Coco Chanel

by Lisa Chaney

  Gabrielle may have been sorrowful, but she was also in love and living with a man who represented everything she could want. For the moment, her ambition seemed unimportant, and she was luxuriating in being distracted. When she went to live with Arthur, at first Etienne hadn’t wanted to see them. But he was a forgiving man, and his heart would recover. In time, the new couple were welcomed back to Royallieu and entered once more into the life of the château. We see Gabrielle, previously such a reluctant-looking photographic subject, seated at table with Arthur, Léon de Laborde and Etienne. A smile plays over her face, at once flirtatious and fulfilled.

  In another photograph, guests at a Royallieu house party have been organized by Gabrielle into donning costumes and playacting a “country wedding.” Two things stand out in the “play” itself. While the sophisticated young people take a swipe at bumpkin country folk, they also satirize the idea of marriage, the grown-up institution effectively banished from Royallieu. The pretty little actress Jeanne Léry plays an adoring bride; the socialite Lucien Henraux is a smitten groom; Arthur is the goofy, buxom mother of the bride; Léon de Laborde is a bonneted, dopey-looking baby; while the rising-star actress Gabrielle Dorziat takes the part of a slightly retarded, pigeon-toed village-girl maid of honor, in a short dress and socks.

  And then we notice Gabrielle, who has taken the role of adolescent best man. She looks straight into the camera with that disconcerting seriousness. Dressed from the boys’ section of a Parisian department store, she wears trousers that don’t reach her ankles, pale socks, buttoned ankle boots, a Peter Pan–collared shirt and a waistcoat set off by a little dark jacket. Despite the deliberately crumpled white shirt, the clumsy cravat and the pulled-down straw hat, to our contemporary eyes, Gabrielle is the one person who fails in her attempts to appear awkward. A century later, the way she has put together and wears the little “suit” strikes us as having an insouciant, particularly modern kind of style. No matter how sophisticated and relaxed her friends might appear, they remain fixed in their own time, the early years of the twentieth century. It is Gabrielle alone who looks as if she might have been photographed just yesterday.

  Describing herself as “unlike anyone else; either physically or mentally,”8 Gabrielle was also ripe with contradiction and rich in paradox. All her life this would make her easy to misread. While craving solitude, she lacked serenity, and possessed an electric, pent-up energy. Without the voluptuous curves then most desirable in a woman, her taut body was more like an adolescent boy’s. She was unusually forthright, yet at the same time, was subtle and seductive. Capable of easygoing lightheartedness, she was also provocative, and had a mordant wit. In her enigmatically beautiful face there was more than a hint of severity. This sprang from a deep seriousness, a profound quality given only to a few.

  Gabrielle had developed an aversion to mere prettiness; she wanted beauty. She believed she had an unerring sense of what was “fake, conventional or bad,” the implication being that the conventional is as objectionable as what is “fake” or “bad.” Her unusual ability, growing stronger with age, to intuit the essence of a person and a situation amounted to what a friend described as “a kind of sixth sense.”9 Yet while Gabrielle was both unusually perceptive and knowing, in those early years Paris made her frightened. Painfully aware of her lack of sophistication in that most sophisticated of cities, she later recalled her ignorance of “social nuances, of family histories, the scandals, the allusions, all the things that Paris knew about and which are not written down anywhere. And since I was much too proud to ask questions I remained in ignorance.”10

  While Gabrielle would never entirely overcome her sense of social inadequacy, she possessed a quality having nothing to do with inadequacy: humility. Hers was the humility of the artist open to everything, and it complemented her underlying self-confidence and strength of personality. Someone who would know her well in the future would say, “She was very elegant, but elegance is something natural, whereas being sophisticated . . . is a conscious choice . . . Elegance is something you’re born with.”11 To this innate elegance Gabrielle added her own singular femininity. For contemporary men attracted to strength as well as delicacy and mystery, Gabrielle Chanel held great appeal. Indeed, she had unsettled the glamorous Arthur Capel, stirring his emotions, and his yearnings, beyond sexual prowess and social prestige.

