The hypocrisy of actors

I’ve been keeping a journal for nearly 60 years. There are piles of the damn things in archives and covered with shoeboxes on high closet shelves. I’ve never looked back at one word in them. Being a vain sinner, I’ve entertained the fantasy that others would but, as it seems I’m not going to be remembered as a national treasure, I must conclude the journals have served their purpose. This was to get me to write things down. The physical act of transcription forced me to place half-formed thoughts upon the paper, making them concrete; a delusion, or obsession became a fact, and, as such, could be addressed as independent of my mental processes — that is, as other than the vapourings of a madman.

Nancy Mitford loved diaries. Her biography of Madame de Pompadour is based largely on diaries written by many, at Versailles. How wonderfully full of dish. The Marquise would sit over her tea, reading the Versailles mail to Louis. The letters sent between its inhabitants were all opened and censored by the King’s police and passed along for his entertainment. Mitford points out that a particular delight of the exercise was the knowledge that the writers knew for a certainty that their letters would be read. I am reminded of a war story of an old acquaintance. Bill Jordan, who died in 1997, had been a Marine sniper in the second world war, then a shining light of our Border Patrol. He’d been in more stand-up gunfights than any man on Earth. I recommend his book No Second Place Winner. He was part of a squad sent to New York City to surveille some malefactors. One day he was called by his supervisor to the apartment of an old lady who’d complained about the agents’ behaviour. She was outraged because the men across the airshaft were walking around half — and sometimes wholly — undressed.