D.V.

by Diana Vreeland

  “Madame, I tell you—she wore nothing when she was massaged by me!”

  I had these conversations with Joseph all the time.

  But these are things you can’t say. You can’t say “My masseur told me this.” And then again, why can’t you?

  I can tell you what it was to be presented at court—that was something. It took hours and hours—before you even got there. So you took food and you took a flask. And you sat forever, because all the cars were held up in the Mall, with all of London looking in at you and saying “’Ere’s to you, dearie!” and “Cheerio, duckie!” and all that divine Cockney stuff.

  Then…you got there, and it was the most wonderful thing, I suppose, that there could be in the world to see. The ceremony is held in a huge square room, the throne room—I’ve always thought a square room is the most beautiful—and at the far end was a platform. On one side of the platform were the Scots in their tartans, their laces, their velvets, their daggers, their sporrans…you know, they’re worn to keep the kilts down—otherwise they’d fly in the wind. They do fly in the wind, by the way. I can tell you. My sister and I had quite an upbringing in Scotland. When gentlemen bent over to stoke the peat fire…there wasn’t much we didn’t know about.

  In any case, here were the Scots in all their regalia…and here were the two royals, King George V and Queen Mary, who were, I suppose, the most royal people in memory—nothing against the present Queen, but there was something about those two that was total, because they were Emperor and Empress of India, and the sun never set on English soil. And there, on the other side of the platform, were the Indians in all their regalia, with their sapphires, their pearls—their wealth in pearls was incredible—their emeralds, and their rubies. Brocades, tunics, pantaloons—though perhaps that’s too Turkish a descriptive. In any case, it was luxury in depth.

  Just beside the two thrones was a boy who must have been seventeen years old. I’d never seen him before. He was exactly the color of a gardenia. A gardenia isn’t quite white. It’s got a little cream in it. You can’t say a white person has gardenia skin. But he did. And his eyes were black. He was dressed in an eighteenth-century coat of white brocade with pale blue, pink, green, and yellow flowers—to the knees—and tight white satin trousers. His head, which was bound in a turban, was absolutely beautiful and very wide for its smallness—it was a little face. This was the first time I ever saw Aly Khan.

  But I only bring this up to tell you about a person who was standing even nearer to Their Majesties on the dais.

  One night, a few years before this, Leo d’Erlanger had asked Reed and me to dine in what in those days was known as a “club.” Not a true men’s club like White’s or Boodle’s. These “clubs” were practically brothels—not that that’s what they were used for, but they were like brothels in that there was no visible exit or entrance. It was the kind of place where J. P. Morgan could dine luxuriously in total privacy. You’d go in a side door, and they were…discreet. Leo was dining with someone he wanted to do business with, and he asked us to come as a favor.

  The man’s name was Nubar Gulbenkian. He was the son of the financier who made a billion dollars or so in oil—Calouste Gulbenkian—Mr. Five Percent. Now I knew that his father had the greatest collection of Chinese art in the world and that, having collected the Orient, he was starting in on these fantastic European pictures the world now knows—like the Rubens of the woman with the black servant holding an umbrella over her head, and et cetera. Naturally, I was spellbound.

  I can’t say the son was very impressive, though there was nothing wrong with him. But for some reason he took quite a fancy to me. And from that time on, when he’d see me across every nightclub and across every lobby during every entr’acte at the opening of every play all over London, he made quite a stir about it.

  “Ah! Diana!” he’d shout across the room, tearing up a napkin.

  “Really, Diana,” my English friends would say in lowered voices, “the people that you pick up!”

  “I didn’t pick him up,” I’d say. “I was introduced.”

  That was as far as he and I went. In later years he became very chic—he always had a green orchid in his buttonhole—but by this time he was well out of my life. It had been just a few small moments in theatres, in nightclubs…all the cheap stuff.

