The Years Between (1939-44)

by Cecil Beaton

  I dined with Loelia Westminster. After six months she had thrown aside the dust covers and re-opened her drawing-room. To celebrate this great event she gave a party. We all felt the dinner to be so excellent that we wanted to keep the menu in an album, as an archaeological specimen showing that this was the meal that we, in England, were fortunate enough to enjoy even after six months of war effort. Perhaps it would be the last of its sort. Anyhow, while we could, we would be as gay as possible. We went out to night clubs and danced all night. When we came back to our beds Germany had invaded Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Hell had broken loose.

  May 14th

  The intensity of feeling during the past few days has been like a knife being turned without cease in one’s stomach. Events have moved so fast: the debate on the Norwegian campaign has overthrown Mr Chamberlain: changes come so suddenly and decisively that one becomes almost immune to shock — the new order accepted immediately as if it had existed for ever.

  The news from the front is almost completely disastrous: Belgium is managing to hold out a little, but Holland, undermined by treachery, has been vanquished in four days. The fifth column were only in the nick of time prevented from capturing Queen Wilhelmina, who rushed to the microphone and implored, ‘Do not trust your best friend!’ These new methods of war are devastating; a handful of parachutists can create havoc. The news gets worse every day. At every setback we suffer the Italians menace us more.

  WEEK-END AT MOTTISFONT

  Whitsun 1940

  For the Whitsun week-end I went to the Gilbert Russells at Mottisfont. Overnight the war had developed into something almost too alarming to contemplate. Today’s machinery used for slaughter makes barbarism seem something innocent in comparison. It was a strange feeling staying in this luxuriously ordered house, so far and yet so near, to all the terrors that had broken loose. Duff Cooper was to have been there, but having just been made Minister of Information in Churchill’s Government, we were without his company, though continuously receiving pieces of news of him through Diana.[7] Things were bad, things were worse than bad. The Queen of Holland had fled her country.

  The holiday was peaceful in exterior, turbulent internally. The trout streams gushed with silver ripples, the gowans at the river banks were lush, the meadow-sweet, or Queen Anne lace, so finely grown that it might have been cultivated, the pink and white may trees weighed heavily with blossom. It was all so sylvan that one’s heart became the heavier that at this very moment, the most rewarding time of the year, Hitler should have so successfully ordered fire and destruction. Maud Russell visited the local people about housing more refugee children. Doria Haig-Scott knitted, Freddie and Violet Cripps fished trout, Diana went full blast ahead at all hours of the day, always with a plan, a visit to a bluebell wood with Conrad Russell as her companion, or reading aloud an article by Stalin. I sketched in the garden some of the queer tree-trunks at whose mossy roots primroses were growing.

  Our host, Gilbert Russell, was a new pleasure to me. I had never known him well before, been rather shy of him, and wondered perhaps if he was not a bit of a crabby martinet. How wrong could I be? He is, in fact, a most amusing personality. I am told that now, as a man weakened by asthma, he is far from being in his former form when he could ‘make strong men cry with laughter or groan at the cruelty of his wit’. His humour is dry and fanciful. To watch him listening, or to hear him tell a story, is to be in the presence of a great personality, and only a poet could say ‘Dash’ in such a way when the lemon slips from the cocktail tray. Even his way of reading the newspaper, or listening to the news, is individual. He showed me a slab of stone on which he had had a Latin testament inscribed, telling that Mottisfont had come back into his family after twenty-six generations. ‘I like that sort of thing, it’s romantic,’ he said.

  While pouring himself out a few drops of port (he is evidently not allowed more), he explained that his wife Maud, when she had first met him, had thought him such a shit that she wanted to hit him in the face. The idea of his wife saying such a thing is extremely comical as, of course, Maud is very elegant.

