by Cecil Beaton
Yet if I indulge in self-pity like this, how would they react — the prisoners of war, the men from the jungle or from a hundred isolated outposts? After years of separation from the life they knew, how could they hope to pick up, when they returned, a thread of continuity?
Margaret, quiet and sympathetic, helped me to sit up and take notice of the new world around me. I had that cold drink that we had all promised ourselves, and it encouraged me to talk of the years between. The war has given me a great jolt. It has pitchforked me out of my self-made rut into all sorts of different worlds. Some of the experiences have been a bit unpleasant, but, on the whole, I have been more than fortunate. Not only have I survived with no injury, but my work has taken me to all sorts of places that I would never have known. All sorts of people have appeared in my orbit, all sorts of new horizons have opened, and I have been given new interests. Will I go back into the same old rut?
REX WHISTLER
On Sunday, on my way to rest and swim at the Connecticut house of my friends, Natascha and Jack Wilson, the thoroughfares were filled with cars dashing so smoothly to the overpopulated countryside. Sexy, apricot-coloured husbands with their arrogant wives, their dyed hair blowing in the wind, paid no attention to the nest-full of children sucking goodies in the back of the car. Everyone seemed so independent and carefree, so self-assured in taking so much luxury for granted. The gargantuan Sunday joint we enjoyed would have used up a six months’ ration ticket book at home.
But talk at lunch was not about the war, but of ‘summer, theatre’ and the various Broadway stars in circuit near by. Later with coffee, we were looking through Jack’s remarkable collection of theatrical scrapbooks when we came across a photograph of Geoffrey Nares. Like so many other friends he would never return from the war. The pages were turned to reveal Rex Whistler’s delightful designs for Victoria Regina. ‘Oh yes,’ remarked Jack, ‘Rex — that’s another one of our friends killed!’ I let out a cry. ‘It cant be true! When? How?’ Jack looked aghast. ‘I’m sure I saw it in the papers. Soon after the Normandy landings.’ I did not need any further corroboration. I knew it was true! Somehow, instinct told me that Rex would be killed. There was something so indefinite and vague about him the last time he came on leave and stayed in my London house. He didn’t know what he would do after the war: he didn’t even know what to do with his leave. I feel somehow that people with a definite purpose are more apt to survive that awful haphazard shell ... ‘Of course Rex is dead and I’m alive. It’s so bloody unfair! I’ve been messing about doing a rotten, piddling little job that’s only an alibi. I’m not capable of making any real effort as Rex has done.’ I started to bellow. I was no longer in China among kindly strangers with whom one must behave with circumspection. I was with old friends. My nerves, long pent up, suddenly snapped. Here there was no necessity to keep a curb on my emotions. I blubbed. Jack and Natascha were naturally deeply upset by my tears, lamentations and hysterical cries of selfcondemnation.
I remembered the evening Rex and I had spent together just before war was declared. We were sitting on his balcony in Regent’s Park: Rex had already enlisted, and said he knew he had the capabilities of being a soldier, and that to accept any other job would be impossible. He made, in fact, an extremely capable officer, much beloved by his men in the Welsh Guards. The timid little rabbit became a leader. All the time he was miserable, but he never complained.
Rex, a natural talent if ever there was one, would now never be able to develop the art of painting which, he said, he felt he was just beginning to learn. His work was, in fact, undergoing a great change, and he might have developed from being a decorative painter, a muralist and illustrator into another Turner. Now his potentials were cut, his lifework complete, and Rex, the person suffused with effortless charm, so romantic and youthful of appearance, with his bold, ram-like profile and pale tired eyes, would never grow old.
I wondered if Edith Olivier, nearing seventy, would survive the news. She loved him: he was everything to her — a son, a friend, her true love.
A little later in the evening Jack motored me, with Martin Manuelis and some other theatrical people, back to New York. Jack had warned them that I was upset at hearing of the loss of a great friend; they were naturally surprised to find that almost all the way home I laughed almost as hysterically as, earlier, I had been wailing with equal lack of restraint.
