The Wandering Years (1922-39)

by Cecil Beaton

  Pictures of the dogs, both dead and alive, had been made by ‘lady artists’. Coloured photographs of them were framed about the house, and two particularly small corpses had been stuffed and placed in glass cases in the drawingroom!

  We retired to change for dinner. I looked forward to act two of the play. I chuckled away to myself in the clean, white bedroom (there were forty guest rooms, I learned), where a pot of asters had been placed to make me feel ‘quite at home’.

  Rise of second act curtain: our hostess is discovered wearing turquoise satin embroidered with moonstones. Diamond stars glitter in her coconut-fibre wig. The Duchess has chosen an overmantel of black sequins, while Miss Wilberforce plays safe in a jeune-fille frock. Pelion-Smith does not play safe: he wears a black waistcoat with his tailcoat.

  The dining-room is a mausoleum lined with red silk and — surprise! — over the sideboard one fine Nicholas Poussin. A white shiny cloth covers the table, while scarlet gladioli tower in silver tureens and trumpet-shaped vases, blocking the view of vis-à-vis diners and preventing general conversation.

  Mrs Mosscockle, undaunted by the épergne, contrives to ‘make conversation’, while Pelion-Smith interpolates unctuous bromides in a voice so rich one feels bilious.

  Mrs M.: ‘I hide in a cupboard during thunderstorms. I hope that all those who are cruel to animals will be punished in the after-life,’ etc.

  ‘Yais.’

  Brightly, I mention that lobsters can be heard screaming in the pot while being boiled up.

  Mrs M., her rickety little frame shaking and shuddering with horror, gasps, ‘Fancy, a poor squealing fish!’

  After dinner, we have barely settled in the drawing-room when our hostess (fearful of things not going with a swing) drags us off to a billiard room that smells as though it had never been lived in or utilised before.

  A rusty old gramophone is put on. Miss Wilberforce and I snigger slightly at the excruciating sounds. Bowing-Levey shows no feelings at all. Pelion-Smith piles Pelion on Ossa, raving emptily about Albani as she wails away like a stray dog. Why, even old Mrs Mosscockle believes there is something wrong with her favourite soprano tonight.

  The wireless proves no greater success: it cannot be heard. After a scrap of billiards, Pelion-Smith suggests dancing. To a foggy, grinding record of The Blue Danube, he and our hostess waltz on six square feet of uncarpeted floor. P.-S. looks like a Soho waiter in his baggy tailcoat, the pants sloppily sagging at his knees. He holds his preserved partner at arm’s length.

  The Duchess whispers to Bowing-Levey to turn off the stove, as the heat is asphyxiating. A few minutes later she complains of a headache and retires. The second act has reached its climax. The ladies curtsey, the men bow.

  P.-S. holds up the curtain. ‘Might I have a nupple before I go to bed? I always have a nupple before going to bed.’ This request occasions a lot of bother, but the butler eventually brings a nupple up.

  Third act breakfast tomorrow at ten o’clock. And everyone must be assembled on time!

  August 15th (Sunday)

  The pièce de résistance of the weekend was provided this afternoon when Mrs Mosscockle expensively hired a launch to take us up river for a trip. Empress of China had room enough for two hundred and fifty people, and we were seven. It went smoothly, elegantly, but oh so slowly. We glided along, a living Tissot, as everyone exclaimed at the view. ‘Oh, isn’t that picturesque? Look at those willow trees, and all those Dorothy Perkins!’ Every other house on the river had white-painted balconies and a wealth of scarlet geraniums. Windsor Castle, in the distance, looked as it does in Victorian water-colour sketches. Mrs Mosscockle sat in a wicker chair, revelling in it all. ‘Capital, capital!’ At dinner, the scarlet gladioli had been changed for salvia. Last night’s pickings had been poor, but now Mrs M. provided caviar and champagne. She herself eats like a butterfly, but Pelion-Smith guzzled greedily. Between mouthfuls he said, ‘That’s a lovely diamond bracelet you’re wearing, Mrs M.’

  She replied, ‘Yes. In memory of my husband. A snake, you see. Eternity.’

  We then went on to discuss literature and art for an eternity. ‘Thackeray,’ P.-S. managed between mouthfuls, ‘Oh, I like Thackeray. He’s got bite. Vanity Fair is strong meat.’

