Low life
Mug's diary
Jeffrey Bernard
Lunched with Betty and the Pinters. Talk, revolved around the Social Democrats anu, the stupidity of carnal lust. Harold and agreed that Foot is something of an ignables fellow but we fell out over the symbolism 0' Lang John Silver having only one leg. nett)/ said that it was Stevenson's repressed castration wish. This I can't believe. Anti)" ma said she wrote down everything she read from Buchan and Carlyle in long hand before she later dictated it to her blind German secretary. Jenkins, it seems, really wanted to join the Common Mar5-‘:.; in the first place. That evening we walke`,1' across Hyde Park to the Gulbenkians. I to,' Asif that had Margaret Thatcher wished t° have joined the Labour Party she could have become another Nye Bevan. The crocuses are doing splendidly. 18 March 1981. Met Bernard Levin in Fortnums for tea. He told me a little about Richard Wagner whom, it seems, he kile,w pretty well. Apparently the old Hun , bounced Bernard on his knee in Gstaad. "1.1 all events the memory lingers for Levin what: I can't help thinking, could have made inn° m. ore of himself if he wasn't inclined, toi ridiculous infatuations. After leaving 101 wandered in to Hatchards and saw TolstoY ,, latest novel. Quite frankly I feel he needs,a tremendous amount of cutting but there:, no denying his innate talent. He seer have a tremendous grasp of the reaW life in real terms but, here again, I thin.; there's a man who is endangered by stupid fascinatioh with carnal pleasure. course, he likes to call it love, but we kr!,°vi , it's pure lust on the Lloyd George scf1,70. Late home to Betty. Camomile tea and k bed with Randolph's memoirs. TattY stti 21 March 1981. Considered suicide 1)81 for the umpteenth time this Ye,ar g•htle rejected it. How long can I put it OW 7„ quality of life is becoming more ta"," every day. At lunchtime I met Denis Heal in Whites. Superb oysters and loPsInii Newburg. Denis seemed rather jade“ a _t pessimistic about Foot finding him a dece“, post in the next Government. God, °Ill e Ya knows what mikes him think there Will next Government. He surprised me soot._ what by saying that he was bullied at and joined the Communist Party at the time I was spying in Cairo for M18. Basically, he seems a good man, but I can't help feeling that his delight in good food and wine will Ultimately destroy him. He reminded me of the time Lord Castlerosse said to me, 'Show me what a man eats and I'll show you what he believes in.' How very true. Walked to Harrods after tea to meet Betty. She looked a little peeky. Must take her to Leningrad for a few days to cheer her up.
22 March 1981. Marvellous to be back in the country after such a boring week in London. Larks ascending, Alpen, skimmed milk, raisins and a sermon from Toby Wilberforce that was one of his better ones. He really has grasped at last the futility of lust but a pity really that he didn't before his Wife bore him 14 children. His wife reminded me of an extraordinary woman I 'net in the Hindu Kush in 1938 when I was there meditating on behalf of Beaverbrook iyho had suddenly got cold feet about the Impending struggle. This old woman she reminded me tremendously of Rebecca West had borne 14 children in so many months. Raj Banerjee Mukarjee, the local resident councillor and MI7 agent as it turned out later, told me that she had acquired perfect transcendental bliss by the antazing gift of swapping her genitals for her head. She had, as it were, conquered the boredom of lust and could have children by a miraculous thought process. It was nunoured at one time that she was having affair with Graham Greene but I find that pretty hard to believe. She never struck me as being quite louche enough for dear old Graham.
23 March 1981. Dined with Ronald 'tgAs, Lord Goodman, Runcible and a delightful but rather dangerous looking Woman called Jane Fonda. Apparently the i man Biggs has been on a long holiday n brazil. Says he met lots of Graham's friends there but wasn't, I gathered, connected. in any way with Graham G's Foreign Office Pals. It seems he has an illegitimate daughter. Oh dear, yet another. It does strike me a, s being quite awful that these people can Tcher after it as Lear's fly. Odd seeing uoodinan again who I remember as being a rather endearing little fag! once thrashed at 8t Harts. The Social Democrats seem to be swelling their ranks and, as I told Shirley Williams that morning, the whole business reminds me horribly of what Hitler told me at Berchtesgaden in October 1938. 'Mark ,irly words Malcolm,' he said, 'give a party a e ladder.' it ti3d name 's already got three feet on ' How right he was proved to be. Oddly enough, Betty has still got a sprig of Alpenstock that she picked that day in the garden while Graham and I chatted to the .Fuhrer. One thing that struck me profoundly about Herr Hitler was his non-married status and the fact that he was a dedicated Vegetarian. I think the Church might have saved Germany from the Nazis had She Stood up. Thinking back on those days Ometimes wonder if it wasn't lust and not the bombing that beat the Third Reich. Graham thinks it was both.
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