Singular life
Just say yes
Petronella Wyatt
It's the Alan Clark season again. Good old Al and his diaries, full of indiscretions about the great and the bad, and above all yet more confirmation, if any were needed, of the great lover that was Alan Clark; the man who kept a wife and so many con- comitant mistresses that other, lesser men could only stand and marvel at his prowess; the man whom husbands expressed a wish to horsewhip in a manner unheard of since the heady days of Lord Lyndhurst.
It is taken as given that Alan Clark was a great lover, just as it is taken as given that he was a great diarist. But what is a great lover? What makes a great lover? Is it the sheer multiplicity of his conquests? Do scores of women a great lover make? Is it enough that there are isolated or even pro- longed sexual encounters with legions of `birds' irrespective of their looks, intelli- gence and general style. In other words, does it matter that they are dogs? Is mere persistence the thing, the rule that if you keep on trying someone will eventually say yes.
Or is a Don Juan someone who attracts quality — the most beautiful, the most per- spicacious, the most wanted? Even if it is only one woman, or two? As long as she is the cynosure of all eyes. Oscar Wilde used to say that the real Don Juan was not the vulgar man who went about trying to seduce every woman he met but the man who said to women, 'Go away. I can live without you.' The man for whom women would die.
A few months before Alan Clark died, I went to Saltwood Castle, where he lived with his wife Jane. It was a nice summer morning and while Jane scurried about we sat in one of the arbours in the garden. I drank two glasses of Sauterne and felt bold enough to ask him how he really rated him- self as a lover. There was a pause and he said, rather irritably, 'What do you mean?' I replied, 'Does a great lover have to seduce beautiful women, or is it of no rele- vance what they look like?'
As he stared into the air I went on, 'How many beautiful women have you had affairs with,' adding diplomatically, 'apart from your wife?' Clark thought about this and then said, 'Well, I really can't think of any.' Why? Because you never were interested in really beautiful women or because they have never been interested in you? Clark told me that ugly women could be attrac- tive too. I said that was an evasion. I said he had succeeded only with plain women and that negated his reputation as a Don Juan. Why hadn't he taken out Claudia Schiffer or someone?
It finally emerged that Clark was a bit scared of glamorous women. This was either because they didn't make an effort or because they weren't interested in him. This seemed unduly modest coming from a womaniser. He had to concede that it was. In the end I asked him whether he really thought he was a great lover? Clark took another sip of his wine. Well, not a bad one, perhaps, but not one of the greatest. Who were the greatest? Portfirio Rubirosa, the Domenican ambassador, Errol Flynn, Aly Khan, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. All of these, of course, are dead.
Has the standard of male lovers gone down, or is it their mistresses? Mistresses involved in political scandals aren't really what they used to be. Compare, in recent years, Antonia de Sancha and Bienvenida Buck with Madame de Pompadour or Lola Montes. One can't imagine any great man of the past risking their lunch appointment for Bienvenida Buck, let alone their careers. Now she has a page on the Inter- net presuming to tell women how to invei- gle millionaires into marriage.
Perhaps another point is that really allur- ing women don't have to be mistresses any more. Other avenues are open to them. The grandes horizontales of the past have become grand executives wielding as much or more influence for less trouble. If Madame de Pompadour were alive today she would probably be the head of a global public relations company or a Hollywood studio. These women have the equivalent of mistresses, in men, often younger, who are largely decorative and entertaining. In fact the male mistress is in better shape than the female one. Maybe that's why Alan Clark never managed to make it with the Class A type. They just didn't need men like him anymore.
`Well worth going private — no waiting list!'
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