  Once, when in The Times the death was announced of ‘The Fox’, or ‘The Mackintosh’, or some such Scot bearing a unique title, Gilbert (who is rich enough) fancied the idea of buying a title. He would, in fact, like to be called ‘The Elemental’, especially as elementals are supposed to give off a most frightful stink. It pleased him to think that whenever ‘The Elemental and Mrs Russell’ were announced there would be an overpowering skunklike stench.

  I hope when peace is regained that I may meet Gilbert Russell again and find him in as good spirits as now, when, in spite of the bad news, he is determined that we could never lose the war.

  LEAVING FOR NEW YORK

  May 22nd

  My military permit to go to the Maginot Line did not arrive at the Ministry of Information until the day of the German onslaught. I was disappointed that I could not now go to France, but thankful to have escaped being taken prisoner in the blitzkrieg. Meanwhile a private offer of great commercial benefit to me had come: I had been approached to go for six weeks to America to take advertising photographs. I was loth to leave at such a time, but it would be perhaps the last opportunity to get even with my finances (which were in a bad way), and to come back with enough to pay my income tax and put more in the savings bank.

  I half hoped that I would not be given permission to go. Indeed every sort of technical difficulty arose over my papers. For days messages were sent backwards and forwards to the Passport Office, to the place for birth certificates, and to the Board of Trade. Eventually, on the eve of the departure of my boat, the final permits came through, but with them the news that the Germans had broken through the Maginot Line. Incredible mistakes, ‘which must be punished’, had been made: bridges had not been blown up by retreating armies. New methods of mechanical attack were proving so surprisingly successful that suddenly, after six months of waiting, of careful preparation, we had all been taken by surprise.

  Overnight the Germans were at our gates. Any day now their air attacks might begin, and the south of England could be shelled from the French Channel ports. My own private courage was badly bruised, and each person one spoke to was more depressing than the last. Diana was in complete despair. I asked her, ‘Should I go to America after all?’ She suggested I should seek Bobbety Cranborne’s advice. ‘He is wise, and doesn’t know how to panic.’ I telephoned throughout the evening but Lord Cranborne was out. Eventually I caught him at midnight as he was coming into his hallway. He was somewhat surprised to hear me ask whether or not I should leave early next morning. ‘Well, the news is howwid (he does not pronounce his ‘r’s), but if you’re only going to be away six weeks and can make a lot of money in that time, I should go, as by the time you come back the news will still be howwid.’

  I was too utterly miserable and frightened to sleep except in a half-conscious nightmare. The night passed seeing a series of pictures of the chaos created by the attacks of 2,000 tanks, of houses with their façades bombed away, and tortures inflicted by the Nazis. These Breughelesque visions were mixed with the more personal disappointment that Peter had not, in answer to my call, rung me up to say good-bye. Happily, at about 3 o’clock in the morning, the telephone bell rang. I woke to talk very forlornly to Peter. He’d been out ‘on the town’, feeling rather cheerful in spite of the general news. I was relieved he telephoned.

  Soon after dawn, I was impatient to be gone on my journey. The household was also about early. After alternative delays and panics I arrived at the station to find the platform deserted. By degrees, dark and depressed refugees arrived with their greasy pallor and bundles of thrown-together luggage. Most of them spoke German; all wore a desperate look in their eyes.

  At last the train, due to take us to the north, departed after slow, jolting delays. My mother was tearful and was led away martially by Maud Nelson, my secretary. I felt weepy and old and useless. Life really was a beastly business,
and perhaps it’s only the impetus that one has worked up that keeps one going.

  ‘Our backs are to the wall.’ The headlines proclaimed the gravity of the hour and made the journey seem claustrophobic. They gave one an extra urge to be up and doing something, working in a factory, or running or shouting: certainly not just waiting and sitting in terror.

  A huge businessman, slumped opposite me, was in a ghastly state of apprehension. He groaned, sighed, raised his eyes to heaven and tried to command sleep, but his tortured imagination prevented that, and he came to in a renewed frenzy.

