Priscilla

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  Priscilla’s request for money to buy a wedding dress brought her father down to earth and up against his own shortcomings. On 31 October, SPB wrote: ‘I saw Priscilla today for longer than I have for years. It is queer for a father to see his twenty-two-year old daughter only in taxis and a few minutes at a time. She is happy about her forthcoming marriage – and curiously sympathetic about my own great unhappiness in being deprived of her when she was small. It is even more curious how detached I have become. It seems strange to me that I should ever have been so unhappy as I undoubtedly was, and I should never have told her. She found out and wept, so she says, on finding out in These I Have Loved. Apparently both she and Vivien were taught, deliberately taught, to hate me.’ But he enjoyed seeing her. ‘So long as she is happy, I don’t mind. She’s had a poor deal all through life.’

  On 16 November, ‘a memorable day’, SPB escorted his daughter to the station where Robert had first noticed her. ‘At tea I met Priscilla, and Priscilla and I sitting outside the Ladies lavatory at Victoria station had a heart-to-heart talk about her failure as a daughter. I gave her £60 as a wedding present [approximately £3,200 in today’s money] and felt mean. It is I who have failed as a father. We were getting nearer than we have ever been when the train was due to go. Robert apparently knows about her abortion and about my separation from Doris.’

  Why SPB did not then attend Priscilla’s wedding in Paris is a mystery. Perhaps he could not stomach the prospect of seeing Doris, whose legal case against him still smarted. Perhaps Winnie put her foot down. Or maybe he was too involved in his work. In January he wrote to his producer: ‘My own daughter was married on the 16th Dec, but from that day to this I have had my nose well down into my children’s thriller and written to no one about anything.’ It may have been more important for him to finish his Buchanesque novel than to witness Priscilla’s marriage.

  But he followed the news of it. ‘The Times which refused to print the announcement of Imogen’s birth two years ago now prints my other daughter’s engagement top of its list.’ He glued the Daily Telegraph’s report into his journal. ‘I console myself with this sort of press cutting. The world may be in a very dangerous state, but it is still ridiculous.’

  FAMOUS BROADCASTER’S DAUGHTER TO MARRY.

  Among the most interesting of the marriage announcements this week is that of Priscilla Rosemary Mais eldest daughter of Mr and Mrs SPB Mais, who has become engaged to Vicomte Robert Doynel de la Sausserie, Chateau de Boisgrymont, St Eny.

  Miss Mais has spent most of her life in France, where she went to school, so that when she goes to her new home in Normandy, she will find nothing unfamiliar in the life which differs in so many essentials from that of England. Neither she nor her youngest sister who has just left school share their father’s gift for writing: Miss Mais said to me the other day that they felt that one in the family was quite enough!

  Priscilla’s fiancé had not been sufficiently alarmed to cancel his annual trip to Hungary. With no input from the Maises, Robert, back from shooting what Priscilla thought was ‘pheasant or something’, took charge of the marriage preparations. He organised the wedding according to Doynel traditions – Priscilla to wear white; and a family procession behind the couple as they left the church.

  In Paris, there was snow on the ground. On 14 December, Gillian wrote to her mother: ‘Tomorrow I am being “witness” to Priscilla and Robert’s civil marriage at the Mairie du 16. Then we are going to have lunch to celebrate. We will be four, as only Robert’s brother Guy is coming to be his witness. And on Friday is the wedding at the Church! It’s a scream. Dad will be in the ‘cortège’ . . . !! It will be so funny to see him walk up behind Priscilla leading a member of Robert’s family! . . . Doris and Vivien and the grandmother and the uncle are coming for the wedding.’

  With her mother and sister away in New York, Gillian invited Doris, Mrs Snow and Vivien to stay in Rue de Clichy, the cold fifth-floor apartment with no lift where the Hammonds had moved in October. Priscilla slept the night before her wedding in Gillian’s room. Doris, who had been nicer to Priscilla since her engagement, brought them breakfast. Photographers were arriving at 10.30 a.m.

  Among SPB’s papers is a black and white portrait taken on that morning. ‘Pris sent a photo of herself laughing in her wedding dress which made her look about 15!’ Priscilla, jubilant, stands on the carpet in the Hammonds’ drawing room clasping a bouquet of white flowers, a long veil draped over her shoulder-length hair.

