Diana’s lessons with Louis Chalif in 1918 set her on the road to recovery after much misery, but her mother’s love of dancing and her decision to enroll Diana with Chalif also marked the beginning of many long-standing passions: for rhythm and music; for ballet and ballet dancers; for leotards and ballet pumps; and for designs that worked with the natural body, rather than clothes that corseted and constrained it. Chalif’s classes started Diana’s preoccupation with posture, health, and fitness in a way that was years ahead of its time. Decades later, her delight in the attractiveness of the invigorated, well-stretched body and long, long limbs would resurface repeatedly on her fashion pages and in her photo-autobiography, Allure. But in 1918 the real importance of Chalif’s classes lay elsewhere. “When I discovered dancing,” said Diana, “I learned to dream.”
Although life improved after she left Brearley in 1917, Diana remained vulnerable to Emily’s insensitivity, narcissism, and petty cruelties, and was often made very depressed by her. It is clear from her diary in January 1918 that her relationship with her mother was still dreadful. “Mother and I agree on practically nothing . . . I can’t do anything but think & think about it.” Her unhappiness was palpable. “I cried this morning. I feel like crying now. I don’t know what to do. It really isn’t fair toward mother. If only I knew what to do. I do nothing but argue & contradict mother & it must stop. It’s awful but I can’t help it.” Not being able to talk to Emily made the problem far worse. “It’s one of the big problems of my life today. I can’t tell mother. I would not know what to tell her. If I went to her & told her that I was unhappy she’d never understand & say I was an ungratefull [sic] little wretch.” She kept many things from her mother, she wrote, and it was all the more painful because Emily insisted that she and her eldest daughter were chums. Diana regarded this as pure hypocrisy. “Mother always says we are good friends. We are not. It seems to me we never were & if we ever will be I don’t know.”
However, the diary also reveals that Diana was learning to save herself from emotional evisceration by escaping to a world of her own. Boris Cyrulnik, a leading French expert on resilience in childhood, observes that sensitive, imaginative children often survive bad childhoods better than the tough and unimaginative young, precisely because of their aptitude for escaping from bleak reality by transporting themselves over and over again to a fantasy parallel universe. “Freud thought that a happy man did not need to dream and that reality was enough to keep him satisfied,” writes Cyrulnik, “[but] only children who can dream can save themselves.”
By any standard Diana was an exceptionally imaginative child. At fourteen she felt this intuitively and tried to explore how it set her apart from other people. “I have always had a wonderful imagination. I have thought of things that never could be found,” she wrote.
For instance I play the Polonaise. I feel the anger, the strife and pride myself with jealousy of a race of people that live in a cold barren country. It bring(s) before me the magnificence & glory of a great expanse of territory occupied only by peasants. A Spanish tango and any other Spanish music brings me strait [sic] to sunny warm Spain full of people in brilliant costumes . . . the music is full of coquetry as the girl that dances to it is flirting with a group of admirers.
Diana needed only to focus inwardly for a moment to visualize a scene in which she hovered at the center, remarking years later to Chrisopher Hemphill: “I keep constructing tableaux in my mind. Usually, they’re of these memories—if that’s what you can call them. Usually, they’re of conversation. And usually, they’re of something somebody said at dinner.” She was already doing this at fourteen, though in 1918 inspiration naturally came from the world around her rather than dinner parties. To take just one example, she flirted with the idea of becoming a Roman Catholic, like one of her friends at Mrs. McIver’s, before deciding she was not sufficiently devout. Instead she settled for an image of herself saying her prayers before an ivory crucifix, a victory of style over substance for which she would later be much criticized: “There is something so wonderfull [sic] about a girl just a girl in a fresh white nightdress kneeling before a pure white crucifix in the candle light—I shall really be like that I want to be heavenly.”
