D.V.
By Diana Vreeland
Edited by George Plimpton and Christopher Hemphill
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
About the Author
Other Books by Diana Vreeland
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
I loathe nostalgia.
One night at dinner in Santo Domingo at the Oscar de la Rentas’, Swifty Lazar, the literary agent, turned to me and said, “The problem with you, dollface”—that’s what he always calls me—“is that your whole world is nostalgic.”
“Listen, Swifty,” I said, “we all have our own ways of making a living, so shut up!”
Then I punched him in the nose. He was quite startled. He picked up a china plate and put it under his dinner jacket to protect his heart. So I took a punch at the china plate!
Nostalgia—imagine! I don’t believe in anything before penicillin.
I’ll tell you what I do believe in. I believe in back plasters.
Let me describe this night in the spring of 1978.
I was dining very late at San Lorenzo’s, in London, with David Bailey, the great photographer, and Jack Nicholson. Now don’t you think Jack is just about the best actor we have? He’s got a convincing face, and that funny flare in his nostrils, hasn’t he? And there’s something else about him which is something all great actors have—he’s a great mimic. Have you ever seen his takeoff of Ahmet Ertegun, the Turk who runs Atlantic Records? He gets that…thing—that whirling-dervish thing Ahmet has. I think it’s only from a takeoff that you can understand another person. Very often, you can’t get it straight from the person himself.
But let me tell you about that night.
I was worrying about my darling friend Jack Nicholson, who couldn’t sit down because his back was in such terrible shape.
The back, you know, is the most important part of your body. I’m never tired at the end of a day—never. It’s because of the way I sit. At the Metropolitan Museum I have the same kitchen chair I used to have at Vogue. They sent it to me because nobody else would ever use such a hideous-looking thing in their swell offices—but it supports me at the base of my back, and that’s what’s important. Then, I have a little rubber cushion which gets me right at the end of my spine and keeps me straight up, up, up. Everyone who comes into my office at the Metropolitan thinks the cushion looks a bit medical—well, it is; you buy it at a drugstore—but for me, it means that I sit straight and high, and it’s marvelous.
But to get back to that night. Jack’s back was in such awful condition that he couldn’t even sit down in the restaurant…walking around, tearing cigarettes apart…in torture. So I said, “I’m fed up with your back! You take every pill on the market but you don’t do as I say. Tonight I’m fixing you up. May I take your driver?”
Of course, here’s old Bailey, sitting there like a lump, saying in his dégagé way, “You can’t get anything at this time of night, Vreeland. You’re crazy. You don’t know anything about this town.”
I wish I’d made him a bet. I said, “I know this town better than you. I know where to go—Boots the Chemist in Piccadilly Circus. Open all night. Buy anything. Ask for it, it’s yours.”
So I got out onto the street alone, found Jack’s car, and I said to George, his driver, “I’m fed up with Mr. Nicholson! He doesn’t realize that what he has I’ve had many times—a bad back. He’s got to break the spasm. He needs a back plaster. I want to go to Boots the Chemist in Piccadilly Circus. It still exists, doesn’t it?”
“Of course it exists, madam.”
So off we went in the biggest Mercedes you ever saw. But I began thinking there might be something to what old Bailey had said. Maybe Boots is open, but only for emergencies. So I said to the driver, “George, I’m thinking aloud…don’t pay any attention to what I’m saying. I’m talking to myself. I do it all the time. It’s my way of getting thoughts out. But I think when we get there I’d better pretend to be the patient…it’ll make more of an impression on Boots the Chemist. So I’m now very ill…in fact, I’ve practically lost the use of my legs! How does that sit with you, George?”
“As you say, madam.”
We arrived. Naturally, George could barely get me out of the car. We went in. George was propping me up, and I, naturally, was gripping the sides of the display cases, which were immaculate, beautifully lit, exactly as they were when I left London more than forty years ago.
In those days, people went in to Boots the Chemist at midnight for aphrodisiacs—Spanish fly, Amber Moon…big, very big. You may have heard of Spanish fly. You’ve probably never heard of Amber Moon, but it was very big. But that night I was not asking for Amber Moon, or even Spanish fly. I was not asking for anything except a back plaster. They put their hands under the counter and came up with one. “I’ll take…two,” I said. “I’m in terrible shape, as you can see.” I took the plasters and got into the big Mercedes.
I got back to the restaurant, and George and I walked to the table. “Now listen, Bailey,” I said, “you may have been born within the sound of Bow Bells, but I’m no Johnny-come-lately. I know my way around this town. I could have bought anything I asked for in that place.”
Then I said to George—by this time I was very intimate with him—“Take Mr. Nicholson down to the Gents. You take him in, and I’ll tell you exactly what to do with these back plasters.”
“Oh, to hell with that!” said Jack. “You come downstairs and put the back plaster on me yourself.”
