Back in the early 1990s my friend, Lee, and I decided we were going to be the next big things in the world of theatre. With this aim in mind we formed a small theatre company and set about putting on our first production, a stage version of The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp. All went well, the script written, the actors assembled and rehearsed and the first night drew close. Then some bright spark mumbled something about copyright and we were sent into a state of panic, we just hadn’t given this any thought at all and we had no money for it, however much it might be. A great deal of head scratching and letter writing followed. I happened to mention our situation to a neighbour of mine when she asked how the production was coming along,
" Well, why don't you write to him. If he doesn't own them he might at least give you his blessing"
I said I didn't know how to get hold of him, all I knew was that he lived in New York.
"He's still got an account with us, I think" she said ( she worked for Lloyds Bank in the Kings Road) "I'm sure I could find his address".
A couple of days later a note appeared on my door mat "46 East 3rd Street, New York 10003". I dashed off a letter explaining our predicament and begging for mercy; to my surprise I received a speedy reply " Dear Mr Bowles, I do not own the rights to my life anymore, I think the B.B.C do. However, as far as I am concerned you may do as you wish with my life, good luck". We had the great man's blessing, if not that of the B.B.C. The play was a success and we had a lot of fun with it, we also learnt much. As a result of all this I started up a correspondence with Quentin, initially to let him know how we were doing with the play and how it all went etc. However, he turned into a very unlikely pen pal and this carried on until the end of his life.
In August of 1992 I decided to take my then boyfriend, Trevor, to New York for his birthday, I wrote to Quentin saying that I would be over and asked if he would be able to meet for a coffee. A letter arrived the day before we were due to leave, "I should be delighted Mr Bowles. Call me when you get to New York, I'm in the phone book”. He was and I did. We arranged that he'd come to my hotel, The Jolly Hotel Madison Towers, at 4 pm on the afternoon of the 8th August. Trevor was certain that Quentin wouldn't turn up and we were still being tourists up the Empire State Building at 3.45, when I had to drag Trevor back to the hotel. We arrived at the hotel a few minutes before 4 o'clock, Trevor went straight up to the room, still protesting at being torn away from the Empire State Building, while I waited in the lobby. A little after 4 pm Quentin Crisp walked into the lobby of my hotel. He stood looking about him; The Fedora hat, silk neck scarf, velvet jacket, walking cane and around his neck a monocle, there was no mistake, it was him alright!
“Mr Crisp!”
"Mr Bowles?"
"Mr Crisp. Hello."
"Would you like to go to the movies?"
A few minutes later I had extracted Trevor from our room and the three of us were walking along 5th Avenue. It turned out Quentin was writing film reviews for The Village Voice and the film we were about to see was going to combine “work and pleasure” although I wasn’t sure if we were the work or the pleasure. As our procession moved through the streets of Manhattan, Trevor tried to talk politics with Quentin. This, I knew, was a mistake. To Trevor's rants about Margaret Thatcher and how awful she was Quentin commented, almost as if to himself, " She has great style" Trevor explained that she wasn’t exactly gay friendly, and mentioned how gay rights were being eroded in Britain by the Tories "Anyone who demands acceptance places himself in the same position as a girl who asks 'Do you really love me?' Every mature woman knows where that gets her" Trevor stared at him. I feared that this might be a long afternoon. As we approached The Ziegfeld cinema on West 54th Street, a large man in a Hawaiian shirt bellowed at us from the other side of the road,
“Hey! Quent’. Over here”
“We shall be accompanied this afternoon by my friend, Mr Williams” Quentin said in explanation.
Jack Eric Williams was a large, loud and very friendly man, a composer by profession. He had with him a few friends who looked like they could be extras from a Woody Allen film.
" Want some popcorn Quent'?"
"I'd rather die than eat popcorn"
"That'll be a no then"
The film was Death Becomes Her starring Meryl Streep. Quentin sat on my left throughout the film and Jack on his left. Jack was munching his way through a bucket of popcorn.
