by Cecil Beaton
Mme E.’s house looks on to Etienne de Beaumont’s court.
Gazing out of the window, I could see a small child chasing pigeons.
We sauntered through rooms furnished with the same stark taste that characterises Picasso and Gertrude Stein. The floors are polished and bare; furniture is bold and there is much brass. Panelled walls have been painted a French grey. A bunch of tightly packed peonies, in a glass goblet on a brass table, should have been painted by Manet. The curtains were made of sprigged white muslin. Huge abstract pictures by Picasso hung on the walls. Every object on the tea table seemed likewise beautiful and simple — the great glass jar of marmalade, the champagne beakers and the brass-ended wooden trays.
Madame Errazuriz’s lodge-house is small, simple and in no way spectacular. But for those who can recognise such things, the taste is the height of luxury. There is a whole moral tale to be derived from this microcosm. This woman’s surroundings have reflected the same uncompromising and sophisticated sparseness for more than half a century. Plush and panache have come and gone, but the empty richness that startled fin de siècle eyes, and made Picasso realise he had found a kindred spirit, is still the triumphant expression of an abiding strength.
Part XVI: Griefs and Laughter, 1935
August 1935
Two idyllic days have been spent in Alsace, replenishing one’s spirit by enjoying the tender green vineyards, Romanesque churches, museums and these tortured, torturing masterpieces, the Grunewalds at Colmar. The great altar piece of the Crucifixion is painted in the colours that appear when copper is thrown into a furnace. The stark reality of the agony, the physical putrefaction and emotional misery of all concerned, is portrayed with a German metallic precision that delights in sparing us no pain. Yet the effect is of a hitherto unknown beauty. For the replenishment of the body there were gourmet’s foods; and it seemed as if wine was being discovered for the first time. Accommodation had been provided at a château owned by some friends of Nicholas,[66] and the atmosphere was agreeable. The terraced gardens smelled particularly beautiful at night, with banks of tobacco flowers.
Always to be heard was the gaiety of many children. On the night of our departure, they treated us to a special performance. The barn had been lighted by paper lanterns surrounded with vine leaves. The décors seemed all the more impressive for their lack of elaboration. Surprisingly, the children’s plays proved completely surrealist, death and horror always recurring.
Then, after a night journey to Salzburg, came the excitement of arriving at Schloss Kammer, on the edge of Lake Kammer. In this somewhat uncanny, mountainous landscape, an enormous quantity of curious people have gathered to create a world of their own under the aegis of Alice von Hofmannsthal and Eleanor Mendelssohn, who with their families share the castle.
Kammer has a strong personality — ruthless sometimes morbid. However much Alice may redecorate the rooms or alter the construction of house and gardens, the atmosphere remains unchanged. Sometimes a shadow falls over the gayest parties. Guests find themselves miserable and never return. Others, like myself, are stimulated for a while. But however much one has enjoyed a visit, it is always as though a cloud has lifted when one leaves.
This summer the castle became a sort of kindergarten for extraordinary grown-ups; long, hilarious discussions; incongruous groups for lunch, for tea, for swimming, for sightseeing. We rode and went shooting in the mountains. At night on the lake, we ate gay dinners on rafts by torchlight, with music provided from adjoining barques.
Apart from the superficial gaiety, jealous intrigue and romantic complications flourished. Scarcely a day but provides a dozen situations for a play, or material for a novel. Lawyers create dramatic scenes to keep X or Y from buying up part of the castle. Complete strangers arrive to stay, and only after two or three days does Eleanor get around to asking their names. Guests arrive in hoards to find neither host nor hostess. The wife of a composer, upon being expelled from the castle, flounced out rudely exhibiting her behind.
Raimund, a power-station of energy, laughingly relates that Alice must cope with three vans full of furniture just arrived from America. The shipment has already crossed the Atlantic three times. One of the tables, intended for her London house, didn’t fit; and so it was sent back to Rhinebeck, but there they decided it could go well in Schloss Kammer. Now Alice is being kind to the customs appraisers, shaking hands and saying, ‘Guten Tag’, and seeing that they are forthwith made drunk on the local wine.
