by Cecil Beaton
Boy came in at ten-thirty to motor me to London. He said, ‘Do come to lunch. It will be dull if you don’t. When no one else is there, the family never has anything to say.’ In the Seven Sisters road he was talking so fast that he didn’t notice a crossroads, nor the policeman who held up his hand. Right across the road we went, at thirty miles an hour. A little black car jerked out from the far side of a huge tram; and of course we had a collision. The trouble was soon over, with very little damage.
We drove to a motor shop, left the car to be put right and taxied to meet Boy’s family at Les Gobelins. Mrs le Bas was in brown, and could speak. In fact she was vociferous about Boy’s bad driving. Once he ran into a horse and they all had hysterics when the huge thing fell right on top of the car, almost squashing them. Gwen, always prettier than a flower, had huge earrings; Molly looked deliciously absurd in the biggest hat that I’ve ever seen. Lunch was fairly amusing. Molly said that once a photographer had told her to laugh; and when she did he immediately shouted ‘Stop it!’ The le Bas were off to see José Collins in the Last Waltz. José has recently married Lord Robert Innes-Kerr, which prompted me to tell about the waiter in the small Soho restaurant where José gobbles her pre-matinée lunches.
The waiter was heard to shout in a bored voice down the hatch: ‘Another double-portion of tripe and onions for Lady Robert!’
Boy and I went out to do some shopping. I bought wine glasses at Waring’s and Pera cigarettes. Then we went to the Medici print place in Grafton Street, staying there a great time. Boy was extravagant as usual: he bought two Botticelli prints, Primavera and The Birth of Venus, at two pounds ten each!
I brought Boy to H.P. street for tea. Loins opened the door for us, unaccountably wearing outrageous white clothes. Modom, in black and pearls, appeared blinking and surprised at the top of the stairs.
We talked very quickly while I put on the Scheherazade record. During the tomato sandwiches, Baba appeared. I couldn’t help laughing at her: her hair had grown too long at the back, and she was wearing an awful grey woolly over her blue and white dress. Then Nancy came in, her hair scraped off her forehead. I told her to go and have a shampoo, and she looked rather annoyed. Baba said, ‘What a sight Angela Duveen is looking nowadays, without her tortoise-shell glasses.’ I said, ‘It’s a pity; they held her face together.’ We unwrapped the Botticellis, but Modom can never get farther than Murillo. Before starting back to Cambridge in the mended car, Modom insisted on a stirrup cup, and brought out a prized ’75 port.
October 20th
Lunch today with Cooper, a gangling albino with whom a half-hearted friendship is maintained because his mother is a friend of my aunt Cada.[10] The meal was a morbid affair altogether. The knives and forks were cheap and tinny, the tablecloth not too clean, the food bad curry with apricots and biscuits. The cigarettes gaspers.
I decided that it might be all right to listen to Cooper on the telephone. But when one sees him he is hideous, and makes everything round him equally hideous. He regaled me with tales of how he lived for a fortnight in Whitechapel with a brown paper parcel as luggage: he’s interested in social problems. Fortunately, his mother is artistic and his father enormously rich, so their house is wonderful. He showed me pictures which had appeared in The Ideal Home. What a waste that a youth who cares nothing for comfort or beauty should have all that money!
October 21st
I drew a bit too much during Mr Bennett’s lecture on Shakespeare and didn’t pay sufficient attention.
I passed the Market Square. Tomatoes, flowers, red sweets, the brass and the crowd — everything reminded me of Petrouchka. I went to Bowes and Bowes and looked at Aubrey Beardsley’s books to see if I couldn’t admire him after all. I made up my mind to buy the Pamela Bianco edition of drawings with accompanying Walter de la Mare poems, but at Eliza Johnson’s they hadn’t got it. Another shop did produce a copy, which to my delight was reduced to ten-and-six.
Lunch was spent looking through this new acquisition. What a remarkable creature Pamela Bianco must be: a child of twelve, doing spindly, wiry drawings with an archaic boldness combined with the feeling of a Florentine painter of the Renaissance. I am so pleased with my purchase.
A VISIT TO OXFORD
October 22nd (Sunday)
Robert Blundell had warned me to be ready early if I wanted to motor with him to Oxford. Eight o’clock seemed cruel on a Sunday morning, and I was so rushed I ate no breakfast whatsoever.
