The Happy Years (1944-48)

by Cecil Beaton

  The elderly Gide has acquired the grand manner. Nothing remarkable about the swept and garnished, orange-varnished apartment, with its rows of bookcases, other than that it is permeated by the leisurely omniscience of its occupant.

  It was a lesson to me to watch how Gide is able to preserve a climate of calm throughout a morning which might have been nothing but a succession of interruptions. As I arrived at his Rue Vaneau rooftop apartment, an enthusiastic and somewhat overencouraged literary disciple was saying: ‘We’ll meet again very soon.’ Gide put a chair between the young lady and himself and, leaning on it, said: ‘Perhaps.’ He received the laundry as a god accepting an offering. He was in no way irritated by the ring of telephone and doorbell for he now had no further intention of answering either of them. He rolled his cigarettes, and as I did my drawing of him he sat impassive as a Chinese deity. I peered at the small tadpole eyes, white vellum skin, and hard-boiled-egg pate. I could smell parched lizard, dry new tweed, and reams of acrid stationery. The sudden quiet in his apartment was only broken by his stertorous breathing. For a while he read a paragraph or two from Plutarch, but most of the time he sat staring into the distance. He, more than any other that I have met, has the writer’s essential gift of leisure. Big business tycoons, theatrical impresarios and film directors do not seem to need time in which to digest their thoughts. Even actors must on occasions sit back and watch their fellow human beings, but reading and contemplation are essential to writer, philosopher and poet. How could I tell that possibly, with so many threads of ideas weaving exciting patterns in his mind, Gide was enjoying a quiet morning?

  STOCKING THE CELLAR

  Diana, wearing trousers, yachting cap and biscuit-coloured fox coat, is to have two days picnicking with ‘Bloggs’ (what a name!) Baldwin[6] en route to Beaune to buy wine for the Embassy entertainments. Thrilled at the prospect of escaping from the bonds of diplomatic life, again she shows herself to be a real gypsy, a rebel. In the turnip-white-faced, ginger-topped Bloggs she has found the ideal companion for such a trip. In company Bloggs is reticent, shy, and even gauche. Often silent, he sits back blinking myopically through large glasses. But when he is with one or two old friends he can become funnier than anyone. He has the liveliest and most original mind, and his point of view is completely fresh. He is a master of the anecdote and delights in turning the joke against himself. ‘There — I’d said it! I was jolly windy — for people were as shocked as if I’d made a smell.’ He tells of how his grandmother suffered acutely from boredom: once she was so bored that she fainted. He described how his sister had ‘a battery of boils going off in her mouth, and she couldn’t let her upper lip touch them for fear of fretting them.’ Diana returned exhausted from what she admitted was a rather pointless expedition — though reporting that Bloggs had never been in better comic vein. But they arrived at Beaune on a Saturday to find all wine shops shut. At the last minute a wine-merchant said: ‘You can buy what I have, but you will have to decant it and help bring it from the cellars.’ She had enjoyed this running down long corridors with tin perambulators and seeing where the best wine had been walled up against the Germans.

  Conversation in le salon vert

  Colette (like an old chinchilla marmoset sitting deep in a sofa): ‘There are few people with whom I want to spend enough time even to go to bed with them, and no one with whom I want to sleep the night.’

  Louise de Vilmorin: ‘Oh, I’m always so alone, I adore to have someone to spend the night in my bed. And the more remote from my life and interests he is the better I like it. During the day I want excitements: during the night mystery. With the warmth of an unknown head on my shoulder I can pass an exquisite night.’

  Diana: ‘Listen to her embroidering upon the thought of a moment. She hasn’t thought this all out before. She has all the ingenuity, flexibility and lack of plan of the Conservative party!’

  M. OF I. EXHIBITION AND ‘VOGUE’ STUDIO SITTING

  The M. of I. Exhibition was opened formally this morning by Duff, very important and solemn. Quite a crowd and many friends turned up, mostly on bicycles. I felt very proud.