  Let’s get back to court. I’ve just made my curtsy to King George and Queen Mary. Now I happen to love curtsying. I was brought up British, don’t forget. And also I like to extend my extremities. I was halfway down in the curtsy department, and then, of course, you have to get yourself up. If you live in London, you don’t just make this little bob—you go all the way down and then all the way up. I was just coming up when suddenly my eye was stretched as I looked at one of the great royal jewels in the world. One would never forget it once one’s seen it. It has a very extraordinary cut: it’s almost mirror cut, that is to say flat, like a baguette. Of course, the great value in a diamond is its thickness. Well, I’m talking about something that was built like an egg and cut flat with the light, very sharp, just pouring out. I stared at it. I didn’t think I could finish my curtsy.

  Then I took in who was wearing it. He was wearing a huge black turban, a marvelous black djellaba…it was my friend Nubar Gulbenkian. I couldn’t have been more surprised—this man who had shouted at me and “shamed” me in all those theatre lobbies standing there beside the throne. I don’t know what startled me more—the man being where he was or the astonishing jewel he wore. Why he was wearing it I did not know.

  Then, a lord-in-waiting who was a great friend of Adele Astaire Cavendish’s—a charming chap, all turned out for court in knee britches—came up to me and said, “Adele told me you were being presented tonight. May I take you into the diplomatic buffet, where the lords- and ladies-in-waiting will be having their supper?”

  I was enchantée, naturally.

  So we went in. There was a light entertainment and these beautiful little sandwiches and the bouillon…I’ll never forget it. And then, by God, this man Gulbenkian, who had demeaned me in every theatre lobby, in every nightclub, who had shouted across all those restaurants, walked right by me in front of all my swell friends and cut me dead…as if he’d never seen me before in his life—never! He passed me by like so much white trash.

  Of course, this man was in so big with the court because he was the biggest and the mostest. He had oil and everything that the empire was doing business with, and that was why he was given this fantastic position on the dais at court. That probably accounts for the jewel, too!

  “Listen,” I said to my English friends afterward, “you just don’t know what your empire has to go through. King George and Queen Mary do. No flies on them! They know what’s what! This is what makes the sun never set!”

  As you can tell, I think of royalty as being a bit of all right.

  Sorry to keep going on about Queen Mary, but I was crazy about her. I used to see her about three times a week in London because she loved these shops where I went. The old gent who owned one of the shops said, “There is a difference between you and Her Majesty the Queen, madam, if you don’t mind my saying it. The difference is when you like something, you ask to buy it; but, you know, when Her Majesty comes in here, we lock up the best, because she expects everything for nothing.” It was really hit and run with her; she just grabbed.

  One day during my London years, I was buying something—I think china—in Goode’s on South Audley Street. Goode’s is the best-run shop in the world. At one point a salesman said, “Excuse me, madam, but Her Majesty is coming through. Perhaps you might step back for just a minute.”

  We were in a room of very cheap vases—glass vases. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in Goode’s, but it’s made up of small rooms, so that you get lots of wall space for the stuff that they’ve got for sale. And so I stepped back.

  She looked so queenly. This day she was in blue. Everything matched—including the pale blue fox to go with the pale blue
tailleur and the pale blue kid laced boots. And the pale blue toque. I stepped back. And, my God! something on my coat or my sleeve—I had a big fur-lined tweed coat on—hit a glass vase, and each piece of glass on either side hit another piece of glass, and all this glass came shattering down. I was like a sort of crucifixion figure against the wall in the middle. It was…too…horrible! The Queen went by and looked at me as if to say, “Well, we are busy these days!” Yes, she went straight by without a comment, but she gave me very much of a smile. She probably thought I was a wonderful housekeeper, very busy with my little home.

  She always wore matching clothes. The toque. You know the Queen Mary toque. Then the fox. Then the tailleur. Then the boots. All the same color: pale blue, pale lavender, sometimes cream color, sometimes white, pale green, pale rose. She only had one getup in each of those different colors.

  So I said to my father, “Guess who I saw this afternoon—Queen Mary!” And I described her.

  Father said, “Never could stand the Tecks! Bum lot!” Dismissed the whole family, who are German, you know, and went on to the next subject.

