by Lisa Hilton
Gaston had dreamed up a flattering wheeze whereby De Gaulle’s visit would celebrate the tricentennial of the Franco – Sardinian alliance that defeated the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino. De Gaulle was thrilled with his reception, which included a speech on the ‘Latin fraternity’ in Milan and a personal audience with the new pope. He complimented Gaston: ‘I wish to say how satisfied I was with the manner in which you prepared and set in motion my visit to Italy … Very clearly, you have achieved a personal position there which is in every way exceptional.’
Gaston had evidently learned a great deal from his tenure as ‘pilot fish’ to the Coopers at the Hôtel Charost. A contemporary recalled that the parties at the French Embassy soon became one of the main attractions of Roman life. ‘His discretion, his taste for secrecy, the great interest he showed in the marvels of antiquity, the renaissance and the century of Tiepolo flowed over the Italian soil [as well as the] interest he brought to modern life, all, in a word, which could excite and serve the interests of our country demanded the recognition of the Italians.’ Among luminaries such as Moravia and Silone, Gaston, of course, welcomed the ‘pretty ladies’. He was delighted by the world he discovered, ‘so shut off and enclosed in the prejudices of the past’, which precisely suited his own temperament. In Rome he found a ‘primacy of sentiment and passion which were the delight of the author of the Charterhouse of Parma … the absence of divorce assured relationships, as in Stendhal’s time, with a conjugal stability’. The perfect hunting ground for ‘M. Lavande’.
The pal-exquis was now ornamented with Gaston’s own collection of pictures, and he intended during his tenure to restore the Farnese to the full lustre of its past. The project, he wrote to his friend, the antiquary Yvonne de Bremond, was the most agreeable he could imagine, ‘far from the worries of diplomacy’. He received permission and funds to restore the Carracci gallery and placed Tournier’s La Mort des Sens in the red drawing room. This ‘strange’ allegorical painting ‘seemed happy to find itself once more in Rome’. Gaston rejoiced in his huge desk, set between eighteenth-century armchairs beneath Salviati’s fresco La Gloria di Rannuccio Farnese and lit with two polished red marble lamps. Writing later of an exhibition of the French caravagistes, of whom he was an early champion, at the Villa Medici, he described the mysterious accord by which the enthusiast discovers those paintings and sculptures best fitted to please him and how, like women, ‘objects of art arrange themselves to fall beneath the gaze of those to whom they wish to belong’.
Gaston’s receptions at the Palazzo Farnese introduced him to the ‘black aristocracy’, those subjects of the Holy See who had shut up their palaces in 1870 in sympathy with the pope’s self-imposed confinement in the Vatican. They included the Colonna and Orsini, the great Roman warlords whose feuds had directed papal policy throughout the Renaissance, the Pallavicini, Savelli, Borghese, Boncompagni-Ludovisi and the Caetani, dukes of Sermonetta. Gaston had a relationship with Cora Caetani, a widow five years older than himself whom he had encountered in Paris. Cora was passionate about interior décor, having directed the Jansen agency in Paris, and, like Nancy, loved to chat in both French and English. Gaston succeeded in obtaining the Légion d’Honneur for Marguerite Caetani, now in her eighties.
