by Cecil Beaton
Perhaps if I had been given other opportunities to know this strange creature I might have been able to discover a rapport with him, to learn the secret of which the hard core of his æsthetic integrity was composed. But the blue motor and its blue-clad occupants soon rolled up the hill again, and with them went the close-guarded secret that has survived the critical scrutiny of many years.
De Meyer’s early photographs, taken from 1900 onwards, are in a class by themselves, with as touching and sensitive a quality as the impressionist paintings of Berthe Morisot. Nothing could be more simple and restrained than Madame Errazuriz in black taffetas, with an aigrette of osprey in her toque, sitting forward expectantly and almost turning her back to the camera, yet giving more than a mere indication of an impression of the personal appearance, character, and atmosphere of this great individual than any literary portrait could have hoped to achieve.
Only in the Baron’s photographs of Lady de Grey (Later Lady Ripon), resplendent in silver lamé and tiara, do I find a corroboration of all that I have heard about this great social figure, of whom, alas, I was never able to catch a near glimpse but whose name is a byword for elegance, graciousness, and charm of an earlier period.
As for the pictures of the fabulous Nijinsky, they alone do not seem to destroy a legend. We have heard of the leap, the lightness, the dynamic agility. It is hard to reconcile the simpering, muscle-bound clod of the Bassano pictures with the verbal reports that have come down to us; but the frivolous de Meyer, with his camera, pioneer spirit, and touching zest, spent an afternoon photographing Le Spectre de la Rose, the Faun from L’Après-Midi, the Slave in Schéhérazade, and the Prince of Le Pavillon d’Armide. The results of that afternoon lead one to appreciate that this strange-looking dancer did, in fact, possess a steel-trap agility, the gaiety of youth, the lyrical and exciting qualities which have now become a part of history.
It was only after a long career of documenting the gloss of an epoch that Baron de Meyer became the Boldini of photographers, and his work changed to the exaggeratedly affected. Even then he was able to pass on his admiration for, and his enjoyment of, the frivolities of the moment. From the curving spines of his sitters with an inevitable hand on a hip and their proud heads, and profils perdus caught in frieze-like poses, to the sparkle on the silver lace, the tissues, the pearls, the shells, the sunlight catching the pristine petal of a madonna lily, the sheen on parquet floors, the shimmer on mirror-panelled doors, the fireworks bursting among the arabesques of a crystal chandelier—all of these details have been frozen out of time by the unique art of fashion’s first and most individual photographer.
De Meyer, Boldini and his ladies, Cécile Sorel, Lina Cavalieri, and “the Souls” played their roles in a world of changing fashions. Indeed, the barometer of feminine styles never ran a stranger gamut than in the years preceding the First World War and throughout the war itself. Paris was never captured during that war, thus allowing its continuing catalytic influence as the world’s fashion centre. Though ten million men were killed in that period from 1914 to 1918, the war was still (and not so ironically by present-day standards) a “gentleman’s” war. There was no pin-point bombing, no saturation raids on the civilian population, no prolonged deprivation. It is not too cynical to say that, with a few outward bows to wartime conventions, certain aspects of social life in Paris continued much as they had before.
EVERY LEADING HOUSE HAD ITS PERSONAL PREFERENCES
On the eve of world catastrophe the mode had become so disparate and varied that to be fashionable in all ways was out of the question. With half panniers and suggestions of Directoire and Empire styles, as well as a partial return to early Victorian bustles, elegant ladies were able to be in the height of fashion while adopting the most divergent of styles. Every leading house had its personal preferences: Paquin was not like Laferrière, nor Doucet like Vincent-Lachartrouaille, nor Reboux like Camille Roger, nor Worth like Redfern. Premet had gone back to the dress of 1880; Beer favoured the periods of Watteau; while Doeuillet expressed preference for Second Empire styles. One half of Paris was wearing Victorian basques as tight as possible, while the other adopted the tunic that hung without touching from shoulder to knee. The pitch pipe of change was sounding different and discordant notes with each season.