  I thought she was wonderful. Simply wonderful! Had such a carriage. She must have been so tired—all those bazaars, you know, garden parties, and so forth. But I don’t think it’s so boring. You have everything you want; no one gets in your way; you get everything done, which is great; and you only do what you can, and you do a lot, and you demand a lot to do. I’d like to have been Elizabeth the First. She was wonderful. She surrounded herself with poets and writers, lived at Hampton Court, and drove that little team of spotted ponies with long tails. Their manes and tails were dyed the same color as her hair—you know royalty—red! She ruled little England and dreamt of empire! She’s at the top of my list. I loved the clothes. It took her four hours to dress—we had a lot in common! No, I wouldn’t mind being a public servant: well paid, well housed, beautifully treated. No, not at all. Suit me down to the ground.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Did I tell you about the Duke of Windsor’s bathroom at the Moulins? After lunch, the Duchess said to me, “Come upstairs. I want to show you something.”

  So there was the Duke’s bathroom, not very big, say from there to here…but ample. The tub was covered over with a wooden board which he’d obviously had one of the men on the property make—a kind of table. It was piled with papers, papers…pa-pers, PAPERS! Bills, little things to do with golf. The Duchess said, “Isn’t this terrible? Look at this heap!” Well, of course, she was right—nothing but a mass of papers. It’s very English. What was so odd was that this mess was in the house of the best housekeeper in the world, where naturally everything, between dozens of housemaids, was perpetually organized every day. You might expect all sorts of things in such a house—but not that table! So we were roaring with laughter. The Duchess said, “What can I do? Look at this thing.”

  Suddenly the Duke appeared: “What are you two doing in here?! May I ask you two ladies to get the hell out! This happens to be my bathroom, and that happens to be my table.”

  So he kicked us both out of the bathroom. We hadn’t touched a thing. We just gazed in horror. Yes, there was a shower right there in the bathroom, but it wasn’t in the tub. Oh, I’m sure he used the shower. There was a glass door on it so the water wouldn’t splash out on his papers. Oh, I’m sure he took showers. There was nothing unwashed about the Duke. My God! We know about the English, but I do think that he had his two a day.

  I first met the Duke at the polo matches on Long Island when the Argentines were here in the twenties—the golden Prince of Wales, heir to the throne. “Did I do the right thing?” After he abdicated, the Duke must have asked himself that question every day of his life. It tormented the Duchess, too. One day I arrived in Paris. The Duchess called me on the telephone and said, “Oh, Diana, I know you’ve just arrived, but come out here and have dinner with me. I’m all alone.” This was after the Duke had died. I went out to the house in Neuilly. The Duchess looked too beautiful, standing in the garden, dressed in a turquoise djellaba embroidered in black pearls and white pearls—marvelous—and wearing all her sapphires. She was so affectionate, a loving sort of friend—very rare, you know. Women are rarely that sort of friend to each other. Men are much more fond of each other. At least, that’s what I think.

  So we were talking after dinner, the two of us. And then suddenly she took hold of my wrist, gazed off into the distance, and said: “Diana, I keep telling him he must not abdicate. He must not abdicate. No, no, no! No, no, no, I say!” Then, suddenly, after this little mental journey back more than thirty-five years, her mind snapped back to the present; she looked back at me, and we went on talking as we had been before.

  I first met her when I was running a little lingerie business near Berkeley Square. It was my first job. It was in a mews where a friend of mine kept his cars. Above the cars there was nothing doing, and that’s where I started the shop and supervised all the work. I was always in Paris finding fabrics, finding designs…. We had some women who sewed in the shop, but the most beautiful work was done in a Spanish convent in London, and that’s where I spent my time. There was a brief period in my life when I spent all my time in convents. I was never not on my way to see the mother superior for the afternoon. “I want it rolled!” I’d say. “I don’t want it hemmed, I want it r-r-r-rolled!”

