by Cecil Beaton
Besides, there was a lot for me to do: many photographs to cope with, including all the Venice pictures to pack and post to magazines. As always, I’m enthusiastic about submitting the work, though it will probably come back with the polite, ‘Go away, you’re not wanted.’
Also, I had Hazel Owet’s photographs to do. Two pictures of her will pay more than a week’s work at Schmiegelow’s.
I remained quiet as a grave in my bedroom until my father had gone off to his office. Then I rang up Schmiegelow and said I’d come tomorrow to do some typing if he liked. There was nothing to do anyway. Miss Robertson was on holiday. But if I came in tomorrow morning for a talk, he would like that. I agreed.
On with the photos. A packet of Venice negatives arrived. I went out and bought more printing paper to enlarge them. When the results were dry, they went off to the papers.
With a charcoal pencil I retouched Miss Owet. I gave her more eyelashes, cut irregular lumps off the dress, made her look prettier and more uninteresting. Silly people don’t want to look interesting.
Jack Gold rang up, eager to hear all about the Lido. We arranged to meet for lunch. He was intrigued and amused when I told him about Mrs Whish. He wanted to hear all about this journalist from Barnes, whose work took her to wherever the haut monde congregated.
I said, ‘She’s a very good sleuth, and has worked on The Times under a man who is fascinated by all the perversions.’
‘All of them?’ Jack raised his eyebrows.
‘Yes. She’s an expert on the sins of society. And I must say I admire her for being philosophical when she gets such offhand treatment from the high and mighty.’
‘They snub Whish?’
‘She just laughs. She told me, “I give the most beautiful of those women seven years.” Besides, she sees herself as others see her. She has no taste and she knows it. She gushes at flamboyant trash in shop windows. At teatime, when most people like a brioche or shortbread, she eats one of those unbelievable cakes all smarmed with apricots and puffed cream, and layers of jam and coconut.’
Jack said, ‘You must write a play about Mrs Whish on the Lido.’
‘But I couldn’t hope to write a well-constructed piece. It might have a certain grotesque vitality, but to tell a story for two and a half hours on end —’
Jack talked very large. ‘Well, you hear of these successful first plays. I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a hit. I could help you with the bones of the story, if you like.’
The suggestion was stimulating. Jack and I had been successful enough at Harrow, collaborating on a satire of Elinor Glyn’s Three Weeks. We decided now to spend one week reading plays, then go off to some quiet place and write. We would use a pseudonym, calling ourselves Ada Meadows.
On our way to buy books on play construction at the Times Book Shop, we passed Cathleen Nesbitt. She was looking her most severe and staid, gaunt about the face and dressed in an unspectacular fashion. I told Jack whom we had just passed. He said, ‘Oh, I wish I had known. I would have taken off my hat!’
‘Why? Do you know her?’
‘No,’ he said, and smiled. I was amazed. ‘You old dog.’ Really, it is fantastic how formally Jack behaves — like an old Regency club bore. He is younger than I am, and certainly too young to be doffing his hat to actresses in the street, whether he knows them or not.
When I left Jack, it was with the feeling that Venice had perhaps justified itself after all. If it had not given me a job, it had given me the character of Mrs Whish. I knew her pat. It might be funny to see her going through the hoops, against the bright setting of Venice, always wearing the same old black dress and black picture hat.
Other main characters would be: a stiff upper-lipped duchess, impoverished but unwilling to lower her gunsights; and a pushing American hostess, a ‘shooting star’ closely based on Mrs Corrigan.
I went home and quickly filled many pages of a notebook. All we needed now was a plot, which quite possibly might evolve.
Meanwhile, there were still a lot of photographs to be printed. I darkened the bedroom, but Ada Meadows kept intruding on my work. Every now and again I leapt into the air as things to put in the play occurred to me. So many parts of the jigsaw were falling into place. I felt that, at last, to be on the verge of giving birth; doing something myself, not just watching others perform. I didn’t mind a bit facing my father now that I had a plan.
