I think one’s notion of self should begin with an acceptance of your faults. You cannot live a life in which you always think it’s other people who are wrong. You can’t go around complaining, “They don’t understand me. I’m not really like that at all.” You have to think, “Am I like how people say I am?” And then you have to either alter it or to go with it according to what you judge to be the wisest thing. You can’t just push criticism aside. I think you have to weigh it up and consider the possibility that it could be right.

  I abandoned England for New York and advise everyone that if they want to be happy they should come to America. Most English people do not want to be happy. In fact they hold happiness in some contempt. I remember a friend of mine saw a play by Mr. Greene33 in which the heroine said, “I only wanted to be happy.” To which my friend reacted, “What a contemptible idea. Who’s happy? People are happy absolutely for only a few moments and even then they don’t know it.” She wasn’t crying when she said that and I think it’s a terrible thing to have said. I mean what is the point of living if you don’t want to be happy?

  Happiness is written into the Constitution of America whereas in England it would be considered to be a frivolous objective. “You ought to have something serious. So grow up. Keep a stiff upper lip. No happiness.” I don’t know why the English don’t want happiness. When I was young and knew nothing else, I thought, “There isn’t any happiness and we can’t expect it.” The extraordinary thing is that in London where no one is happy, there are no protests. America is a place where people can be happy yet there is a protest every day. In America, only the black people aren’t happy and that, of course, I understand. For as wonderful as America is, the truth is it will never recover from slavery.

  * * *

  14 129 Beaufort St, Chelsea, London SW3 6BS, United Kingdom

  15 81 Denbigh St, Pimlico, London SW1V 2EY, United Kingdom

  16 Quentin published How to Have a Life Style in 1975 and Doing It With Style in 1981

  17 Anna Wing, English theatre and television actress, 1914-2013

  18 Jean Moorcroft Wilson, British academic and writer, b. 1941

  19 Sir Arnold Wesker, British dramatist, 1932-2016

  20 Lucian Freud,, British painter, 1922-2011

  21 Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, 1856-1939

  22 Jack Neave, Australian nightclub owner, c. 1886- c. 1961

  23 Marilyn Monroe, American actress and model, 1926-1962

  24 Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1925-2013

  25 Nina Hamnett, Welsh artist and writer, 1890-1956

  26 Walter Sickert, English painter and printmaker, 1860-1942

  27 An unemployment benefit in the United Kingdom

  28 Landlady of Quentin’s bedsit at 129 Beaufort St, Chelsea

  29 A British confectionary, media and sundries retail chain that ceased trading in 2009

  30 A slang term for a police van

  31 David Herbert Lawrence, English novelist, poet, playwright, 1885-1930

  32 Gordon Sumner, popularly known as Sting, English musician, singer, songwriter, and actor, b. 1951

  33 Henry Graham Greene, English novelist, 1904-1991

  CHAPTER 4

  My Life in New York

  As soon as I arrived in America in the glorious city of New York, I set out to get myself a green card so that I could live here permanently. Having secured the appropriate documentation, a room, not too dissimilar from the one I had left behind in Chelsea, was found for me on the Lower East Side. When I saw it, I declared triumphantly, “I’ll live here.” though I was later shocked that the room cost more than $200 a month.

  In Manhattan however, there are studios twice the size of my room with a cupboard in one corner with a cooker in it and a cupboard in another corner with a shower in it, that are $1200 a month. Nevertheless, $200 a month was more than I was used to paying back in England. That aside, I have to say that life in America was made very easy for me from the very beginning. I have always been a willing victim of fate and this has led me to what some would call fame, which in turn brought me to America. It’s as if my daydreaming finally paid off.

  I was sitting in a restaurant on Second Avenue the other day in the window since that is where the owner of the restaurant wanted me to sit, and as people went by they saw me and waved. Naturally, I waved back to them. Then someone sitting at a table near to me asked, “You seem to be famous. Why?”

  To which I replied, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  I’m aware that I am what might be called a one-trick pony. This I accept without argument. This is why, though I like my friends, I’m mad about strangers because, of course, they haven’t ‘heard it all before’. It’s one thing for you to be halfway through a long story and think to yourself, “I’ve said all this before.” It’s something else however, when you look around you and find that the lips of your audience are moving in time with yours. Not only have they heard the story before, they know it verbatim. Somehow people don’t mind.

  I suppose there’s no such thing as being too predictable. In all the English music halls, the comedians had catch phrases for which they were well known. And if they ever failed to mention their catchphrase in the course of their act, the audience would say it for them. As I said earlier, if audiences can predict you, they feel they own you and start to like you. In America however, it’s harder to tell if people like you because they are all so kind. Certainly I am under the illusion that Americans like me. I certainly like them.

  Unlike the average American however, I never go on holiday or vacation as they call it. I have never felt the need because my life has been one long holiday. Nevertheless, I try not to be unsympathetic to people who long for the weekend to be free of the office or factory in which they have to work. I take no notice of Christmas and Easter and all those things because they’re just the same for me. And when I go to visit places, I am not really a traveler because I don’t go to see, I go to be seen. So a lot of places tend to look the same to me.

