The Wandering Years (1922-39)

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The Wandering Years (1922-39) Page 8

by Cecil Beaton


  Uncle Wilfred arrived, blinking shifty walrus eyes above drooping walrus moustache. He’s very, very nervous. Papa says it’s all put on, which I think is the funniest thought imaginable. He’s certainly a character with his double chaff, exaggerated nodding of the head and his far too far-fetched jokes. He gave some silver purses to Nancy and Baba, but of course nothing to Reggie and me. I’d been fuming, before he came, and thinking of demanding a present.

  Dinner was served, but no Bee.[26] We waited a little, waited a bit more and then started. We had soup and were on the fish course, drinking the health of the Willes when Bee arrived, her huge black eyes blazing with delight and surprise. She looked charming; the table looked charming with that Georgian silver basket, scarlet carnations and four scarlet candles.

  The champagne was fizzy, the turkey huge. Papa kept talking about old man Willes and how we missed him. Nancy and I fought for salted almonds. I ate a lot of olives.

  Uncle Wilfred rambled on about the latest plays he’d seen. He hardly ever enjoys the theatre nowadays, but used to have a great passion for Gilbert and Sullivan: he went to see Iolanthe over a hundred times, and lost count with his favourite, The Mikado. He’s the most eccentric man I know — and such a miser. He might have been a great success at anything, but just lives alone, never sees a soul and never wants to. He doesn’t read or write. I suppose he spends his life blinking at the wall to save a sixpence.

  My father now became sentimental. It was twenty-one years ago today that he proposed to my mother. Papa asked Mama if she were willing to spend another twenty-one years with him. Mummie said ‘Yes,’ very happily and sweetly. She would go on living with him for another twenty-one years, never realising that they had nothing in common.

  The Christmas pudding was brought in to great conviviality. Everyone got half sovereigns; I, the bachelor’s button, Mummie a ring and Bee a thimble. We pulled crackers; wore caps; ate Karlsbad plums and dates and fruit and were very merry.

  Papa talked mostly cricket and O. Henry to Uncle Wilfred when the ladies departed. I fidgeted a lot, but pricked up my ears as Papa started to discuss his friend, Lady Smith-Pebble, who has just been fined for shoplifting.

  At last we went upstairs. I brought out my designs and photographs for the Cambridge play to show to Bee. She was interested. Bee is now painting lamp shades at a furious rate and stepping out besides. Last night she went to four dances — the Embassy, Ciro’s, the Savoy and Rector’s! She is lucky the way she gets taken about and given presents. Her mother gave her a gold watch.

  We danced and became rowdy. We played oranges and lemons; all of us against Uncle Wilfred and Bee, who were left sprawling on the floor while everyone else stood round screaming. We threw paper streamers at Modom till she was wound in them. We danced an energetic Sir Roger. Papa kept missing old man Willes.

  In bed I read a lot of Antic Hay. It gets much better after the first hundred pages. I especially like the part where the two people go to bed, stroke one another all over and fall asleep.

  Part III: Bayswater and the City, 1925 and 1926

  My last two years of Cambridge life are recorded with nauseous detail in nearly twenty scribbled notebooks; these hysterical volumes emphasise the determination with which I escaped being ‘educated’ and avoided partaking in the orthodox activities of college life.

  Never a mention of the lectures on architecture, history, or literature, which I should have attended. Instead, there are lengthy accounts of visits to London to see picture exhibitions or plays, or more local jaunts motoring round the countryside, visiting churches and antique shops or going to Newmarket races.

  The journals record the highly aesthetic lunches in his Renaissance rooms, with Steven Runciman, who wore heavy rings, carried a parakeet on his fingers, and had his hair cut in an Italianate fringe. But, although the sprinkled names of Rylands, Shepherd, and Ord, remind me that I was acquainted with other intellectuals in King’s and Trinity, it is evident that the undergraduate’s easy and spontaneous ways of companionship, of ‘dropping-in’, were beyond me. Still deeply insecure within myself, I took refuge behind a façade of formality, and but for the companionship of Boy le Bas would have been extremely lonely. Boy, however, had his other interests to occupy much of his time, so I became absorbed in the productions of the Amateur Dramatic Clubs. No triviality connected with my multifarious participation in these plays is considered unworthy of the written word: every grievance, rivalry and typical stage intrigue is committed to paper to my everlasting shame: I have spared the reader.

