by Cecil Beaton
In spite of lassitude, the amount of work he was able to do, at least at our first sitting, surprised me. And the results could not have been more felicitous if I had willed him to paint me just as I wanted myself to look. However, it is difficult to nurture Bébé’s persistence: after many months away from painting, he has a dread of returning to his canvas. The least thing — a strange arrival, the door banging, the dog being sick, some private disaster of Felix Rollo’s — is quite enough to prevent him from working, to excuse a postponement.
This morning I had to wake Bébé. His snores were interrupted by the dirty little dog barking. He came to consciousness, suffering so much that he groaned and moaned aloud. He lay in a heap on his bed, incapable of action, abandoning himself to despair. He was convinced of war. His imagination fed him with gruesome details.
I spoke about leaving, ‘Yes, you must go,’ Bébé concurred. ‘I can’t take the responsibility of your being here, so far from home. If there should be war, you’ll have a nightmare journey.’
Odom, too, had begun to feel responsible for the art students at his Paris school, and decided he must leave today. It confirmed my own half-hearted impetus. Regretfully, I began to dismantle my room. I packed the rows of Alinari photographs, reproductions of the museum pictures I had liked best in Venice. I pulled down the impromptu curtains made from the poisonous rose material bought in Constantinople. Francis, who had wandered into my room, kept gabbling away about an epergne that Queen Victoria had given his grandmother; he spluttered on about Mrs Wellington Koo, about the green paper umbrellas which were the only defence the Chinese could put up against English bullets during our attacks in the Chinese war.
Everything was now ready. The trunks had been taken downstairs; and I telephoned my goodbyes to Denise while Odom, quietly businesslike, saw to the stowing of the luggage into the car. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but I thought we’d go after lunch.’
‘Oh, er — no. I thought we’d lunch in Toulon. We’d — er — get a better meal.’
I hated the thought of lunching so near and yet so far from Bébé, Denise, etc. I ventured, ‘What news from the school when you telephoned this morning?’
Odom, very grave, said, ‘Oh — er — everything’s — er — very calm.’
I shouted up to Bébé’s room: ‘Si je reste, peut-on travailler aujourdhui?’
‘Mais oui!’
‘Alors, je reste.’
Odom was gone in a flash. And suddenly, everything changed. Our mood became gay; everyone laughed. Bébé’s despair left him; Denise showed her gums. Frosca beamed. Maria Hugo waved. John Sutro made an upward, frustrated and indeterminate gesture with his arms — his particular way of expressing himself when he cannot find words.
Bébé burbled, ‘Since you’ve packed you must move over and stay with Denise.’
‘Fine.’
All was calm now. There would be no war. Hurray, hurray!
The sitting to Bébé was the most fruitful of all.
One of the reasons Bébé has been so aghast at the thought of war is that he realises he must be disintoxicated before being called up. Otherwise his long-drawn-out death would be one of the greatest suffering. He showed me his registration card: ‘Bérard — numéro such-and-such — soldat. In the event of war report immediately...’
It seems to me that Bébé has been smoking more and more. He rationalises, maintaining the stuff he now has is extremely weak. But frankly, I doubt if he can ever be disintoxicated.
Today he seemed especially anxious for a fresh supply of opium to be prepared. At all costs, if he goes to war in a hurry, it will be with his little pot and pipe! Raw opium had already been mixed with earth. Now the mess would be boiled in water, producing a leach which must filter through a cloth several times over. After this, the clarified liquid had to boil down to a final residue, the consistency of treacle or maple syrup.
Bébé’s bedroom looked like the scene of an alchemist’s nightmare. Casseroles had been brought out; spirit lamps flickered. A shirt was sacrificed and torn in shreds. Two lady friends now appeared, volunteering to do the cooking for him, while he worked on my portrait in the adjoining room. Strange odours of earth and opium wafted in to us — Picasso says opium is the cleverest smell. Soon every piece of furniture was covered with steaming casseroles of brown liquid. This would be passed through the sieve of the torn shirt. The residue left in the cloth was squeezed dry and set aside for future leaching, while the filtrate was boiled down.
