Becoming A Virgin
Within four years of the televising of The Naked Civil Servant, I, for whom until then a journey to Ealing amounted to an awfully big adventure, had visited Canada, Australia and the United State. I had also met dozens of people so far above me in wealth, social standing and achievement that they seemed to have come from another planet.
Although these changes were spectacular, there is a sense in which they were superficial; they altered my engagement calendar but not my soul. This was in the nature of things. Events and personalities did not begin to crowd in on me until I was sixty-six and inner development was no longer possible . . I continued to live in my small, dusty room, to drink Complan and to wear other people's cast-off clothes.
Out of doors . . I no longer stalked through the streets scorning people before they had a chance to scorn me. Instead, like all who have appeared on television, I now wore at all times an expression of fatuous affability.
I have pondered deeply the public reaction to Granada's documentary and to the play by Thames Television. The telephone calls provoked by the former were contemptuous or hostile; by the latter, mixed. The letters that I received after the first were negligible; those that followed the second were kind, sometimes laudatory. The manner of strangers encountered in the street subsequent to the first program were uneasy; after the second it was a subtle blend of curiosity and forgiveness.
I think the answer lies largely with the press. . . When one journalist went so far as to say that the Thames Television program justified the existence of television, she made it legitimate for even more refined taste to have enjoyed itself and when Clive James (of all people) said that the protagonist in The Naked Civil Servant appeared to be 'some kind of hero', amusement was nudged in the direction of condonation.
I was pleased that no opprobrium had fallen on the makers of the program and my pleasure turned to delight when I found that some of the glory properly meant for the play itself was descending like golden rain upon me. The redemptive element in television was beginning to work in my favour.
Recently I was standing at a bus stop in Shepherd's Bush when a lorry drew up . . The driver climbed down from his cabin on to the ground, crossed the road and said, 'You're Quentin Crisp.' When I falteringly admitted that I was, he added, 'I get the hang of it now.'
Although these changes were spectacular, there is a sense in which they were superficial; they altered my engagement calendar but not my soul. This was in the nature of things. Events and personalities did not begin to crowd in on me until I was sixty-six and inner development was no longer possible . . I continued to live in my small, dusty room, to drink Complan and to wear other people's cast-off clothes.
Out of doors . . I no longer stalked through the streets scorning people before they had a chance to scorn me. Instead, like all who have appeared on television, I now wore at all times an expression of fatuous affability.
I have pondered deeply the public reaction to Granada's documentary and to the play by Thames Television. The telephone calls provoked by the former were contemptuous or hostile; by the latter, mixed. The letters that I received after the first were negligible; those that followed the second were kind, sometimes laudatory. The manner of strangers encountered in the street subsequent to the first program were uneasy; after the second it was a subtle blend of curiosity and forgiveness.
I think the answer lies largely with the press. . . When one journalist went so far as to say that the Thames Television program justified the existence of television, she made it legitimate for even more refined taste to have enjoyed itself and when Clive James (of all people) said that the protagonist in The Naked Civil Servant appeared to be 'some kind of hero', amusement was nudged in the direction of condonation.
I was pleased that no opprobrium had fallen on the makers of the program and my pleasure turned to delight when I found that some of the glory properly meant for the play itself was descending like golden rain upon me. The redemptive element in television was beginning to work in my favour.
Recently I was standing at a bus stop in Shepherd's Bush when a lorry drew up . . The driver climbed down from his cabin on to the ground, crossed the road and said, 'You're Quentin Crisp.' When I falteringly admitted that I was, he added, 'I get the hang of it now.'
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