THE BAROMETER OF FEMININE STYLES NEVER RAN A STRANGER GAMUT
SUFFRAGETTES INSISTED ON WOMEN’S EMANCIPATION
These changes of style were not unrelated to the breaking up of the social scene: like the shadows cast on the wall of Plato’s cave, they reflected the mutations of the times. Suffragettes insisted on woman’s emancipation, while paradoxically the styles asserted themselves as being more feminine than ever; morals and modes of behaviour were being shaken up like the first cocktail. Automobiles were bigger and more powerful, trains were longer and faster, airplanes were feasible, and life became a whirl. A craze for dancing swept in. The thé dansant became a social function, a rendezvous for illegitimate flirtation. With it came the “lounge lizards,” the unescorted wives and enthusiastic businessmen who left the office an hour earlier to dance the tango, which had been “smuggled” in from Argentina, to wriggle to the maxixe, hug in the Bunny Hug, glide in the Gaby Glide, and walk the Castle Walk, for Vernon and Irene Castle were at the peak of their popularity.
When Mrs. Vernon Castle suddenly appeared, she was greeted with the shock of recognition that people always reserve for those who—as Wordsworth once said—create the taste by which they are to be appreciated. Her advent introduced a completely fresh note in women’s appearance, but at the same time this surprise had the familiarity of understanding: when we take up the “new” it is only because we have had a secret need of it and have unconsciously prepared for its coming. It is no accident that Stravinsky’s early music and Picasso’s cubist period coincided with the success of a woman who was to be one of the most remarkable fashion figures the world has known. Mrs. Castle was as important an embodiment of the “modern,” in the social and fashion sense, as these artists were in the world of art. No doubt there were many ears that rejected the Sacre du Printemps, just as many eyes could not appreciate Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. With the passing of the years, those same eyes and ears came to accept the painting and music which they had at first rejected so violently. In the case of Mrs. Vernon Castle, no such time lapse existed: women are much more open to changes in fashion than the public is open to revolutionary trends in art.
In the spring of 1911, when England was on the eve of George V’s coronation, New Yorkers were heralding Victor Herbert’s operettas, Oscar Straus’s The Chocolate Soldier, or the Pink Lady with Miss Hazel Dawn. Mr. Irving Berlin was about to popularize a new kind of jazz with his song, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”
The waltz, the Boston, and the two-step had been the dominant forms of the dance, but now the tango and the one-step were “all the rage” and Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle were the embodiment of this new modernity.
There must have been an unconscious wisdom in the newly married Castles’ choice of temporarily turning their backs on the American scene, though in fact the entertainment in which they had been appearing in New York had closed, their immediate prospects were nebulous, and the groom had vague plans to appear in a revue in Paris.
Thus the Castles set sail for France, there to meet with a cycle of bad luck. Disappointments followed close on one another. Vernon and Irene Castle were sitting in some obscure pension on the Left Bank at the nadir of their fortunes. When all theatre prospects had failed to materialize, they were finally offered an engagement to appear as a dance team at the Café de Paris. An announcement was posted together with a display of their photographs in the lobby of the restaurant: “Tous les soirs, au souper, Vernon and Irene Castle, dans leur danses sensationelles.” These “danses sensationelles” were to be performed in costume, and possibly included some wilder versions of the new, fashionable jazz steps.
The evening proceeding their engagement the Castles we
re invited, as a magnanimous gesture on the part of the management, to dine at the Café de Paris. As they sat somewhat timid watching the world around them while they ate their dinner, they were recognized from their photographs by a Russian count at a nearby table, who persuaded them to dance for him then and there. The young couple found themselves taking the dance floor, not from the wings nor in costume, but from a table among the guests wearing evening dress, Mrs. Castle in her wedding dress replete with train and a Dutch bonnet, which was later to be copied all over the world. Perhaps they were obliged to dance with more reserve than if they had worn their theatrical costumes, Mrs. Castle’s short train limiting her to non-acrobatic movements. The result was a succès fou.
