The Parting Years (1963-74)

by Cecil Beaton

She became an adornment to the general scene, and wearing simple Greek draperies, or Eugenie crinolines and romantic hats, her likeness to the young Queen Alexandra was felicitous. We soon knew that she was a character of great gentleness and modesty, with a natural gift for draughtmanship, and a love of music. She enjoyed the company of people with creative talent.

  Then one dark wartime night, at a tragically early age, she became a widow; for hours on end she remained speechless and motionless as she stared out of the window. The people grieved with her then as they were to do for the rest of her life.

  It was difficult for her to become assimilated into British habits; she had not the knack of making friends easily or quickly, but once she had given her friendship it was a serious and lifelong commitment. Her greatest quality was one of heart. No one had a kindlier or more understanding outlook.

  Brought up by her mother with a deep regard for tradition, and steeped in ritual, she was the most simple of human beings, at her happiest in informal surroundings. It was characteristic that, throughout her life, she preferred to serve her friends herself at lunch at Kensington Palace, or better still at an outdoor picnic. Her parties lacked grandeur and possessed a delightful atmosphere of the impromptu, although there was never anything casual or offhand about her. She paid impeccable attention to details. In spite of all that she had to do, she never permitted herself to be hurried or thoughtless.

  Her sense of fun sometimes made it difficult for her on official occasions, and she was the first to laugh at herself in some situation which she considered ‘och, so stupid!’ She loved to give herself up to uncontrollable laughter. Sometimes her amusement was caused by jokes of a quite basic nature.

  Beautiful and romantic princesses are a rare phenomenon today, and their mere existence enhances. Even those who saw her only a little were warmed by the knowledge that she was there; with Princess Marina’s death that particularly lovely glow has gone from the land.

  October 1968

  The morning papers all published my new photographs of the Queen wearing a naval boat cloak. As these were quite different from any that I had taken of her before, they caused a stir and were incidentally good publicity for my exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, a collection of about six hundred of my photographs taken over the last forty years. It has been an amazing success and seems to have been enjoyed by old and young alike.

  FRITZI MASSARY

  Biihlerhöhe, Baden, Germany: February 2nd, 1969

  In the sanatorium, where I had come to recuperate, I had another go at the German newspapers hoping that perhaps, with practice, I might understand a few sentences. By the most extraordinary coincidence, since she was one of the very few German people that I knew, I found myself reading of the death of Fritzi Massary, at the age of eighty-six, in Hollywood: Fritzi Massary gestorben.

  A pang of pain went through me, for although I had never known her in her prime, I had heard much about her and realized that in the world of operetta she must have been unique. She was the ‘Merry Widow’ of Germany and very different she must have been from our lovely Lily Elsie. She had a tremendous vivacity and chic. Her clothes were said to be more works of art than theatrical dresses, the petticoats alone worthy of a museum. She was a heroine with an exquisite voice and an impeccable way of putting across a song.

  I first met her in the courtyard of Schloss Kammer while staying there with Raimund and Alice von Hofmannsthal. She was a wizened little pixie in Bavarian clothes who sang with great play of fingers the popular ‘Joseph’ from Madame Pompadour. One could tell even under these difficult conditions what artistry she had, and all who saw her were speechless in their admiration. Then, being a Jewess, she had had to flee from Hitler’s diabolical regime. In London she had appeared in a Noël Coward musical. In 1963 George Cukor had the idea of casting her as the Queen of Transylvania in the film of My Fair Lady. I was given the job of showing her around the lot and taking her to be measured by the wardrobe.

  But she was not willing to break her retirement for peanuts. Her agent asked the most preposterous amount of dollars for, at most, a four-day stint. I was deputed to telephone her and reason with her. ‘But it’ll be fun!’ I said very stupidly. ‘Fun? No, it will be hard work. It’ll upset me a great deal. It’ll mean panic here for weeks on end. My peace of mind upset. I’ve retired. Why should I come and do a day’s work if it upsets me?’

