Screen legend and 'Easy Virtue'

There is a joke in Easy Virtue that may alarm animal lovers and not knowing if it is in the Coward play, I will tell the story actress Elizabeth Spriggs told me about Ralph Richardson and the same unfortunate 'dog event'.

I met Lizzie working on Bruce Beresford's 'Paradise Road' where, from the start she seemed to be a character straight out of Dickens. Large and jocular, she was a fountain of theatrical stories from her years on the English stage - principally the Royal Shakespeare Company.

She told me that as a young man Richardson had a friend with a large country house. He was asked to stay and arrived in time for a long and intoxicating dinner. Afterwards he was shown up to a beautiful bedroom with long heavy curtains but woke later that night confused about his surroundings. Disorientated for the moment, he had patted around his bedside table to find the lamp and knocked something over. He got out of bed and headed for the curtains which he wrenched open with both hands. A little wintry shaft of moonlight came in and satisfied, he stumbled back to bed.

When he failed to turn up for breakfast the next morning - his hosts went up to find him. The bedroom was a riotous mess. Richardson had knocked over an ink pot which stood by a writing pad, wiped his hands on the bedclothes, opened the curtains with ink stained hands and dripped more ink over the carpet as he went. Waking early in the morning, he had slipped quietly out of the house - too mortified to face anyone.

And now the sequel : Decades later, after he had been knighted, Sir Ralph was was filming near his old friend's house, when a note arrived asking him to dinner again. Feeling all had been forgiven he turned up and was shown in to the front hall where he stood while his host was called. Noticing a narrow bench by the wall, he sat down wearily. When his friend arrived to greet him, once again...no Richardson. But the small family terrier was lying on the hall bench dead as a doornail - with his back broken. Sir Ralph never returned.

Elizabeth Spriggs was an animal lover of the highest order but even she told this story with some enjoyment.


To see Elizabeth Spriggs photo gallery, click on:

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