The Parting Years (1963-74)

by Cecil Beaton

  I am somewhat comforted to see that death need not be as terrifying as one feared. The sedatives make the withering away less tragic; her fading out will be like that of a plant which suddenly becomes sick.

  Sunday, March 11th

  I steeled myself. The first thing that struck me on entering her room, and I saw her lying asleep with her face turned towards the window, was that her hair had fallen on to her forehead. This somehow added the final touch of poignancy to the picture. It affected me deeply.

  I stared at Baba. She lay, a small steel grey piece of sculpture, and I left the room in a state of complete breakdown.

  Almost a week later

  Rosamund telephoned early in the morning. Baba had died at 4 am. Goodbye Baba, who was always so independent, so lithe and graceful; always with a pet dog, so athletic and country loving.

  Goodbye my most beautiful first, home-made model. Goodbye to so much of my own life. Goodbye to Baba.

  New York: March

  A painless radio interview; talked mostly about Picasso; then a marvellously easy lunch with Lincoln Kirstein who is always full of spicy good news. He took me to the Lincoln Library of the Performing Arts and showed me all the De Meyer photographs of Nijinsky. They were the first poetical ballet pictures.

  Lincoln, with great modesty, for he had found and donated most of them, showed me the exhibition of the library’s latest acquisitions; Diaghilev’s payroll lists and expenses; a drawing by Fragonard; eighteenth-century coloured engravings by Berain; masks, gloves, a Stravinsky telegram, and a marvellous drawing of an Etruscan corseted figure in the notebook that Bakst took on his first visit to Greece.

  Reddish: June 16th

  The summer weather is so unbelievably beautiful that I only wish my sense of delight and enjoyment was stronger. Perhaps, after a day or two’s rest, I will regain my zest. Already I feel less tired, and have been out in the early morning sun walking barefoot on the dew-covered lawns. The birds are having a fine time (the pigeons very destructive!) and the doves seem to have made a haunt of this place. We saw a kingfisher down in the water-garden and there are chaffinches and yellow hammers. The garden is at its peak. Just before its best, Clarissa[12] came and had tea under an awning on the terrace, and thought she liked the garden best now when you could see the shapes before all the colour. The terrace is a mass of roses, and I only trust the summer will continue till next weekend when the garden is open!’

  MARLENE DIETRICH

  I watched on television Marlene Dietrich’s successful performance staged at Drury Lane. The quality of the photography was extraordinarily exact, and I felt I saw more and heard more than if I had been a part of the wildly enthusiastic audience. As for Marlene, aged seventy (actresses are always said to be older than they are), she was quite a remarkable piece of artifice. Somehow she has evolved an agelessness. Even for a hardened expert like myself, it was impossible to find the chink in her armour. All the danger spots were disguised. Her dress, her figure, her limbs, all gave the illusion of youth. The high cheekbones remain intact, the forehead good, the deep-set eyelids useful attributes, and she does the rest.

  Not much of a never-musical voice is left, but her showmanship persists. Marlene has become a sort of mechanical doll. The doll can show surprise, it can walk, it can swish into place the train of its white fur coat. The audience applauds each movement, each gesture. The doll smiles incredulously. Can it really be for me that you applaud? Again a very simple gesture, maybe the hands flap, and again the applause, not just from old people who remembered her tawdry films, but the young, too, who find her sexy. She is louche and not averse to giving a slight wink.

  Marlene has created another career for herself and is certainly a great star, not without talent, and with a genius for believing in her self-fabricated beauty.

  Her success is out of all proportion and yet it is entirely due to her perseverance that she is not just an old discarded film star. She magnetizes her audience and mesmerises them (and herself) into believing in her.

  I sat enraptured and not a bit critical as I had imagined I might be. The old trooper never changes her tricks because she knows they work, and because she invented them.

  Villa Albrizzi, Este: August 23rd, 1973

  Peering into the same bowl in the art nouveau bathroom, and seeing the old stain of rust on the rim of the loo, made me realize that nothing whatsoever has changed since I was last here three years ago. Yet much had happened to me during that time.

