The Wandering Years (1922-39)

by Cecil Beaton

  Lunch was a success. Edith ate heartily of a piping hot fish soufflé which was a triumph, except that it had bones in it. Manley[42] offered red or white wine at the same time, and to make matters worse had placed the bottles on a mingy little tray he had picked up from heaven-knows-where. Edith, when approached, entolled in her bell-clear voice, ‘White, please.’ During dessert she recited a bit of Gertrude Stein’s ‘Portrait of Tom Eliot’: ‘Silk and wool, silken wool, woollen silk.’ How precisely and richly she spoke. She could make any rubbish sound like poetry.

  I could hardly contain my impatience and delight as we went up to my sisters’ bedroom for the afternoon’s photography. She posed instinctively. No matter how many positions I had already taken, I felt loth to call a halt. Surely this was an unique opportunity. I must perpetuate the image in front of me, of a young faun-like creature sitting against my leaping-fawn design, looking surprisingly Victorian in her crudely-cut Pre-Raphaelite dress, with her matador’s jet hat, and necklace, her long mediaeval fingers covered with enormous rings. When the hat was discarded, she became a Brontë heroine, and her pale silken hair fell in rats’ tail wisps about her face, while the big teapot handle bun made the nape of her neck appear even more impossibly slender.

  As the afternoon wore on, I suggested more exotic poses. I even persuaded her to asphyxiate under the glass dome. She became quite hysterical kneeling on the floor, her knees and joints popping and cracking. A Chinese torture she called it, but loved it all the same.

  I, meanwhile, had my own agonies. The camera kept going wrong, the film got stuck and couldn’t be wound further. I excused myself, crossed the landing to my room, pulled down the blind and unrolled the film.

  At last Edith left to ‘finish a poem’ she was in the middle of. I caught an approving twinkle in her eye as she left. It meant that we were going to be friends. I remembered a letter Kyrle had written to me in answer to a cri de coeur of mine. I had begged for his advice. ‘What on earth can I become in life?’ He had replied: ‘I wouldn’t bother too much about being anything in particular, just become a friend of the Sitwells, and wait and see what happens.’

  After today’s photographic session my eyes ached from looking into the unshielded photographic bulbs. I could see wiggling scarlet and green worms everywhere. Hastily I changed for dinner, as Billie Williams was taking me to the ballet.

  What a rush life has become!

  A RUSH OF ORDERS

  December 9th

  The telephone bell rings all day long. It seems that the young girls I’ve lately come in contact with have nothing better to do than to call me: ‘Take me out; take my photograph again and let me bring Tanis, Meraud, Honey and Rosamond...’

  I’m generally in a compliant mood. If there is any complaint, it’s simply that I spend too much time on the drudge work connected with photography. Lately, however, I’ve been giving Selfridge’s photographic department nearly all the developing. This morning I traipsed there for the fifty millionth time to get the results of Edith Sitwell. The camera had leaked: light got in and spoiled a number of negatives. It would!

  Soon after lunch, Inez brought Honey, Rosamond, etc., to be photographed. After almost every pose the camera got stuck; I had to go into my darkened bedroom and tug at the film.

  Inez, very business-like, suggests that I give her a commission on each girl she brings to be photographed. It sounds all right to me.

  The girls sat round in various stages of décolleté, as I like to take bare shoulders. With everyone in her slip, the room looked like a dormitory. (When I was photographing the Du Maurier sisters, outspoken Daphne said it looked like a brothel.) Inez chatted and smoked cigarettes, sometimes holding the lights above the girls’ heads for me.

  We had a riotous afternoon. Inez’s friends kept saying they hadn’t enjoyed themselves so much for ten years; in fact, not since the last time they’d been photographed. Meanwhile, I tried to keep my head and bring into play all the stunts and tricks I’ve developed.

  December 18th

  There were endless photographs to be done. A glut of Tanis Guinness turned out beautifully. I love her fat face, her enormous eyes with tulip-petal lids.

  I sat for hours under a light, retouching prints with pencil and paint. Then I steamed them over a kettle in the cook’s den downstairs; mounted them with secotine and put the cards to press under the leg of some heavy furniture. Then more hours enlarging: I persisted in making endless prints of the same picture until I got one worthy of being sold.