  Then a great contrast: to the Vogue studio for my first shot at Paris fashion photographs for many years. Here again was Madame Dilé to give one a big hug of welcome. Madame Dilé, a small bird-like woman with raven’s-wing hair and huge thrush’s eyes, has managed the Paris Vogue studio and its often difficult ‘star’ photographers through untold phases of fashion. When first I came to Paris on assignments for the magazine I was unable to understand the language and proved inadequate in dealing with both technicians and my illustrious sitters.

  But Madame Dilé at once became my friend, and no matter how perverse an editor might be to please she always had an encouraging word. As the years progressed, and my knowledge of French improved and my style of photography became ever more elaborate, Madame Dilé’s task increased in difficulties. Yet at a moment’s notice, and on a last-minute whim of mine, she would produce fish-nets, statues, wax-work figures, cemetery wreaths, and any imaginable assortment of objects as part of my neo-romantic or surrealistic compositions. She did not quail at the thought of going out at midnight to bring back to the studio an old seller of violets from the Madeleine, or lobster in pots from the market. Nothing ever surprised or daunted her.

  Then came the war — and silence. Of course there was no fashion and no magazine: the studio was empty. But here, once more, was Madame Dilé. Today she was wrapped up against the cold in woollen shawls over woollen cardigans over woollen sweaters, a muffler covering her slightly shrunken mouth. Her hair was now grey and her dark eyes told of unspoken tragedy. But, more interested in what others are doing than in personal misfortune, she has no use for self-pity. With her deep crackling notes of sympathy and nods of wide-eyed recognition, she is one of those rare human beings who spread throughout one’s adult life the feeling of comfort that has been missing since the night nursery.

  After trying to instil some sort of allure into my photographs of the ‘stick-in-the-mud’ dowdiness of ‘London’s couturiers’ these clothes give one wings. Balenciaga’s line is very medieval and pregnant — nothing to do with the present-day travelling in métros so over-crowded that one has to be pushed into the train by porters — but so rich and luxurious that it is stimulating just to see.

  The vegetables I asked for as props to these pictures were of great interest to those in the studio who still know hunger.

  DIANA’S REVEILLE

  Monday

  The reveille of Diana is like a chapter out of Evelyn Waugh which, of course, is putting the cart before the horse. Diana has woken at 7.15 a.m. after a late night. Before the crimson curtains are pulled and her tea is brought to the vast crimson and gold bed in Pauline Borghese’s crimson-walled bedroom she has already written an eight-page letter to farmer Conrad Russell, an addition to a remarkable correspondence that has continued a lifetime. Diana, alabaster-white, is wearing, tied under her chin, a tight nightcap that might have come out of a medieval German engraving. Arrival of mail: packages and parcels unfolded: envelopes and unwanted paper thrown on the floor. Follows careful — not too careful — reading of the newspapers. The bed is soon a litter of work-baskets and trays of correspondence. Then she dials a telephone number. She is trying to get an old English governess into the already over-crowded English hospital here. She makes another call: ‘Have you heard the latest? This will blow your ear off. That beautiful little Laura Finch Berkeley has married an Indian snake-charmer — no, don’t gasp — nothing wrong with that — I’m also charming to snakes — but listen to this. He’s as tall as Emerald Cunard and completely circular — so fat that he falls over. He’s twice married and has four children...’ Now a call to the secretary: she gives instructions... ‘That one was a brute — now I’ve got a nice one for you. Will you tell Sergeant Spurgeon to go to Madame Taquière and fetch a poodle — it’s got long legs like arms — and take it to have its hair cut at the coiffeur and then bring it
back here for life.’ The telephone from the porter’s lodge: ‘She wants to be paid, does she? How much? Oh, she does! Well, don’t let her have a penny. Ask her if she’ll take a bottle of whisky and some soap.’ From now on the telephone is never silent. How to find a job for her son, John Julius, which will prevent his being sent by the Foreign Office to Outer Mongolia? Who could bring over from Jackson’s some kippers for Duff’s breakfast? The house-guests, clad in night or dressing-gowns, come into the room to hear and spread news. A black-coated man (very important in his line of antique business) arrives to help one of the guests sell a watch for ready cash; another comes in to supply bobble fringe for re-doing Josephine’s bed canopy; a workman appears with a ladder to mend a chandelier and is asked his advice about new lamp shades. An unexpected visitor places a pug dog on the bed. Mrs Portault (‘the sheet woman’) is announced; two girls accompany her. Soon the floors, chairs and bed are covered with finely embroidered sheets. ‘This is a “Roi Soleil” design.’ Everyone is exclaiming rapturously: ‘It’s too lovely — too lovely!’