Looking back, Diana thought she was also saved by a strength of character that her fragile mother lacked. “I was much stronger—with a stronger will and a stronger character—but I didn’t realize it then.” She was a determined fourteen-year-old, and she was determined to become great. Keeping a diary was, in fact, part of the greatness plan. “All great people kept diaries so I think I will keep mine very seriously henceforth,” she wrote on January 10, 1918. Though she dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer, another potent daydream was, quite simply, showing everyone that they were wrong about her. If she could not be a dancer, she would be an actress or an interior decorator. But it was agony to think how long she would have to wait, and her diary was filled with daydreams of escape. As Diana said later, “Some children have people they want to be. I wanted to be anywhere else.” In 1918, however, she was in no doubt that marriage was the most realistic evacuation route, and she weighed her options. A creative sort was one possibility: “I want sometimes an artist, wild and fantastic, that will fall in love with my small white feet etc oh but very, very, wild and horribly good looking.” But a Wall Street chap was indubitably more sensible: “Then the next day I want a man with money, moustache, good looks . . . of course the latter variety is more practical but still I want a wild romance—wild, oh si, si wild—an Italian painter who will want to model me in marbl [sic] and paint me as the Bohemians did with a tambourine and a dagger.”
It was not all fantasy, however. Emily had impressed on Diana that she would need to be self-supporting when she was older. It is unclear whether in saying this Emily was worried about Diana’s chances of finding a husband because of her looks or her lack of private income, or was simply trying to make her do her homework. Whatever the reason, Diana took Emily’s injunction very seriously and worried about money for the rest of her life. Her first recorded attempt to do something about her financial situation—and to earn cash from a woman’s magazine—appeared on January 23, 1918. She had written to the Woman’s Home Companion “pin-money club” which offered readers the chance to earn a few dollars through the magazine. However, Diana then discovered that she would be required to sell subscriptions, which she did not think would be “quite correct.” On the other hand, at fourteen she also unknowingly rehearsed being editor in chief of a fashion magazine in the most intriguing way, not just by endlessly constructing tableaux in her mind but by spending hours cutting out images from magazines and catalogs and rearranging them. “I am making a divine collection of pictures from the penny picture catalogue. . . . I spend hours a day but very interesting hours picking out and choosing and disciding [sic].”
It is clear from her diary at this time that Diana was gifted not just with a prodigious inner eye but a way of looking intently at the world beyond her family that was already becoming second nature. She frequently talked to herself about the houses she visited: “Mrs. McKeever has lots of taste & the whole apartment is sort of dark and rich in coloring.” Ama, on the other hand, had no taste at all. “The house is terrible, it is so ugly. Ama knows a beautiful thing when she sees it but she can not create a beautiful thing.” In her diary she transposed these observations into plans for her grown-up bedroom on the happy day when she was finally in control of her own destiny: “I would love a bedroom in French gray and turquoise blue & then a boudoir opening off it. I would line it in a dull grey [sic] and dull grey blue. I’d like to have painted furniture & bowls of fruit and flowers. Also transparent plum colored glass and dried rose petals. Also incense.”
Those who knew and admired Diana later were often astounded by the way she was never on vacation from her eye. “She was perpetually scanning, monitoring, reaching for some idea, sensation, or tangible item—a fingernail, a color, an eyesocket,
a squashed banana, a jewel—that would, in her words, ‘thrill me to madness,’ ” wrote Jonathan Lieberson in the 1960s. One friend later described her love of a beautiful object (which frequently opened the eyes of others to its beauty) as “almost fetishistic.” Not everyone who scans the world with such sustained concentration necessarily enjoys it; but from childhood Diana was undoubtedly made happier by looking, an act on which her misery bestowed a fierce intensity. In the manner of many unhappy children Diana learned early the trick, which stayed with her for life, of making herself less miserable by gazing at beautiful things to the point of euphoria. “Some times I feel as if I did not want anything but a wonderfull [sic] picture to look at,” she wrote in her diary. At the same time she started to deploy her great imaginative gifts to construct a carapace, a protective sleeve—beginning with the Girl.