  But what had I done with the time, except misuse it by being, as Oscar Wilde said of the Americans, ‘In too great a hurry to catch trains’? I had done a hell of a lot of work, and some of it well paid, but in no other way was it of much avail.

  I had been to foreign parts and seen a d’egringolade take place in the United States. In the country, several pleasant additions had been made to house and garden. But horrid things also had occurred. Due to what specialists say does not exist, yet I am convinced does, eyestrain continues to give me headaches.

  Perhaps the greatest change has taken place within myself as I steer towards my seventieth birthday. Most noticeable, apart from thinning hair, a paunch, paleness of eye, is the attitude of the young towards me. ‘Will you be tired if we do that? Let me fetch it. I’ll drive.’ So far I have not yet noticed a deterioration in my drawing or in my powers to write; certainly my reading has dwindled. But although I do not embark on a holiday with the same eagerness that I used to and do know that during these weeks I am not likely to fall in love, or make new friends, I am grateful that, either from my father or my mother, I have inherited a strong body and a system that withstands many trials. When I look at certain contemporaries, those that have survived, I am appalled to see how they have become prematurely old.

  A day’s trip to Mantua, in the great heat, knocked me out to such an extent that for several days I remained at the villa idling, very familial and remote from the outer world. It was like a bolt from the blue when George Weidenfeld arrived hot from his latest romance in Venice, via Israel and the South of France, with all the international news and gossip. It seems the pound has gone lower than before, that England is considered as a faded, leisurely old-fashioned country as Italy was once by Henry James; that the Austrians and Germans have the strongest currency; that Germany and France are loathing one another.

  George told us that Kissinger was now Secretary of State, that Nixon gave a clever press interview in which he said the amount of bugging he did was nothing to that done by his predecessors, and that Nixon’s unpopularity had turned, and that he would survive to be a popular president.

  George’s vitality and curiosity are unquenchable. He is good value, shrewd, and fair. He makes me feel rut-ridden and sluggish. Little wonder that he has swept all before him and seems to have the best of so many worlds.

  Staying with Mrs Joseph Lambert: September 1973

  The others went off to Venice to watch the Regatta, and I had the day to myself. It was like a purge.

  I walked around the garden, watched the swans and looked for a vantage point for sketching. I sat on a seat. The day was blissful, no wind stirred, not too hot a sun. I gave up the idea of sketching and for the first time in a long while remained just sitting. For a long time I was occupied with my thoughts and a few ideas came into my overcrowded, blocked-up brain. I thought a bit about my future and my work and what best to do. I thought about the work in hand, and one or two little improvements came filtering through. I wished I had more time for sitting and meditating at Broadchalke.

  Lunch served in an elaborate manner in which the Italians excel; gazpacho, omelette, ice-cream, and cheese. I watched the ripples on the nearby pool. There was, as I have said, very little breeze, and everything seemed still. Yet in the shade of the trees tongues of light ran down the plane tree trunks, and occasionally an unseen gust caused some low-hanging branches of acacia to be dipped in the water, then, dripping, they were released, and the water was motionless again. A leaf fell on to its
surface and the reflections were still until a fish poked up at a fly, and caused circles to flow outwards in a symmetrical design. This made the reflections move in a ballet-like rhythm; a hard, sharp, straight twig became a reflected corkscrew, then a rhythmic whip, then, slowly, it regained its sharp monogynous image.

  It was fascinating to watch the activity in this silent, motionless spot. As I got up to walk away, a lot of small, unseen frogs leapt from the bordering grass to disappear in the shallow water.

  CYRIL CONNOLLY’S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

  London: September 11th

  Cyril was only told the venue at the last minute as the car turned into Regent’s Park and went on to the Zoo. Because of the heatwave, his friends gathered outdoors at the members’ club drinking champagne. John Betjeman, with trousers too short, walking like a toddler on the sands; he only lacked a bucket and spade. Alastair Forbes, Anthony Powell, Hamish Hamilton, eight people from The Sunday Times and Raymond Mortimer, in old age looking beautiful with long wavy silver hair. To comfort those of us who are reaching the age of seventy, Raymond said that he had been happier during the last five years (he is seventy-five) than at any other time of his life. He certainly looks contented, serene, unworried.

