The Wandering Years (1922-39)

by Cecil Beaton

  When first I met Picasso, he greeted me in his quiet dignified manner, with a twinkle of liquid amusement in his brilliant eyes. It somewhat surprised me to see him wearing the most conventional and elegant of blue suits, with a white shirt. On first sight his surroundings struck me as being like that of a typical doctor’s waiting room. The current fashion of stripped panelling, whitened woods and vague baroqueries was so universal that these plain walls and bold mahogany furniture came as a disappointment. But by degrees I acquired a new vision and noticed that every piece of furniture was of eclectic simplicity. Noticing my growing enthusiasm he demonstrated the ingenious craftsmanship of the various pieces; how a low stool turned into a pair of steps, or a desk possessed hidden levers, drawers, and lids, and that the curious objects on tables and chimney piece had been made from matchboxes, by piecing together pieces of menus, lottery tickets and playing cards, or part of a leather bicycle seat.

  Surely it was a privilege to be given a secret glimpse of his seldom used salon? Shutters were thrown wide to reveal a white pannelled room stacked with vast portraits of his wife, some like Ingres, others Cubistic. The large armchairs were covered in white linen. Suddenly Picasso indulged in a piece of legerdemain as he danced towards one of the chairs and in a bold gesture ripped off its cover to disclose a shining conch-shell of orange. One by one he threw off other covers to reveal chairs upholstered in brilliant satins that somehow reminded me of those sugared cushion-sweets of one’s childhood. With a flick of his arm he conjured up a hot-yellow conch: then another butcher blue. Yet another crimson, and now an emerald green, Picasso’s eyes flashed with excited enjoyment as each new colour appeared. These were the real colours of Spain, bold, unconforming and startling. It gave me an indication of a whole taste of which I had never before been conscious.

  A DAY IN PARIS

  Summer 1935

  Tilly Losch asked me to help her with her costume for the Oriental Ball. It soon became my work of the morning. Endless telephoning. What is the address of the woman who is so good at make-up? Daisy would know but is out. Iya knows it. Iya is away. Boris would know, or Natasha, or Nabokoff.

  We then went in search, and at last found, near the Musée Grevin, that curious little circus shop called Poupineau. Here we revelled in the glories of spangle and tinsel.

  Tilly has a smouldering, Slavic face. In costume as an ouled naïl, her appearance becomes barbarically fatale. Unfortunately she is completely helpless — either lazy and spoilt or else clever at getting things done for her. After creating her costume the whole morning I said, ‘Now you are complete. All you have to do for the Ball is glue a sequin between your brows.’ Tilly whimpered, ‘But how can I do that? Won’t you come to the hotel and bring some glue?’

  Lunch chez Noailles was not at all what I had expected. I imagined that the two children, Marie Laure and myself would sit rather embarrassedly discussing generalities and veering towards our mutual object of affection. But no, it proved to be a lunch party manqué, with an empty place for the hostess. Just before lunch, Marie Laure received news that René Crevel had attempted suicide and she rushed off to his bedside in the hospital.

  All day long the telephone buzzed. Harassed conversation alternated between the dying man and tomorrow’s costume ball.

  ‘C’est effroyable! O, ma robe, cest une merveille! Pauvre petit garçon. O, ma robe!’ There was a scene at Karinska’s emporium in the afternoon, with everyone turning up for a minute to try on a turban and discuss the unhappy news.

  Later in the evening, in Bébé’s cluttered room at the First Hotel everyone talked of René. Tony Ganderillas arrived from the hospital, panting for a palliative. This would happen just as he came to Paris for a few days’ holiday. ‘It is too much. I’ve been through this too many times before. All my friends commit suicide.’

  Later, at Marie Blanche de Polignac’s, we heard that the attempted suicide had succeeded: after dying all day long, René eventually expired.

  In spite of the tragedy, the evening turned out to be just the sort I like best. The two Polignacs, Bébé, Boris[63] and I sat down to a rare dinner. There was lamb cooked in maize, so delicious that I could not believe such things existed. The sauces were unbelievable, the atmosphere of the house equally sympathetic. Bébé’s murals, influenced by Raphael, in the dining-room are his best things. We looked at the lovely, loved collection of Madame Lanvin[64] — Renoirs, Degas, Stephens and ravishing small Boldinis. We talked of the solid charm of English country houses, browsed through snapshot albums, admired the pretty objects throughout the house.