One can buy opium in the final form; but glycerine, morphine and heaven-knows-what are often added as adulterants, so that it is only safe to prepare the product oneself. I wondered why the very process did not put Bébé off the stuff forever — the smells were sickening, the brown liquids looked extremely unpleasant.
Busily the two cooks fidgeted, giggled and fluttered. Bent double over their witches’ brew, they reminded me of Nancy and Baba as children, making fudge on rainy days. And when, in extremis, the pot de chambre was whisked from its little wooden home to provide another receptable for the slimy liquid, my imagination could not be curbed.
Undated
Today’s war news seemed less acute. Mr Chamberlain, aged sixty-nine, has taken an aeroplane for the first time and flown to confer personally with Hitler. While these conferences are on, war can not be started.
After the anxiety and gloom of last night, our present happy mood continued. The pendulum had swung violently back to gaiety, the evening became a bacchanalia.
After dinner at Denise’s John Sutro released his pent-up emotions, bursting forth with a spontaneous programme of improvisations, recitations, mock-Alexandrine peace orations, Restoration plays, folk songs and what you will. His plays in rhymed couplets were inspired; his impromptu Shakespearean scene proved the best I had ever known him to do. Bébé entertained by executing a ballet imitation of a butterfly fluttering over flowers; or could it have been a moth in a wood? He skipped about on minute feet, a fantastic sprite with red beard and twinkling almond eyes. John provided the score, whistling like an inspired bird. Challenged, I danced with Denise to Brahms waltzes and Liszt.
Oliver Messel arrived with Peter Glenville. Bébé said, ‘Now Oliver, do some new imitations. You’ve done the same ones for ten years, and you must get something new in your repertoire.’ Oliver looked astonished.
Towards the end of the evening, our entertainment became more ribald. We resorted to a number of Folies Bergéres spectaculars: Les Folies Nues, Les Pays, Les Fleurs, Les Vices, etc.
Some French political journalists arrived unexpectedly. God knows what they thought as they witnessed the scene in Denise’s drawing-room, with the company dressed in anything to be found in the hallway — umbrella stands, garden chairs, a globe of the world, tennis nets, rugs and cacti.
Undated
This afternoon we went to Revest, a village built around a Saracen tower on the top of a mountain eight kilometres from Toulon, which supplies water to all the surrounding towns. It is a small and entirely complete world in itself, exuding such an atmosphere of serenity that just to visit the place for a few moments is as refreshing as drinking from a running brook. Winding alleys mount to the crest of a hill; the bar of the local hotel was in medieval times a falconer’s lodge. A rectangle of plane trees surrounds the village square, where an eighteenth-century fountain stands ornamented with carved heads.
We arrived just as day was about to fade (I seem always to discover places by twilight). We compared it to the moment when a formerly young and beautiful face is on the brink of waning; Bébé said, ‘la derniere heure de Greta.’ During this hour, people seem to have fewer occupations than at any other time of day. They sit with their children on a wall; they watch from a window. Others sort grains of corn from the husks, or play bowls, or sit on the green iron chairs of the café and exchange news.
Revest is a silver-toned village, rock-like strata continuing the design of its walls into a landscape of Leona
rdo-esque mountains, dotted with silver-grey and fish-green olive trees and a reservoir of blues appropriated from one of Patinir’s paintings.
Everywhere we looked, the composition gave the impression of having been arranged by a master hand. Strewn on thistles to dry lay garments that ranged from white to purple. Some wild flowers growing against a stone wall appeared more softly lavender than the breast of any dove. In a buff alleyway, a black cat sat in front of a fragment of looking-glass that reflected a correspondingly black image in an otherwise dun-coloured world. We could see beautiful faces leaning from the windows above. Then, abruptly, a sunburned young man came out of a doorway. He was wearing a virulent green sweater, making his appearance as dramatic as if he had been the hero materialising at some crucial moment in a melodrama.
Bébé walked with flashing eyes, never looking twice but seeing more quickly than anyone else. ‘Look at that door,’ as if for our benefit, a door had been painted with crimson paint which, weathered now, ran through a gamut of red shades like a ripening strawberry. Over the door hung a vermilion curtain.