  Miss Wilberforce introduced the subject of modern poetry. She thought Kipling very bold. ‘I don’t like him myself, but he has a great public.’

  ‘What do you think of the Sitwells?’ I ventured. But nobody had heard of the Sitwells.

  Pelion-Smith regarded me with suspicion. ‘In my humble opinion, the modern tendency in art is the cult of the ugly.’

  Mrs Mosscockle shuddered, ‘The cult of the ugly! How horrible!’

  Typical of the cult was Sargent. ‘How cruel and merciless his portraits are,’ said Bourbon Princess Marie Louise, Duchess of Seville.

  ‘Portraits should be idealised,’ Mrs M. agreed. And the matter was left there.

  After dinner our hostess was induced to play the piano and sing. A travesty to end travesties, she sat playing mostly wrong notes as she squawked out II Bacio, The Rosary and A Little Brown Bird Singing. I bit my lower lip savagely in order to maintain the proper reverence. She wheezed; she wobbled on the treble notes, inevitably three tones flat. Even as a funny skit it would have seemed overdone. Pelion-on-Ossa seemed too embarrassed to gush. It remained for Bowing-Levey cleverly to intersperse the necessary encouragements. After a particularly screeched ‘To kiss the cross, sweetheart, to kiss the cross,’ however, he could only remark, ‘That must have been a very tiring and difficult one to sing.’

  SANDWICH: PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE

  August 17th

  It was midnight when the train arrived at Sandwich. Mama and Aunt Jessie met me on the platform, both looking wild and unkempt in old clothes, but elated by the excitements of their holiday; the pageant at Walmer Castle, antique shops in the back streets of Deal and the Prince of Wales on the golf-course. All the news they gave me as we walked in Stygian darkness to the cottage which is about a mile outside Sandwich.

  Next morning Nancy and Baba greeted me early, alert and bright. I was pleased to get a fresh impression of them. They are both very pretty indeed, with pale faces and hair that has got bleached from the sun. Baba has the more classical features but is going through a gawky, ungraceful period. Nancy, by contrast, knows what to do with herself and can be most decorative.

  N. and B. showed me about the cottage, small and primitive, but they’ve been happy with it. The garden’s not bad, and there’s a kitchen garden, orchard and some hens.

  We bathed at Deal: the water grey and filled with jellyfish. Lunch seemed more like a picnic. We ate grilled ham and breakfast foods. I had a gargantuan appetite.

  Afterwards, Mum and Modom busied themselves with domestic work. Modom concentrated on catching fleas off the dog. It appears that the cottage had been infested with fleas. No sooner had the family arrived than all were bitten. Mummie wrote a ‘strong’ letter to the owner of the house, who became outraged and wrote back: ‘How dare you? I have a horror of fleas.’ Meanwhile I lay on the lawn: How pleasant to be lazy and do nothing but watch the clouds or the cabbage butterflies hovering around, or the various little insects in the grass. I read some letters of Chekhov.

  From then on, the incidents of the holiday have no sequence... Days went by while I sat in a wicker chair in the garden, reading. For the first time, I read all the Jane Austen novels, and made drawings of the heroines. I discovered Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh. What could be more piercing than: ‘He found a theory on which to justify himself and went to sleep?’

  I also came across Ronald Firbank. A little story called Caprice is the best; the others are too inconsequential to be funny for very long. Robert Byron’s excellent The Tower made me appreciate Byzantine art for the first time. It was a shock to discover that Robert, a person I had always considered a dilettante-white-mouse, should be so erudite.

  Other works: Margot Asquith’s trashy novel, and Re
becca West’s essays. In fact, I read more than ever before. But how slow I am: Nancy and Baba can read twice as fast.

  Every evening we went for a walk through the cornfields: it was enormously nice. Before dinner, we sat on the window sills outside the house and read, while a late sun shone warm. Sometimes we would sit enthralled, listening to the group of villagers. Against the hedge which divided our lawn from the walk by the ramparts are public seats. On these, old ladies gossip to one another to pass the time of day.

  ‘I believe in children eating their crusts.’

  ‘There’s been such a horrid smell down there.’

  ‘Aaah, you mean the drains! The sewer! We had to shut all our windows during that very hot weather. We couldn’t stand it.’

  By gaslight, I made quick pen and ink sketches of Baba. The results encouraged me, and I filled many pages. The gas hurt my eyes; in addition to which, it smelt and killed the cut flowers.

