Autobiography

by Diana Cooper

  The under-stage-manager said today, staring at our cathedral set: “We got a cathedral in New York. I had a look at it. Fine it was. Did you ever see a cathedral, ma’am?” He also said about the ballet of nymphs which nearly ruins The Miracle: “I don’t think it fits in. Lesbianism don’t fit in. Fokine can’t get away from Lesbianism.” How staggering if these words had come from an English stage-hand!

  Take care—if anything happens to you it happens to me.

  It is natural for someone who has created a part to fight innovation. This Maria Carmi did tooth and nail. At Olympia she had been a sitting waxen figure, brocaded and jewelled. The new statue was a standing fourteenth-century Virgin, with Child held high in one hand. Maria Carmi was a beautiful Italian, taller than me, experienced and seductive and elegantly dressed. She was allowed to have her way at her own performance, spoiling our primitive atmosphere by baroque flamboyance.

  16 December

  I’ve been to see my stone coat. Rather wonderful, the ghost breaking through the slab and cerements rather than the laden graceful Lady of Lourdes. I can’t of course stoop to pick up the foundling Christ, which destroys the part, so Vollmöller may veto unyielding folds. The idea is to have the prisms streaming through the stained-glass windows round the theatre onto all the statues but me, so that when the moment of incarnation comes there will be true astonishment.

  My mother had arrived for several months, perhaps never in her life so happy, beloved by the entire cast, eating prawns and rice pudding with me at drugstores, up all night, and for ever drawing in the darkened studio, with an electric flash-pencil, the groupings and gestures of the actors.

  To the studio at 8. I did nothing until 11.30 when Otto Kahn and Paul Cravath arrived, so the last act was turned on and I did it so abominably that I dared not talk to anybody after it was over. My nerves were pouring icy sweat and tripping me over my long skirt, my knees jelly. I have been dejected since. What will the first night rouse in me if Otto Kahn can so much damage my faint heart? Mother had “high strikes” at rehearsal this morning over her daughter’s “art and beauty.” Very embarrassing it was.

  Reinhardt, Gest, Krauss, old Schildkraut and Kommer came to me for a definite answer as to whether I would play the Nun. I’ve said that I’ll try, so tomorrow I start with Richard Boleslawsky of the Moscow Art Theatre. I’m over-excited, over-tired and very frightened, but I must venture. It’s good for me—anti-lethargy, anti-phat. I hope you will be pleased and not think I’m making a fool of myself.

  I read these letters with surprise. Why was I not overjoyed and glowing with hope and thankfulness?

  22 December

  Third week over. I was so happy this morning. The Leviathan choked up its mail without delay and from its belly came the loveliest, longest, most satisfying letter from you, full of adventure and love, and a poem. My head was aching with apprehension. The relief numbed it for an hour when I trudged off to the Russian’s studio. I plodded for three hours pouring with sweat, as black as a sweep, trying to master the last scene where the Nun returns from the storm with her dead baby. The Crawling Order. Master it I did, but Lord knows how an amateur feels! One moment of certainty to ten of bewilderment. At two we sat down to a real Russian lunch—one Boleslawsky, one German pianist and four stray Russians. No plates, two saucers, a huge semi-carved cold turkey, a samovar, lemon, a loaf of bread, a knife, no other utensils, no excuses. My migraine was worsening, so I walked to the hotel for medicine and brought them back a bottle of gin. They were mad with joy. I should never have drunk it. My rich visitors can do without.

  Another three hours’ work, thinking every time I stopped that I was going to die—heart and head throbbing wrong. (I believe it’s lack of stimulant that is killing me.) I staggered back to the main rehearsal and reported to Reinhardt that I had mastered a scene in base but accurate imitation of Pinchot. He was horrified and said that I mustn’t be in the least like Rosamond. Ecstatic I must be, not animal. (How am I to be ecstatic, I wonder?) So all today will have been wasted. Everybody was worn out and peevish, so a pause was called until tomorrow. Make everyone who can pray for me. Tell Maurice, Belloc, Polly Cotton, Katharine and all the Mariolaters to burn me candles and entrust me to Our Blessed Lady.