  The others went off to a party at the British Embassy, and for the rest of the evening I was with Bébé. We stopped at Maxim’s, talked of Marie Laure, were charmingly interrupted by Figgi Ralli and Igor Markevitch. Then, back to the First Hotel until four o’clock in the morning. Bébé smoked and talked with the avidness of a haunted creature, desperate to rid himself of some devil. ‘You do like me, Cecil, don’t you?’ My reply was such a relief that it went through him like an electric shock. ‘That’s over. Good! Now we continue.’

  Bébé’s sensitivity and intensity are beyond compare. He talked inspiredly of his hobbies of collecting — objets d'art, terra cottas, rare books — and of reading the cheapest American magazines, devouring the detailed lives of movie stars. He praised Eduard Bourdet for being such a gentle and inspiring collaborator in the theatre and we both eulogised the photographs of Cartier Bresson. Bébé also talked of Boris, while Boris slept. It seems that Boris, about to organise a new ballet season, hadn’t turned up for an important date with Markevitch and Dali. Bébé loves Boris, but minds very much that, in details, Boris is disorderly and late, throwing away so many of his important chances.

  I haven’t known Bébé for long, but I already understand him. I love him for the rocklike character that fundamentally, and in spite of all his superficial nonsenses, he really is.

  JEAN COCTEAU

  Spring 1936

  Jean lives at the Castile, which is visible from my hotel room. As a result of a telephone call, we waved towels and handkerchiefs at one another from our balconies.

  After this semaphore, he became ill. For several days he could not sleep, eat or smoke opium. His throat was completely constricted. At last someone puffed opium smoke into his mouth; and like a galvanised corpse he staggered from his bed, and gave a virtuoso performance that was full of ideas, wit and poetry.

  Looking like cheese, Jean came out to the ruins of the Paris Exhibition to be photographed. It was very cold. His nose turned purple, making the rest of the face seem even more grey, green and yellow. But the low temperature did not chill his volubility. Indeed, I could hardly persuade him to stop talking long enough for exposures to be made.

  Like all ruins, this discarded playground is strange and very romantic.

  Jean is having a hard time: his recently completed play was rejected by Jouvet and Bourdet. Jean feels all France to be against him, rails that he alone has not succumbed to the perils of cheap success and vulgarity.

  As for the play, it is said to be unlike anything else he has written. No metaphysical characters, just five members of an ordinary family. It is only their wickedness, viciousness and meanness that make them appear extraordinary. Marcel,[65] to whom Jean read the play, was so horrified that his face swelled and broke out in spots. Glenway Westcott heard it the next night. He told me the audience would roll in the aisles; but he thought the play eminently actable and translatable into German and English — a thoroughly well-constructed piece of work in the Bernstein manner.

  I should like to make a catalogue of Jean’s qualities and characteristics.

  Where to begin? His physical appearance: a fakir-thin body is held up by legs as thin as a sparrow’s; yet curiously, he has flat feet. His hands seem so brittle you are afraid a sharp blow may crack them off. The fingers taper, can bend backwards. The nails are discoloured and slightly dirty (a sign of the dope addict’s laisser-aller). As with most artist
s, the eyes communicate their owner’s deepest secrets. As silent as Jean’s mouth is talkative, the dilated pupils of his bulging fishy eyes, anguished and tortured, aghast and helpless, seem to be looking into another existence.

  Charm, childish exuberance and longing to please are Jean’s greatest personality assets. He is completely unselfconscious during conversation, chuckling with an infectious gaiety. Sometimes he will nervously thump his listener’s chest and shoulders as though to assure himself of riveted attention.

  Famous are Jean’s annihilating descriptions of people with whom he is displeased. ‘When that ballerina misses a step,’ he exclaims acidly, ‘she creates the same embarrassing effect on her audience as an old woman who bends down to pick up something and lets off a loud report.’

