Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [133]
15 March
Of course being Harold, there were moments of comedy, orchestrated by him. Witness the scene at the British Library where Harold formally handed over his archive. He had said to me, innocently, a few days before: ‘I’ve found an unpublished poem which I shall take the opportunity to hand over.’ Me: ‘What is it?’ Harold, carelessly: ‘Oh, wait and see.’ And secretly I thought it might be a new love poem to me … Well, it wasn’t exactly that. In the event, at the extremely formal ceremony, a man in an elegant suit, surrounded by other men in suits, introduced Harold with a tribute to his lyrical use of language. And Harold then proceeded to read from one of his yellow pages as follows a poem called ‘Modern Love’ which began: ‘Do you fuck him / And she fucks me too …’ going on to play with the word thereafter, with the word ‘love’ occasionally thrown in. I shall not easily forget that scene. The faces of the suits never moved: but after all suits do have total control of their facial expressions, don’t they? Rebecca, Judy and I were shaking.
My Diaries at this time are full of good resolutions along predictable lines about taking each day as it comes, enjoying what yet remains, quotations from Browning’s ‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’: ‘Grow old along with me / The best is yet to be.’ Yes, but would we really be allowed to grow old (or you might say, older) together? Nevertheless Harold did not lose all his zest despite almost intolerable physical challenges. He suddenly volunteered to accompany me to Harrison Birtwistle’s opera The Minotaur, out of respect for and interest in Harry, when my original date fell through, a gesture of solidarity and optimism given that Covent Garden had long been deemed too physically testing. I think he identified with John Tomlinson’s Minotaur.
19 May
I can hardly write about the amazing night last night at The Birthday Party – its fiftieth anniversary in exactly the same theatre and on the exact date in 1958. It was a Gala to raise funds for the Lyric and what a gala! All the performances excellent – Sheila Hancock a joyful Meg – but most moving of all Harold going on stage at the end to join David Farr (the director) and the actors. Looking incredibly fragile, he was led on by Justin Salinger who played Stanley, a rather odd reversal of roles. His last fall (one of two recent ones) has left nasty debilitating wounds. But he managed to speak and tell the story of the usherette at the Thursday matinee who when he told her he was the author said, surveying the empty house: ‘You poor dear.’ And he appealed to the usherette if still around, to come forward and he would give her a kiss.
I tried to think of some other playwright who would have attended the fiftieth anniversary of his own play, transformed from total failure to classic within his own lifetime. Chekhov? Died in his forties. John Osborne and Look Back in Anger? He died in his sixties; of course there was a difference because the Osborne play was a startling success, Harold’s a resounding failure.
It is good to read of this glorious occasion because shortly afterwards there was a terrifying experience, when Harold collapsed and fell at 10 a.m. fifteen minutes before we were to leave for Eurostar and Europe. (I was due to talk on historical biography at the Shakespeare and Co. Bookshop festival.) The Great Fear was coming nearer, especially as he might easily have collapsed on Eurostar in the tunnel … At first Harold resisted the idea of going to hospital, his roar at the sound of the word ‘hospital’ making a Siberian tiger sound like a pussycat. He finally agreed. O Dante’s Inferno! O St Mary’s Casualty! We were cheered up in a highly depressing situation by the award of a CBE to Edward Fitzgerald for Human Rights and Harold vowed to give him a lunch on the day he went to the Palace.
27 July
We sat in the drawing room listening to my Desert Island Discs: Harold delighted by it and kept saying so throughout the day, that day and the next. He was immensely touched