Nureyev : The Life (9780307807342)

by Kavanagh, Julie

  Accustomed to a more ostentatious setting, Rudolf was disappointed by the Royal Opera House, its striped crimson interior and pink-shaded wall lights reminding him of a Parisian café or boulevard theater. “Maryinsky is better proportions, built better. Stage is wide and big and deep with incredible effects … this beautiful blue velvet, ivory, gold and silver—make you nostalgic.” Also something of an anticlimax was Fonteyn’s Giselle, a role in which her interpretation had left many people, Clive Barnes among them, “stonily unmoved”:

  Her flashing smile search-lighting out over the auditorium, has never, to my mind, succeeded in subjugating the ballerina to the peasant girl Giselle. Her acting seems like a contrived mask, carefully thought out yet somehow lacking in warmth and humanity.… Her mad scene is a masterpiece of artifice … and in the second act her exquisite dancing, for all its marvellously individual quality, never spells out love.

  Aware that Fonteyn had not been seen at her best, Maude tried to deflect any criticism by saying pointedly to Rudolf, “We all love Margot. She’s been our ballerina for years, and we adore her.” He remained silent, his only comment being, “She uses her eyes well.” When they asked what he had thought of the opera house, he replied with equal tact, “I like. I like to dance here.”

  As Margot had a dinner engagement after the performance, the Goslings had decided to take him to a small bistro near their house in Kensington. There was not much conversation that evening, but no awkwardness either. “We were just very comfortable together,” recalled Maude, a poised, slender ex-dancer whose South African upbringing was still faintly detectable in the inflection of her voice. In her gentle, balding husband, Rudolf immediately recognized the serenity and innate distinction he had loved in Pushkin. Only Nigel, he would later say, was able to put his thoughts into words, and this almost psychic link between them was there even on their first outing. When they arrived at the restaurant, Rudolf had asked to go to the men’s room. To show him the way, Nigel followed him into the basement, sensing as they continued down a “rather alarming” dark corridor the Russian’s sudden frisson of primal fear: “I became aware of this very natural instinct he had that there could be a kind of trap.… I realised there was this strange mixture [in him] … of almost animal sense, overlaid by extremely social sophistication.”

  After dinner they took him around the corner to their house in Victoria Road, which, unlike Thurloe Place (it had escaped bombing during the war), was an assortment of old and new architecture. Rudolf approved. “I would like a house like this,” he said, looking around the second-floor living room with its high windows, house-plants, comfortable chairs, and clutter. Above the framed photographs, invitations, bronzes, and china on the mantelpiece was a fragmented Roy de Maistre abstract, and from ceiling to floor on each side were shelves of art albums, sepia Gallimard paperbacks, and leather-bound classics. Rudolf was astonished by such an abundance of books in a private home. “He was so young and so interested in everything,” said Maude. “You couldn’t feed him enough.” Before he left he asked if he could use the Goslings’ telephone to call Copenhagen. When Erik answered, they heard Rudolf say, “I’m safe. I’m with friends.”

  Instinctively Rudolf knew that he had found his English family—another husband and wife to dote on him, but with a difference. Sweetly undogmatic, and content with her supporting role, fifty-three-year-old Maude was Xenia’s opposite, while Nigel had the sophistication and scholarly mind Alexander Ivanovich, with his peasant roots and basic schooling, could never claim. “He could talk dancing to me,” said Maude, “but he could talk everything else to Nigel. Which is what he preferred.”

  Educated at Eton and Cambridge, Nigel Gosling came from a family of country gentry on both sides (his grandmother was the daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch; his father, a major in the Scots Guards, descending from a family whose banking firm had been established in the seventeenth century). It was a traditional upbringing, with the four Gosling brothers engaged in squirely pursuits of “hunting and shooting almost every day, and dancing most nights,” yet, even as a schoolboy, Nigel loved anything that broke with convention and was almost exclusively preoccupied with the arts. The diary he kept as an undergraduate shows a writer in the making, with glimpses of the mix of urbanity and lightness that defined his criticism. “I am suffering at the moment from my sangfroid habituel, which I must have caught off somebody. It always goes to my throat.” By the age of twenty-nine he had written his first novel, Thicker Than Water (published by Longmans, Green & Co. in 1938), a sentimental education of two young men that draws on his own experiences at public school and in Europe, where he spent a year after university.

