by Cecil Beaton
It was one of the most beautiful moonlit nights of a wonderful summer. Windsor looked lively at this hour of the evening with crowds coming out of the theatre and the pubs. The castle was floodlit. Little posses of people stood around watching the guests arrive. Policemen and yeoman of the guard were at every point.
Surprisingly informal in a rather cavernous light, the Queen received her guests at the top of a small flight of stairs. As I got nearer I could see the marvellous sheen on the Queen’s skin, her teeth, her lips, her hair. She was dressed in white with some sparklets round the neck and her hair a bit stiff. I have never in my life seen such a marvellous regard or such a look of interest and compassion.
I was thrilled.
The silence after ‘Good evening’ was broken by ‘Are you better?’ Prince Philip asked: ‘What’s all this about?’ I explained that I had left hospital to come here. He laughed, as much as to say: ‘You must be mad’ or ‘What else is new?’ He would have liked to bully me but I moved on. Patrick Plunket told me to go to the long Gothic gallery where the guests were gathering and a buffet stretched the length of one wall. The party was to celebrate the seventieth birthdays of the Queen Mother, the Duke of Gloucester (he’s too old to appear), the Duke of Beaufort, and Lord Mountbatten.
Prince and Princess Paul of Yugoslavia were there, and a lot of German royals, and all sorts of young, including several longhaired young men. Ava Waverley looked like a drawing of an old woman by Dürer, her mouth fallen open and her eyes popping. Her hair was like the fluff of a five-day-old chick. Diana Cooper was a tour-de-force of aristocratic beauty in white.
The Queen Mother was wearing pale moth-coloured chiffon with pelisses covered with solid sequins, a big pearl and diamond necklace and tiara. Princess Alexandra looked ravishing, long tendril curls, a dark red satin dress and a sheen on her skin; the most adorable of human beings, she exuded beauty. Princess Anne, with wild hair, was fascinated by all she saw and heard. Prince Charles with crab-apple-red cheeks and chin and nose, healthy, full of charm, and intelligent. He asked me if I was still photographing, which gave me a great opportunity to talk about the recent visit to Royal Lodge.
I sat with a neighbour, Mary Pembroke, and the Hopes; was visited by Sybil Cholmondeley, Chiquita Astor and others who pretended that I looked well. I ate a bit of supper and drank two glasses of champagne.
Patrick Plunket then took me to the Charles II rooms to see the new decoration and the pictures which had recently come from Buckingham Palace. Some of the wall coverings are a mistake but in general the improvement is immense.
Patrick has been responsible for doing all the flowers. Instead of the carnation-sweet-pea arrangements, he got the gardeners to grow vast quantities of green zinnias, tobacco plants and alchemilla mollis to fill the golden candelabra on the buffet and to decorate four huge cones. There was a vast edifice of white eremurus, white delphiniums, and white peonies. Patrick had arranged for a whole syringa tree in flower to be cut down and put into a great malachite pot in the supper-room.
The evening was obviously being a success; everyone enjoying themselves and in good mood and the reason was that the election results had returned a great Tory victory. We had been expecting to put up with Wilson and his lot for another five years but quite dramatically all was changed and here was the new leader in person. I didn’t see Heath, but he was there and when he appeared, a cheer went up and I was told that he blushed to his collar.
I felt I had better leave before my strength gave out. I had enjoyed myself and the evening for me was more than replete. The return journey seemed to take no time and at the hospital two giggling Irish nurses were waiting by the front door for me. I felt like a prisoner happy to return after his parole outing. I slept better than I have for nights and woke up next day with temperature normal.
June 8th
E. M. Forster died yesterday aged ninety-one. He was a sweet man; gentle, self-effacing, kind, with great moral courage and a determination to fight for what he believed in.
His last novel was written as long ago as the early twenties. Altogether he wrote only five novels and the fact that he is considered one of our greatest writers proves that quality is better than quantity.
