Low life
Anticipatory
Jeffrey Bernard
Recent abuse I've received from my seemingly dwindling band of readers has come in two forms. There have been face-to-face confrontations with consequent verbal assaults and there have been anonymous letters. Moderately genteel slanging matches I can bear, but there's something slightly sickening about a 'disgusted' reader who's too self-righteous and gutless to sign his or her name, and they've been posting them from under every rock since I wrote last week what I meant to be an affectionate piece about Maurice Richardson.
But I'm not here today to defend that. I'm here to anticipate my own departure and wonder just how it would be recorded — if it were written without pussyfooting.
'May I add a few words to your excellent obituary of Jeffrey Bernard. I knew him intimately for forty-six years and I feel that many of his more remarkable qualities were left unsung in your otherwise comprehensive review of his messy life. He was born in 1932 — probably by mistake — covered from head to food in eczema. One of the first things he did was to wet the bed and he continued to do so until he was fif teen. A weak, thin-skinned and oversensitive boy, he had few friends at school. He usually chose to sit at the very back of every classroom so that he could play with himself unobserved and the only subject at which he excelled was history. His liking for historical biography was an early sign of the paranoia he was to develop later but his early obsession with sex prevented him from obtaining any worthwile academic honours. By the time he left school he had become a chain smoker and compulsive writer of fan letters to Veronica Lake.
'In 1946 he paid his first visit to Soho and from that point he was never to look forward. It was here in the cafés and pubs of Dean Street and Old Compton Street that he was to develop his remarkable sloth, envy and self-pity. Well do I remember his first bouts of drunkenness that usually ended in tears or abortive suicide attempts and I think that it must have been at this time that we began to realise that Bernard was not cut out for a career as a naval officer as his mother had hoped.
'He drifted from job to job and between jobs he spent months at a time accepting small sums of money from homosexuals or friends who were working. He began to develop a greed for unearned money and the growing conviction that he was cut out for better things. After a short, undis tinguished spell in the army from which he was given a medical discharge, his pay book being marked "Mental Stability Nil", he returned to Soho, got married and split up with his wife a few weeks later.
was during this period that he first became involved with horse-racing and gambling and the feelings of infantile omnipotence that prompted this were to last him the rest of his life. These feelings were particularly noticeable in his dealings with women and some even said that his life was a never ending cliché of a search for his mother. His drinking began to escalate to such an extent that he was' unable to hold down the most ordinary of jobs and he was coniequently advised to take up journalism. Even in this field it was noticeable that he was never offered a staff job and he gradually drifted Into writing a series of personal and, at times, embarrassing columns and articles about his own wretched experiences.
'After a spell in the alcohol and drug add ic unit at St Bernard's Hospital, Hanwetil°11 1he developed the fantasy that starting tomorrow it would all be different. Under the growing conviction that geographical changes would solve his problems he moved to the country and lived in various 'dream' cottages. Unfortunately, he was always there too. My last memory of Bernard was of seeing him staring at his typewriter one weekend. and fighting yet another battle against his chronic amnesia. He leaves two unwritten books and a circle of detached acquaintances.' (Ed. Are you sure this is right? J.B. Absolutely.)
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