  All the while Bloggs Baldwin, waiting to take Diana out in his car, is sewing buttons on his khaki tunic. ‘Don’t look at me now,’ says Diana, wrapped in a bath-towel at the dressing table as she paints her face with her back to us. This is about the only privacy she demands.

  When, at last, Diana is ready dressed Bloggs says: ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t come yet as I’m doing something that I don’t think has ever been done before. I’m sewing on a back trouser button without taking off the trousers.’

  The grave butler bows and shows a typewritten list. ‘Coming to lunch? Sir David Keith? What can he be?’ The chef comes in with his book of menus and suggestions for dinner — ‘Idéal’ — and is dismissed. Finally the Ambassador appears.

  Diana hands him a list of tonight’s dinner guests. Duff feels in his pockets. ‘What are you looking for — your glasses?’ ‘I can read this just as well without my glasses as you can hear without your ear trumpet.’ He reads. ‘That sounds rather nice!’ ‘’Tisn’t really — make no mistake!’

  Bloggs drove Diana and me to Rambouillet to see a shell pavilion. En route we passed St Cyr and noted the precision of the RAF bombing. The destruction was entirely confined to the military target.

  Rambouillet park was in a haze of mist. A child with long thin legs and long black cape walked like a character in a Grimm fairy story. Diana asked her:

  ‘Où sommes-nous?’

  ‘C’est la laiterie de la reine Marie Antoinette.’

  A grey stone mausoleum greeted us, the interior of marble and gold. The child unlocked another door and lo! a vast rockery with Venus among the artificial rocks and fountains for cooling the milk.

  The child, quiet and silent and grown-up in manner, then led us down an avenue of flaming trees to a thatched rustic house. With large keys more doors unlocked and behold! — a wonderful shell house. After exclamations of delight had echoed from shell to shell the child pulled aside a hidden door. We were now in another small room exquisitely painted with flowers and birds. Here the serious child opened some secret cupboards and some revolving dolls appeared. An atmosphere of magic.

  Diana decided that this would be the place to bring Churchill for a picnic when he arrives in a few days’ time.

  Harold Acton and I went to Huis Clos, a short existential play by Sartre about hell — the premise being we make our own hell. Three characters are shown in an empty bricked-up room, here to remain intriguing and fighting with each other. The complications are infinite: misery of all sorts — including unrequited Lesbianism — and there is no conclusion. Depressing and brilliant.

  CHURCHILL’S ARRIVAL

  November 10th

  The household this morning was in quite a flap preparing for Churchill’s visit tonight. Candles were put in all the candlesticks — furniture rearranged once more. Diana, in pants and bandanna, delivering strange orders to the servants. ‘Give that light a wash — it’s got too much London on it, but it’s useful: it may help us all to look a bit better.’ ‘Would you, what is known as, “bring this up” — it’ll “come up” beautifully.’ ‘Place that sofa kitty-wise.’ Jean moved the sofa across a corner. ‘No, no — that isn’t even pure-kitty!’

  Saturday, November 11th: Armistice Day

  Churchill and de Gaulle are to lay a wreath on the Unknown Warrior’s grave and watch the march past of France’s war effort — including the Moroccans, Algerians, Fire Services, Post Office men, etc.

  In the Embassy courtyard below bands are playing and the guard is changed. Diana calls up on the house telephone very early for she is leaving for the procession and may never be seen again. There has been great anxiety lest some of the Germans — still in hiding — might throw a bomb or bring out a machine gun.

  The whole of Paris seemed to be turning out. I had no place, had made no plans, but had a great stroke of luck when I got a lift from a young officer in the bullet-proof, landmine-proof car that once belonged to Eisenhower, and we drove through the crowds, up the Champs-Elysées into the very jaw of the oncoming pageant: thus we had a ringside view of Churchill, de Gaulle and Eden laying wreaths on Clemenceau’s tomb.

