Autobiography

by Diana Cooper

  We went five-strong to Tex Austin’s ranch, a stone’s throw of forty miles away. Ivanenko the Olympic champion, Iris’s friend, has been found and has joined our throng. We’re changing our tomorrow’s train-reservations because Davey has real horse-branding to offer at another Tex Austin ranch a hundred miles away. “Tex” isn’t there but “Butch” is.

  Next day

  The horse-branding did not disappoint, with pistols being shot off indoors to stir the sluggish, and “mule’s foot” (called so for its kick) being passed round with the roast horse in a loving-panikin to the noise of yelps and whoops. Outside are herds of dear little horses untethered, with one dragging rein that you can grab, and then you clamber into those nice secure saddles that grip you like a vice, with a pommel to hold on to and stirrups like sabots, and no pigskin slipperiness or fiddling with snaffles. I cantered round in an ecstasy that I can still feel. The blue-birds I can still see, and the wild prancings and branding-antics. Ivanenko did everything a bit better than the cowboys did, which was a mistake, and he had to be checked. Iris jumped from a corral-post onto a wild horse’s back and stuck its bucking.

  The Grand Canyon next day seems not to have been up to hopes. I watched the clouds gathering through the night from the open Pullman. I could not bear the hotel blotting that formidable escutcheon. The cleft was very big, yellow-and-red verdigrised, utterly lifeless and silent, not a bird or animal. Tourists become invisible immediately. I blush to remember the relief of no descents being allowed that day for icy reasons. After three hours’ riding round the brink, we threw ourselves on hotel beds in the désœuvré fatigue that much-vaunted wonders of the world often encourage. “Phoenix for dumps,” we said, and sped on to Chandler, where all was confident morning again.

  The expense is ghastly (eight dollars a day tout compris) and no haggling allowed. We shall sleep out on our porch and therefore not sleep. Warm as May, birds (rare in America) singing loudly, lambs already born, eagles and big red flowers that I’m sorry to tell you turn out to be castor oil, and this heavenly roadless limitless glimmering desert that with the grey-green scrub makes one’s horse feather-hoofed. Queer cactuses in obscene phallic shapes and canary-green in colour erect themselves every few hundred yards. I never enjoyed a ride so much. A horse like Pegasus, stirrups right. We could be happy here if one of us gets consumption.

  Lovely sleep. The Boy swung our swingbeds into it. We rode and rode through the desert and rough hills and cactus and sand and sun, and the guide told of Indians and birds and legends while he cooked us steaks on a fire of mosquito-wood. He’s very keen for me to come back with you in the autumn and camp in the mountains, and hunt lions and turkeys and coyotes. Next stop San Francisco. I’m fearful of bad news in payment for this happy week, and I dread Kaetchen’s face of doom.

  San Francisco

  Just as I feared—a frightful row and no delectable supper arranged for us, even though Raimund was smuggled away to some “digs.”

  But there were letters from home to compensate. My mother had been mysteriously and gravely ill. As her only reaction to the pain and anxiety was that I should not be told, so determined was she to put no cloud in my sky, I heard of it only when danger was already past. Years before, when threatened with a severe operation, she had denied its imminence and sent Duff and me on a carefree Easter holiday. She had written her last wishes, forbidden the news of her predicament to reach my sister Letty (who was expecting a child), said goodbye alone and secretly to Belvoir and the gardens and avenues that she had made, and only when her recovery was sure did a gay telegram of convalescence reach us in Italy. Such saint-like selflessness I shall never find again. This new scare passed, and she was just able to get to Belvoir for Christmas. On the 24th the gift car and the chauffeur in livery, rug on arm, arrived. Duff wrote on Christmas Day:

  I spent a very happy morning yesterday at Hamley’s and bought some transfers for Ursula which she wanted, a toy circus for Isobel, the King and Queen going to open Parliament in the State Coach for Charles, and a military band, with musical-box soldiers and a conductor beating time, for Johnnie.

