The Glass of Fashion

by Cecil Beaton

  Even as a young woman Cavalieri had the gestures, the bearing, and the grace of a woman in her prime. Until the 1914 war women did not seek to appear as youthful as they do now: on the contrary, maturity was the keynote of feminine beauty, and Cavalieri had the air of sorrow and experience that comes only with years of living. Her Italianate aura of sad perfection was dominated by large eyes, compassionate and sombre, set beneath eyebrows raised not in question but in inner sorrow. Her equally sombre but sensuous mouth completed features that seemed to have derived from a painting by Murillo.

  In the demi-monde in which she occasionally appeared, though often only through being publicized in newspapers side by side with stars of a more unsubtle and dubious social position, she created the appearance of Athene mingling with a group of doxies. Cavalieri’s ladylike bearing gave her the appearance of a czarina or an empress. She possessed the cool impassivity of a statue. The line of her back merged with the nape of her neck to create a noble column. Whatever the origin of her instinctive physical perfection, it lent authority and even grandeur to all bodily movements. She used her Italian opulence with a wonderful and probably unconscious distinction, a Mediterranean Valkyrie on a small and graceful scale. Her arms were employed for flamboyant yet beautiful gestures, which have been immortalized in the photographic poses where the right hand is idly fingering a long string of pearls, or where, with arms locked behind her head, she outlaws the vulgarity that such an odalisque gesture would normally imply. Often there might be a picture of her with one arm curved upwards, the palm of the hand with its pointed fingers resting on the crown of her head, while its counterpart was placed on a hip.

  About the same time as Gaby Deslys, Cavalieri made her New York debut as an opera singer and entered into a brief marriage with a wealthy American. During the First World War, Cavalieri returned to her native Italy, where, as a young girl, she had worked as a factory hand. After hostilities had ended she returned to America with Lucien Muratore, a French tenor and her second husband. Together they toured in opera, and Cavalieri began to make a series of silent motion pictures.

  LINA CAVALIERI

  As late as the early thirties, the Italian diva (who may have inspired Edward Sheldon’s perfumed theatre piece, Romance) could be seen in Washington Square circles, where I caught sight of her one evening at a party. Years had passed since her prime, yet the magnolia complexion and black satin hair still created their dazzling effect. She had the same carriage with straight back and the high proud poise of the head. Her dress was of black velvet, severely cut, like that of Sargent’s Madame X, and was unadorned by jewellery. After that evening it was a long time before I heard of Lina Cavalieri again. The real tragedy of people is always lived out in time: what irreconcilable deserts of years lie between the opulent New York of 1913 that feted this beautiful diva and the impossible rubble of the Second World War under which Lina Cavalieri was killed in a bombing raid in Florence in 1944.

  To speak of Cavalieri is to speak indirectly of Lady Diana Manners and “The Souls.” Towards the end of the Edwardian age in London there had appeared a coterie of somewhat intellectually inclined aristocrats, bohemians, and statesmen, who called themselves (it is to be hoped with a tinge of irony), “The Souls.” They were earmarked by a revived interest in poetry and literature and cultivated æsthetic tastes and were not without a capacity for creative activity. Their members included Lady Wemyss, Lady Desborough, Lady Ribblesdale, Lady Islington, Lady Lytton, Lord Balfour, Harry Cust, and Evan Charteris. Yes, there were male “Souls,” and one particularly “uneasy spirit” in the guise of the Countess of Oxford and Asquith, a “charter” member who was to observe many years later: “I was born with sufficient enterprise, affection, and observation to discern, even among the young, those who were likely to become permanent; and there was not a member of ‘The Souls’—the name given to me and my friends—who did not earn world-wide reputation.… There is no social circle of the same kind today, because prominent political opponents, who had seldom spoken to one another, met in our house. This was an innovation which was almost as good as a scandal and was what first brought ‘The Souls’ into fame.”

