by Cecil Beaton
But am I complaining? After all, the majority of people spend their lives in one place. Most towns-people prefer to remain at home after a tiring week, without taking a train or motoring for hours. The empty, quiet city on a Sunday has charm for many, particularly in winter. For the first quarter-century of my life I spent almost every weekend in London. It was not then necessary for me to smell the downland air in order to set to work painting, designing or taking a photograph.
But the habit of fifteen years is hard to break. As a young man I was never bored in London during the weekends but, suddenly, to me it has become lowering to the spirit. The air seems to have been used up. One is conscious of the untidiness, the discarded bus tickets, the greasy pavements, the look of aimlessness on the faces of those with nothing to do. I felt slightly ghost-ridden by the scarcity of traffic, the deserted Undergrounds with a pile of News of the Worlds sprinkled with pennies thrown while the seller has gone off to commit suicide.
A friend rented me a cottage near her house, but the cottage soon became too near her house. I wonder if I shall ever find another retreat of my own? Estate agents offer no hope.
DINING IN CHURCHILL’S COMPANY
December, 1945: Pelham Place
How can one curb the day’s activity and say ‘no’ when interesting, unexpected, additional jobs suddenly fall within one’s reach? Now that I have no longer a retreat in the country to retire to, the pace seldom slackens. Today it has reached a great impetus and it was in a condition of over-fatigue, and in a mood of self-pity, that I set off to dine with Sybil Cholmondeley. Sybil, a dear friend of many years whom I generally see in the intimacy of her immediate family, had explained that tonight’s dinner would be just a quiet and small affair of eight people... Too bad that no taxi could be found at the last moment. Harassed and self-absorbed, I asked the parlourmaid at Kensington Palace Gardens if I were the last to arrive. I was. My dismay was increased to find a most distinguished group consisting of Field Marshal Alexander, Lady Wimborne and Brendan Bracken standing in the centre of the drawing-room listening to Winston Churchill. A few moments later I pulled myself together enough to gather that the great man was telling the company that he had been invited to go to New York to drive through the streets, but that he couldn’t do it nowadays in winter: without a hat he would catch a cold. ‘I’ll drive through the city later,’ he promised. This off-hand reference to being afforded a ticker-tape triumphal reception from City Hall along Fifth Avenue, struck me suddenly as resembling an excerpt from Alice.
It was difficult to accept as part of everyday conversation such understatements as: ‘The last time I was in this street was when I drove to call at the French Embassy, a few houses along, and there were crowds outside.’[10] Altogether the tone of this evening was so elevated that it was hard to readjust myself to the shock of leaving so far below me the worries and interests of my prosaic little existence. In silence I watched Churchill holding, in his feminine hands with the pointed nails and fingers, a glass of champagne too near his face so that the exploding bubbles tickled him and, like a baby, he screwed up his nose and eyes to display an almost toothless mouth. He wore cracked patent-leather shoes, and his stomach was high-pitched under an immaculate shirt, and his heavy gold watch chain was like my father’s. Churchill, of course, was very much the star of the evening. He has much of the ‘show-off’ about him and does not brook with equanimity rival attractions or interruption. Several times during dinner he growled: ‘Allow me to continue this discussion’, or: ‘Please don’t interrupt, Clemmie’, and indeed he knew his performance warranted rapt attention. I realized to what a degree all in his family circle must pay him due deference. But, in all fairness, he was strictly truthful, well-balanced and impartial. At one point he interrupted himself by asking Alexander: ‘Am I right, Field Marshal?’ ‘No, you’re wrong, sir,’ said Alexander in a voice like a gun shot. Churchill was neither fazed nor angry. He ‘huh-huhed’ — then continued. Later he claimed that he was not a bitter political loser, that in politics you must expect everything you get (‘At least they haven’t been rude to me!’), but during the evening several topics were discussed which showed that he was altogether somewhat disgruntled — the British Council and the recent Picasso show being particular bugbears. He was appalled by the publicity about the Nuremberg trials: ‘Bump ’em off but don’t prolong the agony.’ He complained of photographers snapping him when he was putting a piece of meat in his mouth, and regretted the way the world is going. ‘Nowadays no one is allowed their fine house. People do not want what they are given, and they are not given what they want.’