  This morning after church the Hillman car came round to the door. It really is a great success and reflects lasting credit on Holbrook and me. I sent a note early to your Mummy saying: “Diana has sent you a present from America which I have to give to you, so let me know at what time you will receive it, and wrap up warm because it has to be given you out of doors.” She said that she would come down at one o’clock and swears that she never guessed what it was and feared that it might be an animal, or possibly a fur coat that looked better out of doors. At one o’clock everyone was assembled to see her receive it. She walked out with me through the porter’s lodge and when she realised what it was she was quite overcome and could only press my arm very tight and bow her head to hide her tears. She was so delighted. Everything in it is perfect, I think. John suggested that we should go for a turn round the terrace, which eased the situation.

  I had a letter from Hilary [Belloc] this morning asking me to send you a telegram and enclosing ten shillings for it. Did I tell you that I dined with Eloise Ancaster and went to a play? The Duke and Duchess of York were there. They are such a sweet little couple and so fond of one another. They reminded me of us, sitting together in the box having private jokes, and in the interval when we were all sitting in the room behind the box they slipped out, and I found them standing together in a dark corner of the passage talking happily as we might. She affects no shadow of airs or graces.

  San Francisco delighted us, but relations were strained. I wrote:

  Reinhardt in doldrums, the rehearsals a shambles. Noel Coward is on the edge of a nervous breakdown which he proposes to have in China. Catastrophic rows and misery over Kaetchen’s sulky ire. Reinhardt says: “Ich glaube dass es gefährlich ist.” He can’t mean suicide! After rudeness and scenes and the pandemonium of the rehearsals he says: “Ganz hoffnungslos!” You see that I’m paying for those happy Wild West days.

  Later (4a.m.). The Kat row is over. It took from midnight until 3.30. Now at last Kaetchen has gone, broken with shame and repentance. He says that blood gushes to his brain and he doesn’t know what he is doing or saying when jealousy grips. He says that we both hate him subconsciously (Freud). I know that I love him dearly and consciously and always will.

  Iris and I bought Reinhardt the Chinese gong that he could not afford. He wants it reverberating for five minutes to open his plays at Salzburg. Kaetchen and Iris and I pooled and Mr Gumps (the merchant) took off 100 dollars if we would include his name. The Master was childishly pleased and said “fabelhaft” and “herrlich” and “grossartig” a thousand times.

  The letters show that my mood had veered right round. With Raimund as a companion, no relations to carry, competing with Iris for Reinhardt’s favours, together with the glorious State of California, the large-waved Pacific and its seal-covered rocks, my glooms were dissipated, leaving me only my fears for Duff’s life to pray against. George Moore had come back like a good genie. Boss of all he surveyed, he sent Reinhardt and Kaetchen off to Del Monte, and got to work on launching us socially. His magic lamp lit us and our way to adventures and parties of fabulous beauty. One dinner I remember at Burlingame, where a clubroom had been converted by two old ladies (whose profession it was) into a fairy orchard in Persia at dawn. The walls, seemingly of transparent ice flushed pink, held silver espalier trees bearing golden apples. On the table for 120 guests were tall staves on which white peacocks perched, with garlands of flowers linking them. At the corners were white china elephants as big as genuine newborns, with white peacock-tails spreading in pride from their howdahs. Moore produced delightful companions, Chinatown revels and a nerve-destroying equestrian paper-chase, where Iris was tossed high into the air and I arrived an hour after the others, having spoilt a kind man’s sport; and best he invited us to spend our interim at his ranch. We dared not take our child-friend Raimund.

  San Francisco


  5 January 1927

  Goodbye, Frisco! It’s over and the last night was a frenzy of excitement and joyous farewells and tears. It’s been one of our best successes—matinées every day. Crowds at the theatre pay eight dollars to be allowed to squat on their haunches in crannies from which the stage is invisible. They get paralysed by cramp and ask the ushers to “pull” them. Many faint, I suppose, from standing up and looking down too long. I get a kick out of it but not as much as anyone else would. The densest jamming is on the statue side of the stage, and they come in swarms to the dressing-rooms to have a look. Through last night’s swarm swam Elinor Glyn (looking twenty-five and talking rubbish), fans, photographers, lunatics and lovers. It would drive another crazy but I rather like it, and I like best dear faithful Sister Chinese White of the Rutland Hospital, who arrives nightly with a delicious hot supper for me.