Since Gaston was unmarried, he would often ask women like Cora to act as his hostess, though as his nickname recalls, his seduction techniques were not always so subtle. Lord Weidenfeld, who dined at the Palazzo Farnese with the art collector Jayne Wrightsman, whom Nancy later came to know in Venice, commented on l’Embrassadeur’s undoubted sex appeal, despite his ‘repulsive’ skin and teeth. Stories proliferated of Gaston bounding after girls through the palazzo’s magnificent salons. Nancy was not the only Parisienne to make discreet trips to the Farnese. Gabrielle d’Arenberg came, as did Ethel de Croisset. Violette de Pourtales, with whom Gaston had been having a serious affair since at least 1951, also visited. Her husband refused to divorce her and, conscious of both their reputations, she spent her time closeted in the palazzo. One of the favourite anecdotes about l’Embrassadeur crops up in Rome, though like most apocryphal stories, all the witnesses place it differently. Gaston offered an attractive girl a lift home in the ambassadorial car, to which she replied, ‘No thank you, I’m much too tired this evening. I’d rather walk.’1
Gaston’s snobbery was exalted beyond measure by his forays into the Roman gratin, but new money was also alluring. Nancy had always commented on the restlessness of his character, which had found satisfaction in the early days of the RPF in the marathon journeys across France, where he had appreciated the usefulness of personal contact in communicating his message. To further knowledge of and support for France, he undertook a series of trips described by his brother: ‘One saw him opening exhibitions, commercial fairs, pausing before Greek and Roman temples, in the north for discussions with industrialists, in the south dreaming at once of the sweetness of the climate and the miseries of the people, which did not prevent him from showing beautiful Italians that Frenchmen, even ambassadors, had not forgotten the rules of gallantry.’2 A gourmet fair in Bologna, the opening of La Scala in Milan, car factories in Turin, the French Cultural Institute in Genoa, the silk works at Caserta were all honoured with visits, though perhaps the hospitality of the Agnellis, Pirellis and the Fosca-Crispis added to their attractions.
In October 1958, Gaston made a pilgrimage to Florence to visit Bernard Berenson, the ninety-three-year-old critic who was considered to be the greatest American expert on Italian Renaissance art. He stayed as a guest of Violet Trefusis along with his old companion from his Travellers’ Club days Harold Nicolson and Harold’s wife, Vita Sackville-West, whose affair with Violet had been one of the great scandals of the early 1920s. Gaston later wrote that the great storms of their passion had clearly passed, and that Vita, who looked like an ‘old shepherd’ and Violet, ‘a Hanoverian grenadier’ treated Harold with a degree of condescension as the four of them strolled along the banks of the Arno. Gaston’s visit to Berenson’s villa, I Tati, at Fiesole, was a joy. Many aspects of his life seemed to echo Berenson’s. Born Bernhard Valvrojenski, Berenson was a Lithuanian Jew whose parents had emigrated to America when he was ten; like Gaston he had converted as a young man. His career as a critic had been as controversial as his love life, but through his brilliance and his network of equally brilliant friends he had transformed himself into the grand seigneur of Italian art. During Gaston’s several short calls the two men discussed Lorenzo Lotto and relived memories of Paris in the Twenties. Gaston was always glad he had made time for these visits, as Berenson died the next year.
Despite the happiness of her visits to the pal-exquis, Rome was always something of a cursed city for Nancy. Shortly after her return from her trip with Deborah in 1961, she heard that one of the women with whom Gaston had been having an affair had borne him a son. There has been some biographical confusion about dates: Nancy learned the news that year, but the boy was already about nine. Le tout Paris was already in the know. Gaston wrote that his affection for her had in no way diminished, that this ‘small and sweet new element’ in his life should not affect their relationship. ‘I mind’ returned Nancy, and how could she not have done? The scab beneath which she had concealed her very private pain at being unable to have children of her own had been brutally torn away. Gaston tried to be sensitive, explaining that the situation was so natural there was no reason for her self-respect to be wounded. What might have been left of it suffered a further violent shock the next summer in Venice, when Nancy read in the Daily American that Gaston was to be married. She felt, she wrote, as though her whole life had collapsed. The story was merely gossip, Gaston reassured her; there was no question of marriage.
Maybe this was the point at which Nancy accepted that there was to be no happy ending. The colonel was never going to descend from the blue skies of Rome and carry her away. As ever, he had made her no promises, told her no lies, he had simply complacently expected that she would absorb th
e cruel blows with the dignity and reticence of a Princesse de Clèves. And Nancy did, and there was still love between them, proud, bruised, but enduring. It is utterly antithetical to modern sensibilities, such unconditional love, but it is not ugly, and Nancy refused ugliness all her life.
