The other Clark diaries
Antony Rouse
THE OSSIE CLARK DIARIES edited by Lady Henrietta Rouse Bloomsbury, £20, pp. 402 0 ssie Clark was a talented clothes designer, famous in the Sixties and Seven- ties, who was stabbed and bludgeoned to death by his male lover in 1996. At the time of his murder, Clark was 54 years old, broke, much addicted and living in a coun- cil flat.
Henrietta Rous, the editor of Clark's diaries, knew him in the last 14 years of his life and adored him, despite his four times smashing her cars. Apart from an introduc- tion, she provides a preface to each year of the diaries.
Ossie Clark was born the youngest of six children in a northern working-class family. At 16 he went to Manchester Regional Art College. In Manchester he met his future wife, the textile designer Celia Birtwell, whose fabrics would play a large part in his rapid success as he dressed the wives and girlfriends of rock stars in romantic chiffon. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art where he met another northerner, David Hockney, briefly his lover. The complicated relationship of Clark, Hockney and Celia Birtwell runs through the diaries.
By the time they start, Clark's life is already a mess. He is separated from Celia and their two children, taking drugs and uppers and downers, failing to keep busi- ness appointments in New York, Paris and Hong Kong, and his company is in trouble. The first diary entry in 1974 goes:
January 10. Moved into Powis Terrace. Dinner with Mick and Bianca. Took Mo to cheer him up. After, Paul Getty Jr with Nikki Weymouth, Chrissy, Robert Fraser.
And it doesn't get much more illuminating than that. As time goes by, the famous names disappear and the diaries become a sad, dull account of efforts to get money, to get drugs, to get back a lover.
There are attempts to kick his addictions. '78th day without pills' is one entry; '39th day without cocaine' is another. But doc- tors are accommodating:
He didn't see anything wrong with certain people being prescribed, which he did, 100 Dexedrine and 50 Valium.
Clark subsists on the state and occasional commissions from friends to make dresses. His business is bankrupt in 1981. He is per- sonally bunicrupt in 1983.
Unaffected by all this is Clark's sex drive. Those familiar with the diaries of Joe Orton will know what to expect, although the public lavatory dear to Orton is replaced by the sauna bath and Hampstead Heath in Clark's case. It takes 1 hour 40 minutes for Clark, penniless, to walk to the heath from his flat in Notting Hill.
Hockney, writing of early days with Ossie Clark, says, 'He worked hard for a month, then he stayed in bed all day and went out every night. He seemed to know how to live; I didn't live that way, I worked.' One result of the work was the famous Hockney painting 'Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy'. It was a wedding present which Clark later sold to the Tate for £7,000. The money was used as deposit on a house which Clark hoped to share with his wife and two small children. The family never moved in. The painting is much visited.
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