  Jean’s surroundings are a typical reflection of his personality. There is a tingling aliveness about his room. Even the bad photograph of Daisy Fellowes is now justified, for he has cut it to make her look like a bird and has stuck real feathers on her. Black drawing boards are covered with chalk scribblings — his engagements, random drawings or ideas. There are plaster heads decorated with wax tears.

  In spite of the darkness of Jean’s room, it has comfort and great organization. A high desk serves for drawing; a bedside table holds equipment for smoking. Neat files of letters and photographs in portfolios permit him to find things quickly. His india rubber is never lost. In evidence are the drawings, always displaying an easy flow of line and imagination. Two sailors playing games with one another suggest the celestial regions to which lust can be elevated. (A more earthy illustration is provided by the indecent postcards strewn about.)

  If a stranger looks at the objects in the room, he will perhaps guess Jean’s unhappy side — the great disasters, the personal tragedy of being abandoned by lovers. There is a lurking sentimentality in the crimson wools, a death-like aura about the life masks of his head and hands, a secretly depressing claustrophobia in this atmosphere redolent of the seminal smell of opium.

  But Jean himself is unmistakeably alive, frenziedly so. No one can doubt his supreme intelligence, wit and authority. When the master expresses himself, it is always a very special performance, matinee or evening. Nor is he showing off; rather, he merely discourses with his disciples.

  It is interesting when an artist has sufficient strength of personality to be outré, yet accepted by the most conservative elements of society.

  GERTRUDE STEIN AND ALICE TOKLAS

  Paris

  This afternoon I went to see Gertrude Stein in her new apartment on the Rue Christine.

  Oddly, I had never imagined Miss Stein’s apartment would be so impressive, though there was no reason to believe otherwise: whenever we met, I’d always been particularly struck with her sense and taste. Here now was the expression of a goût impeccable. Tall ceilings, panelled walls and high windows delighted the eye. Each piece of furniture seemed solid and beautiful in design. There was no chichi or vulgarity anywhere. The Misses Stein and Toklas live like Biblical royalty: simply, yet in complete luxury.

  A well-scrubbed, apple-cheeked maid opened the door. Miss Toklas was sewing in her bedroom. She did not move, determined to spend the afternoon there. This plan succeeded admirably, except when explanations were necessary to a workman who had come to mend a latch.

  Miss Stein took me on a tour of inspection. I noticed her low-heeled brown shoes, as highly polished as the furniture in the various rooms. ‘This,’ she gestured, ‘is where we have some of our pictures.’ Over the fireplace was an enormous portrait of a woman by Cézanne. Hung in front of a huge looking-glass was a full-length Picasso nude; while his portrait of Gertrude Stein occupied the space above a beautiful brown and gold cabinet, its colours reflecting those of the painting.

  A few unique objects were displayed: a portrait of Voltaire done with pin-pricks, a china cherub fallen asleep with his head resting on a skull. Cut azaleas were in bowls; bluebells sprouted from earthenware vases. The copybooks in which Miss Stein writes all her works had been placed in orderly readiness. Fuss, bother and discomfort seemed eliminated from an apartment whose great strength resides in its uniformity.

  The curtains were made of glazed white linen with a waxy, dotted-leaf motif. Ubiquitous brown carpets and brown wood furniture with brass ornamentation created a bold background for the petit-point chairs, embroidered by Miss Toklas from designs Picasso had drawn on to the canvas.

  Miss Stein showed me the paintings of Francis Rose. It was the first time I had seen any. Pavlik turns Mantegna-grey at the mention of his name. To him, Francis Rose and his work are the last word in something-or-other. Here, hung in a gallery, were about forty of his canvasses. Most salient is a heavy, pregnant gloom and fatality. Rose seems to have absorbed from all the big painters, yet with no slavish eclecticism.

  When I asked Miss Stein about him, she told her story with Steinian simplicity. ‘Well, his mother was French, his father a baronet, he is about twenty-seven years old, with very pretty ways and gentle manners. He was brought up in Paris, came under the influence of Cocteau and that galère. He painted, painted, painted. It’s the only thing that interested him. Then he fell in with this American fraud, lost the greater part of his money and is now in America painting hard all the time. It is a typical English story.’

