The Parting Years (1963-74)

by Cecil Beaton

  On arrival I found Jane Ormsby Gore, with her baby, Saffron, lying in a shopping basket. She was calm and sad about the tragic accident that had killed her mother four days before. She spoke sympathetically about the misery that her father must face each time some new aspect of his loss occurs. The snapshots that he took on that last Sunday’s tea-party, at which I was a guest, will one day be returned from the printers. Chrissie hustled about his dark panelled rooms doing nothing in particular and certainly never settling down to talk. Half an hour later Michael Wishart, freshly out of a nursing-home, came to call for Jane. She snatched up the basket and they disappeared. ‘Mick’s coming to dinner,’ said Chrissie, ‘bringing Marianne Faithfull, but I can’t think where they are.’ At 10.15 they appeared. Mick was in a gold brocade coat with tight, coffee-coloured trousers. He shrugged a bit, made no pretence of manners, and settled down to look at a picture book. Marianne, with white suety face, the usual drowned-blonde hair and smudged eyes, her dress torn under the arm, fluttered, and made ‘groovy’ conversation. Also present, by now, was Prince Stanislas, or some such name. I remembered seeing him two years ago at a freak Dufferin party as a huge white and black Hamlet, wearing, in spite of the heat, a heavy, black cape. He looked extremely self-conscious and po-faced. Tonight he was still dressed as Hamlet, with strips of sequins on his blouse and his sleeves painted psychedelically in silver, magenta and gold. He showed a large, white décolletage, a vast Adam’s apple, huge white hands covered with rings, Byzantine-black page-boy hair, white face and potato nose. Throughout the long evening he spoke not at all.

  In spite of the impediment in his speech, the most articulate person there was Robert Fraser. He has the usual pallor, the five-o’clock shadow, the tie badly in need of a pull up, and hair.

  At 11.30 pm we went off in taxis to the Bagdad House restaurant in Fulham Road. Here, in the club-like atmosphere of the basement, we found others of the gang. Mark Parker, more rodentlike than ever with his greasy blond hair over his nose; Michael Wishart, looking as if he needed to go back to the nursing-home; the youngest Tennant girl dressed like an aged 1920s figure with dark glasses, frizzed hair, a mini skirt over thick, purple, woollen stockings and rows of clairvoyant’s beads. Also now present were Jane Ormsby Gore with her husband, Michael Rainey. He was asleep, ‘out’, with his head on a shoulder; nearby, oblivious of the flashing lights and roar of a juke box, was the baby, Saffron, in the shopping basket.

  I tried to talk to Mick. He shrugged, twitched his eyes, contorted his mouth and screwed up his face. He was hungry. He wanted ‘fewd’. Little plates of mush were brought. He put a cake of pap into his huge mouth. I was, by now, in a trance of fatigue. Robert Fraser extolled the virtues of Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls film. Wouldn’t I like to come and see it? He had it at home. It runs for four hours. I wondered if I should be a devil and make a night of it. But no, I hadn’t the strength. I said: ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ It was one o’clock when I left to walk home up the deserted Fulham Road, leaving the night to the rest of them to turn into something or nothing.

  I’d never met Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone before, but lately, going through early bound magazines, I had seen pictures of her at her wedding. I was struck by the tininess of her waist and the potelé little bosom and rounded hips that were pushed out from the corset. Now today the Princess, playing croquet under the cedars of Lebanon at Wilton, was disguised as an eighty-year-old lady.

  The remains of beauty are still there, thought the waist has gone; together with her porcelain complexion.

  But unlike most royalty, and perhaps she has the advantage of being very ‘minor’, she has a directness that is healthy, and her shyness is well under control.

  The Pembrokes keep up the tradition of the Edwardian house-party and had assembled twelve for this weekend, which was now, on Sunday evening, at a low ebb, half of the guests having departed. The croquet over, we were relaxing in the library having a drink before changing. Princess Alice talked on her ‘Topic A’ which was Queen Victoria.

  The following points interested me. The Queen’s children were all very much in awe of this fearsome little figure. Since it was always being drummed into them that they must behave well in front of her, when she appeared they quaked. But she was easy and good-humoured, laughed a lot and had two long, birdlike teeth in front that appeared whenever she was amused. Princess Victoria, known as ‘The Snipe’, inherited them.

