The Richard Burton Diaries (173 page)

Thursday 2nd, Ritz
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We left the chalet at 1pm and were in Paris at 2.45pm. [...] Gianni and two Cadillacs were waiting and we were away to the Ritz. The radios and TVs told us or rather told them, Parisians I mean, that Le Grand Bal, le Bal du Siecle would be graced with unaccountable wealth and that there would be 500 guards around the house and la Reine elle-meme Elizabeth Taylor was apporting $3m from the neck up. True too, but who told them so exactly, they described the exact placing of all the nonsense. Van Cleef? Valentino? Alexandre? We arrived at the Ritz to find the place absolutely surrounded by large black bumper-to-bumper cars and found a hurly-burly reception on inside for the Republic of Congo and a great many black sleek gentlemen in diplomats’ uniform, both the latter and the former as black as your hat in a coal-pit. And bowing and scraping and midst a brouhaha of c'est Liz Taylor et son mari Burton we entered the lift and ran up to the 3rd floor and found ourselves in a penthouse suite though the lift numbers definitely stated there was a 4th floor and therefore, having got off on the third and not having gone up a lot of stairs, how was it possible to be in the penthouse. The
hotel is built oddly that's why. Some bits of it have 3 floors and some four. Carl Ritz who built it and whose son – very old I suppose – still lives here wanted to build a home from home for Gentlemen and obviously didn't have Conrad Hilton in mind as the corridors run in Euclidean nightmares and Pythagoras metempsychosis. This form would be turned into a brutish conglomeration of filled in erector set by a boy with a tidy mind and no imagination.
³⁶²
The suite was sweet and much prettier than the one we had last time and this one even includes a grand piano which I bet needs tuning though I haven't played it yet but will and E has just awoken and invaded the salon where I am typing this which is one reason why the other suite is more practical as I had a room between where I typed and where Elizabeth slept. But there, we are only here for one night this time, but if we stayed here a lot, I mean for a long time – as when making a fillum – I would ask for the room next door the
other
direction from the living room. That would stop my typing waking E too early and also give us a second bathroom. Very desirable this latter as after a day or two E reduces any bathroom to chaos. She carries around with her a cornucopian ‘make-up’ case that Malthea and Jupiter might have envied.
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It measures a foot high to a foot wide to a foot and a few inches long I would guess and is ‘hard’. That is to say it is not one of those bags that are soft-sided and topped and zipped but is solid and rigid and yet seems to contain endless things – eyebrow pencils, pens, the usual make-up things and deodorants and perfumes and what seems to be pills for any disease and malaises and balms and elixirs and you name it and that box contains it. It may even contain spare parts for the Rolls. Anyway the point is that after a day or two they gradually over-flow the bathroom like lava and there is no room for my pathetic collection of toothpaste and two brushes and deodorant and after-shave and razor and comb.

We established our corners, which means the small guest bedroom for me and my books and clothes, ordered tea and settled down to my Spanish Grammar which I am finding a bit of a bugger as I mix it up continually with Italian. Esta Questa Esto Questo. [...] E paraded in and out showing me the diamond headdress which she will wear tonight. Even my tasteless eye thought it superb. It was made especially for E by Van Cleef and Arpels and actually does cost well over £1m. Not dollars, POUNDS. Damned if I won't buy it one of these far-off days. It will always be a staggering sight and the knowledge of its cost adds to its beauty regardless of such Philistinism.

There were many telephone conversations twixt E and Marie Hélène and E and Grace who says that Rainier is going shooting and not at Ferrières and feels too shy to go alone to house Ferrières so would Elizabeth, asked
Marie-Hélène, call Grace and ask her to come down with us and we still don't know whether Rainier doesn't want to go to the do and Grace does but won't go without him or whether Grace is uncertain of the protocol in case Mags shows up and Marie-Hélène said rather frantically at one point to E ‘you simply must make her come, I mean I've even got a chair for her’ which meant that she (Grace) was to sit on Guy's right.
³⁶⁴
And my E told M-H that if she (M-H) put E with a bunch of non-English-speaking idiots she (E) would never speak to MH ever again. Grace said she would call E back before 11pm and tell her what but she didn't and E, by this time fed up to the eyebrows being MH's soc. sec'y said to hell with it and why didn't I (me) call up Grace and talk her into coming. Why me? But I suppose I shall have to have a go. I just asked where Grace was staying and to my astonishment they told me she was staying at the Embassy. What Embassy asks I? The Monaco one. The Monaco one! Anyway I just called and asked for Son Altesse but she is on the blower so the lady said. She may decide to be ‘occupie’ all day. Fact is, I don't think either of them, Rainier or Grace, feel too happy outside their realm as they can never be sure how they are going to be treated, both of them terrified of being comic-opera. Niven, all of whose stories have to be heard with suspicion and delightfully so, says that once on the CÔte d'Azur in some restaurant or other a waiter didn't appear to have the proper deference and even though they were supposedly incognito Rainier became extremely violent. I've forgotten in what or which way but really nasty-violent.

