The Vanity Fair Diaries

by Tina Brown

  Tatiana descended at last wearing huge violet glasses and what seemed a straw flower pot on her head. This was the first time I had met her, though of course I had heard about her tyrannies and harsh immediate judgments that dispatch supplicants to hell. Though in the early pictures she is clearly dramatically beautiful, there’s a real drag-queen look to her now. She spoke in hoarse, sweeping statements, as I had been told she would. “Why doesn’t Princess Anne get her chin fixed?” “The Falklands War? It was pure public relations.” “Vanity Fair. Hah! Visually, it is nothing. It WAS a good magazine, once.”

  “Why?” barked Alex, bristling. “Why was it good?”

  “It knew what it was doing,” she said with deadly emphasis. “We all used to read it.”

  “Forgive me,” said Alex, “all your class liked it because it was a smart, superficial, thin little magazine that endorsed all their snobberies.” I realize he had started to hate the legend of the old Vanity Fair that got in his way so much.

  * * *

  “Non!” declared Tatiana fiercely. “Because it was VERY good. And VERY beautiful to look at. In Paris we used to eagerly await its arrival.”

  It sounded as if they were talking about a wholly new topic, but could it really be they never discussed Vanity Fair before? In interviews he always says they never discuss his day job, but I assumed that was just pretense to look discreet.

  Whichever it was, I knew that she would play a key role in Alex’s opinion of me.

  After lunch looking over that heavenly garden, he took me out in his pickup truck to see his sculptures. “What am I to do?” Alex said as we bumped along. “You would make a brilliant editor of Vanity Fair, but I have a human problem.”

  “I understand,” I replied. “But Leo is the only person who doesn’t see himself as an interim appointment. He could be cast as a savior in a difficult time who then made way for a new regime.”

  “Si is coming here tomorrow,” said Alex. “Confidentially, we are looking for a new editor of GQ. Fairchild is bringing out a new men’s glossy called M which has all Fairchild’s brilliant journalistic stamp on it. What do you think of Bob Colacello for GQ?”

  “Excellent,” I said. (Bob was editor of Interview with Andy Warhol and said to be a star.) “But”—I was determined not to be diverted—“that also raises the question of Vanity Fair. If Colacello is brought in to turn GQ into an upscale men’s feature magazine, Vanity Fair needs a very clear position in the market.”

  “I know,” said Alex. And I longed to know if his secret wish now was just to kiss off Vanity Fair. After all, if it really fulfilled its potential, it would threaten the primacy of Vogue. I think he is torn between a personal desire for it to fail and a professional desire not to have his successful record blotted at the end of his career and lose his mystique with Si.

  He took me to the warehouse full of huge, orange, iron constructions being welded by his team of four. They looked, I realized, like abstract cannons. In his studio the paintings were equally huge, the workshop of a much younger man, you would think, judging by the energy it must take to fill these canvases. On the table were hundreds of layouts for the magazines that he supervises: Vogue, House & Garden, Glamour, and Vanity Fair. It is clear that he is the real editor of all of them. Unless he can relinquish his grip on VF, no editor can make a success of it.

  But I felt I had broken through to Alex today and now we were real friends with mutual respect. We sat in the garage on folding chairs and he recapped where we were.

  “How much of all this did you say to Si?” he asked. I felt he was probably going to present my perceptions of Leo as his and see what Si made of them.

  My own feeling is, they will do nothing for now. How can they? But I was pleased to hear two days later that at ten a.m. Si had wanted to see Leo, I am sure to hear what he has in the works and judge for himself whether it’s the old potatoes I outlined.

  We parted with a warm embrace. “I expect nothing, Alex,” I said.

  “But if I do something dramatic you won’t run away again?” he asked with a smile.

  “No, you have my commitment. But I cannot wait too long,” I said.

  Rushing back in the rain through the Connecticut lanes in the limo, I felt my heart sing. I know that whatever happens now, I have established myself as a fighter in Alex’s eyes, which any perusal of his paintings shows is what he admires.

