The Wandering Years (1922-39)
Page 4
Stanley was terrifically hearty to begin with. He said he had heard Oxford was a hotbed of intrigue, with plots and notes left on pillows: ‘Why has your attitude changed towards me?’ I exclaimed, ‘Why, it must be like Harrow all over again; only more lewd!’
Then Boy arrived and we sat down to eat some shredded sole. Stanley puts away the most enormous amount, indulging in the old Yorkshire habit of having cheese with his meat. Boy said he had had cheese and jam tart at our house and liked it. I explained it was an American habit my parents had picked up, as was marmalade and ham for breakfast.
Stanley can at times be terribly vulgar. Yet, after Boy left, he became interesting. We had the most marvellous conversation about poetry. Stan said everyone was a poet really, and rhyme and metre meant nothing. He said poetry was romance, just as beauty was romance. Stanley went on and on about women. He said, ‘The female body is the most beautiful thing, so balanced in the hips and curves. It’s the same with the aeroplanes I draw.’ He told me about Monica Moulting and how he took her into a wood and made her listen to the trees growing, and how he could sit and look at her back for hours.
December 6th
Went to Hills and Saunders to see the pictures of the ADC’s Troilus and Cressida scenery. It taught me what sort of doings I must do if I design Volpone. I can only alter the colours and backclothes, all the rest has to be permanent.
Lunch with Theodore Burton Black. His room is in a dark court. It is delightfully decadent — beautifully carved furniture, Persian carpets, silks on the wall. There are long brass candlesticks, carved boxes, weird colours and rows of interesting books.
When I came in, Burton Black stood with his back to the fire. His hair looked lankier and his face whiter than ever. He wore a bright blue silk shirt and collar, a vivid emerald tie, a white sash round dark trousers, white socks and black slippers. Over the shirt was a short kimono of black and pale yellow. He smoked a cigarette through a holder about two foot long, so thin that I wondered how smoke could get down it.
I was very amused and sat down to a decadent hour or two. Burton introduced me to a dull boy who was tiresomely childish. We waited for Hunt to come to lunch, then decided to wait no longer. I enjoyed lots of oysters and concluded that my host was like an oyster. The boy with the childish manner behaved stupidly about the oysters: he hadn’t had one for six years and would rather like one now, but no more. Then we ate cutlets, ending with angels-on-horseback as Hunt arrived at the gallop. He had had a note from someone saying, ‘Don’t come today, come tomorrow.’ But the note hadn’t been sent by B. Black.
Conversation now became most edifying. We talked about art and looked at books on Cézanne and Picasso. Hunt held forth about the theatre. He is going on the stage, and spoke of play construction. He said it was his whole principle in life that rules should be observed. He then broke the rules, becoming annoyed with Burton Black for dogmatising, for being so affected and wearing a kimono. He said Black looked like a tinned hermaphrodite. I howled with laughter, thoroughly enjoying myself.
We left together. Hunt commented that Burton Black could be an extremely nice person if only he were periodically severely kicked. I did not think, however, that kicking would do much to improve B.B.’s designs for Oedipus Rex, over which he sits up until five o’clock in the morning.
Undated
Mama and I walked down past the University Arms Hotel. We looked at antique shops, and Mama saw a little old gate-legged table which she said I ought to buy if cheap. Then I said goodbye.
I felt rather brutal when I realised I didn’t mind going back to my rooms alone. What a change! I can remember the time when I cried in bed at night because my governess told me that in Heaven peoples’ shapes were different. I didn’t want my mother to assume another shape.
How I have grown up. How sad to be so much less affectionate and dependent.
Undated
All the intellectuals in Cambridge turned up at the ADC for the Greek play. I saw Adrian Bishop, who looks like a decadent Roman Emperor or a Spanish Oscar Wilde, Stewart Perowne, Dadie Rylands, miraculously blond, Denman, Hazlitt, Sebastian Sprott. Hunt was selling programmes. Lytton Strachey and Irene Vanbrugh had come up specially from London.
The first act seemed patchy. The scenery was cheap, ugly and messy; the lighting couldn’t have been worse. Arundell made an absurd apparition as Oedipus, and his acting was monotonous. Everyone laughed when Herbage as Jocasta insinuated himself on to the stage. His salmon-pink gauze dress was a travesty; his bosoms had been padded as large as balloons. Only Clinton-Baddeley survived the disaster.