  Gradually we gave up and did nothing after dark, just walked outside and went to bed absurdly early. Not tired enough to sleep through the night, I’d wake and read by candlelight while moths spluttered and popped in the flame. In the orchard outside, I could hear the thud of apples falling.

  Ninnie had come out of retirement for a holiday, but insisted upon becoming maid-of-all-work. She sang to herself all day; and as her sense of tune is non-existent, the noise we heard was like an old hen clucking in the yard.

  The Chattocks came to stay, which pleased Nancy and Baba especially. I was left alone to read and write and draw. When the Pater came down for weekends (most unsuitably clad in city clothes), the little Mill House almost burst its walls. Ninnie’s songs turned to a dirge. Daddy’s mood was a bit sullen. He’s no more interested in Mummy’s or N. and B.’s enthusiasms, than he is in mine. And if the truth be told, we are not interested in his enthusiasms either. Behind all our frivolity lies the unhappy awareness of this incompatibility. No one thinks about it if the abyss can be avoided, but the abyss is nevertheless there.

  ‘Best summer for many years,’ said the postman as the sun continued to shine on our holiday. We over-ate ourselves with village chocolates, marshmallows and ice cornets from Mr Medlicott. I started smoking again and bought cigarettes. I bought papers and magazines at the station: the society ones on Wednesday morning, the New Statesman and Saturday Review on Saturday. I bought Indian ink and inspiring notebooks from the stationer’s. Each time I did this I passed through the churchyard with its old and new graves and wizened villagers tending them. We played tennis a lot. My laziness was such that I could never bother to put the racket back in its press after the set.

  One evening while we were eating a cold supper in the kitchen, I talked airily of my plans about going to the Lido on Sunday. ‘Two journalists, Mrs Whish and Mrs Settle, are off to Venice to write about Baroness d’Erlanger’s costume ball. They suggested I tag along with them.’ What I didn’t say to the family was that I am desperate to go, though I don’t know how I’ll manage it. The alternative — returning to Schmiegelow’s office — was not very cheerful. Suddenly the telephone rang. It was Daddy relaying a telegram for me from Peggy: ‘Very sorry impossible. Writing.’

  August 19th

  Damn! Damn! Damn! Now how was I to get to the Lido? The fortune teller had said two journeys abroad, and one of them wasn’t even going to materialise!

  Mum asked what the message meant. I told her I had written to borrow money from Peggy. Mum turned white. ‘Have you gone mad? It’s the most disgraceful thing for a young man to borrow off a young girl. What a caddish thing to do! You’re abusing her kind hospitality. No one will ever lend you money for pleasure. You must never do such a thing again.’

  I suddenly felt abashed and squeamish. I hadn’t thought of it in that light at all. Being perfectly honest, I would have paid the money back as soon as possible. It wasn’t as though I were stealing. Anyway, I wrote to Peggy immediately, saying how sorry I was and that I suddenly realised I shouldn’t have done such a thing, but out of desperation, etc....

  I felt stranded. All my high-falutin’ talk had been worthless and silly. I couldn’t go, not even if I sold all my leather bound books so carefully collected from old David’s bookstall at Cambridge.

  I went to bed, sick with the thought of not seeing Venice this year. I wouldn’t be meeting my saviour after all.

  August 20th

  Nancy and Baba wondered if they couldn’t get their money out of the bank and lend it to me. I said no, that wouldn’t do. I asked Mum what she thought. ‘The only thing to do is write to your father and explain the matter. See what he says.’

  Could I? I hadn’t really thought of that, but it was my last hope. I sat down and wrote: ‘Will you lend me twenty pounds to go to Venice?’ Then I listed all my reasons, and even boldly stated it was a waste of my time to remain in Holborn when I could earn more than a pound a week standing on my head.

  Baba had the note ‘express lettered’ to London. If I rang my father this evening, I’d have his decision.

  I spent the rest of the day being sick with nervousness. Whenever the telephone bell went I had pangs of agony. False alarm: the wrong number. Mummy began to worry with me.

  The telephone rang again. This time it was my father. ‘If you intend just to go for pleasure, I’m afraid I must refuse.’

  ‘But it isn’t for pleasure. I really think I might be able to get something out of it.’