  During my years here in America, I’ve been to a great number of places. One of the places I liked visiting was Key West in Florida which seems altogether to be a holiday island. Nobody seems to work in Key West. It’s full with guest houses, piano bars and restaurants. The whole island seems to me to be a shrine to Mr. Hemingway.34 In every bar there’s a life-sized picture of him that says “Hemingway drank here” “Hemingway ate here” “Hemingway wrote here” or “Hemingway fought here.” They ought to rename the whole place Hemingway Island. It’s a very nostalgic place.

  I’m not a great one for nostalgia. I try to live in the continuous present. I do think about the past. Everybody does. But I don’t think, “If only I lived there. If only if I had black hair. If only I had those people around me.” I like what I have. Someone in England once described me as having ‘a disgusting zest for life.’ I don’t think I do, but I am very content and that seems to be annoying to some people and I never know why.

  I lived in Los Angeles for three months, which as you know is New York lying down, but the trouble with Los Angeles is there aren’t any people. When you wake up in your hotel on the first morning of your stay and you look out the window, you wonder what’s happened. Has there been an earthquake? Where are all the people because the streets are empty. The answer is, of course, that they’re in their cars in traffic jams on the city’s various freeways. This means you feel a bit lonely wandering around on foot. In spite of the lack of people on street corners however, I have to say I did like Los Angeles.

  I suspect I have been to places in America that I haven’t liked but I can’t really remember them. I know I’ve been in places where nothing I could do could entertain the people who had gathered to see me. I was once taken to a terrible place called the Pyramid Club and I thought to myself, “What am I going to do? What am I going to say? These weird people probably expect me to do something bizarre.” I decided I had better get out of there as soon as I could, which is exactly what I did.

  I can honestly say I haven’t been in any danger in America not even here on East Third Street, which makes it altogether different from my early experiences in England. I’m convinced that New Yorkers try to frighten you with stories of New York. They’re always saying, “You shouldn’t go down there,” or “That’s a bad street.” Well, I’ve wondered all over the Lower East Side, from which you can get no lower, until midnight and I’ve never had anything happen to me. I’ve never had things thrown at me, or been shouted at, or been chased about the place, or anything. I feel thoroughly at home here, which is a first.

  I was once on a bus going up Third Avenue when, very discretely, a man squatted down beside me and got me to sign my name on a piece of paper. Then, just as discretely, he went back to his seat. Just then, the woman opposite me said, “Well, who are you then?”

  And I asked, “Who indeed?”

  She looked puzzled and said, “I thought he was asking for your autograph.”

  To which I replied, “He was.”

  Confused, she continued, “Well, why?”

  To which I answered, “You must ask him.”

  By this time the autograph hunter was sitting with his face in his hands and everyone else on the bus was laughing. Finally she turned to the rest of the bus, who she thought must know who I was, and exclaimed, “Who the hell is he?” And everyone roared with laughter.

  As I got off the bus, I passed the poor woman and said, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t anybody.” At which point even the driver of the bus laughed. It could only happen in America.

  My preferred methods of travelling are to walk, to go by bus or to go by taxi, but I have been on New York City’s subway. My first time on the subway happened when I was with my friend Mr. Ward35 when we were catching a train at Penn Station bound for Providence, Rhode Island. We had taken a taxi up 8th Avenue and had got stuck in traffic. Later we realized we could go no further than 14th Street anyway because 8th Avenue was closed for a street festival. By then we only had fifteen minutes to make the train. It was a frightful rush but we managed to make the train by taking the subway the remaining distance. I have to admit I find New York’s subway a little gloomy. I much prefer to stay above ground but from time to time I am forced to take the subway because all other ways of getting there are impracticable.

  One time, I was on the subway going to Brooklyn and I had to stand because there was no room for me to sit. Imagine my surprise upon realizing I was the tallest person in the carriage. Brooklynese people must be a particularly short race of people. Are they Jewish? Are they Italian? That I didn’t notice. The carriage was so crowded that day you didn’t have to hold on to anything to remain standing even as the train lurched from side to side. You just leaned upon the people next to you and if you fell into someone particularly badly you simply said, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  My time in America has been happier than any other in my lifetime. Partly this is because people are my only pastime and in Manhattan there are always plenty of people. While I was waiting on the street for a taxi today, two separate people called out, “Hello, Mr. Crisp.”

  And, of course, I said hello back.

  “You don’t know me,” they each continued in one way or another, “I just wanted to say hello.” Then they walked on.

  It was nice, but why was it nice? I thought about it and I realized I feel comforted to be with people who know who I am and who are generally pleased with my existence. That makes me pleased.

  I don’t think I’m a hedonist however. A hedonist lives for pleasure, I do not. I do things to be justified. Then again, I suppose I hold that the purpose of life is to be happy, so perhaps I am a hedonist? I do take pleasure in living in the present. I think that’s how animals live. They’re at one with their surroundings.