  She had certainly enjoyed a good life, for although in middle age she had had to leave her country and all behind, she managed to make a new life of ease and comfort with her daughter Lise in California. It would be difficult to explain to later generations the freshness and originality and vitality that she invented, which is a pity; the stars of today could well benefit from her. Maybe a number of older people will be sorry that Fritzi had gone. I blow a kiss to her memory.

  That evening I wanted to watch on television a programme in memory of Fritzi Massary. What a joy for me that would have been! Beforehand I had to sit through a performance of The Glass Menagerie, and then a political discussion which seemed endless. Just as I was looking forward to what I had been waiting for all evening, the other guests of the sanatorium rose to their feet and one of them turned off the television. In English I shouted: ‘I want to see Fritzi Massary!’ ‘No, no, it is too late; it is forbidden.’

  London: Easter 1969

  I arranged to take the recently widowed Sybil Cholmondeley to the premiere of the film Oh What a Lovely War.

  There are few people who still manage to have the aura of pre-1914 luxury about them, but Sybil Cholmondeley is one of them. During winter, she is likely to wear a tuberose pinned by a pear-shaped diamond brooch to her dress. Tonight she provided a marvellous half-bottle of champagne and smoked-salmon sandwiches and, fresh from Norfolk, her keepers had sent three plovers’ eggs.

  ‘Now you must do what my brother Philip taught me to do with them. You must redistribute the yolk. Now, my hand is quite clean, open the palm flat, place the egg with the flat base in the centre — now be brave! Bring the other hand down on it very suddenly and hard — slap — like that — the egg suddenly becomes a poached egg, flat and with the yolk seen through a film of white jelly.’

  I felt I had had a glimpse of another world — the world I had yearned for as a child.

  Of the evening only the film was a disappointment.

  Edward Bond’s play Saved caused a furore when it was first shown only a short time ago. Already it has become a classic. I must say it’s outspokenness, frankness, and brutality shocked me. But the shock was legitimate and not for shocking’s sake.

  I found the play a real development in the art of play writing, subtle and brash at the same time. A young man living with a girl in her parents’ house is superseded by another man whom he hears fucking his girl downstairs. He shouts: ‘Are you trying for the Cup?’

  The mother sympathizes with the rejected young man. ‘But how do you manage?’ she asks.

  The most terrific shock came at the end of one scene after the mother had inadvertently sexually excited the boy, then scorned him in disgust, and the young man gets out a dirty old handkerchief and starts to unbutton his flies...

  A later scene, between the resigned, but vindictive husband and this boy, was really wonderfully subtle, sad, poignant and strange. Very impressive ending to thoroughly stimulating evening.

  A PLEASANT EVENING

  April 1969

  The pleasant evening was a quiet dinner at home with Elizabeth Cavendish, Frank Tait, and Patrick Garland. We all got along well and the talk was of a most entertaining quality. Patrick, a new friend, is extremely funny as a raconteur and brilliant as a mimic. But the mimicry is not overdone; he does not do set pieces, but tells his tales in the person concerned’s voice. He was full of good stories about Forty Years On, and how John Gielgud is so absent-minded that he is often late for cues. He once missed a whole scene and, doing an ad lib, said to the audience what was most in his mind: ‘Oh, I’m dreadfully worrie
d about having to pay all those back taxes.’

  Another Gielgud story out of context. When they were rehearsing Oedipus and the gold phallus was first produced there was much criticism. Irene Worth said: ‘It should be on a plinth.’ John asked: ‘Prince Charles or Prince Philip?’

  Patrick also talked of the very shielded Julia Trevelyan Oman, the designer. Her worst ejaculations are ‘Oh Christmas’ or ‘Golly’. During the fighting stages of preparation for Forty Years On she heard so much swearing that she asked why everyone said to her, ‘Oh, go and fuck up.’ However, conversation was by no means all bawdy.