Robert, in a huge, cocoa-coloured overcoat and caramel muffler, came twisting up the stairs smoking an Egyptian cigarette. He delayed our departure, telling me how he’d driven to London last evening (without an absit) to see the Duncan sisters.
At last we started off in the open car. It was sunny and cold. We didn’t go very fast — averaged about thirty miles an hour. I like Robert: he’s quiet and unhurried, wise and uncritical. He is so sensible that he has the effect of making even me feel sensible too. The first twenty miles seemed long, but after Bedford the fields flew past. We whizzed through St Neots to Bicester. We talked in deep, grave voices, never glibly but seldom for long on the same subject. We talked about Ethel Levey and revue actresses, Colonel Repington’s diaries, Mrs Asquith, signet rings and dogs.
When at last we reached the ugly outskirts of Oxford, I was aching and stiff from the cold wind. I spotted the Rothenstein boy and he directed Robert to Kyrle’s rooms in the High Street. As I creaked out of the motor, my legs felt like ice and could hardly support me. Robert said when he would pick me up, then drove off. While I waited for the doorbell to be answered, I felt like an actor listening for his cue, yet uncertain of what he will say onstage. I followed someone up to Kyrle’s rooms.
It was a somnambulist’s arrival. Vaguely I noticed Kyrle’s blue coat and red waistcoat, and — someone sitting on a sofa. The stranger wore a green tie, making me wonder where I’d seen him before. It was Victor Butler; and I’d seen him at Harrow. He had dropped in unexpectedly to see Kyrle. I sat with my back to Kyrle, in front of the fire, feeling acutely self-conscious and generally miserable. I couldn’t utter a word. Victor Butler talked intelligently and Kyrle laughed raucously.
At last Victor left and I began to thaw, though still not quite at ease. I could have kicked myself for being so gauche. After all Kyrle and I had spent weeks together in Wales, when we slept out of doors, went fishing, rode a motor bicycle, got punctures and climbed up mountains. I stumbled about, making inadequate comments about Kyrle’s room and furniture. He has some pieces of pure Hepplewhite and Sheraton, not the muck I accumulate. Neither does Kyrle go in for rubbishy chrysanthemums from the local market. He had a pot of lilies on top of a bookcase; and by a lamp were the tallest roses I’ve ever seen, also some green orchids. Kyrle’s books and pictures are good: many first editions, lots of Kay Nielsens and a lithograph by Hartley.
Bob Gathorne-Hardy, Kyrle’s room-mate, came in to say lunch was ready in his room. His appearance was almost comic: pink and white complexion, nose and mouth much too small for the rest of the face. He seemed brilliant, talking hard all the time. Perhaps he felt he had to, as I was so silent. Kyrle told me afterwards that Bob always makes ceaseless conversation. Be that as it may, he gabbled so quickly in a deep throaty bass I could hardly hear anything he was saying (that’s an exaggeration). It added to my confusion.
After lunch we went back to Kyrle’s room. But soon the scout came in looking rather bewildered, and announced that there were two more courses to follow! We could not go back. We’d already had an enormous lunch: eggs scrambled with button mushrooms, chicken and a soufflé.
During coffee, Bob held forth on Restoration comedies. In a breezy, off-hand and I must say unsparing manner, he described all the plot complications. I was shocked but secretly delighted by the ease and charm with which he used four and even six letter words.
Quite unexpectedly, eight people burst into the room. Kyrle introduced everyone rather badly, making me feel still less at ease.
Wha
t an extraordinary crowd. Bob’s brother, Eddie G.-H., looked like Andrew Aguecheek — uncommonly tall, vellum complexion, tortoise-shell glasses, long hair, a bemused expression about his eyes and mouth. He had a deep crumbling voice, outshone his brother in lewdness as he talked about seductions and affairs. Eddie spends three thousand a year on old books, at Claridge’s and the races.
Then there was Billy Smith (son of W.H.) in bright new brown leather shoes, his hair cut so short at the neck and sides that it seemed shaved. Eddie Sackville-West looked like a bird in a tight suit, carrying a black stick in its claw. Lord David Cecil talked even more quickly than Bob. He, too, wore a perpetual smile on his pale face. His eyes had cushions of amusement underneath them, but they looked at you with the slow appreciation of a cow. His movements, by contrast, were staccato and unexpected. He dashed about the room, seized a hair brush in the middle of a sentence, went on talking while he puffed his hair out until he looked, as he said, ‘like the barber in Happy Families’.