A delightful friend, the last time I saw him was two or three years ago when the Italian ambassador and Madame Guidotti gave a gala for his having encouraged an understanding of Italy at a difficult time. He was invited to stay at the Italian Embassy in London and to receive a gold medal at a special lunch in his honour. When he left Cambridge he got into the wrong train; the limousine sent to meet him at the station waited in vain, and he eventually arrived bedraggled and out-of-breath.
I had always liked to think of him still living in his rooms at King’s.
Villa Albrizzi, Este: August
The Albrizzi who own this house have long since fallen on hard times. In summer, if lucky, they rent the house to eccentric English people who enjoy its shabbiness.
Diana Phipps, our hostess, has a deceptively offhand efficiency and an aesthetic appreciation of the joys of living simply. She knows how to organize the household and in a vague, casual way, with the help of her Spanish couple from London, everything works. There are seven of us and two children. Diana does the cooking.
She is completely at ease enjoying the villa, and its beautiful, overgrown garden. The carpets are mostly threadbare, there is little matching china, but the proportions of the halls and rooms are noble; the house had been built when comfort on a large scale was understood.
From this delightful place we drive in a curious mixture of motor vehicles; the cook’s car, a rented limousine, or the local taxi; over the gravel paths between the beds of drooping sun-tired roses, through the tall, wrought-iron gates to visit neighbouring sights. Once we went by motorboat up the Brenta, to visit the Villa Malcontenta. It was wonderful to watch Diana’s enthusiasm for the Palladian design of the house, the furniture, the beautiful china and glass, and everything that Bertie Landsberg had done for the place.
I had never realized how marvellous his work had been. Now I felt sorry that, having once known him well — I had even helped to chip away the paint covering the frescoes here — I had seen less of him since.
To me the absence of noise is one of the great luxuries today. Italy is usually a nightmare of clamour. Every small country town reverberates with the appalling din of motor-engines. Even the most feeble little car lets off a roar that sounds like the approaching hordes from Hell. A motor-bicycle shatters the eardrums of all but the triumphant rider. It is monstrous that this pollution of God’s peace should not be curtailed. This and the encroachment of factory buildings and skyscraper blocks of flats has ruined the countryside.
Lorries bigger than any monster ever created by Bosch or Breughel hog the road for miles letting off farts of stinking black smoke. Only the most reckless motor-bicycles dare to overtake them at the corners, and somehow manage to avoid the oncoming car by a whisker.
Diana Cooper is lying on her bed. Her broken leg has hurt her so much that she has had to leave the group. She keeps her bedroom door open so that she can waylay anyone coming up the staircase.
I go in for a chat on my way to bed. She is depressed and may go back to England to see her doctor. What bravery she shows, always pulling her weight, never complaining. Suddenly I felt a brute, that I had secretly judged her for showing off, for not listening, for criticizing the food, for being deaf. Then I realize how unique she is, for she is nearing the eighty mark.
VISIT TO THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF WINDSOR
September
Went to the house in the beautiful Bois de Boulogne to have tea with the Duchess. On arrival in this rather sprawling, pretentious house full of good and bad, the Duchess appeared at the end of a garden vista, in a crowd of yapping pug dogs. She seems to have suddenly aged, to have become a little old woman. Her figure and legs are as trim as ever, and she is as energetic as she always was, putting servants and things to rights. But Wallis had the sad, haunted
eyes of the ill. In hospital they had found she had something wrong with her liver and that condition made her very depressed. When she got up to fetch something, she said: ‘Don’t look at me. I haven’t even had the coiffeur come out to do my hair,’ and her hair did appear somewhat straggly. This again gave her a rather pathetic look. She loves rich food and drink but she is now on a strict diet and must not drink any alcohol.
Wallis tottered to a sofa against the light in a small, overcrowded drawing-room. Masses of royal souvenirs, gold boxes, sealing wax, stamps and seals; small pictures, a great array of flowers in obelisk-shaped baskets. These had been sent up from the Mill, which will be sold now the Duke is not able to bend down for his gardening.