  The wedding was at noon, in the church where Yeats’s muse Maud Gonne had married John MacBride. In the absence of SPB, Doris had conjured up a distant uncle, a Mr Tapscott of whom no one knew much, to give Priscilla away. There were no bridesmaids. Two little pages, Arlette Doynel de la Sausserie and Jean de Tonquédec, followed Priscilla up the six steps to the threshold.

  All but five of the hundred guests who swivelled to look at her were from Robert’s family. Priscilla’s wedding was the last occasion when the Doynels convened in such numbers. Marquises, barons, counts – they represented some of the grand branches of French aristocracy: de Bonvouloir, de Chervariat, de Chèvre, du Fay, de Fredy, de Montécot, de Parigny, du Quengo, de Tonquédec, de Thieulloy, de Traissan. The coming war would rip them apart.

  Priscilla walked down the aisle on Tapscott’s arm. In the sea of faces, she recognised hardly one – until she arrived at the row reserved for the bride’s family. The five people who stood there were her mother, sister and grandmother; and Gillian and her father.

  She took her place beside Robert in a large armchair. He was dressed in morning coat and tails. He smiled at her, his expression tender. He did not seem nervous. A priest stepped forward.

  It was over quickly. Gillian made notes: trousseau from Paquin, white lace wedding dress, church organs, flowers everywhere, the Ave Maria, three priests in ceremonial robes, Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. And then that cortège, relatives walking two by two behind the bride and groom, like Noah’s Ark.

  Soon she was outside again. A married woman with a strange name, posing for more photographs. Her new sister-in-law Yolande appeared in one, with the expression of a defanged cobra. Priscilla wrote in her diary: ‘On this particular occasion she had gone completely haywire – she had on a low-cut black silk frock and red trimmings, black shoes with red heels, and a black hat with a red veil.’ Priscilla caught sight of Robert’s mother. With some satisfaction she noted Adelaide ‘looking in horror at this apparition’.

  There was a reception in Georges and Yolande’s flat nearby in Avenue Victor Hugo. No tears, everyone in good spirits. Outside, the sun shone forever on the snow, as in a picture. Towards the end of the afternoon they slipped away to a hotel.

  Two clouds marred an otherwise perfect day. Priscilla had hoped for a honeymoon in Spain or Morocco, but Robert protested that it was too cold to go anywhere. ‘He had decided that one week in a hotel in the centre of Paris was sufficient.’ Priscilla’s other concern sprang from a conversation which had taken place two days earlier and touched on a topic that she had brought up before. ‘I mentioned that I wanted children badly.’ Robert replied that right at this moment he was physically out of sorts, but he hoped to recover and to have children eventually. Priscilla wrote: ‘We had still never made love and I was slightly worried about his ability to do so.’

  On their wedding night, Robert went calmly to sleep in her arms. Priscilla was tired herself after the day’s excitement and did not mind. Like a date that is always pushed back, it could wait. It would happen. ‘I refused to think about it.’

  Not until the last night of their honeymoon did Robert try to make love. Priscilla was terrified. ‘He became a different person. He was no longer gentle and tender, but brutal – his features changed and became distorted – his breath came in gasps.’ Sex to her was ‘a natural, normal thing – nothing to make a fuss about – it could even be beautiful,’ but there was something ‘horrible and unhealthy’ about Robert’s attempt to possess her. A
fter what she called his ‘one infructuous essay’, Robert would not attempt to make love to her again.

  Priscilla had taken on the role of a daughter to a man seventeen years her senior. On his part, their marriage was an extravagant mésalliance, a flutter on the Bourse, or a ring he had slipped on his finger, hoping for his flesh to grow inside her; on her part, a desperate berth, coloured by childhood stories of princes. His impotence was disastrous for the marriage and for her.

  14.

  VERTÈS

  In those few months left before the war, the only victory was to live well. Gillian asked the newly-weds to Christmas dinner. She wrote to her mother in New York. ‘It’s egg stuffed with mousse de foie gras and truffle, and around it there’s jelly and lettuce.’ She had ordered the first dish from Prunier’s. ‘After, we will have turkey stuffed with chestnuts, new potatoes and salad. Then the Xmas pudding and fruit. I shall buy a pineapple as it looks rich, also some dates and some chocolates. There will be coffee. I think it will be a very good dinner.’

