by Cecil Beaton
‘When does it begin?’
‘It’s begun.’
‘Oh, well, perhaps I oughtn’t to have mentioned the spittoons.’
The lecture tour may have been even funnier in fact than Margot imagined it. She must have looked quite fantastic in a silver tissue dress given to her by Callot. At one time she was asked to become a member of the Culture Searchers’ Club, and when invited to a ‘hen luncheon’, she inquired, ‘What’s a “hen” luncheon?’
‘Oh, isn’t she lovely!’ they laughed.
Margot has her dislikes: she once told Shaw his plays were too long. ‘It’s the only way I have of emptying the theatre,’ was his reply.
She said she was not fond of Sibyl Colefax of the dark curly hair. ‘I don’t care who people know, and it is so tiresome that Sibyl is always on the spot. One can’t talk about the birth of Christ without that Astrakhan ass saying she was there in the manger.’
It was here at the Savoy that Ivor Novello had recently gone up to Margot’s table and introduced himself. Margot looked nonplussed, then uttered: ‘Novello? Novello? Ah yes! You smile too much and Eddie Marsh loved you!’
Each time one sees her she is apt to say something one will long remember. Tonight she was full of good things. The waiter asked, ‘Will you have spring chicken, m’lady?’ ‘Which spring?’ she asked. She told bright little stories: Maud Tree and she were passing Lutyens’ newly-erected cenotaph. Lady Tree breathlessly exclaimed, ‘But that’s not a war memorial! I want angels — angels — angels — I want angels mounting higher and higher!’ Margot replied, ‘But you don’t want a Jacob’s ladder.’ Lady Tree replied, ‘I don’t want a Jacob’s lift!’
When Margot is at her best she can envelop you with her charm as she did this evening. She even kissed me and put her face close to mine in a most surprising way. I find her love of humanity, her bemused outlook and abundant affection are her greatest merits. The years have given her a kindness and mellowness that, I am told, she lacked before.
Tonight Margot has had a treat, and so have I!
DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
January 29th
This was the third day of the debate on the progress of the war.
There is a lot of unrest and anxiety throughout the country. The news has been unrelievedly bad, so far as Britain and the United States are concerned, and Mr Churchill demanded a vote of confidence. He knew he could get this, but the House wished to make it quite clear that they were dissatisfied with the output and the work done by members of the Cabinet.
On the first day Mr Churchill had made a brilliantly adroit speech in which he devised many ingenuities and surprises which succeeded in causing a number of members to tear up their speeches of protest already written. On the second day there had been criticism — stinging and useful. On the third day it so happened there were no fireworks left: everyone knew the Prime Minister would succeed, and must succeed, for the good of the country. Mr Shinwell, Randolph and Jock McEwen (who said that the work of Lord Beaverbrook had the same effect as a strong cocktail — exhilarating for a time but leaving a bad hangover) had done their best. Today Belisha had been unconvincing and bored, and Lord Winterton made references to Mr Churchill being like W. G. Grace the cricketer, who would play with village elevens so that he could bat all the time and bowl when the others on his side were out. Everyone laughed. This really ‘got’ them. I felt it strange that, in the middle of this war, the House of Commons could be so amused by references to the traditional sport. Somehow I felt the whole procedure was quite unrelated to the war. It seemed like a performance that had little bearing on the world outside. The newspapers would bring this scene to every doorstep, but it seemed so muffled in tradition that all sense of actuality and urgency was lacking. It was up to Mr Churchill, in the final contribution of the debate, to bring the proceedings to a high level. He became twice his usual size, as he always does when making a speech. He was like a bird that ruffles up all its feathers. When after the debate he wandered about the floor, talking to all and sundry, he again became quite svelte.
Mr Churchill spoke well and enjoyed a few well-phrased jokes. Nevertheless, it was obvious that the speech was not costing him much, that by taking an even path he knew that no great effects were necessary. But he appeared so exaggeratedly like himself that one had the impression of watching a rather uninspired historical film about the great Winston Churchill. From where I sat, an effective cinema shot could have been made looking down on him as he stood by the Mace, a bald, waxen figure, with chin and nose of a pig-pallor, and of a rather powdery consistency, with the large empty expanse of the green carpet as his background. The camera would then pan up to Mrs Churchill, an impressive figure with hair worn in a high diadem of blue-grey curls capped by a fan-like arrangement of the transparent material of which her turban was composed. She behaved with impassive calm whenever criticism was particularly waspish.