  I stopped at ten o’clock, as I was invited to Madge Garland’s bottle party. Mum knew I was going out, but we had to keep it from Dad. Last night Reggie had been stupid enough to stay on at a nightclub until five o’clock. Dad is generally a sound sleeper, but by some misfortune he woke up and heard Reggie returning surreptitiously. There was a terrific row. I had difficulty getting away unnoticed. Mum kept cave for me. I couldn’t stop laughing at the sight of her in her nightgown, face soused in grease and terrified eyes beckoning me to come on or go back. She allowed me to take a bottle of champagne to the party, as it’s Christmas.

  December 20th

  The Christmas rush is on. Everyone wants last-minute photographs taken for presents. I am up to my navel in work. This morning was such a pandemonium I hadn’t a jiffy to shave or dress smartly. I grovelled on the floor in a dirty old sweater and flannel trousers, mounting and retouching masses of prints. The pink work room got strewn with rubbish. My mother came to the door, looked and sighed woefully, ‘This room will never be the same again.’

  Anyway, I did a good day’s work and sent off several large packages, including the glass-eyed woman’s order.

  January 14th 1927

  Today is my twenty-second birthday. Yet the last few years have meant so little to me, compared with my early life. How impressed one was, how cut with emotions as a child! Now I feel that life has slowed down to half pace. I’m rather thick-skinned, and things don’t seem quite as important or vital as they once were. Life has become more or less routine.

  Twenty-two, damn it! Hell take it! Or no! I do believe it is twenty-three! Yes, I was born in 1904. Good Lord, I’m twenty-three!

  In my suit of plus fours, I felt like a new person. I then went hunting for a place to use as a photographic studio. Now that my photographs have become well-known, I can make a great deal of money if I start in a business way.

  I went to estate agents. I’d like a mews in Mayfair, an amusing place where I could not only click away but also paint and read and telephone my friends. I want to do the place up to look like my own, with cages full of chirping birds.

  WEEKEND AT WILSFORD

  The weekend party described below was the first of many others to be spent at Wilsford. This Elizabethan-esque manor-house in the Wylye valley, was created by the mystical Lady Glenconner, at this time married to Lord Grey of Falloden. Living with her was her youngest son, Stephen Tennant, a golden-haired young man who resembled the youthful Shelley. I had first met this remarkably poetic-looking apparition while he rode the papier-mâché horses on the roundabouts at the Olympia circus. He was surrounded, as usual, by an adoring group of Guinness girls. He wore a black leather coat with a large Elizabethan collar of chinchilla. As he blew kisses to left and right, he created an unforgettable sight.

  Ever since Stephen had published, at a very early age, a book of his poems, The Vein in the Marble, illustrated with his own Beardsley-esque drawings, he was brought up, by his mother, to be a genius. Although he lead a semi-invalid life, which no doubt encouraged him to evade the more unpleasant aspects of reality, his health had recently improved; in fact he created an impression of galvanised vitality.

  Stephen could give a verbal fireworks display that was brilliantly funny. His ability to make people laugh was brought out, not in repartee, but in declamations on a definite subject, or in descriptions of past experience. Sitting around his silver bed, such critics as Rebecca West, Elinor Wylie and Arthur Waley, would be sent
into paroxysms of amusement while Stephen regaled them with fantasies about restocking his reptillery or ordering all the exotic specialities from the bottled fruits department at Fortnum & Masons.

  It is always difficult to re-create the humour of the past: so much depends on the timing and the nuances of the performer’s personality. And, jokes that strike us as original at one period, soon show signs of becoming dated.

  Since I never wrote down any of Stephen’s flights of inspiration, I cannot vouch for their successfully bridging the gap of years. I can only state that, at the time, they were inimitable.

  WILSFORD

  January 15th

  I was met at Salisbury station and motored through the dusk to Wilsford Manor. It turned out to be a grey-stone manor house, with parrots, lizards, Morris chintzes, and flagstones. The long, panelled drawing-room created a comfortable and informal air with its enormous soft chairs, bowls of fat hyacinths, sweet smelling freesias and an untidy litter of books.