  I acted the Nun marvellously and I really thought when it finished that the audience would surge in one tidal wave over the stage in a paroxysm of emotion. I even formulated a trifling “few words” to deliver through tears of joy and vanity. Wrong! Nothing unusual happened; just the usual “good hand.” Other times, when I think that a turnip could have done as well, they “never better” me.

  The poor child-friend, his day is over. We opened a bottle of champagne to keep him from tears and because it was the tenth anniversary of Wade’s coming to me.

  Del Monte

  Here for the night, of all places. The most beautiful cedars with old fantastic roots winding into the slow Pacific. Rocks and seals abound. Pinchot arrived. Iris and she are crazy competitors for Reinhardt’s heart. I think Iris wins, but low in my consciousness I feel myself Cordelia.

  We rode with Pinchot into the breaking waves. She looked like a centaur (no, like the Elgin frieze) stirrup-less. Moore has got the Kat and Reinhardt and Vollmöller into saddles. They are not born to be horsemen. They wear stiff collars and can’t look about for “riding.”

  12 January

  I woke with dread upon me, as always before starting something new. We kissed the Kat and the Master goodbye and parted, we for the ranches and isolation, they for filmland. We drove eight miles to the edge of Moore’s ranch and rode fifteen to his house, the loveliest thing in nature. No other dwelling in its fifty square miles. Not unlike England, quite as green, no rocks, all grass. Sometimes it’s Tuscany, with ilexes springing from the swards. They look like olives grown in proportion to this large country. Hills (not mountains) and a feeling of cultivated friendliness like an orchard, though it’s really as wild as on Creation Day. The house was finished to-day, packed with luxury, scrumptious food and too much champagne. I had a tireless polo-pony that frightened me not at all. Youngster was its name. Fifteen miles is a long ride for the weak, but the last five, planted with redwood trees so utterly unlike anything seen before, gave me a new lease through wonder. We must be here together. I shall sleep on the balcony tonight.

  13 January

  Already at 8 a.m. there was a nice noise of polo-balls being tapped and curses and directions. George had bought me fine “chaps” in Frisco, piebald cowskin heavy with doubloons and silver pieces-of-eight. Off we rode again through other hills and redwoods. I wanted an early bed, being bruised and longing to feel at my well-est. No such luck. The champagne and Bourbon flowed until 3 a.m. in such quantities that Iris and I were driven to pouring it into the grate’s ashes, the flower-vases, under the sofa, anywhere, because George will not stand for anything abstemious. He sent for his negroes five who run the house, and made them sing in perfect harmony for two hours. If they faltered for a break he would yell: “Get on, boys, do your stuff! I say, do your stuff!” They would answer: “Yes, Masser Moore” and keep at it.

  19 January

  George was of course feeling terrible today, not admitting it but drinking vile anti-hangover concoctions. “The climate looks after you,” he says. It doesn’t! Pouring the hootch surreptitiously into flower-vases (during Prohibition) does.

  It’s difficult to believe in the old life in England and in Emerald and Aunt Mildred and “the Boys” even, and Arlington Street and the Garrick Club. I am ashamed of this blurring, ashamed too that pity fills my heart for them all—all but you. Pride is what fills my heart when I think of you, and an enthusiasm to return to jail if you were in it. So don’t fear. I’m always a little restless the first month home. That’s due to cessation of the false occupation of travelling and to no work. This nigger likes her work.

  A horsy mute arrived today with ten polo-ponies from Texas. He’s an uneducated dreary little fourth to Iris, me and George, so we talked only of anthropology and R. L. Stevenson.

  Los Angeles

  24 January

  All night in the train dread and melancholy grew upon me. Sad to leave, and I know so well how bad things will be. At dawn I brought my conscientious head to the window in duty to the new country. I knew they couldn’t keep it up. It’s hideous. A cultivated plain with hard rocky hills like a drop-scene. Gest and the Kat were at the station. After a full hour’s drive we came to the Garden of Allah, our lodging-to-be. I admit it’s entrancing—a tiny whitewashed village of two-or three-roomed Spanishish houses, fountains and a swimming pool, arcades and white out-of-doors stairs. Iris and I share one, Kaetchen and Gest and others are in two, and Elinor Patterson in a fourth.

