The Restless Years (1955-63)

by Cecil Beaton

  Food of all sorts is expensive enough in Paris, but the fruit is so reasonable in quality that one does not mind paying for a pear or an apple as if it were a jewel. I ordered eight pears and while they were being packed up was able to admire to the full the marvellous display of fruit on counter and window. This year spring has been particularly late in appearing and this made the ‘out-of-season’ fruit arrayed in tiers seem even more remarkable. There were enormous, globular bunches of pale-green grapes, wonderful symmetrical pale-green artichokes, ceps of all shapes and colours, heavy custard apples, mangoes and aubergines like bolsters. Even the oranges and tangerines not only tasted better than all other oranges and tangerines but looked as if they did too. Passers-by outside would stop and smile as they gesticulated at the marvellous sights, the most remarkable of which were the two boxes which contained half-a-dozen bright, ruby red strawberries that were as big as fir-cones.

  The fruit and vegetables in this shop are treated with the care which they deserve, and the white-haired duchess who attended me arranged that my pears should be beautifully wrapped for the aeroplane. The procedure took a great deal of time. While I waited my gastronomic juices were working overtime as I admired the best of every sort of sausage, pate and cheese. It was a busy time of the morning and there was quite a va et vient in the shop.

  Suddenly an old, old woman, all in black, a black shawl over her head, and carrying in one gnarled hand a large, cracked black leather bag, appeared in the doorway. She was the very essence of old age and the essence of France. Everyone in the shop watched her and was for a moment quite quiet. Whether the lull was created by shock or embarrassment I do not know. The ancient woman hung for support onto the glass of the door. She was bent forward and her face was solid and pink; although not particularly lined one knew she was ancient; she must in fact have been eighty-five years old. But although she looked healthy enough, she had outlived her strength. She knew she could move only with great care, and the effort of coming into this shop was almost more than she could manage. Yet the habit of a lifetime is strong, and she knew instinctively how to preserve herself from falling. She stood peering with a dazed gaze into the interior of this grand emporium.

  One of the assistants called cheerfully, ‘Entrez Madame, and gave the old woman a present of some appetising meat and wrapped it in shiny paper. The old woman could not say thank you, she merely stared with large, incredulous eyes peering from her rosy, rough-hewn face. She had a drop at the end of her nose, and her stockings were twisted round her ‘shrunk shank’ like a gnarled tree. She was like all the French peasants one has ever seen; she had the earthy ruggedness of Van Gogh’s early paintings.

  I wanted her to know how friendly we all felt towards her, and so I stood meeting her bewildered gaze with a forced smile on my face. But she did not understand anything. Another assistant ran to put a large tangerine in her cracked old bag, and I managed to put a coin in her hand. Lurching forward, she slowly turned with enormous dignity towards the door again, to take herself out into the bustle of the Madeleine. She was shockingly old, and one felt how near to death she must be.

  GORDON CRAIG

  South of France: May 24th

  His refuge high on the hills of Vence was hard to find, even with the very specific instructions I was given. However, eventually, Indian-inked signs and arrows marked on trees showed the way to the back of the shack in winch Edward Gordon Craig, aged ninety, fives, cared for by one of his daughters.

  The shack was shuttered tightly. I feared my luck was out. I knocked hard and repeatedly, then I heard sounds of movement within. After a bit a pale, blue-eyed, frizzy-grey-haired woman appeared. She gurgled an English sentence in a deep musical voice. I gave her my name and asked if I could see Mr Craig. Her smile became very forced as she looked at my camera and said: ‘But I don’t think he’ll want any photographs.’ I called for the driver to take my camera back and waited, as bidden, on a garden chair. Eventually, cackling and high-spirited, the old colossus appeared. He was like a huge bird that had lost many of its feathers. His nose was a beautiful beak, his mouth was toothless, and the long strands of pale cream silken hair were a bit fitfully placed on his scalp. He wore a high, white Regency collar with old, rather wintry clothes, a woollen coat with many of the buttons missing and baggy trousers, with the knees patched with some brown flannel. His flybuttons, or rather his zip, was discernible. He wore thick shoes, similarly zipped. The effect was untidy, artistic, but not dirty. There was, in spite of his age, something rather immaculate and healthy about him. He was immensely tall in spite of a hunch, and waggled all over like a sheep dog that is pleased to see a friend.