During the interval, the audience rushed to the club room to shout and smoke. Lytton Strachey peered at everyone through thick glasses, looking like an owl in daylight. He is immensely tall, and could be even twice his height if he were not bent as a sloppy asparagus. His huge hands fall to his sides, completely limp. His sugar-loaf beard is square and reddish, but the hair on his head is thick and dark, worn long in the fashion of an arty undergraduate. Topsy Lucas[15], Eton-cropped and draped in a Spanish shawl, held a reception in one corner. Irene Vanbrugh, I noticed, did not leave her seat. Apart from her scarlet and gold turban, there was nothing stagy about her. Without make-up, her complexion reminded me of crumbled dog biscuits.
We had something of an improvement in the second act. Arundell did splendidly; and the intensity of the tragedy sustained even poor Herbage, though his final exit was superbly ridiculous.
The play got terrific applause at the end. When we came out, the streets were filled with Rollses.
Part II: The Vacation and Family Holidays, 1923 and 1924
December 10th, 3 Hyde Park Street
Lunch was rather startling. My father kept asking me awful questions about Cambridge — questions that were impossible to answer. He asked questions like this: How many St John’s people are there in the rugger fifteen? How many John’s people in the cricket eleven? I don’t know any of these things. I don’t even know the names of the athletes; except for Tolley who plays golf. To crown it all, my father asked what the St John’s colours were. I was covered with confusion, while Nancy and Baba giggled.
It is awful nowadays that I don’t bother to get myself interested in anything, except art, society and the theatre. I must try and pull myself together or I shall become most frightfully dull.
When this upsetting lunch came to a close I read a book on Leonardo in the drawing room while Nancy and Baba tinkled the piano. I become sick of their everlasting piano playing.
December 16th
I decided, all of a sudden, to ring up and get a ticket for the last matinee of Dear Brutus. The theatre had nothing left; Webster’s, fortunately, had one dress-circle seat.
Happy at the thought of seeing the play again, I hared off to do a lot of shopping. I went to the Times Book Club, renewed my membership, took out Mrs Asquith’s second volume and Elizabeth’s new book of short stories, Balloons. I tried to get Kitten on the Keys at His Master’s Voice in Oxford Street, but they were out to lunch. Other errands, and I came home hung with parcels.
Lunch, of course, was late: Papa hadn’t come in. I gobbled some cold meat and bussed it to Wyndham’s, so fearful of being late that I arrived too early. I waited in the vestibule and saw the crowd dribble in. It was a dowdy intellectual crowd. Fifty little girls swarmed through the vestibule, all very excited.
I watched the performance attentively from beginning to end, enjoying it even more than my four previous times.
I was struck with the wit and beauty of things I hadn’t noticed before. I realised how splendidly the play was acted. Ronald Squire is excellent, Gerald du Maurier incredible. The Dream Child scene was more exquisite than ever. In fact, it all impressed me as too tragically beautiful; also fresh, spontaneous, polished, intricate. I waited for Moyna Macgill’s ‘Never, forever, forever, never’; and Gerald du Maurier’s ‘It’s so frightfully unfunny’. I drank in the greens and the dim colouring; the wood, the greys, Faith Ce
lli’s silky hair and green clothes and green voice. I loved the birds and the tune that Coady dances to; Lob’s roses, Lob’s room with the soft yellow light inside; and the moonlight on the standard rose trees outside.
In the interval I went to the box office and bought the Dear Brutus poster by Shepperson. It was one of my happiest afternoons, and I knew how wise I’d been to go alone. What if someone else hadn’t shared my enthusiasm?
The reception after the play kept the curtain going up and down about eight times. I moved round to the side of the dress circle for a close look at the stage, wanting to remember the little room I was seeing for the last time. I etched the details in my mind: the shiny round table, the low flower bowl, the Tatlers, Lob’s fireplace, the oak beams.
I walked into Leicester Square with tears on my cheeks.