A man ringing a tinkling bell hurried along, with dozens of small children behind him. ‘Tonight at nine o’clock,’ he announced, ‘a great presentation. A play, not marionettes! A theatre with five décors and twenty-five costumes. Seats, one franc to five francs. See the great presentation of Le Fou Rire.’ And he hurried off to make his announcement elsewhere, followed by his excited retinue.
In the village square, the theatre was being erected against a high stone wall. Atop ladders, boys stood balancing canvas draperies, preparing to tie them to the boughs of the plane trees (most theatrical of all trees, with their mottled bark looking perpetually sun-dappled). The children, at a given command, hurried off to the local school and returned on the double, carrying light wooden trestle benches from the classrooms. Some balanced these benches on their heads; smaller urchins carried them like trays.
We sat in the café, contemplating all this. Bébé said he would like to paint a huge picture of the scene. It is what he likes best — life as expressed by people beautiful in their simplicity, integrity and good manners.
Undated
This morning Bébé painted like someone in the throes of mediaeval torture. He did not talk during the sitting. He groaned, whispered, sighed, whimpered, stamped his feet, jerked backwards and forwards, lunged with noisy intakes of breath. ‘You don’t know how difficult it is! Oh God, oh God! Ah, je vois. Non, ce nest pas fa! O, Dieu!’
It was both a revelation and a lesson to me. Bébé’s work is the result of acute concentration, making even so lightly painted a portrait as mine a tribute to agony.
After a long bout, he rested to smoke a pipe. I said, ‘I’m so sorry you have suffered as you did today.’
He replied, ‘It’s all I like in the world!’
He then went on to concentrate for half an hour over a thumb that finally looked as if it had been wished on to the canvas. But the result still did not please him. Every portion of the head too, had been treated with such loving care you would think the portrait were a living thing.
In the evening we dined at the Sablettes, about twelve of us — the inevitable group. It was an interesting dinner, with Bébé in a ferocious mood I had never seen before. He seemed to be possessed of a devil. As a matter of fact, when we discussed strange occurrences, ghosts and spirits, he averred that the devil was the one thing in which he believed. Bébé seemed to direct his fury against Frosca, who laughed healthily at his sallies.
At some meals we talk about food, at others about painters, the theatre, books or personalities. Tonight’s conversation centred about the deadly struggles between serpent and mongoose. This led Frosca to tell how Jean Pierre delights in watching all sorts of combat in the animal and insect worlds. It seems that he collects natural enemies and puts them in the same cage, then joyfully seeks the sacrificial remains the next morning — a broken wing, a lizard skeleton. This is the kind of thing that makes me hate Jean Pierre.
After dinner we played the ‘Tower Game’. Three people are left in the world, two of your greatest friends and yourself. Only one of these friends can survive. Which one would you throw from the heights? It is an unfair game, assuming such surprising reality. Also the participants are seldom able to play with superficial tact. Friends can be lost in a minute; people frequently burst into tears. I refused to choose between Bébé and Denise.
September 22nd
I see by the newspaper that yesterday was Wednesday, September 21st. The days of the month have meant nothing to me of late. And now, on the 24th, I must be back in London to sign some books which the publisher wants to ship to America.
A lot of the portrait remains unaccomplished. Portions that at first were considered successful have now altered in relationship to the whole, thus requiring further work. The progress is a lengthy and slow one, as Bébé refuses to be slip-shod.
Today I sat both morning and afternoon, while Bébé smoked his interminable pipes. It takes a long time for him to get into the right mood for painting. The opium interruptions are, alas, continuous now. He admittedly smokes more than any addict he knows of — at least fifty pipes a day. The preparation for smoking is a long and elaborate process — rather like having to cook one’s own meals, yet meals that must be prepared every half hour or so throughout the day and night. ‘You can see what an agony I am in? I can’t escape this terrible business.’
