by Cecil Beaton
December 7th
At breakfast this morning I asked, ‘Are you expecting me at the office today?’
The question baffled my father. He didn’t know. He had had to engage a Dutchman (evidently of an unexcitable nature) to scratch out my mistakes and clear up the books.
I said, ‘I have enough orders for photographs to keep me busy a whole week.’ This was true.
‘All right,’ and he clicked his tongue.
I rushed Mrs Joicey[29] through by ten o’clock, packing her up neatly. Then I took the pictures to the Berkeley, walking there and hack in the snow. It gave me a thoroughly thankful feeling to have got them off my chest. I also felt glad I hadn’t given her poor prints. It is important to do a print over again when the first results aren’t good enough.
THE MOVE FROM 3 HYDE PARK STREET
February 23rd 1926
Farewell to number three Hyde Park Street. Tomorrow a van comes to cart all the rubbish in this house to the sale room. We’ll not be able to get half our things into the new place.
I spent hours sorting out papers in my room and tidying my desk. Gosh, what a lot of utter muck! The love letters, the soliloquies I wrote at Harrow. It all seems housemaid sentiment now, but how deeply I felt things at the time.
Then there were all my old theatre programmes to go through. With what fervour I collected them! It seemed a major disaster if one was left in Rumpelmeyer’s after the matinée. I’d have to go back to the theatre and haggle with a commissionaire. These mementos were clipped away in a Schauenburg schellhäfter, a filing contraption father got from Germany.
The programmes are faintly interesting still, but only to stir memories. What raptures I went into about musical comedies: the ‘fakeness’ of the scenery, with netting in the trees, and painted artificialities. Lily Elsie and Gertie Millar were my heroines. And I used to pray that there would be a full page of rabbity Florence Smithson in the Sketch. There never was.
Oh, those embarrassing letters! Long ramblings from Beresford-Jones about art; descriptions of studio parties and ‘wonderful talks’. Courageously, I threw them all away at last. I’ve been meaning to do so for years. It would be a scandal if I fell ill and someone discovered them.
Then there were all the painstaking water-colours I did at Harrow. In those days I sketched anything. It didn’t matter what. I wanted to make things look as they looked. But now I see a sad lack of tone, a conventional realism I thought was art! Alas, a great many people still think so. My parents observe wistfully that I could draw in those days.
In the afternoon I went through my magazine clippings. How I worshipped the actresses in their ridiculous clothes. What enthusiasm I had. Nowadays, nothing makes me so genuinely ardent as I was then. Of course, it seems self-indulgent in retrospect. I must try never to be self-indulgent again.
February 24th
In the midst of this wretched house-moving, I haven’t for a moment forgotten my plight. I still have no work, am sick about what work I shall do and when.
Meanwhile, my father slaves away and naturally feels disgusted with my idleness. Pig that I am, I almost wish he would force me to take action. But I’m no bloody good in that office. The Dutchman is still undoing my damage.
This afternoon we all went round to the new house in Sussex Gardens, Paddington. It’s much smaller and less elegant but we’ll have to make the best of it. The blue door has dried badly.
Papa took us for a run in the country, but as usual we never got farther than the Uxbridge road. And he must shout ‘Get out’ at people when they dare to cross the street.
February 25th
The move! Yesterday the men packed up our glass and small stuff. Today, in good earnest, things were carted out and plonked on the pavement before being put in the van. It offended my eyes to see servants’ bedroom furniture cluttering the pavements — wash stands, china chamber pots.
At the new house, Nurse muddled about bossing everybody. She’s such an old tartar.
February 26th, 61 Sussex Gardens
Where are we to put all the furniture? The drawing-room is stacked so high I had difficulty getting a ladder placed in order to pick out the mouldings with gold paint. What a labour, and how precise one must be! During all this dead man’s work, the turpentine fumes gave me a big headache.
Our last meal at H.P., with just the dining table left! I wandered about, making a goodbye tour. The empty rooms looked dirty and forlorn. They’ll want doing up now. Still, it’s been a good house; living up to it was something of a triumph.