However, back in my room, I again gave way. For the next few days I was utterly consumed by this sorrow.
Eventually this news from home caught up with me. After successfully landing in Normandy in his tank, Rex missed one of his men. He jumped from his tank to look for him, and was killed instantly. Rex’s moonlit face now stared from an obituary notice.
A friend wrote me of how Edith’s sister had broken the news. ‘It was late in the evening when Edith drove back from her many duties as Mayor of Wilton to her little house in the park. She was quite fagged out after a particularly long meeting. “I’m too tired to put the car in the garage, but I’ll do it later,” Edith puffed. Her sister, meanwhile, had heard the news about Rex, but did not know how she could bring herself to tell poor Edith who, at this moment, looked already so white and drained of strength. “Now come and settle down in front of the fire and have some hot tea.” Edith drank three cups of tea. And I put a lot of sugar in them to sustain her. Then I said how awful it was that some people received telegrams to say that their kith and kin had been killed, only later it would transpire that they were still alive — or prisoner of war — like the Colt boy. Then I told her that I’d had a wire that, alas, might be true. It was a terrible piece of news, but they had heard that Rex had been killed ...
‘Edith remained as she was — staring in front of her with a glassy, glazed look. She seemed to be peering into another world. All the remaining colour went from her face. She continued to sit, wildeyed, staring and quite silent, utterly white. Then suddenly she started to become red around the neck. I thought I must move her, so I said, “Now we must go and put away the car.” Edith whispered, “Yes, yes, we must put away the car.” So we went to the garage, for I knew Edith could not go alone. Then I took her upstairs and laid her down on her bed. She lay, just gazing in front of her. I said, “I’m going to leave you alone for an hour.” When I came back an hour later, it was only then that Edith started to cry.’
August 10th
My fatigue has entirely disappeared. A few nights of sleep were all that was needed. I am now avid to compete with New York — and start doing some work. Greedily I’ve taken the opportunity to make money, and have been inundated with requests for photographs and commissions to do drawings. In wartime London I reached the point where I wouldn’t say ‘no’ to a job that would bring me in three guineas. Now, after a week in New York, I am making a small fortune. It is no hardship for me that the Ministry of Information has given me a respite and delayed my return home.
Monday, August 14th
Woken early with news of the Allied advance towards Paris. This is something that one has waited for with such longing for so long. Yet now, strangely enough, I feel ashamed that I was taking it almost for granted. Perhaps it is a question of distance, and one cannot criticize people here that have been fortunate enough to remain comparatively untouched by the maelstrom. New York restaurants, night clubs and theatres are flourishing, and people are determined to have a good time. Yet beneath the surface one sees to what an extent the war with such ruthless cruelty has spread tragedy through this vast continent. Everywhere one senses an undercurrent of anxiety if not of plain suffering; so many people whose sons are missing behave in a manner that cloaks their misery.
LIBERATION OF PARIS
Wednesday, August 23rd
Mercedes de Acosta, whose voice I have not heard for seven years, telephoned, as if the past had never existed, to tell me the news of the liberation of Paris. The Americans had surrounded the city which had then been taken from within by French patriots. Telephones buzzed all morning
with more rumours — one said Pétain had been kidnapped — some were true, some false, but the fact remains that Paris has come alive!
From my hotel bedroom I could see paper flying like confetti from the tall buildings. At the Rockefeller Center ticker tape streamers were floating in the breeze like octopuses, while sheets torn from telephone books looked like doves or miniature aeroplanes.
In the sunken garden French troops were lined, tri-colours flying: speeches: songs: Lily Pons led the ‘Marseillaise’. American sympathy and emotion for a country that had suffered under the Germans for these four years was shown in a spontaneous outpouring of emotion that is typical — and very moving.