  Saturday, August 6, 1983

  Spain

  Waiting. Have run away again, this time to Spain, to stay with Mum and Dad and try to go back to the play about a Nigel Dempster figure named Quentin Wasp I abandoned months ago. Finding it so hard and the harder I try the more I dream of a phone call summoning me back to America. I am so baffled and intrigued and longing for the outcome.

  It’s good to be with Mum and Dad. They’ve cultivated a fun new life here in Salto de Agua in the hills of Málaga, looking down at the Mediterranean. Mum has adopted three stray dogs and five disreputable-looking cats. There’s always a party going on on the patio at night.

  Harry is incommunicado at Brasted on the last straits of Good Times, Bad Times. It’s going to be explosive. He’s pulled no punches describing Murdoch’s eroding his editorial base at The Times by lies, bullying, and suborning the disaffected old guard at the same time he was urging Harry to get rid of them.

  Thursday, September 8, 1983

  London

  The Kraken wakes. A telegram arrives from Alexander Liberman, asking me to call him. Trembling, I dial the number, but it turns out to be more of the same. “It is Si’s and my dream,” he says, “that you edit Vanity Fair.” (Pause.) “But I cannot dismantle the status quo. So I have to ask you to work through Leo and make suggestions, which I will then endorse.” Thanks, but no thanks, Alexovich! I politely tell him that I am currently far too tied down in London and hope we could be in contact again soon. Even the mention of that snaky compromise makes me feel nauseated. A letter then arrives from Leonard Lauder. “I hear you’ve done some wonderful things for Vanity Fair,” he writes, urging me to be back in touch. It proves to me that Condé Nast is still using my name to sell ads. It’s galling, but I have given up on it and switched my sights back to London. I can get something to run here.

  Saturday, September 10, 1983

  The suspense about VF is now making me a basket case. I went to see wonderful Dr. Tom Stuttaford for sleeping pills and he was at his tweedy best. I told him about all my mixed-up longings. “Hmm,” he said. “I never did understand your infatuation with America. I tried it once and wouldn’t dream of making it a habit.” He removed his fountain pen and wrote a new prescription with an inky flourish. “Here’s my diagnosis, Tina. Buy a large house in the country, have a couple of babies, and just accept you are complicated.” In other words, just go off and be a wife.

  Monday, September 19, 1983

  Harry got an invitation to go to Duke University in North Carolina as a visiting professor. Could be a nice interlude. It will greatly refresh him and get him away from Murdoch’s gloomy orbit. I can buy some Dr. Scholl’s sandals and take an American history course, which I have always wanted to do. Plus, we would then be snugly based in the US of A if Vanity Fair happens and I get called like Agrippa to leave the plow.

  Tuesday, September 20, 1983

  Auberon Waugh took me to lunch at L’Escargot in Soho. We are both so much better with each other by letter. When we actually meet, he chain-smokes in a tortured way, his gingery, schoolboyish face screwing up with regret. He’s always difficult, but was particularly so today because of the looming shadow of Harry’s impending book. He knows I know he is gearing up to savage it in The Spectator or the Daily Mail or one of his other multiple outlets. It was hopeless to try to defang him. I think Bron was as depressed by our lunch as I was. He clearly misses the old Oxford days when he was my hero and I his muse. And so do I in a way.

  Then tonight, ye gods! Leo Lerman phoned, asking me to write a piece about something, anything, for Vanity Fair.
I asked him who was on the next VF cover and he said Francine du Plessix Gray! That’s truly a desperate move on so many levels. First, unabashed nepotism to put Alex’s stepdaughter on the cover, however good a writer she may be. Second, it shows he is still stuck in that suicidal choice of black-and-white Irving Penn nostril shots, which are a death knell to the newsstand. Why would Alex let him do it? I guess he’s just milking the mag to give more and more promotion to friends and family and enhance at least the personal power base.

  Friday, September 30, 1983

  Asked to do a million things but don’t care about any of them. I miss the focus of an issue to get out. Deadlines are a great antidote to insecurity. And I miss my beloved Tatler gang.

  I had an abysmal lunch with Bernie Leser, probably deputed by Si to keep in touch. He had just come back from the America’s Cup and, no doubt just to discomfit me, banged on about watching the last race with his old Aussie chum Rupert Murdoch.