From then on there were unlimited invitations and offers. It became the Castles’ specialty to appear in ball dress, to rise for their exhibition dance from a table among the guests. When they returned to America a year or so later, the Castles were internaational celebrities. Soon they found themselves the king and queen of Castle House, a restaurant for thé dansants and dancing school on East Forty-Sixth Street of New York, from which they sent forth the rules of modern dancing.
They performed at a night club which opened on top of a theatre called, appropriately enough, Castles in the Air. On the stage they became the stars of Watch Your Step, earning as much as six thousand dollars a week. From cheap Left Bank pensions they had travelled to a country house in Manhasset, where Vernon played polo and kept sporting dogs.
The dance craze was meanwhile at its zenith. Endless new dance steps emerged, including the fox trot of 1915, which was to prove to be the most enduring of all. Many restaurants engaged similar dance teams to rival the Castles, among the leading contenders being Maurice and Florence Walton and later Mae Murray and Clifton Webb. It was as the winner of one of the so popular dancing contests that Rudolph Valentino came to the fore. Moralists attacked the new dancing, saying that it encouraged loose behaviour, but the upheaval in manners was consolidated and the dancing continued, its vitality being personified by the genial new ambassadors of youth, Vernon and Irene Castle. Even middle-aged people found themselves joining the quadrille. When we think that today one scarcely pays attention to an older man or woman taking the floor at a night club, we must realize how the attractive personalities of Vernon and Irene Castle were important elements in the creation of such a laissez-faire attitude.
Irene Castle’s appearance was unlike anyone else’s, yet overnight people accepted it and emulated her wherever possible. The primary effect that she created was one of an exquisite grace combined with an extraordinary boyish youthfulness. There was something terrifically healthy and clean about her. In her whip-like and taut bearing she hinted at the wonderful play of muscles beneath the surface, as a fine-bred horse betrays its beauty by a ripple. There was something blade-like and steely about her muscles and her limbs. She used her hands with such a bold grace that one had the notion that she gesticulated rather than gestured. Previously dancers had made softer use of gesture, but Irene Castle moved her hands sharply, with a masculine boldness, the wrists arched, the fingers straight as breadsticks. She walked with very long strides, with no daintiness, swinging along with wonderful, live, big gestures. She invented a whole balance of movement, with the pelvis thrust forward and the body leaning backwards, giving her torso the admirable lines and flat look of Cretan sculpture. This stance necessitated, if she were standing still, the placing of one leg behind her as a balance. Within the compass of these basic axes she turned her body to the four winds, raising a shoulder against the direction in which she was going. The “trademark” of the raised shoulder became a sort of fetish that many women were to copy. Such movements seemed possible only with an extraordinary sense of balance and an innate sense of design. It was as if a gyroscope were inside her, always stabilizing the body’s framework no matter on which tangent it moved off.
Yet Irene Castle’s boyish impression was counterbalanced by an extreme femininity, an equally strong suggestion of allure, despite the fact that she employed none of the usual feminine attributes. Her complexion was rather like a boy’s, dun in colour; and her hair was a nondescript mouse-brown. The features were knobby and blunt as those of a marmoset. With the heart-shaped face, the high cheekbones, and the incredibly long eyebrows that ended like a mouse’s tail at the corners, Irene Castle was not a beauty in classical terms at all; but the relationship of her features to one another was good, and her face became the prototype of a cast of looks not at all uncommon today. Very few women, up until that time, had possessed high cheekbones or slightly protruding, rather Egyptian mouths, almost simian in their pout. Even Mrs. Castle’s eyes, small but of extraordinary brilliance, proved how unimportant is the notion that eyes have to be large. The upper lids tapered downwards to give a sad, compassionate, sympathetic expression, belying the lower lids, which, in contrast, screwed upwards, so that she looked as though she were always laughing. She created a strange combination of sadness and gaiety.
Like many works of art, it was not symmetry that made Mrs. Vernon Castle so alluring; she, too, proved that real beauty can often be irregular, and she created a dominant and striking personality from assets which any other woman at the time might well have regarded as liabilities.