  The Queen was very clean and always smelt refreshingly of rosewater. She was often making a hat, platting straw together, and the Princess Alice was furious at having to wear this hat which she considered hideous.

  The Queen had no figure, just an avalanche of basalt black with little, white lawn collar and cuffs that were immaculate. I think the word for the neckpiece was ‘tucker’. She did not wear it high round the neck in the fashion of the time, but was quite décolleté, and therefore dowdy.

  At Windsor, Balmoral and Osborne there was always too much food. The sideboards were heavy with cold and hot meats, fowls and capons. There were always two soups, clear and thick; fish and eggs, and so much for the servants to take away. Such a waste!

  Part IV: Behind the Iron Curtain, 1967

  WARSAW

  September 1967

  First visit to the large, sprawling, creamish-coloured Wilanow Palace. Originally built for Jan Sobieski in the seventeenth century, it was rehashed in the 1840s for the Potockis with Victorian chutney-coloured doors, poor frescoes and indiscriminate decoration, stucco, statues, and busts. Some of the tall-ceilinged rooms were impressively hung with Genoese velvet. There were galleries of archaic family portraits of a certain individual Polish charm, the women with long, pointed faces like Dolly Radziwill, and pretty costume nonsenses of sun bonnets, scarlet or black bows, and odd uses of brocade. The use of candles in sconces at intervals on bookcases is an idea I’d like to copy. A fearsome bathroom decorated with cheap silk in bosses and peacock’s feathers. Some good French furniture, boulle, lacquer. The rooms were all carefully redecorated with great taste and bravery. Although the exterior was rather sad, and the gardens badly planted with salvias and other Victoriana, it was pleasant to walk on the terraces and in the water gardens.

  We saw the amazingly reconstructed old city, medieval Rynek, copied faithfully from documents of Belotto, so that it is now just as it used to be before.

  We did not realize what terrible damage the bombing had done, or maybe we had just forgotten the horror, until we were shown by the National Museum people a film of just how determined the Germans were that the city of Warsaw should be completely wiped out. The devastation of the raids was later followed by the German soldiers setting fire with flame-throwers to any building that remained standing; ninety-nine per cent of the city was destroyed. The film was so impressive, so nightmarish, that it has made all the difference to one’s point of view about the things one sees today. That the Poles should immediately start rebuilding the city as it once was, was an act of faith that is quite unbelievable. At the moment there is still little enough to make life seem easy, but their faith in the future guided them through a terror and misery that few other countries have ever endured.

  Then to Lazienki Palace, in a park facing a lake, a fairy-tale palace with colonnaded wings, and two gilded balconies. The Germans had done their best to dynamite everything that could be valuable, the ceilings, frescoes, statuary, but the reconstruction has been a miracle, not only of dedication and love but of taste. A small, intimate hall, white and grey marble with heavy stucco ceiling, leads to a small, all-Delft room and a small green silk room with family portraits; garlands of wild flowers decorate the frames of engravings; then a yellow velvet room; and a ballroom of sunlit whiteness.

  Tuesday, September 5th

  8.30 am bus start. I could not read and after two hours the motion of the bus made me feel ill. The towns had displayed their bombed desolation. The scenery through which we passed was deeply depressing. The countryside showed that the Pol
es have never progressed in the tilling of their land since the Middle Ages, and that modern machines are not welcomed even if they could be paid for. Horses draw the carts which, as a concession to modernization, have Michelin tyres on their wheels. Thatched chatas falling down; weeds everywhere; poor soil.

  We followed the Vistula for miles of flat decay. Even the cemeteries are untended. Few pets, one or two dogs, not a cat in sight. Such an extra expense is discouraged.

  The day was pastel-coloured and hazy with filtered sun. Our first stop was a large house at Pulawy: gothicized inside with iron staircases and tall windows; outside a battlement. A walk through the park was made charming by hundreds of young school-children, all looking the same. They were blond with blunt features, clean, well shod, well dressed and well mannered, being tended by kind women who appeared to have been gathering mushrooms. But the general poverty is disturbing.

