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November 1981, signing copies of his book Acid Drops. From The Kenneth Williams Diaries, edited by Russell Davies |
Stop messing about! Forgotten letters record that unique voice
Preparing to move house recently, Illtyd Harrington chanced upon a lively correspondence between his late partner Chris and the great comedy star Kenneth Williams, writes Dan Carrier
THE pack of letters had lain untouched and forgotten about for some time. But when Illtyd Harrington, the New Journal’s literary editor, was moving home he found the package and began leafing through them.
They contained correspondence, spanning 20 years, between Illtyd’s partner Christopher Downes, who died in 2003, and his friend, the comic Kenneth Williams.
The letters reveal a close and personal friendship between two much-missed figures in British theatre – and remind the reader of Williams’s eccentric genius.
Russell Davies, the editor of Williams’s published letters, called him “one of the great letter writers of modern times”.
He wrote: “The content of Williams’s letters reflected in its variety the wide range of his acquaintances. To Erich Heller, the serious Germanist, he would write seriously, enquiringly, argumentatively in an intellectual sense, but always with affection and respect.”
He tailored his writings to suit the person he was writing to: he described himself as an “avuncular mentor” in his correspondence to younger friends.
He was written to by fans, many asking for some kind of advice. He would reply seriously, as he did when a friend wrote to him asking his counsel over a nasty case of sexual blackmail at his work.
Williams kept carbon copies of his letters, scratched out in a careful hand. He writes frequently in his dairies of the importance of letters as a means of communication, but it is more than that. They were a means of exercising his mental agility with words and phrases – key for an actor whose main strength lay in his voice and ability to use it.
Christopher, a theatre dresser, became friends with Williams in 1971 and the letter writing started soon after.
He had started out in the 1950s. After a spell working as a book buyer for Robert Maxwell, helping in a hostel in Primrose Hill and then backpacking his way round Europe, he became a tailor by trade. He found work at Horne Brothers in the West End, and due to his speed as a cutter and the irregular nature of the custom, he found he could spend four and half days a week indulging in his other passion, the theatre.
He worked at the Old Vic and then on to the National Theatre, where he dressed and befriended such names as Laurence Olivier, Albert Finney, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi and Robert Stephens.
Reading Williams’s personal letters reminds us of his unique use of dialogue. The boy who stood in his father’s barber shop off the Marylebone Road and listened to his customers banter comes off the pages. Williams the conversationalist is apparent.
One type-written airmail envelope, dated the December 4, 1975, is sent from his home in Mornington Crescent, not abroad.
It starts with “Mon cher Christopher…Your letter was a cheerful gleam in the fog and cold of a dreary morning!”
Kenneth Williams was to write in his diary of the joy he felt when he received a letter – his day starting anxiously if he had no post to mull over and digest over breakfast.
He continues: “It was sweet of you to write; too often nowadays, people just don’t bother…”
He then gives Christopher an outline of how busy he has been, telling of three shows for the BBC in the space of a fortnight.
“Last week I did a TV show at the Centre… It was what they call a ‘one off’ variety special. Called ‘The Kenneth Williams Show’ and consisting of sketches and monologues and songs. The audience was very good, and I couldn’t put a foot wrong. Which is useful when you can’t dance. The point of the opening was a great lead up, with me saying ‘watch that doorway and you will see something fantastically exciting’ – and then I went off, and the doorway mists over, and I suddenly appear through the mist and say ‘Yes! It was me all the time’. But it didn’t work out like that. The mist wasn’t mist at all. The effects boys produced smoke machines and by the time your Aunt Ada got round the back and through the door, I was choking with the smog and could hardly speak at all! I was shouting ‘get a fan! Get a fan for gawds sake!’ but everybody laughed including the floor manager, and they kept the cameras going so I had to continue!’
Another is simply scrawled across headed notepaper and thanks Christopher for a letter and a gift. He adds: “You mustn’t do it you know! You’ll spoil me and I’ll get bigheaded and start thinking I’m the Belle of the Ball. I certainly wasn’t LAST night. Ghastly party in Belgravia with a fearful South African queen (garish accent) holding forth like some blaring trumpet and no one else getting a word in edgeways…”
He later thanks Christopher for providing him with an address of mutual friends. “I’m not sure I will write,” he says. “I haven’t had a peep out of them for ages. They didn’t even bother to tell me their address. I have been treated like a load of rubbish and you know it! No! don’t argue! You know it’s true! Here I am, nearly 50 [born 22.2.26] tottering round St Pancras gardens looking for the odd bit of furtive pleasure and getting nothing. Not even a touch up. And people can’t be bothered to write. If they don’t write, how else are we to keep loyalties young?”
By writing, Williams not only gave his friends a sense of their worth to him, he left a legacy of observation that reminds us of his eccentric and wonderful take on life. |
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