by Cecil Beaton
Noble, the gardener, explained that the plaster for repairing the walls was only chalk and water, so that recently the wall fell down and he and Ry[56] had a terrible time getting the mess cleared up. Six and a half barrow loads it was. Noble says Joannie, the child, fell into the lily pond. They were counting the lily buds when she went right under.
Bees droned, a thousand rooks cawed and the thrushes chortled as they settled down for the night. In long summer evenings, the sun does not disappear until nearly ten o’clock. Shadows become elongated. The trees do not stir, are still bright green in the twilight.
I remember particularly vividly a late summer party at Ashcombe. All preparations made, I walked slowly up the valley, hoping to meet the first guests at the top of the downs. I sat on a mound and waited. From my mossy vantage point, the view of rolling hillocks and avalanches of woods for miles around was saddeningly beautiful. Innumerable rabbits appeared. A deer peered from a thicket. Birds of almost every variety swooped across the wooded canyon.
Chalk stones whirled under the wheels of the motors. The guests at last! Feminine laughter. High spirits, high hopes. ‘Let’s get out here and all walk down together!’
After dinner that night writing games were played by the firelight in the studio. Then drawing games; Heads, Bodies and Legs; or Titles and Pictures. Rex, of course, excelled at this. The others were apt to become pornographic.
Peter arrived customarily late, and prowled around surreptitiously before making his presence known. Then the women trooped off to bed with the evening’s jokes and lighted candles, Nancy inaugurating the new Marie Antoinette room improvised in the barn.
Peter and I changed our shoes, deciding to have a late moonlight walk on the downs. It was four o’clock before we returned. We foraged in the dark for food. ‘What about a bit of this Camembert!’ But we ate ginger cake.
June
Alice Astor,[57] Freddie Ashton and Ivan Moffat arrived to stay another weekend.
Freddie entered the sitting-room, cocked an eye at the chimney piece formed in tiers with a potted geranium on each level and suggested, ‘You ought to have a ladder or staircase placed alongside that chimney: leading up to an unknown room.’ It was a ridiculous idea, but full of fancy, pictorially justified.
Later, Freddie entertained us with brilliant, spontaneous imitations, each a choreographic gem in itself. He is a born mimic, relying on gesture to create a devastating caricature of a person or situation. We sat amazed as he ran through a repertory from Sir Thomas Beccham to an Edwardian lady and Sarah Bernhardt. This display was deft, professional, done without shyness or blunder. His sure hands created improvised effects from whatever his eye lighted upon, with the certitude that only an artist can possess. The lid of a coal scuttle served many purposes, becoming a picture hat, then a garden basket in which the Edwardian horticulturist gathered her specimen flowers.
The Bernhardt impersonation was a cameo of one of the actress’s stage tours de force, during which she acted a dramatic scene while arranging an elaborate bouquet of flowers in a vase without even looking. Her back to the public but head turned towards the arc lights, she selected each bloom, placed it with careful precision until the arrangement was finished, then stepped back with grandiose gesture to admire the effect. The audience applauded wildly.
Freddie’s performance prompted Ivan to discuss how much children sensed of everything that was happening. No doubt Freddie never actually saw Bernardt arranging those flowers, but even in his perambulator he must instinctively have known she was doing it and that the audience would applaud. Just so, Ivan at the age of three knew that his mother, pouting and frowning and moaning, was only pretending to concentrate for his benefit. It is true that all children seem astonishingly intuitive, and will automatically be aware, even at a distance, that things about which they should be ignorant are being discussed.
Freddie said he considered that he had been living all his adult life on investments from boyhood. In illustration of this, he was able to convey with exceptional éclat the romance that some Brazilian woman had had for him in his youth, when he lived in South America. He recalled how a certain disdainful woman had behaved after being given the honour of dancing with the Kaiser. He mimed the way this same woman made conversation with the British Minister at a garden party in Buenos Aires, and how she turned her head beautifully for the waiting photographer. He also described the stance of Edwardian beauties, their heads held high, their chins proffered slantwards to reveal to perfection the line of neck and throat.
