by Cecil Beaton
Things looked black for us. I prayed for a verdict of ‘accidental death’.
Daddy called his witnesses. Bradley said, ‘Reggie was gay, in good spirits.’ Spencer told of the blackout and fall in the bathroom that morning. Jeanne Stourton spoke of how she had planned future dates with Reggie. It now seemed possible, indeed there was a half and half chance, that in spite of the train driver’s evidence the verdict would be open.
Each word was a year, each sentence a decade while the coroner impartially summed up. I thought him insufferably inhuman as he kept referring to ‘this man’. How could Reggie be put in the category of ‘this man’? How could my younger brother, who went off in the train to St Cyprian’s with me, who was so happy on our childhood holiday at Arley, who fell out of the hammock when I swung him too high, who played cricket and tennis with such flair, who taught me how to drive, who had a mysterious sense of humour, who for all his outward heartiness was a subtle enigma — how could Reggie ever be called ‘this man’?
The coroner concluded, ‘Although this man was content with his life and in good spirits, yet like many men today he apparently took that life for no apparent reason. In this case, I am convinced that this man had been worrying in secret about his eyesight. Indeed, what could be more important to someone in the Flying Corps? Suddenly an impulse had overtaken him to get rid of his troubles. And so, acting while of unsound mind, he killed himself.’
It was all over. There could be no repeal of the verdict. Useless to worry now about not having had a solicitor to appear for us. This impossible verdict must be accepted, but how were we to face Mummie and tell her the news? It would have been a comfort to bring home a verdict of ‘accidental’. A judgment of suicide could only crown her misery and despair.
Daddy had to leave for the City. I returned to confront Mummie. I have never hated a scene more in my life. I stopped outside her door, wishing so much that this had not been necessary. We had already called the doctor, in case it would be better to give her some soothing injection. But Mummie, perhaps through sheer exhaustion, seemed calmer as I went in to her. I gazed at her colourless, unalive face on the pillow.
‘Do tell me what they said,’ she pleaded.
In the softest way possible, I related the events of the inquest. Her eyes lit up for a second’s agony; she raised her head and cried, ‘Oh, but it’s too awful!’
The whole disaster struck me now as some incongruous nightmare. It was unlike anything that could possibly happen to us. If anyone in the family were ever to have been tempted to suicide, then why not me? Yet, despairing as I have been at times, such thoughts never really entered my mind. The others, Reggie in particular, couldn’t have been more normal. It was nothing short of impossible that it should be his face in the papers under ‘killed by a train’. It was an absurd unreality that he should be the ‘Flying Officer’ on the placards. Such tragedies happened to other people, never to one’s own family. What error of fate could overnight have overwhelmed us like this? How inconceivable that we should be the ones about whose trouble everyone in London was reading over the breakfast table.
In the drawing-room a trail of wreaths had begun to arrive for the coffin. I cried when I read the names and a further batch of sympathy letters.
I lay in bed uneasily. It took a long time to go to sleep. I remembered Reggie’s heavy tread on his way up to his bedroom; his calling Manley and his rather breathless, ‘Becka, Becka, Beck, Beck,’ to the dog. I kept seeing Reggie’s fresh, clear-cut features, his good nose, his eagle, lidless eyes so direct yet soft in their gaze, his forehead wrinkled in surprise.
This morning (Saturday) was the funeral. More flowers arrived, including a sheaf of lilies I had sent. Hesitantly, I wrote a last message to Reggie on the accompanying card. The flowers were somehow ugly, and they didn’t seem to smell.
Mummie was up from bed, weeping dejectedly as she waited in her bedroom for the funeral to begin. Nancy and Baba looked unaccustomedly pale without make-up. They sat on the arms of Mummie’s chair. Everyone looked strange in black.
Time now to go to the church opposite for the service. The wreaths had already been taken across. I was sent to tell Mum to come down. I tried to say casually, ‘I think we ought to be going.’
As we descended the cold staircase, I turned slightly and noticed my mother had on black satin shoes rather frayed at the toes. The coffin preceded us to the church. We walked up the aisle, Mum very bent with tears pouring down her face. She cried throughout the service.
