Of course, there were things we missed. We never went to Spain when Alfonso XIII was King. God knows, we were asked. Years later, Spanish friends used to say to me, “Diana, you always miss the boat. You should have been here when Alfonso was King. Then you would have seen Spain.”
Alfonso—that gorgeous, glorious, marvelous Bourbon! I met him—once—in London, before he went into exile. He was the most exciting man I’d ever seen. There was no one like the King of Spain. You know that he was the only man ever born King of Spain—he was born after his father’s death. The King of Spain was…well, the King of Spain…this shiny, magnificent man. He had the Spanish Bourbon nose, and that mouth which was set up and out. His mustache was marvelous, his hair was rich and black, he was a bit dark, he loved dogs, horses, men, women…. You’d never think anything in the world could go wrong for him. But then think of what his last years were like. Do you realize that nobody would walk on the same side of the street with him in Rome? It was supposed to be bad luck. The evil eye.
Alfonso married Victoria Eugenia—“Ena” of Battenberg, this marvelous, totally chic granddaughter of Queen Victoria and god-daughter of the Empress Eugénie. She introduced hemophilia into the family, and each of their sons—except one—was born with some terrible physical defect. They were deaf, they were dumb, they had club feet—they had everything.
And Alfonso had to go when the monarchy went and the Civil War began. He was thrown out of the country like an old boot. He left by battleship the way Edward VIII left England when he abdicated.
One day Reed and I were motoring through the south of France to Marseilles. We arrived at the Hôtel de Noailles, where we were going to spend the night. The next morning we were going to take a boat to Sidi Bou Saïd in Tunisia. That night, we’d arranged to go on a tour of the red-light district of Marseilles with the prefect of police. It was a very interesting evening we were going to have.
After we settled ourselves in our room, Reed went downstairs to see about our evening’s prowl, and I sort of dozed off. I felt that the hotel was abuzz with something, but I was really too sleepy to think about anything. Reed rang up from downstairs. “Please,” he said, “don’t, under any circumstances, come down until I’ve come up.”
As we were going downstairs together, he said, “Here’s what I have to tell you: the King of Spain arrived this morning by battleship, and he’s here with—”
No sooner had he said it than I saw it. The entire court of Spain had arrived. The whole palace had been kicked out of Spain, and here they were in the Hôtel de Noailles. In the ballroom we saw the little Infantes and Infantas on stretchers…in braces, in wheelchairs, most of them in some way disabled. There were older children; old servant women carrying baskets, wandering aimlessly through the lobby…there was everybody there who is in any royal family. It was like cleaning out an attic. They all had rooms; everything had been arranged. They weren’t like refugees, yet they lived the rest of their lives as refugees.
So we left the royal family, moving through that extraordinary scene, and off we went on our evening’s prowl…into a world so utterly different.
We were now five—Reed and I, Kitty and Perry Brownlow, who were going to Tunisia with us, and the prefect of police.
“I do want you to know,” the prefect said, “that the British consul disappeared five weeks ago while doing rather the same thing that you’re about to do, prowling through the red-light district of our city—and he hasn’t been heard from since. Are you still prepared to go?”
Listen, can a duck swim? What the hell did we care?
“Yes,” I said.
So we made our first stop. We went through this very dark alley, and against the walls were these Pepe le Mokos. The only thing you’d see was the ends of their cigarettes—their bodies were against the wall in shadows. From the alley we passed into these inner, secret squares within squares of such a magnificence, such a scale, such a proportion—they must have been early Renaissance—but all in darkness.
Then, in the innermost square, we saw, floodlit, a palace façade with stone pediments and balustrades carved with pyramids and the most beautiful, enormous door you ever saw. Do we go in that door? Forget it—this is a tale of vice! We went in the lowliest little doorway at the side, where we were met by the madam, who was quite padded out and had a mustache about the size of Adolphe Menjou’s.
