday 24th, Dorchester [Hotel]
Have decided to change to typing this diary badly rather than that I should write so hurriedly that sometimes I have difficulty reading my own writing.

[...] Janine Filistorf rang today from Geneva with the shocking news that André Besançon, the gardener of Pays de Galles, Céligny and a very dear and honest man, had committed suicide. Poor bugger. How solitary can you get? We, Kate Ivor and I will fly in the jet to Geneva on Friday or Saturday to attend the funeral. He hanged himself. I remembered that he had suffered from a nervous breakdown some 12 or 13 years ago after the death of his wife and before we employed him in 1957. He was about to go into a home this morning at 10 o'clock but it was too late. He killed himself last night. I feel such a bloody fool for not even suspecting it. If I'd known I'm sure I could have helped. I could have had him transferred to Gstaad instead of that amiable but quite useless drunken musician of the mighty name, Johann Sebastian Bach.
⁵

K. has a desire to be left alone for a bit, I think, and so tonight she is going to stay in Hampstead with Ivor and Gwen while Liza, Maria and I will stay at the hotel. We took K to the Wells Pub in Hampstead before lunch today while Ivor and I had a couple of pints.
⁶
[...]

I am trying to persuade Elizabeth to postpone her film with F. Sinatra.
⁷
It starts in only 5 weeks time and it's hardly likely that she'll be properly prepared mentally for such a big job so soon. [...]

Just shared a pot of caviare with Ivor and Liza. K. says she doesn't like it. I suspect she has her mother's fear of famous but untried foods. I had it myself for a long time. It's very working class but I was weaned early by PHB. I was reading A. L. Rowse's second volume of biography recently in which he recounts his embarrassment at being offered asparagus when dining with Lord David Cecil and not knowing how to eat them.
⁸
I know the feeling well.

Thursday 25th
Just about to give a lecture to the boys. Apparently they have been playing records in their room until 2.30 in the morning, putting cigarettes out on tables etc. instead of or perhaps including ashtrays. Generally a case of showing off. [...]

Friday 26th
By the time their explanations had finished it was time for me to go to lunch with Hugh French, who, poor fellow, also had a tale of woe. The only girl he'd ever loved, in his words, had left him. Wealthily married to an impotent old husband she had promised to get a divorce, found herself pregnant by Hugh and suddenly without so much as a by your leave or a kiss me foot had disappeared somewhere in Paris for an abortion. He is looking for her. She's French, youngish, about late twenties, peasant, was on the fringes of the film business. Hugh met her through Terry Young, film director, who'd ‘used her’ in a film.
⁹
She sounds as ordinary as a tabloid newspaper but there's no accounting for love lust or taste. [...]

I am just about to leave for Geneva with Liza, Kate, Ivor, Gwen and Brook Williams for the funeral of André (Bobo) Besançon.
¹⁰

[...] went to the Hospital to see ETB, and there was Norma Heyman who was drunk and who had been turned down by my two stepsons for lunch and proposed to give us, me, E, a lecture on how to talk to the boys and how to keep them interested [...]

[There are no further entries in the diary until late September. During this period Richard travelled to Céligny to attend the funeral of André Besançon. He was accompanied by his brother Ivor, Ivor's wife Gwen, Emlyn Williams's son Brook, and daughters Liza and Kate. After the funeral the men dined at the Café de la Gare in Céligny. Initially the intention had been to travel on to Chalet Ariel in Gstaad but, as they had eaten and drunk rather well, it was decided to postpone the journey to the following day. Instead they agreed to stay at Le Pays de Galles, which Burton had not visited for more than two years. Ivor went on ahead to open the house up and put on the heating, and when attempting to gain entry to the property, slipped and struck his neck on a paving slab. In what appears to have been a freak accident he was paralysed from the neck down. Ivor's incapacitation and eventual death in 1972 would cast a considerable shadow over Richard.

Much of August was spent in organizing Ivor's treatment, initially at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, but in the last week Burton went to New York. By September he was in Paris to begin work on
Staircase
, co-starring with Rex Harrison, and Elizabeth was to co-star with Warren Beatty in
The Only Game in Town
.]

SEPTEMBER

Thursday 26th, Paris
We worked from 7 last night to approx 4 this morning. [...] Elizabeth has gone off to work and ‘test’ costumes. She should be back before I leave I hope. After 7 or is it 8 years I still miss her if she goes to the bathroom. She starts work on Monday, and after a time we shall be working the same hours, ‘Continental’ hours, so called, which means from mid-day to 8 at night.

