Mademoiselle
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97 youth into a desideratum: “Previous to Chanel, clothes were designed for mature women,” observed Cecil Beaton. “With Chanel’s advent, they were all designed for youth. Or … to make mature women look young.” Cecil Beaton, The Glass of Fashion (New York: Doubleday, 1954), 194.
98 a body more like Coco’s: I borrow the term “internalizing the corset” from Peter Wollen, who wrote aptly of this phenomenon: “[The Chanel look] involved adopting a new set of disciplines, internal rather than external: exercise, sports, diet.… Fitness and slimming mania simply replaced tight-lacing as forms of extreme artifice.” Peter Wollen, “Fashion, Orientalism, the Body,” New Formations, Spring 1987, 5–33.
99 “I created a brand-new”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 54.
100 “The creations of the Maison Chanel”: A.S., “Paris Lifts Ever So Little the Ban on Gaiety,” Vogue, November 15, 1916, 41.
101 at least five million civilians: See Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History (New York: Henry Holt, 1994), xv.
102 made it through the war unharmed: See Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World 1914–1991 (1994; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 25–26.
103 “soldier blue”: The color “soldier blue” first appears in an item about Chanel’s jersey coats, and their popularity on the Riviera: “Chanel … is showing jersey coats of white, mulberry, red and various shades of blue, including the new bleu soldat. They are buttoned down the middle front and they are loosely belted, quite long, and slashed to the belt on each hip.” A.S., “The Way of the Mode at Monte Carlo,” Vogue, May 1, 1915, 136.
104 awarded the “Mons Star”: Daniel Hainaut and Martine Alison, “A la Mémoire d’Arthur Edward Capel,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de Fréjus et de sa Région 9 (2008). The Battle of Mons ended with the British forces retreating, after being confronted with far stronger and more numerous German troops.
105 “He won the affection”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 64.
106 surely saw a younger version: Clemenceau had established his left-leaning bona fides early in his career, when as a delegate to the Paris Municipal Council he argued for amnesty for the Communards—the protesters in the 1871 uprising that ended with government troops massacring thousands of French citizens. Later, amid the anti-Semitic furor of the 1898 Dreyfus affair, Clemenceau once more declared his progressive politics, penning a series of articles arguing for the innocence of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. In fact, when author Emile Zola published his now-famous letter in defense of Dreyfus, it was Clemenceau—a friend of Zola’s—who provided the document’s defiant and unforgettable title: “J’accuse.”
Prior to his first term as prime minister (1906–9), Clemenceau had enjoyed a long career blending politics, literature, and journalism. He’d lived in the United States—where he’d taught college French in Connecticut (marrying an American student); he’d edited and published several newspapers and journals. A great Anglophile and fluent in English, he’d translated John Stuart Mill’s Auguste Comte and Positivism into French. He’d socialized with the cream of French artistic society (Edouard Manet figured among his intimates), been a great athlete, and—apparently—broken not a few feminine hearts. See Graham H. Stuart, “Clemenceau,” The North American Review 207, no. 750 (May 1918): 695–705; Georges LeCompte, “Clemenceau: Writer and Lover of Art,” Art and Life 1, no. 5 (November 1919): 247–52; Barnett Singer, “Clemenceau and the Jews,” Jewish Social Studies 43, no. 1 (Winter 1981): 47–58; Robert K. Hanks, “Georges Clemenceau and the English,” The Historical Journal 45, no. 1 (March 2002): 53–77.
107 liberal pacifist soon to become: See Hanks.
108 beautiful war widows: Charles-Roux, 222ff.
109 producing clothes for Spain: Charles-Roux, 258ff. See also Madsen, 81ff. Galante also cites former workers of Chanel’s recalling how she used “patriotism” to convince them to stay on during the war. Galante, 38.
110 “I heard a Parisian lady”: Quoted in Galante, 37.
111 coordinated designs, at couture prices: Ibid., 36.
112 “I had founded”: Quoted in Vilmorin, 95.
113 7,000 francs, or the equivalent: Madsen, 82.
114 “People knew me”: Quoted in Vilmorin, 87.
115 “It would seem that”: Delange, “One Piece Dress Wins Favor at French Resort,” Women’s Wear Daily, vol. 13, no. 88, 1.
116 “I had decided to replace”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 55.
117 “luxurious poverty”: Quoted in Delay, 74.
118 “her art resides in jersey”: “Chanel Is Master of Her Art.”