  ‘You want to take a photograph? Splendid! You’re the master. There’s only one like you. How do you want me to be?’

  The driver brought back the camera and within a minute the old bird was posing in a most felicitous patch of light that came through a small window in the corridor.

  His daughter gurgled musically: ‘Oh, and with all your buttons undone?’

  The old man shook off the admonition: ‘What’s it matter? We’re beyond all that!’ was his gay brushing aside of all but the important tenets of behaviour.

  ‘You must have known lots of my friends — Max Beerbohm and Rothenstein. I’ve often wondered when we’d meet, and here you are! Oh, I like the way you take photographs. You’re a genius. I can see that. You’re the most unprofessional photographer I’ve ever seen at work — but that’s good. I can see you’re interested and I like this. This is splendid!’ He chuckled with glee.

  ‘Where’s my hat?’

  The daughter fetched a big-brimmed, felt sombrero that made its owner look like a lesbian. Cackle. He posed with arms akimbo and then looked up to the ceiling like a saint in ecstasy, his pale eyes lively and quick through his spectacles. I clicked away with fervour, almost surprised that even without any preliminary talk we should so soon be involved in this ritual. Within a few more minutes I felt I had achieved as good as I could possibly get, and we moved into his small, book-lined den. He sat at his desk and, in spite of his deafness, was able to carry on a conversation. Occasionally the daughter would repeat in his ear some remark that I had made. There seemed to be a marvellous rapport and love between the two of them.

  The self-sacrifice of the daughter had brought her an inner peace that one could easily recognise. Living a hermit’s life, acting as Cerberus, she was not for one minute bored looking after this old man.

  Her eyes brimmed with goodness and affection and her father said: ‘Daughters are the thing!’ This reminded me of a line of Barrie’s in Dear Brutus — but Craig had always hated Barrie. ‘He was such a beastly man — so mean and despicable!’

  ‘What can we offer him to drink? Champagne?’ he said rather surprisingly. The daughter said they also had whisky and brandy. ‘I’d love some water,’ and she brought in a bottle of some mountain spring water that was cold and delicious.

  I was fraught with excitement at meeting, at last, a great figure of the theatre that I’d heard about since my earliest, stage-struck days. When I mentioned my admiration of all that he’d done in the theatre, he threw it aside as beyond speaking about.

  ‘They never did any of my things. Cochran was going to, but everything fell through. I’ve never had any luck in England. They know me much better in Switzerland, Poland and Russia. I know very few English actors. They’re not an interesting lot. Bernard Miles is an exception. He comes to see me three or four times a year. What he does is interesting. But I don’t like actors. I was an actor once, but not for long. It’s funny, but I never knew my father except when I was very small, perhaps five years old. But I’ve never forgotten him, and he has meant more to me than anyone else in my life. Here’s his photograph dressed as a monk. He was always dressing up, but he wasn’t on the stage.’

  Craig chuckled. ‘I’ve sold a lot of my books to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, but [with a wink] by no means all!’

  He is a bad bus
inessman and could have sold his books at a much greater profit, but he knows he still has a nest-egg in his possession.

  ‘Here’s a nice book.’

  He opened one or two leather-bound volumes from which the innards had been torn and inside were little playlets in Latin or Italian which he had bound himself. Arty and useless I considered, but to Craig they mean a great deal.

  Craig was game and courageous and seemed perfectly contented, though, as a sort of act, he pretended to be angry at being marooned so far from play or film; without a telephone, without a car. To me it was nevertheless rather a pitiable picture; there is something so tragic about old age that I felt it an impertinence of a stranger like myself to come and eavesdrop.