  In 1924, the fashionable diplomat Paul Morand would write his first novel, Lewis et Irène. In the dedication of his book to Gabrielle, he referred to the similarities between Arthur Capel and his fictional hero, Lewis.12 Morand was fascinated by Arthur, a man with whom he shared an addiction to speed, horses, cars and women. In time, Gabrielle would tell Morand much about her relationship with Arthur. Not only did Arthur become the inspiration for Morand’s hero Lewis, but the similarities between Gabrielle and Irène, and many aspects of the Chanel-Capel relationship, were widely recognized by their contemporaries. Lewis et Irène is in large part their story.13

  Morand saw Arthur as the dashing exemplification of a new kind of man, and made Lewis out of the same mold. Their similarities began with Lewis’s appearance. He had “beautiful brown eyes, quick and hard, a strong jaw, thick, very black hair, in disarray, and a half-open hunting vest.”14 Lewis was like Arthur in being determinedly modern and up-to-the-minute, with his reading of Freud on sexuality, his scorning of much of the past and his air of always being in a hurry.

  And while Lewis et Irène was in many ways a depiction of Gabrielle and Arthur’s relationship, it was also the first French novel in which the heroine’s unusual self-reliance enabled her to have a relationship in which she was an equal partner. At Irène’s first entrance, in her black swimsuit, with her slim muscled and bronzed limbs, she is clearly a modern woman. Lewis’s admiration soon turns to something more, and in Irène he feels that his “fate was absolutely mapped out.” He realizes that without her, “What coldness when she is gone . . . what boredom.”15 Lewis tells Irène that he is learning how to be human, and that his first need is to adore her. She replies that her first need is to surrender to him, and that she doesn’t have to “regret my madness any more.”16

  Gabrielle would recall that during her first winter with Arthur in 1910, their relationship was a very private one, and they invited few people to their apartment.17 Morand said of Lewis and Irène that “in the morning they stayed in bed. Lewis had kept a few racehorses. He telephoned . . . from his bed for news of their hooves, their teeth, their tendons.”18 At first, the intimate world of lovers was enough for Gabrielle and Arthur. Gabrielle described how, initially, she “distanced him from his friends”19 but also how Arthur wanted her to “remain the unsophisticated, untainted creature that he had discovered,” believing that she would be “damaged” by having friends.20

  It was the beginning of their love affair and, for the moment, Gabrielle apparently accepted Arthur’s judgment. Constantly surprised by his edgy brilliance, she said, “He had a very strong and unusual character, and was a passionate and single-minded sort of man.”21 Paul Morand wrote that Lewis lived his life at top speed, ate while driving his car, sat on the floor and slept very little.22 Gabrielle recalled Arthur’s stable of polo ponies; she talked of his refined yet eccentric manner, his cultivation and his “dazzling social success.” More important, he was also the first person in her life who didn’t “demoralize” her.23

  Arthur exemplified the personal superiority and distinction of those for whom the notion of elegance and good taste had changed; it was no longer based upon birth or wealth alone. Membership in this group largely hinged on a particular savoir vivre and a new, nonchalant brand of elegance based more upon individuality than membership in any particular group. Morand’s description of Lewis rings true of Arthur yet again: “To appear carelessly dressed in elegant places, because it pleased him to give an impression of strength and rudeness. That is why he readily dined in a sports jacket [rather than dinner jacket], among women in low-cut evening gowns.”24

&
nbsp; Gabrielle was entranced by Arthur’s English dandyism, which fulfilled the anglophile cultural ideal of “le gentleman.” Unaware that some of Arthur’s compatriots from across the Channel mightn’t always find him quite old school enough for their prejudices, Gabrielle was dazzled. She described him as “more than handsome, he was magnificent.”25 But her appreciation of Arthur went much further than his looks.