We were interrupted by Francis Rose, who appeared for the first time in two or three days. He has been to Cannes, arranging the disposition of his house, the last vestige of former affluence. All that remains is a coffer filled with forgotten treasures. He has brought it with him; he opens it, producing two gold snuffboxes, one dated 1720, the other more recent with a jewelled cross implanted in the lid. He tells us these things belonged to Horace Walpole. Why, this was the very box Hogarth had painted! When Bébé contradicts him, Francis complains of feeling ill and accuses Felix of having put opium in his drinking water. Bébé shouts ‘Go away! Work at your painting and don’t talk nonsense’.
This afternoon Bébé was anxious to work automatically and not concentrate too hard on his painting. Thus he sang a lot; he also talked a great deal.
Frosca afforded enough material for a novelette. Bébé related how she had escaped from Russia, how rich she used to be; how clever she was to manage without money, living elegantly on nothing at all.
Frosca’s taste, Bébé confessed, had exerted great influence on him. Lacking the means to buy beautiful furniture, she sparsely arranged her apartment with the most simple and elegant pieces, finding them for practically nothing at the marché aux puces. The apartment itself was always swept and garnished, clean and orderly, smelling of the most luxurious Floris perfumes. Copper was brightly polished. Frosca always had good soap, good cheese and iced milk in the frigidaire, was a first-rate cook. (And an inventive genius to boot: once, when Bébé had no pipe to smoke, she blew an egg hollow, attaching it to a length of rubber taken from a douche bag!)
Bébé described a typical Frosca strategy. Someone telephoned from Fourques and asked her to retrieve her husband, who was indulging in an exaggerated bout of drunkenness. She arrived to find him beside himself with drink — shouting, breaking glasses. Frosca, neat as a pin and cool as a cucumber, sat down beside the raging bull and ordered a whole bottle of Pernod which she handed to him. Within minutes he dropped his head on the table and meek as a lamb, was quietly conducted to a sanatorium.
Another time, in Normandy, she saved Bébé when he had no money to pay for damages in his room. Stains and burns had made a shambles of the parquet. But, just before the landlady arrived to make her tour of inspection, Frosca soused the entire floor with a bucket of water. The wood turned dark, showing no blemishes until it dried after Bébé’s precipitate departure.
Having exhausted the topic of Frosca, Bébé fell silent for a few minutes, darting to and from the canvas with burning eyes. Then he began to talk abo
ut Diaghilev. It was only after Diaghilev’s death that Boris and Bébé became friends and decided to share an apartment. For years previously, Boris had travelled with Diaghilev.
Though the ballet was Diaghilev’s job, music remained his greatest passion. Nothing could rival the singing of Caruso, nor the works of Stravinsky and Tschaikovsky. Yet in spite of D.’s inordinate love for this most abstract of all the arts, he preferred his ballet old-fashioned and with a definite story. It was only on the surface that his aesthetic seemed to become harder and colder, his taste more abstract with the passing of years. As each new season called for new dance creations, ballets such as Ode would be produced. But such works had little direct appeal for him, were considered merely a part of the job, an attempt to fuse the best of modern genius into a contemporary dance expression.
Diaghilev hated success. When the cheers of the audience had died down after the premiere of Le Chat, he hissed to the composer, ‘How pleased I would have been if it had failed.’ When a dancer received great applause, you could be sure that he or she would be placed in the back row of the corps de ballet at the next performance. These humiliating tricks extended to composers as well. On one occasion, after he had asked a composer to come and play his music, D. summoned the hotel orchestra upstairs and had them substitute their own palm-court selections.
In the main, Diaghilev liked the ballet because it created a kingdom for himself — a kingdom filled with youth. His sentiments inclined, above all, to young creatures with lithe figures, dark hair and long eyelashes. The older and fatter he became, the younger and thinner he liked his minions to be. He had, of course, admired Nijinsky, but Massine became an even greater source of inspiration. Later, ballets were created around Lifar. And Markevitch, as a musical prodigy, received the master’s final accolades.
Apart from his recognition of true talent, D. was often taken in by adventurers or place-seekers, who inevitably treated him abominably. The worse they treated him, the more he was titillated. Once, towards the end of an evening at the Savoy Grill, Bébé had seen a reigning beauty helping Diaghilev on with his coat. The myrmidon saw Bébé, winked and let the coat drop, while the old man fumbled clumsily with arms stabbing the air.