  Bertram Cruger had arrived. He and I went to see the sea and found it at Venice, Calif. We went to call on Marion Davies at the M.G.M. studios. Surprising. A place like a dockyard or lunatic asylum with “abandon hope” gates only opened for the bosses and holders of red-tape permits that need to be signed repeatedly. Marion Davies’s dressing-room is built in the middle of the sets and is as big as a church in W. R. Hearst’s unfailing Spanish-Gothic taste.

  Gest wants a longer season here until March 15th. How can I bear it? He’s all togged up this evening and has just been in to ask rather sweetly if I think he’ll “do.” He’s wearing a big Lavallière tie and an extremely high-waisted velvet jacket tied tightly above the stomach with a black tape. He says: “We all wear this in Russia, Di dear.” He also said: “I joined your school, Di dear, mad on de horses. It’s de phenomenalist thing. I took ma feet out of de spurs, let go de reins and went like hell.”

  Going to dine now in the sitting-room. Twenty Chinese in jade-green silk have brought in the entire dinner from soup to nuts on one tray, so it will be bitterly cold from the second course on.

  30 January

  The child-friend we don’t see until Kaetchen goes next week. He sleeps in corners and shadows of the Garden and knows all our comings and goings. Other inhabitants must think that the Garden is haunted. He whistles different tunes and signals at his likes and dislikes as they pass.

  31 January

  All afternoon I laboured at my stone coat in the theatre, stitching and swearing. Poor bee, that dies young of its own industry. They have given me an enormous car the size of a wagon-restaurant. I drive it with trepidation. It takes an hour to get to the theatre and naturally an hour back.

  The first night was cruelly alarming and altogether rude and miserable, and the house was packed with screen celebrities. In my unblinking gaze I saw Pickford, Fairbanks, Norma Shearer, Marion Davies, W. R. Hearst, Jannings, Elinor Glyn. To my surprise no one did anything in honour of Reinhardt or any of us—no party, no flowers, no telegrams, no visits to congratulate. Hollywood is unlike any other American city. It would be impossible for say the Fairbanks or Guitrys or Stanislavsky to have a first night in London and not be fêted by the profession at the Savoy or at a private house, wouldn’t it? I’m outraged.

  Flowers there were in plenty from our own—Ali Mackintosh and Lady Beaverbrook. So it ended with Reinhardt and Kaetchen coming home with us to complain. I could hear the Boy whistling in the Garden, and was frozen with terror of Kaetchen finding him as he walked out. I hate this town, hate it, hate it! I believe that they despise us for being “legitimate” stage.

  1 February />
  One day much like another except that it’s Brief February today and I can say “Next month I’ll be with my dear.” Poor poor bee, she’s in a self-pity rhythm and has very little cause in her beautiful hive with three hard-working drones around. Kaetchen has got Raimund out of The Miracle, so now the poor boy’s désœuvré and destitute. He shall be our paid chauffeur and get enough for his cheese sandwiches.

  In the new King of Kings picture, Schildkraut tells me, the betrayal of Christ is explained as due to a wave of jealousy for Mary Magdalen. No comment.

  They don’t mind their “p’s” here. A newspaper said Miss Constance Talmadge had got a separation from her “Scottish souse Mr Ali Mackintosh.”

  Three days before the beneficent Miracle faded into American memories, Iris and I went together to see Elinor Glyn. She had a cluster of beautiful young men in attendance, one of whom transcended the others in height and wild originality of countenance. He was called Friedrich Ledebur. When we returned to our Garden Iris broke to me the hard news that she would not be travelling back to the East nor yet to England with me. I felt deserted for a whim, lonely and deceived in her affection. It was not, however, a whim, for she married this paragon. The Miracle had been a blessed mother to us both. To no other Madonna or Nun had it brought good, but it had answered all our prayers. I was sad to leave alone, and sad to leave our dear Raimund to fend for himself. He looked so woebegone, with empty pockets and only a foreign tongue with which to thrust and parry and find a livelihood. He would have lovesick Iris as a prop for a little longer, and that must console me.