1990 - Autumn
Mrs Thatcher has abdicated; . . I shall spend my final years in perpetual mourning - . . Mrs Thatcher ascended the throne during one of my early exploratory stage appearances in America. . . hardly an evening passed without someone asking my opinion of England's Prime Minister. I thought and still think that she was a star and I repeatedly said so. Once, after a show, while a female member of the audience was walking along the street with me, she said, 'I hope you realize that you gave all the wrong answers.' . . I was obviously expected to take politics seriously; I never have.
On Thanksgiving Day, as I have done for many years, I went again to Port Monmouth, New Jersey, where the parents of a friend of mine always welcome me. I regard this as a very special favour. Such occasions tend to be purely family affairs, and I am an outsider in so many ways. I doubt that any such thing would happen in England.
I've now reached the age when almost every letter that I receive from anyone that I used to know in Britain, contains a list of acquaintances who have recently died, and I have secretly wondered if this was ever going to pay off. Last week I thought it had. I received notification that I had been left two hundred pounds in somebody's will. As, with feverish fingers, I turned the pages of this document, my hopes began to fade. In order to get my hands on this legacy, I would have to sign for it, and my signature would have to be witnessed by a banker, a clergyman, or a justice of the peace who knows me personally. Where in the whole wide world will I find anyone with any prestige to lose who would admit to anything so incriminating?
When people ask me what I do when I am not involved in the smiling and nodding racket, I used to say, 'I breathe and I blink.' To these deliberately minimal activities, I must now add that I scratch. I suffer from eczema, which increases with severity with the passing years. Mr Eliot wrote that it is, 'love that weaves the intolerable shirt of flame', but I'm wearing it, and I think it's eczema.
On Thanksgiving Day, as I have done for many years, I went again to Port Monmouth, New Jersey, where the parents of a friend of mine always welcome me. I regard this as a very special favour. Such occasions tend to be purely family affairs, and I am an outsider in so many ways. I doubt that any such thing would happen in England.
I've now reached the age when almost every letter that I receive from anyone that I used to know in Britain, contains a list of acquaintances who have recently died, and I have secretly wondered if this was ever going to pay off. Last week I thought it had. I received notification that I had been left two hundred pounds in somebody's will. As, with feverish fingers, I turned the pages of this document, my hopes began to fade. In order to get my hands on this legacy, I would have to sign for it, and my signature would have to be witnessed by a banker, a clergyman, or a justice of the peace who knows me personally. Where in the whole wide world will I find anyone with any prestige to lose who would admit to anything so incriminating?
When people ask me what I do when I am not involved in the smiling and nodding racket, I used to say, 'I breathe and I blink.' To these deliberately minimal activities, I must now add that I scratch. I suffer from eczema, which increases with severity with the passing years. Mr Eliot wrote that it is, 'love that weaves the intolerable shirt of flame', but I'm wearing it, and I think it's eczema.