The Restless Years (1955-63)

by Cecil Beaton

  One evening when we had seen enough of Julie’s performance to know that she was absolutely perfect for the role, I rather impertinently said that she must try always to remember this most wonderful moment in her career, when she was just about to burst on the world as a star. It was typical of Julie’s modesty and professionalism to say in a somewhat Eliza-like phrase: ‘The only thing that matters is if I do it right.’ She did!

  Nothing could have been more exquisite than Cathleen Nesbitt’s little cameo as Mrs Higgins and she never suggested for a moment that I had overdressed her. Bob Coote was totally effective as the waffling Colonel Pickering.

  Rex Harrison was by now extremely tense; never having appeared in a musical before, and doing something so utterly different, he felt he could not rehearse enough. The chorus-girls, long since exhausted, lay on the floor or were sprawled in the stalls, while Rex repeated, over and over again, certain phrases of ‘I’ve grown accustomed to her face’. At length, when he was playing the last-act fight scene with Liza and she threw the slippers hard in his face, the entire chorus applauded from the stalls.

  No doubt Rex was right. He knew his performance was more important than the impatience of thirty chorus-girls and dancers. However, Rex’s continuing egotism upset me to such an extent that only by a miracle was I prevented from making an ugly scene. I was so steamed up to fury on some now forgotten account, and was just about to burst into his room to tell him what I thought of him — an idiotic, pointless and impertinent thing to do in any case — when I was interrupted by the stage manager: ‘Moss wants you immediately at the back of the stalls.’

  The dress rehearsals in Newhaven were long-drawn-out and complicated. Yet the unions did not prevent their continuing until near dawn. By dint of Moss’ brilliant organising and with help from the stage manager, Bud, the show was able to open in extremely smooth shape.

  The news of the success of My Fair Lady, as Pygmalion was at last named, spread from Newhaven to New York. I had never before worked for a big Broadway musical and I only now realised what it meant to participate in a grand opening.

  The performance of the first night audience was as brilliant as that on the stage. Every joke was appreciated, every nuance enjoyed and the various numbers were received with thunder-claps. The success was beyond all expectation. I did not understand how great it was until next day, while sauntering up Park Avenue. I came across someone whom I knew very little for he had never seemed to acknowledge my existence. I was, therefore, extremely surprised when he said: ‘Hullo Seesil, good to see you. You really are quite a guy!’

  Success on such a scale now seemed easy, and I wondered why it had never happened before. It had taken such a long time to achieve. It had not come too late, yet I was, perhaps, a bit bitter that some of my friends in the theatre (if there is such an anomaly) did not have confidence in my talent twenty years before. Nonetheless it was pleasant to enjoy it now.

  On the last lap of my stay a snowstorm blanketed New York, and its commuters were isolated. Everything at a standstill for two days; appointments cancelled; I had to delay my sailing by a week. In this time I was able to squeeze in most of the pressing urgencies, including the designing of a set of modern clothes, based on My Fair Lady, for a Seventh Avenue wholesale firm.

  The telephone seldom stopped ringing, and messengers arrived with packages, or people arrived by appointment. Now the various jobs of work are finished. There are no visible signs of spring in Central Park but those definite vibrations are in the air. I’m impatient to get home, and to see what, in my garden, has survived the great frost.

  The last three days were the worst. The rooms were turned upside down as packing started. But, harassing as it was, we were all buoyed up by the fact that things were going well. The faithful Margaret Case went with me to get my exit permit. Jim promised he would pack any belongings that were left behind once I had gone off to the boat. I arrived at the dock too late for any further visitors to come aboard. I waved to Margaret and Jim and others who had appeared. Hooting — an eerie sound. I went to my cabin and I lay on the bunk. I felt I was on the crest of a wave and must enjoy the ride.