  When my university span had passed — in as untypical a fashion as any undergraduate’s could — I was again faced with the problem of my future. I now found myself more than ever without convictions, in fact the obstacles I placed in my own path were becoming insuperable. Back in London I could only await possibilities with a vague hopefulness,

  The picture that follows is of a miserable creature full of self-pity, jealousy and envy. My frustrations and pretentiousness must have made me as exasperating an element in the free-and-easy atmosphere of my family, as they were hateful to me.

  January 14th 1925, 3 Hyde Park Street

  My birthday. I feel very funny when I realise that I am now twenty-one. That’s more than half one’s nice life. It will be dreadful when I’m over thirty. My whole excuse so far has been my youth!

  September 7th

  Daddy didn’t seem to mind my coming down from Cambridge without a degree, but he’s getting in rather a state since then. Yet I can’t think what to do! I only know that I want to do something. At the moment, I’m just spending, or thinking of extravagant ways to spend more.

  September 22nd

  I’m utterly stagnant except for a few paltry engagements. Tuesday I went out on the tramp for a studio. Round by St James’s Square there was a small house that would be ideal — but certainly beyond the price-pale.

  I’m desperate about the necessity for work. I don’t just want to take photographs, which would be a petty waste of time. But where in hell will I get the money to start an establishment where I turn out theatrical designs, paint and take photographs — all at the same time?

  Meanwhile, I can’t be seen sitting about, in case the Pater comes into the room and starts yelling again, ‘Why can’t he do some work?’ Mama is so harassed and upset about Reggie’s appalling headaches that she has no energy left to cope with me. Boy prods me to work, but I can’t seem to get started on anything.

  September, undated

  I had a second look at that house in St James’s. It’s pretty pokey, but that wouldn’t matter if I once got inside and had my notepaper stamped. I ought to inquire about the lease.

  The Pater hasn’t said anything more for the moment, but I get in a panic as things slide on. I’d really like to go away, but one needs a lot of money for that. At Cambridge, one was away. In fact, now that I look back on those days they seem positively halcyon. One merely spent and tried vaguely to pay the bills.

  October 15th

  The whole week has slipped by, and nothing done. I had hoped to have out a whole series of designs to show to Nigel Playfair.[27]

  Good Lord, I resent wasting time like this. Where will it all end? I feel so annoyed, going to theatres and picture places and seeing others shine. I want to shine myself! I’d like to act, but what terrible parts one would get if one got a part at all! So I go on, feeling discontented and grudging everyone’s triumph.

  November 10th

  The axe has fallen! Today my father said, quite agreeably, though I could see he’d been planning his speech beforehand, that he would like me to get a better idea of business by going to his office and keeping accounts. I replied that I would. But gosh, how I’ll loathe it!

  That puts an end to my hanging about doing no definite work. As it happens, I’ve been pretty busy lately with designs and photographs. But Papa thinks of these things as a hobby.

  I lied to Boy and said I had decided to go into my father’s business.
He was shocked. When his parents heard the news they gloated. ‘Ah ha! So he’s had to knuckle under and throw to the winds all his fanciful ideas,’ etc.

  Realising that I had only a little freedom left, I put a sprint on and did a tremendous amount of work. I got fagged out mounting enlargements, a long, laborious task during which I became covered with foul-smelling secotine.

  MY FIRST DAY IN THE CITY

  November 20th

  The City, oh God! I got up early and was ready to go at 9.30, but Daddy said I’d better wait for him.

  Last night at dinner, Reggie and N. and B. and I talked about how we’d been brought up in such awe of the ‘office’. N. and B. decided it was really a complete farce, a mere excuse for taking up Daddy’s time. They made it seem funny, but I didn’t see anything funny this morning.

