The Restless Years (1955-63)

by Cecil Beaton

  The serene fisherman waits patiently for another bite. As much as twenty minutes later, the fish in the dark chest makes its last terrible effort for survival. Bringing all its strength to bear, it is flailing itself in a useless agony until, at last, it subsides into its death silence.

  Fish are said to have neither brain nor warm blood. Yet have we not witnessed that they have feelings, and must suffer in their death throes? Few fishermen give thought to hit their victims over the head in order to bring possible misery to an end. Meanwhile, such suffering continues everywhere, every day, every hour, every minute of every day.

  MARGARET, DUCHESS OF ARGYLL

  I’m tired of seeing Margaret about ‘everywhere’. She always looks wonderful, but always the same, with her dark eyes and nut-brown hair, her pink and white complexion, her bandbox fresh dresses chosen with impeccable restraint. There is nothing of the private faces in public places about her. There is a dull inevitability and monotony about her beauty.

  I was leaving New York once more by ship, and there was the usual dockers’ strike. Going up in a luggage lift in the company of a bunch of fellow passengers, I was appalled to find myself standing next to Margaret. Oh, God! Would I have to be her companion for the next five days? I was a bit taken back when she asked if we could eat together during the voyage in order to escape the boredom of certain of her friends. What on earth could one find to talk about all the time? I believe it was the late Lord Wimborne who said of Margaret: ‘She don’t make many jokes, do she?’

  Soon after the hooting and moaning of sirens, and as we were slowly passing ‘down-town’ Manhattan, I ran into Margaret sitting upright at a table, watching through a dirty window the skyline of Wall Street passing away from us. She had about her an extraordinary air of leisure and self-completeness.

  ‘I always love to watch New York like this. Even if we arrive at six in the morning I come up to watch. I love New York. I feel so well there; it’s a tonic for me. I’m always sad at leaving. But [surprised and startled] these windows are dreadfully dirty. Do they realise they haven’t been washed for days? That’s not too good, is it?’

  I was amused at her apparent shock. Today most smart ladies are no longer surprised to see dirty windows. When I told Margaret I had intended to economise and have some of my meals in the dining room and not pay extra each time I go up to the Verandah Grill, she was equally shocked.

  ‘Oh, but I love sitting with the sun shining and all the windows onto the sea. I can’t bear eating during the day in electric light! Promise me to be in the Verandah Grill at one!’

  Margaret was already sitting, cool and serene, when I went up. She was surveying the sea with a certain wide-eyed amusement. I discovered she has the capacity to be ‘on’ to herself.

  I have known Margaret since she and my sisters were schoolgirls together, but I have never spent much time hearing her talk. I discovered that her idiom of speech is extremely fashionable. Her language is quite strong. Some particular man she described as the ‘President of the Shit Club’. She explained: ‘There’s no nonsense about me. Oh no, I’m earthy: you can’t fool me. I’m shrewd and have lots of common-sense which is very rare. Why do they call it “common” when so few people have it? No, I’m master at calling people’s bluff, making them come off their perches; but I can’t keep my great mouth shut. It’s terribly hard for me not to contradict even when I know it’s no good to do so, and I’m always putting my foot in my mouth. Queen Gaffeuse.’ She admitted her clothes are the result of inordinate care and thought, that she buys them in New York because they’re better value, but goes to Paris to keep her eye in. ‘I love the way American women look — that neat, clean, simple look — but I couldn’t be that. The overdressed type, that’s me.’

  Margaret must be one of the few left today who still feels impervious to the approach of the common man. Her money has given her a sense of security, and she is one of the rare examples of someone who has used it well.

  ‘I’m a very good housekeeper. I run my home beautifully. I entertain a lot, but I don’t think any woman should spend more than five minutes a day talking about the arrangements; it’s too dull. But men hate the fact that I do it all so quickly. I talk to my cook on the house telephone each morning, but I wouldn’t dream of going down to the kitchen. She knows that I can’t boil an egg, so what would I tell her? I hate it in America where nowadays your hostess puts on an apron and says she is going to fry a steak. I want other people to do the cooking, and I can’t bear it [apropos a visit to a Cabinet Minister] when people mow the lawn. They should get others to cut back the roses and dig.’