About 7 late night we suddenly realized that we had not eaten all day and were mad with hunger so food was procured. [...] After which we watched Inter-Milan play a German team in the quarter-finals of the European Cup.
³⁶⁵
A nasty ill-tempered little match. Soccer seems to me a very boring spectacle unless you see a genius at his best or you are desperate for one side to win. In this case I couldn't have cared less about either team though the Germans blond and clean looking looked nicer than the Eyeties, squat and hairy and dark and thick thighed like pocket Welsh front-row forwards. And the incessant writhing about on the ground after every tackle, foul or fair, is stupefying in its monotony. To my relief I have just heard that Grace is coming and is coming with us. So that's that. Phew! as they say in the comics. And it is comical.

Friday 3rd – Saturday 4th, Ferrières
³⁶⁶
So the Ball was had. It was had until 7am when the music at last stopped and the do-or-die-ers crawled into their cars and lumbered off with early morning traffic to Paris. We had come up
from the party about 4.30am but, after packing away the ‘big’ jewellery and putting it in the house coffre, we sat and chatted desultorily away until the orchestra stopped at 7. I managed, though I was sorely tempted during dinner, not to have the mildest form of alcohol so despite only about 4 hours’ sleep I feel as bright as a button. We have just had tea, as indeed we did at 5 this morn also. It is 1.15.

We picked up Grace at 32, Avenue Foche which doesn't seem to be the Embassy and I forgot to ask Son Altesse if it was or not. A very amiable Rainier brought Grace to the gate carrying her two small bags – a considerable difference from son altesse ETB even despite the fact that Grace was not staying the night. [...] Grace and E chatted away at the back of the car while I sat in front beside the driver. Grace was nice and relaxed and, after the initial awkwardness which I always feel with people like Grace who are in a somewhat false position and know it, everybody talked freely. Grace went into a blow by blow description of the Shah of Iran's famous or infamous party.
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Grace defended its extravagance with extraordinary obtuseness though neither of us attacked it. It was meant, she said, as a tribute to the people of Persia and as self-advertisement for the Shah's magnificent governing which was bringing literacy to the illiterate and hygiene to the unwashed and culture to the brutish. She described the Shah as a marvellous man and once called him a great man which is going a titch too far. She said how monstrous it was of the Western Press to be so vulgarly cynical of the whole show, all of them she said she knew for a fact writing their stuff before the thing had really got going. E was sweet and said that yes I mean Tito and the Hungarians and other communist countries were there and didn't seem to be particularly put out by the obvious ‘capitalism’ of the whole thing. Absolutely said Grace and said it was a marvellous thing to see people of such enormous disparity in religions politics and races finally warming to each other after the birth-pangs of meeting and how a little chinaman who was stiff and unsmiling and reserved and talked only through an interpreter was by the last day chatting a mile a minute radiant with smiles in impeccable English to all and sundry. So there. It all goes to show that we are brothers under the skin. And why for heaven's sake doesn't the Western Press attack its own spending of zillions a year on advertisements, corrupting the minds of the young and the stupid with their idiotics. And so on. One didn't suggest that it might perhaps have been more helpful to his appallingly poor people if he had promoted a sort of World's Fair, an Expo 71 or something and have the other people pay for the advertising. The ‘do’ of the Shah's was supremely silly under any circumstances and if it was to celebrate the extraordinary advances made for the benefit of his people then it was inane to the point of simple-mindedness.

Enough of the car journey. As we approached the last few miles to Ferrières there were policemen, mostly motorbiked every few hundred yards and learned later that Guy had arranged for a policeman or van every
¹
/
₂
mile from Paris. All the way from Paris!