‘Alice has a new wheeze,’ Raimund confides. ‘It is telephone shopping. The other day, while several people were gathered in her bedroom, she took up the telephone and acquired more furniture, including some painted peasant tables and cupboards, circa 1790. “Hullo,” says Alice, “have you something with birds painted on it?” A pause, while the man in the antique shop hunts around. Then he comes back and says, “No, but we have a pretty chest with deer on the drawers.”’
Margot Oxford motored over to lunch today. She talked about ‘her queen’, her Alexandra. Alexandra was so beautiful, so interested in people and not a bit stuck up. When it was time for Margot to settle down to the business of an autobiography, she sent a letter to ‘her Alexandra’ asking for permission to write about their friendship. In reply came a telegram saying, ‘Of course, any damn thing you like. Love A.’
Margot’s mind is as alive and alert as that of Ivan Moffat, the youngest guest at the Schloss. But she boasts the advantage that only older persons have — experience. And she can say, as only more mature people do, exactly what is on her mind. Margot will never do anything she doesn’t wish; her mind cannot be exhausted by complicated half-truths. On leaving, she turned to her host with a candid, ‘It’s been most enjoyable. Thank you, sweet Raimund. Please ask me a little more often.’ The diminutive shaved off any rudeness, while the tragedy of age and the cleverness remained.
FRITZI MASSARY AND LILY ELSIE
Fritzi Massary, in her heyday as a musical comedy actress in Berlin and Vienna, is staying nearby on the edge of the Lake. Fritzi is now recovering from the shock of Hitler and her husband’s death. When she visited us today, I saw at first a scrawny, wrinkled little wretch. But she has such metallic spring and quickly exerted a personality so witty and alluring that I soon became her abject admirer.
When she sang ‘Joseph, oh Joseph’ and other songs from Koningen and Pompadour for us in the courtyard, without accompaniment except the barking of dogs, we were all in raptures.
Later I asked her if she knew her English counterpart Lily Elsie, our ‘Merry Widow’. And in English, which she is learning to speak now, she told the following story (so well that both David and I were moved to hug her matchstick shoulders).
Fritzi Massary came to London a year ago, at which time she lunched with some people called Marks in their Hampstead house. Six women were present; and, as a result of the typically casual English fault that makes hosts forget to introduce their guests, neither Fritzi nor the lady sitting next to her knew who the other was.
Both maintained silence for a spell: they had nothing to talk about, and breaking the ice proved difficult. At last the neighbour, ladylike, straight and fair, broached the subject of the theatre. Fritzi responded to the cue, observing that only once had she seen any outstanding personality on the English stage. It was in The Dollar Princess; and the lady was Lily Elsie. To which her neighbour replied quietly, ‘I am Lily Elsie.’
They talked more of the theatre. Lily Elsie explained that she lost her singing voice some time ago, and an occasional return in straight plays had not been markedy successful. Now she was no longer interested in the theatre; she did not like the change that had come over today’s entertainments. In her heyday, operetta had been so alive, Strauss and Lehar tunes so full of melody. She’d been too busy to travel much abroad and see the musical comedies. But in Germany she once saw the only person she thought a wonderful musical comedy heroine — Fritzi Massary. Fritzi Massary smiled and said, ‘I am sorry, but I am Fri
tzi Massary.’ The two women wept.
Ivan talked about the peculiar fact that in Salzburg and Central Europe, the out-of-doors gives an indoor impression. No tree stirs. The leaves of the lowest branches may twitch a little, but top foliage is completely stationary. Façades of houses seem so flat they look like cardboard cutouts. All is a toy representation. Here, the river looks unreal, as though the machinery had been turned on too quickly; the water flows too fast to be true.
Yet this timeless Hansel-and-Gretel quality constitutes one of the great charms of being at the Schloss.