23
POLITICS 1962–9
As Gaston’s tenure in Rome was drawing to a close, he received a call from his former protégé Georges Pompidou. After the referendum on the Evian agreement on 8 April 1962 and the resignation as prime minister of Michel Debré, De Gaulle had asked Pompidou to form a government. His choice of a man who had never held any political office was indicative of De Gaulle’s needs and his perception of how France ought to be governed. Pompidou would be a manager, an administrator, rather than a leader. Gaston immediately accepted Pompidou’s offer of a post as De Gaulle’s minister for scientific research, atomic energy and space. His new offices overlooking the Place de la Concorde softened the wrench of leaving the pal-exquis. Gaston had never personally doubted De Gaulle’s regard for him, and the Palazzo Farnese had more than compensated for the lack of a governmental position in the general’s first administration. However, he had hoped for the Foreign Ministry when De Gaulle returned to power in 1958 and although both he and the general had been equable about its refusal, this had been interpreted by some of Gaston’s political opponents as a slight. Gaston’s reputation as a society butterfly still hampered him, and an enemy had been quick to suggest that on seeing him in Paris, De Gaulle had asked: ‘Vous ici, Palewski? Pourquoi vous n’êtes pas â Rome?’ The new job would be a chance to prove to his detractors that the general still respected both his political talents and the legacy of their shared experiences.
Gaston’s administration was not, however, a resounding success. The new minister’s portfolio was everything an inquisitive schoolboy might wish for. Its four sections comprised civil and military nuclear power, new information technology, oceanography and space. Just two weeks after his appointment, Gaston found himself once more in Africa to oversee an underground nuclear test in the Sahara. Dressed in shorts and shirts, the dignitaries watched as the device, codenamed ‘Beryl’, shot a horizontal flame out of the side of a mountain directly at the command post. Luckily no one was killed, but one witness claimed that even the flight of 1940 had not been accomplished so quickly. The radioactive minister clearly felt that if he could stand it, so could the inhabitants of Polynesia, and January 1964 saw him at Mururoa supervising further tests, having overridden the security objections of the senate. Tant pis for the Polynesians, but Gaston did take a certain pleasure in selling a nuclear reactor to the Fascist government in Spain.
Gaston confronted another old enemy, Communism, in a bizarre meeting with Nikita Khrushchev at his dacha in October 1963. His purpose was to orchestrate a visit by De Gaulle which would inaugurate a Franco–Russian programme of space research. The Russian leader seemed quite taken by the idea of French-style colour televisions, but resisted the idea of cooperation in space. The CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) was a more congenial environment, but Gaston’s attempts to refine its bureaucracy and encourage more effective relationships with the grands écoles were countered by researchers who had grown too attached to their state sinecures, and Gaston’s idea of attracting foreign funding failed. Research into UFOs also formed part of his jurisdiction, but the French government was not particularly interested in mysterious objects flying over Madagascar. Interviewed by the editor of Phénomènes Spatiaux, Gaston was asked why no books had appeared in France on such a fascinating and important subject, as was the case in America. Gaston could not resist. Serious inquiries such as that had to be pursued by the gendarmes, but perhaps the president could take a trip to have a look?
In February 1965, Gaston resigned from the government. He had not, surprisingly, been sacked. To his immense delight, ‘Monsieur Atom’ was now president of the Constitutional Council. Proving the dictum that French politicians never die, they just move to a different arrondissement, his new workplace the Palais Royal, also housed his old companion André Malraux at the Ministry of Culture. He appreciated the intimacy of his rooms on the Aile Montpensier, designed by Fontaine for Louis-Philippe. Here, he could support De Gaulle in his campaign for a second mandate from the French people.
Gaston had been among the signatories of the controversial law of November 1962 which changed the Constitution to permit the election of the president of the Republic by direct vote. At the time, he had emphasized the collapse of the executive in 1940 as the justification for this reform, and in 1965 he was still as convinced as he had been so long ago that France needed De Gaulle. As the election approached, De Gaulle held a dinner for Gaston, André Malraux, Georges Pompidou and Michel Debré, at which he asked their opinion on standing for a further term. Gaston said firmly that he believed there remained too much to do for the seventy-five-year-old general to resign.