  One of the sources of their intense mutual attraction lay in their recognition that the other was untypical. And while they were both ambitious, Arthur was one of the only people in Gabrielle’s life until then whose authority she was happy to accept. Well behind her were her days as a poseuse at Moulins, when her slenderness had been called “thinness” and was attributed to too much partying. (It had been rumored that she would come to no good, and one of her nicknames at the time, La Famine aux Indes, was borrowed from the disturbing contemporary famine photographs from India.)26

  But her life had changed beyond recognition since Moulins. Even though Gabrielle sometimes refused a trip to the dressmaker or a new pearl necklace, courtesy of Arthur, the bondage she had assumed was luxurious, and she was happy. She wore beautiful clothes, discovered that her slender grace was found increasingly alluring, and reveled in an unaccustomed happiness. Gabrielle’s natural charm blossomed as never before, and an admirer was to remember, “She had a roguish smile and delighted in mocking people with a tantalizing look of innocence.”27

  Gabrielle’s fascination for Arthur lay not only in her unusual beauty but in her intelligence, her striking directness and her capacity for silence. But while Morand’s fictional Lewis was impressed by Irène’s “uncluttered and imperious mind,” he was also intent on educating her out of what he saw as her abominable ignorance. In the habit of “improving” his conquests, he set out to “cultivate their minds.”28 In like manner, Gabrielle recalled that for all the luxury of Arthur’s apartment, his outlook was in some ways a strict one. She said that “in educating me, he did not spare me; he commented on my conduct: “You behaved badly . . . you lied . . . you were wrong.”29 Gabrielle could accept this admonishment and his attempts to school her (including instruction in small details, such as the best years for champagne) because she didn’t feel undermined by that “gently authoritative manner of men who know women well, and who love them implicitly.”30

  Her background and her desultory education had inspired in Gabrielle a reasonable idea of what she wanted. First was escape from the meanness of her upbringing. On moving out of the haberdasher’s shop into her own lodgings, she was determined to make her own way. Like many shop assistants before her, she had possibly augmented her earnings in Moulins with modest prostitution, and was eventually partnered with Etienne Balsan. Later, in his château at Royallieu, she found something to which she could seriously apply herself: horse riding. Not only did she become a talented rider, Gabrielle was also well informed about the most significant racing fixtures, the best jockeys, the finest horses. Yet her social life was spent largely with sportsmen and their mistresses, aristocrats, courtesans and turf society. During her years at Royallieu, she may have had the privilege of grandeur and being waited upon, but clearly, Arthur didn’t believe it had imbued her with much sophistication.

  He was an established figure in the highest Parisian circles. Yet although he had fallen in love with this unusual creature, his social standing impelled him to a certain caution regarding transgression of the status quo. As a result of this, Gabrielle was effectively forbidden access to the haut monde. That subtle and precise brutality practiced by most elites, whose sense of exclusiveness functions with a hair-trigger sensitivity, meant that her lover didn’t escort his live-in mistress around the capital’s select salons, where he normally found his friends. And no matter what the private indiscretions of the haut monde, that same society wasn’t unconventional enough to visit a bachelor and his mistress at home. While at Royallieu, we remember, Etienne had no wish to receive society. This was just as well, because society would have been most unlikely to accept his invitations; his establishment was disreputable.

  So Gabrielle and Arthur went out, and he introduced her to his more rakish friends at fashionable public places such as the theater or Maxim’s, the Café de Paris, or the Pré Catalan restaurant on the Bois de Boulogne. At times, Gabrielle hankered after an obvious kind of respectability: she was in love with Arthur Capel and would have married him if he’d asked. But unlike Etienne Balsan, for the moment, he did not.