Nicholas Nabokoff arrived belatedly from Alsace, his vitality unsurpassed. Most people stagger off a night train incapable of speech for a while. But the journey had been like champagne to Nicolas. He bubbled now with great effervescence. In the early mornings, before the rest of the household had stirred, he would come into my room while I was having breakfast and read me the lectures on music that he planned to give during the winter at Wells College in New York ... or perhaps I would find some morning’s letter interesting enough to read to him. This following was a typical periodic scolding that I received this morning from Pavlik. ‘How trivial and boring is the life of the monde! What does it mean? A bunch of whores and bitches, with or without money, with or without taste, with or without sexes. The monde has no eyes to see, no nose for smelling, ears for hearing only those things it wants to. It is difficult to make you feel my feelings, because you like too much this kind of life and people, and they appeal to your imagination. But I really only have contempt, for they are milk reduced to water. The tragic thing is that they can eat us up if we give them a chance, because amusement is queen, and everything must go into the arena. I think you must have a charming time at Kammer. I do like Raimund very much. He has something very lyric about him profoundly, and I do admire the beauty of Alice which she ignores and does nothing about. It is the beauty of an Hindu, or a Spanish dancer, or a gypsy — and something of a Persian Queen. Why am I fascinated by human appearances? I really do like people, and I admire their beauty in spite of everything.’
MY FATHER
August 24th 1936
It was on one of these mornings that the breakfast tray brought with it a fatal telegram: ‘Daddy gravely ill. Come.’ In a flash, everything changed. My mood, my life, the colour of the room, the significance of everything altered.
Since I was very small, I had always wondered what would happen if one of my parents died. The mere contemplation of such an event brought tears to my eyes. Now it had materialised in absentia, and it hurt sufficiently for me to cry.
In a few minutes I got through to London on the telephone.
My mother was suffering greatly, and wailed hysterically for me to come. My father had died of a heart attack at dawn.
More details I did not learn for a long while; it proved impossible to fly back to England at once. I was motored furiously to Munich, but arrived half an hour after the last plane of the day had left. I waited in an agony of idleness, impotent to move until the morrow’s plane took me back to scenes that needed much courage to face.
My poor mother! After almost thirty-five years of married life, the blow would be bitter. It was especially hard that none of her children should be with her; but the doctor had told us that all was going as well as could be expected. We had gone on holidays, leaving only a temporary servant at home.
What scenes were being enacted at home? The gnawing uncertainty gave my imagination full play.
Yet abstract misery and querulousness combined to produce a sort of waking dream. I decided that activity would be helpful. I ate enormously at the Walterspiel, thinking irrelevantly that it must be the best restaurant in the world. I then went to see the Greek and Roman sculptures in the museum, and in the evening took myself to the rococo Residentz Theatre for an excellent presentation of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
I slept badly. The anxiety of a dawn call kept me on edge. But to my relief, I was alerted at the correct time and managed to catch the aeroplane.
I no longer have a father alive. My father is dead. My father died at five o’clock in the morning.
All this sounds as nothing. It is read in the newspaper every day; it happens every day. The special significance is for me and my family. It means that I will no longer see Papa return from having taken the dog for a walk, coming in all bowed and then looking up with kind, bright eyes. No longer will he sit at his desk like a formal child, feet side by side (in later years they were seldom crossed). He will never play patience again, nor will his advice be asked in moments of emergency over technicalities, money, rents or politics.
My father had been ill off and on for the past two years, and had suffered two previous attacks of thrombosis. I remembered one early dawn when my mother rushed wildly into my room, eyes blazing and hair distraught. On that occasion, she’d been unable to open the patent catch on the tin of pastilles used to alleviate his breathing difficulties.
Once more, Mum had been awakened in the night by a tapping on the door. She rushed to Daddy’s assistance but was too late to help. There had been no pain this time. A weakness simply overcame him. Powerless to talk, he stared in front of him, then fell sideways on to the pillow as though dropping off to sleep. The difference was that he would never wake up again.