I went on enlarging and came down to dinner in dirty, acid-eaten rags. Before Pop could say anything about Schmiegelow or ask if I had been there today, I announced, ‘My next mad scheme is to write a play!’ That more or less took his breath away.
‘Jack and I plan to go to Cornwall, find some quiet village and write for ten days.’
‘Where are you finding the money to go? Who will pay?’
I answered that I would. Hazel Owet was sending a cheque for her flattering photographs; and Jack had volunteered to settle a three pound ten debt for pictures I had taken of him a long time ago wearing a pink hunting coat.
‘Well good luck to you!’
In bed I started to read Ibsen and Galsworthy plays for hints on construction. I found that more often than not I was just led along by the story, unable to realise the craftsmanship. I was encouraged by studying The Queen in the Parlour but discouraged by Our Betters.
I studied until dawn. My elbow got stiff. A decorative circus bed may be fine to look at, but it’s most uncomfortable for reading in. With nothing to lie up against at the pillow end, one has to lean on an elbow.
I twitched with restlessness and longed to start work.
MR SCHMIEGELOW’s SECRET
September 7th
A hurry to be at Schmiegelow’s office by ten. When I came out of the underground, Holborn Circus looked just the same. That haunting man with scarlet eyes and face half-eaten away was still smoking a dry pipe and selling shoelaces. In Southampton Row, our building hadn’t changed by a scratch. Clara, the buxom, fresh-faced lift girl, took me up to the fifth floor. How sad to think that the inevitable had been going on in the same way ever since I’d left! Hundreds of letters had been received and posted, and perhaps just enough profit had been made to justify the office staff remaining on and on, in the same groove. Yet perhaps that’s what they like — being in a groove.
Schmiegelow was alone in the office, slowly tapping at a typewriter. We sat and talked. I asked him to smooth matters over with my father, to explain that I was marking time when I might be doing much better on my own. In any case, I could get a job somewhere else and earn more than a pound a week.
He agreed in his clipped, baby Danish accent. ‘Yess, it tiss a vaiste. But you see, you faghter iss a businesse man and wornts you to have your feeghte on the ground.’
I told Schmiegelow that I had my feet on the ground and was now toddling off to write a play. This interested and impressed him. I said, ‘Do tell my father that I’m not at all a slack sort of person. I really have great ambitions, and even when I’m doing nothing definite at home, I’m busy with photographs or painting.’ Schmiegelow promised to clear the air. I felt relieved. As I was leaving he said, ‘Don’t joordge your faghter too harshly. He just wants you to be dissciplined. He knows you’ll never be a businesse man. In fact, I’ll tell you a secret but don’t effer repeat it.’
‘What secret?’
‘Your faghter hass been paying me the one pound a week that I pay you.’
I was flabbergasted.
September 8th
I read Mrs Cheyney, or at least most of it, in the Times Book Club. It seems cleverer than it did when I saw it. But at that time, my level of a good play was so much higher than it is now that I am starting to write myself! I still don’t admire all those old- fashioned epigrams, though: they’re very Oscar Wilde, remote and unreal.
At lunch I read Granville-Barker’s Madras House.
TWO CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A PLOT
September 13th
Jack and I took tickets to Lyme Regis. We had d
ecided that Cornwall was too far, too expensive a journey. I had about one pound for my stay away, but with what Jack owed me I thought it would do.
The train started. We shouted ideas at one another, more suitable for short stories than a three-act play. It seemed difficult to get hold of a strong enough plot to carry three acts without being mechanical. We decided against murder, mistaken identity and above all robbery. How tiresome to have to invent ‘Who was the last person to put the pearls in the box? Who placed the box on the écritoire? We didn’t want any unpleasantness, no sex; yet the play had to give people the impression that they’d been amused and had their money’s worth.
At Axminster we still had no plot but decided to get off there. I carried a small attaché case and no change of clothes except for some socks. It would be simple and crude. We took a taxi through perfect scenery. It was just beginning to get dark as we arrived at the top of a steep hill to find the village of Charmouth. Here was where Harriette Wilson had come from, and here we would stay.