April 7th
I have looked through my Cochran designs and can’t understand why C. B. didn’t use any of them. I’ve rung Miss Scrimshaw many times, but get no satisfactory reply.
The Pater is furious: Why hadn’t I got a definite contract, etc.? I admit it must be exasperating for him to observe my unbusiness-like ways. Yet Cochran definitely told me it wouldn’t be ‘a waste of my time’.
April 8th
I had an idea for a stage curtain decoration: a family of Marie-Laurencin fauns leaping about, pale pink with dark, liquid eyes. I started to draw contentedly.
Mum came up to my room and said, ‘Oh, dear, I do wish Cochran would accept your things. Your father is threatening to put you in Schmiegeiow’s[30] office!’
I refused to contemplate such a fate and went back to my pink fauns.
Part IV: Holborn, 1926
April 10th 1926 (Saturday)
At breakfast, Daddy brusquely asked if I had found a job yet. I said, ‘I’m afraid not.’ I started to explain that I might possibly get a job with Nigel Playfair at the Lyric, Hammersmith.
Daddy interrupted rudely, ‘Well, if you haven’t, I have. Mr Schmiegelow will take you in his office. You start on Monday morning at half past nine and get one pound a week. I’ll leave you to work your way up from the bottom.’
I went crimson. Of all the humiliations! If I had to go into an office, I could have asked Mr Le Bas to let me into his — his really is a good one. But Schmiegelow, that young Danish friend of the Kiaers! Schmiegelow, who plays tennis with Daddy!
But how could I argue? After all, I’d done nothing for a year. For that matter, I’d done precious little at Cambridge.
If only Cochran had accepted my designs!
An office! I would only be as incompetent as I was at my father’s. I suppose he thinks he’s being sensible, firm and strong.
He read an article by Arnold Bennett in the Sunday paper, all about ‘fathers’ sons’, about how the Swiss hotel proprietor sends his son to the neighbourhood hotel to work his way up. That’s what my father thinks he’s doing.
Yet he won’t let me start from the bottom in my own line. He doesn’t realise I’ve made more than a pound a week, just dabbling with photography in my spare time. The trouble is, when I get a cheque for seven pounds I immediately blow it, half on some extravagance and the other half on paying debts.
After all I’ve dreamed and hoped for, to be chained to an idiot’s task in a meagre office!
My grievance festered all day. I felt thoroughly venomous. I would be as unpleasant as possible to Schmiegelow. If I could get any other work at all, I would immediately plank down a pound note and quit. I would not be damned in an office. I would not give up the opportunity of doing work that interested me.
April 11th
With Schmiegelow’s office staring me in the face tomorrow, I tried to do a bit of journalism for the Daily Express or some such paper. I spent the morning sitting in a large armchair desperately trying to finish a snobby article about ‘Society’.
I’d get a spasm, write masses, then gradually alter it all until there was nothing left.
I am no good at writing. I often try doggedly to write an article or a short story. But it’s too bloody difficult.
Soon the family returned from Birmingham, my mother with a cold and sore throat. My father handed me a slip with the address of Schmiegelow’s office on it. I argued a bit, making him feel uncomf
ortable.
I am sitting in bed now, wondering whether I really will have this hell foisted on me? Perhaps I can manage to create a last minute argument at the breakfast table and get myself free.
GETTING TO KNOW MS SCHMIEGELOW
April 12th
At breakfast I said nothing, just munched and felt an empty, throbbing feeling in my stomach. Mummie stayed in bed with her cold. At breakfast Daddy asked if I needed any money for lunches this week, as Schmiegelow wouldn’t be giving me anything until Friday. Oh, no! I’d rather starve.
I left directly after a second piece of toast and marmalade. At any rate, the address was a Bloomsbury one and not in the City.
I enjoyed the bus ride. It was a sparkling morning, the air fresh with spring. I felt superior for not having a morning paper to read. In fact, I had the odd impression of being tremendously alone and independent. It came over me all of a sudden, something akin to what one felt when going back to Harrow or Cambridge, after the holidays. One was conscious, for the first day, of oneself; of oneself doing this or that, or walking alone in the street.