When the ladies left the dining-room Churchill talked about the atom bomb that was let off in New Mexico. At the Potsdam Conference news had come through that it was a baby thing and Stalin was not impressed. Churchill was harsh in his criticism of Sir Stafford Cripps (‘that parlour Trotskyite’) whom he quoted as being only one person who didn’t enjoy all the things he said about them. ‘He resented being called “Sir Stafford Crapps”. But I didn’t know that that word had a connection with the rears. I don’t have to descend to four-letter words to be abusive.’ Brendan demurred. Churchill replied : ‘Come off it, Brendan, you’ve also had bad luck with that word. You once called someone “crapular” and he resented it.’
But although an occasional plaintive note could be detected from the great hero dethroned, Churchill, unlike myself, entertained no self-pity. The evening had upon me the salutary effect of making my own troubles seem unimportant. But it also made me realize with quite a shock of humiliation the limitations of my specialized existence. Here was a group of men who are uncommonly varied in their wide range of interests, yet with none of them was I able to converse with authority or ease. I realized how remote I have become from the ordinary man of intelligence. Not only in the field of politics and government, but in history, in social problems, and in the events of the day, I found myself tongue-tied and with no opinions to voice.
Churchill has never been one to put people at their ease: he is known to have an alarming effect on many. Tonight I admired him as always, relishing his turn of phrase and his wit, but I felt rather like Eve in Howards End: ‘She was a rubbishy little creature and she knew it.’ It was only when, at a comparatively early hour, and wrapped in scarves and heavy clothing, Churchill was bundled off to bed by his attentive wife, that I felt able to assume even a modicum of social poise.
Part III: New York, 1946
ARRIVAL AT THE PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK
The Haymarket success of Lady Windermere had re-kindled an interest in Wilde plays in New York, and the magnet of designing An Ideal Husband for Leonora Corbett drew me across the Atlantic. This project failed to materialize, but there were other tentative suggestions, including a duplication of the London Fan. At any rate, there seemed to be in the air the possibility of my at last breaking through the, to me, impregnable barriers of Broadway.
It was the dour, grey month of February when I eventually arrived — via a bleak and frozen Canada — in the twinkling and warm comfort of the Plaza Hotel. After the awful Atlantic crossing on a troopship filled with ugly GI brides, and their horribly seasick children, I wallowed in my old luxurious rooms. My friend Serge Obolensky, a director of this hotel, had arranged for me, on a previous visit, to live at a greatly reduced rate in a suite decorated by myself.
Although the theatrical enterprises were all, in turn, postponed or remained undecided, almost directly after my arrival so many jobs were offered to me that it was difficult to keep an equilibrium.
My photographs were said to have acquired a different quality from the fanciful concoctions of before the war: I was kept on the hop with sittings.
At last I begin to feel that the war really is over. Anxiety and nervous dread are things of the past: rationing is forgotten: the future is roseate. Of course here, as at home, the first year of peace is a period of readjustment. Here, too, it is a time of frustration — also of fear: the bogey being Russia. Eve
ryone is scared of spies. Economically everything is in a state of flux, with continual talk of inflation or deflation or threats of further strikes. John L. Lewis has defied Truman, and can be proud that he has put a million men out of work with a loss of ninety million tons of coal. Vice-President Wallace, who in Chiang Kai-Shek in China has backed the wrong horse, has been inveighing against the British imperialistic policy in the Near East and, having done great general and lasting harm, is mercifully now in retirement. Mr Rockefeller, on the good side, has given eight million dollars towards an East River home for a United Nations building.