  Lady Grey, plump finger tips in the air, beamed her greetings, eyes bright and small. Stephen wore plus-four trousers and a lizard-skin belt. Zita and Baby Jungman both looked countrified in wool and tweeds. Dolly Wilde,[43] raven hair shingled, and oyster face plastered with powder, wore vitriolic purple and reclined like a decadent Roman empress.

  We sat on the floor in front of a great log fire, at which an extravagantly exotic scented elixir was burnt in a long handled spoon. I felt awed by Lady Grey, gracious and queenly as a fairy godmother. But soon she left the young people to themselves.

  Stephen talked like a rocket going off. Dolly, never expecting that she might have inherited her uncle’s wit, continually managed to say clever, funny things as if by a fluke. Her eyes widened with astonishment at each bon mot, and she exploded as heartily as anyone in the ensuing laughter. Baba Brougham[44] hunched her shoulders, chuckled in spite of a cold and encouraged cleverness with, ‘Oh, that’s good! Oh, my! That’s very witty!’ Baby tossed a strand of flaxen hair out of her eyes and chuckled contagiously; Zita looking like Trilby with her page’s cap of hair, had a gentle quiet voice like honey, or milk that is slightly off. I love them both.

  Steven Runciman added a note of erudition. He told historical anecdotes, including a grotesque account of Louis XIV’s heart. It seems that, many years after the Sun King’s death, his heart was transported to England with much ceremony and reverence. While being exhibited on a salver at some reception, it was mistaken for a little cake and eaten by a short-sighted clergyman!

  At dinner, I warmed to Lady Grey when she regaled us with nonsense. She told about the woman who wanted to have diamonds put in her teeth so that she could even say, ‘Good morning’ brilliantly.

  Afterwards we played a game of ‘Analogies’; also various word games, including one called ‘Interesting Questions’, I was very bad at that, being so ill-educated. But, by dint of being funny instead of knowledgeable, I managed to come out fairly well. Steven Runciman wrote about me: ‘My Mother: Lady Colefax. My Father: Cardinal Mazarin. My Teacher: Leonardo da Vinci. My governess: a piece of porcelain. My skeleton in the cupboard: a kind heart. What would I save from the fire: myself.’

  I considered this weekend the beginning of a new life. At last I found myself among people with kindred interests. Moreover these people seemed to like me, whereas at home I feel misunderstood, somewhat of an idiot and a nuisance. Undressing in front of the fire that glowed welcome to me in this strange Honeysuckle Bedroom, I was happy and thankful after so many months of having fought desperately. If I hadn’t made a move from the Holborn office I should still be at odds with the world — miserable, unsuccessful and undeveloped.

  MY PARENTS’ SILVER WEDDING

  March 7th, 1928

  Today was Mummie’s and Daddy’s silver wedding day. At first there had been vague plans for a party. Several weeks ago, Mum suggested ‘having some people in’ and even employing a pianist; but since she inevitably avoids making any move or decision, nothing had been done about it and no one had been invited. It was just as well: this house is too small for a party. Besides, whom would we have asked?

  We all foregathered for such festivity as had been hastily planned this evening. Aunt Jessie, wearing an old evening dress under a day overcoat, was in high spirits and determined, whatever happened, to enjoy or at least make the best of the event. I hadn’t seen Mum earlier in the day, and tried to be nice. But I couldn’t congratulate her, couldn’t tender wishes or whatever one does on a silver wedding day. I was deeply shy and uncomfortable, wishing the whole thing had never come about. It seemed merely sad that my parents should have been married so long.

  Worse, I felt miserable and beastly for judging my parents’ life as being drab and dull. What a fatuous fool I am, living in a largely self-invented world of wit, brains and money. How dare I judge my parents’ humble efforts? I detest myself for it, yet their world is not for me. Their aura warps and rots me until I am without any spirit.

  Anyway, I was a part of tonight’s family party and must enjoy it just as Aunt Jessie seemed to be doing. After dinner, there would be the inevitable theatre. Whenever any of us has a birthday or anniversary, dress circle seats are taken at a theatre where the play is sure to have been running for some considerable time. Tonight we would see Gerald du Maurier in a piece that had received bad notices. But the choice was made in desperation: Daddy vetoed everything else. He’d read through the list, hated George Grossmith so that cut out Lady Mary, couldn’t bear Noel Coward so The Second Man had to be forsaken, and so on.