  I discovered Margaret has quite a talent for observing her particular sort of existence, and drawing definite conclusions. ‘American women are too sure of their husbands: Englishmen too sure of their wives.’ ‘French women spend their days sitting on the bidet.’ Poor-little-rich girlisms: ‘I love to dance, better than to eat.’ ‘I love camellias, but I don’t like to see them growing.’ ‘Oh, do look at Lady Rosse with amber necklace and diamond bracelets and sapphire brooch. Oh dear, she hasn’t thought that parure out!’ When her husband, while on honeymoon, was ‘putting on the dog’ in Seville (in Holy Week), complaining of their poky bedroom to the management and saying: ‘After all, I am the Duke of Argyll’, Margaret chided him later, saying: ‘Sweetie, don’t try that one; in this town dukes are two-a-penny. If you want to get results, just start crackling a few crisp dollars!’

  I wondered how it was that Margaret had developed, for better or for worse, into a real character. I wondered if it wasn’t because for twenty-five years now she has been, and is still, a great beauty. Because of this Margaret has been in the top class; she has met interesting people. The years spent hobnobbing with Beaverbrook, millionaire Americans and English politicians, etc., have made their mark on her. Having sat next to these people for hundreds of meals, she had become a most acceptable, entertaining, companion.

  I found, during this Atlantic crossing, that in her company each meal was genuinely enjoyable. Talking about the good things in life from the ivory tower of the Verandah Grill was a surprisingly pleasant way of making the journey seem short.

  Part II: To and Fro, 1955-6

  THE NEW COOK

  London: November 1955

  ‘What sort of meal will you have?’ asks Madame Andrée, the French cook. ‘A stuffed aubergine? A risotto? I can give you a magnificent dinner, of course, but a pheasant is expensive. If you have a chicken I can make it go a long way. For instance, that boiler that Mrs Beaton sent up from the country last week, with a ticket on its leg to say it was old, did very well for nine people.’ It is true that the old bird appeared first with rice and cream sauce, then in some other capacity and when Ann and Laura Charteris lunched, the remains were embedded in splendid vol-au-vents!

  Not only is Madame Andrée typically French in her parsimoniousness, but she is an artist: she can send up an egg at just the right consistency, and a salad with the perfect dressing. She is also good company. She tells me that she has broken every bone in her body, for her early years were spent performing in a circus when her crowning achievement was to be shot nightly out of a cannon.

  ‘THE CHALK GARDEN’

  New York: November

  This year, instead of staying in the cushioned unreality of a luxury hotel, I rented the apartment of a Sicilian friend, Fulco Verdura: unkind friends said that in taste it was Poor Man’s Charlie Bestigui. To me it was extremely pleasant, with avalanches of good art books and long-playing records of the classics; a mixture of Mannerist paintings, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century engravings, and sketches by Bérard; nice bits of china, palm trees and dark green walls, an effective if slightly sketchy attempt at interior decoration. A bell rang downstairs: a fastener on the door was a safety valve against unwelcome visitors. ‘Who is it?’ A voice answered my shout: ‘It’s the garbage man’, or ‘Any roaches to be got rid of?’

  Even before I had unpacked I was totally engrosse
d with work. I was soon at such fever pitch that the servants were incredulous and said: ‘Do you always keep it up like this?’ Some evenings I would come back so tired that I could hardly stagger up the short flight of iron steps to my first-floor apartment, and I would fling myself on the day bed, soon to recover energy after at least three or four cups of tea from a thick, chipped-spouted, yellow earthenware teapot.

  My immediate job was to assemble the furniture, props and a thousand little details for Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden. Work on this had already been going on for many months in London. It has not been an easy assignment and I would be called up late at night to talk about rethinking the whole visual conception. At weekends, too, I had to be on duty. It was not an agreeable experience, and I cannot think why I had not decided to break my contract, and be free — free — free! However, now I had more or less finished my designs, the workshops were busy building the sets and, apart from costume fittings, I was able to find time for correcting the proofs of a comic book, my experiences of a lecture tour on the blue-rinse circuit. Although the eventual possibility of production seemed more remote than ever, I also tried to do a bit of polishing to the last scene of my long-deferred Gainsborough play. Also I did designs for a small ballet, Soirée, for the Met. with Karinska making the costumes.

  Three whole months had gone by in an incubator of work.

