The Restless Years (1955-63)

by Cecil Beaton

  THE RESTLESS YEARS

  1955-63

  Cecil Beaton’s Diaries

  Volume Five

  Table of Contents

  Foreword to the New Edition

  Part I: Changing Perspectives, 1955

  Part II: To and Fro, 1955-6

  Part III: Far Eastern Adventure, 1957

  Part IV: ‘Gigi’, 1957

  Part V: Old Friends: New Places, 1958-60

  Part VI: Artists with Paint, 1960

  Part VII: Travelling Again, 1960-61

  Part VIII: Restlessness, 1962

  Part IX: African Journey

  Part X: Return to Hollywood, 1963

  ALSO IN THE CECIL BEATON’S MEMOIRS SERIES

  Foreword to the New Edition

  I welcome the republication of the six volumes of Cecil Beaton’s diaries, which so delighted readers between 1961 and 1978. I don’t know if Cecil himself re-read every word of his manuscript diaries when selecting entries, but I suspect he probably did over a period of time. Some of the handwritten diaries were marked with the bits he wanted transcribed and when it came to the extracts about Greta Garbo, some of the pages were sellotaped closed. Even today, in the library of St John’s College, Cambridge, some of the original diaries are closed from public examination, though to be honest, most of the contents are now out in the open.

  The only other person who has read all the manuscript diaries is me. It took me a long time to get through them, partly because his handwriting was so hard to read. I found that if I read one book a day, I had not done enough. If I did two in a day, then I ended up with a splitting headache! This in no way deflected from the enormous enjoyment in reading them.

  Altogether there are 145 original manuscript diaries dating from Cecil going up to Cambridge in 1922 until he suffered a serious stroke in 1974. A few fragments of an earlier Harrow diary survive, and there is a final volume between 1978 and 1980, written in his left hand. 56 of these cover his time at Cambridge, some of which appear in The Wandering Years (1961). 22 books cover the war years, and were used for The Years Between (1965), and nine books record his My Fair Lady experiences, some of which appear in The Restless Years (1976) and were the basis for Cecil Beaton’s Fair Lady (1964). These six volumes probably represent about ten per cent of what Cecil Beaton actually wrote.

  The diaries attracted a great deal of attention when first published. James Pope-Hennessy wrote of Cecil’s ‘thirst for self-revelation’, adding that the unpublished volumes were surely ‘the chronicle of our age’. Referring to Cecil’s diaries, and those of Eddy Sackville-West, he also commented: ‘We could not be hoisted to posterity on two spikier spikes.’

  I have to tell the reader that these volumes were not always quite the same as the originals. Some extracts were rewritten with hindsight, some entries kaleidoscoped and so forth. Certain extracts in these six volumes were slightly retouched in places, in order that Cecil could present his world to the reader exactly as he wished it presented. And none the worse for that.

  Hugo Vickers

  January 2018

  Part I: Changing Perspectives, 1955

  HAIRCUT

  January

  Hurrying up the marble steps with nimble alacrity towards the Men’s Hairdressing Department of Selfridge’s, my mind went back to the time — oh, crikes! how long ago was it? — when I started coming here to have my hair cut by nice, carroty Mr Massey. The expeditions as a schoolboy from Temple Court in Hampstead to the West End were always exciting and full of adventure. I really felt I was seeing life from the top of the bus as the bell ting-tinged down Finchley Road towards Baker Street and Oxford Street. Once the matinée idol, the fair, wavy-haired Owen Nares, jumped on board. As the conductor came towards him I had the full benefit of the Greek-god profile as I heard him, in his plummy drawl, ask: ‘One to Piccadilly Circus, please!’ It was a Wednesday and no doubt he was going to the theatre! What glamour life possessed!

  London, to me, consisted almost exclusively of Selfridge’s. Gosh, what a feeling of sophistication it gave me to sit on a high stool and drink a real American ice-cream soda! Then I bought a large packet of equally American peanut brittle, and prowled around the Photographic Department and other counters in the hope of seeing Gladys Cooper shopping. It was always here that Reggie and I had our hair cut. Thirty years must have elapsed since that time when first my younger brother affirmed, with utmost urbane authority, that no one in London cut hair so well as Massey. Sometimes I have migrated to Trumpers where there is always an uncanny and exclusive smell of orange hairtonic. But one is never given a welcome; one is rather grudgingly accepted as a client; and so I return to my tactful old friend in the large white emporium on the first floor of Selfridge’s.