But then the hard reality struck me again. Far from being independent, I was in a trap. Indeed, out of spite I had put on my oldest suit — the brown one all covered in gold paint spots.
I wandered about Bloomsbury trying to find Southampton Row. Funnily enough, I discovered that Schmiegelow’s office was in the same building occupied by a photographer whose work I often looked at in my days of leisure. Those days seemed a long way away.
I found the room and entered on my guard. Mr Schmiegelow wasn’t in. But a little man with an intimate and kind manner said, ‘Oh, yes, you’re Mr Beaton, the son of Mr Beaton who owns the woodwool works. You’ve come to help Mr Schmiegelow, haven’t you? Well, he can’t be long and won’t you sit down.’
I sat sordidly on a chair, my coat collar muffled up above my ears. I boiled with spleen. My father thought I’d done nothing all this time. I had, admittedly, been lazy. But how difficult to work in the family atmosphere, with one’s mater always busy wasting time. And anyway, I’d done a lot in spasms. I daresay I’ve made fifty pounds with my photographs during the past year! Moreover, hadn’t I slaved on a rickety ladder gilding the house into a state of respectability? Just look at the suit I was wearing! And what about all the work I did for Cochran? I wasn’t to be blamed if he didn’t look at half the things I showed him. My designs are definitely good. I feel confident about several being really original.
The door burst open and in flew young Schmiegelow, bright and cheery and taking long strides. He wore tortoise-shell glasses; he seemed nice looking. To my relief I found him Danish and foreign, instead of middle-class.
I took my coat off, feeling it mightn’t be as bad as I had imagined. An old virgin huddled in and took off her hat and coat, too. I was introduced to Miss Robertson, who hurried about giving me papers and telling me in a firm but motherly way what to do. She sat me at a typewriter and I started to work that, very slow and somewhat careless about mistakes.
It seemed a less awful place than my father’s office. There’s only one small room, but it’s well-proportioned and light, painted various unobjectionable shades of green.
A busy morning: copying first one thing on the typewriter and then another. I was told to do one or two easy sums.
At lunch time, Schmiegelow said he’d like me to go out with him. We went to the Holborn Restaurant, a place which, in my days of leisurely shopping, I had looked at with curiosity and wondered if anyone ever went inside. They did: I found hundreds of business men having a mediocre lunch. We had some particularly nasty steak and kidney pudding and talked hard.
S. understood that I didn’t like this sort of thing, that I was an artist and not a business man. We got fundamental, exchanging energetic views about how hard life was; about how, when one was at Cambridge or in polite society, one never realised the unpleasant fact that life was really governed by cash. Gentlemen didn’t talk about it, but pounds and shillings determined everything. When it came to business, friendship meant nothing if one could get a bit of money by doing someone else down. We took, as an example of a typical dishonest-honest business man, Mr —, that little Danish bounder who does anyone down if he can. He doesn’t care a damn for art except in relation to pounds, shillings and pence: ‘This must be good because it cost me five hundred pounds!’
Schmiegelow seemed to understand what I felt about business men. He has apparently been going through a disturbing period since he left the Danish Legation. He realised with a bump that cash was everything, and without much money has been finding things difficult.
He considered my problem, saying that what I wanted was a manager, just as Carpentier had Descamps. ‘It would pliss your faghter if you could earn money with your artte.’ (It would please me, too, but doing my own work would be the greatest pleasure.) S. then promised to see if he couldn’t find me some work congenial to my talents. In the meantime, there were a few things I could help him with in the office.
It was a long and interesting wrangle. By the time we returned to the office I had thrown off my sullen state of despondency. I tapped the typewriter like a woodpecker. Schmiegelow became vivacious at tea, adopting a funny and airy attitude to the things we’d been serious about at lunch.
I went home pleased. This morning, I had pictured myself returning in fury and despair. By contrast I now felt full of beans, and immediately started gilding a fireplace.