  Christmas in 1923 was already commercialised, ablaze with electric trees, pretty green window-wreaths, obscene Santas and deafening carols in the shops. I had my mother and Olga Lynn as symbols of home.

  Olga hung a stuffed stocking on my bed that held a diamond guard ring, a bottle of rare scent, a cigarette-case and shagreen box, silk stockings and chiffon handkerchiefs. In return I had nothing for her. It’s terrible…. I’ve hated Christmas—my occupation gone. I long for tomorrow when rehearsals are resumed. They alone are strenuous enough to numb my achings for you.

  I never tired at rehearsals, and they grew to last almost the clock round. A new and dear friend, Bertram Cruger, became my nurse and playmate. He would bring me sandwiches and hot coffee in cardboard containers at 3 a.m. and be sympathetic with my panics and self-dissatisfaction. He believed in the play and had no fears, but I knew him already for an incurable optimist.

  I got up early and went to a smart sports shop to buy knee-caps so that I may now do “praying, much praying” and falling on my joints without so much pain.

  We cannot get into the theatre yet. They have forbidden fires in the studio and altogether things are so unsatisfactory and stale that they gave me my freedom for twenty-four hours or more. I dashed home to bed. My Mummy also in bed with what Holbrook calls “potmaine” poisoning.

  Letters tell of perpetual postponement, and every day lost was added to our separation, since the contract was for sixteen weeks of performance. The cathedral-theatre had to be made in such a way that the public, before and after the performance, could walk about as they do at Chartres. The proscenium arch was scrapped; there was no curtain, and chancel-steps led to the high altar; the pillars were not merely façades; the stalls were turned into pews. There were aisles and side-aisles, a resounding organ and, round the whole, gothic stained-glass windows. It could not be ready in time. The days dragged leadenly for us. Only the public were kept on the alert for news of the two stars fighting to win the lead. As the dread night drew nearer Maria Carmi, who sensed that she was to play second, suggested to Kommer an arrangement that would save her face. A reconciliation was to take place before the press and photographers. Our names were to be put into a hat and a little child should draw lots. The first name would be the first Madonna’s. To me it sounded a common solution, and Kommer made it less savoury by telling me that the draw was to be cooked and that I was the winner designate.

  3 January 1924

  I’m battered and bruised as the pulp of an old medlar from Nun rehearsals. At 4 the telephone rang rudely and a peremptory message told me to be at the studio by 5. I rang up Kommer for an explanation. He admitted that it was to meet Carmi and draw the contemptible lots. I said that nothing would drag me out of bed. I disapproved anyway. K. oiled me down and said that Reinhardt minded as much as I did and yet was bowing to the circumstances. So I fetched up at a very disgraceful séance. For our first meeting no one was present but Gest, Reinhardt, de Weerth and Kommer, twenty-four photographers and pressmen. Carmi arrived, terribly flash in black and diamonds, with a left hand’s languid greeting. I felt my Cinderellaism overdone and was horrified by her youth and beauty, height and elegance. She was the woman of the world to my shabby and awkward bumpkin. Her first words were “Ora la commedia è finita.” Mine was “Spero,” which I hope she took wrong. We were then photographed. My spirit was fainting and flaring up alternately. The little child was looked for. We waited and waited. No little child and no time to waste, so Kommer must draw the lot instead, Kommer so much lighter-fingered to pick the prize for me. Just at the moment of drawing Carmi said: “Stop! Before we draw I would like to say that if you want the first night so badly I will give it to you. I protested because I created the part, but I will give it
to you.” I was speechless and forgetful that she was guarding herself against certain failure, and it seemed to me for a moment generously fine. The cameras clicked, and a great lump gathered in my throat, so I couldn’t answer anything except “I don’t want the first night.” Kommer’s sensitive hand drew out my name. I felt debased by the beastliness of it all, and raged that I should have to suffer the embarrassment and humiliation of cheating in this country that can’t paint a good production without framing it in glistening mud. They all made it worse still by congratulating me, including Carmi, the tears coursed down my silly old cheeks, and to cap it all Gest said: “You’re so ’uman, dear.” I felt that I wanted to behave dramatically like the Nun and cover my ears and face with my hands and arms, so I found a screened-off corner and sobbed and sulked until Reinhardt and Kommer came and soothed me, both a little ashamed of the proceedings.