  After six hours we halted outside Liverpool, and from then on the day became one long queue: we stood for hours upon end. Fortunately I had only my books to hold, but many old men and women had heavy baggages to lug. The emigration officers were hard working enough, and had been on their job since dawn; no one could be blamed for the delays. It was war. It was inevitable that all our papers, books and bags should be searched. At last the boat!

  THE VOYAGE OUT

  SS Samaria

  Never have I embarked upon a trip to New York with such a heavy heart. The thought of quitting England at this crucial time filled me with remorse. If only there were other means of getting out of my finance dilemma: yet I must thank my stars that I am still able to work in this way!

  How different this trip to those of the old days when there were concerts, celebrities, dances, champagne, balloons. This is a load of German refugees making their escape from persecution, and a sprinkling of moth-eaten English people like myself, going out on business. I have a cupboard-size cabin but it is my own, and, if it is cold, this does not prevent me from sleeping for hours on end.

  A boat drill on deck brought out a sorry-looking crowd. Mustering in excited clumps, all swelled with lifebelts under our chins, we had only one thought in our minds: the possibility of being torpedoed. One couple was rather hysterical, and laughed loud and explosively. A fat old lady was asking, ‘Iss dis der vindoh we most get hout off?’, and, nuzzling her lifebelt, she called it her ‘papie’. Instructions were given. The boats would be lowered here. The bugle would call six times, gongs would ring. The sea looked cold and menacing — a forlorn prospect in case of shipwreck.

  We carry our lifebelts with us wherever we are. Lying in bed, I can hear fog sirens and distant gunfire echoing against my mattress. One afternoon, near the north coast of Ireland, the gunfire was not distant: in fact, the noise was so portentous that it gave a slight idea of the magnitude of a battle at sea. An aeroplane was sighted and, as we watched its swift and ear-splitting approach, we felt the horror and hopelessness of what it must be to be bombed. Not that this was a German aeroplane, for the Allied circles of colour were a boon from heaven; but for the first time I felt the impotency of waiting for a bomb to drop without being able to retaliate, or even to escape.

  DR LOEWI

  SS Samaria

  It is my daily delight, on board, to seek out, in the tourist section, Raimund’s[8] sister and husband, the Zimmers. With them is their little, owl-like friend, Professor Loewi from Graz, who won the Nobel prize for discovering that the nervous system was dependent on chemical reaction. It is a revelation to hear the point of view of intelligent people, who were fighting against us in the First World War, discussing the present situation. One’s childhood’s ideas of war are so covered with the horror of blood that even now it is hard to realize that a war can end because of an economic breakdown.

  Strange, too, to hear these Germans and Austrians — and I am in no hesitation about their sincerity — in a state of anguish lest Germany should win. Raimund’s mother is now ensconced in Oxford and having said, during the last war, that she wished she were on the other side, now finds being on the other side is not altogether agreeable. Zimmer, a man of intensity and torrentlike vitality, who works in Intelligence, says he knew after the first two months that Germany had lost the war. He is so robust and optimistic, so strong within his convictions that he makes me feel like a wriggling winkle. How can I be so paltry as to be put off by his farouche appearance? This man’s intellectual range is enormous. He is brilliant when discussing anything from Jane Eyre to the ‘Galician nobility’ on board the ship. Figuratively, he gave me a slap on the back when I said I felt isolated and lost on the boat, having mislaid my personality and individuality. My ruminations in my cabin seem so pitiable and mawkish when in the fresh air of this man’s vitality.

  Professor Loewi was working with his assistants in his laboratory in Austria when news came that Hitler had arrived. ‘Hitler? Where?’ ‘Here in Austria.’ ‘Our experiment must be finished. We must work hard. It can be finished in two hours.’ The experiment was completed, the system plotted, but not before the guards were at the door. The old man was arrested. His immediate fear was not of death or torture, but of his experiment being lost to the world. He was allowed a postcard. The table of his discovery was written thereon and sent to the chief scientific magazine, and his name signed ‘Prisoner’.

