Rudolf Nureyev

Rudolf Nureyev is a recurring presence in the diary’s crowded social world: someone whose arrival can redirect an evening, whose attention becomes the subject of intimate gossip, and whose personal grievances surface behind the polish of celebrity. The account does not dwell on his performances; instead, it records a series of encounters in which attraction, access, and the management of public attention shape how he is seen. Across them, Nureyev is at once sought after and difficult to approach, affectionate and resentful, the center of a party and a man described as visibly worn down by nightlife.

A Presence in the Social Circuit

One early encounter places Nureyev at Elaine’s, where the diary writer had come to meet Jamie Wyeth and Arnold. The scene is recorded as a meeting of people rather than an occasion focused on Nureyev’s public work: the diary’s attention moves among introductions, acquaintances, and the shifting intimacies of the evening. A man connected to Lester Persky grabs the writer and introduces Neile McQueen, while Arnold later arrives with three young women. Nureyev is part of this fluid social arrangement, where recognition and proximity make an encounter noteworthy even before anything is said about him.

The diary gives this presence a more personal dimension the following day. Jamie reports that Nureyev had fallen in love with Erskine, who had almost yielded to his advances but ultimately did not. Nureyev’s reported parting suggestion was that they could simply watch television together. He also gave autographs to Erskine and Catherine Guinness. The smallness of that proposed activity contrasts with the intensity of the reported attraction: after a night among prominent names, the detail that remains is a domestic invitation and the handwritten tokens he left behind.

Parties, Detours, and Access

At another party, Nureyev’s social orbit affects the evening’s itinerary. After dinner, Andrea Portago wants to go to Baryshnikov’s party at Lester Persky’s. As the group is leaving, Bianca and François Catroux arrive and warn them away, describing the party as poor. They instead return to Nureyev’s party, where the evening includes a period of having to go through the ritual of being welcomed back. Andrea then suspects that Bianca may have disparaged Lester’s gathering to thwart her career, and reconsiders: Milos Forman might be there, making the party useful to her. The group goes after all.

Nureyev’s party thus sits within a chain of social calculations rather than appearing as an isolated celebration. Invitations, warnings, ambition, and the prospect of encountering influential people compete for the group’s attention. Nureyev does not need to dominate the narration for his gathering to matter: the choice to return to it, and then to leave for another party, makes his home or event one of the evening’s organizing points. Elsewhere, when the diary writer sees him at Elaine’s, the question is not what to say but how to behave—whether to remain cool and avoid disturbing him, or to embrace him as Diana Ross might. His celebrity creates a small social dilemma about the proper distance between admiration and familiarity.

Monique Van Vooren and a Reversal of Generosity

A later visit to Judy and Sam Peabody’s presents a darker account of Nureyev. He arrives looking, in the diarist’s judgment, terrible and unusually old; the writer speculates that nightlife has finally caught up with him. His masseur is with him and is described as serving something like a bodyguard’s role. The physical impression and the protective companion frame Nureyev as more vulnerable and guarded than the glamorous party presence of the earlier episodes.

The visit also exposes a sharp conflict with Monique Van Vooren. Nureyev has told the Peabodys that he will leave if she appears, accusing her of having used him. The diarist counters this accusation with a particular memory: when Nureyev was too cheap to stay in a hotel, Monique gave him her bed. That recalled act of hospitality makes his present charge look especially ungenerous to the writer, who calls him mean. The passage does not provide Monique’s account or establish the full history between them; its force comes from the contrast between a concrete kindness and Nureyev’s reported insistence that he was exploited.

Celebrity, Intimacy, and the Diary’s Portrait

Taken together, the entries show Nureyev through other people’s talk and through the diarist’s immediate judgments. His attraction to Erskine is relayed by Jamie, while the Peabody episode turns on what Nureyev has reportedly said about Monique. The diary therefore offers no settled, comprehensive portrait: it preserves fragments—an invitation to watch television, autographs, a party that becomes a stop on a contested itinerary, a refusal to share a room with someone he resents. Each fragment brings the public figure into a more intimate register without dissolving the distance around him.

That distance is especially visible in the writer’s uncertainty about how to greet Nureyev at Elaine’s. The question of whether to be cool or affectionate captures the social pressure of celebrity as lived etiquette: recognition does not automatically grant intimacy, and admiration can itself risk becoming an imposition. Against that uncertainty, the later criticism of his conduct toward Monique is notably direct. The diary moves from wondering how close one may come to Nureyev to judging how he treated someone who had offered him shelter. Its portrait is consequently neither simple reverence nor uncomplicated condemnation. Nureyev remains compelling because the entries hold both the magnetism that gathers people around him and the resentment that can turn an intimate history into accusation.