“Bonsoir, bonsoir!” she said in this terrific accent, the Marseillaise, which is very hard to understand, even with something as simple as “bonsoir.” She went on: “You’re here to see the movies, you’re here to see the action, you’re here to see the girls—what?”
“Everything!” the prefect said.
This brothel was called the Edward VII. Every good brothel in Europe was called the Edward VII. He liked them very much and sort of christened them as he went along. Apparently, this was his favorite, or so we were told—how do I know if there’s any truth to it? I’m only telling you what we saw. We saw silver rooms, we saw gold rooms, we saw rooms of mirrors…and then we went into an enormous red-and-gold Edward VII ballroom with little gold chairs all around and a band tuning up, led by this little hunchback.
Then the girls came in and took their seats. It didn’t look like much of an evening for them—three guys and two girls had arrived, so where were they to fit in? But the prefect was marvelous, talking to this obscene woman with the Adolphe Menjou mustache—this buxom, army-captain sort of a woman.
Then…the band strikes up. The bandleader, we were told—this little hunchback at the piano—was the leader of the orchestra of the Marseilles Opera. He was the most important musician in Marseilles, and every night he played for the girls.
It was too extraordinary. Shall we say that’s what’s attractive about brothels? They’re where earth and sky meet.
“Oh, my God,” I said to Reed when we finally got back to the hotel, “what an evening! The gnome, the girls, the madam, the old servant women carrying baskets, the little Infantes, the little Infantas…the King of Spain!”
We never did find out what happened to the British consul.
This was all one day. It may sound like too much of an experience, but don’t forget, we were living every hour of that day. Everything was a lot in those days. The world was much larger—and much smaller. Don’t ask me to explain that.
But don’t think you were born too late. Everyone has that illusion. But you aren’t. The only problem is if you think too late.
That was my mother’s problem, and that was her tragedy. She used to write Reed and me letters on our honeymoon in Paris: “My dear darling children, I cry for you in the rain when I think that you missed all the glories of Paris before the war, when I think that you never saw the Bois as it was, when I think….”
“Glory be to God!” I said. I wrote her back the most terrible letter: “Dear Mother, Were you ever in the Galerie des Glaces? Did you ever know what it was to be presented to Louis XIV? Did you ever hunt the stag with the bugles and the hounds of Henri II in the forest of Fontainebleau? Forget it! Anything I’m missing today I’d like to know the name of!”
Naturally, she never in her life referred to my letter.
Everything is new. At least everything is new the first time around.
So Reed and I made a point of going to out-of-the-way new places. To some, naturally, we were invited. Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger was the one who invited us to Sidi Bou Saïd after our adventure in Marseilles. He couldn’t be called the black sheep of the d’Erlanger family—he was a perfectly enchanting man—but he was an odd bird. He never went into the d’Erlanger bank, which was as queer as if you decided to walk on your hands rather than on your legs. His wife, Bettina, was a Roman beauty with turquoise eyes. The two had gone to Sidi Bou Saïd as bride and groom, and they adored their life there so much they stayed and built a very beautiful house—a miniature palace. Their friends, who were the most interesting people in Europe, came to visit them—Elsie Mendl, for instance, was there
during that first visit Reed and I made. We’d never been to Africa before, and I was so excited. It was dawn when we arrived in Saïd Bou Saïd. From the deck I saw the d’Erlangers’ house—a little white palace, actually, on the top of a white cliff rising straight out of the Mediterranean, terraced all the way up from the sea with gardens of orange trees, lemon trees, and oleanders.
We docked. Then we made our way to the palace, and in the courtyard we saw menservants. We only saw menservants the whole time we were there, dressed…and in the evening they’d redress, and it was like the Arabian Nights—these great big pantaloons with gold and silver brocade and lamé boleros worn over very clean white shirts.
We walked past the menservants into a hall with orange marble walls and a mauve marble ceiling supported by sixteenth-century lace columns, made of a stone that’s carved like lace and is called lace. Between the columns were little birds flying in and out, in and out…and there was a tiny rivulet running through the hall with gardenias floating in it.