Kyrle took me aside and protested that he was furious at the intrusion. He then looked even more miserable when we glanced through the window and saw another half-dozen undergraduates walking arm in arm towards his rooms. In burst Teddy Hogg, together with handsome, blue-eyed, stuttering Eardley Knowles and others whose names I barely or never heard, including three or four peers. One I think, was Lord Cavendish Bentinck; another Lord Sudeley.
What a gabble! Everyone talked at once. I’d never seen anything like them before, and en masse they seemed overwhelming.
I gaped like a cod; I listened like a foreigner. Bob G.-H. said to someone, ‘Hermia Wormsley ought to be ravished. In fact, it would do a lot of people good to be ravished.’ Lord David Cecil, evidently showing off, interjected an extremely witty remark. Everyone roared with laughter, but as he rattled on so quickly I could hardly catch a word.
In the midst of things, Kyrle announced that he and I were going out. There followed a lull of silence as we left, but the babble began again before we descended the stairs. Outside, Kyrle said none of them minded what he said or did.
We walked arm in arm to see Magdalen. I didn’t pay much attention to the surroundings, being too intent on trying to re-establish our former intimacy. By now we were walking in Addison’s Walk, then went into Magdalen Chapel.
When I told Kyrle about the Pamela Bianco book, he replied that he’d known her at Harlech! I was impressed.
We went to the Ashmolean, where Kyrle had arranged for me to see the Uccello. The Stag Hunt in the Forest By Night is his favourite picture. Its detail, colour, form and perspective are indeed perfect.
Meandering again, we passed Eddie Sackville-West’s and went in. Princess Bibesco and Puffin Asquith were there, so we did not break up the party. Puffin has a huge head of wiry, fuzzy hair. He talked in such spasmodic jerks I could hardly understand him. Elizabeth B. far from being the magpie beauty the newspapers write of, looked like a large oyster, and was just as silent.
When we returned to Kyrle’s rooms, there were still a few people left. But they soon decided to go for a motor drive with Eddie G.-H., who reappeared wearing a pea-soup coloured cap and driving a hired Overland. The crowd borrowed Kyrle’s coats and mufflers, and from the balcony we watched them roar off.
It was good to be left in peace. We talked at random, with our old ease. We ate bread and butter and listened to Schumann records. We looked at albums of photographs. I lingered over a picture of an Elizabethan house and garden. Whose house is this?’ ‘A woman who lives near here at Garsington: Lady Ottoline Morrell,’ Kyrle answered. ‘Isn’t she the scarecrow that Augustus John painted? Doesn’t she have magenta cheeks, beetroot hair and two protruding teeth? Oh, I long to meet her!’ ‘You will,’ said Kyrle. ‘You’ll like one another. In fact,’ he laughed and lines appeared round his eyes, ‘she’s rather like you!’
All too soon Robert was outside with his car. Motoring through the darkness I offered some frank impressions of Oxford while Robert pricked up his ears. I said, ‘People at Oxford do give the impression of being very much more sexual than at Cambridge! They are ravishing Hermia Wormsley and heaven knows who else.’ We stopped in Bedford to dine. I was glad Robert allowed me to pay, as I would have felt awkward if he hadn’t.
When I got back to my rooms, I found a note saying I had been elected a member of the ADC. Perhaps Cambridge won’t be so bad now.
October 23rd
Everyone had gathered in a huge mass for the St John’s college group photograph. I was cheered by all for being so late. Then the usual fuss that goes on when a group is being taken: silly little men ran up and down waving fingers, telling so-and-so to lower his head as the sun caught his glasses, while such-and-such must stiffen his chest. Stupid people burst out laughing just as the snipper was snipped; and the usual roar of mirth when the snipper had been snipped.
We proceeded to the Fellows’ anteroom, where we ‘formed up’ to march to the Senate House and sign our names in the Cambridge register. Luckily for me, we queued in alphabetical order.