Now President Pompidou used to be employed by Guy de Rothschild before and after he became Prime Minister and the new Prime Minister was also to be here last night but was unable to come and rang M-H this afternoon while we were there to apologize not only to M-H for not being able to come and telling the reason why but also asked the names of his two side by side companions in order to apologize to them too. Toujours la politesse. So it is no wonder that Guy can commandeer the entire Parisian Police force if he so wishes. As we turned into the drive the entire house faced us and for the first time since we've been coming here was lighted up. It looked magnificent and were it the clop-clop of horses and the smell of saddle leather and blankets round the knees and not the low hum of a heated Cadillac we could have been back a hundred years. The main entrance however was only for the herd – we entered by the side door as we usually do and went straight up to our rooms having some difficulty in finding out where was which and who was where. Sorted out finally we found ourselves in the Chambre Rose while Grace used the Chambres Balcon to change in and do her hair. We are changing from our chambre to the Balcon tonight while at dinner. The Rose while very nice and suitably rosy with all the decoration à la Wedgwood, panelling and all, has an outside bathroom which though exclusively for our use meant having to put on a dressing gown, if you happen to be in shorts in case of running into M. Olivier who lived next door and shared our little hallway. Also, to our surprise, we could hear everything in the two adjacent rooms quite clearly, it therefore following that everybody could hear us. So it will be nice to gossip at normal voice.

I sat around and waited for the girls to be ready – my girls including the Duchess of Windsor and The Princess of Monaco and of course my very own ‘girl’. Grace was ready and waiting about 10 minutes before time and came to our room for a drink. E would have been ready but Alexandre, the hairdresser, took forever to arrive and longer to do M-H's hair-do. We had been told that we were to descend strictly at 9.10 and sit down to dinner at 9.30. We descended at 10.30 and sat down at 11pm. The great hall had been made into a dining room for the occasion and was impossible before we began. It took me 15 minutes to get to my table from the door – I timed it – and after having trod on endless trains and knocked aside several expensive coiffures, virtually climbing over half a dozen people, I found myself at table no 11 with madam de Montesquieu on my left and the former Mme Louis Malle on my right both of whom, thank God, I knew.
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Now for an hour or more of absolute agony.
The waiters simply had no way of being able to get round the tables so most tables including ours elected one person to receive all the services and pass them on from hand to hand. The food was divine, or perhaps I was so hungry that it seemed better than it was, and I made an arrangement with Mme Malle who is a very beautiful but giant of a woman for her to pass me all her refills of water while I passed her all my wines. She must have a powerful head for she must have had well over a dozen glasses of various wines – champagne, a white wine, the inevitable Lafitte and a second white wine which I guessed from its viscousness was Chateau d'Yquem and it was. My attention was however riveted from the first by a man sitting opposite me.
³⁶⁹
He looked like a cadaver when still and a failure of plastic surgery when he moved which was seldom. He was eyebrow-less and eyelash-less and atrociously wigged or dyed with snow white hair at the front of his head and to the crown and nondescript brownish, rather like mine, hair at the back. His face was hideously pasted with make-up and had odd lumps on it, a face made of funny putty by an inept child. I had just asked in Mme Malle's ear who was that extraordinary thing over there when he leaned forward and said ‘Where's my Elizabeth?’ Ah, I said, well now, she is ah, over the other end of this ah sitting and ah eating indeed at the ah corresponding table to this but ah at the ah other end if you know what I mean. I wish she was here, said he, the inference being that far better her than me. So, as a matter of fact, do I, I said with a speed which would have done the Rev Sydney Smith no harm to admire.
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[...]

After the strangely delivered question from Andy Warhol for that is who the horror film gentleman was, we all settled down to the battle of the food. I discussed on my left with Madame de Montesquieu who is indeed descended from the great Charles Louis Secondat, Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu who wrote
L'Esprit des Lois
, poetry which all started by her saying that she had been at somebody's house and they had played records of me speaking
The Ancient Mariner
and how this woman who had given the party and played the record said that she had heard me speak poetry at the Rothschilds’ ‘and even Guy listened’ and that she (the hostess) had gone out and found all the records she could find of me speaking verse.
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I asked Montesquieu twice who the woman was and twice she told me but I should have written it down as I have forgotten it already, but would like to know who this lady is. Just out of curiosity. It wasn't Lili Rothschild who I know has some of my poetry things. So we talked about French poetry which I told her I was only just beginning to read and enjoy. She was rife with platitudes and has quite clearly inherited
nothing from the great Baron except his name. She was, is, tall and blonde and retrousse-nosed and about 35. Mme Malle and her sideman were much more amusing and I think that E would like Malle. She, the latter is nicely unhappy, almost desperate I would guess and she and I and the man on her right discussed painting. I said my usual and quite true things about Art, that I didn't understand it at all and derived pleasure only from the occasional picture but that, quite clearly, I was artistically ‘tone-deaf’. I said that we had what was by common consent a very fine Van Gogh but that though I was impressed by it I didn't know why it was remarkable and that to me the most impressive thing about it was its estimated value in cash which was enormous. Apart from the written and spoken word – preferably the former – the only other art-form that genuinely could disturb me was music, some cheap some deep. Malle and the man protested that music at its greatest was so much like painting at its greatest that I must try again with painting. I said I would.