  Apart from their peripheral political activities, “The Souls” had a considerable influence on the æsthetic trends of their day. Their taste might generally be described as being expurgated pre-Raphaelite or day-nursery Yellow Book. The vivid colours of Rossetti were banned in preference for the almond greens and pale greys of Kate Greenaway. Their houses were decorated with discreet Morris chintzes, while leaves replaced flowers in the category of beauty: a sprig of jasmine might be found in a single “specimen” glass on a mantelpiece, and other vases around the pale-coloured rooms would be filled with sprays of rosemary or thyme or magnolia leaves. Bay leaves fastened by paste brooches were invariably worn by the ladies, who went in for long draperies and pleated dresses.

  MRS. AUBREY HERBERT AS A BRIDE

  Bay leaves fastened by paste brooches were invariably worn by “The Souls”

  One of the immortal “Souls” was Violet, Duchess of Rutland, a great beauty who wore her hair in the Greek manner, with a fringe and a big chignon, and was partial to trailing tea gowns of coffee colour, combined with a lace cap that was tied under her chin. She had three daughters who were dressed in unusual clothes and reared along the remarkable and original lines of their mother’s high æsthetic aims.

  Lady Diana Manners, the youngest and most beautiful child, was quite blonde. Instead of being enveloped in the ordinary white muslin dresses of the times, she was scrupulously clothed by her mother in black velvet. When the young girl Diana was of an age to make her debut, she did not appear in the pink-and-white dress which was standard for other debutantes, but was garbed by her mother in stone colours, greys or other off shades that made their wearer’s opalescent complexion seem even more glowing. When she went to Ascot, Lady Diana Manners, unlike the other girls of her age, who wore straw hats trimmed with a rose or a ribbon, was outstanding in a picture hat with sheaves of black wheat on it, and in another hat draped in grey lace. At the popular historical pageants of the day, in which important personages appeared for charity as well as for their own amusement, Lady Diana always arrived in some surprising guise. Once, instead of appearing as a queen of England or a French king’s mistress, Lady Diana, together with a group of other young ladies, decided to be a swan. Her mother, without informing the others, arranged for her daughter to be the black swan of the brood.

  All the Duchess of Rutland’s children received a similarly unique guidance. Once piece of advice issued to them was: “If you wish to comport yourselves in the most graceful and dignified manner possible, if you wish to assume beauty, if you wish to have the grace of a great lady, then you cannot do better than to study every detail and gesture of Lina Cavalieri.”

  Perhaps Lady Diana’s sister Marjorie, with her dark hair, took this advice most to heart and became Cavalieri’s most adept pupil. Today her children, the granddaughters of the old Duchess, are very beautiful women, married and with children of their own. Whether they realize it or not, their mannerisms—from the surprised eyebrows and the arched back to the bold gestures of the arm, the sensitive twisting and untwisting of the pearl necklace—all of these idiosyncrasies are derived from Lina Cavalieri. Thus Cavalieri lives today: a school has been established, based on this woman whose personal magnificence was a living proof of how great natural gifts of distinction can be found in those not born in the highest spheres. That a wise old English duchess, conscious of the best when she sees it, should select as a paragon of behaviour for her children a woman who worked in a tobacco factory and rubbed shoulders with the demi-monde—all of this has the ring of a short story by Isak Dinesen.

  Among the stage personalities in the years before the 1914 war, none was (or is, since she is still alive) more vivid than Cécile Sorel, who represented that rare thing, an actress with the ability to display a great deal of taste in her off-stage life. Since her earliest
days, when she was photographed by her sister, the well-known Reutlinger, flamboyantly posed in the most exaggerated fashions of the day, with heroic hats, draped silks and furs, Cécile Sorel brought the glory of Racine into the drawing room. Likewise, there has always been a panache about the way in which she lived. With the advantages of a great deal of money to spend and the advice of the Count Boni de Castellane and the architect Whitney Warren, this actress turned her nobly proportioned apartment on the Quai Voltaire into a thing of extravagant beauty. Everywhere she displayed her penchant for leopard skin. Though the taste was derived from Largillière and Nattier, Cécile Sorel’s predilection was to wield considerable influence for the next half century. She possessed some rare pieces of furniture, including a particularly beautiful chaise longue shaped somewhat like a gondola, upholstered in a wonderful old green-blue velvet, and a set of magnificent chairs signed by Cressant. The fine boiseries were of eggshell blue and gold. Against a magnificent Coromandel screen she placed a couple of Jacob fauteuils covered in lobster-scarlet velvet.