The presidential election was the first in France to be conducted with a direct universal suffrage. Gaston was asked to run the campaign. On 18 November, he appeared for the first time on television, reading the list of candidates; on the 19 December he appeared again, to announce a winning vote of 13 million for De Gaulle. Gaston’s role now became in many ways similar to the one he had fulfilled during the first De Gaulle administration, that of communicator between the general and the outside world. His colleague François Luchaire confirmed the symbiotic relationship between the council and De Gaulle. ‘Although we affirmed that the council exercised a juridical function, no one could believe it.’ In Gaston’s own words, ‘So long as General de Gaulle was head of state, it seemed difficult to me to have a different conception of the council than of the author of the constitution himself.’ Keeping the constitution on a Gaullist path was not desperately onerous: the committee took an average of eight decisions a year and made only four challenges. All the members had time for other activities, and Gaston continued his involvement with the Save Venice programme, in which both he and Nancy had been engaged since 1961.
The anti-Americanism of Don’t Tell Alfred may also have been informed by the difficulties Gaston had as ambassador in reconciling Franco-Italian relations at a time when the Italians were pushing strongly for an ‘atlanticized’ Europe. The Americanisation of Europe seemed nowhere more obvious nor more threatening than in Venice. Nancy despaired at what was happening to her beloved city where she had spent so many happy summers, more so because the Venetians themselves appeared to be colluding in her depredation. She described their to her eyes pitiful attempts to convince visitors of their modernity, that Italy too could be as prosperous and impressive as the United States in its most brash and banal manifestations.
Nancy could be very funny about the naïveté of American visitors, who, ‘tired of mass-produced, synthetic materials looking like the froth from detergents which choke up the 5th Avenue emporiums’, were easy prey to the tourist cons of Torcello, where the old ‘lace-makers’ collected their work on sale or return from Burano and the priest rounded up holy processions to coincide with the arrival of the steamer. She was appalled, though, when she heard from Anna-Maria Cicogna of a proposal to build a monorail over the lagoon to the Piazza San Marco which would transport cars and tourists to the city. Nancy detested the idea of skyscrapers, described by Evelyn during a New York trip of 1947 as ‘negligible in everything but bulk … they bear the same sort of relation to architecture as distempering a ceiling does to painting. They are nothing nothing nothing at their best. At their worst, that is to say when they attempt any kind of ornament, they are actively wicked.
Now though, high-rise buildings were to be constructed at the Venice railway station to house cut-price visitors. Car ferries would take them from the Zattere to the Lido. The city in which time appeared to have stopped during Nancy and Gaston’s revered eighteenth century was to be brutalized into the twentieth.
Gaston immediately wrote of this ‘crime against aesthetics’ to a jour
nalist contact, Gerard Bauer, who launched a campaign in Le Figaro, in which he described Venice as the only remaining city in the world which preserved the grace of the eighteenth century, the only one time had not disfigured and which, intact, retained a unique power to renew the human soul.
In 1966, floods were as much of a threat as skyscrapers. That autumn, both Venice and Florence were underwater. Gaston was elected president of the France-Italy Association which, under his supervision, raised funds for the restoration of the Ca d’Oro, the Tiepolo frescos in the Palazzo Salzi and a room at the Bargello, among numerous other rescues. By the end of the year, thanks to Gaston’s request to the UNESCO director general René Maheu, the Save Venice fund was launched, with Gaston as leader of the French committee. Initially there was very little money, so Gaston worked for three years at raising awareness and donations. Nancy reported on the situation on annual visits and organized publicity for a photographic exhibition mounted by Anna-Maria to illustrate why immediate action was necessary. She also persuaded Gaston to help Anna-Maria place articles in the newspapers. Gaston’s efforts were rewarded with an honorary seat at the Venetian Institute of Arts, Sciences and Letters, a particularly flattering tribute as this had previously been accorded to Bernard Berenson. There was something more profound in his passion for Venice than snobbish distaste for budget holiday-makers. He believed it was only in the collective effort to preserve its cultural heritage that Europe could retain its place in the world. Faced with the superpowers on one side and what he called ‘the famished and threatening crowds of the Third World’ on the other, the world needed the enlightened humanism only Europe possessed as never before.