The coffin looked solid and shiny. I couldn’t believe anyone lay inside it, least of all Reggie. The black-beetle pall bearers staggered under the load as they made their way down the aisle. We followed, the family and Reggie’s best friends — Raymond, Mrs O’Brien, Ninnie, Manley, Miss Joseph, Lady Chichester, relations and a few men I did not know and scarcely saw.
Outside there were painful kisses, silent handshakes. Nancy and Baba had faces swollen red with tears. Daddy and I drove silently to Hampstead cemetery. On the way, I watched to see which of the passers-by took off their hats as the hearse moved along. I noticed what a lot of people had cigarettes in their mouths.
The sun shone. We gathered around the open grave, watching the coffin lowered slowly into the vault as the last prayer was said. Only now did my father burst into tears. He tried to hide his face with his hat; he trembled and quivered. I was howling. Someone held my arm very tight.
After a few necessary words to relations and friends, we drove home. On the way, Daddy brought out his watch. ‘Twenty minutes to twelve. That didn’t take very long,’ he said.
The drawing-room looked like a scene in a Pirandello play, with so many flowers and everyone wearing black. There was sherry and brandy on the side table. No one spoke much.
January 14th 1934
A new year and another birthday. I am thirty now. My line of being young, inconsequent and all that, will not be possible any longer. Yet it’s hard for me to realise my age. Still thinking of myself as being twenty, it is a shock to see school contemporaries going slightly bald or grey, settled down stolidly to uneventful domestic lives.
CHRISTMAS AT ASHCOMBE, 1935
Our Christmas dinner wasn’t really festive. The three of us — Mummie, Daddy and myself — sat down in no spirit of gladness.
We made small effort to feel gay, though the bottle of champagne engendered a certain self-conscious levity. And my father, as he has done each Christmas Day ever since I can remember, raised his glass to my mother: ‘Well, Mrs Beaton, thirty-one years ago today we drew up this contract. Now, is this to be continued for another seven, fourteen or twenty-one years?’
My mother sadly and earnestly replied, ‘I shan’t be here for another seven years.’
‘But you’re too late,’ my father jested. ‘You should have given notice before.’ It was a nice way of overcoming Mummie’s morbidity.
I sat feeling caddish at my inability to rise to the occasion. But try as I would, I could not add stimulus to fragmentary conversations that died as soon as they were born.
At any rate, this Christmas dinner was less poignantly dramatic than last year’s. At that time, we had not got accustomed to family losses: it was Nancy’s first Christmas of wedded life: Reggie lay but recently in a cold, granite grave. There had been forced jollity, and a sad moment when glasses were raised to ‘absent friends’. That walrus buffoon, Uncle Wilfred, had insisted on making his joke, ‘Yes, let’s drink to absent-minded friends.’
Now Christmas is over. My father returns to London tomorrow: to a hotel, to an office where there is nothing of any importance to be done at all.
CONVALESCING
Newton Ferrers: Callington
States of health play curious tricks with one’s sense of time. I have been here in the Cornish countryside for the past four days, recuperating from an appendicitis operation as the guest of Bertie and Diane Abdy. I ought now to be stronger after so much sleep and quiet. Yet I am unable to remember how I felt
when I arrived, just as I have quickly become incapable of differentiating one day from another. Time flies as never before. I sleep so much that it gives me a headache. I am drugged from too much sleep, but have been unable to keep awake.
Initiative not only lags, it is totally lacking. I read little, in spite of my intention to read a great deal. I have not drawn, nor have I stuck any pictures in my album, nor have I written anything but the shortest notes in lieu of correspondence. Waking hours seem to be devoted to eating delicious food, looking at picture books and talking ceaselessly with Diane. We compare our illnesses and their attending consequences; we talk about painting, about furniture and decoration, everything pleasant.
Diane is the most articulate companion. Such a varied and brilliant use of words is rare.