  4 January

  First day of the theatre. Its scaffolding is down. Carmi was there with her axe buried. She put Reinhardt in a rage (my docility has spoilt him) and he told me and Pinchot not to act, but only to mark time before her. The stone coat will be stunning. Pinchot’s father says that my performance of the Nun is “bully.”

  5 January

  Tonight five terrible days of dress rehearsals began. Worse than I thought. The clothes, I fear, may ruin all. Bel Geddes doesn’t know about movement. His cathedral is sublime, but his clothes (like my stone coat) are carapaces, cancelling movement and grace. Krauss lost his temper about his costume. Pinchot and the designer quarrelled permanently, I think because she is too young and rude to forgive the rude, tired and anxious. Schildkraut raged round because his dressing-room isn’t on the stage. Mine isn’t fit to trap a rat in, but I keep my trap shut. Kommer went further than I’ve ever heard him in uncalm when he said that he couldn’t be in two places at once. Reinhardt said: “Weiter, weiter, de Weerth, weiter, weiter” with infinitely weary rage in his lovely voice. Bel Geddes took to not answering to his name and leaving the building. Pinchot cried unceasingly. I had a very bad cold but enjoyed every minute of it until 4 a.m.

  Now I’m in bed with a newly-opened telegram of congratulation and wishes for personal success from unknown Lyn Harding! The English on alien soil cling pathetically close. I’m tired, tired. I’ve put some stinking embrocation all over my chest, and onto that I’ve clapped Thermogene smouldering wool, and I’m burning like a crater. I do need you here to laugh at me.

  7 January

  Cold worse. Nothing but drugs, sweat, dope and poultice. Mother just as bad. Got up for rehearsal. Carmi so difficult that she has been banished for this week. Pinchot’s nose bled at 4, so she left (dressed) for home and with great courage re-dressed when it stopped and took her place until 5.30 a.m. Bertram Cruger is my buckler and staff. He never fails in tender services—coffee in cartons, waiting until all hours. I’m lucky he loves me.

  Great depression follows last rehearsals, known no doubt to all actors. Clothes have spoilt everything, so has the set with its unnecessary steps and stairs, pillars and properties, all so much better in the studio. After all, simplicity is of the first importance. No props, no pretence. There is only one prop that matters and that is the Holy Child. I can’t get one made that doesn’t look like a foetus, and no one listens to me because I don’t have to work in with the others and therefore need not be reckoned with. All these contorting nervous fears and fatigue breed terrors of other kinds, never properly under restraint.

  5 a.m. I’m just in. I had a miserable bowel-aching day because of no answer to my cable to you. I know myself foolish and tried not to let my fears flame, but they did. So I sent another wire asking Holbrook how you fared.

  12 January

  Nauseated with misery. Miracle worse than ever. Everything wrong, me included, and nothing ready. Now they’ve “braced” my stone coat with steel, and I can’t get in or out. I’m just home, having had my back broken by Krauss’s straw. He caught me in my dressing-room looking utterly woebegone. We groaned together in pidgin German, and he told me how ten years ago a German novelist had written a book with Reinhardt as the hero. It told of his rise to fame, and in the end this artist-producer goes to a fremdes Land and there he creates what is to be the crown of his genius—a super-colossal production. The night comes and gradually the audience starts hissing and whistling. I felt faint and had to sit down. He then told me that he thought of taking flight tomorrow. He couldn’t face it, he said. He must escape. He is so sadistic that he may have done all this to watch me writhe. He certainly succeeded and I hope felt better. My desperation is in the best theatre tradition and a better augury than satisfaction. Bertram has managed, against all precedents, to get admittance to the rehearsals, so he is always there to any hour. He runs out and buys me milk, and telephones and gets Mother a doctor, and once he even produced a bottle of champagne because Oggie told him to.