We talked as easily as only old friends do. Nothing much except health, mutual friends and the young generation was discussed. Then an even greater shock; amid the barking of the pugs, the Duke of Windsor, in a cedar-rose-coloured velvet golf-suit, appeared. His walk with a stick makes him into an old man. He sat, legs spread, and talked and laughed with greater ease than I have ever known. At last, after all these years, he called me by my Christian name and treated me as one of his old ‘cronies’. He has less and less of these; in fact it is difficult for him to find someone to play golf with. There were moments when the Prince of Wales’ charm came back, and what a charm it was! I noticed a sort of stutter, a hissing of the speech when he hesitated in mid-sentence. Wallis did not seem unduly worried about this and said: ‘Well, you see, we’re old! It’s awful how many years have gone by and one doesn’t have them back!’
We talked of the current trends in clothes, hippies, nudity, pornography, ‘filthy’ postcards, etc. The thought struck me that had it not been for the sex urges of their youth, these two would not be here together today. But they are a happy couple. They are both apt to talk at once, but their attitudes do not clash and they didn’t seem to have any regrets. The Duke still talks of his investiture as Prince of Wales, and asked me to find out where the crown is that he wore at Caernarvon. He got to his feet (with stick) to look out some illustration in a book and talked of the old ‘characters’ — Fruity, Ali Mackintosh, Freddie Cripps, Eric Dudley.
An hour passed quickly enough, but I felt we were perhaps running out of small talk when I looked at my watch and realized I must leave for an Ionesco play. The leave-taking was lengthy, due to many red herrings on the way. The Duchess leaning forward on tiny legs, looked rather blind, and when an enormous bouquet of white flowers and plants arrived, she did not seem able to see it. She leant myopically towards it and asked, ‘What’s that? A tuberose? An arum lily?’ The man corrected her — ‘An auratum’ — ‘Ah yes, will you tell them how beautifully they have done them.’ I watched her try to open the card to see who this incredibly expensive ‘tribute’ had come from. I’m sure it cost all of £75! ‘Who is it from?’ asked the Duke. ‘Don’t be so full of curiosity,’ said his wife trying to read without glasses. ‘It’s from Jane Englehard!’ The two old people, very bent, but full of spirit and still both dandies, stood at the door as I went off in Lilianne’s smart car. Through the passage of years I had become one of their entourage, an old friend, and the Duke even said to me: ‘Well, between these four walls...’
CATHLEEN NESBITT
Cathleen Nesbitt is the most delightful companion. I have always admired her on the stage and considered her a romantic personality. She is beautiful, decorative, and easy about the house. She embellishes the garden and every room she sits in, and her talk is of the best literary quality.
Cathleen shows a rugged sense of reality that no doubt she has learnt in the theatre. She alludes to Willie Maugham as a bastard. She talks freely of the functions of the body. She is clean-living and clean-thinking, but realizes the importance of the sensual passions. Rivals have surpassed her in the theatre; she has no regrets and is not bitter in any way. She is generous, kind and unselfish; and she has an inner contentment.
It is incredible to think that she is eighty-two years old. Her brain is still quick and alert and her ability to quote at great length from poetry and literature is impressive. She is seldom at a loss for a name from her distant past, and can even put a date to a long-forgotten play. She always has a feast of reminiscences about the theatre and is full of good anecdotes about stage celebrities and occasions. Cathleen is also a wonderful audience and throws her head back in raucous laughter.
She is still wonderfully natural. Her face is bright and clean in the moment of waking as others are after hours of preparations.
She leaps out of bed, runs upstairs, and does exercises like a child. Without much money she manages to be delightfully dressed. As Dot Head said, ‘She is the perfect example of how to grow old, and proves how wrong it is to make too much effort in the ways of artifice.’