  Fluent in French and German, and well read in the literature of both, Nigel had planned on a career in the Foreign Office, but changed his mind after living in Berlin, where he became obsessed by European culture. On his return to London he took lessons in art technique with Roy de Maistre, whose studio, a converted café in Pimlico, was a salon to such luminaries as Douglas Cooper, Henry Moore, and Graham Sutherland. Although de Maistre was an accomplished painter himself, his real gift lay in encouraging young men of talent to make the best of themselves. When Nigel arrived, he had begun nurturing Francis Bacon, then a wild Irish youth designing furniture, into one of the greatest artists of the age. De Maistre’s young lover at the time was fellow Australian Patrick White, who has always claimed that it was his mentor, de Maistre, who helped him to discover his talent and voice as a novelist. Nigel, though a skilled watercolorist, knew he would “only ever be a Sunday painter,” and was not as conspicuously influenced by the teacher as were his two other protégés. Nevertheless the Pimlico studio was his entrée into London’s art world, and its ambiance undoubtedly left an imprint. Just as de Maistre was a modernist who affected Edwardian manners, so Nigel “seemed to belong to an earlier age yet [to be] fully in touch with the culture of his day.”

  It was because of its decor by twentieth-century masters like Picasso, Bérard, and Derain that Nigel discovered ballet. He bought a season ticket for the summer appearances of Colonel de Basil’s Russian company at Covent Garden and, wanting to extend his knowledge of dance, contacted Marie Rambert to find out if she gave tuition to amateurs. She would consider it, Rambert told him, if he rounded up a sufficient number of pupils to make a class. So, in 1938, together with half a dozen acquaintances including an old Etonian and a couple of girls who worked in the Foreign Office, Nigel began to study ballet once a week. The teacher Rambert provided was Maude.

  At this time Maude Lloyd and Pearl Argyle were the two beauties of Ballet Rambert, regarded by their colleages as the Garbo and Dietrich of the company. Frederick Ashton made Maude a reflection of the exquisite Pearl in The Lady of Shalott and, inspired by her responsiveness, grace, and femininity, cast her in ballets about the jeunesse dorée at play, such as Les Masques and Valentine’s Eve. It was Antony Tudor, though, who adopted Maude as his muse, basing aspects of his masterpiece, Lilac Garden, on dynamics in the deep friendship that had formed between himself, Maude, and the dancer Hugh Laing, his lifelong partner.

  When Nigel met Maude, ballet was her life, but gradually, over the period of a year, he drew her into his world, inviting her to tennis parties and weekends at Hassobury, the Goslings’ enormous mock-Gothic estate in Essex. It was a slow, gentle courtship, even though Maude regarded Nigel then as no more than “a friend who was always with us.” By now, he, too, had become part of her sphere, and they spent that summer together with Tudor and Hugh Laing in the hills of the South of France, having borrowed a beautiful old farmhouse and an open-top car. “It was the most wonderful holiday, and I think that’s when we fell from friendship into love.”

  The couple was honeymooning in the Haute Savoie when war broke out. A pacifist who felt incapable of killing, Nigel became a conscientious objector. Their son, Nicholas, was born in 1943, and when Nigel was sent abroad in charge of Red Cross camps throughout Europe, Maude lived in the country with the baby, mo
ving back to London only in the late forties, when Nigel wanted to find full-time work. He was standing at a bus stop on his way to see a publisher when he met a friend from Eton, David Astor, then the editor of The Observer. Described variously by his staff as “a Renaissance patron,” “everybody’s spiritual father,” and “the last great actor-manager,” Astor liked to surround himself with colleagues who had had some bearing on his life. (His literary editor, Terence Kilmartin, the translator of Proust, had helped to rescue him in France during the war.) Hearing that Nigel, whom he had known since they were children, was on his way to an interview, he immediately offered him a job. “But I’m not a journalist,” Nigel protested. “No,” replied Astor. “But you’re a writer, and that’s what I want.”