  Philippe de Rothschild, Anne Fleming, Antony Hobson and Tania were there, and, of course, Deirdre. Deirdre told me that Cyril reads in bed almost all day. He hardly ever goes out and at Eastbourne they see no one. Cyril’s life is entirely centred round his books, but it seems an interesting, satisfying life.

  Cyril looked calm, pretty as a celluloid cupid in a bath, with no apparent nervousness, and although he says he has never made a speech, did in fact deliver himself of a spontaneous one. It was a typical piece of Cyril embroidery about his having an unhappy childhood (only son) with ill-assorted parents, how as a schoolboy he went to St Cyprian’s, ‘where a younger boy, Beaton, he was only called Beaton, taught me about painting and we ate gooseberries together — when the black ones were finished, we ate the green ones. When the unhappy only son of ill-assorted parents went on to another school, here he attained puberty and he admired the shell-like ear of a boy with black hair, Noel Blakiston and he’s sitting over there, and then I won a scholarship for Eton and I became friends with Kenneth Clark, sitting over there. Then I worked in J. C. Squire’s office and was helped by J. B. Betjeman — and he’s sitting over there; and Tony Powell helped me and he’s sitting over there.’ We thought he might be going through the whole thirty-odd guests and making it a ‘This Is Your Life’, but it was perfectly timed and not a sentence too long. It was funny, pithy, satirical, well dramatized — Cyril at his best; a lovely celebration.

  VISIT TO DADIE RYLANDS AT KING’S

  December 1973

  I had seen Dadie two weeks ago at Raymond Mortimer’s at Crichel and was struck by his healthiness, his freshness, vigour, and purity.

  I thought him wonderfully rare and uncontaminated by the rush and squalor of contemporary life. Only occasionally does he take wing from his life of books and study, but whenever he does make friendly forays, he always shows a childlike enjoyment.

  Extraordinary as it seems, Dadie is now over seventy. He still appears to me, even if a bit thinner on top, to be the young bullocky blond that he was at King’s when I was unhappily at St John’s.

  Dadie was, with his pale-blue eyes, blue tie, pink-and-white complexion, and canary quiff of hair, a spectacular figure. A great friend of all the Bloomsbury group, the names of Lytton, Duncan, Vanessa, and Clive were seldom off his lips. He was loved and passionate; his reputation was most enviable. He played the Duchess of Malfi, a role that I could have performed if only I had not been so tiresome and difficult, and it was the best Duchess of Malfi I have seen, out of at least a dozen. Dadie was dignified like a unicorn, neither male nor female.

  Now Dadie, in boyish open neck, welcomed Jakie Astor and me in his kitchen. I have seldom seen anything so ordered in the clutter of his rooms, a magpie’s hoard of silver, china, and twenty-ish paintings. Mercifully everything was extremely well dusted and polished. Nevertheless, the effect was peculiar, a mixture of a Victorian old lady’s taste and donnish severity; mahogany bookcases, china cabinets, and a hangover of Bloomsbury décor. Carrington had painted typical and pretty panels on the doors and cupboards, and his smaller sitting-room was liberally sprinkled with ‘dated’ nudes against a noughts-and-crosses background.

  Dadie made the tea, produced hot buttered buns and macaroons. He asked about Jakie’s ‘arable land’, gave information about what all the Cambridge celebrities were doing and how they had achieved eminence in other fields. He was quick and trenchant and showed a wide range of interest; his little beady eyes popping and his lips pressed in a pout as he listened. One felt that time had in no way impaired the sharpness of his brain. He talked about Thomas Hardy, quite a close family connection there; about Siegfried Sassoon, and Stephen Tennant, Victor Rothschild, and Raymond Mortimer, all of whom he described in a very true way.

  Jakie sat in amazement. I felt that Dadie had mellowed and that he must be a very happy man. But no, it seems he is extremely lonely, feels the lack of grandchildren, finds the hour of waking and the early morning appallingly depressing. He is happier when, after seven or eight cups of tea, he lies in bed reading. Three o’clock in the afternoon is his most difficult time and whisky at six o’clock helps him to continue.