December 28th
The golf links were covered with hoar frost, but it was exhilarating to play on crusty ground. Reggie[16] and I will never be champions, yet once or twice I hit the ball an enormous distance! Towards the end of the morning the frost began to melt. Soon the green was soggy, making me wish I hadn’t dressed so unsuitably. But golf isn’t romantic when played in plus fours.
After tea I went to get my negatives from Selfridge’s, but was disappointed because they seemed underdeveloped. I then went to Kodak’s and bought a portrait attachment, some gaslight paper, developers and fixers.
The whole evening was spent excitedly printing by gaslight in my room. It was the first time I’d ever done this, and Reggie and I were all agog. The results looked awful. But I have wonderful plans, and am going to do marvellous things in photography soon!
December 29th
Tonight Reggie and I did some printing by gaslight again. Nancy and Baba came up to look at the magic. The sock wrapped round one of the electric lights started to scorch, making a stink in the room. Our efforts were more successful, and we took the basin downstairs to show the others.
We had dinner: smelts. Smelts are almost my favourite fish, and we talked tonight, thank God. Afterwards we played bridge. It was a mistake not to play for money as everyone overbid.
ST CYPRIAN’S
February 14th 1923
St Valentine’s Day. I wonder why I thought about St Cyprian’s today? All sorts of things about my first boarding-school came to mind.
When preparing for this school, my mother was horrified at the length of the prescribed list: 12 pairs of socks; 6 pairs of pyjamas; school cap; blazers; 3 pairs of football shorts; 1 serviette ring and 1 Bible. Reggie and I were each given a ‘play box’ in which to put our favourite personal possessions. This box had black metal corners and large initials on the lid. (I hated my C.W.H.B.: cricketers are always known by impersonal initials. I want only to be Cecil Beaton.)
In a specially reserved Pullman Reggie and I went off to Eastbourne together with a group of other boys. We were seated on the far side of the platform window. As the coach started to glide I had a glimpse of my family waving goodbye. I realised we were in for something serious. Mother looked anxious in spite of her smile. Would we mind the wrench from home? She didn’t worry about Reggie. She knew I was the one to have qualms about. Something in her well-dressed appearance or sweetness touched me so much that to be parted from her now seemed the most awful thing. I bit my lip. But before the coach window moved out of sight, my face crumbled, I broke into a torrent of sobs.
During those first days at Eastbourne, I blubbed at the most unsuitable times of day and night. I would suddenly be overcome by waves of homesickness and burst into tears in the middle of a sentence. When we marched in crocodile file over the downs towards Beachey Head, the tears almost froze on my face in the winter wind. I got into the habit of waking early, so that I could go to the lavatory and weep alone.
By degrees, I accepted my fate. It was only after a ‘suitable interval’ that Mrs Vaughan-Wilkes,[17] with her rosy cheeks and apelike grin, said she had a surprise for us in her private sitting room. We found our parents there. I couldn’t see or speak for tears.
St Cyprian’s was probably better than most schools during the war (it certainly is one of the most snobbish). But the food was bad. Reggie and I developed papillomas on the soles of our feet. Dr Whaite said they were caused by undernourishment. We had to have them burnt away with acids during the holidays by Mr Cooper, a chiropodist with a mahogany toupée.
It was always cold at St Cyprian’s. Whenever possible, I clung to tepid radiators in the corridors. Here I developed the chilblains from which I still suffer agonies. It didn’t help matters much when we had to jump into an icy swimming bath every morning.
The gymnasium was mediaeval torture to me. In spite of my weak arms, I found myself obliged to climb the rope. Half way to the ceiling strength would give way, and I hung in terror by weakening hands.
There were agreeable moments. In summer I enjoyed being allowed to pick gooseberries. I also had a square-yard patch of garden in which to grow mustard and cress, phlox and poppies from seed packets.
Most of all I enjoyed the theatricals. At the end of term we performed a curtain raiser by W. W. Jacobs, with Cyril Connolly in mob cap and curls playing the barkeeper’s daughter. There followed a potted Pinafore. In the Mikado, I sang plaintively, waving a fan I had painted with periwinkles. As Nanki-Poo, I got two plums: ‘A Wandering Minstrel I’ and another singer’s ‘Willow-Tit-Willow’.