  Arthur’s numerous female admirers—several of them ex-lovers—were unhappy at his cohabitation with his mistress. She, meanwhile, recalled an episode intended to demonstrate her hold over him to the haut monde. Arthur was due at an important gala at the ruthlessly fashionable Deauville casino. On a whim, Gabrielle insisted that he should dine there with her alone. All eyes were upon them. While Gabrielle may have felt diffident before the Parisian elite, the urge to stake her claim over her man publicly was a far from timid action. She remembered that her “awkwardness, which contrasted with a wonderfully simple white dress, attracted people’s attention. The beauties of the period, with that intuition women have for threats unknown, were alarmed; they forgot their lords and their maharajas; Boy’s place at their table remained empty.”31 (“Boy” was the nickname by which Arthur was commonly known.) Gabrielle’s first moment of public triumph was not, however, based upon a conspicuous white dress and her connection to the glorious Arthur Capel alone. People remembered that evening and her memorable mix of engaging honesty, hauteur and charm. Le tout Paris had already whispered a good deal about the eligible Arthur Capel’s new liaison, but this episode announced it with a megaphone.

  Many of the details of Gabrielle’s affair with Arthur remain obscure. And while, as we shall see, Arthur had reasons for keeping aspects of his own background mysterious, in the future Gabrielle would maintain far greater secrecy about her own. As a result, the chronology of these years is very difficult to disentangle.

  7

  Arthur Capel

  Gabrielle would admit that she hated “to submit to anyone, to humiliate myself . . . to give in, not to have my own way,” because “pride is present in whatever I do.”1 And yet Arthur Capel had so captured her heart and her imagination that half a century later, she would still speak of him with a kind of awe. As we saw in the prologue to this book, Gabrielle believed he was “the great stroke of luck in my life.” And bearing in mind her different versions of her early life, she remained touchingly consistent in her descriptions of this man. Her conviction that he had shaped her, made her—that “he was my father, my brother, my entire family”—never changed. Arthur was everything to her.2 Yet despite his great renown at that time, and Gabrielle’s feelings for him, today he is barely known.

  The story told in all Gabrielle Chanel’s previous biographies is that Arthur Capel inherited large interests in shipping and Newcastle coal from his distinguished Catholic family. In addition to his considerable wealth, he was a noted polo player and rake. But while his origins were apparently a little mysterious—there were rumors about his paternity—and his drive to make money was untypical of the Parisian haut monde, nonetheless, Arthur was one of the elite.

  Until now, very little further detail has been known: his background, his early life, his arrival in France, his movements between Britain and France, his urge to make money, his activities during the First World War and, afterward, as a political secretary at the Versailles Conference. Finally, our knowledge of his affair with Gabrielle, his marriage and its aftermath, all have remained obscure.

  Gabrielle’s biographers and fashion journalists long ago turned Arthur into something of a caricature: a polo-playing, womanizing tycoon who had done important things in the First World War. Little more than an adornment in his role as consort to the icon Coco Chanel, the finer points of the real Arthur Capel and his story were lost, while his character was submerged in cliché as the improbable hero from one of Gabrielle’s newspaper fictions. For more
than half a century, the very elusiveness of Gabrielle’s lover has added to the romance of his reputation. But if she so insistently credited this unreal figure with her very invention, we can reasonably assume that in discovering more about him, we will understand more about Gabrielle.

  In piecing together much new information about Arthur, it became clear that significant details were wrong, even his date of birth. Part of the problem has always been that one of the few sources of information about Arthur was Gabrielle, and while her comments are invaluable, she added to the confusion with unintentional inaccuracies.

  After more than a year, research led me to Arthur’s family. In the lengthening dusk of a winter’s afternoon, we sat by a fire as they told me what little they knew. This, and the small cache of letters, they gave me—hidden in a “secret” book in a private library for more than half a century—were together, however, to become immensely significant. The letters were written by Arthur during the First World War. His generous handwriting, almost spilling over the small, forgotten pages, gave a clear sense of that voice sought for so long. With each letter, this elusive man emerged with more clarity from the shadow of his lover, Gabrielle.

  What stood out in the letters, across the almost one hundred years that separated us, was the strong impression of a man who was confident, humorous and ironic. He was also commanding, thoughtful and touching in his intimacy. As one learns more about his and Gabrielle’s story, one appreciates both why Arthur wanted to be with this young woman without background, and why he appeared, both to Gabrielle and to many others, as quite unforgettable. In discovering Arthur Capel, we do indeed discover more about Gabrielle herself.