  Priscilla had supplied the nuts and champagne, but at the last minute had to cancel ‘as she was ill again with her leg. It was a pity.’

  Robert took his wife of two weeks to convalesce at Boisgrimot for the New Year. His family were present in substantial numbers. Priscilla had become ‘tante Priscilla’ to a confusing crowd of individuals of all ages, from three months to forty years. She attended church; she learned to play belote – which she considered an inferior form of bridge; she walked on her husband’s arm through the icy flat countryside. She adored him, and only occasionally had misgivings when she remembered that terrible night.

  Even so, her stay at Boisgrimot was ‘not very exciting’ – the high point was catching her father’s voice on Adelaide’s Bakelite wireless, talking about the heroine of The Secret Garden. She breathed out when Monsieur Carer rode them to the station.

  Her new name had a curious potency: Vicomtesse Priscilla Doynel de la Sausserie. The whole programme, as the French say. But she did not feel very different. She had spent many similar days.

  Honeymoon over, she had moved into the apartment in 103 Rue Nollet, which Robert still shared with his brother. Guy showed no sign of shifting. Priscilla could not be mistress of her own home. It was a ghastly set-up.

  When he was not gambling at the race track, Guy ordered the food or did the shopping. Georgette came by most evenings for a meal, returning to her own apartment nearby. On Sunday after Mass, dressed in their Sunday best, the four of them solemnly went out to lunch having first worked up an appetite by going for a walk.

  Early on, Priscilla had been touched by the way Guy protected his little brother. But Guy’s reluctance to relinquish his mothering role started to chafe. Guy’s eating habits, his early morning cough, his inevitable arguments about where they should go for Sunday lunch and deciding anyway, soon got on Priscilla’s nerves. ‘His views and mine were diametrically opposed.’

  She could not ask Robert to evict him. Robert was much older than Priscilla. She dared not scratch the precious surface by criticising his actions, few as these were – the effort requiring him to marry having further sapped his energy. Robert never asked Priscilla what she thought about anything, never consulted her, and made conversations over her head. She was ‘treated as a child’. Her marriage was not living up to the engagement.

  To give his young wife something to do, Robert paid for Priscilla to attend a cordon bleu course at the Académie d’Art Culinaire. Robert did not own a car, so she caught a green platform bus to the cookery school in Rue Léon Delhomme. There, she studied hard ‘to try and learn all the things I should have known already’.

  Robert’s habit was to stay in bed until noon, rise for an early lunch and rush off to the Bourse. ‘I would fetch him at 2 p.m. Then we would wander through the streets of Paris and occasionally go to a cinema or have tea in a café. Then we would go home for an early supper and so to bed. I would sleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, but Robert would read far into the night.’ It was no recipe for having children.

  Why live in Paris at all, she wondered. The same life could have been led in the wilds of Africa. Her new name was her only compensation.

  To enliven her day, Priscilla bicycled to the Bois de Boulogne and went swimming at the ‘Racing Club’. Since she had no allowance and Robert rarely gave her money, she started to take a few francs out of his pocket for bus fares. One day, he noticed that silver was missing and accused her of stealing. ‘So we had our first row.’

  Robert still maintained that he wanted children: ‘he just thought that there was going to be a war and things might get difficult.’ But it was two years since their encounter on the boat-train to Dieppe and they had not made love. It also upset Priscilla that Robert had taken to talking about his ex-mistresses and showing her their photographs. ‘They were very beautiful, but had he really slept with them? If so there was something wrong with me, as I couldn’t get any result.’ She admitted: ‘I was very worried about the situation.’

  On a visit to England in February, SPB gave Priscilla ‘a lot of books’ as a wedding present. He found her ‘radiantly pretty’. At the same time, ‘she looked restless and unhappy’.

  Séverine is a beautiful but bored Paris housewife. The heroine of Joseph Kessel’s 1928 novel Belle de Jour (played by Catherine Deneuve in the 1967 film adaptation) is, like Priscilla, locked in an unphysical marriage with a decent man whose interests exclude her. Séverine breaks the montony by spending her weekdays, anonymously, in a brothel. My aunt took her relief more vicariously – at least to begin with.