Churchill became his most grave when explaining the loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse. But the real drama of the day came with a moment of pathos and tragedy when, after the victorious result of over 450 votes to 1 in favour of Churchill, Sir Roger Keyes sprang to his feet, and, full of emotion, delivered an incomprehensible little speech. His son has been killed on one of the Commando raids and Keyes looks as if his own life were about at an end. He is wizened, with staring eyes, and did not remember what he had started out to say.
Beverley Nichols motored me to North Weald to photograph Michael Duff looking after his squadron of American Eagles. It is Michael’s triumph that, by remaining just as fantastic and full of eccentricities as ever, these tough, amusing and witty pilots love him.
Michael does not attune his manner to them in the slightest degree, and appears more ‘British’ and ramrod of mien than ever. He is completely lacking in self-consciousness. What an enviable quality this is! For me it is quite an ordeal to go alone into a mess. However, today’s expedition, under Michael’s aegis, overcame even the more sombre aspects of war, and private terror was lost in laughter.
Beverley has obviously been struck hard by the war, and did not seem capable of mustering much gaiety. But I liked him so much for relating a story about his visit, earlier in the war, to a bomber station. It might so well apply to me (or, I suppose, to almost any frightened stranger). ‘Would you like to go up?’ they asked Beverley. ‘Sure.’ ‘Sign these papers just in case you meet with a fatal accident. Now put on your parachute.’ They assembled under the belly of an enormous bomber. ‘This is where you get in.’ Beverley looked up at a cylinder of shining metal above him. How on earth could he get to the top of that? His parachute was very heavy on his behind. With a tremendous effort, and, of course, with the incentive that under no circumstances must he fail, also out of nervousness and desperation, he performed a most tremendous physical feat. He jumped up into the air, with galvanized strength jumped higher than he has ever jumped before. He then stretched higher than he has ever stretched before. Somehow or other, by a miracle, he was able to reach the summit of the cylinder: not only did he hang on, but with one further effort he pulled himself and parachute up into the cockpit. When, with bleeding fingers and thumping heart, he looked down the funnel at the others below, their faces were upturned in amazement. ‘How in hell did you manage to get up there?’ they shouted. ‘They’ve not yet lowered the step ladders!’
Luisa Casati had been telephoning frantically. Every block in the house was filled with messages to say I must call her urgently. Something catastrophic had happened. Could I see her? Sure. Lunch tomorrow. Oh lunch, how kind — do you really mean it? Isn’t it too much? To save her the taxi fare I called at her flat — a dirty room on the top floor of Catherine d’Erlanger’s former house, where Byron lived, in Piccadilly. Luisa, wild black eyes and yellowed tresses, in the inevitable black velveteen and leopard skin, said that everything had gone wrong. It was a day when the devil was in everything. She sat at a table in the middle of the room, adding kohl to her eyes while
the taxi ticked up. Now to tidy the room, to hide — in a locked wardrobe — the electric stove a friend had lent her so that the landlady would not charge her for extra electricity. She opened the cupboard to display a sight of degradation: old artificial flowers, methylated spirit, broken bottles, and jet evening cloaks.
Luisa is a product of the D’Annunzio period, a Gustave Moreau painting or Aubrey Beardsley drawing to the life. Her appearance is so exotic, and even frightening to many, and seldom do her acquaintances have any idea what goes on behind the white and black mask of her face. In fact, Luisa is a very human and wittily comic character who worships beauty in its more fantastic forms and enjoys the incredulity her personality creates in unsuspecting strangers. Luisa also possesses a cruel streak and has been known to annihilate many an enemy with a phrase; she can be unsparing in her sarcasm and bitterness. Not only does she look like a witch but, believing in witchcraft, she can become one.