  Lunch at Renaissance Square in Kazimierz/Dolny, where there is a façade elaborately sculpted with animals and people reminiscent of Hardwick. Then an appallingly long drive to Lancut. The scenery more congenial. The landscape less flat, richer, greener and better tended. Daylight fading upon pretty scenes of haymaking, and strong aromas.

  Disappointing to find Lancut was not in its own park, but right in a town. There was a hideous garden, and, to match, a hideous façade. The castle covered with tin advertisement signs.

  Count and Countess Roman Potocki came down to greet us; the squire with hat and stick, she in false pearls with a shopping bag and a twitch. The hall was unbelievably ugly; the reception rooms and the corridors were beyond belief a disappointment. Admittedly all the good furniture had been removed and taken away in nine train-loads during the war, but even so what was left was vulgar and coarse.

  It was sad to see the place in the care of a museum custodian and his staff. Many housemaids now sweep and dust for the State. They have no resentment of the former owners; in fact, the family photographs are exhibited proudly and so great the interest that in a country where there are few cars as many as 5,000 visitors come on a Sunday.

  I could not help thinking that the reputation that had gone before was grossly exaggerated. The grandeur only asserted itself as one saw the first-floor rooms: the bedroom-boudoir of the Countess Betka Potocka, the ballroom like a stage set, the library, the billiard room; and, above all, the 1914 theatre. This was built by a Viennese architect; there were garlands of double rows of illuminated chandelier drops hanging from the ceiling; and on stage a ravishing set of painted roses for a musical comedy.

  The visit to the coachhouses was really exciting; beautiful carriages of every sort, each with its own personality, black and brown veneers, black leather, shining harnesses; and sledges; all smelling of horse.

  In strange contrast our rooms in the so-called ‘Palace’ Hotel were primitive. No room had its own bath or lavatory, and tonight no room had any running water. How to wash one’s teeth? How to go to the loo? The twenty of us all took the crisis extremely well. When one thinks of how Madame Patino Ortiz would not dream of going without even a bottle of mineral water, one has to laugh.

  Wednesday, September 6th

  The journey to Cracow was exceedingly long and tedious. The countryside (with the Vistula popping up — very flat — every now and again) was not particularly pleasing although happily the earth seemed richer, the badly tended crops healthier, and the effect greener.

  On the streets the people looked much less miserable than in Russia, but the suffering is excruciating. Before dinner we went to have a drink with the Roman Potockis, who would have been heirs to Lancut but for the Russians. The staircase leading to their room was of a squalor unimaginable, permeated with the smells of a restaurant on the ground floor and the nearby refuse bins. The room that he shares with his wife and children is only theirs in the afternoon. In it there is the lavabo, and the kitchen sink and stove; the bed of madame is pushed behind a screen and monsieur’s bed becomes a sofa during the day. The room contains many mementoes. Some beautiful furniture, a few good paintings, and photograph albums to remind them of former glory.

  However, pity must not be felt. They could live elsewhere if they wished. But they find Paris life insupportable. Here at least they are cheerful.

  Friday, September 8th

  Today was a comparative treat, for we started our sightseeing at the reasonable hour of 9.30. Just to say that we went to a college, an art museum, the souks, the large ‘Place’, the Wawel, and five churches does not give any idea of the physical effort needed to carry out this venture. The bus could not be found, a guest could not be found. We walked and walked, and did our best to behave well; only the art-guide lost his temper.

  To see Wawel Castle and Wawel Cathedral was rewarding. The castle with its sixteenth-century colonnaded courtyard is the former seat of the kings of Poland, and contains among its treasures the famous collection of Flemish tapestries woven in Brussels in the sixteenth century and displayed here with impeccable care and taste. Inside there are marble-floored rooms, leather walls, heavy gilt and painted ceilings, huge bronze chandeliers, dark Renaissance tables, throne chairs and, above all, the tapestries — hundreds of them in dozens of rooms. I, no connoisseur, was impressed by the colours still being so fresh, by the bird’s-egg blue among the silver and rose threads, the biblical figures over life-size, and the scenes of animal jungle life in a fantasized Africa.