We inquired at two pubs but neither could offer anything except a double bed; and though we were collaborators, I thought that was going too far. We said we preferred lodgings anyway, not an hotel. Most of the villagers came out to consult with the taxi driver. ‘Try so and so; no, they’ve got people in.’
The driver, who looked like Massine, took us to six lodgings before we found one grey haired woman with eyes sparkling like stars in the glow of the candle she held. ‘Yars, yars,’ she could do us for two and half guineas a week but couldn’t manage dinner tonight. ‘Mrs Childs I am. Mrs Childs of Charmouth.’ We asked what her address was. ‘Oh, this is Waterloo House, but Childs of Charmouth gets me from all over the world.’
September 14th
I was wakened by Mrs Childs of Charmouth shouting at me outside the door. She had brought my breakfast and the hot water. Too modest to bring them in herself, she slowly opened the door and slid the tray and can along the floor like a toy engine. I roared with laughter. Mrs C. of C. must have thought me quite mad.
Jack was pompously unhurried, having breakfast in bed and reading the papers. An hour went by before he decided to have his bath. I, meanwhile, ached to get started. I didn’t give a damn about the London papers.
The morning was spent in fruitless discussion. Each time we got hold of a notion, some booby trap would suddenly send us flying into space. We went round and round in circles. Jack was all for murdering poor Whish at the end of the first act but I would have none of it. Perhaps the stiff upper-lipped duchess might put Mrs Corrigan’s pearls in the écritoire. Or Whish might have known Corrigan when.
At last we sat silent, dried up. Jack said cheerfully, ‘You must have your bath now. It’s getting on for lunchtime.’
September 15th
Even if we haven’t yet got a plot, we do think we know how to introduce the characters. Without knowing what would happen later, it seemed best to plunge into Act One. The wet, cold day prevented our going out, and so we did quite a bit of work. My mind buzzed with significant things that must be said by Whish, Corrigan and Stiff Lip. We were pleased and excited actually to be writing dialogue.
We still, alas, have no definite link to bind our characters together. In fact, I begin to wonder if we haven’t been counting our chickens before they were hatched. In our mind’s eye we read raving reviews of the play, made a fortune and envisioned the audience crying, ‘Author, author, we want Ada Meadows!’. We saw ourselves pulled onstage while Lady Curzon of Kedleston applauded from her box. But will all this ever become a reality?
After tea, Jack suggested that we part company until dinner — a welcome break from having seen one another continually for three days. Jack took his map and set out for a long walk. I went my own way for aimless miles over wet fields. I found myself hedged in, but with ridiculous determination pushed my head through thick hedges, getting my hair caught in twigs and my old trousers torn by thorns. I walked up and up, then sat on a gate at the top of a small mountain. I got out pencil and paper, but my mind was blank.
September 16th
This morning we sat in Mrs Childs of Charmouth’s clean sitting-room, looking out at the drizzle. At last Jack said, ‘Let’s give up this bloody trio and start on something else.’
‘Oh Jack, how can you? They’re my own flesh and blood. I’m fond of them!’
It was a deadlock. If we stayed together much longer we’d start to bicker. More separate exercise: I set off for a long walk in the rain. I sloshed through a field of clover and felt that a four-leafer might bring us luck. I found one within the first few seconds of looking. But one of the leaves was a bit malformed. I felt determined to find a proper one for luck. The rain made all the clover look silver, though my touch turned it to green. I went on looking until my back ached; I thought I was a damned fool not to be content with the poor example I’d got already. I didn’t find another.
This evening we more or less came to the conclusion that Charmouth is not the place to find a plot. We may part company for a few weeks, to think about things. If either gets an inspiration, we’ll join forces again and continue.
September 18th
Jack has gone. Perhaps I’ll hack away at the play more successfully by myself. I wonder if his three pounds ten will see me through? Or will I grow restless by myself and become too introspective?