  I walked to the tube station with my father and a thousand other men, all smoking pipes, all carrying morning papers under their arms. I didn’t buy a paper. I glared and glowered at the people in the train, intent on their papers and themselves. They never looked about them.

  Daddy lectured me with earnest impatience: ‘The first rule in business is ... to put it another way ... the simple plan is ...’ These expressions echoed over and over again in the midst of a long harangue I didn’t understand at all. I replied dutifully, ‘Yes,’ or ‘No.’ I was more or less resigned to my fate, except for one thing: I would never wear a bowler hat.

  We arrived at the office. A series of nondescript men slid into my Father’s room with letters, their expressions as dreary as their collars.

  I had rather a headache. The radiator-heat atmosphere of the building didn’t help any. I hadn’t had time to visit the lavatory after breakfast, which made my depression total.

  Then, abruptly, I heard Reggie[28] talking professionally and competently on the telephone. How important! I began to think the place wasn’t such a farce after all.

  Mr Tarr came in. Mr Tarr had a white face, red hair, drooping moustache and a pale, silky voice. He looked like a Velazquez portrait. But what a freak of nature — so methodical, punctilious, neat and tidy as a silly old virgin.

  I had to read one or two typewritten letters, but I couldn’t understand them any more than Daddy’s pompous explanations. He created an aura of great hurry, kept tapping his fingers and became impatient with the poor clerks. I was made to do a lot of figures in a book. Each figure (feeguire as Daddy calls it) had to be put in exactly the right spot or else sharply rubbed out with an India rubber. Daddy keeps one in a drawer of his desk, wrapped up in a piece of paper. Each time the rubber is used, the paper gets unfolded, then folded up again.

  At one moment, the pater rang up that cheery Hampstead cricketer, Geo. Hickson. I am to do a caricature of him for a cricket club menu; which means I’ll have to sit and look at his Ally Sloper face and draw him making ludicrous expressions — eyebrows up, mouth stretched like a slot and cheeks all wrinkled.

  By lunch time I had copied out a lot of feeguires. Reggie took me to the place where he generally goes. I’d imagined worse, but it was two o’clock and the crowd of young men at Birch’s, as the place is called, had thinned out. We went downstairs, crossed a sawdust floor, stood at a counter and ate: ham in roll sandwiches, beef sandwiches, rock cakes, chocolate biscuits. We drank punch.

  Afterwards, we went to the Jamaica place for coffee. This I did think revolting. The coffee couldn’t have been worse, the bowler hats stiffened my determination not to wear one. I had the impression of a lot of dirty beetles fighting for existence.

  Back at the office, I decided that the whole building smelled like an underground lavatory. I wrote some more feeguires in the book and was faced with the task of doing additions. I have always been bad at arithmetic, finding it an agony to add anything up. Now I must needs do the best I could. My head went round and round. Exhaustion overtook me. I struggled for hours.

  What a squalid place! The tall chairs were falling to bits; the oilcloth had holes worn through to the floor. Dust and dirt were everywhere, creating a musty smell. And here I was, hacking away at this damned arithmetic. The purple ink had dwindled in the well; with the pen nib so thin, my entries looked completely meaningless and without character.

  At last we went home, with a million other bowler-hatted business men now carrying the evening paper. Queen Alexandra was dying — ‘sinking’ as the placards had it. Since we were all going to the theatre tonight, the pater and Reggie began to worry in case the Queen should die and the theatres close.

  I felt sick of hearing about the Queen. All I knew was that I was tired and bad tempered. My headache persisted, I felt cold and wanted to get home so that I could have a bath, rest and think about something decent.

  At length I did get home, in such a state of rage and despair that I wept as soon as I was alone. I slammed everything on to the floor, clenched my teeth, swore more filthily and freely than I’d ever done before.

  I felt in a happier state of mind after I’d been to the lavatory and had a shave. I trailed down late for dinner, but didn’t care a damn. The lazy, silly females had done nothing all day and the house looked ugly, without even any flowers. Mummie appeared thoroughly dowdy.

  N. and B.’s Angela Duveen came to dinner. What a delightfully precocious midget, all of twelve and speaking as though she were thirty.