  It was rather a shock to realise that I had been away from my home for almost seven months out of eight. Those months had been creative. I was not displeased with my efforts. It had been a time without particularly irksome love troubles or lack of love. I had never allowed myself to get beyond a certain pitch of exhaustion, and it seemed that my stars were favourably disposed. Things that seemed to have developed slowly in recent years suddenly came to fruition.

  GRETA

  New York

  Our last meeting had ended on a high emotional note. The scene had taken place in her rather too ornate apartment. I had drunk vodka cocktails. When Greta mentioned a twenty-year-old score-something about her having no heart I became uncontrollably angry. ‘If after all these years you can’t forget that, then I’m a failure and our friendship means nothing!’

  I banged out of the apartment. She came to the elevator to stop me. ‘Then you won’t marry me?’ she joked. But it was no joke to me.

  When I had got back to England I wrote her one long, serious, sad letter. Then I decided on silence. When I came back to New York I did not call her. I did not answer her messages sent through Truman. I went home again and I still did not write.

  On my return to New York I waited before telephoning her. She was contrite and sweet. We were friends again, and yet the relationship was different. I had consciously put a brake on my emotions.

  One day she telephoned me: ‘I believe we’re both going to lunch at Madame de Becker’s?’ ‘Yes, shall we go there together,’ I asked, ‘or shall we go under our own steam?’ ‘Our own steam is better.’ She had particular reasons for not wanting us to be seen arriving together.

  Greta looked a bit shiny-faced and palely beautiful in a grey dress. But I was determined to remain untouched by her beauty. While having coffee after lunch the conversation centred around works of art, and our hostess said: ‘Greta, you’re the only one “up”. Go and fetch the Connaissance des Arts from the next room.’ Greta, the Empress, looked aghast at being spoken to in this peremptory manner, and then she half-saved the situation by doing an extremely comic imitation of a drunkard reeling out of the room.

  Later, ‘by appointment’, Greta came to my hotel on the dot. I was as bright and gay as I could be, but the spirit had died in me. Greta is an extremely intuitive person; it was obvious that sensing this, she became ill-at-ease and worried. When the time came for her to leave, she turned and waved to me down the corridor with a sweet, sad expression on her face that broke my heart. When I telephoned to her a few days later, she said: ‘I never thought, after our last meeting, that you’d ever call me again.’

  I did not want to cut off our friendship, but the flame of my love had been dampened down on purpose by me. Determinedly I became engrossed in my work. The calendar each week became a fretwork of interlocking dates. If I rang and asked Greta to dine next Friday, she would be incapable of giving an answer until the last minute. So I saw little of her, and whenever I telephoned, it was just a question of ‘keeping in touch’.

  Jakie Astor, one of my nicest and most amusing friends, arrived in New York. He wanted to meet Greta and, after a certain amount of prevarication, she decided to come to a small dinner I was to give. At the last moment she rang up to know if I really expected her. (She had already decided to come with Cecile Rothschild.) Well then, was it all right if she wore trousers? She arrived in grey with a turban on her head. She had made the minimum effort, but this was enough to make her outstanding. She seemed dazzling in her own luminous light, spellbound and spellbinding. Her eyes melted and showed that the old feeling was still there. I capitulated. It was lovely to feel in love with her again, to be enveloped in a tender cocoon of an emotion after wearing the hairshirt of self-defence.

  From this evening our telephone conversations became friendly and jocose again. Even so, we didn�
�t meet much. Then her health became bad. She could not say what was the matter; she had been to the Medical Centre for tests each day. She talked with terrible foreboding on the telephone: she moaned, felt ill, could do nothing, and went out very little.

  When I went to see her, she told me that the doctors had found out that the matter with her was not serious and that she would recover. She exclaimed: ‘The relief! The joy! Because, although I do nothing, go nowhere, and lead an empty life, yet I love every minute of it! I’m never bored! Only there’s never enough time! I’m in my room pottering about. Two hours have gone by, then a whole day! Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and I can’t believe that I’m no longer leading the sort of life I used to — that I’m no longer making motion pictures — that all is over. I can’t think where the time has gone.’

