Jeffrey Bernard is unwell

A quick detour into nostalgia prompted by 

In the mood for a drink in The Coach & Horses with Jeffrey Bernard, Francis Bacon, Tom Baker et al. pic.twitter.com/Ch6RjUvW2B

— Richard Littler (@richard_littler) November 9, 2021

There he is, Jeffrey Bernard in his natural environment.  

 

Click to enlarge.

I was a regular reader of the English Spectator for decades and still enjoy it.  Jeffrey Bernard authored the weekly Low Life column, chronicling the life of a hard drinker, someone both familiar with many cultural leaders and icons but also firmly at the tenuous margin.  His preferred oasis for intoxication and dissipation was The Coach and Horses pub in Soho.

He lived a life almost completely in contrast to my own goals and values.  Yet he lived with integrity and conviction.  He was untroubled by all the negative consequences of his own choices; he rolled with them even unto death with scarcely a whimper or regret.

It was hard not to respect him and value his weekly reports from the troubled far side of alcoholism.  And he was a gifted writer.  

Some of my memories

When he was too under-the-weather to file his weekly Low Life column, The Spectator would insert a small notice "Jeffrey Bernard is unwell."  

His friend, the playwright Keith Waterhouse wrote a popular and successful play, Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell

"Bernard and Gluck divorced in 1980. He later described her as "my fourth, last and most angry wife". He did not remarry for the rest of his life."

Jonathan Meades described Bernard's Low Life column as a "suicide note in weekly installments."

 

In the later years, it was disheartening to read the chronicles of his decline but there was always an astringent humor and defiance of outcomes.  When his leg was amputated due to complications of diabetes, instead of "Jeffrey Bernard is unwell" The Spectator noted ""Jeffrey Bernard has had his leg off".

One evening sometime in the mid- or late-1990s, I was working on a project in Washington, D.C.  I went out to dinner at a favorite restaurant that had reasonably good light for reading and very good food.  I had ordered and was seated with a couple of books on the table and The Spectator in hand, reading.  

The gentleman at the table next to mine, with a pretty date of unobvious wit or intelligence, saw my reading the Spectator and leaned over far enough to see I was reading Low Life.  

"A friend said I was the Jeffrey Bernard of American journalism" he offered.

The friend may have made that observation but it did not seem to have much merit.  Pressed shirt, chinos, sufficient income for a nice restaurant, clearly aspiring.  Not a Jeffrey Bernard by any stretch of the imagination.  I was also struck by the incongruity.  He was definitely trying to get beyond a certain level of familiarity with his date.  

I suppose he was trying to demonstrate urbanity and international sophistication (with a sub-signal of rakishness?) but it seemed entirely lost on her.  She did not know Jeffrey Bernard, did not know The Spectator, and I had my doubts of the extent of her awareness of England as a country.

Just one of a thousand dinner time cameos over a career which has entailed a lot of dining out across the world.  

But good old Jeffrey Bernard.  A very distinct voice and missed.