EDITH OLIVIER
The remarkable Edith Olivier has left Ashcombe after a visit of three days. It gave me an opportunity to see her at her unusual best. So often we meet when surrounded by many people, but her qualities are not to be enjoyed in a crowd.
Edith is sixty-three, maybe more. Rex and I treat her as a contemporary. Sometimes it seems inconceivable that, from the vicarage in Wilton this pennilesss spinster should create such ripples. Her energy and vitality are unlimited. She can talk or listen intently all day; she relates long stories with heroic gusto; she is witty and full of jokes. At night, she retires to read three books and write a detailed journal. Next morning, she reappears as fresh as ever.
But it is, above all, Edith’s understanding qualities that make her a boon to those who write or create in the other arts, as well as to simple country folk. She has infinite sympathy. Everyone goes to her with troubles, knowing she can be trusted implicitly. Her advice is always wise and easy.
I love Edith more than almost any friend I have. If she were to die, no one could fill the breach.
August
Just as I seldom sink to my knees in prayer save when unhappiness overcomes me, so my pen is lifted to paper only when the mood is sad. These scraps would give a picture of inordinate gloom to anyone judging my existence from them. Perhaps I concentrate too hard on an unrequited love affair, on my failings and shortcomings. Yet in so many ways my existence is enviable: I do not have to think of money, which is the ultimate in luxury. Great riches will never be mine, but enough is earned to do unhampered most of the things I like. I work hard, yet with my own schedule; it is often difficult to find time to get a haircut or buy new shirts.
Meanwhile this past week has been a good week, probably the best I remember having spent at Ashcombe. There has been an Italian-blue, cloudless sky. The sun pours down on to this romantic, melancholy spot. The summer noises are soothing — hand-pump drawing water, doves throttling, and metallic cooing of lawn mower. Indoors, the house has brimmed with sunlight and reflections from prismatic glass; friends around the table have offered laughter and wit.
And I have even had an interesting lunch with someone else I believe I am rather in love with.
THE DUCHESS OF HAMILTON’S TEA PARTY
December
Tea at my nearest neighbours: over the hill in the cold wet darkness to Feme House.
Margaret Drummond-Hay is golden-haired, with love-in-the-mist eyes and russet cheeks. She has masses of equally healthy-looking giants for brothers. They troop over to me for charades on Saturday evenings, and we often ride together on the downs. Margaret has even introduced me to the pleasures of the Hunt.
Today’s invitation was from the mother (whom I had never met) of these athletic, God-like creatures. I had heard that her husband, the Duke, was a cripple, that he had been paralysed after falling from the mast of a ship. I knew well of the Duchess being a rabid humanitarian and anti-vivisectionist, and that she had turned Feme into a sort of dog’s home. In fact, any stray that finds its way through these remote Wiltshire lanes to this ugly Victorian mansion, whether it be a human refugee, discarded pet bird, donkey, monkey, or mongrel is sure of a welcome.
Today the school-like dining-room was alive with children and dogs. What with all the young sons and daughters of the house, and their pets, and with the addition of many guests of all denominations, the floor seemed to be a sea of moving limbs and paws. Children, on all fours, scrambl
ed under tables, together with the dogs and cats who gnawed at the remains from table and filled in every cubic inch of space. I sat next to the Duchess, a tall woman of independent character rather than of the classical beauty unexpectedly apparent in her children. She was dressed in white summer clothes as is her custom throughout the year. It is her perpetual expression of mourning for one of her young children who died tragically.
We tried to talk about books, but our attempts at conversation were constantly interrupted by animals and children of various sizes and shapes.
At last we found ourselves marshalled into the drawing-room, where a spindly Christmas tree stood decorated with tinsel toys and illuminated by coloured bulbs. Soon the village children from Berwick St John trooped in by invitation — fifty or sixty of them standing like a military unit. They had large heads, pale, weedy complexions, and goggle eyes. An overfat schoolmaster, crimson in the face, conducted a hymn while his minions sang with only a remote interest in the proceedings.