119 “[Having] spent so much money”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 62. French critic Lucien François later summed up the phenomenon: “When Mademoiselle Chanel gets to heaven, she will surely impose her cardigans and little jersey shifts on the Princesse de Clèves and Marie Antoinette.” Lucien François, “Chanel,” Combat, March 17, 1961.
120 she employed three hundred: Madsen, 82.
121 “You had to see her arrive”: Galante, 82.
122 “My heart contracted”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 50.
123 every penny he had advanced: Delay, 61.
124 bought outright the Villa Larralde: Madsen, 89.
125 Aunt Adrienne traveled to Vichy: Delay, 61.
126 “I thought I was buying”: Ibid.
127 the obstacles impeding women: “The door to the City of the Future … is still closed to women. For centuries, they have been considered … as inferior creatures, as beasts of burden or of pleasure. The time has come to enfranchise them. They are already doing this themselves. Since the beginning of the Christian era, women’s education has been limited to teaching them the art of pleasing men. In society … a woman unable to please a man falls into a state of dependence and inferiority. Work has proven that the inferiority of women is nothing but an illusion created by the opposite sex. Today, work has given women the right to absolute equality with men.” Arthur Edward Capel, De Quoi Demain Sera-t-il Fait? (Paris: Librairie des Médicis, 1939) 77–78.
128 mystical belief in an overarching: In this, he drew inspiration from nineteenth-century French occultist Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre and the eighteenth-century philosopher and Hebrew scholar Antoine Fabre d’Olivet. Fabre d’Olivet’s universalist theory of “synarchy” held that every element of the world existed in deep relation to everything else. Capel, De Quoi Demain, 156.
129 Reflections on Victory is astonishing: Always abreast of scientific research, Capel anticipated the future military usage of radioactivity—still incompletely understood in 1917. In his second book, Capel predicted the economic rise of China and the danger of terrorism emerging among the impoverished and undereducated populations of Islamic nations.
130 “Germany will take her revenge”: Capel, Reflections, 66.
131 “In ten years’ time”: Ibid., 51, 66.
132 “We [must] destroy”: Ibid., 116–20. Reflections on Victory draws on Enlightenment figures such as Rousseau and Voltaire, but even more on the seventeenth-century Duke of Sully (whom Capel pressed Coco to read). In his Memoirs, Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully—prime minister under France’s King Henry IV—argued for the creation of “The Very Christian Council of Europe”—a loose confederation of fifteen European nation-states, united in purpose and employing a common army. Several centuries ahead of its time, Sully’s plan for a unified Europe, which he called “the Grand Design,” prefigures not only the League of Nations, established after World War I, but even the contemporary European Union.
133 plans lacked practical details: “The book would gain in cogency if more attention were paid to the practical working out of the proposed scheme.” “List of New Books and Reprints,” Times Literary Supplement, May 10, 1917.
134 mercenary practice of dowries: Capel writes: “For the groom, the dowry plays a primary role, so that rich little runts can marry the most beautiful girls, thereby degrading the finest products of o
ur race. What becomes of love and virtue in such barters of beauty for gold? Is it not naïve to demand virtue of a young woman after you’ve exploited her ignorance in order to steal her only commodity: love? What support will she find in the vanity that was her downfall and the religion that betrayed her. The truth is, most often, discretion winds up replacing virtue.” Capel, De Quoi Demain, 77–78. There is no mention of a translator; the bilingual Capel may have written the book in French. In 1918, Capel further demonstrated his interest in the struggles of young women by donating a substantial sum to found the Theatre Girls Home Club in Paris. Offering moderately priced room and board, a supervised common area for visitors, and a strict curfew of one a.m.—the dormitory-like club was designed to help protect aspiring (frequently teenaged) actresses who came to Paris from England, often without money or family. “The Week in Paris,” The Times, October 7, 1918. One wonders whether Capel was responding to Coco’s stories of her own difficult years trying to break into theater, or whether his own mother, Berthe, had had some connection to a vulnerable “theatre girl.”
135 “Mahomet has, I believe”: Arthur Capel to Henry Hughes Wilson, October 23, 1915, Imperial War Museum, London, HHW correspondence (cited hereafter as IWM), 2/82/7, letter 18.
136 Re Wilhelmina: Arthur Capel to Henry Hughes Wilson, October 20, 1915, IWM, 2/82/7, letter 15.
137 “balanc[ing] political and military”: Arthur Capel to Henry Hughes Wilson, January 10, 1916, IWM, letter 33, and December 24, 1915, letter 30, respectively.