When we arrived in this absurd crocodile, there were quite a number of youths from Trinity still waiting to sign. They leant against benches and walls in an exasperated manner. The Worthington-Evans boy swore like a duchess. He had had to wait for over an hour. I suggested that, for the occasion at any rate, he should drop the hyphen.
Only six people were ahead of me to sign. The formality proved ceremonious. Three men shout out your name. You walk forward. Two little boys offer pens, one of which is chosen. It is dipped in ink and you scribble your name in a huge book. With five hundred people staring, you walk very sedately into the open air, a proud member of Cambridge University.
Armistice Day
A huge, surging crowd had gathered in the Market Square for the Two Minute Silence. Then a maroon went bang. Everyone became still and silent, as though turned to stone. I stood apart in the middle of the road and looked down at the wet ground. A piece of bright emerald cabbage lay in the gutter. I thought of Claude[11] with his sleek pale face and hair, his interest in Bakst, his own drawings done with a needle sharp pencil, and how he’d gone off to the mud and horror of the trenches.
I remembered the first Armistice Day. I was in my bedroom at Temple Court[12], brushing my hair. The maroons went off. My mother and I went mad with joy. I had a funny feeling inside me and lumps in my throat. I beat the lunch gong and ran two miles to John Barnes[13] and bought enormous Union Jacks to hang from the windows. At Piccadilly Circus that evening, the delirious mob surged like a sea through which the buses moved slowly like ocean liners in a storm.
I was brought back to Cambridge and the present day by two maroons going off at the end of Silence. Dogs barked. A woman with a pale, fat face and red hair said, ‘Did you see that poor soul with her children? She was weeping. Her husband had been killed.’ But the crowd was already intent on its marketing, buying and smiling at the stalls.
November 15th (Saturday)
We had drunk four bottles of champagne between the three of us. It was a good thing that Tris suggested we leave the Smoking Concert. I could hardly stand up. Out in the cold air I realised I was quite tight. Boy seemed in even higher spirits and let forth hyena-like yells of laughter. Tris was sober, so I held on to Tris. We came to my rooms and stood by the outer door. Boy and sober Tris began to bawl in unison, ‘Mr Biggs! Mr Biggs!’
I laughed, half terrified. Mr Biggs[14] came rushing out. I murmured something about my friends being vivacious tonight, then walked with difficulty to my sitting room at the bottom of the yard. I sat laughing on the sofa. Mr Biggs came in all red and awkward and half-smiling. He asked if I was all right. ‘Yes’ — and to prove I wasn’t tight, I opened my sitting room door, managed to walk gingerly the length of the yard, then only fumbling a bit, to unlock the door to go up to my bedroom. Mr Biggs watched.
Somehow I navigated the winding stairs, remembering what Hamar Bagnall had said one day my first term: ‘These are awful rooms to come back
to when you’re blotto.’ I stared in the glass to see what I looked like when drunk. It was much the same face, only white and shiny. I staggered a bit, sat on the bed and watched the walls going round and round. I didn’t laugh much now. I felt ill. I tried to make myself be sick in a jug, which I was. It was all terribly sordid. What a good thing I hadn’t been sick outside with Tris and Boy! or at the Cottrells! I wondered if Boy was being sick.
In bed the whirling sensation accelerated. I got up again and threw the contents of the jug out of the window. Then I rinsed the jug, dashing more and more water out of the window. I washed things: I sprayed eau-de-Cologne all over the room, but still I could smell sickness. I felt like Macbeth after the murder.
November 16th
Early this morning, I got a whole lot more water and threw it out of the window, in a panic about the mess on the tiles outside. I washed the jug and a towel. I had my bath. More eau-de-Cologne everywhere, and I came down to breakfast.
Mr Biggs visited me later. He looked like the cat that ate the mouse, ‘I’ve got a complaint about you. Mr Turner said he had to get up in the middle of the night to shut his window, as such terrible things were coming through it. This morning there was puke all over the floor and the window sill.’
No good hiding the truth. I begged him to tell Mr Turner how ashamed I was, and that it was the first time I’d ever been tight.
Mr Biggs said, ‘Well, next time don’t bother to toss it out of the window. Just leave it there!’
Thursday, undated
Spent the morning being annoyed with Tell England. Then off to Stanley’s for lunch, carrying lots of coats over my arm.