The girl first appeared in Diana’s diary in early January 1918. On January 12 she wrote: “You know for years I am and always have been looking out for girls to idolize because they are things to look up to because they are perfect. Never have I discovered that girl or that woman. I shall be that girl.” Denied a female role model, Diana elected to craft her own. She proceeded to list some of the ways she was going to set about it: “Never to be rude to mother sister or anybody. To improve my writing . . . I shall always try terribly hard in everything I do. I shall do things all the time (like make things etc). Never be idle! And so on. There are loads and loads of others.” In further diary entries the goal of achieving perfection crystallized around three aims. First, she had to battle her natural disadvantages and transform the way she looked: “I have descoved [sic] I don’t look pleasant & and if I want to look as well as I do want to I must look pleasant and be sweet and look charming and be ‘the girl.’ ” Second, she would improve her manner and the way she spoke: “I have decided that my vocabulary is very small & poor so I am going to try and broaden it.” Third, she would work very hard, although such resolutions were generally subordinate to becoming more attractive: “I shall please everyone in my appearance & my manner and shall work my hardest in everything I do.”
In June 1918, when she took her diary up again after a pause, Diana (who was still only fourteen) had an even clearer idea about who she wanted the Girl to be. Smoking, which was just becoming fashionable for stylish young women, was crucial to the effect. “Have smoked a cigarette & adored them. My ambition is to be a dancer or actress have wonderfull clothes and no clothes that aren’t wonderfull, smoke and drink cocktails. Not drink hard of course just for the chic of the thing. Yes, those cigarettes were great, marvellous.” She appreciated that this would require a painstaking approach: “I want to look after detail and I simply must be perfect.” It should be noted that learning French was part of the master plan, another clue that Diana was not a Francophone in 1914 as she later claimed. “I must learn French and be able to speak fluently. I must be able to dance and be a belle everywhere I go.”
Diana dreamed of winning the same kind of admiration and intense attention that flowed toward her beautiful sister, Alexandra, whenever she entered a room: “I am going to be able to sing at liberty the song sister sings—‘they are wild, simply wild over me.’ ” But rather than compete on Alexandra’s territory, she decided to create an alternative, original identity, a different ego-ideal, so that “they” would be “wild, simply wild,” about her stylish appearance, her command of French, her chic smoking technique, and her extensive vocabulary. The young Diana firmly believed she could dream such admiration into existence: “I dreamt of many men coming to me & asking me to take drives with them in their cars. In other words it means that I was popular. I have heard it said that dreams do not come true but I will make this one come true!” The campaign would be directed at both sexes. “I shall make myself the most popular girl among boys and girls,” she wrote on January 20. “I’m going to make myself the most popular girl in the world. I know I can succeed. If I don’t . . . it will be betrayal of my own self.”
Triumph over youthful adversity has been described as a process, a successful reknitting together of a sense of oneself in stages. Applying herself assiduously to the secret business of becoming the Girl at Mrs. McIver’s school turned out to be just as good for Diana’s self-esteem as doing well in Mr. Chalif’s classes: “Sister’s music teacher told me that one of the little girls in school said I was wonderful I’m going to try and make that impression on everyone. My skirt has been lengthened & my hair is held back with a comb and I feel new and fresh.” Her self-conscious attempts to develop her vocabulary and the way she spoke contributed to her success. Her classmates at Mrs. McIver’s thought she was entertaining. A new friend, Emily Billings, found Diana particularly funny. “Emily said I talked very well and am very amusing. I’m awfully glad because I love people to talk in an amusing way.” It all led to the most gratifying success. By late January she felt able to write: “You know I’m vastly popular everybody wanted to walk near me & be with them. . . . Well that’s just what I’m driving at. Popularity.” By June 1918 it was even better. The plan was working. Her efforts had made her more sought-after. “Lots of things have happened since I last wrote in this book—I have become much more popular with everyone. Emily Billings & I are best friends forever, and all the girls at school the latter part of April and May were awfully nice to me—I’m going to make myself the most popular girl in the world. I know I can succeed.”