April 13th
Arrived at the office fairly early. S. didn’t turn up until late.
Miss Robertson is a nice old bird, feminine and giggly. Though fond of routine and practical, she loses her head in an emergency. She speaks in a high, cooing-dove voice with a pretty accent, pronouncing her u’s in a pointed way. I wondered if she could be Danish, then found out she was Scottish. I got to like her more and more as the day passed. She is matey and pally, if unstimulating.
I didn’t know where to eat in my luncheon interval. I abominate those big teashops and would sooner go hungry. I went to the British Museum, requisitioned some books on costume and waited so long for them that I had to leave just as they arrived.
I came back to the office, felt rather hungry and decided I must have some coffee. The cafe downstairs is evidently run by prostitutes. I sat in fear of catching syphilis from the coffee cup.
The p.m. was spent copying out invoices. I pecked away, feeling my hopelessness and incompetence returning. By six o’clock I squirmed with irritability. I came home in a cracking temper, insulting everybody. I hated myself for it.
April 14th (Wednesday)
This morning I arrived laden with books to read and letters to answer. I am determined to be energetic every moment that I have to be here, unlike the other people in this office, who slack away doing nothing. There’s hardly any business accomplished.
Miss Robertson yawns, gossips about her Scottish relations, her flat or her idea of a perfect holiday. She makes cups of tea and looks out of the window. The room gets squirted with eucalyptus by the little girl who serves as secretary for Mr Skinner. Mr Skinner is the nice man who greeted me on Monday.
I suddenly realise how different these people’s world is from mine: no snobbery.
Time drips on. The tea interval is greatly looked forward to. Schmiegelow plays the comedian, ragging old Miss Robertson. She answers back in her fluty Scotch accent, yelling with laughter.
After tea I’m restless to bolt as soon as possible. The others seem content to stay on till the bitter end, even though they know there is no work for them to do nor any possibility of there being any. I suppose they have nothing to get away to.
April 15th
I felt it was a bit too late in the day to ask what E. & O.E. meant, but managed to do a lot of credit notes.
During the luncheon interval I again went to the British Museum. I tried to pretend I wasn’t hungry, but finally bought some bars of milk chocolate. In the B.M. I had difficulty about a reader’s ticke
t. Anyhow, I did get a squint at the mediaeval costume books.
In spite of my resolution against idleness, I spend a lot of time gassing away with Miss Robertson. She is forever brewing tea. She stands and pours it out into cups, while the teapot leaks and drips into the fireplace. She ogles Mr Skinner: ‘Two spots more?’ Mr Skinner cannot resist, replies embarrassedly, ‘I don’t mind if I do.’ Miss Robertson is delighted. ‘That’s right,’ and she throws the dregs of the first tea right on to the fire. Sp-r-r-r! There is a terrible spitting noise, almost a pop, followed by a burst of grey smoke.
INSPIRATION FROM HELEN MACGREGOR
I rang up Miss Helen MacGregor, the photographer, and arranged to meet her at six o’clock this evening. I was looking forward to seeing the studio and the good work she and Maurice Beck are doing.
Helen MacGregor is rather like an apple that has been kept for a long time in a loft. She might be one’s fairy godmother — benevolent, with a benign twinkle in her eye.
As we talked ‘sharp’ (shop), I looked round the studio at a large screen which was papered with silver foil, the lacquer chest, and other oriental props I’d seen photographed by her in Vogue. Then Miss MacG. put on a spotlight and showed some examples of her work: the things she really liked. I gazed in amazement. Every picture struck me as being the work of an alive person, with a gifted imagination.
H. MacG. seems to have taken pictures all over the world. She favours Chinese things — owing, I suppose, to the fact that Maurice Beck lived twenty-five years in China.
I looked at the photographs; I listened to her talk. Her flow of bright ideas made me glow. We talked of photographers, pictures and paintings. I felt attuned to her attitudes. I confessed to being a lost soul, striving to fight my way against the difficult difficulties of youth.