In the past her glittering riches justified her eccentricities in the eyes of conventional Roman aristocracy. Even so her highest flights would only be tolerated with difficulty. The beau monde would be bidden to a soirée to find their white-faced, scarlethaired hostess, entwined with cobras, had decorated the ballroom with caged monkeys gibbering among branches of lilac. Dressed by Bakst in Persian trousers, she was once accompanied by a negro slave, named Larbi, who led a chained panther in his wake: it was said that Larbi died from poisoning as a result of having to appear at another ball naked, but gilded from head to foot.
Luisa’s vagaries took her to Capri, where she created a remarkable house like a Greek temple that Axel Munthe later made famous. At the end of one Venetian season, she found herself unable to pay the gondolier’s bill, so, in settlement, took off a row of heavy pearls and tossed them at him. Dunned by bailiffs, the Marchesa migrated to Paris where she lived in Boni de Castellane’s Palais Rose. Francis Rose told me of the first time he, as an extremely impressionable young painter, saw her. Luisa was in her bedroom wearing, as a hat, a gold upturned flowerpot from which sprouted an enormous salmon-coloured feather to match her salmon gloves. She was clipping the artificial daisies from a grass carpet she had had made in imitation of a picture by an Italian primitive. Her maid stood by, holding the basket into which the daisies were put. No doubt she not only enjoyed this highly aesthetic activity, but was secretly amused at the effect she must be creating on this somewhat incredulous Englishman.
It is really ghastly to see to what straits of poverty this wildly extravagant woman, who has spent two of the greatest fortunes in Italy, has fallen. She hasn’t even a tosser left! A few English friends club together to give her a stipend each month, but she blues the lot on fodder for her cat. Occasionally she hires a cab and, in desperation, beseeches one of her benefactors to buy the relics of the Countess Castiglione’s fancy dress as the Queen of Hearts, a tarnished, theatrical necklace, or bits of worthless finery from the bottom of a trunk. Sometimes they accede to her entreaties, but most of them eschew the bargain, giving her instead a present, only to become irritated when they learn that their contribution was used to buy imitation orchids or sets of false eyelashes.
Even Augustus John has turned. Luisa’s frequent requests for fivers have at last got him down. He says she should be, like some beloved household pet, shot and stuffed. She would look so well in a glass case.
Luisa and I came back home for lunch. It was a bitter February morning but my guest wore no overcoat over her only day dress: doubtless she still possesses some old gold-cloth ball gowns, but they would give her even less protection from the icy blast. My rooms were warm and, suddenly, the sun came through the library windows and everything looked comfortable and congenial. Luisa became as happy as a child. She said she worshipped the atmosphere of my house — the scent of the rosemary that we burnt at the grate — and she felt that she ‘lived again’ now she was in this dark-red room, sipping this glass of amber.
We started lunch. Oh, she liked so much the plates — the food! Everything she imbibed with a passionate enjoyment. Her enthusiasms are so much stronger than mine! I really adore her, in spite of her wickedness and suspiciousness and vitriolic wit. For what tenderness, warmheartedness and camaraderie she possesses! She has the spirit of an artist, and, as with all artists, one can learn a lot in her presence. I was fascinated to watch her reactions.
‘Now, tell me, Luisa — what is wrong?’
‘You have a little time to spare for me after lunch? Then let us mention unpleasant things later. Now let us enjoy this pigeon, this good glass of wine that is so rare.’
She talked brilliantly. Luisa sees ordinary Chelsea flappers as archangels: Augustus John a patriarch; Tilly Losch looks ‘like a rifled drawer’. Apropos of two friends of ours, she said they are like love birds which sit touching one another and chirping at one another all day, not ‘I love you’ but ‘I hate you’. Their proximity — from which they cannot escape — prevents them from loving one another. Luisa has a good memory for funny stories: Violet Trefusis brought a lanky lover to her mother. ‘Mummie, this is the man I wish to marry!’ ‘Mariage, Violette, non! Collage, oui!’ She considers Henry Moore’s ‘Shelter’ pictures were for ‘alltime’: she was deeply moved by my Fuseli painting.