By June 1918, Diana had her pick of friends, a heady experience after Brearley. Elizabeth Kaufman had asked her to stay; Anne had told Diana she was her best friend, a boost to the morale because Anne was sarcastic and fascinating; her friendship with Emily Billings soared as they exchanged weekly letters filled with mad plans for getting away from their parents and setting up home. “E Billings and I are going to get up a ballet and next winter we are going to have a studio somewhere and I’m going to dance and she is going to draw.” Diana made the important discovery that friendship was a powerful cure for misery caused by one’s mother. Boys appeared in her diary too. Like Emily, she was allowed to mix with the opposite sex, without chaperones. Hollis Hunnewell, for example, had nice manners until they were left alone. At that point “he lost them all & we had wonderful time using slang and discussing women’s rights.” (Hollis was against women having rights, while she was in favor, a rare instance of Diana arguing the feminist case.) By June, Chanler Chapman was writing her letters, and following her around on his bicycle asking her to marry him.
“I fought for a long time to be like other people,” Diana said later. However, it is clear from her diary that she had already decided to stop being like other people in 1918. Once tentative attempts to change the way the world saw her proved unexpectedly successful, she made up her mind to go one step further. She would finally fulfill the expectations that came with the name her mother had given her, and she would do it alone, for only she had the power to make her life as she wanted it to be.
At this point Diana wobbled back toward the idea of finding a great person on whom to model herself: “then by that I can become great.” She was reading a life of George Sand, and there was much she could learn from the life of Sand, she felt, since they were so alike. She would become an artist like her latest idol. “I want art, pure art,” wrote Diana. “I shall be as I what [sic] to be and no other. I am Diana Dalziel I am going to treat myself as a goddess, with respect and I am only for art and for the arts.” Reading about Sand left her in no doubt that becoming a goddess not only meant being different and original, but having the courage and determination to see it through: “Diana was a goddess and I must live up to that name, Dalziel = I dare, therefore I dare, I dare change today & make myself exactly how I want to be. I dare do anything on this earth where there is a will there is a way.”
It would be a mistake to read a sexual undertone into Diana’s admiration for the cross-dressing, cigar-smoking George Sand, even if she did express warm feelings in her diary for her new frien
d Emily Billings. Any such undertow remained subterranean, sublimated in intense female friendships. Diana thought she might be in love with Chanler Chapman, she admired Sand for having many male lovers, and there is plenty of evidence of her interest in the opposite sex. The Girl was the goddess Diana wanted to be, rather than someone she longed to possess; and in 1918 she was an interesting and composite creature. She was bohemian and dedicated to the arts. She liked society and parties. She had many lovers, and flamboyant, daring style. She was in many ways remarkably like Emily and it is not hard to see that at one level Diana wanted to be like her mother and win her approval. As far as Diana herself was concerned, however, the Girl/Goddess was also like no one else at all. She was an idealized girl of her own creation, with whom Diana intended to snuff out the unlovable imperfect version of herself. She was her own hidden source of power.
In summoning an idealized version of herself into being, Diana absorbed several ideas floating in the American ether in 1918. The fashion for the first great U.S. female prototype, the Gibson girl, had passed, but the idea of the perfect woman was surfacing again with the sirens of early Hollywood whose eyes, hair, makeup, and dress (or lack of it) could be scrutinized in close-up for the first time. Diana paid rapt attention to the new screen goddesses. In January 1918 it was the refined beauty of Elsie Ferguson in The Rose of the World that made the strongest impression. “It was the most tragic & harrowing thing I ever saw,” she sighed to her diary. “There was only one moment of brightness in it and that was ruined by something happening.” Though the book that popularized the idea of the American dream would not appear until 1931 (James Truslow Adams’s The Epic of America), there were elements of this, too, in Diana’s faith in the power of possibility, and in the connection she made between wish fulfillment and hard work; and there was more than a dash of New England puritanism in her determination to drive herself on through effort and meticulous attention to detail.
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