  Almost unbelievable that, after those long, interminable years of suffering, France was once again freed. Today was a landmark in all our lives. The weight of emotion robbed one of all individuality; one became just a minute spectator of history.

  The crowds, red-nosed with cold and crying, were quiet in their gratitude: some who had climbed up trees looked like black rag dolls perched without moving. When the leaders passed, the crowds shouted in unison: ‘Chour-cheel!’ and during the playing of ‘God Save The King’ they ‘sh-shussed’ for silence and the men removed their berets. The sky was filled with aeroplanes: a number of Spitfire squadrons were being utilized to keep any German bombers away. Even so, it was remarkable that this great mass of humanity should gather within a few miles of an enemy that was now in retreat, but, until only a short while ago, all-conquering.

  Lunch at the Embassy. Mrs Churchill, feeling very cold and looking rather severe, with daughter Mary in the blush of English, pre-Raphaelite perfection in attendance, described how a Dakota had brought them from England yesterday with an escort of Spitfires. When Mrs Churchill had passed over France she wept. On arrival they had bundled into a car which at once had conked out. They changed cars and had the terror of passing others at breakneck speed in order to keep their place in the procession. On arrival at the Quai d’Orsay Mrs C. was amazed at the luxury, the grandeur of the salons, and her bedroom and sitting room had been filled with white lilac! The hot baths in such elaborately appointed bathrooms had been a great event — and dinner, too — with such delicious food and so much of it: soup, scrambled eggs with truffles, followed by chicken — and as much cream and butter as you wished. Every member of the Churchill family possesses an unspoilt quality of naïveté that is always delightful.

  Mrs Churchill told of the effort it had been to make conversation with de Gaulle at yesterday’s great banquet. While sitting on the General’s right, and seeking desperately for conversational gambits, she reflected to herself on the difficulties of the lot of Madame de Gaulle. Suddenly, the General broke the silence by remarking: ‘I have often thought it must be very difficult for you being the wife of Winston Churchill.’

  After lunch Mrs Eden asked if I’d go with her to see the rooms at the Quai d’Orsay, and Mrs Churchill said she’d like to join us. It was an interesting experience walking through the crowds — none of whom recognized Mrs Churchill who was buffeted by gendarmes, bystanders, jeeps, etc. But she was thrilled to be in Paris again and, like most women, could not resist taking an interest in the shop windows. She thought the Dürer-esque hats hideous.

  Outside the Quai d’Orsay the gendarmes challenged our approach and told us to go to a side entrance, but Mrs Churchill pleaded: ‘My name is Churchill’ — at which moment a jeepful of American GIs drove up: ‘Say, if you’re English ca
n you tell us the way to...?’

  We toured these grand but monstrous apartments of the Quai d’Orsay with their oceans of Savonnerie carpet and mountains of ormolu and boule. Baskets of red, white and blue flowers had come from the most expensive florists and were in great contrast to the way in which these illustrious guests lead their lives. Nothing could have been less pretentious than the collection of toilet articles belonging to Mrs Churchill; Churchill’s tooth-brushes, hot-water bottle, sponge and shoddy bedroom slippers looked as if they belonged to a public schoolboy. By Eden’s bedside was an Everyman edition of the classics, and the rubber dummies with which he does his exercises for shaking hands each morning.

  One does not realize, when the cheers are resounding in one’s ears, that the hero, acclaimed at one moment by the world, is for most of his life just like any other quiet, possibly somewhat solitary, individual.

  CHURCHILL AND DE GAULLE VISIT THE FRONT LINES

  November 13th

  Already I am becoming soft. The day-to-day life at the Embassy is too fascinating to me. Full well I know that after a four years’ absence Paris offers so much, and I should be investigating every street and corner: there are still so many questions to ask, and old friends to track down. But it is hard to leave these precincts — knowing that Duff is always in the centre of some excitement — while things are never dull around Diana. Whoever comes down the long enfilade, it is bound to be a person of the greatest interest: Petchkov, the son of Maxim Gorki who has just somehow escaped from Poland, or a member of the British Cabinet whom I would never be likely to run across at home. I have only to remain in the salon vert for Eluard or Aragon to appear.