Bertie, too, infects me with his enthusiasms. I would willingly put myself under his tutelage and learn a great deal more than I know about art or — perhaps more important — the art of living itself. Both he and Diane make me realise how incompetent and sluggish I am in the practise of this art. Ordinarily, life rushes by in a whirl of unconsciousness. I drug myself against reality by plunging into work and engagements, without allowing myself time to be aware of anything beyond my immediate interests. I am like a horse with blinkers on.
‘What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?’ But I mingle with too many people; I’m dazed by too many lights. My sketches are too quick, my articles too quick-fire, my photographs too many. Crowded weeks give place to others, while I labour under the delusion that I am living more vitally than if I sat down by a pool and just looked at some goldfish.
Yet even my play and pleasure are hurried. I am at best able to appreciate only certain superficial forms of beauty and sensual delights. By contrast I think of someone like Peter Watson, who has joined me here at the Abdy’s to motor me home. Peter feels himself inwardly to be an inferior human being. He practises no art, but I think him a very extraordinary person. If we are meant to live life fully, then surely he is one of the few people who know how to do this. Just being in his company affords an odd stimulus. He puts me on my mettle, makes me strive to inspirit him as much as he does me. As an observer, he is so incredibly sensitive and acute that it opens my eyes to many subtleties. Peter is the best person at the art of living I know. I wish I had some of his gifts.
HAZEL LAVERY
One of the biggest stars in my adolescence was Hazel Lavery[62]. She looked like a Luini Madonna — skin of alabaster, hair aflame, eyes huge as a hare’s and rabbit nostrils.
Hazel’s life was the apex of all worldly delights. Painters forever painted her; photographers squeezed their bulbs, and everybody gossiped. She moved in an aura of romance; she was in the swing. She posed as Botticelli’s Primavera, as Lady Hamilton, as a society woman in velvets, leopard skin and gold embroidery. Did Pavlova give a society garden party? Then Hazel would be snapped talking to Bernard Shaw.
On her private life she showered the extravagance of an artist. Had Hazel returned from Morocco? Then she brought a little coloured boy back with her. Wearing a turban, he trundled in with coffee to a dining-table aglow from crimson glass and columbines in vases. Did Hazel always wear mauve orchids? They were sent by an anonymous lover.
Now dear Hazel Lavery is dead. Not only has one of my first and favoured stars ceased to shine, but I have lost a true and sympathetic friend. When I started my career, Hazel was one of the first to overwhelm me with encouragement and kindness. She did all she could to help me. She sent notes, drawings, criticisms and suggestions. She sympathised with my despairs.
In her glory, Hazel was a witty companion overflowing with affection and happiness. She’d been a person after my own heart; a great player of make-believe. Without affecting grandeur, she enjoyed creating a good theatrical effect. No Cartier’s for her: she could not afford it, and in any case preferred paste jewels. Her clothes were generally concocted by herself and her maid. She would appear in public faultlessly wearing organdie frills and a picture hat she had pinned together. The result was in the best picturesque style. When she went to Courts, she wore Prince-of-Wales feathers on the front of her head. Often she met with failure in these home-made efforts. Once she became so irritated that she burnt a fur muff.
Hazel had artistic talent. She drew expertly but never concentrated long enough on her work. She could not bear to become tired or dirty. As soon as her hands were smudged with pencil or charcoal, she must give up. She was a charming, feminine amateur.
The past years were sad. From a plump and stocky beauty still flawless of face, she gradually changed into a haggard wraith.
She knew she was ill, and her illness made her restless and hysterical. She became ‘poor Hazel’. She had always talked too much — of her young beaux and of Michael Collins, of Lady Colefax and Lady Cunard and Lady Castlerosse. But now she refused to allow a conversation to take its natural course.
Poor Hazel has been laid in her coffin and taken to Kensal Rise Cemetery. A living spirit has become a thing of the past. Those who loved her will perhaps make a legend of her, decorating her memory with the tuberoses, orchids and crimson roses that she surrounded herself with in life. But soon and inevitably, even these dearest friends will be busy going out to lunch with someone else.
THE END OF SUSSEX GARDENS
I wasn’t well enough to be there for the sorting and packing, but went this afternoon for a last visit to the address that has so long been ours: 61 Sussex Gardens.