138 French diplomat Jules Cambon: “Winston in favour of War council,” Capel writes to Henry Hughes Wilson on December 2, 1915, IWM, letter 25.
139 “I think I know”: Arthur Capel to Henry Hughes Wilson, December 24, 1915, IWM, letter 30.
140 achieve any kind of consensus: In frustration at one point, Capel writes, “We asked for a Joint-War-Council in order to obtain—1. Unity of Direction. 2. Centralisation, which are indispensable to victory. What have we obtained? A Tower of Babel.” Arthur Capel to Henry Hughes Wilson, October 23, 1915, IWM, letter 18.
141 a Supreme War Council: For a full account of the creation of both councils, see William Philpott, “Squaring the Circle: The Higher Co-Ordination of the Entente in the Winter of 1915–16,” The English Historical Review 114, no. 458 (September 1999): 875–98. I am grateful to Professor Philpott for his guidance in researching this period and his help in accessing the archives of London’s Imperial War Museum.
142 “I am now a clerk”: Arthur Capel to Henry Hughes Wilson, February 2, 1915, IWM, 2/81/2.
143 “Dukes in a troop”: Arthur Capel to Henry Hughes Wilson, February 1, 1915, IWM, 2/81. Capel even concocts a baroque scheme that involves befriending German Socialist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, in order to use them to seed antigovernment sentiment among German troops. Arthur Capel to Henry Hughes Wilson, undated, IWM, 2/81/7, letter 8.
144 multifaceted, meteoric career: Chanel does not figure in the Capel-Wilson correspondence, save possibly for one cryptic, slightly rhyming line. Capel writes to Wilson: “On Friday, I go to live (or die) with Coconeau, this may be of use for you to know.” “Coconeau” could be a nickname for Coco, or for her home in Garches, which she nicknamed “Noix de Coco” or “coconut.” “Chanel had baptized her house Noix de Coco,” according to Henriette Bernstein. Quoted in Galante, 53. Capel might mean he is spending the weekend with Chanel. The “live or die” remark might refer to their tempestuous relationship. Arthur Capel to Henry Hughes Wilson, September 12, 1915, IWM, 2/81/15.
145 Anglo-French cultural fluency: Capel’s letters, in fact, abound with observations about British and French national characteristics—the French are “fickle,” the British “aloof.”
146 forcing herself to eat oysters: Haedrich, 61.
147 married Percy Wyndham: By a striking coincidence, Percy Wyndham was a half brother of Bendor, the Duke of Westminster, with whom Chanel would have a very long relationship.
148 all his military leaves: Galante, 47.
149 reveal his vacillating feelings: Chaney, 130.
150 “All you tell me about Capel”: Letter of June 26, 1918, in Edward, Prince of Wales, Letters from a Prince: Edward Prince of Wales to Mrs. Freda Dudley Ward, ed. Rupert Godfrey (New York: Little, Brown, 1999), 298.
151 “being married on Wednesday”: Edward George Villiers Stanley, Paris 1918: The War Diary of the British Ambassador, the 17th Earl of Derby, Edward George Villiers Stanley, ed. David Dutton (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), 119.
152 “I think I’m going to marry”: Diana Capel to Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, July 1918, Papers of Alfred Duff Cooper, Cambridge University, file DUFC 12/8. In her letter, Diana refers to Boy as “my darkie,” clearly referring to his black hair and olive skin—qualities often cited as evidence of his Jewish heritage. Haedrich refers to him as having “the ‘matte’ complexion of an Oriental.” Haedrich, 55. A colorful and multitalented character, Duff Cooper had a successful career in the British Foreign Office, served with distinction as an officer during World War I, and later became secretary of state for war. Despite all this, he was best known for sleeping with countless famous beauties (including Chanel’s friend and biographer Louise de Vilmorin), both before and during his marriage.
153 emergency bomb shelter attire: Georges Bernstein Gruber and Gilbert Maurin, Bernstein le magnifique (Paris: Editions JC Lattès, 1988), 166; Chaney, 132.
154 “nobility by association”: Wedding announcement in Le Gaulois, August 10, 1918. Reference courtesy of Martine Alison.
155 “I knew before he told me”: Delay, 66. According to some accounts, Coco had known specifically of Diana and encouraged Capel to marry her, knowing he needed an upper-class wife, and guessing that Diana could never steal him away completely. Coco’s friend Antoinette Bernstein recalled: “Chanel knew how insignificant the girl was and doubtless thought she would be able to keep a certain hold on Boy.” Quoted in Galante, 48. But it is equally likely that Chanel invented this version of the story after the fact, to save her dignity.