  The usual talk: ‘Has Mr Jack Gordon been in lately?’ ‘When was it that Mr Selfridge himself ceased to come here for his daily trim?’

  As Massey turned me on the revolving chair to face the light from a huge window I saw my reflection in the glass opposite: I flinched. How could it be that I looked so hideous and so old? Had I really got such baggage under my eyes? Where did I get that bloat? It was not until the end of the haircut that I was pole-axed with the greatest shock of all. Massey pivoted me around again so that my back was to the light, and he produced a hand-mirror in order that I could see if he had clipped the nape of my neck to my satisfaction. I almost keeled over the edge of the chair at the sight in the reflected glass! A semi-bald man of twice my age and size sat in my place. I had not known that the hair on the crown of my head was becoming sparse. But this was a ghastly tonsure! I felt sick, as one does when an elevator rushes too quickly through space. Men suffer just as much as women at getting old and losing their appearance; every bald man is a personal tragedy.

  Massey must have gauged the stricken horror in my voice as I moaned: ‘It can’t be as bad as all that! Oh, Christ! What can I do to be saved?’ Massey nodded compassionately; trying to console me, but making the situation more tragic, he said: ‘I shouldn’t have let you see, should I? It was a mistake to do that, wasn’t it?’

  I crawled away down those marble stairs. The commissionaire asked: ‘Taxi?’

  ‘No, hearse please.’

  THE RIVIERA

  January 1955

  Echoes of former glories persist along the now comparatively shabby haunts of the Côte d’Azur. A garden falling into a wilderness still possesses shades of King Edward VII; a crumbling mansion is a memory of the Duke of Connaught. A tall, locked gate leads to the shuttered Villa Léopolda where Cléo de Mérode, the poule de luxe with the Leonardo hair-do, gave her purity of beauty to the ugly and unpopular King Léopold. At the time of the troubles in the Belgian Congo the crowds shouted ‘Cleopolda!’ at the King.

  In Nice the Hotel Negresco with its wedding-cake façade, though slightly cracked, is still like icing sugar in the sun. But the vestibule is almost empty. The Promenade des Anglais is sparsely populated with a few old cronies. The reaper has taken his toll, and economics as well as fashions have brought this sad change. Perhaps Monte Carlo is the last place where one can still see a few decrepit French dandies tottering on their last legs in crowsfooted shoes, stovepipe trousers, and curled trilby hats. Their hair is ginger-dyed and artificially waved; fingers are gnarled and heavily ringed. Women-folk are mere bags of bones with kohl-rimmed, blank eyes, marmalade wigs, tired tulle and wired linen flowers. They are the last survivors of the caricatures of Sem and Capiello.

  Hidden away in various parts of the rocky coast are a few bastions of the old days of Edwardian glory. Muriel Wilson is pottering among her borders of antirrhinums and larkspurs. Today her ‘Maryland’ garden is a mockery of its past grandeur, and the house is seedy and sa
d. So much has passed since she first came out here as a dazzling beauty, bringing with her her staff of servants from Tranby Croft, of card-cheating fame.[1] She managed to escape the German invasion of France on a coal boat which took three weeks to reach Gibraltar; but her seventy-five-year-old butler remained behind to look after the house. The Germans did him no harm; he was too old to suffer, they considered. But after they had been in occupation a year a German soldier was shot in the village, so thirty-six Frenchmen, including the aged butler, were rounded up and taken to Buchenwald. The wretched man at the time of his arrest was wearing nothing but shorts and a summer vest. He was lucky to die of pneumonia after two weeks; others suffered for years before they died.