The house is ripped bare now. Packing cases are strewn everywhere; and with the curtains down, it looks forlorn, stark. There are dirty shadows on the wall where pictures used to hang. And so many memories that have been lost beneath the untidy accumulation of years come suddenly to light. I am reminded with a stab of long-forgotten incidents.
The house was always a cold one. For that reason, I bore it a grudge in winter. But I’d been fond of it, too. It represented an exciting, eventful period of our lives. When we first arrived, I had great fun trying to make it appear as grand as we could afford. It was my ambition to make each room look like a stage set — the drawing-room fashionably apple-green and gold, Nancy’s and Baba’s bedroom Marie-Laurencin pink and blue, and my room a circus of many colours. Even today, I like the look of that circus.
My photographic career thrived in this house. From here I had my first exhibition. Through this letter box the first press cuttings arrived. From here I set out on my virgin trip to America, and returned to find a fresh-faced family. It was the first time I had seen them in many months, and I remember thinking their blue eyes looked strangely cat-like, piercing.
Here, first Nancy and then Baba became grown-up, shouting excitedly over the banisters, ‘Telephone! Photographs! Hurry!’ Becky, the dog, barked every time the postman made a delivery. Manley slid down the banisters the quicker to open the front door. Once, he answered the summons to find Sacheverell Sitwell standing there. It was said that Manley bade him peremptorily to ‘go to the back door, Sonnie’. But this Sitwell family joke would not have been based on fact. For Manley was a marvel of tact and industry, coping with assorted messages and calls for my parents, Reggie, Nancy, Baba, and myself. Manley had an uncanny instinct about whom one wished to speak to. At times he was guarded: ‘I’ll see if he has left yet.’ But he always knew I would speak to Mr Watson.
In this house, every morning at ten o’clock, Miss Joseph arrived to help me through the technicalities of the day. I would come down to morning coffee in my dressing gown. Business started with the morning letters and kept up at a fever pitch.
Coming home late at night, I would unlock the door to the familiar Italian light giving an orange glow in the hall. If everyone was in, I clicked off the lantern and found my way upstairs in the dark. Exhaustedly, I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow on my narrow four poster bed.
One day, while I was in the drawing-room taking a photograph of a baroque wood pedestal filled with flowers, my mot
her told me that Baba was going to marry Alec Hambro. Weddings are contagious. Within a week, Nancy was also engaged.
Then came that terrible night when Baba was waiting up for me. By the glow of the orange light she told me that Reggie had been killed. The house knew death: black scenes and wreaths stretching from the conservatory through to the drawing-room.
Marriages, death, parties, career, friends, dramatic telephone conversations, jokes, laughter — general experiences, but unique for each and every person. I wonder if 61 Sussex Gardens can entirely cast off our memories just because it is an inanimate thing?
Part XV: The Gallic Influence, 1935
Ever since my father treated my brother and me to a holiday from a holiday, and first took us across the Channel from our rented house in Folkestone, a visit to Paris has been considered the ultimate in pleasure.
As the years have passed, Paris has become ever more significant. Invariably, a few moments after arrival, the light in the sky becomes more varied, and one’s surroundings are seen with a fresh eye. The way that the loaves of bread are laid out in a shop window, a curtain tied back, or the fusion of two colours, give one a stimulus. After two days, my anonymous hotel is filled with new names, catalogues, pictures of things which show the way towards undiscovered tracks.
The French are said to be inhospitable: Yet, if so, how was it that if I made known my arrival to Christian Bérard, Marie Louise Bousquet, or a couple of other friends, I would forthwith be given the keys to whatever part of the city it interested me to see?
Paris artists and writers seem to have infinite leisure so that one never has the impression of interrupting the tenor of their day or night. Colette had covered reams of blue stationery with enormous calligraphic scrolls with the choice of a dozen fountain pens at her elbow, when she cheerfully cleared away her tray to give full attention to her visitor. Likewise Gide was content to ignore the ringing of the doorbell while he allowed me to spend a morning in his company.