BACK TO NEWSLETTER 2002 CONTENTS
Email 2002
Howard Burnham
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 07:22:17 EST
Dear Hugh:
Thanks for the email. You are little bit like the Recording Angel...
Poor old Naughty George! That's another nasty shock. Do you know what took him? Let's hope that we have a better longevity gene than George, Malcolm and Dave.
Please find below the bulk of my last epic. The Saratoga gig was fun. I am recovering from my role as General Phillips in the Burgoyne Surrender March jollifications. I was Burgoyne by day, giving several performances at the Visitor Center and in schools, but was demoted to 2 i/c for the parade and reconstruction of the Trumball painting for Governor Pataki and large crowd of Patriots. It was great fun. The stirling reenactors who portrayed Burgoyne and Gates were both of a generous enbonpoint and looked a bit like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but they were jolly coves. The weather showed sympathy for the defeated British - a gentle rain fell. Fortunately not enough to wash out the fireworks, which were pretty spectacular.
Give my best wishes to Nick.
Take care and avoid the Four Horsemen,
Howard....
Old Message:
Yes, I'm still in South Carolina's bubbaland (where culture is Ben and Jerry's and the Baptist Church) but it's more fun than pedantry in North Yorkshire. I'm a sort of jobbing cultural gypsy. I'll email you my flyer later. I am on the South Carolina Arts Commission's Roster of 'Approved Artists' and am Artist-in-Residence at the huge Richland County Public Library, which just about pays for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield. I also get lecture tours for the English-Speaking Union of the USA, most recently to Philapdelphia.
(If you have time, here's my recollections of the City of Brotherly Love, and my big break-lette into the media; if not, skip to the last para!) Philadelphia was a little disappointing, though it was nobody's fault. My co-hosts there were both working men, so I was largely left to my own devices. Unfortunately, the rain rodded relentlessly down on day one, so I was confined to my hotel room. It did have an impressive view across Logan Square towards the Art Museum, whose steps Rocky raced up. I didn't have the energy. I was walked several ziz-zagging blocks to the Franklin Inn Club during a dry spell by one host for lunch family-style at a long scrubbed deal table with "a paper and intelligent conversation, but I must leave you to get back to my office". With this rather alarming injunction, my host left me in the care of a retired lady judge of formidable articulateness who downed a bottle and a half of Shiraz without slurring a syllable. A young lawyer gave a paper of the erosion of civil liberties since September 11, and then the polemic pyrotechnics exploded as left and right pitched in. I slumped down behind the flower arrangement hoping no one would ask me my stance on constitutional law and the relevant amendments. When I escaped -- unscathed and unexposed as a woolly thinker -- it was raining and I had no idea how to get back to the hotel. Luck favoured the inept, and I struggled soggily back with the aid of five patient Philadelphians at different turnings.
That evening my host took me for dinner at his boat club, which was the most memorable evening of the tour. It was just like being a new boy back at Clayesmore. There were arcane rituals of song-and-ceremony at this all male gathering, and 'strangers' (like me) were expected to tell a blue story. Luckily, one of the old gentlemen at a five star retirement home in Wilmington had told one two nights before, so that passed muster. As I am among the most wimpish of guys, having had a bone disease in childhood that prevented me from playing games, I did my best to bluff my way through the evening in what I hope was a suitably 'jockish' manner. I think one or two of the more sober and suspicious of them rumbled me, but were charitable enough not to debag me and thrown me in the river. I haven't been so scared - or so excited - since I was 13!
Last weekend I had my day as a film 'twinklet' playing Lord Cornwallis at Williamsburg-Yorktown for Granada Media's four part series "Brothers at War" scheduled for BBC2 and WGBH-Boston next year. I had originally been contacted to play Major Ferguson at Kings Mountain but that fell through. Just as well as I was twenty years too old for the role, and didn't relish being shot off my horse by eleven rebel bullets. Then I got the contract to play Cornmuffin at four day's notice. It was a busy weekend for me. On Saturday I was part of a big book festival in Charlotte, NC. They wanted me as Cornwallis to speak on Queen Charlotte (the wife of George III and for whom the town is named) and on my army's occupation of Charlotte during the Rev War. It was a bit of a non-event as I was surrounded by bouncy-castles, elephant-ear and other junk food concessions, Clappy the Clown and pals. Understandably, no one paid much attention to me, but a nice old gentleman came up afterwards and said I "done good" (which was a precious moment). Then I drove through the evening to Williamsburg VA.
Next day, I reported to the plantation location near Yorktown for the shoot. There were a director and producer, a techie crew of six, wardrobe and props, two American professional actors hired for General Greene and Sergeant Lamb of the 9th (convincing Irish accent) and ten stirling reenactors who doubled as redcoats or continentals as the scene required. Caterers and a honeybucket porto-pottie completed the mise en scene.
I was in eight sequences:
1. Ordering a staff officer to take a message to General O'Hara at my command
tent
2. Walking into my headquarters with guards presenting arms
3. Complaining of lack of loyalist support
4. My thoughts on the conduct of the war
5. Ordering the cannon to fire with grape at Guilford Courthouse
6. Being rescued by Sergeant Lamb at Guilford
7. Writing to Clinton from Yorktown
8. Last note to Clinton before surrender
5 and 6 were especially exciting as I was on horseback. This was rather surreal as there was a Civil War reenactment going on nearby. Suddenly a captain of federal cavalry c. 1864 canters up and offers me his horse. "Shyster" was a retired racehorse. He was so tall that I needed a leg up to get on, but I did not fall off the other side. Luckily for me, he was really quite docile, though there was a nasty moment when the crew let off smoke charges and his ears went back and he showed the whites of his eyes. But we - and Sergeant Lamb - did it.
The last sequence was memorable too. It was shot in a wooden cabin with smoke charges under my campaign table and a crew member on the roof shovelling fullers earth through the slats to simulate dust from explosions. I was assured that the smoke and dust were organically dolphin-friendly.
How much of me makes the screen rather than the cutting room floor remains to be seen next Spring in the UK and next Fall in the US. But it was fun, and afterwards we had an Indian at the Nawab Restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg, which was a little bizarre and yet appropriate in view of Cornwallis's later career!
I am off back to Saratoga next weekend as Burgoyne for the big 225th
commemoration. So the Rev War keeps me busy.
I too am still married to wife #1. It's funny that old Evelyn King is reported
to have said "Clayesmore is a school that makes good husbands." I used
to think that was a tad boring, but now it seems no bad thing, not that I am
smug about my uxoriousness. Sandra travels the world as an examiner for the
Royal Academy of Dance. My son is an extremely young "professor" of
ballet in the Performing Arts Dept of the University of Florida. I'll trawl the
web for Hugh articles in the Times and Telegraph. Let's try and stay in
desultory e-contact. I might blow into Putney one of these decades.
Howard Burnham (60 - 65)