  In 1950, when Nigel took up his new post as a staff reporter and editor on the arts pages, The Observer was a bastion of English liberalism peopled by intellectual writers including Kenneth Tynan, George Orwell, and Arthur Koestler. The dance critic then was the brilliant and irrepressible Richard Buckle, whom Nigel edited until Buckle left in 1955, when Nigel himself took over the column. As he was already reviewing art under his own name, he decided to use a pseudonymn—“After Beatrix Potter’s Pigling Bland—hopelessly volatile and very fond of song and dance—just like us.” The short, spirited, and accessible chronicles of Alexander Bland, combining Maude’s technical insights with his own scholarship and wit, grew into a highly respected double act that lasted more than twenty years. To Rudolf, though, who considered that he knew more about dance than any critic, it was only Nigel’s art reviews that he took seriously. Nigel’s mastery of the subject and general breadth of learning were sources he never ceased to tap. Even that first night Maude remembers him saying, “Tell me about Freud. What window did he open?”

  The first thing the next morning, the Goslings arrived at Thurloe Place for Nigel to conduct his Observer interview and for them all to discuss what Rudolf should dance at the gala. Maude’s suggestion that he should appear with Margot in Le Spectre de la rose was laughed off by the ballerina, who said, “Don’t be silly, Maude, I’d look like his mother!” But by now Rudolf seemed reconciled to the idea of performing without Fonteyn, and in the end it was decided that he should dance a Petipa showpiece duet with a partner of his choice, and that Frederick Ashton should be asked to choreograph a special solo for him: “It seemed the obvious thing to do.” Then it was Margot’s turn to take Rudolf in hand. Having caught a defensive glint in his eye, she had decided that she liked the young Russian only “nine-tenths,” and was delighted to see his face suddenly light up with a laugh at a flippant remark she had made. Her relief was matched by his own. “First impression and strongest—it stay forever, was that such a big lady and big name was tremendously simple. And warm.”

  Deriving obvious pleasure from putting his secret identity to the test,* Margot took him to the Royal Ballet’s Baron’s Court studios, where she introduced him to her colleagues as Zygmunt Jasman, the real name of a leading Polish dancer due to appear in the gala. (For some time to come, “Jazz” would remain her pet name for Rudolf as well as his own incognito—“Jazz, London” was how he signed a letter to a Hungarian friend in order to protect them both from surveillance.) Aligned along the barre he saw several faces he recognized from dance magazines: lovely, Lithuanian-born Svetlana Beriosova; the young principal David Blair, who had just succeeded Michael Somes as Fonteyn’s partner; and Blair’s soloist wife, Maryon Lane. Rudolf was curious about local competition, and one of Rudolf’s first questions to Margot had been, “How good is Brian Shaw?” (the leading English virtuoso throughout the forties and fifties). And to everyone’s surprise, he even knew the name of an astonishingly gifted newcomer: eighteen-year-old Anthony Dowell.

  If he had failed to impress the Danes in class, he dazzled the English dancers from the moment he walked into the room. “We were completely thrown—just by his presence,” says Georgina Parkinson, then a fast-rising ballerina, while another, Monica Mason, remembers how everyone just stared at him. “He already looked special. Before he’d even done a step.” By the end of class, having witnessed a series of thrilling technical feats, there were few who had not deduced that the stranger in their midst was the Kirov’s errant young star.

  Over the next few days, when Margot had rehearsals Rudolf went sightseeing alone, looking at London from the top deck of a bus, not particularly impressed by what he saw. “I expected different thing: very picturisky [sic]. Dickens times. I thought it would be older.” He went to the Tower of London, to the National Gallery, walked in Hyde Park, and along the Kings Road, which, as Margot remarked, he “scented” as soon as he arrived. Although still a village with its greengrocers, newsagents, fishmongers, and old-fashioned ladies’ outfitters, it had a couple of fifties bohemian coffee bars, and was then “just beginning to be cruisy.”