In fashions Irene Castle was an instinctive leader. When she cut her hair very short, everybody copied the Castle bob. She had a completely personal way of dressing, utilizing the fashions of her time for her own purposes, and always in an unusual manner. Though she stands out in memory as being the personification of her epoch, she was responsible for many innovations in the prevailing fashions: above all for an innovation in appearance—her marvellous balance of femininity and boyish simplicity was congruent to the latest ideal that women had created for themselves, to replace the golden curls and valentine sweetness of a Mary Pickford.
Since her professional appearance was seldom theatrical in a flamboyant sense, it was easy enough for Mrs. Castle to adapt the very feminine fashions of the period for her dancing clothes. The impression she created was rather as though the most elegant woman in a restaurant or night club had been induced to give an exhibition on the dance floor.
Wherever she travelled she would find some costume of a foreign country could be adapted to her purpose. Sometimes Mrs. Castle wore boys’ caps or men’s riding coats, even donning glen plaid or striped tail coats for evening dress. In spite of her short hair, these outfits were always extremely feminine, and if she wore a man’s top hat there would always be a loose curl in the middle of her forehead.
In general, she dressed in soft, flowing materials. Though some of the dresses Lucile made for her might be elaborate, they were always simple in outline: there was little trimming about her—she was a statuette conception with nothing pinned on.
In effect, Mrs. Castle put the backbone to femininity, showing its vertebrae instead of its dimples, and was thus an important reflection of the social attitude of her period, an embodiment of woman’s declared emancipation. This attitude genuinely defined her personality, even down to the buckled shoes that trod on slippery floors with a sure unerring step, the step of her utterly frank, open, and bold personality.
Irene Castle had the certainty of an artist. You knew that she was never fussed, that the comb went through the hair once, and once was enough. She did not need a second chance. She was the kind of woman who could dress without looking in the glass, for she needed no assurance from a mirror—if she felt right, she could go out onto the dance floor.
Of her dancing it was said that she was like thistledown, and an observer remarked: “Not until you have seen her dance do you really understand what a breeze is like; she makes a breeze visible.” Yet it is said that Irene Castle was not as fine a dancer as her husband. Her grace and poise were a perfect foil for Vernon Castle’s “lithe authority.”
Not only were the Castles the precursors of modern ballroom dancing, but by their grace and distinguished example they opened the hea
rts of millions and sped “modernism” on its way. The dance craze that they symbolized promoted a freer, less restricted social exchange between men and women. It was only a step in the revolt that, at its peak, would bring in the shingle and knee-short skirts. When Vernon Castle was killed at Fort Worth, Texas, in 1918 as the result of an airplane crash, his death marked the end of an era—the era of the First World War—and the beginning of a new one, the era of the twenties.
No doubt the war of 1914–18 had hastened the demise of the tightly swathed skirt as being impractical for the new role that women not only envisioned for themselves but were actually fulfilling. These narrow costumes had never been in keeping with those early struggles for feminine freedom, and suffragettes in hobble skirts and picture hats had had a hard time when chased by policemen. Now the pendulum was to swing to the other extreme: by 1915 and 1916 fashions returned to an eighteenth-century feeling and skirts became bell-shaped. “Flare and the world flares with you, cling and you cling alone,” was the adage that fashion magazines applied to the new skirts. Some dresses were tiered, and robes de style or “picture dresses” became popular. There came in the ravishing fashion of peg-top skirts, or skirts with Fragonard panniers of taffetas. A full-blown rose was tucked in at the waistband, at the culmination of a fichu which fell in ruffles or drapery from the neck. Stripes were popular; and Nattier blue became the fashionable colour. Shoes were pointed, trimmed with huge buckles, and laced silk ribbons. Suffragettes tying themselves to the railings of Buckingham Palace now wore Dolly Varden shepherdess hats tipped up at the back, with a bunch of ribbons under the rear of the rim.