Then we went into lunch—European, in that you sat at a pink marble table set with gold goblets. I sat on the right of Baron Rodolphe, who always had a beautiful linen handkerchief—like an absolutely transparent cobweb—which never left his hand and which he’d raise to his nose…he was an ether addict.
“Diana…[sniff],” he’d say, “it’s so wonderful to see you looking so well. You’re the night’s morning…[sniff], you’re the sun, the moon, and the stars…[sniff, sniff]”—you know, the sort of business that men say to women by the sea.
“Reed,” I once said, “what happens if I really get a blast of it?”
“You won’t,” he said. “Just remember—when he breathes in, you breathe out.”
Rodolphe was so attractive. Don’t think this ritual of his was unattractive—it just took a little getting used to. This little weakness for ether was as normal as if you…Listen, Baron, Rodolphe was the uncrowned King of Tunisia!
His best friend was Fuad, the King of Egypt, King Farouk’s father. Together, they were really responsible for getting the music of the Arabs of North Africa onto paper. They’d work on the music together in Baron Rodolphe’s beautiful library, and they’d exchange orchestras. Sometimes, when we came in to dinner, the orchestra would be playing, and it would play through dinner and into the night….
Every morning, everyone would go down to the sea for a swim, through the gardens, past a herd of peacocks. Everyone else went together, and I guess the peacocks felt they could let them have their way. But they didn’t with me. I was always the last in the morning—I’m always the last—so I went down alone, through an acre of lemon and orange orchards, and there’d always be a peacock standing in the way with his tail spread out. “Please let me go by,” I’d say. “They’re all waiting for me. I won’t have time for a swim before lunch. Please.”
He’d wait until he got good and ready, then he’d put down his tail and drag himself back into the orchard.
Peacocks, I always say, are unbelievably beautiful—but they’re vulgar. All of these peacocks, however, were silvery white, and I’ll tell you why. Apparently, years before, King Fuad—like someone in the sixteenth century—had had sent by special messenger a little woven gold basket containing a pair of little blue peacocks. Naturally, they had babies. Then the babies came and the babies came, and one day there was a white peacock. Then there was another one. And as the herd grew larger and larger, there were more and more white peacocks.
By the time we arrived there must have been seventy-five. The d’Erlangers had given away all the blue peacocks, and as white peacocks only breed other white peacocks, they were white, white, white. In the evening they were so beautiful. The top of the palace was flat, and on hot nights we’d go up there after dinner to get the air and look down at the peacocks with their tails spread and their tiny heads against the reflection of the moon shining on the sea…it didn’t look real. When I say it didn’t look real, it didn’t look real. It looked like an Aubrey Beardsley drawing for Salome.
One night we heard drums. They were to announce that Denys Finch Hatton had died. He was one of the original Great White Hunters. He was a great friend of my mother and of everyone of her generation, and, most important, he was the lover of Isak Dinesen. She was a great friend of mine. Whenever she came to America, she’d come to see me. Every Saturday afternoon she came for tea. Tea was always combined with an early dinner, and she always wanted the same menu. A bottle of champagne. A bunch of grapes. And twelve oysters on the half-shell. She was tortured with illness and operations, but she always got where she wanted to go. She had been dying for twenty years of syphilis.
One snowy Saturday afternoon, the bell rang. I went to answer the door, and there she was standing like a woodsman with a big bunch of bright scarlet gladiolas slung on her shoulder—in the middle of winter, with snow up to your hip. Roaring with laughter, she said, “I brought you some red flowers for a red room,” and she threw them at me as if to say, “Good God, I’m glad to get rid of these!”
CHAPTER SIX
I was always fascinated by the absurdities and the luxuries and the snobbism of the world that the fashion magazines showed. Of course, it’s not for everyone. Very few people had ever breathed the pantry air of a house of a woman who wore the kind of dress Vogue used to show when I was young. But I lived in that world, not only during my years in the magazine business but for years before, because I was always of that world—at least in my imagination.