  Daddy (as bad as Uncle Wilfred) suggested that Reggie and I go by bus or tube to the theatre. I damn well wouldn’t, and we went comfortably in a taxi. It was my second time seeing Mercenary Mary, but I enjoyed it, thanks to champagne at dinner.

  I’d forgotten the whole day to wish Daddy many happy returns on his birthday. I hadn’t any money for a present, either.

  My first day in the City: I pray that there won’t be many more!

  November 24th

  Up at the last minute; on with the clothes that lay crumpled by the bed. My shirt was dirty, but what did it matter in the City? Nothing mattered. I looked a wreck with my suit unpressed, with filthy collar and cuffs. Down again in the tube, directly after breakfast. No time to finish the photographs I wanted; no time even to fill the orders on hand — and there are quite a few of them.

  The same office, the same petty work, the same routine. I wrote out receipts, filled up the ledger, wrestled with averages and sums until my head was splitting and my hands clammy.

  In the luncheon interval, Reggie and I were out over an hour. We ate at Simpson’s, a chop house. We had a great lump of meat, beautifully cooked. The men there looked dreary, everything seemed dreary. Worse, I felt more resigned than yesterday. If it went on much longer, I’d gradually lose interest in everything I ever hoped to accomplish.

  As an end to a perfect day (of horror) Reggie took me to the woodwool factory. We went in the bus to the most Godforsaken place: Bethnal Green! The factory was noisy, repellent, etc. Reggie put on a business-like air with doddering old Baldwin, the factory head.

  On the way home I tried not to read the papers. But there was nothing else to do in the train.

  November 30th

  Today I didn’t mind the office boy’s face. I felt rather sorry for him.

  Mr Twist is the only one I don’t feel sorry for. He oozes malevolence with his huge chest and stomach, his vulgarity, his nastiness. In his indolence he reminds me of a fat woman with a rich cough.

  Lunch at the Stock Exchange Lyons, where we tried in vain to get rid of a foreign coin that had been given us as a shilling.

  December 3rd

  The pater stayed very late at the office and came home in a foul mood. He turned Reggie out of the room, then ticked me off about the books. He said I couldn’t do work that a child of twelve could do. What with mistakes, scratchings out and blanks, I’d put the files in a chaotic state, in future, he would be afraid to let me handle them. Why, I couldn’t do the simplest addition of feeguires. The business would soon be bankrupt if I continued. He even went so far as to say he didn’t want me at the office again, but at the same time wouldn’t tole
rate my doing nothing.

  I felt untouched by his fury. It just seemed far away. Inevitably, of course, I knew my work had to be checked; and I felt certain I’d made a few slips. But in all ignorance, I couldn’t have guessed it mattered so much. Apparently, when something has been written down wrong, one must take a ruler and put a ruled line through the mistake, not just draw a line through it by hand.

  I had a very hot bath, so hot that I almost fainted in it. I lay back with my eyes shut and hoped I would lose consciousness. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t have minded drowning. I felt numb, uninterested in anything. I had no ambition, was surrounded by difficulty and thoroughly depressed. Generally, the thought of death terrifies me. I want to live and do what I am going to do next week or the week after. But this evening I could have faced it with equanimity — not because I was unhappy, not for any particular reason, except that there seemed nothing immediate to live for.

  December 6th (Sunday)

  At lunch, ‘Where’s Cecil?’ At 3.30, ‘Where’s Cecil?’ At tea, ‘Where’s Cecil?’ All through the evening my father’s anxiety continued. It wasn’t because he wanted the pleasure of my company. No, he worried for fear I wouldn’t get the cricket caricatures done.

  When at last I did come home (and it’s my business where I’ve been) I found the family playing bridge. I drank some whisky and soda to get less irritable, then started the damned caricatures. They were quickly done; I thought the one of Hickson quite good. I took them to Daddy, who promptly expressed his delight. He leant on the piano, chuckling over them. Having been grumpy all day, he was satisfied now. He asked me if, as a reward for the caricatures, I’d like to come to the cricket dinner. I had carefully to say that I didn’t think I would enjoy it, but thank you all the same.

 

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