Then came the story of her catastrophe. A. John gives her two pounds a week, but he has been away for five weeks. For Christmas Augustus had sent her a letter enclosing a present, but no present was enclosed! He has forgotten to write the cheque. His wife, mistresses and daughters swarm around him and forbid her to talk to him on the telephone in the country; they are jealous. Meanwhile Luisa has no money. She telephones Mrs Brougham, who asks, ‘What has become of that pound you had last week?’ Luisa, outraged, answers, “J’ai mangé, j’ai bu — et j’ai encore de l’argent dans ma pochette.’ Alice Astor has sent her some shoes and artificial flowers which have caused her to walk on air, but she has no hard cash, no prospects, and is incapable of helping herself. As Augustus says, ‘She can’t even knit!’ Yet she is never depressed and complaining — only frenzied in the direst half-hour of need. I felt enriched by her company, stimulated by her unusual presence, and my eyes rejoiced as I watched this stringy black scarecrow undulate down the garden path to the extravagant taxi which, of course, she must take now that I have given her a small present.
Three days later, and again catastrophe. Luisa telephoned that she could not reach Augustus on the telephone. I called his number and there he was. Luisa, cruelly, had been given a wrong number. Yes, Augustus was wanting to see Luisa. Must see her, in fact, for he would be going away again to the country tomorrow. Luisa, for a few more days, was saved again.
A couple of weeks later poor Luisa arrived, unannounced and unexpectedly, without even the money to pay the taxi at the door. I had brought her luck before, and being so superstitious she had had to come and see me again.
But her plight was again extreme. Well, how could we ward off another evil day?
I had an idea: Luisa makes, for her own amusement, strange and surrealist collage screens or blotters composed of fragments cut from engravings and any odd pictures that strike her fancy. ‘Could you not do some of these for sale? You could make money!’ Luisa flapped her false eyebrows and bared her huge teeth.
We went forthwith to the Charing Cross Road and I spent a fortune on eighteenth-century and Victorian prints. Although Luisa chose with care, and seemed enthusiastic and grateful, nothing came of the expedition. She will not commercialize her talent.
Is it not curious that this exotic creature should not warm her old bones in the warmth of an Italian sun rather than choose to end her days in — of all cold, dreary places — South Kensington? Yet perhaps there is method in her madness: she knows that her ‘old friends’ in Rome, who tolerated her when she was a millionairess, would cut her ruthlessly and give no help now that she is stony-broke. Whereas in England there are always a half-dozen cronies who can be relied upon before the very last gasp of her cat.
‘I
love England,’ Luisa claims. ‘It is so mysterious and unexpected. It is much more highly civilized, subtle and difflcult to know than any other country.’ It cannot have been easy for her living here with an Italian passport without occupation or permanent address. But her proudest moment came when the police wrote to her: she showed me the letter. ‘In future you will be considered a friendly alien.’
SCHOOL FRIENDS’ MEETING
He sat opposite me in the train. ‘We haven’t met for twenty-five years,’ he said. He told me his name. He is bald, but perky, full of assurance and enthusiasm. He remembers vividly every detail of Harrow life, which, to me, is now in a haze of oblivion. We were not particular friends but he knows a lot about me, as he does of everyone else there. He tells me things about myself that I had not remembered. He’s a type of school-bore, but rather fascinating.
He informed me I went to Harrow in the summer term of 1918, just before the end of the First World War; that I got my shoes from Chathams, my clothes from Wards; I had a damn good time there and never did any work. Used to draw different coiffures for women on the back of my notebooks. He said he thought I was by no means silly but never concentrated or worked, was screwed in examinations, and never got out of the same class. He reminded me of our doing ‘stinks’ together — and I vaguely remember putting sulphuric acid on pennies — but other divs and classes that he mentioned were, to me, something that I might never have experienced.
Yet he was able to conjure up again the taste of Gillettes’ ham sandwiches (they cost sixpence each). Gillettes was the snobbish shop where any outcast schoolboy, entering without the necessary credentials, was made to feel so out of it that he’d not dare to defile the precincts a second time. He reminded me also of Gillettes’ cold sausages and tomato ketchup, the Patum Peperium, and the marrons glacés in silver paper. Gillettes’ cold, white, little emporium was an exciting meeting-place, and it was here that many strange friendships and emotional upheavals began.