How well do you know San Lorenzo’s? Well, as you come in off the street, there’s the Ladies and Gents. Do you think we bothered? No. Right in the hall. He took down his trousers….
“Wonderful condition,” I said. “I must say your chemistry is really good! Plump and pink.”
I started taking the paper off the back plaster. Here was this big pink behind waiting for it, but I couldn’t get the wrapping off the plaster. “You better get back into your trousers,” I said, “because someone’s going to come by in a few minutes and think this is a mighty queer act.”
He shook his head. It didn’t seem to bother him. Finally I got the paper off the back plaster and I said, “Now Jack, I’m going to put it on. When I put it on, you have to lean over and wriggle, wriggle, wriggle so it doesn’t get too tight.” I showed him myself. “Otherwise,” I said, “you’ll never move again.”
By this time, we had a small audience looking in the door from across the street. I got the back plaster on all right. The warmth of it set Jack right up. He pulled his pants back on. Now, at least he could sit down. We went back upstairs. We ate. Don’t ask me what time it was when we finished dinner—it was late. They were going on to some party. So we got back in the Mercedes and I found myself
on the north side of Regent’s Park.
“Now,” I said, “you must take me home.”
“Oh, c’mon, Vreeland,” Bailey said—he always calls me “Vreeland,” and I always call him “Bailey”—“you’ve been out later than this.”
“I’m not going to any party,” I said. “I don’t want to see anyone but you. But as we’re up here…I’d like to go to the other side of Regent’s Park to my old house, on Hanover Terrace, which I haven’t seen since I left England in 1937.”
You can imagine how interesting this was for them. Every house on Hanover Terrace is identically the same. Mine, naturally, was different—once you got inside the door. At the end of the street was Hanover Lodge, which belonged to Lady Ribblesdale, where my great friend Alice Astor lived—that’s Alice Obolensky, Alice von Hofmannsthal, et cetera, et cetera, Alice Bouverie…in any case, Alice Astor, the daughter of John Jacob Astor, the one who went down on the Titanic. That wonderful, divine woman—thank God she wasn’t in the house when it got the direct hit from the bomb, because it was totally destroyed.
I got out of the car and went up to our house. I approached the door. It had belonged to Sir Edmund Gosse, who was quite a literary figure in the early part of this century and the last part of the last—you know, Yellow Book stuff. In half the memoirs of the period the address is 17 Hanover Terrace. We bought it from his widow in ’29. The façade was rien, but the house was divine. Below the garden was a larder….
I’m big on larders. I could take my bed and put it in a larder and sleep with the cheese and the game and the meat and the good smell of butter and earth. I’m always saying to people here in New York, or anywhere, “What’s the matter with you? Everywhere there’s a garden, there should be a larder. All you need is some good earth—dig into it and make a larder!” Oh, our larder used to be so attractive….
Then, at the end of the garden, on the mews, was the garage, where we kept our wonderful Bugatti. We had a driver who was so young that when my two boys got chicken pox, mumps, measles, etc., he’d get them too. He’d write us letters all through the war. Sometime after we moved to New York, he went to work at Buckingham Palace and became the second driver for Princess Elizabeth. And one day he wrote me: “Now, madam, I drive Her Majesty the Queen.” Isn’t that a marvelous life?
Above the garage were the servants’ rooms, in which I had radiators and wash basins installed, and a good bathroom—quite unnecessarily, I was told at least three times a week by the servants. They were petrified of the radiators—they were so afraid they’d burst. They never dared turn on the water in any of the bedrooms. Incredible race. They have a horror of running water. But they never left me. When we went to America, the two housemaids went to work at Buckingham Palace also, because the housekeeper knew someone in the royal household. The households of England in my day were a big part of life. They had their own life. But we all worked together. That’s why I could go to work for Harper’s Bazaar when I left England—I knew how to work because I knew how to run a house. My God…the only chance in life I ever had to learn anything was those twelve years in England!
But I want to stick to that night. I approached the door….
The topiary had gone. Of course, we had a topiary garden. At the top of the steps, on either side of the door, I put a topiary bear. Greenery, you know, is as much a part of England as a nose is part of a human face. Inside 17 Hanover Terrace, in front of the long French windows in the drawing room, were orange trees—I went down to Covent Garden at dawn for them—and with pots of cineraria plants in every color you can think of on the floor. The walls were painted a marvelous dull ochre I took from the face of a Chinaman on a Coromandel screen. Then there was Bristol blue chintz—you know what color Bristol blue is—and on it were bowknots and huge red roses. The windows went right down to the floor, and beyond the windows was Regent’s Park with all those wonderful flowers and trees and boxes. Ducks in the morning. Then, as we’d be going to bed, which was invariably late, the lions were being fed—roaring and having their meal. Oh, wonderful to hear a lion roar in the middle of a city!
So that’s where we lived. My husband was working in the Guaranty Trust. He left for work every day at quarter past eight, right on time, and beautifully dressed.