  Robert had never learnt English, and Priscilla lacked the patience to teach him. But she could speak in her own language to Gillian. With Robert at the Bourse or in bed, Priscilla turned for colour and excitement to her best friend. Gillian was ‘the only bright spot in my life at that time. We used to spend afternoons together and gossip by the hour.’

  Gillian was surviving – just – on her fashion drawings. She had commissions from Harper’s Bazaar, Femina, Britannia, Eve, Rester Jeune, and, her favourite, Bonnier’s, a Swedish equivalent of Harper’s whose readers wanted ‘5% information, 15% opinion, 85% dreams’. Nothing in Gillian’s career rivalled the moment when Bonnier’s published her first cover. She sat for an hour outside the Café de Paris, looking at the copy on display in the kiosk, waiting for someone to buy it. The cover showed two girls, one dark-haired, one blonde. The blonde was modelled on Priscilla.

  Readers enticed by the image of a woman advertising ‘Madame Schiaparelli for the blue hour’ had no idea that this figure was the twenty-three-year-old Vicomtesse Doynel de la Sausserie. Priscilla modelled for Gillian throughout 1939: in hat and veil; wearing gloves; in a violet evening dress with puffed shoulders.

  Priscilla had been chaste two years; Gillian anything but. During those afternoons when Priscilla posed for her, they came clean about their private lives.

  Gillian was leading the kind of existence – free, adventurous, with no taboos – which in less than a year the Vichy government would condemn for having caused the fall of France. In the summer after Priscilla’s abortion, she had contracted gonorrhoea from a British lieutenant-commander whom she had met on holiday in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. He had come up to her when they were having coffee: ‘I feel you don’t like me.’

  ‘You’re too classy,’ she said clumsily. Anyway, she was in love with her married Hungarian artist. But Gillian was also her mother’s daughter. She never stopped believing that ‘un homme et une femme qui couchent pour la première fois, ça peut-être de la dynamite.’

  For months afterwards, her mother questioned Gillian. Had she heard from that charming naval officer?

  ‘No, nor do I wish to.’

  ‘She only likes dagoes,’ her father said.

  Gillian laughed. She longed to answer: ‘Dagoes haven’t given me the clap.’ Instead, she said: ‘That’s right. Only dagoes.’

  Her nightmare, Gillian told Priscilla, was to
be caught by her father behind the curtain, straddling the bidet while sluicing herself with permanganated water. This needed to be done twice a day and the bidet scrubbed with disinfectant. The treatment went on for three months and to pay for it Gillian had to persuade her Aunt Muriel to give her the post office money that Muriel was saving for Gillian’s twenty-first birthday.

  But she had infected her married lover, Marcel Vertès. In a Paris museum, he slapped her twice to relieve his feelings.

  Vertès had been in Budapest when he started ‘peeing razorblades’. He sent Gillian a furious letter, the first he had ever written her, ordering her to go to a reputable doctor for treatment. Gillian destroyed it. She did, though, keep 600 of his subsequent letters. ‘From the day I met him in 1933 until his death in 1961 we loved each other, we hurt each other, we lost each other and found each other again, each of us living different adventurous lives, but never stopping thinking about each other. That sort of passion does not go with marriage.’ In its humid sexual nature and pathological jealousy, Gillian’s twenty-eight-year affair with Vertès was everything that Priscilla’s virginal marriage with Robert was not. But in their own ways, both relationships were as important, as enduring.

  Whether Vertès went to bed with Priscilla, as only much later Gillian decided he may have done, is impossible to say with certainty. The question is crucial because it led to so much more knowledge about Priscilla than would otherwise have been available. What is undeniable is that Vertès was a pivotal presence in both of their lives in the months up to the Occupation. It was during this period that he painted the portrait of Priscilla which hung at the bottom of the stairs at Church Farm.

  If ever a man was likely to come between them, it was Marcel Vertès. Unknown in Britain, he is famous if at all for the Oscar he won in 1952 as costume designer for the film Moulin Rouge, about the artist Toulouse-Lautrec.