  Also back on this golden coast is the wealthy widow, the whitehaired Lady Bateman, who was so upset when her Croesus-husband died that she went round the world six times. Princess Ottoboni, and one or two other hostesses of different nationalities, spend their time bickering and pouring down slime and abuse on their friends’ heads. Watching the newspaper lists of deaths is an exciting game for these faded survivors; a point is scored each time they see they have outlived an old acquaintance. ‘They say poor Violette is in a bad way — on the way out.’ ‘Guido Sommi has just died.’ The tom-toms relay the news of the latest victim.

  Even before the last war, the seasons switched and the popularity of the Riviera was confined to the months of summer. The dangerous, curving Corniche road was jammed with sports cars on the way from one plage to another; sunbathing ladies covered in Ambre Solaire, rich young girls and boys, all dressed as sailors, brought millions of francs and pounds and dollars to the new owners of casinos and night-clubs. The old winter chateaux were ill-suited to conversion to summer usage, but small gardeners’ lodges, or servants’ quarters, were decorated by Lady Mendl, and once more the Riviera was rich.

  But today there are few foreigners who can pay the outrageous prices; most people are in favour of a cheaper holiday in Spain or Italy. French visitors are of the working class who, since they now have a paid holiday, arrive on their bicycles from the North and camp out in primitive conditions on the rocks or swarm into the small hotels where prices and standards are low. The promenade is littered with rubbish, the rocks with the remains of primitive sanitation, so it is not surprising that even without demonstrations by the Communists against the arrival of the American fleet most of the American sailors would prefer to go home.

  ZAZU: OBITUARY TO PUG DOG

  April 8th

  I am about to return from a three months’ work-out in New York. During that time, Zazu, the amusing little pug dog who had made life so agreeable with her charming ways, had suddenly and inexplicably died. My mother wrote that she was so upset that for some time she could not bear to be in the house and went to London.

  Zazu was bought from a woman who lived on our way out of town to the country. As we were shown into the house a champagne-coloured pug of diminutive proportions gambolled into the room with a lovely lilting gait. She was the personification of gaiety and impudence. Her kennel name was Zazu. No doubt but that she must be ours. A cheque was signed; short talks about her foods and habits, and the woman kissed the little dog on the forehead as my mother gathered her up and into her life.

  From the moment of her arrival there was seldom a dull moment in the Broadchalke house; Zazu provided an infinite variety of delights. One could not look at the expression on her face of wistfulness, cruelty and curiosity without roaring with laughter. The eyes were far apart; the decoration of nose and mouth was devilish. She looked like a velvety pansy.

  Zazu became an immediate favourite. The squabbling servants made up their differences on account of her, and my mother became exhausted by her incessant playfulness; she had never known a dog with such determination and character. Zazu was excessively stubborn and disobedient, but in spite of her bad manners we adored her.

  Her powers of invention were extraordinary. With her imaginative tricks, she gave a new dimension to life. All sorts of inanimate objects suddenly became dangerous weapons. A scuffle in my bedroom, and I would discover that Zazu had started to eat a large tube of white oil-colour paint. She tore at tassels, chewed pencils and boots, and her inquisitiveness when I went to the lavatory and flushed the toilet, or got into my bath, was positively frenzied. On a walk in the garden she was always excavating new undergrowth, or discovering some strangeness in the flower borders.

  I would bore my companions with anecdotes about her. I relived the time she was locked by mistake in the lavatory and chewed the wallpaper; the afternoon of the garden fête when she ran like a demented devil among the village children; the way she would become quite frantic in her determination to rush up and down stairs to retrieve a thrown ball.

  I know I will be pleased to get back home, but when I arrive in the hall at Reddish something very vital will be missing.

  PARIS: LADY MENDL

  Summer 1955

  No one knows the real age of Elsie Mendl; some say it was over a hundred years ago that she was born in America. Until recently, she gyrated like a galvanised monkey and in order to maintain her physical flexibility exercised herself each day in a most frenetic fashion. These acrobatics were watched by her awed friends and admiring staff who applauded the climax, a pièce montée when Elsie stood on her head. However, one day disaster overtook her. At least one vertebra was wrenched out of place, and the poor old girl was never to be the same.