  Had I grown up in America, my outlook and my way of being would doubtless have been quite different. It would have been much less shrill than it is, especially if I had been born in a big city like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Chicago. Had I been born here, I don’t think I would have needed to behave in such a defiant way as I did in England. I was always swimming against the tide over there.

  Lately, it has been my speaking engagements with Mr. Lago36 that have taken me around America and further afield. By further afield, I am mainly referring to Canada where I will be visiting later this year. The first time I visited Toronto, I flew in from England and stayed at the Toronto Hotel. It was only while pondering the meaning of Nova Scotia that I came to the realization that the Scots were the ones who discovered Canada. Doubtless, closely followed by the French.

  Mr. Lago and his friend Mr. Snell37 arrange for me to go to various places and work in tiny, arty theaters, and tell the inhabitants there how to be happy. At the end of the show I am found in another room sitting at a table, pen in hand, ready to sign the books that the audience can buy in the theater’s foyer.

  These tours send me to places like San Francisco, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Baltimore, to name just a few. The last time I went to Baltimore it was burning hot. I’m sufficiently ignorant of American geography that I didn’t even know Baltimore has a seacoast and a harbor. I have also been to Portland and San Francisco, the latter of which was the only town in the world where I have had entirely bad notices. Having said that, the last time I went they were nice to me, so perhaps they are slowly warming to me.

  Mr. Lago makes it all so very easy for me. He even sends me an airline ticket. I have to confess I have never bought an airline ticket in my life. Air travel really is easier than any other form. You can hardly do it wrong. I have never yet got on to a plane, sat down and made myself comfortable and heard the stewardesses say, “Welcome to Flight 123 to Los Angeles,” and thought, “Oh, I thought I’m meant to be going to Atlanta,” and rushed off the plane. So far I’ve always done it right.

  Sometimes someone comes and says, “You’re in the wrong seat, Mr. Crisp.” And they take my luggage and move me into the First Class cabin, usually because First Class is almost empty. When that happens it’s nice because there’s so much more room. Recently I was given a bottle of wine by the cabin crew, which I suppose was going spare. The woman sitting next to me asked, “Are you somebody special that we should know about?”

  I replied, “I don’t think so. Only to the staff on this airplane.”

  These days I’m much better at making connections because I’m usually sat in a wheelchair and I’m wheeled to wherever it is I have to go which often is a very long way. It’s necessary because at my age I can hardly walk at all with my luggage. I don’t rely on my fame, you understand. I rely on my helplessness. They can see that I am an old man and that I can’t move fast and are generous enough to help me on my way.

  John F. Kennedy airport is absolutely hell to get out of. It really is a miserable airport. I find La Guardia much easier. It’s reportedly the most dangerous airport in the world, but if you happen to land safely, it’s easy enough to get into town from. Apparently, they’ve been meaning to lengthen the airstrip by 400 yards for six years now, but haven’t yet gotten around to doing it. So planes are always either arriving too low and catching their undercarriage on the edge of airstrip, or coming in too steeply so that they can’t come to a stop after landing and run on into the river. I suppose when a plane full of people die in the river they’ll eventually do it.

  I’ve never been to Mexico or any other country where I don’t speak the language. Since my performance is entirely speech, and since what I say has to be translated from English into American before it can be translated into any other language, it’s never really crossed my mind to go to Mexico.

  I was once invited to go to Costa Rica, but of course I speak no Spanish. The man who invited me said it didn’t matter, but I couldn’t help but think it would. People always say I’m capable of learning a foreign language, but I think I’m too old for learning now. Besides, you have to know a language very well before you can tell jokes in it. I’m not sure jokes even exist in French. I am willing to believe they might in Spanish.

  * * *

  34 Ernest Hemingway, American novelist and journalist, 1899-1961

  35 Phillip Ward, Quentin’s best friend, b. 1956

  36 Charles Lago, Quentin’s manager from 1995 and founder of Authors on Tour

  37 Charles “Chip” Snell, an associate of Charles Lago

  CHAPTER 5

  My Family

  Since I am leaving this world without what I believe people refer to as a ‘significant other’, and since I have borne no children, you might very well think that the great, though assumed, name of Crisp will fade to dust at the same time I do. You would be mistaken, however. For although in the past I gave the impression that I was raised as an only child, that was most definitely not the case.

  In this chapter I would like to introduce you to my family so that you can rest more easily knowing that what Mr. Watson38 and Mr. Crick39 would call my DNA is still splashing gaily around the planet’s gene pool. Let me start with my chief enabler, my mother.

  My mother was very beautiful and always more stylishly dressed than any of our neighbors. She played bridge and did all the things she felt she should do. Ladies would come to the house and play bridge with her in the afternoons, but would all leave for their respective homes in time to greet their husbands home from work.

  When I look back, I realize my mother was, of course, invincibly snobbish. Previously she had been a nursery governess and in this capacity had experienced life in the houses of the rich. This had gone to her head. I believe she wanted to re-create that atmosphere in our small house on a side street in Sutton and, looking back, probably went to absurd lengths to do so.