“I once went to the theatre with a woman who ate a peach throughout the first act, loudly”. Quentin remarked.
The trailers for the upcoming films started, one of these had cars crashing, people being shot or worse and explosions around every corner.
“Nothing that could be called family values there. I don’t think I’ll bother with that one”.
After the movie, Jack Eric Williams asked Trevor and myself to join him and Quentin (and the Woody Allen clones) back at his flat for a drink. Inside Jack's flat we all sat at one end of a long table and chatted away while Quentin sat at the other end of the table drinking beer and looking like he was sat in a life class again. It was odd as much of the conversation was about him, but conducted as if he wasn’t there. The serious bespectacled woman who was with the serious bespectacled man (each a mirror image of the other) apropos of nothing in particular asked Quentin:
"Have you ever had a significant romance Quentin"
"Oh no. No, I couldn't cope with that."
"But wouldn't it have made you happier, then" she pressed.
"Oh no. I don't think a relationship has anything to do with happiness. They nag you all the time! They say, 'You're not going to sit around looking like that all day, are you?'. And so you find yourself combing your hair for somebody you already know! It's absurd!"
Laughter.
"Has anyone ever got close to you then?" said the earnest yank
" I don't think anyone is close to me, no. I spread my love over the whole human race. It's threadbare, because I spread it horizontally, not in depth. I don't love some one person more than all the others"
" What about love, then?" She was now teasing him, I felt, trying to push the buttons.
"I don't know what it means" He said.
More laughter. I felt that they had had this conversation or played this game with Quentin before. It was like putting a coin in a jukebox and waiting for it to play your favourite song. You fed Quentin a line and he came back with one of his greatest hits. He said things that evening that I had heard him say before in the many interviews I'd watched and read over the years. I felt, however, he was amusing himself as well as others and so that made the scene in that little flat off Broadway not an altogether sad one. All the same we politely declined the offer of dinner with Quentin, Jack and Co. Trevor and I left them to go off to Christopher Street for a pizza and to examine the extraordinary events of the afternoon.
Quentin showed us to the door, said goodbye and thanked us both for coming, there was a short pause and I did something I regret to this day, I hugged him. I knew instantly that I shouldn't have, that I’d strayed over some invisible line. He didn't say anything, but I knew. It was like hugging a bunch of kindling wrapped up in a velvet jacket. My initial thoughts about this gathering were that it was sad that he had become this broken down raconteur, sitting in a flat in Manhattan, amusing a couple of old queens and some worthy playwrights, but, I do believe that he was enjoying himself. And how many old people just like him were sitting alone and ignored all over Manhattan - or London for that matter. I had expected to find an activist and instead found a pacifist. So what. I don’t think he had ever really been political anyway, merely demonstrative.
We kept in contact by phone and letter in the years following that meeting in New York and I spoke to him a few days before he left that city for the last time.
“I’m very ill you know Mr Bowles”
The nasal drawl informed me down the line.I questioned whether he should be making the trip to England if he felt so ill. He got very irritated and told me that certain friends had tried to stop him going by telling his agent he wasn’t fit to travel. He seemed very annoyed about this.
“I told Miss Arcade, I need to work”.
He died a week later in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, one month before his ninety-first birthday. On Christmas Day 2013 he would have been 105 years old.
Postscript:
Extract from Resident Alien The New York Diaries by Quentin Crisp P143
"On Thursday afternoon, I went to meet two young men who had come to New York to climb the Empire State Building and to see me. In England, they had been performing a stage version that they had written of The Naked Civil Servant. The day was so crowded with engagements that I had to ask them to accompany me to the Ziegfeld cinema to see Death Becomes Her with Jack Eric Williams and sundry friends. To my relief, my new acquaintances were well received by Mr Williams. To my horror, he asked them if they were lovers, but they took this intrusion upon their privacy calmly. What they thought of the movie, I have no idea.”
Sting's brilliant song about Quentin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d27gTrPPAyk
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