  On the day before I was sailing, we lunched together at our accustomed table. Unfortunately, I had to leave directly after to pay my taxes, and she had to go to the hospital, so that our shopping expedition was not possible. I watched her out of the taxi window as she walked down the street. She looked sad and pale, her skin crinkled and papery, and there was a shiny residue of cold cream around her eyes. The tax man only took a second to get my signature, and I thought maybe I could find Greta again on Lexington Avenue, but she had disappeared.

  That evening I went to say goodbye to her in her apartment. ‘Life is such a compromise! I wanted to live in such a different place from this, and yet one must have tables and chairs! But these are not what I like.’ Only her almost unfurnished dining room, where there is a great, solid table that could have been Queen Christina’s, looks as if it belonged to her. The ormulu, the bound volumes (never opened), the bits of china were all bought under the influence of the ‘little man’.

  We talked of plans for meeting in Europe during the summer — all very indefinite. The time was coming for me to leave. I had once wanted to talk to her about our ‘row’, to ‘clear the atmosphere’, but the opportunity did not come; I was rather pleased that it did not. We were now on terms of easy intimacy; why spoil anything so pleasant?

  But suddenly she said that she had been wanting to answer my ‘serious’ letter. She had wanted to say: ‘I do love you, and I think you’re a flop! You should have taken me by the scruff of my neck and made an honest boy of me. I think you could have been the Salvation Army.’ ‘Thank you for telling me that,’ I murmured.

  I had much to think about on my way down in the elevator, and in the street, and on my way to dinner. I would have much to think about later on the boat. Maybe it was not too late, after all, to try and recapture the past? Maybe life did hold new possibilities now that the stars seemed to be under good aspect?

  PETER WATSON

  Sunday, May 6th

  I lunched with Peter at a branch of Wheeler’s restaurant that is near to his Institute of Contemporary Arts in Dover Street. Peter was busy hanging an exhibition of garden schemes from Brazil and could not spare time off to get back to my house for lunch.

  We talked, as always, very animatedly. He had survived the rigours of winter though he had been feeling terribly ill and had gone to my Dr Gottfried. He spoke with such gusto and intelligence that I was very happy to listen and admire his point of view; his ever-sensitive appreciation for so many aspects of art and life. I thought that he was a completely fulfilled, integrated person; someone who has been through many vicissitudes and has now discovered himself.

  Peter is an independent, courageous person, on terms of absolute honesty with himself, with the world, and with everybody he talks to.

  Tony del Renzio, whom I had seen with Peter at the ICA a few days ago, telephoned. I let out a moan that was like that of a bull in agony. I could not speak and I asked him to wait until I had given myself fresh energy to face the dreadful fact that Peter was dead.

  Nearly thirty years I have known Peter ... here a painting of Ashcombe we had found together — so many books — so many memories — snapshots taken in every part of the world — America, Mexico, Austria, Germany, France. I dressed like Peter and I behaved like him.

  Later he wore awful mackintoshes — his hair, once so sexily lotioned, was on end. He was a real bohemian — gone the elegant clothes and motorcars. He had become thinner and more gaunt and of a bad colour.

  He had edited Horizon with Cyril Connolly and become a serious art patron in a quiet, unobtrusive way. He was deeply interested in music, painting, sculpture and poetry. He read books in many languages, and thought a great deal about politics. He was intensely single-minded. Sometimes I would watch him as he talked with such concentration and he would look like a ruffled old chicken, his complexion yellow; he had become very sloppy about shaving and generally had a few cuts around the face. But however awful he looked, he had a quality of beauty. He relied less and less on charm; but his smile was so disarming that people could not but like him.

  PETER’S FUNERAL

  May

  The coffin was totally against his taste; the red brick chapel and all the details of the service were the sort of things Peter would have no patience for.