156 their young daughter, Suzanne: Charles-Roux, 275.
157 “pity me”: Letter quoted in Gruber and Maurin, 166.
158 had confided her worst sorrows: Ostensibly enjoying a “thermal cure,” Henry had rented a villa in Uriage, leaving Antoinette and their young daughter, Georges, behind in Deauville. They visited Uriage only occasionally during the summer. In late August 1918, Coco rented a villa adjacent to Bernstein’s, and stayed with him most of the rest of the season. The couple seems to have cared little for discretion—according to Georges Bernstein’s biography of her father, the affair was an open secret. Gruber and Maurin, 157. According to Axel Madsen, Chanel was also romantically linked to Argentine millionaire Paul Eduardo Martinez de Hoz about this time. Madsen, 94.
159 to purchase his own theater: “Chanel is the only woman who has ever given me money,” Bernstein told a friend. Quoted in Gruber and Maurin, 167.
160 great fondness for little Georges: Letters from Chanel to Antoinette Bernstein from this period and into the 1920s routinely ask affectionately after Georges.
161 correspondence continued for years thereafter: “Whatever happened, that friendship existed [and] endured,” writes Georges Bernstein in Gruber and Maurin, 166.
162 Antoinette and her mother: Speaking with Pierre Galante, Antoinette Bernstein recalled, “My mother and I often went to Deauville; that is how I met Chanel. It amused me to look at what she had in her shop. Then in Paris I went to see her. In the beginning our relations were purely professional and commercial. It is only after the war that we became fond of each other.” Quoted in Galante, 31.
163 the day she married Henry: Gruber and Maurin, 157.
164 seeding mistrust between couples: Henry Bernstein, Le Secret: Une Pièce en Trois Actes (1913, repr. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1917); accessed at http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015033159727;
seq=13;view=1up;num=5.
165 “equally emaciated”: Gruber and Maurin, 166.
166 Even Diana Capel wore Chanel: Marcel Haedrich mentions that Coco knew Diana and had dressed her, even after Diana married Capel. Haedrich, 72. Lisa Chaney points out that Diana Capel was seen after her marriage wearing a pair of chic gold trousers, which were most likely designed by Chanel. “Arthur saw nothing unusual in buying clothes for Diana from Gabrielle’s salon in Biarritz, but once married, Diana began to object. Arthur overruled her. Why should she not be dressed by the most exciting designer in Paris? The long-standing tradition in Diana’s family has it that she disliked Gabrielle.” Chaney, 142–43.
167 retreating to her native England: Chaney, 143. It is possible that Diana Capel resumed her affair with her former beau Duff Cooper at this time, although this has been disputed by Lisa Chaney. Chaney, 412n17. “Lady Diana Cooper … was sure [her husband, Duff] was seeking out that annoying Diana Capel, the woman whose husband was rumored to be having an affair with clothes designer Coco Chanel, leaving her free to spend time with her husband.” Juliet Nicolson, The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age (New York: Grove Books, 2010), 148.
168 Diana had suffered the loss: See Charles-Roux, 282–83.
169 Boy spent hardly any time: Chaney, 144.
170 “1919, the year I woke up”: Quoted in Haedrich, 67.
171 imitation of a dutiful brother-in-law: Chaney, 143.
172 later reunite with Diana: In her late thirties, Bertha Capel had married Herman Stern, the 2nd Baron Michelham—a teenaged boy half her age who, despite his family’s wealth, was considered unmarriageable by virtue of his being either mentally challenged or gay; both explanations have been offered. When the boy’s father, Lord Herbert Michelham, became gravely ill, his much younger wife, Lady Aimée Michelham, learned that he had altered his will, reducing her share of his fortune. Wishing to retain control of her husband’s money after his death, Lady Michelham had her dear friend (and possible lover) Boy Capel help coerce her sick husband into changing his will once more, with terms far more favorable to his conniving wife. In exchange for this assistance, Boy received a “gift” for his sister Bertha. She would marry Lady Michelham’s young son Herman, thereby obtaining a noble title and a handsome lifetime income. Bertha Capel became Lady Michelham and was set for life. The only conditions were that she never cause a scandal and never bear a child. She agreed. This story has been told in fragments in multiple places, but I thank Martine Alison for consolidating and clarifying it all in her unpublished article, “Bertha Capel, Soeur d’A. E. Capel,” 2008.