  While in Chelsea, Rudolf went to Margaretta Terrace to see Violette Verdy, who had settled briefly into Colin Clark’s house before rejoining the New York City Ballet in the fall. He was anxious to renew contact with the ballerina who, as one of Balanchine’s current muses, could prove a vital link. Not only that, but he wanted her to dance with him in the gala. When Colette had written to invite her at the end of August (offering the lure of Nureyev as a possible partner), Verdy had declined, as she was due to dance in America at that time. Rudolf hoped to persuade her to change her plans.

  The ballerina would not be swayed, but the visit proved satisfying for Rudolf nonetheless. Violette was always enchanting company—effervescent and intelligent, with the eloquence of a writer—and she had assembled a small group of like-minded people for him to meet. Among them was the Bolshoi-trained Hungarian principal Zsuzsa Kun, who remembered seeing Rudolf limbering up in a Moscow studio: “a boy at the barre dressed all in black with fantastic placing, and this arrogant face.” They spoke in Russian about “dancers, choreographers, companies, salaries, hopes and aspirations.” In reply to Kun’s question about his own immediate future, Rudolf said, “Yes I have plans but not certain what they are yet. One thing I know for sure: I want to dance with Margot Fonteyn. She’s a lady. An aristocrat.”

  Having made contact over a few days with three of the people who were to prove of most lasting importance in his life, Rudolf then returned to the fourth. Erik was at home in Copenhagen, waiting to appear with the Bolshoi in Moscow, but had just received a letter from the Russian Embassy postponing his engagement. They both knew the reason. “[Rudik] was staying with me at the house. They were obvious that they were having him followed, and that we had been seen together.” When Erik heard from a freelance ballerina, the Bulgarian-born Sonia Arova, that Anton Dolin was assembling a troupe of international stars for a short season, he decided to join her in Paris where she was then living. Soon due to rehearse there himself with de Cuevas, Rudolf accompanied Erik by train, glad not to be traveling alone, as he still dreaded abduction by the Soviets. Erik remembered him crossing from one border to another, standing “absolutely pale and petrified waiting to be grabbed.”

  Sonia Arova was at the Gare du Nord to meet them, eager to discover the identity of Erik’s companion (he had asked her to book a double room at a cheap hotel near her rue Lecluse apartment, but deliberately avoided mentioning Rudolf’s name on the telephone). She instantly recognized the Russian star, and greeted him warmly, noticing at the same time how he did not return her smile. “All Rudi did was eye me in a very strange manner.” Sonia had been Erik’s first love. When they danced together after the war in London’s Metropolitan Ballet, and later with American Ballet Theatre, they were engaged to be married though they had never been lovers.* “Erik is strange also, like me, about an emotional attachment,” Sonia once said. “Sex is sex. It’s not interesting. One has to have much more. The intellectual side, the sensitivity … the beauty and the purity.” For Erik, however, this New York period was also one of sexual discovery; he had several encounters with male dancers, most of them casual, until in 1959 he began a s
erious affair with corps de ballet dancer Ray Barra and brought his relationship with Sonia to an end. Over the years they had managed to remain friends, and had even recently recaptured some of the closeness of their early years. This was the first time that Erik had openly acknowledged to Sonia his love for a man, an admission that she now felt able to take in stride. “I was actually very helpful towards their relationship, which is why Rudolf felt he could trust me.”

  Sharing Eastern European roots as well as a bond with Erik, Rudolf soon grew fond of Sonia, a dancer with the intense dedication and self-sufficiency he admired. And while her marked resemblance to Maria Tallchief had troubled him at first, her easy, platonic rapport with Erik made a friendship of three possible, even enjoyable. It was Paris itself with all its memories that unnerved him: He carried a switchblade in his pocket, and would suddenly stop in his tracks, convinced that they were being followed. It was only in Sonia’s apartment that he really relaxed, soothed by the affectionate hospitality of her mother, whose heavy wintry cooking reminded him of home.