And that was death ... nothing horrifying, nothing to make children quake and have nightmares about. The horrifying part was the consequences. Two ghouls in nurses’ clothes arrived to prepare the body. (What did they have to do to make the body suitable for a coffin?) The ghouls and the insect corps of undertakers: these are death’s frightening adjuncts. But my father’s death was not terrible in itself. It came as a quiet end to a quiet life.
That life had been entirely honourable. It had also ended as something of a failure from a worldly point of view. Yet in his youth, he’d had real interests — sports, the theatre. His father had been wealthy; life had been full of promise, with a good business to fall heir to. He made a happy marriage to a beautiful woman; he had four children. How could he have foreseen that the 1914 war would end the old world he had known and bring about such radical changes? His business became more and more old-fashioned, the losses heavy. His children grew up to have tastes other than his own, to become almost strangers to him. His hobbies and interests dwindled. He became too infirm to play tennis, to ride or play cricket. He had no social distractions; and since he read little, his old age must have been sadly lonely.
The harsh thing about the death of a parent is that it destroys one of the cornerstones of one’s life. A precious link with happy childhood memories is broken. Every evening in the nursery, bubbling over with cupboard love, I cherished Daddy’s return home. He brought with him the Evening Standard, and that newspaper contained the Bessie Ascough fashion drawing which I was so eager to colour. It was my father who first took me to the theatre; who gave me pocket money, who made sacrifices so that I might be sent to a good school and be given the best opportunity. He liked to be host, especially if the guests were ‘under-dogs’. He seemed at his gayest then, especially on the occasions of enormous impromptu dinners at home for his club cricketers. He did imitations of Hawtrey, Tree, Irving and other leading actors of the day.
Still, I cannot be insincere. The warm memories I have of him, the devotion I always felt, were not unmingled with a great sense of estrangement. We had little in common; even though I feel now that it might have been much better if, in more ways than one, I had closely resembled him.
It is difficult for me to write about my father without becoming sentimental after the fact. But I will try to describe his traits of character, which have become indelible with the years.
He was a man — a one-hundred-per-cent gentleman. Such a phrase is apt to provoke laughter or sneers nowadays. But it entirely befits him. He was incredibly fair, the most just person I have ever known. Seldom did he seem influenced by personal prejudice. This attitude he had perhaps acquired in his youth on the playing fi
elds of a lost England. In those days, sports were a serious recommendation for life. My father’s prowess at sculling augured well; he learned his ethics from the cider, ginger ale and raw-wood smell of the cricket pavilions.
As is often the case in a man’s more resilient years, his youth had been gay and successful. He was debonair, wore a large rose in his buttonhole, went out to dances until late at night. He acted the lead in amateur plays. It was in A Bunch of Violets that my mother first saw him.
My father’s histrionic flair showed itself, too, in little touches of fantasy. His jokes were odd, his after-dinner speeches witty. His attitude towards household pets was whimsical, and his letters to children elaborately humorous. (Once, while in America, he wrote a long letter to me, addressing me as Ginger-Top Fizzgig Marmaduke Beaton. I was nine months old!)
Yet my father remained an extremely simple person — direct, sincere, not easily gullible but quite naive. He disliked ‘flash’ brilliance and sophistication. His temper, generally even, became terrifying when aroused; and nothing aroused it more quickly than such a womanly artifice as painted lips.
My father had no small talk, boasted no easy knack of friendship. Even with his brothers he would talk as if they were comparative strangers, though this was perhaps a family idiosyncrasy.
He felt more at ease with intellectual and social inferiors, would go to great lengths to please them: ‘Let’s ask so-and-so to dinner. I know he would appreciate it.’ By contrast, he seemed surprised and disarmed when people liked him or were amused and interested in him. To our eternal shame, his own family seldom gave him much of a chance to shine in later life (the brutality of family opinion can be murderous).