Occasionally, as I hopefully continue with this diary I will try and fill in things that happened during the unrecorded days. e.g. We took Kate to NY with us on the
Queen Elizabeth
. With us also we took Liza and my God-Daughter Sally Baker (Stanley's daughter), Nella, and a nurse named Caroline O'Connor for Elizabeth.
¹¹
It was an uneventful crossing, and, having been so often on the big ships, rather sad. [...] There was a general air of run-down gentry, frayed at the edges. [...] I wondered if after many years of travelling that I had become blasé. Elizabeth said not, and Sally asked me if the ship had always been as shabby. Some of the life-boats and the great steel arms that presumably lower them into the sea were rusty and a great many of the weather-covers were torn. Sally had never been across the Atlantic before and so presumably had nothing to be blasé about.

While at dinner one night in the Verandah Grill, which is the same as ever, I was called to the phone to Ethel Kennedy.
¹²
I thought it was some sort of crank, because I'd read in the papers as we left England that Ethel was on Onassis's island in Greece.
¹³
However it later turned out that it was Ethel calling from Hyannis Port to ask me if I would do the narration of a documentary film about Bobby Kennedy. I said yes and did it in Quogue at Aaron's house. It was shown at the end of the disastrous Democratic Convention and was apparently the only thing in those vulgar five days that was well received.
¹⁴

Sunday 29th, Barbizon
¹⁵
Last night we dined in the Hotel Restaurant. [...] I became very mournful about Ivor, and started blaming myself for not having been with him when he went to open up the house that dreadful night. [...]

Back to Paris today. Elizabeth finally got round to reading her script yesterday and likes it, she says. [...]

Barry Cooper, Elizabeth's doctor of a few months arrives shortly to examine her.
¹⁶
Elizabeth has more examinations in any given month than I've had in my lifetime. [...]

Received a letter from Cis and Elfed today thanking us for the 500 quid we sent them and telling us how excited Tom and Hyral were when they received theirs.
¹⁷
Cis and Elfed were staying with them when it arrived. Can't wait, said Tom, for the bank to open, they'll hardly be able to get me through the door. Ivor is to be fitted with a collar, which hopefully will enable him to be sat up. This should be of enormous help psychologically. He has finally agreed to see Cis. She's the first so honoured apart from us.

Dr Cooper has been searching, he says, for the origin of Bateau Mouche. And could I tell him, he asked the origin of ‘Pumpernickel?’ I could, I said. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. His horse was called Nickel. How it was spelled I don't know. The French soldiery [were] forced to eat off the country, including the black bread of Mittel-Europe. They hated it and groused that it was pain-pour-nickelle.
¹⁸
I also told him the etymology of Marmalade. Je voudrais la preserve d'orange pour La Reine
Marie qui est malade.
This from a courier who had been sent in a hurry from France from Mary Queen of Scots, who, pregnant, was insane to have some of her beloved Scots
marmalade.
¹⁹
There's no way of finding out whether these stories are true or not. I like them anyway.

Monday 30th, [Hotel] Plaza, Paris
Returned to Paris yesterday having at lunch at Bas-Breau with Caroline and Dr Barry Cooper. It seemed to me that he wasn't bound too strictly by the Hippocratic oath as he might have been when discussing a patient of his and acquaintance of mine called Nick Ray.
²⁰
He talked freely of his drunks, drugs and gambling etc. They lived together for a year he says. He also took a scholarship to Cambridge, and was only the second Jew to win a blue. For rowing. He is very short and tubby so he must have coxed, I suppose.
²¹
He also asked us and the children to stay with the Butes (Marquise of) in Scotland this winter.
²²
He talks carefully and quietly as if afraid that, if he didn't, he would accidentally reveal a non-U accent.
²³
He is vocally a bit like a black friend of ours called Roscoe Lee Browne.
²⁴
[...]

I read P. G. Wodehouse's latest
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?
in one sitting.
²⁵
It's exactly the same as all the others. He's still mining the same vein of gold, but it's as effortlessly entertaining as ever. Then a couple of chapters of Churchill's
World Crisis
, and so to bed for a couple of hours sleep until 12.30, a chat and some more
World Crisis
, and back to sleep again at approx 2.30.
²⁶