  Looking extremely delicate, Elsie is lying on a velvet leopard-skin-covered sofa in the bathroom of her Paris apartment. It is a room filled with orchids in crystal vases, glass objects, mirrors and mirror-screens behind one of which is her chaise percée. Elsie seems to be getting smaller every month and is certainly prettier — prettier than she has ever been before. Not until she was eighty did she learn to smile; it is now a sweet smile.

  Soon a bachelor from the United States is shown into the room, and kisses are exchanged. The confirmed bachelor explodes: ‘Well now, my dear, I’ve got some news for you!’ The usual flapping and confidential gestures and grimaces. ‘I’m going to bring Mr Getty into your life, and he’s so rich you just can’t believe it!’ Elsie’s health is at once restored. Bolt upright, she asks: ‘But can’t we get him to buy my Coromandel screen?’

  I photographed Elsie this morning. She has just recovered from her last face-lifting operation (only a month ago). The bruises are no longer Stephen’s ink blue and dark red, and the stitches hardly show, but no-one is yet allowed to kiss her on the cheeks. It was a major operation, and only an incredible old bird like Elsie could undergo such a shock voluntarily, and through sheer discipline be able to withstand it.

  At any rate Elsie has fared better than Cécile Sorel, the octogenarian Académie Française actress, whom I recently saw standing outside Maxim’s in a revolutionary costume of black velvet and ostrich feathers. Her canary hair now bears no more relation to her head than a badly fitting, too small wig. She has a twitch. With an apparent effort she pushes the lips, enlarged with paint and at variance with their true contours, over the teeth in an uncomfortable moue. But the worst aspect is that the face has been pulled up so taut that the eyes pop and can never close; at night she must wear a black mask in order to sleep.

  For her photographs Elsie wore an elaborate new ball-gown with a white tulle crinoline skirt. The hairdresser, Antonio, had done his best with the few remaining strands of hair — had dyed them mauve, fluffed them into corkscrews, and filled in with spangled bows. The chauffeur, upstairs for orders, was invited in to admire the result of so much time, energy and expense. Elsie paraded in front of him like a mannequin on a wire. She asked: ‘Don’t you think it’s pretty, Leon?’ Leon, the driver, truthfully said: ‘Och, mais c’est un miracle!’

  Elsie telephoned from Versailles to invite me down to dine. Her accent was as strongly Bostonian as ever (which sounds, in her case, like Brooklynese — a ‘doity-doid’ for ‘thirty-third’), but her voice was sad, frail and crackling. ‘
My dear, I didn’t know there was so much human pain to be endured in this world. It’s the spine, you see, and they can’t take out the spine of a very old wummun. They can’t do nothun but drug you, and I’ve never been much of a druggist.’ When I arrived the butler told me she was sleeping.

  I decided to go for a walk in the park of Versailles. The Hubert Robert avenues of vast dark trees were a triumph of symmetry; at certain points one came to the junction of eight avenues stretching to the statue-adorned horizons. Surely the French in the eighteenth century had reached their peak in ordering nature to current fashion? Returning to Elsie’s entirely green garden, I wondered if she had not beaten even the eighteenth century at its own game? The lawns were like billiard cloth, the overhanging trees were ‘set’ in place by a great scene designer so that not a branch dare move. But the clous of Elsie’s topiary garden were the trees cut into the shape of oversize elephants. These green animals were Elsie’s last defiance at the contempt with which the Germans had maltreated her garden during the Occupation.

  I remember coming down to see the house directly after the enemy had left, in order to report to Elsie, in her Californian refuge, on the damage that had been inflicted to her pinchbeck palace. Against the boiseried walls, where Elsie’s carefully chosen Jacob and Cressant pieces had once been placed, it was a travesty to see modern brothel-furniture, and a naked electric light bulb hung where rock-crystal chandeliers had been. The cellar was ransacked, but I remember finding in a cupboard a mountain of Elsie’s scrapbooks. These were filled with photographs of Elsie’s décors, her parties, and social activities. They must have struck the occupying Huns as being particularly eccentric with Elsie always wearing the most exaggerated costumes, posing in a variety of extraordinary guises, and nonsensically even giving the Fascist salute when on a trip to Rome in the early days of Mussolini.