  I sat watching Daddy mix three crude, orange-coloured cocktails. Mama and Modom held the results high in their fingers, then sipped. Poppa, who had already changed, kept pulling out his heavy, old-fashioned gold watch and chain. I subsided on a sofa, listening to Modom’s jovial reminiscences of the wedding day. It is extraordinary how unintimate we are with our parents. They never talk about things past. I’ve no idea what sort of people my mother’s parents were, what their house in Cumberland was like, where my parents met or any such sentimentally interesting items. Yet here was Modom spurting out all sorts of amusing gossip. ‘Oh, Etty, do you remember how it rained? Do you remember the thunder? Do you remember how that boy lost Ernest’s hat? Ernest said, “Now be careful, don’t lose it.” “No sir,” and then, of course, when it was wanted it wasn’t to be found. Oh, the thunder! I shall never forget the peals of thunder when you were cutting the cake. The carriage horses were terrified! Had it stopped raining by the time you got off?’

  ‘Got off? A very suitable expression,’ said Papa. This rather typical joke of his struck me as being chillingly unfunny, but Modom threw back her head and screamed with golden-hearted laughter. Daddy looked at his gold watch again.

  Dinner was rather more elaborate than usual, with extra ornaments on the table; salmon, roast chicken, champagne and toasts.

  ‘Well, here’s luck for health, wealth and happiness during the next twenty-five years,’ Aunt Jessie raised her glass.

  ‘Best wishes,’ was all I could gulp. Then my father nearly killed me, as he held his glass in front of his mouth, nodded sheepishly to my mother and said, ‘Well, I’ll take on the job for another twenty-five years.’

  Reggie exploded with laughter, his face red and shining. ‘I think that’s jolly funny: take on the job for another twenty-five years!’

  Sitting next to me, Baba remained very quiet. She is sensitive, and I daresay it was all as painful to her as it was to me. But we didn’t discuss it afterwards.

  No one at the table would ever think about this scene again.

  After dinner the gold watch came out again. ‘Oh, Ernest, there’s plenty of time. It doesn’t take a minute to put our things on.’

  ‘Well, you always say that, but in point of fact it does take time. I was only suggesting that you should start to put your things on.’

  Aunt Jessie and I went in a taxi, as there was not enough room in the car. Modom talked hard all the way. I tried to concentrate: wh
at was she saying? Something about walking so far this afternoon in order to save some bus fare! Yet Auntie, on this anniversary, had filled our drawing-room with lilies. I thought, ‘Here I am, having spent the day jumping into taxis, and I didn’t even buy my parents a bunch of violets.’

  The six of us sat in a line in the fourth row of the dress circle. Daddy wore his spectacles and hunched his shoulders. Mummie had on a home-made dress and an old moleskin cape that offended my eyes. The light in which she sat made her hair appear tangerine, though I noticed it was pale at the parting. Baba looked white and anaemic; Reggie was just an ordinary young man. Auntie burbled next to me, her hair dyed rotten, then crimped and curled and kept in place with many slides.

  I was suddenly overwhelmed. My heart cracked in two for love of them, and with shame at my snobbish uneasiness over their appearance and the ordinary commendable goodness of their lives.

  The play was bad as it was said to be, but I saw it only through a veil of my private unhappiness.

  THE PHILOSOPHY OF BOY LE BAS

  April 1st

  Tremendous omission: I forgot to write about such an important thing as going to see Boy in his flat.

  It was an impressive visit, and I came away filled with admiration. Not so long ago Boy was moping about, looking ill and refusing to speak much. Then he left his family; since that time he is living every moment of his life, thinks hard and works hard. Even his leisure hours are spent reading good books, not smart rot.

  It is positively inspiring to see what a strong person Boy has become. I’ve more confidence in him than ever before. He has even become sufficiently detached to look upon my half-baked social world with tolerance.

  Boy’s apartment, on the top of a fat Georgian house in Golden Square, is typical of his new life — completely utilitarian, with no ornaments or silly art effects. The whole place has been whitewashed out; the furniture could scarcely be simpler. On huge book shelves he keeps only the books he will read, having sold that half of his collection which he knew he would never begin.