  Tents captured from the Turks at the Battle of Vienna in 1683 were part of a permanent exhibition of Oriental art. They were embroidered, appliqued with an extraordinary variety of designs on the same theme, rose colours predominating; stylized flowers with black-dotted centres. Altogether they created a magic that is beyond description; revelation was enough.

  In the museum in the vaults of the castle there was much to see: armour, Meissen, Chinese and Japanese porcelain, swords of unparalleled magnificence, all beautifully shown.

  Wawel Cathedral houses bright shining marble tombs of the kings of Poland from the earliest times with their individuality intact. One fifteenth-century king, having the nose of my mother’s family, prompted a closer look.

  The visit to the Collegium Maius was of special interest. It was thrilling to see so many beautifully decorated medieval rooms overlooking a large, dun-coloured opera set of a court. They were wonderful and smelt of wax. A smaller room, M. Lerone’s study, contained odd mathematical and scientific instruments, and a wooden statue of King Casimir, the founder of the college, who was considered to be one of the best mathematicians and physicists of his day in the world. The former college now houses the University Museum and has a remarkable collection of astrolabes and globes, and shown to their greatest advantage on a marvellous staircase are beautiful petit-point tapestries. Many of the exhibits are connected with the scientific research carried out by Copernicus.

  As we stepped outside we were almost drenched by the water jets which were cleaning the building in De Gaulle’s honour. The General was to make a speech in the glorious lecture hall.

  Then to the square, vaster than any in Europe; flower markets; Victorian souks in which, sadly, one had no desire to buy a thing.

  The Eglise Notre Dame is as grand as any cathedral. We heard the trumpeter in the tower sound the midday notes; inside there were many peasants with handkerchiefs on their heads and nuns wearing fantastic coifs. They contributed to the splendour of this tall, forest-like building with green fourteenth-century windows, blue vaulted ceiling, huge altar piece, and wonderful carving.

  The afternoon took us to the enormous eighteenth-century collection made and given to the country by the Czartoryski family — who at one time had everything and now nothing. The pearl of the collection was the painting by Leonardo of the woman holding an ermine, a beautiful young mistress of one of the Sforzas.

  But how much sightseeing can one take in? What about the five churches to see? One had a pulpit like a golden ball with cherubs peeping out from a silver sheet, another was a huge, gloomy, grey church
, and then there was an art nouveau one with lilies and nasturtiums in the stained glass and on the child’s-illustration-like walls.

  The huge Gustave Doré edifice of the castle of Pieskowa Skala, twenty-five miles outside Cracow on a high mountain crag in a most beautiful valley, raised our spirits at the end of an exhausting day.

  I feel there is no hope for the Poles. They are sandwiched between Russia and Germany, a helpless situation. They are sentimental about the past but cannot create a style which is new and modern.

  I asked one of the most mouse-like of my fellow travellers what had most impressed her on the trip, and she answered, without hesitation, the ‘hauteur’ of the Poles. It is extraordinary that, in the face of the most appalling anxiety, disaster, and poverty, they continue to have courage and hope.

  There was little time for sleep before a 6.45 am call, and the start of a long day in the motor, three hundred and more kilometres to Brno in Czechoslovakia, where we were to spend several days.

  I had decided after this to cut short my trip and escape the week in Germany. It was a pity to miss the unique opportunity of seeing the state of that unhappy land, but I could not take in all those palaces en route — saturation point had been reached.

  CZECHOSLOVAKIA

  September 9th

  The sun has gone; a wet day. The troupe all appear in tweed, some with shooting hats. We drive in the bus for one hour in mist. Terribly ugly suburbs of Brno. Then into a countryside which at least looks prosperous in comparison to Poland.

  First stop the eighteenth-century castle of Milotice, which once belonged to the Serenyi family. Approached over a bridge carrying huge stone sphinxes and urns. Inside the atmosphere was one of a large country house full of sporting charm, stuffed birds, deer and antelope; a good simple staircase, Biedemeier furniture; one room decorated entirely like a scrapbook, very pretty in its yellow-green varnish. All that was missing was the family, who are now probably living in a garret.