  Ah! You don’t know the fabrics we had! You don’t know the luxe, you don’t know the beauty…. I mean, someone like my friend Mona Williams would come in and spend five thousand dollars—this is on bedsheets—which, of course, was an enormous sum. She collected them. Laid them away in linen closets and chests. She treated them like the most beautiful French dresses. And then the nightgowns…

  One day Wallis Simpson came into the shop. I didn’t really know her then. I’d met her at a party at the embassy when we first arrived in London. She wasn’t very well dressed then. She wasn’t in what you’d call the smart set—at all. We didn’t become great friends then. But one day she invited me to lunch and I went. And I’ve never eaten a meal like I had that day for lunch. All the people at the table that day said that they’d never had such a lunch. She gave other luncheons like this, always with the most remarkable food, and that’s what really established her as a hostess in London, which she was by the time she walked into my shop.

  She knew exactly what she wanted. She ordered three nightgowns, and this is what they were: First, there was one in white satin copied from Vionnet, all on the bias, that you just pulled down over your head. Then there was one I’d bought the original of in Paris from a marvelous Russian woman. All the great lingères, the workers of lingerie, were Russian, because they were the only people who really knew luxury when luxury was in fashion. The whole neck of this nightgown was made of petals, which was too extraordinary, because they were put in on the bias, and when you moved they rippled. Then the third nightgown was a wonderful crêpe de chine. Two were pale blue, another in white—three pieces in all.

  By this time she had left her husband, Ernest Simpson. She was on her own then. She didn’t have anyone to support her, so this was a big splurge for her. The nightgowns were for a very special weekend. The Prince of Wales had discovered Wallis Simpson.

  She gave our shop three weeks to do the job. “This is the date!” she said. “This is the deadline!” So then a week went by and she called again: “How are those nightgowns getting on?” Then, in the third week, she called every day.

  She was on her way to her first weekend alone at Fort Belvedere with her Prince.

  Then…suddenly, she had the most beautiful clothes in London and the most divine house in Great Cumberland Terrace, filled with white lilacs and burning perfume and the whole bit.

  The other evening I dined with my oldest friend, Edwina d’Erlanger—just the two of us. After dinner we started talking about our life in London together during the thirties. “Oh, Edwina,” I said, “didn’t we love our Golden Prince of Wales!”

  He was the Golden
Prince. To say that now, after all these years…it sounds a little mawkish. But you must understand that to be a woman of my generation in London—any woman—was to be in love with the Prince of Wales.

  That evening I told Edwina a story I’d told no one but Reed. The year must have been 1930, because I remember Reed was away in New York on business that year and I was home alone in London. One night a friend was going to take me to dinner and to a movie at a divine movie house on Curzon Street where you called up to reserve tickets and where everybody knew everybody—it was rather chic to go, but it was important to be on time. My friend was to pick me up at precisely eight o’clock.

  Eight o’clock arrived. Then eight-fifteen. I was standing in front of the fire downstairs, wondering. I couldn’t believe it, because my friend was always extremely prompt, as all Englishmen were in those days. Eight-thirty arrived, and I told Coglin, the butler, that I’d have my dinner on a tray. Coglin, who was an extraordinary man—he had a marvelous correctness about him—suggested that I wait another fifteen minutes.

  At ten minutes to nine, in walked a man who hadn’t shaved since morning, whose tie was askew, whose collar was rumpled. You simply didn’t see men like that at ten to nine in the evening in London. I’m not saying that he’d be in white tie, but he’d be clean as a whistle—and on time.

  “Diana,” he said, “I have just lived through the most terrible day of my life. At nine o’clock this morning I was called to Buckingham Palace to meet the King and the Prince of Wales. I sat in the room with them, lunch was served, a bottle of wine was passed…we made conversation—stiffly. Then…”

  The man who was telling me all this is dead now. He was a charming, handsome man, named Fruity Metcalfe. He was the Prince of Wales’s aide-de-camp; he was a polo player the Prince had picked up in India; he married Lord Curzon’s youngest daughter, you know, Baba, Lady Alexander. He didn’t do very much in life. I once asked him, “Fruity, what do you do in the morning?”