  Then he told me my successor at Tatler, Libby Purves, had quit. “We accepted Libby’s resignation as editor of Tatler because we realized that she didn’t have your two most important attributes.” Pause. “Your looks and your lifestyle.” What? That’s what he attributes to my turning around a magazine? I truly cannot imagine any man being told such a thing. Put me in a bad mood all day.

  Friday, November 4, 1983

  Good Times, Bad Times finally hit the stores. It has been a press atom bomb, with front-page coverage every day.

  The revelations of Rupert’s conduct flouting his guarantees to the board of Times newspapers provoked a flurry of parliamentary questions in the House of Commons, so Harry had his press conference there, which sent the book straight to number one on the bestseller list. It’s getting fabulous reviews, hooray!

  After the presser, we drove home with Anthony Holden, who has been in his element stirring up all the hacks in the Blue Lion pub. He said he overheard Arthur Brittenden, the Times PR man, say, “Of course everyone knows Harry Evans is a compulsive liar.” Holden said to him, “How sad that the man who was once a respected journalist has become the mere trumpet-piece of News International!” We killed ourselves laughing over “trumpet-piece.”

  W has interviewed me about VF’s travails for a piece that is coming out in ten days. They asked me what I thought of it and I decided to be candid to send a little spark Si’s way.

  Wednesday, November 9, 1983

  I am writing this in a room in a hotel in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, where I have come to do a follow-the-hunt piece for the Daily Mail. I felt like a bit of traditional old England after the last few weeks with all Harry,s book press raging.

  It was a lovely day here in the autumn sunshine. So refreshing not to be talking about Times newspapers or angsting about Vanity Fair! Lady Northampton, one of the women hunting, is divine. A tough, saucy blonde living in my dream house, a rosy-colored manorette with a huge sitting room looking out on her acres bounded by stern iron gates, and the prettiest, sweetest little girl bouncing around, who I wish was mine. Dashing on her horse through country lanes with her fat snood and tight breeches, Rosie Northampton seemed to me the most carefree woman in England. The Daily Mail of course wants some slasher piece about snobs on horseback. But mostly the people hunting were relaxed, courteous country people, not all aristos by any means. The men were gallant, raising their hats at the slightest provocation, the women dignified and strong. Their hunting-speak wafted back to me as they paused to pat their steeds.

  “I’ve just come back from the Quorn. Frightful country.”

  “So difficult, it was nose to brush all the way.”

  Rosie’s two black Labradors slept in the biggest basket I have ever seen, coiled together like sighing, silky serpents. Maybe Dr. Stuttaford is right. We should just buy a big country house and raise children.

  Friday, November 18, 1983

  With Harry off promoting his book and me upstairs in my tiny book-lined study at Ponsonby Terrace, all is calm again. I received a lovely prebirthday letter from Bron Waugh, saying that all my conflictedness arises from being married to a “fellow stormy petrel.” He counseled, “Your place is front row at the ringside, occasionally being splattered with blood.” I.e., forget about Rosie Northampton fantasy. Knowing he is right, I thanked him.

  Monday, November 21, 1983

  Milestone. I am thirty today. The big Three. Or the big Zero. Harry bought me some beautiful pearls. We went out to dinner, just us, in our old Greek Street haunt, since I hate birthday parties when they are mine. I feel gloomy about hitting this number. As if it’s time to really deliver and stop rattling about. I am the same age as Clare Boothe Luce was when she took over as managing editor of Vanity Fair, but that seems a dream that’s fading. Alex Liberman has asked Michael Roberts to come over to NYC and help bring some attitude to the visual pages. Good to have him as a source to know what’s going on.

  Tuesday, November 22, 1983

  I have to get back to New York! Went as Harry’s consort to an absurd dinner party hosted by the ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (whatever that is), Edward Streator, and his wife, Priscilla. It was in honor of (57 Varieties) Jack Heinz’s seventy-fifth birthday, and for some bizarre reason the ambassador toasted him and me (perhaps Harry had revealed I turned thirty). Afterward when the women were banished, I sat in a corner with the impossibly chic Belgian Dominique de Borchgrave, who told me that Lady Aliki Russell remained traumatized by my reference to her in Life as a Party as a “frisky pachyderm.”