  A CORNER OF SOREL’S BEDROOM

  In the bedroom, in an alcove and on a raised dais, stood her magnificent Louis Seize bed. The bookcases held many beautifully tooled bindings, and the pair of Oriental dragons with beautiful mounts of ormolu, the phoenix in Turkish green, every object was chosen with an extraordinary instinct. Sorel’s “smaller drawing room” could easily be in the home of an enlightened Rothschild today. But it was the dining room that perhaps displayed her sense of grandeur to the best advantage. The floor, of white and pigeons’ blood marble squares, was spread with leopard skins, while the marble walls, of an eggshell brown, were hung with medallions of carved stone. The dining table of marble was copied from one at Versailles and was covered with a cloth of gold tissue. For her dinner parties huge garlands of scarlet poppies or red carnations, raised a given points to attach themselves to a huge still life of purple grapes, were stretched in festoons the length of this table.

  Early in the century Sorel’s apartment was photographed in colour. From the reproduction that appeared in a magazine, it is astonishing to realize how little the evanescent or trumpery found its way into her rooms. There were no fussy cushions, no palms or ferns, no overcrowding.

  A CORNER OF SOREL’S DINING ROOM

  CONSUELO, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH: SOMETHING LIKE AN IDOL

  This is an example of classical taste allied to an individual point of view, though the personal touches have been so widely copied that it is difficult for us today to realize the full force of their original impact.

  Outside fashion, and yet immeasurably more elegant that most of the heroic beauties of her Edwardian heyday, was the American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt, who became Duchess of Marlborough and later Madame Balsan. Though she was immensely tall and exceedingly slender, with a long stalk-like neck and wasp waist, there was nothing willowy about her, even in early youth. Something like an idol or a Cretan goddess, she was poker-backed and poker-faced. With her etiolated but compact contours her movements were ceremonial, and she seemed to spend her life simplifying her own silhouette.

  IN THE MANNER OF BOLDINI

  From the time that Consuelo Vanderbilt wore the famous stomacher of diamonds and transcended the essential ugliness of the peeress’s robes at the coronation of King Edward, through the period of boaters, picture hats, sunbonnets, cloche hats, and until she became the white-haired woman in an early Victorian trilby of Parma violets, she has retained her easily recognizable primness. The minute face as symmetrical as a primrose, the pursed smile and the tiptilted nose with triangular nostrils were captured by Helleu, Sargent (who made an heroic family portrait to hang at Blenheim Place), and many other painters of her day, but no one succeeded better than the painter of fashion, Boldini.

  Surely no other artist ever slashed his canvases more vigorously to produce an effect of brio and verve. With a few aggressive strokes Boldini could produce the incandescent effect that women felt they were able to create when seen at their best.

  The bulk of the canvases of this extraordinary little Italian reveal duchesses and cocottes caught in some terrible contortion on parquet floors so shining and slippery that you wonder how they were able to maintain their balance, especially when they are wearing such high-heeled, pointed-toed shoes. Perhaps, for safety’s sake, a mushroom-coloured fauteuil is painted nearby, where the subject can collapse if one of her posturing poses should prove too arduous. Boldini inevitably pictured his sitters as caught in the extreme affectation of their times. Like birds about to take flight, the ladies seem barely at home on satiny chaises longues that seem to be spinning round in mid-air. The tulle scarves, pointed fingers, elaborately coiffed hair, silver tissue trains, and aigrettes are all caught in a frenzied whirl of succulent paint.

  FROM A DRAWING OF THE DUCHESS GRAZIOLI BY BOLDINI

  Boldini had an awareness of fashion far more acute than that of Sargent, and instead of painting his subjects in the somewhat nebulous draperies that the American painter erroneously supposed would not “date,” the Italian immortalized his sitters in the dress of one particular season. Mrs. Lydig walks in the Bois in a tailleur from Callot, or someone else wears an evening gown recognizably from Cheruit. Boldini was able to create on his lightning-struck canvases an apotheosis of all that the Rue de la Paix and the Place Vendôme could offer. As the years advanced, his canvases became bigger and his art debased, until he finally attained a vulgarity that gave birth to the schools of Van Dongen and Jean Babriel Doumerge.