  LILY ELSIE

  June

  Lily Elsie, the heroine of my youth, has died. Her last years were spent at St Andrew’s Hospital, Dollis Hill, where she was extremely happy in her anonymity. She had occasionally been taken by friends for a ride in a motorcar and to have tea at Henley or Hampton Court: she had praised the pâtisseries at Pinner.

  ‘The bones hold my face up,’ she had said when a friend told her that she was as beautiful as ever. Although she had always disliked being ‘recognised’ in public, she was not displeased when one morning her Australian nurse ran in and said: ‘You never told me you were a movie star! The man in the next room has a collection of picture postcards and all of them are of you.’

  Lily Elsie’s success in The Merry Widow at Daly’s Theatre in 1909 made theatrical history. Cecily Webster, the last surviving member of the original company, remembered her on the first night waiting for her final entrance in the third act. The house had cheered itself hoarse and were in a state of ecstatic hysteria. Lily Elsie, with the typical modesty that was to remain with her all her life, turned and whispered: ‘I think they like us!’

  King Edward VII saw The Merry Widow four times; people from all walks of life became devotees, and it ran for 778 performances. She will be missed by many people who are still attuned to The Merry Widow waltz, and I shall always remember her.

  August 3rd

  After the Comédie Française job, which was a delightful departure, as the Americans say, I returned to a long, frustrating period trying to get Pelham Place redecorated. I tried to paint and made no progress. I longed to ‘stay put’ in the country, instead of always having to come to London for two days of exhausting, crowded appointments.

  There are things moving (the film My Fair Lady) which may save my financial situation but will not help the real cause of my trouble, and the more difficult years are looming. There are no real alibis. Time ferrets out all the weaknesses, and they become ever more apparent.

  CLARISSA EDEN

  Broadchalke: August 5th

  Clarissa Eden had to come to Broadchalke to meet Mr Blick, the builder, about the new water supply going up to her cottage. She arrived, her hair in a late thirties bob.

  The rain stopped and we made a brief tour of the garden.

  ‘Where do you get that curry plant?’ she asked the gardener. ‘Do you go to Murrell for all your roses?’

  When we came back to the house it was a question of: ‘What is the name of that beautiful begonia? I must have one like that. Do give me the details. And what is this coffee? It’s very much better than mine.’

  Surprisingly, at lunch, Clarissa was much more forthcoming than of late. She volunteered at once that she and Anthony had been to see Winston in the hospital.

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘Very bad! I’d say, dying. He’s gone a very pale waxen colour, no pink lips, and he can’t remember anything except his early days. He couldn’t remember that Heath had been to see him the day before about the Common Market, and he didn’t seem to be listening when Anthony talked to him on the same subject. Yet, surprisingly enough, he does suddenly make sense. He had a little toy by his bedside — a grey square of wall with a black velvet cat crouching over it. I took the thing up and turned it so that the cat was looking the other way, and Winston, in the middle of the Common Market talk, turned and petulantly said, ‘Why have you turned the cat the wrong way round?’

  Clarissa talked about the recent sacking of almost the entire Cabinet, something that’s not been done before. It was said that to save his face the Prime Minister wanted to give a ‘new look’ to the Cabinet. Politics, we all know, is a cruel business. I asked if Clarissa had heard the story of Macmillan having to go out and be sick between each sacking? ‘Highly unlikely,’ she said.

  Clarissa described quite graphically this week’s Garden Party at the Palace.

  ‘But did you see anyone you know? I’ve never been invited, but I imagine it’s a lot of those people you see all dressed up self-consciously standing very stiffly at the street corner as they wait hopelessly for a taxi.’

  ‘Oh no, there’s what they call “The Tent”. There you see all the Ministers, and their wives, and the Corps Diplomatique and the ex-Prime Ministers, and it was very amusing to see Lord Eccles who just a few days beforehand would have said “I’ll see you in The Tent”, having to say, “I have to go over to tea with the hoi-polloi.”’