  ‘Well, you see, I can’t go on forever with these great expenses. You’ve been a year doing nothing. I can’t really afford ... don’t think I’m being unreasonable...’ Then, after, a long pause, ‘If you do think there is a chance of something coming of it, I’ll let you have the money.’

  I exploded with gratitude. Daddy became gruff. ‘You see, as usual you leave everything till the last minute. If you’d known this all along we ought to have discussed matters thoroughly. And your passport: that’ll have to be seen to.’

  The rest of the evening was panic. I’d leave here first thing in the morning; I started to pack and looked up the earliest train to London. Then it was discovered that none of us had any money, and I couldn’t buy a ticket without ten shillings! I had sevenpence, Nancy and Baba about sixpence between them, Mummie a few odd shillings and Modom a religious medallion of doubtful value. We looked in every drawer of the cottage, in every purse. We scraped together seven-and-six, which wasn’t enough. Then Mum found a pound note. It shamed me to take these scrapings, but I couldn’t turn back now.

  There was no alarm clock in the house. I wondered how I’d wake up in time to catch the early train. Baba said, ‘I can make myself wake up any time I want to. I’ll wake you at six-thirty.’

  August 21st

  Baba’s pale yellow face appeared in the doorway — triumphant, beaming and sprightly. ‘Exactly six-thirty! I woke up on the stroke.’

  All flea bitten and miserable, I got up and dressed hurriedly. The clocks seemed to show different times. Baba had gone back to sleep, taking her watch with her. I thought there was time to spare but Mum agitated me on, saying how awful it would be to miss the train. I bolted off to the station. It seemed longer than a mile, and I began to grow panicky. I had to catch that train, otherwise I wouldn’t arrive in London in time to get my passport. I ran the last lap in agony. My clothes stuck to me; my hands were grimy and aching from the effort of lugging the heavy bag. Ready to give up the ghost, I reached the platform just as a train was going out. Then I suddenly saw a clock: I was half an hour early!

  During the journey I thought: how selfish I am, how nice the family is being to me. But how wonderful to be going to Venice! It only remained to face my father this evening, an ordeal which might prove embarrassing. I’d felt master of the situation on the telephone, but it would be difficult to look him straight in the eye...

  It wasn’t difficult. When Pop arrived home he seemed calm and quiet, hardly mentioning my trip. I just thanked him very much. And, almost by tacit agreement, we never alluded to Schmie
gelow or the office. We had dinner. As there were no servants, I helped with the food. I drank a lot of whisky and soda, felt quite drunk and talked freely and easily.

  In my room I started to put out the photographs and designs I was taking to Italy to show to my ‘saviour’, whoever he or she might be!

  August 22nd

  I was ready to go. I called a taxi. I kissed Daddy goodbye, not having kissed him in months, almost years. Then, with my pink flannel scarf round my neck and neat luggage stowed away, I set off for the Lido.

  Part V: Venice, 1926

  August 24th

  Venice! I stand at the window of the Pensione Casa Petrarca. There is no view, but effective shadows fall on the white stone walls outside. What a blinding sun! What a glut of sun! I never realised before, but in England the sun comes in precious small spasms. Here, it shines all day.

  I feel alive and alert. I enjoy my café complet. The only thing I can say to the maid is Caffé completo and Grazia. The coffee, heavy with chicory, leaves a nice taste on the roof of one’s mouth. And I like the Italian bread, dry and indigestible.

  I walk down all the odd, dirty, bright vistas. Everything is picturesque — a word which, until now, I’ve always considered taboo. I take turnings and wind my way through twisting little alleys, overcrowded with people and glittering with shops.

  Suddenly I stumble on the Piazza San Marco. What a shock! All seems incandescent. St Mark’s is a shimmering cluster of oriental beehives. The Doges’ Palace stands luminous and flushed, like a flame through porcelain. Thousands of pigeons are so much confetti; the glaring whiteness of stone filigree carving completes a theatrical unreality. I want to stand and gaze forever, but my companions have arranged to catch the boat to the Lido.

  We arrive at the Excelsior. What a hideous Moorish hotel! Its vulgarity and bad style make me think of a Hippodrome revue — meretricious but rather fun. In the marble lounge, women sit about wearing the most expensive pyjamas (with designs of dragons and birds of prey hand-painted in brilliant, sickening colours) and no shoes. The men, too, saunter about in fancy pyjamas. It is all quite absurd, fantastic and smart.