  “But she keeps writing to say how much she enjoyed the book,” I said.

  “Precisely,” said Dominique triumphantly, her painted nose rising out of a roll-necked lamé silk dress. Then she pitched into how “demented” Princess Michael of Kent is. “She pounced on Peter Hall at the National Theatre last week after the Jean Seberg play and said please don’t ask me to anything as bad again. And Peter said, ‘Ma’am, you can be sure of that!’ And as for her husband, NO, I don’t feel sorry for Prince Michael. It has been my honor or should I say my horreur to sit next to him four times this past year. The man offends my womanhood!”

  I could not escape this cascade because I was pinned against the flocked wall with a very small coffee cup. She raged on. “Have you watched Robert Lacey’s television program The Aristocrats? Robert Lacey is so common. And such a fiend! He asked my friend the Marchesa di Frescobaldi what she’d do if her son marries a peasant on the estate! Excuse me! What can she say, except ‘je m’excuse de répondre,’ et cetera et cetera! The Westminsters came out of it the worst. They are so middle class, they live like my concierge, yet the money and land they control is quite demented!”

  Wednesday, November 23, 1983

  Leo’s arrived in London. I finally risked tea at the Ritz, a very stilted affair where we were both so ill at ease that Leo doused the stamp sandwiches in milk. He looked so old and flustered and is in a rotten situation. He asked me if I could write for the magazine and I just evaded it with talk of holiday plans. I felt sad when I left, wishing he’d let me help him when I could.

  Thursday, November 24, 1983

  Went to a very uptight lunch the Kissingers threw at the Connaught for their friends here, who are wonks and diplomats and establishment oldies like Marcus Sieff, who owns Marks and Spencer. I feel Henry is in a lot of pain from Seymour Hersh’s devastating book, The Price of Power. He looks tormented. Nancy appeared under strain, too, but was able to maintain social banter better than he. She has the habit of assuming that everyone present knows world leaders as well as they do. “So we thought we’d try a new French restaurant and François Mitterand came up with a great suggestion. You know François?” or “The trouble with Helmut Schmidt is he’s so unpunctual you can’t go in to dinner until he arrives.” Or the best, “What I couldn’t get over was not the Pope surviving the assassin’s bullet but surviving an Italian hospital, but you know what the Pope’s like!”

  Henry kept up a steady and
remorseless interrogation of the Tory MP George Walden about why Mrs. Thatcher had taken leave of her senses and denounced the US invasion of Grenada. He told a story about how he had taken on a commission to report on Latin America for Reagan. “How can a former secretary of state refuse a president’s request? But I felt so bad about it that Nancy and I left a dinner party early and I came home and put a call through to Gerald Ford, a man of total common sense. But before he could come back to me, the White House came through and I said, ‘Mr. President, are you sure you want me to do this? I must tell you of my grave reservation.’ He said, ‘I am sure.’ Then as I put down the phone, Gerald Ford came on, he said, ‘Henry, this is a tar baby. No way should you touch it.’ I tell you I am going to get off this commission on January sixteenth and I have made it clear to the White House that I will have nothing whatever to do with implementing any of the recommendations.”

  The underlying truth, of course, is Sy Hersh’s book. Henry is determined not to let Sy hound him out of public life, and yet it has nearly hounded him into taking on the wrong thing. “One civil war is quite enough to be involved in in a lifetime,” he added bitterly.

  It must be very difficult for Nancy K, though he still has his sense of humor. “Nowadays the only thing I send in advance is paranoia,” he said.

  Friday, December 9, 1983

  Treasure Beach Hotel, Barbados

  Beach time in Barbados. I suddenly got a call from … Alex Liberman. He tracked me down here to invite me to have lunch with him and Si in New York on December 15. Harry urged me to go and not dither around and so I said yes right away as if it was no trouble, even though it means leaving him and the Christmas vacation to go to New York for two days and I don’t have anything to wear.