Reed took immense care with his clothes. He bought a great number of things—silk shirts, working shirts of discreet design, rows and rows of boiled shirts—in enormous quantity and of marvelous quality, bang, bang, bang. The hats! They’re so beautiful. I’ve given most of them away. I had some chaps over and they wanted them. I’ve got five or six left—I’ll give them to the Museum. But they were all measured and fitted. Beautiful felts—I mean, the felt was like satin. Lock’s, St. James’s Street. A paradise for men, just a paradise. I remember the last person who tipped his hat to me; it was so elegant and attractive. I was walking down Fifth Avenue and Ronnie Tree stepped out to the curb. He had on a bowler. If you remember his hair, it was that marvelous stiff hair that bushed up around the ears. You know how chic that is. Marvelous with a hat. Takes a special head; it has to be very stiff hair. He did it, tipped his hat, and it was so attractive. So beautiful. So memorable.
But then it all stopped, didn’t it? Those robust pink English faces—well weathered and smiling—they’re gone too, haven’t they? The high color. They get it being out in those heavy, wet winds. Perhaps these days the chaps aren’t out shooting so much. But in the early sixties the hats just died away overnight. I can remember Reed coming to say goodbye to me one morning, very early, and he didn’t have a hat on. I said, “But you haven’t got a hat.” He was always totally dressed when he came in to say goodbye. He said, “I’m not going to wear a hat.” That was that.
Back to Hanover Terrace. Inside, it was marvelous—but very ordinary, do you understand? I mean, we didn’t have an extraordinary atmosphere of…light. Orange trees by the window, light coming through…a very English light.
That night, I stood at the front door and looked. The stoop was very well kept which is that English thing and which makes all the difference. But the door was painted a hideous color. When we lived there it was pickled—every surface removed and then polished. Every door inside was an Oriental red, but one didn’t come in through a red front door. I stood in front of the door. Through the side windows there was nothing to see. It was just a blah house. But there on the door was my old door knocker, a pathetic little hand. It had been on that door since 1930, through the Blitz and that whole bloody bit. A door knocker! Ah, but it was more! I bought it in St. Malo when I was very young—and we were going to miss the boat to wherever we were going. So I said to Reed, “That little hand—I like it so much.” So we knocked on the door and a woman came out and after twenty minutes—the French are very generous if you offer them money—we came away with the door knocker. It was an interesting little Victorian door knocker, no grand’chose about it, but ah, my God! And then I turned around, went back down the steps, got back in the car, and said to David Bailey and Jack Nicholson, “And now we are going to the party!”
CHAPTER TWO
“Vreeland—with a V!” I say whenever I have to give my name over the telephone. “V as in ‘victory’! V as in ‘violent’!”
But I can remember a telephone operator saying to me when I was living in England, “No, madam—V as in ‘violet.’”
I loved the put-down. She put me right back where I belonged. “Yes,” I said, “you’ve got a point.”
I liked the violet touch.
My sister, Alexandra, has violet eyes. She’s four and a half years younger than me, so she was still a baby when my family moved from Paris to New York in 1914. I can remember she was The Most Beautiful Child in Central Park. In those days it was a very small world, and there were all sorts of little titles like that. She’d sit in her pram—she was terribly dressed up, you understand—and people would stop just to look at her. As soon as I’d see people looking, I’d run over to the pram, because I was so proud of her.
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br /> “Oh, what a beautiful child!” they’d say.
“Yes,” I’d always say, “and she has violet eyes….”
Then there was the most terrible scene between my mother and me. One day she said to me, “It’s too bad that you have such a beautiful sister and that you are so extremely ugly and so terribly jealous of her. This, of course, is why you are so impossible to deal with.”
It didn’t offend me that much. I simply walked out of the room. I never bothered to explain that I loved my sister and was more proud of her than of anything in the world, that I absolutely adored her…. Parents, you know, can be terrible.
My mother and I were not really sympathetic. Very few daughters and mothers are. She was very good looking. I’ll tell you who we are on the American side: Hoffman and Key from Baltimore. Francis Scott Key was my great-great-uncle. My mother was born Emily Key Hoffman. Her father was a man called George Hoffman. I know nothing about Baltimore; I know nothing about my background. I know that my great-grandmother and her sister had a lawsuit over a dining-room table, and the judge was so fed up—this was in Baltimore—that he had a carpenter come in, cut the table in two, and say: “You two women get out of here and stay out, each with your own slice!”
My parents met in Paris. My mother’s family, though American, was always in Europe. My maiden name is Dalziel—pronounced Dee-el. Dalziel was once listed in Reader’s Digest as one of the three most difficult names in the world to pronounce. One of the others was Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumley); I can’t remember what the third was, but I’m sure it was English. Impossibly difficult language. Dalziel goes back to 834, Kenneth II of Scotland. It means in old Gaelic “I dare.” That’s me.
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