After he left this morning, I tidied up the minute sitting-room. He had left Country Life hanging about, also his map and some rotten fruit.
Mrs Childs asked, ‘How long will you be staying?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you, Mrs. C.’
I sat down cheerfully and began to scan our notes for the play.
Suddenly I realised our efforts were crude and amateurish — utter rot, rot.
Mrs C. of C.’s sitting-room faces the road, and her house is on top of this huge hill. As a result, one can hear in the distance every single car that comes buzzing up the hill. The buzz grows louder and louder as gears are changed. By the time the car arrives at the summit, the noise is infernal. I hadn’t noticed this distraction so much while Jack was here, but now I seem to be aware of nothing else.
Working alone is more satisfactory than collaborating. Whenever I go stale, I type out what has already been written. Mrs Childs’ daughter comes in to lay a meal or clean the remains of one away. Mrs Child occasionally says, ‘You’ve been hard at it today, Mr Beaton.’ So I have; I had no idea what concentrated work a play requires. I went up the lane for a breath of air before lunch, but otherwise slogged non-stop ’til midnight.
September 19th
The morning was spent weeding out the titbits of what Jack and I have concocted and trying to zigzag them into place. After lunch I typed until my back ached.
I went out. Charmouth, with its grey stone and large, dark trees, looked peaceful in the bright sunlight. I walked down to the shore, then wandered for miles along the beach. The sky was as vivid a blue as one sees in Italy. The sands were yellow and hot.
Completely alone, with no one likely to be in sight for miles, I stripped naked and lay on my towel reading Congreve. Swarms of sandflies hopped about my back and legs. I went into the sea, thinking they would leave me alone if I were wet and salty. The water was cold and bracing, but when I came out the insects still buzzed about. Determined, I looked at my notes for the play, then decided I couldn’t do much unless I settled down to a table and became really wrapped up in it.
I dressed and walked further, deciding to scale the cliffs and explore the wild country. But it wasn’t so easy to find a place where I could climb up. After a long while, I came to a small stream that ran down the cliffs into the sea. Here there were many pampas grasses, and by clutching them I managed to reach the top of the downs.
I gasped with delight. It was all primitively wild, with not a sign of a cottage in sight. Rabbits scuttled, birds flew up from thickets, God was in His heaven and all was right with the world. I walked along the downs, or rather waded through bracken a
s tall as myself. I came to an enormous greystone farm, with beautiful barns.
I was tapping away energetically when Mrs Childs came in and said, ‘Not finished the whole play yet?’ She looked amazed when I told her I’d only just scratched the surface of Act I.
September 20th
Mrs Childs obviously thought I’d gone potty when she heard me reading my absurd play aloud. But in spite of her attempted interruptions, my dry throat and hoarse voice, I was determined to time, by my watch, the length of the first act. It was much too long, and of course there would be laughs. (I hoped.) Cutting could be done later. But what was going to happen in Act II?
Morning’s end and I still had no idea! The wastepaper basket was overflowing. I felt entitled to give my brain a rest, so would spend the afternoon blackberrying along those downs I discovered yesterday.
I set off with an enormous basket. It would be a gesture to send the blackberries to Mrs Whisht!
Though the blackberries were enormous, I kept thinking that the ones out of reach were bigger. Before ransacking the place in front of me, I would plunder the next grey bush. With their long, barbed branches, they reminded me of the details in a Leonardo drawing. I picked until my hands looked dipped in ink.
Worn out from pinching the black carbuncles off their sockets, I started back along the top of the cliffs. A fantastic idea came to me. Supposing a young man were to wake up and find himself here, in this wilderness? He stumbles across a sign post, ‘Trespassers will be shot’, and then to his panic hears distant dogs barking. The sounds come nearer; he sees farmers marching towards him with guns.
‘Bang!’ A young man shot out of nowhere, rushing along in white flannels. His face was serene and shining. He, too, had been overcome by the remoteness of the place. He got as much of a start on seeing me as I had on seeing him. He said, ‘Tricky path, isn’t it?’