  After two months he was released from prison, and now at the age of sixty-seven he is starting life again. He is not depressed. Although once rich, all his possessions have been confiscated, and he is now without a country. His ambitions are for humanity; he is sad for the world. I know nothing of science, theology, or philosophy, and yet was so stimulated that I was disgraced into making an effort to rise from my apathy. Here was an old man, a dandy by inclination and manner, sharing a cabin with three marines, yet working all day, translating his lectures from one foreign language to another. And here was I moping my heart out for a dead past...

  We sat drinking beer. Loewi, with wrinkled lines on his face, talked of what, pray? Garbo! But in what a way he talked of her! He has no money for the cinema, but makes one exception each time there is a Garbo film: he considers that excitation of the brain in any field creates inspiration and that this stimulus, produced from however feeble an interest, is valuable. Why should Garbo appeal universally — to him, to me, to millions of others? He considers that she, as with certain lyric poetry, is the condensation, the concentration of the hidden, but ever present, sadness that is in all people.

  For every grown-up person Garbo possesses, too, the sadness that is dormant in a child, when, robbed of its protective armour of courage against the world, it lies asleep.

  The little Professor told us of a new experiment he was working on. It has always been thought that we sleep as a result of our day’s work, but he is convinced that we sleep in proportion to the amount of life before us. Thus a baby, awake for two hours of bottle feeding, falls back into a tremendous daze for another twenty hours. Children need a great deal of sleep, but the older one becomes, the less sleep is needed. This old man now requires only five hours each night. He considers the fact that I need eight or nine is a healthy sign. When asked if sudden death caused by an accident counted, he waved his hands aside, ‘Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all!’

  A few quotations: Certain tangents of the brain develop and grow stronger. A hand that becomes useless atrophies, so certain parts of our character and brain.

  One must judge which of those paths in life one is most equipped to follow, and which to ignore safely.

  The spiritual and aristocratic always have their hopes. Only superficial people are dependent on comforts, luxury. In the new world order the old Professor does not miss his former possessions.

  Professor does not approve of practice of psychology for money. Story of performer at theatre who died of exhaustion from effort of concentrating in psychological act.

  Churchill says the news for England is very grave and each day or hour becomes more critical. This from so great a fighter.

  CHILDHOOD REMINISCENCES

  SS Samaria

  My powers of concentration seem to become more limited with the years. My deficiency shows itself most depressingly and vividly when I read anything but the frothiest of literature. By now I have developed almost a phobia about the printed word. I have every wish
to read, but lately I find I shy at the sight of a long paragraph, and instinctively look at the end of an article before summoning up energy to compete with the whole. I can look at pictures and photographs by the hour, but a whole page article or a novel makes me wonder if my eyesight isn’t being strained.

  As a child, I never read. All the books young people enjoy as foundations to literature were unknown to me. At my day school we were given as a ‘holiday task’ enormous tomes like Middlemarch, but the effort needed to embark upon such a vast undertaking was never made by me. I skipped so much that I never even gathered what the book was remotely about. My brother Reggie knew better: he did not intend to waste a minute from his cricket practice: he did not even open George Eliot.

  In my family no one ever read: apart from Vanity Fair, which he had devoured at least thirty times and which was always by his bedside, my father possessed few books. When he was slumped in an easy chair it was with Whitakers’ Almanack or The Economist. One room was called the library, but there were never any books about the house: books were never discussed.

  It was while at Harrow, when waiting for an underground Metropolitan train which was to take the sketching class back to school, that I was looking at an advertisement for the summer number of Punch. ‘Copiously illustrated’, it said. ‘What is “copiously”?’ I asked Jack Gold, my companion. ‘Really, Cecil, you should open a book one day.’ This reprimand from one of my most frivolous friends produced an effect.