  We looked at portfolios full of Rose’s drawings: cross-sections of the brain; detailed lines of the hand.

  We discussed other painters. Miss Stein thinks Pavlik is an illustrator, that he possesses no aesthetic sense. She likes Picabia (whom I have hated) for his tireless search to find a new dimension in space.

  Juan Gris is another of Stein’s masters. When she lives with pictures that continue to be good, then she knows they are great. ‘There’s no doubt about it. There are no ifs and ands. If I live with a man I know so. There’s no parti pris. It’s just definite, and Juan is great.’

  Gertrude held on to Pepé, the dog, standing against the blue and white wallpaper depicting pigeons on the grass, alas.

  I photographed also Toklas at her sewing. Determined not to talk this afternoon she nodded by way of understanding and said, ‘Interior’.

  ERWIN BLUMENFELD

  Paris

  It was difficult to find the studio of Erwin Blumenfeld, the photographer whose work has intrigued me during the last few months. I crept along a pitch-black corridor. Then my eyes gradually became accustomed to the dark, and I noticed a crack of light coming from under a door. I knocked and was ushered in.

  Somehow I had expected a young man. But Blumenfeld turned out to be a middle-aged, huge-nosed Dutchman, like a gay and evil spirit in a Bosch painting.

  Without preliminaries, he showed me the photograph of an early African war god. ‘Is it not extraordinary? Is it not extraordinary in taste?’

  The god was, indeed, a remarkable object. But his other photographs were what I particularly liked. These, in fact, seemed revelations — the work of a photographer totally uninfluenced by others. Blumenfeld has a fresh, clean mind. It is wrong and disgraceful that his photographs never fetch much money. With three children to support, he remains poor. But Blumenfeld’s merit as an artist lies in the fact that he is incapable of compromise.

  He showed me a series of nudes — women lying with wet draperies covering them, like sculptured figures of the French Renaissance. He has taken many photographs of medieval sculptures and tapestries, interpreting them with a new vision which make the pictures works of art in themselves. He showed me prints of cathedrals and cathedral details, treated with a new eye. There was a trick photograph of his son, that had the poignance of an early Ronault.

  Sometimes I come across a photographer whose work I like, though his personality proves to be a blank (De Meyer was a colossal disappointment). But this little gnome has the appeal of only a genuine artist. I found myself forgetting the hours as we browsed about a bare attic studio amid a mess of cigarette stubs and electric wires. Enlargements on the walls included distortions of nud
es mingled with old fashioned still lives; pale, romantic prints of apple trees in blossom alternated with ivy grots and broken steps in an overgrown garden. Nudes of witch-like hags contrasted with shadows of young nudes seen through muslin screens. One picture showed the photographer himself lying half under the bath water, with the visible part of his body reflected by the water’s surface.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me you don’t do your own technical work?’ Blumenfeld turned a full Dutch disbelief on my candid admission.

  ‘I used to, years ago. But now I don’t have the time. Besides, there are others who do it so much better.’

  ‘You don’t develop, you don’t enlarge? For me, when I have taken the picture, the technical work is the greatest joy. I have such will power, such belief that the pictures must come out as I hope. Even if they were washed in water instead of developer, I think they would gradually appear in the basins. To me, the greatest magic of this century is in the dark room.’

  After three hours, I tore myself away. Glenway had been waiting half an hour for me at the hotel. My arms were full of an assortment of Blumenfeld’s pictures, which I’ll send to Vogue. They will be fools in my eyes if they do not use him.

  MADAME ERRAZURIZ

  Paris

  Mme Errazuriz is now a very old woman, making it impossible to engage in connected conversation. But one can see how blazingly lovely she must have been when Helleu, Sargent, Boldini and others painted this Chilean innovator at the turn of the century.

  We made attempts to talk, while Mme E. ate a sandwich. Alas, the bread sagged, dropping by slow degrees from mouth to chin, from chin to chest, from chest to floor. It was only when I admired a porcelain pot decorated with twigs and leaves that she responded. Taking up the cream-crackled pot and holding it in her trembling hands firmly, lovingly, she said with fire, ‘I’ve never liked anything so much as this little pot. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it a most beautiful pot?’