My door bell rings with the printers arriving with a ballet programme lay-out for Lincoln Kirstein. At the same time a would-be producer arrives with notes for suggestions for rewrites on a play I was working on, and messengers go back and forth with manila envelopes containing proofs of articles, typescripts or the latest colour transparencies. Now, at last, it seems that the theatre is open to me as a designer on a big scale: it is all most invigorating. My earlier visits to New York had always seemed too fleeting. Now, with nothing specific to keep me in England, there was time to settle down and relish to the full the infinite delights that New York has to offer.
MRS WELLMAN: A CONTINUATION
When I first arrived in New York in the late twenties, Frances Wellman, a middle-aged woman of singular ugliness and persistence, became quite a figure for giving parties in her unimpressive hotel suite in which members of ‘cafe society’ mingled with Broadway celebrities. Perhaps of all her pet guests Noël Coward was the most cherished. The hostess, who had quite surprisingly distinguished hands, would ‘ssh’ her guests, with her long index finger to her pouting mouth, to signal the coup of the evening: ‘darling Noël’ at the piano. Noël is not only a brilliant, but also an indefatigable, performer. Neysa Mcmein and a group of fans and friends, close and otherwise, would sit on or around the piano in ecstasies, while lesser devotees were ‘ssh’d’ in the background.
Twenty years later the same lady was tonight giving a party to honour Noël Coward. Anita Loos said: ‘It’s awful — no one seems to be going. Neither Madeleine nor Tilly — they just can’t bear to face Noël after the notices for his recent play.’ Noël, of course, loyal to the old hostess, was in dazzling form. So professional is he that he would never concede that he was anything but thrilled with the reception of his latest production. He appeared on the crest, and, in spite of all that had been said, the friends had clocked in. Neysa Mcmein, of course, as she is the most friendly and loyal of all; Adele Astaire, too. And the rest of the guests — the ‘nonprofessionals’ — were just the same set that, throughout the twenties and thirties, had stayed up all night and, if no party was to be found, would sit in night clubs till dawn.
In the meanwhile there had been a world war. I had not seen these people for so long that they now seemed to me to be caricatures of their former selves: mouths wider, eyebags lower, hair brighter, laughter louder, and Scotches stronger. Frances Wellman, even more restless than she was twenty years ago, had become a galvanized zombie and was shushing everybody while Noël warbled about a marvellous party at which Momo and John-John and Figgi had turned up in wildly smart vein. The song satirized the foibles and idiocies of this particular group; noses screwed up, teeth bared, foreheads wrinkled, everyone shrieked with laughter because they knew how damnably exclusive and smart they were. By the time everyone had joined in the old twenties songs the low ceilings of the Waldorf must surely crack.
I was being a boor; however much I drank I couldn’t get the ‘party spirit’. I found this group of older people, insistent on still behaving like ‘the bright young things’ they have long since no right to consider themselves, had become really rather offensive. Surely they were now too old to be quite so silly.
I left early, feeling unhappy at being so censorious of these friends who were only a bit past my own age, and whose heyday was at the time when I was so full of hope and vitality. Maybe I have changed more than I realize. This was not my evening. I prefer the company of those who are still full of promise with their careers in front of them, those who have no bank balance and probably live in a ‘cold water walk up’ flat in the village, yet who, by facing failure as part of reality, create a vitality that is, to me, more invigorating.
DINNER IN ‘THE VILLAGE’
Cyril Connolly, when describing New York, used the provocative phrase ‘the luxury of poverty’. I think I know what he means: comfort and all that money can buy has become de rigueur, and the effort to impress the Joneses the chief incentive. In the apartments of the excessively rich one finds boiseries, parquet de Versailles and Renoirs galore: imagination, originality or vitality do not exist in them. It is more likely to be among those struggling for survival — the overcrowded families, the Italians, the Jews, and the younger writers and painters or theatre folk — that one finds people who are expressing themselves with too much vigour, ambition, or even desperation, to think of the effect they are creating. It is only when no standards of comparison have to be maintained that freedom — that greatest of all luxuries — is found.
