Blessings in Disguise by Alec Guinness Hamish Hamilton 246pp, £18 in UK
My Name Escapes Me by Alec Guinness Hamish Hamilton 214pp, £16 in UK
THE image occurs of a', sprightly septuagenarian. He has been prevailed upon, to accompany an 82 year old who has been allowed out of doors and might take a wrong turn or a bad turn, or become lost or fall down in the street. The octogenarian is, in fact, his older self. In other words, Alec Guinness's 1985 memoir, Blessings in Disguise, has been reissued as a companion to the new My Name Escapes Me a diary covering the eighteen' months up to June last.
The image although cosy, is false this old man can take care of' himself. He wears a hearing aid he has cataract trouble and he can no longer memorise a long part, but the diary is a fascinating account of a receding life. One has heard, by the way, of journals set, down with an eye to publication' this must surely be the first to have been actually written to order.
In his introduction, John le Carre says that Sir Alec is not a comfortable companion, adding. "Why should he be? ... The deprivals and humiliations of three quarters of a century ago are unresolved." The memoir, at any rate, does not suggest that he was either deprived or humiliated, even though he was born Alec Guinness de Cuffe to what these days is called a single mother she features not largely in his reminiscences. As an intending actor, he went hungry, but was assisted by John Gielgud and Martita Hunt, who was the quintessential Miss Havisham and a formidable lady of whom this reviewer has smiling memories.
Sir Alec is a remarkable and versatile actor probably he is the only member of his profession who can, on occasion, ham by underplaying I think it is called "camp". At any rate, it cannot be said of him as Rex Harrison observed of and to Robert Morley in mock admiration. "I do envy you. One wife, one home and, if I may say so, one performance." He had growing pains. On the third day of rehearsals for The Country Wife at the Old Vie, the star Ruth Gordon, imported from America, addressed the director, Tyrone Guthrie "Tony! Tony, I can't act with this young man. Would you get another actor for the part, please?" Guinness was sacked there and then. The theatre is an uncertain profession but probably that could, be accounted as, sufficient humiliation for a lifetime.
In the memoir his film career is taken largely for granted. He is more anxious that we should know of his conversion to Catholicism, which he describes as if he' had become a member of a rather exclusive club. He would no doubt seize upon such an image, while adding his disappointment that undesirables cannot be black bailed. Perhaps a small part of the attraction is that in England the churches are relatively uncrowded and the polloi are not much in evidence.
In the diary, there is a hilarious account of the Pope's Easter Mass, celebrated outside St Peter's in wind and rain "The sensation was that of sitting in a chilled, sodden summer pudding" (he writes very well). Of the Pope, we read "I decided that his voice is the most beautiful and dignified speaking voice I have ever heard." This is like one novelist giving another a good notice. One has the irreverent impression that if which heaven forbid Sir Alec was run over in the street, his first, and perhaps last, words would be "I am unwell. Kindly send for a cardinal."
The memoirs are well worth rereading there is virtually no luvviness and the tone is cool, austere, erudite and not without humour. (I liked the anecdote of the young man who solicited Sir Alec's autograph and then said "My granny will be thrilled!". And one warms to him when, at home and bored on a cold, sullen day (last May 17th), he quotes Shakespeare on the subject of travel.
I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dull sluggardiz'd at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.
There is of course the mandatory strivings to, be modest the diaries are entitled Wife Name Escapes Me, and one is empted, to, mutter Not for long it doesn't!
As when he says. "Two Oscars (one for services to the cinema) have come my astonished way. The subtext suggests a person who is not so easily astonished. He describes the film of Forster's A Passage to India as "deadly" and "dismaying" one reflects that it was neither, and that what really got up the author's nostrils may have been his risible and scissored performance as the Brahman Professor Godhole.
Writing of the director David Lean in Blessings in Disguise, he mentions discord ". . . we are both strong willed and his will is the stronger. He is nonetheless generous, adding" all is well between us. Or so I hope. I owe him my film, career.", In 1985, he concluded his memoirs with "Of one thing I can boast I am no aware of ever having, lost a friend." In the new edition, he amends this "I am sorry to say that I can no longer make such a boast" but he does not further enlighten us.
Then, in the diary, he writes of Lean's memorial service at St Paul's in January last and remembers "David's extreme unpleasantness in latter years. . . We each did our best, I think, to repair our damaged friendship but it didn't realy work out." Is this the lost friendship and, if so what happened in between? It might at any rate, have been more profitable for Sir Alec to boast, as the rest of us strive to do, that all of his ends liked him.
The memoirs are studded with good things. James Dean, a casual acquaintance, shows off his new Porsche to a jet lagged Guinness visiting Los Angeles, and the author hears himself saying. "If you get in that car you will be found dead in it by this time next week." There are glimpses of Gielgud, Edith Sitwell, the now forgotten actor, Ernest Milton and, of course, Ralph Richardson, who was as daft as a brush.
"Who can one hit," Richardson enquired rhetorically, "if not one's friends?", where upon he floored his arriving dinner guest, "Sir Alec, with a blow to the jaw. ,Just as vivid is the description of the actor in his dressing room, [raising a beaker of gin and water and proposing a military style toast. "To Jesus Christ. What a splendid chap!"
And there is Richardson's description of walking home from an uneaten dinner at the Connaught. "I sat for a while on a bench in Oxford Street. It was very nice until a chap on a bicycle stopped by me. I know you he said. `Oh, yes?' I said. `Yes,' he said. `You're Sir John Gielgud.' `Fuck off,' I said. Then I walked home. It was a lovely night for walking. So many stars."
The diary is perhaps more revealing than the memoirs, which are shaped and on that account as far from truth as Astroturf is from a meadow. Also, and intriguingly, the desire to be known argues against the apparent aloofness. We are given glimpses. "Beethoven's piano sonata No.32 is the greatest piece of music I know." Ronnie Barker is his favourite performer. Il Postino, My Life as a Dog and Strictly Ballroom are his preferred films of the decade he hardly mentions his own films, apart from an anecdote about The Lavender Hill Mob.
There is a mind "in cask" here it gets riper and mellower with the years. He listens to music, reads, travels, learns. His wife, ill as she is, puts fresh flowers on his desk each week. As for work, he recalls that he turned down a million dollars and the use of a private jet to make a film in Hollywood. He has not unlike Gielgud and Olivier in later years, greedily appeared, in cameos and guest roles in cinematic trash. "I have always resented, he says, the idea that man has his price. Not this old baby.
This old baby is doing fine.