  The early and smaller sketches of Boldini—ladies in broderie anglaise drinking tea in the garden, interiors of dress shows, or sitting rooms shuttered against the afternoon sun—are tender and sensitive and are as yet underrated for their consummate skill and artistry. But however superficial or meretricious his work became, he was always able to pass on to the spectator his enjoyment of the nonsense he was portraying. Even the most outrageous of his portraits imply the greatest fun.

  Of the poor, pathetic phantoms of the past, a faint memory of the day before yesterday, the Baron de Meyer is forgotten today by all but a few who still appreciate the contributions he made to this time in Vogue’s pages, where his best work appeared.

  Baron de Meyer was a German who settled in London with his ultra-fashionable and spectacular-looking wife. He was the continuation of a tradition based on the Scottish Octavius Hill, a mediocre painter who became a remarkable photographer. But the Baron’s intentions were very different from those of the Scot. De Meyer wished to avoid reality except when it conformed to his particular idiom of grace and distinction. He succeeded in overcoming the mechanical limitations of the camera with the surest and lightest touch, and created impressionistic pictures of the ladies of his day that brought to the surface their innate elegance with an uncanny and varied mastery and spirit. His was the triumph of mind over matter of mechanism. By using a soft focus lens of particular subtlety he brought out the delicacy of attractive detail and ignored the blemishes that were unacceptable. Utilizing ladies in tiaras and silver lamé as his subject matter, he produced Whistlerian impressions of sunlight on water, of dappled light through trees. As in the instance of many true artists, de Meyer managed to convey his enjoyment of a subject, and he never conveyed too much: he was not afraid of producing an almost empty photograph.

  With his dashingly dressed wife, his house, and his entertainments, Baron de Meyer was a man of flamboyant taste, the first photographer to possess a worldly sense that came through his work. He was a great snob, and if he photographed a certain woman, the implication was that she had attained a high position in the social scene. The innate discrimination of his touch could be seen in every photograph: if a bibelot appeared on a table in a corner of a picture, it was certain to be an exquisite bibelot, just as the table itself bespoke quality. He was the first of the editor-photographers and would take a hand in choosing the dresses he was to photograph for the magazines: then often he would improve upon the look of the dress he w
as photographing by giving some slightest readjustment to a sleeve or a bow. The Baron brought many innovations to photography, and, though even technicians are ignorant of his name, much of the photographic work being done in studios and moving pictures today can be directly traced to him.

  It was a great event for me when at last I was able to meet the man whose photographs had had such an indelible influence on my own. I wanted so much to discover the sort of person responsible for making such a variety of pictures that had all been touched with the sacred fire of an artist. Alas, I never made the discovery.

  De Meyer drove down the precipitous path to my small remote house in the Wiltshire downs in an enormous open racing car which was painted bright blue. At its approach, stones, little lumps of chalk, and rabbits scattered in all directions. Inside the car, driven by a chauffeur in livery to match the motorcar, sat the Baron de Meyer, a tall, ageless-looking man in a bright blue suit and beret, with hair dyed to match.

  My rather bucolic guests were somewhat surprised by this apparition, and I must confess to feeling embarrassed myself by his mannerisms. I fear the wretched man did not make as successful an entrance as he had expected. Perhaps it was because of this lack of sympathy that, out of nervousness, he took refuge in a dreadful affectation and artifice, talking with raised eyebrows and a plum in his mouth, in a high-pitched voice that was like a stage caricature. Each word that he spoke seemed more unfortunate than the last. He giggled nervously. Alarmed that things were so disappointingly different from what I expected, I felt, before all was lost, that I must make a speech and tell this man how he had been my god for years, instilling into his pictures a magic whose recipe it had long been my ambition to discover. As I continued with my set piece, I could see the man’s face becoming rigid and resentful. I had done something wrong. To talk about photography, I realized, was unpardonable. It was just as much of a blunder as if I had asked him whether he himself fixed his pictures in hypo.