The Duchess stood to attention surrounded by many ugly, grey-haired women, including a few deaf mutes. The village children, puny and unattractive, made a startling contrast to the healthy ducal offspring.
Her Grace then spoke a few words, welcoming the local children and giving them a dissertation on the advantages of country over city. Each leaf, she explained, was different in the country. There were many things to watch; they must appreciate and preserve its rustic joys.
One boy was asked the main difference between town and country and ruggedly replied, ‘Oi think the moine difference is that in the cities there is so much dust and doirt and muck. In the country, the air is different and there are flewers.’
‘Quite right, that is excellent.’ The Duchess seemed a stalking crane in her off-white flannel skirt, socks and gym shoes. Finally she excoriated those who are cruel to the animals. ‘Above all you must be kind to birds.’
The children were then encouraged to give bird calls for Father Christmas. They moved joylessly into the pitchpine panelled hall and intoned at the top of their melancholy screechy voices. After delays, and hitches and whispered commands from the family, and repeated shouts in unison from the children, Father Christmas materialised in the form of the Duke who was wheeled on to the scene by Geordie, his stalwart son. The Duke was dressed in red flannel with hood and a wig of white cotton wool. The children were told to line up in order of their ages. Those who were twelve years old must head the procession and be given a present.
A few mumbled words, then the village children were given orders to troop as a platoon into the frigid drawing-room. Each child took an orange and an apple from fruit-filled Tate sugar boxes placed near the door.
Everyone waited: grey-haired women, deaf mutes, refugee cats and dogs, and children of all ages. Then the lights went out; a few of the smaller village children began to whimper. The ducal grandchildren crawled in and out of legs, human and animal, while outside the French windows their handsome parents, could be seen for a flash or two, as they ran in the stormy darkness with matches and beacons. Suddenly a Catherine wheel hissed; then in the rain appeared a shower of ‘golden rain’; squibs popped; jumping crackers exploded on the wet ground; Chinese crackers went off in a series of half-hearted reports.
The whimpering village children now burst into screams of alarm. Terrified of the darkness and the noise, they howled, bellowed, shrieked with each new explosion. Babies cried, dogs barked, oranges and apples rolled on the floor. From exploding rockets blinding flashes revealed a maggot-crawling mass of panicking children and dogs. The hysteria reached a terrifying crescendo when a spurting, spluttering ‘sparkler’ came flying indoors.
February
Where do the weeks go? They seem to hurry by even quicker than the days or the hours. It is the immediate future that holds such store, and that keeps our enthusiasms so active. If we had time to realise how quickly the unknown becomes the known, the future the present, and the present the past — should we then perhaps take a calmer view of the weeks and minimise our activity? Then maybe one would have time to consider the real significance of all those meetings, those jobs, those pleasures.
Part XIII: America Again, 1932
March 1932
Now, as I write this, I am in America again. My New York winter has been spent at the Waldorf, in a tower suite which I have filled with tripe in an attempt to destroy its impersonal ‘good taste’-type of decoration.
There were relays of activity with the Winston Churchills, and their rumbustious family, staying on the floor below. A stop was put to this when Churchill got knocked down and very nearly killed by a taxicab. I saw a lot of Tilly,[58] did drawings of nudes with the Bismarcks[59] and listened to Toscanini concerts.
If I were to criticise my existence, it would merely be that it has become more or less predictable, whereas before I never knew what was forthcoming. I suppose that happens as the years form a pattern of living. Or is it that I have fallen into a rut?
GRETA GARBO
Hollywood
Once more I arrived in this arc-lit, slightly macabre suburbia. By now, I was no longer a stranger, and could call friends with whom I felt at home. I became absorbed in their tales of the film industry. The conversation always seemed to revert to Garbo; her hermit-like independence, her unconventionality in this most conventional of all worlds.