  15 January

  Two lines to take you my love and tell you that it’s all over and successful. I dread tomorrow’s papers. A few contretemps ruined my hopes. I say: “He’ll be proud of me” when the ordeal of immobility seems unbearable.

  The press was very good to me. I was not then or ever very anxious to read reviews, and when I did steel myself to the task, however glowing the praise, I felt it insufficient.

  16 January

  All day I tried to get a rehearsal with the finished stone coat, a necessity that I had never managed. I got it one hour before the bells clanged, summoning New Yorkers to church. The bells are tremendous and ring for half an hour. The coat needs a week’s practice to perfect the carrying round of it (me enclosed) in the finale. This scurrying didn’t add to my peace.

  I got on to the stage ten minutes before the play was advertised to begin—already an improvement. As originally planned and rehearsed I was to be in place when the doors opened. Now, with locomotor ataxy legs I merge in (black-cloaked) among a knot of nuns and glide behind the church banner that conceals the holy statue. Behind it I wriggle into my carapace and put on my crown and am handed the Holy Child. What was my horror when they handed me (surreptitiously as rehearsed) a new impossible baby made of snow-white unpainted papier-mâché, a three-year-old, huge and unholdable. I whispered my rage to the praying nuns and in time got the property Child I was accustomed to, with no hole in its poor side to hold it by. The rest went well enough until the last touching moment when I break for a minute out of the stone into the animate to gather up the Nun’s brat, miraculously transfigured by death into the infant Christ. There again lay, in Death’s skeleton hand, the enormous obscene repudiated abortion, glowing with inner electricity connected by a white umbilical cord. I managed somehow to grasp it and was surprised that my stone folds held my rage in bounds. Once “off” I lost my temper as no temperamental prima donna has ever done. It was a vile surprise and ruined the end from an artistic point of view. I was too cross to enjoy the fifteen minutes’ applause and the chancel banked up with flowers and felt outraged at being forced to take calls. A Madonna should not. Geddes threw a faint in the wings and remained for an hour unconscious. Reinhardt cried.

  Today I think that I hate the profession. Rehearsing is heaven, but acting too painful. Tomorrow I rehearse the Nun with Carmi. Next day I act it, so fears are without end. So are the dangers, since they’ve jammed all the exits with extra chairs.

  Duff received the following telegram from C. B. Cochran:

  WIFE’S PERFORMANCE EXQUISITELY BEAUTIFUL UNQUESTIONABLE WORK OF SENSITIVE ARTIST WITH MANY INDIVIDUAL SUBTLETIES THE RESULT OF THOUGHT AND COMPLETE MASTERY OF RARE RESOURCES.

  Our friend Valentine Castlerosse wrote:

  I am really writing to you about Diana. My dear Duff, she’s too magnificent. I can’t describe how superb she is. There are only a certain number of superlatives…. I saw her as the Nun. I was really overcome.

  I went with Charles B. Cochran (of London). You remember that he was the first man to produce The Miracle. He told me before we started that he didn’t
think he’d enjoy it as he was prejudiced:

  (1) against anything but dyed-in-the-wool professionals;

  (2) because he had seen Miss Pinchot and thought the show anyway well inferior to his own production.

  We arrived late and that’s all wrong. Before I’d been there three minutes I was gasping—really minding what was happening. Forgot the theatre, forgot New York, women, cards and Prohibition, the market, forgot everything but was rivetted (how many ts are there?). There was no nonsense. I have never been so carried away and you know that The Miracle is Diana. It is ridiculous for me to try and describe the effect that Diana has on this enormous crowd. She holds them tight, tortures them, frightens them. The audience groan and writhe. One very soon forgets it’s a play.