  Patrick has a very wide knowledge of poetry, literature, and the stage, and his honesty is remarkable for one going through the beginnings of success. Talk was also of the remarkable village in the south of France and its ‘inhabitants’ bought by Tony Richardson, and the goings-on, which Elizabeth saw as a guest last weekend; a great deal about juvenile delinquency; Elizabeth, a magistrate, had today sent a child to a reform school for stealing £2,000; about the Budget — we are all having to pay higher costs amid the general gloom of the long, dark, cold winter. Ill-health, Biafra, Czechoslovakia, and all the horrors of the world today.

  We went on until one o’clock in the morning which is now a late hour for me.

  KENNETH CLARK

  Spring 1969

  Tonight I saw the last episode of Civilization on television. This series has prevented my going out on Friday or Sunday evenings. It has given the greatest possible pleasure. The most exciting of all was ‘The Fallacies of Hope’, with its miraculous use of music.

  It is not surprising that Kenneth has aroused enormous jealousy. He knows too much and he knows that he knows more than others. Yet one cannot but admire him. Though one is alert to criticize, the guarded phrases in which he cloaks his opinions are so exact and clever it is impossible to worst him.

  He is fortunate to have had this opportunity to show to a large public the fruits of his life’s work.

  DAVID HOCKNEY

  Reddish: Whitsun 1969

  It was the first time that David Hockney came to stay. For three days I have been studying him while he savoured all the impressions of Wiltshire and, monkey-like, squinted or grimaced up at me, then down again to his drawing pad. He has been asked to do a drawing of me for Vogue and since I admire his work, I was willing to sit until Domesday if he needed that time to get a good result.

  To begin with I was utterly appalled, having remained in some romantic but extremely uncomfortable pose for a great deal too long, when I saw an outline in Indian ink of a bloated, squat, beefy businessman. He laughed. No, it wasn’t very good, and he embarked upon another which turned out to be just as bad. About eight horrors were perpetrated while the days advanced until, finally, something rather good emerged. He was encouraged. He was enthusiastic. Would I sit again tomorrow all morning and then again after lunch. He eventually decided to draw me in pencil rather than in ink and the result was different and better.

  Poor Roy Strong did not seem to have much attention given to him, and he had recourse to doing watercolours in the conservatory and garden. David, tireless, continued with his drawing with infinite care and precision. I marvelled at him as he sharpened the pencils (having discarded the pen) for the hundredth time. I realized what a very different sort of an artist he is from myself. He has a great technical flair. He knows about cars, he can open unfathomable locks, he knows how to put things together; how paint and pencils work under certain conditions. He is an engineer, but he is also that strange thing, a phenomenal genius.

  It is always fascinating to see someone as remote from oneself working in the same field. I was intrigued to see him admiring things that I like from a completely different point of view. We could not be farther apart as human beings and yet I find myself completely at ease with him and stimulated by his enthusiasm. For he has this golden quality of being able to enjoy life.

  He is never blasé, never takes anything for granted. Life is a delightful wonderland for him; much of the time he is wreathed in smiles. He laughs aloud at television and radio. He is the best possible audience, though he is by no means simple. He is sophisticated in that he has complete purity. There is nothing pretentious about him; he never says anything he does not mean. In a world of art intrigue he is completely natural.

  He was born in Bradford on the day that Michael Duff and I gave our elaborate fête-champêtre at Ashcombe. His family were poor and had little interest in art, though David’s father surprised the family when years later he saw a reproduction of the Leonardo cartoon which the National Gallery were appealing to buy, and said: ‘Oh yes, I’ve done that; it’s called “Light and Shade”.’ (He had had some art tuition.)

  David had three brothers and one sister, and his mother never went for a walk in the country without picking everything she knew to be edible in the hedges. Nettle soup was a great favourite and in a huge, yellow bowl she made very intoxicating nettle beer.

  David, inspired by the pictures in the Children’s Encyclopaedia, knew by the age of ten what he wanted to be. At sixteen he left school determined to be a commercial artist, and he took his portfolio around Leeds with no success.