For years now Garbo had become quite an obsession with me. Her screen image haunted me. I collected her every published photograph, and now in a valiant, though doomed, attempt to take my own pictures of her, pestered Howard Strickling of the MGM Publicity staff. Instead of flatly discouraging me, he held out hopes. She had gone to the mountains to get some rest, but was due back tomorrow... Meanwhile, Miss Shearer was offered on a plate, or Miss Crawford...
Piecing together the various pieces of the Garbo jigsaw my curiosity grew in intensity. I gleaned: this living legend is unattainable. No advice or pressure would be of avail; she could never be won over by flattery; other people’s fame means as little to her as her own. She dislikes all and every kind of publicity. Each week her fan mail is taken unread into her garden and burnt. She depises the symbol of sex for which she is cast in films, resents the part she plays, and considers the producers barbarically ignorant. Neither is she interested in the way she photographs. ‘What difference does it make if the photographs are the best I’ll ever have taken?’ she answers the baffled Mr Strickling. As soon as shooting on a picture is finished, Garbo disappears. The studio is often in despair as to how to contact her in case of retakes or an emergency, ‘I go into the mountains. I have no address — leave a message in a certain tree, and I will go and look for it.’
Her Nordic blood may be a reason for her tendency towards morbidity, and being so highly strung, together with her sadness at finding herself in a trap, she periodically gives way to bouts of complete despair. It is then that she locks herself up without seeing even her maid for days; for two years no one crossed the threshold of her home.
But, when she is happy, she is childishly uninhibited, walking on chairs and tables, climbing trees and hanging from the branches. She enjoys reciting fragments of poetry and mystical catch phrases, and uses romantic similes: ‘The moon’s face tonight is soft, like moss with white violets in it.’ Her humour can be ironic. She is secretly amused at her way of knowingly mystifying the officials at the studio. Once when shopping at her favourite ‘Army and Navy Store’ in Los Angeles, she discovered a one-piece undergarment in thickest wool, with long legs and sleeves, that is known throughout the United States. One day at the studio, feeling cold, she wore this garment under her vaporous evening dress. When the startled director asked her what she was wearing, her periwinkle eyes stared into the half distance as she answered, ‘a union suit’.
My chances of capturing the butterfly were becoming more slender each day. Yes Garbo had returned, and had been busy on some retakes, but these were now about to come to an end. I was resigning myself to leaving Hollywood with m
y mission uncompleted. Funds were running rather low, and Howard Strickling’s prevarications became exhausting.
However, when an English couple, Eddie Goulding, the director, and his wife, the former ballroom dancer, Marjorie Moss, suggested my leaving the hotel and coming to their house for a few days, the invitation was accepted with alacrity — particularly since Eddie had directed Garbo in Grand Hotel, and was one of the few people she visited at weekends. ‘We never know if we should expect her, but she generally rings up at the last moment to ask if she can come along for cold Sunday supper.’
My turret bedroom was reached by circular steps, in this typical ‘Spanish-type’ mansion. Marjorie mothered me in her disarming nasal voice, which sounded particularly Cockney in Hollywood: Eddie was entertaining in his exaggerated British bull-dog bass. I drove a hired car to the various studios and to the ‘Army and Navy Stores’. Here was a treasure trove of men’s clothing that could be worn with impunity only in Hollywood or at Ashcombe. I bought vast quantities, at almost negligible cost, of football vests, exotic footgear, the scantiest shorts in all colours and in white sharkskin; I could not resist one particularly beautiful white kid jacket.
Sunday arrived, my last day before returning home via San Francisco. Would Garbo ‘drop in’, and would I be included in the spontaneous party? Yes, she had telephoned, but she didn’t want to meet me. She usually hid from English people, and she said, ‘He talks to newspapers’. Crushed with defeat and dejection, I tried to telephone a mutual friend; if it was not permitted to pass the evening talking to Garbo, then it could be spent talking about her. The friend was out. The call was repeated all the afternoon. So I slept. I woke. Still no reply from the mutual; and, for want of anything better to do, I took a long hot bath. I dressed myself, choosing to wear, for the first time, the pristine white kid coat, the sharkskin shorts, and new white shoes and socks.