  It is strange to see the changes that have taken place in Clarissa’s life since that day when she sat in my bedroom here at Broadchalke and wondered whether or not she should marry Eden. She’d been a bachelor girl a long time.

  While he was Prime Minister the fiasco of Suez occurred. It was a bad time for them both. Anthony then became ill and from that moment Clarissa loved him as only a mother loves her child.

  As a mother-nurse figure, Clarissa has acquired serenity of mind. She certainly has a vie intérieure. She can be by herself for a whole year on end, has a deep love of books, and of things of nature. There is no denying that she is a person of high taste and of first-class quality.

  BROADCHALKE

  August 10th

  Perhaps success is merely superficial, but as I have always walked alone any that I have achieved has come entirely from my own machinations, or as a result of my own endeavours. I started out with very little talent, but a lot of strong ambition. This ambition has not abated with the years, and I have been fortunate. Maybe it was just as well that I was a late developer.

  The ghastly fact that I am nearly sixty years old must be faced. With luck I may be able to carry on for some time making money, but equally I could soon find myself stranded and therefore bereft of confidence.

  Cyril Connolly wrote that he was sorry for me; that I had worked so hard but that all my work was of an ephemeral kind. I feel this to be true, to the exaggerated extent that if I don’t keep going with continuous new efforts I will be forgotten, even from one year to another.

  August 11th

  With the years I find my house in the country becomes ever more of a magnet. In fact I am always restless when away from it. Unlike rich people, I would never feel at ease leaving one house for another at set times of the year, or travelling for long periods on end before touching ‘home’ as in the game of ‘Grandmother’s steps’.

  I want to stay put and watch a certain bud open. Even the three or four days in London are a great disturbance.

  August 12th

  The full day had started at eight o’clock this morning at Broadchalke when Mrs Talbot had, accompanied by the pug, brought in the tray, to be followed unexpectedly soon by the Sunday papers.

  The newspaper headings were of the Russian astronauts circling the earth at 15,000 miles an hour, and busily telephoning and laughing as photographs of them and their voices were being relayed simultaneously back to the world below. The Russians intimate that they may send up five more astronauts before the end of the week and that this is a step towards making a landing stage in space from which a man can be propelled to the moon.

  I always feel cheated and bypassed if I do not read all the Sunday papers in even a cursory manner. Today there were fascinating bits about the pale ‘glamour’ of the old days in an article wherein Robert Taylor blew the lid off MGM pub
licity. He described how 3,000 people had been cajoled into meeting him at a station and how two ‘fans’ had been paid by the office to hide under his sleeper.

  Cyril Connolly’s article on ‘Rome’ was a disappointment after his most brilliant and touching first article on the ‘Grand Tour’. At last my ‘Paris: Creators of Style’ had appeared — a bit half-heartedly and disappointing after the amount of effort that had gone into it. It is a mistake to allow someone to alter one’s immortal prose unless one follows through and agrees their interpretation.

  I was delighted to skip through ‘British Guiana’ by my enemy, Evelyn Waugh, and to find it dull.

  I did not feel particularly pleased, because I was conscious that this looked like being the end of the summer. The trees were autumnal. There was an air of fin de saison.

  VISIT TO DENMARK

  August

  Eileen was there at Pelham Place, smiling and calm, to attend to all that was piled on my desk. She is indefatigable, impeccable and the fact that it was a Sunday afternoon and that she must cope with all these last-minute nonsenses in no way upset her. It took the two-and-a-half hours at our disposal to do all the packing, letters and photograph instructions, and it was only when the hired car was ready to take me to the airport that I suddenly faced up to the fact that I was going to Denmark.

  ‘Here is your ticket and passport and this little map and book will show you where you’re going. You see, there is Copenhagen; to get to Fyn you take the train east across country and you cross the sea and land at Nyborg.’