Condé Nast was a very extraordinary man, of such a standard. He had a vision. He decided to raise the commercial standards of the American woman. Why, he decided, shouldn’t they have the best-looking clothes? He gave them Vogue. The best-looking houses? House & Garden. And don’t forget Vanity Fair! Why, Condé decided, shouldn’t American women know about writers, entertainers, painters—that Picasso was painting extraordinary paintings, that a man named Proust was writing an extraordinary book? Why shouldn’t they know…about Josephine Baker?
I knew about Josephine Baker. I’d seen her in Harlem. I was never out of Harlem in the early twenties. The music was so great, and Josephine was simply the only girl you saw in the chorus line. Her eyes were the softest brown velvet, loving, caressing, embracing—all you could feel was something good coming from her. But her eyes were full of laughter, too. She had that…thing—that’s all.
One night I was invited to a Condé Nast party. Everybody who was invited to a Condé Nast party stood for something. He was the man who created the kind of social world that was then called Café Society: a carefully chosen mélange—no such thing as an overcrowded room, mind you—mingling people who up to that time would never have been seen at the same social gathering. Condé picked his guests for their talent, whatever it was—literature, the theatre, big business. Sharp, chic society. Why was I asked? I was young, well dressed, and could dance.
This was the Night of the Three Bakers. First, there walked into Condé’s party Mrs. George Baker, the wife of the great banker, who was the best-dressed, most attractive woman in New York and a great hostess. Then…we had Edythe Baker, who was the cutest thing in town. She came from Missouri, was rather small, and had an absolutely sublime gift for the piano. In the Cochran Revue in London she had played a huge piano which seemed literally the length of the entire stage. At the keyboard was this little doll, her fingers running up and down as she played and sang “The Birth of the Blues.” That was Edythe.
Then, into our midst walked…Josephine Baker. Now that was historic: we have a black in the house. Her hair had been done by Antoine, the famous hairdresser of Paris, like a Greek boy’s—these small, flat curls against her skull—and she was wearing a white Vionnet dress, cut on the bias with four points, like a handkerchief. It had no opening, no closing—you just put it over your head and it came to you and moved with the ease and the fluidity of the body. And did Josephine move! These long black legs, these long black arms, this long black throat…and pressed into her flat black curls wer
e white silk butterflies. She had the chic of Gay Paree.
I was so thrilled to be asked. There was no living with me for days. The Night of the Three Bakers!
One night in Paris, after I was married, a friend and I went to a little theatre above Montmartre to see a German movie called L’Atlantide, with a wonderful actress in it called Brigitte Helm, who played the Queen of the Lost Continent. It was the middle of July. It was hot. The only seats in the theatre were in the third balcony, under the rafters, where it was even hotter. There were four seats in a row, and we took two.
We sat there, the movie started…and I became totally intoxicated by it. I was mesmerized! I have no idea if I actually saw the movie I thought I was seeing, but I was absorbed by these three lost Foreign Legion soldiers with their camels, their woes…they’re so tired, they’re delirious with dehydration…. And then you see the fata morgana. That means if you desire a woman, you see a woman, if you desire water, you see water—everything you dream, you see. But you never reach it. It’s all an illusion.
Then…a sign of an oasis! There’s a palm…and more palms. Then they’re in the oasis, where they see Brigitte Helm, this divine-looking woman seated on a throne—surrounded by cheetahs! The cheetahs bask in the sun. She fixes her eyes on the soldiers. One of them approaches her. She gives him a glass of champagne and he drinks it. Then she takes the glass from him, breaks it, cuts his throat with it….
And et cetera.
This goes on and on. I hadn’t moved an inch. At some point I moved my hand…to here…where it stayed for the rest of the movie. I was spellbound because the mood was so sustained. I was simply sucked in, seduced by this thing of the desert, seduced by the Queen of the Lost Continent, the wickedest woman who ever lived…and her cheetahs! The essence of movie-ism.
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