It was only when I was driving her to the station for her return to London (and a diet of cream cheese) that I popped the question of whether she would have married Rupert Brooke. ‘Yes, I suppose we would have married if it had not been for the war. You see, I only knew him for three years and during two of those he was in America and that’s why there were so many letters. I keep them in a cardboard box and should preserve them more carefully. But, you see, we were both recovering from unrequited love affairs. I had had that girlish crush on Harry Ainley with whom I was appearing on the stage, and he was having an affair with another woman. Anyhow, Rupert was studying for some Naval Reserve course at Dartmouth, and I went down there to see him; sometimes he came to see me when I was touring. We read poetry to one another, I reading Donne to him, and he reading his poems to me. Rupert said he thought he ought to be thinking about making a will, and he supposed we’d better get married. And which would I prefer — to be left his rather small possessions, or the rights to his poems? Then he went on to say he thought perhaps as he had just started a poetry magazine with Lascelles Abercrombie, de la Mare and Gibson, and he would like it to continue, it would perhaps be best to leave the copyrights to the three of them. After Rupert’s death Mrs Brooke, his mother, said it was quite frightening what a lot of money came in from the poems; that all England was mad about “If I should die think only this of me ...”, when the other sonnets were far better.’
Cathleen described Rupert’s stocky body but graceful, quick movements, the marvellous colouring, the jutting, unclassical nose, and how he had, by dying so young, achieved lasting fame. A young poet dying in a war is always the stuff of legend, but what if he had lived? Would he have developed as a poet? Rupert had wanted more than anything to be a playwright; he had written two plays, but they weren’t any good. Would he have become embittered? What would he have looked like today as a man of eighty-four?
I asked Cathleen about Bernard Shaw. She did not know him well, but he had directed the taking of photographs of the production when she played Perdita and he said, ‘No, that’s the wrong side of your face.’ When she told him she would like, for once, to play in comedy, he said, ‘No, your jaw is too pronounced. People should have no chins for comedy.’ Once, soon after she came over from Ireland and wanted to be an actress, she was invited to lunch with Sir John and Lady Lane. ‘I don’t know why, because it was all above my station.’ She said Shaw should have been present but he was ill. Henry James, however, was well enough to be present. Cathleen wondered what could be the engrossing topic in which Mrs Shaw and James were so intent. She discovered it was entirely about the stomach troubles of Shaw and James.
When Cathleen played ‘Mrs Dubedat’ she wrote asking Shaw what she should wear; he answered in minute detail about clothes and character. Cathleen again wrote to the now great man when she wanted his permission to do a play of his on radio. Shaw refused. ‘They disturb the voice,’ he said. ‘They made me sound like a bloody Irishman, when everyone knows I haven’t a trace of an accent.’
I never came across a woman who has lived so intelligently in such a variety of circumstances and has overcome all the disadvantages, putting them down to part of life’s experiences.
Perhaps all the sad things that have happened to Cathleen have made her face all the sweeter.
France: September 1970
Birches, lush greens, pale autumn yellows, gold and silver. The farther south the greater our enthusiasm for the rural delights for which we had been looking. They were even more extraordinary that we had imagined in a brilliant blue haze, and a sunlight where nothing moved. We drove through a valley, marvelling in the soft, feathery trees, the palatial roofs of farm buildings, the richness of the quiet animal life, a pastoral poem.
Nor did the Dordogne disappoint, periwinkle blue and gently moving, seen from a mountain height or on the same level, it was a child’s idea of what a river should be, bordered with forests in which fairy palaces with blue turrets were sheltered.
Our arrival for a late lunch at our lodging, ‘Le Vieux Logis’, was a delight, with the hotel guests sitting on a terrace under an awning of scarlet Virginia creeper giving on to an overgrown, effulgent garden which, in turn, gave on to a white-flowered meadow. The food was wonderful and everything we had hoped for. After dark pâté de foie gras with really strong-flavoured truffles, I had a stuffed goose’s neck with peas. Sam Green contented himself with a salad tasting of the walnut oil with which it was dressed. Later the afternoon sun became softer for our journey to see medieval Sarlat by night; great beauty all along the way, Beynac particularly worth another visit when, from the height of this château, we looked down on to the river.
Domme proved one of the great surprises, a mountain fortress town in which the English were once imprisoned.
We picked walnuts off the ground, fat, oily, delicious. We saw a dozen farms that could be made into romantic houses. But because of the long rainy season, I realize that I would not wish to live in this part of the world. It has been an interesting week with beautiful things to see, and the countryside has not disappointed.