  During his National Service David showed his independence of thought by becoming a conscientious objector. He helped bring in the harvest for Sir Richard Sykes whom he refused to call ‘The Master’. He then worked in hospitals, at first in the medical wards where bronchial cases were treated. He saw many people die of heart attacks. He became an orderly in the skin-disease ward. One particular, pot-bellied old man whom he loathed had to be dabbed with calamine lotion. Standing up naked in front of David he would say, ‘Don’t forget the testicles, David.’ David was then given the job of shaving and washing corpses. The thing he disliked most was washing the mortuary floors.

  In 1953 he went to the Bradford School of Art. After four years he went on to the Royal College of Art in London. During the first term he finished four drawings. He lived for four months on £30; but in 1961 had saved enough to buy a forty-dollar ticket to New York with a hundred dollars in hand. He lived there for three months and dyed his hair ‘champagne ice’.

  When I went to the college to take a few lessons, David and his friends were referred to by the professors as ‘the naughty boys upstairs’. I visited them up there and found David at work on a huge Typhoo Tea fantasy. Everyone seemed to be doing what they wanted and loving it. The school at this time boasted Allen Jones, Ron Kitaj, Peter Phillips, Derek Boshier, and Pat Caulfield. I bought an indecent picture, ‘Homage to Walt Whitman’, by David who brought it round when Pelham Place was in the throes of building alterations. The workmen were startled at his appearance.

  David is a meticulous worker, never hurried. He seems to have infinite leisure. He has a great taste for literature, having as a boy got books from the public library. He devours the encyclopaedias and remembers everything he has read.

  His Bradford lilt gives a melodic and touching quality to his sentiments. His voice, though low, has a great range of sound. He can touch one’s heart with his euphoria. His words are carefully chosen and often unexpected. For instance, he says that someone is ‘not immune to the oddity of a situation’.

  After dinner at Dickie Buckle’s, David talked of the coming of the Golden Age. He had read many philosophers, and has thought a great deal. In the next forty years all will change. The computer will do away with work; everyone will be an artist. No need to worry, all the leisure in the world, everything will be beautiful. There will be no private property, or need to own anything. Everyone will be ecstatically happy. It was marvellous to see this white-skinned, champagne-topped, dark-glassed young man in pale pistachio green, with bronze boots, orange and yellow alternate socks, holding forth with such vehemence. Midnight chimed without his realizing that it was bedtime. David goes to sleep only when, suddenly, he is tired, and wakes only when he has slept enough: never a question of routine.

  May 10th, 1969

 
A novella should be written about Anne Tree’s governess, Miss Bolton, a bad character, now seventy-five; half Swiss and generally unpleasant she none the less inspires complete devotion, affection and profound love in the heart of Anne. Miss Bolton came late in Anne’s youth, at a time when she was still suffering from the effects of a demoniac governess — she does not tell others that this mad woman would come into her bedroom at all times of the night and make menacing faces and gestures. Miss Bolton was not good as an instructress, never helpful in the house, and in fact was hated by other servants. But she seemed to be the only one who was able to give comfort to Anne’s father, the Duke of Devonshire, by playing cards with him, when his son was killed in the war. Miss Bolton’s selfishness is beyond description and her besetting sin is greed. She eats so much that she now looks like a big, bursting muffin. The doctors tell her that it is a strain on her heart to carry so much flesh, but her podgy hand still goes out to a Bendick chocolate peppermint or another sandwich. She complains everlastingly, is never satisfied or grateful. ‘Ha! not much of a tea. I suppose I’ll have to go back to my little dungeon hungry for the night.’

  Yet I do see her companionable charm. Just to have her sitting deep in a sofa and blinking in front of you is quite a cosy experience. She fills a room with a warmth, more than any dog, and she does not mind having her foibles laughed at. She is the spoilsport of all time. ‘Oh, come, do turn off that horrid TV.’

  When after fifteen years Anne and Michael had, for financial reasons, to leave Mereworth Castle, they dreaded breaking the news to Lilian Bolton. They approached her tactfully. ‘Lilian, we have to cut down. We can’t afford it here any more, but I want you to know that, wherever we go, we will take you with us, and have you in the family as always, even if we have to build you a little house in the garden.’ Miss Bolton snorted: ‘Hmm! I hope it faces south.’