Friends, new and old, want to know about the Far East, and being able to expatiate a little on this subject has given me a certain self-confidence. My fluke visit to New York has made me feel ten years younger. It has given me the assurance that, after the war, I can again earn my living.
Now the parcels are arriving from hospitable and generous people for me to take to family and friends in England. I was elated. However, Ben Thomas, my old Cambridge contemporary, and now a pillar of the British Information Service, administered an antidote when he came in to say good-bye. Ben, about seven foot tall, with ‘blind-as-bat’ eyes and a long, indecently pink nose, has the undiminished charm he possessed as an undergraduate, and the same gentle manner of handing out broadsides which, curiously enough, one cannot resent. ‘You know you’re the sort of a Britisher the BIS here wants to hide,’ he said in his deep, plummy voice. ‘You give the impression of being a beau, and the office wants to show that the British are really very like Americans.’ He went on in his eighteenth-century mannered way: ‘At Cambridge you told me that I knew the “right people”. Well, at any rate, you seem to know them now. You are a snob.’
I replied, ‘If it is snobbish to prefer people who are intelligent, amusing or beautiful, and who use their assets imaginatively, then I am a snob. But I don’t like people only because they are well-born or rich, for they are often so dull and mediocre. Just imagine being closeted for three minutes straight with ...’ and we simultaneously mentioned the name of an important mutual friend...
We laughed, and drank to the advent of peace. It cannot be far off now!
***
Continue the journey through CECIL BEATON’S DIARIES with The Happy Years: 1944-48.
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THE WANDERING YEARS: 1922-39
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THE HAPPY YEARS: 1944-48
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THE PARTING YEARS: 1963-74
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Published by Sapere Books.
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Copyright © The Estate of Cecil Beaton, 2018
The Estate of Cecil Beaton has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.
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eBook ISBN: 9781912546268
* * *
[1] Our Prince Charming.
[2] Our red-headed pianist.
[3] Our Buttons.
[4] A pre-Druid burial ground, a near-by landmark to be seen silhouetted on the Downs.
[5]This new house in Pelham Place was discovered by my mother, and we made a home together there when my work for the Ministry of Information made it necessary for me to spend most of my time in London.
[6] Emlyn Williams, actor, author.
[7] Lady Diana Cooper.
[8] Raimund von Hofmannsthal, son of the poet, librettist.
[9] Lady Juliet Duff.
[10] The painter who had lived in France, where I met him as the protégé of Gertrude Stein.
[11] Mrs Randolph Churchill.
[12] James Pope Hennessy.
[13] St John Hutchinson.
[14] An elderly wit about town.
[15] A fashionable American-born lady, famous in Paris.
[16] Or some such names.
[17] I Corinthians xiii.
[18] Alec Hambro, married to my sister Baba.
[19] A. E. W. Mason, the historical novelist.
[20] This resulted in Hutchinson’s publishing Winged Squadrons, drawn from my diaries.
[21] A former concert singer, now a music teacher and social figure in London.
[22]I hadn’t.
[23] Randolph Churchill.
[24] Felix Harbord.
[25] Air Chief Marshal Coningham.
[26] Geoffrey’s premonition was correct. He died in hospital a few months later.
[27] Raschid Ali’s abortive anti-British hostilities in 1941.
[28] When the King was assassinated in 1958 a mangled photograph from the day’s sitting was found in the ruins of the palace.
[29] Some time later Adrian Bishop fell from a balcony here and was killed instantly.
[30] Lydia Lopokova, the Russian dancer, who had married Lord Keynes.
[31] J. J. Cooper, now Lord Norwich.
[32] Raimund von Hofmannsthal.
[33] Hugh Beaumont, of H. M. Tennent, responsible for putting on the production.
[34] A former secretary and friend.
[35] An agent at Government House.
[36] General Grimsdale, GOC British Military Mission in China.
[37] Many today consider that this visit was responsible for the unfortunate policy that the US adopted towards Formosa.