  Among the congregation, with its trustees, lawyers and family business associates, it was difficult to identify Peter’s friends. Norman was high up in the front pews, very quiet and imaginative; Stephen S. and his wife; Lee Miller and her husband, Roland Penrose; Reid, the picture dealer; Tony del Renzio. The service was meaningless to me in my hollow state of mind. I noticed that Cyril Connolly was weeping and I loved him for that; but from my seat in the back of the church I could not see or hear or feel anything but anonymity.

  It was a cold, horrid afternoon. The chapel door was open and gusts of gritty wind gushed from the asphalt outside. The clergyman hurried through the service in double-quick time, and the appalling moment came when the metal doors opened on their mechanical hinges and the coffin slowly moved forth on a conveyor belt to the other world. I was strangely unmoved and watched the trembling flowers going through to the outer space. Suddenly a ray of brilliant sunshine came down onto the flowers. It was a most dramatic and beautiful effect — the lilies became incandescent in this drab, horrible surrounding. I almost believed that this symbol meant that Peter had attained a happiness that was denied him on this earth, and it helped me to think that he might be in a state of serenity after his turbulent years.

  I went to the car park and the clipped voice of Mr Brewer said: ‘They don’t take long in getting through with it, do they!’ A quarter-of-an-hour had passed since we had turned into the red brick gateway — a quarter of a century’s friendship had been ‘written off’.

  VISIT TO CHANEL IN PARIS

  Chanel has been the most important influence on fashion since the 1914 war. The young girl of peasant stock had come from the Auvergne where she had been spotted by the elderly Etienne Balsan, who brought her to Deauville and set her up as a milliner. At once her hats were successful, but the grand and respectable ladies frequented her emporium only in the mornings, for too many men were to be found there in the afternoon. Under the influence of the Grand Duke Dmitri she added to her knowledge of the best in French and Czarist Russian taste. Later she came under the protection of Boy Capell, a man of exceptional flair who proved to be perhaps the love of her life. But Boy Capell died young in a motor crash, and Chanel’s protectors then became numerous. She learnt a great deal from them all.

  From millinery Chanel progressed to dresses. She made Russian blouses and skirts, and used English tweeds and jerseys. When she opened a shop in Paris she gave rich women the ‘poor’ look that made her fortune. Chanel herself was the embodiment of the new ‘chic’: flat-chested, devastatingly attractive, with a boy’s hips, long thin legs in her ‘kasha’ colour suits and cropped black hair.

  Her successes continued. Her romance with the rich Duke of Westminster became notorious. The duke gave her a block of property in Mayfair, a mill where she designed her particular brand of English tweeds, and a gold-mine in jewels; she was seen in the hu
nting field with rows of pearls swinging on her habit. Her temperamental scenes and extravagances were violent. It was said that Chanel was the one woman who was never sycophantic or subservient to this incredibly spoilt man. He gave in to her every whim, even setting up a workroom for her at Eaton Hall, complete with her French staff, rather than have her return to Paris a month earlier to make her season’s collection. When she was displeased, and the duke tried to placate her with offerings of jewellery, she was likely to stamp on them or throw them through the porthole of his yacht.

  Her business continued to prosper with each year. Then came World War II. France under the Occupation became a prison; fashion dead.

  Now, after an interval of fourteen years, French friends and acquaintances seemed vague about whether or not Chanel still existed. They had positively no idea of her whereabouts since, during the war, she had taken a good-looking husky German as a lover. Certainly, she had long since given up making clothes; the windows in the Rue Cambon still displayed bottles of ‘Numéro Cinq’. However, it was not really difficult to discover that the ‘pariah’ was still to be found in the apartment at the top of her dress shop. She would be delighted to see me.

  Paris seemed empty during that weekend. It was almost an uncanny experience to enter the deserted Chanel building, to walk past row upon row of display stalls long since covered with dust sheets, then up flight after flight of the mirrored stairs, eventually to arrive at a door that opened onto her private apartment and into an Aladdin’s cave of oriental splendour; an unbelievable richness of Venetian glass mirrors reflecting lacquer screens, gesso tables and Tang horses.