My greatest success, however, came at a concert given for the wounded soldiers in a nearby camp. Faced with a sea of blue flannel uniforms and scarlet ties, I sang ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’ and ‘Chalk Farm to Camberwell Green’. I remember the evening ending abruptly as we were all bidden to pray. I knelt on the platform while the camp cat wove its way between the wooden chairs and on past my nose.
Of all the boys at St Cyprian’s, Cyril, or ‘Tim’ Connolly was certainly the strangest, most fascinating character to me. He seemed so grown-up. Even his face was dotted with adult moles; and his long fingers ended with filbert nails. We admired one another, though I got a bit of a shock when I discovered how much he knew about life. A few of us vaguely realised that someone’s parents were rich or titled, or had a large motor-car. But Cyril knew which of the masters had a financial interest in St Cyprian’s, and which were only there on sufferance. He said it helped you to know how to behave towards them.
What made me tremble was that Cyril’s greed seemed stronger than his sense of self-preservation. When it came to food, he did the most dangerous things. If he’d been caught, he would have been ‘out of favour’ with Mrs Vaughan-Wilkes. Flip, as we called her, had more influence than all the masters put together; if you crossed her path, life was not worth living. Cyril’s taste in literature being far above everyone else’s, his standing with Flip kept him ‘in favour’. Yet after breakfast, during Flip’s alarming scripture lesson to the assembled school, Cyril seemed unable to resist continual nibblings at the bread and honey. While we still sat at our places in the dining room, Flip, from one end of the central table, would instruct various boys to recite the collect for the day. Her beady eyes darted throughout the hall, quick to discover anyone not paying attention. Cyril, barely two yards from her, surreptitiously extended a filbert-nailed hand towards the big bowl of rough honey in front of him. Dip went the sop into the stickiness. Then it was brought by slow motion across the table, over his green sweater front and up to his mouth. By the end of the meal, it seemed as if a hundred snails had been travelling forwards and backwards between Cyril and the honey bowl. Astonishingly, I never remember Flip catching him in the act.
As for me, I regarded Flip with terrified awe. Generally I remained her angel, for I knew how to suck up to her and curry favour. I pretended to read books that might impress her with my good literary taste. I even mowed the school lawn, and painted Christmas cards for her. In fact, I became such a positive favourite that she often took me down into the town of Eastbourne on her domestic shopping visits, and gave me a mid-morning coconut
cake.
Once or twice, however, I fell from grace. There was a particularly cold winter’s afternoon when Flip went up to London for the day. Boldly, I refused to change into icy football clothes and run round the frozen sports ground. Instead, wearing an overcoat and scarf to keep warm in the equally cold indoors, I hid myself from view. Bored, I wandered from corridor to corridor, migrating towards the improvised theatre built over the swimming pool for our forthcoming production of Pinafore. As luck would have it, Mr Vaughan-Wilkes was showing some prospective parents round the school. He spotted me looking out of a window at the wintry scene. By slow, appalling degrees he tracked me down. Oh horror, the party entered the theatre! I crept to the back of the stage. They followed closer. There was nothing to do but squeeze under the platform. Footsteps echoed overhead. My place of refuge in the darkness was discovered by a large torchlight playing on my doubled-up form. The victim was dragged out from under the stage, covered with shavings and sawdust and doubly shamed in view of the prospective parents. Weakly, I said I’d been helping the carpenter. This immediate disgrace proved bad enough, but when Flip returned from London I came to realise the full horror of what I had done.
Another dangerous moment came when I was caught by the matron of St Cyprian’s, doing a pantomime ‘principal boy’ stunt outside the dormitories each side of a long passage. Rows of heads peeped from every cubicle or above the partitions, as I goose-stepped up and down. My pyjama trousers were rolled up to my middle; I wore a corps cap and tunic and held a little riding crop. Suddenly a great scurry: cave! I whisked off the buttoned-up tunic in a second, jumping into bed just as the matron came into my cubicle. She laughed, and being a good sport, didn’t tell Flip.
THE BEN JONSON PLAY
March 18th
I went to a performance of Volpone given by the Phoenix Society. Mr Ensor[18] had been successful in arranging seats for me. I gave fifteen shillings as a contribution to the Society and waited for Boy to arrive.