  His eyesight is perfect, so he can indulge in his favourite pleasure of reading for the rest of time.

  The telephone rang. He answered it in his very poor and small little bedroom with the chamber pot under the wash-basin. ‘They’ve called it off?’ he asked; his dinner engagement was off. He would cook eggs or sausages for himself on his ‘Little Belling’, and he would get through the washing-up and clearing away in ten minutes flat, and then the long evening would be in front of him.

  JAMES POPE-HENNESSY

  January 25th, 1974

  The various news items on the television come and go so rapidly that one wonders at times if one has heard aright. My heart missed a beat as I learnt that James had been severely beaten up, and stabbed. A photograph of James’ poetical face was shown on the screen, and before I could take in the horrible fact that he had died as a result of the attack, the news moved on to Ireland or to a football match.

  I was struck by an overwhelming sorrow and horror that did not leave me during the night. When I woke and the breakfast tray came in with the newspapers and letters, my hopes that the news-flash might have been a mistake were dashed when I saw the same beautiful face in a photograph on the front page. I looked at my letters. Surely this envelope was written in James’ hand? I opened it and a most tender, friendly, sweet letter from him pierced me to the heart. James was thanking me for a present I sent him at Christmas, which he had found on his recent return from America where he had been interviewing friends of Noël Coward for his forthcoming biography, and he longed to meet me again.

  James came into my life at the beginning of the last war with a new and fresh sort of appeal. He had ‘quality’, was intelligent, and intellectual, and serious, and yet good company. I delighted in him, and we became fast friends. We did a book together, he the text and I the photographs, on the bombing of London. Our expeditions to the city were dramatic, often tragic, but agreeable. Sometimes after exploring the still-smoking ruins, we went to the Strand and ate a good lunch in a restaurant.

  James introduced me to Clarissa Churchill, who has remained a close friend, and to many others whose company I enjoy.

  I remember seeing James from a taxi as he got out of another taxi in front of Batsfords. He was late, he was panicky, his arms full of books. As he descended, his hat hit the top of the taxi, hat and books went flying. I saw in that glimpse myself.

  Later James began to be rather difficult. He drank too much. He made friendships too easily with the ‘rough trade’. This was dangerous and extremely boring for his other friends, who often said: ‘Unless he’s lucky, one day James will find
himself murdered.’ James lost his looks, became bellicose, devilish and impossible. Maybe drugs, as an antidote to drink, did improve the situation. ‘You do spread your friendships thin,’ he once taunted me. I was hurt. Every time I returned from America I brought him a present. I was always the one to ring first. He seldom took the initiative and then there would be a long silence; and now this.

  Reddish: February

  The water-garden has become one of the most magical places in the garden. To visit this place of babbling water, and birds, is like being in a different country. To think that all these years I was hardly conscious that a river did go past my property! Every sort of bird seems to congregate here, quite different from those that come to the terrace. We are surprised often to see a heron or two on the lookout for fish. But the greatest excitement is a kingfisher — a rare enough streak of blue, yet suddenly I saw one, and the sight gladdened my fading spirit. Kingfishers fly so quickly that by the time one says ‘Look!’, they have gone.

  This most brilliant metallic bird is said to have such an unpleasant smell for other birds that it is solitary and safe. Then I visited the haunt, a tree by the river, and one day not only did a kingfisher fly past me but it landed on some reeds by the river’s edge. Here it stayed a while, then was joined by another one. I am hoping that a family will be hatched in the spring and that they will always stay in the water-garden.

  Greatest joy having Dot[13] as a neighbour. She is one of the real characters of which it is said: ‘They don’t exist any more.’ Diana Cooper has been spending the weekend and the two crossed swords, but they are both magnanimous and marvellous and appreciate each other. Anne Tree is likewise an oversize personality and character-rorty, Hogarthian and with exquisite understanding of character. It is wonderful to have such friends among the country neighbours, and no need to go to London where there is less time in which to relish at leisure these exceptional, very English types.