But when I repeated Connolly’s phrase to an abstract painter-friend named Chuck, he was furious. ‘That’s just damn perversity,’ he said, and Chuck should know because he is dog-poor. Yet Chuck himself illustrates the point for, in spite of not possessing — to use his own phrase — ‘a pot to piss in’, he manages to do everything he wants, has a lively, lovely time somehow managing to see everything that is going on, and even creates a stimulating, congenial atmosphere in whatever overcrowded, faceless little apartment he shares with Joseph, a poet, equally ‘pot-less’. On my way downtown to dine with these two friends I was glowing with anticipation of an unusual evening.
In a dank, mushroom-smelling hallway I could not see the names of my friends pencilled among the others of the building: the light bulb had been filched. Fortunately a negro came along and lit a match for me. I started to mount the sagging stairs to 5C. I noticed that refuse from other apartments had been dumped outside each scabrous door, and some occupants allowed their dogs to make messes on the impoverished lino’ landings.
Due to a misunderstanding about the time I should arrive, a soufflé which, I was told, had resembled the Himalayas, was now flat and of the consistency of chamois leather. However, Chuck and Joseph were pleased to see me and seemed somewhat overexcited — for they both spoke in high-pitched voices above the clattering of kitchen utensils, the decibels of radio turned on full volume, and a hysterical neighbour outside calling from her window: ‘Mary! Mary! Mary! Mary!’
While I wondered how much more junk and jumble could be piled into one room they exclaimed: ‘We just love this apartment! It’s so much more sympathetic than the other which had the elevator railway running through the windows.’ ‘And, my dear, it’s cheaper!’ ‘At least by two or three dollars.’
I asked if the music and the heat could be turned lower, and if the boys could please talk one at a time; neither of them seemed to resent my behaviour.
In spite of their enthusiasms, I could read between the lines a story of failure and disillusion. Chuck managed to make a joke of the wicked way his dealer had cheated him, and was still convinced that he himself, as well as everyone he admires and likes, is on the verge of success. But it soon became obvious that his saga was one of hopes unfulfilled and faith undermined. It was also easy to see that Joseph was in a pretty cynical state, even near to despondency, having been taken out of his humble surroundings by a rich protector and shown the bright lights of Europe, only recently to be most cruelly dropped back where he came from.
A third young man lurched in. He was also their room-mate, but where space could be found for him to doss down I was unable to imagine. Ken turned out to be a prospective playwright, recently out of the Army. He has not yet received acclaim though he has written a dozen plays and done much spadework for the Schuberts.[11] (He wrote from the French a new version of a popular musical comedy which has been touri
ng the country for three years with separate companies, and for which he was paid in full by Mr Schubert the princely sum of $300.)
Chuck and Jo had prepared the dinner in a kitchen the size of a boothole yet the ragoût, with savoury rice and mushroom in cream, was delicious, and the sauce showed particular imagination. But with so much attention paid to pots, pans, plates and cutlery, the talk was in jerks. Jo confessed: ‘I’m afraid our dessert is going to be rather skimpy’, and produced about seven wizened strawberries on a blue and white saucer. The would-be playwright protested: ‘Oh, you can’t offer those — there aren’t enough of them. Keep them for tomorrow and let’s have some cheese.’ Jo said: ‘But they won’t last until tomorrow! Already I’ve had to throw away four that were mildewed, and you know fresh strawberries are terribly expensive.’ The playwright agreed that he would never buy fresh strawberries.
We sat back to enjoy coffee and after-dinner conversation, but somehow the temperature of the flat could not be regulated: throughout the evening the room was either suffocatingly hot or fiendishly draughty. The neighbour still kept up her wail for Mary, floorboards exploded with pops and bangs when anyone walked across them, and a number of strange characters came to tread over them. These people obviously had a quite different code of manners from those I see in my limited circle. They appeared to have a truer relationship with each other, indulging in no pretences, and saying just what was on their canny, alert minds even to the extent of exhibiting their own nakedness as well as that of others.