  It has been a Garbo-less visit. I was deeply hurt. She sent a message through Truman Capote that she wanted me to call her, that she wanted me to take her to Jamaica, but I reckoned, sadly, that she reacts more favourably to a negative reply.

  THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL, NEW YORK

  March 16th, 1956

  Am about to return to England now that April’s near. I’m told I have missed one of the most inclement winters in Europe since 1867. In fact, the cold months on Manhattan have gone by almost unnoticed, for so much of the time has been spent working indoors in artificial light that it was only when I was occasionally stranded far away from my hotel, taxiless in snowstorm or deluge, that I realised what has been happening outside.

  When I arrived the sweltering heat had been like a series of blows between eyes, shoulder blades and in the solar plexus. By imperceptible degrees the temperature had dropped. Through my windows on Park Avenue a winter scene presented itself, and a pretty violent one it appeared to be but, fortunately, my work confined me to the rooms. These I have decorated myself (and for the hotel!) in a Japanese nouveau art manner. Since I have ceased to work for Vogue, I have been doing quite a lot of sittings for the deadly rival, Harper’s Bazaar. The editor, Carmel Snow, despite all these years on the staff has never lost her innate enthusiasm and lettuce-crisp enjoyment. She is an inspiration. It gave me a new lease of life to discover the off-hand way in which she whipped up her confectionery with the slightest effort. She worked with the minimum staff, and seemed to enjoy the impromptu.

  However, my main photographic work was for a book for George Weidenfeld to be called The Face of the World. To my strangely decorated rooms came a procession of personalities — Dr Suzuki, the great Japanese philosopher; Eudora Welty, sad and sensitive; Mary Macarthy, by whom I am determined not to be alarmed, and many other varied personages.

  Jim Benton, with dark monkey-fringe for hair and a slow, deep voice, came to do a few secretarial chores for me. By degrees work became hectic, yet Jim proved himself a master-hand at keeping things under control with the ever-ringing telephone and the various chores that now kept me indoors most of the day and night. He would buy necessities for the ice-box, be messenger, look after the vastly increasing hoard of photographs which I was collecting for the book.

  He gave me a perspective on the glamour potential of some of my sitters or visitors. He made, for instance, a sitting with Joan Crawford into quite an event. Very seriously he said: ‘Why, she hasn’t had such a distinguished workout in years!’ He was less impressed by the personality of Callas, who was one of my most difficult photographic subjects. However the tornado visit of Marilyn Monroe was the greatest fun. Although one-and-a-half hours late, Marilyn was instantly forgiven for her disarming, childlike freshness, her ingenuity and irresistible mischievousness. The cupboard where the photographs were kept suddenly became full to overflowing; the bills mounted appallingly but, fortunately, so did the invoices that Jim sent out.

  ‘MY FAIR LADY’

  Working on the production of The Chalk Garden had been for me so deeply disturbing that I felt disinclined ever again to work for the stage as a designer. I was lucky to have had the offer of another play, which turned out to be one of the happiest productions of all time.

  When that most delightful, witty and loyal of all friends, Herman Levin, had rung me in London to say Alan Lerner and Frederick Loewe were doing a musical of Pygmalion for him and that they wanted me for the costumes, I had not been enthusiastic about the project. Some years back the Theatre Guild had come to me with the same project. Gertie Lawrence was to be ‘Eliza’ and I was thrilled at such a prospect, but all had fizzled out.

  There was another reason for regret: Oliver Smith had already been signed to do the scenery, and although I am devoted to Oliver, I had made a rule that I would never again participate in only one of the facets of what I considered should be a visual whole. However, I went to Claridge’s and listened to Fritz Loewe strumming the music on a piano while Alan Lerner croaked his lyrics. No sooner had they given their rendering of ‘The Rain in Spain stays mainly in the Plain’ than I knew the venture must be a dazzling triumph. Of course I would do the costumes — better than nothing. My decision had been fortunate.

  In New York I had spent five weeks working on the costumes and then returned to England where Rex Harrison’s clothes were to be made. Rex is a perfectionist and demands minute attention. I had taken him to my tailor and made quick decisions about what he should wear: I work like that. If too many alternatives are suggested, I am likely to become waylaid, and even influenced for the bad. Rex is like a dog with a rat and will ‘worry’ details at enormous length. If given the opportunity, he will work himself up into a state of nervous alarm. I cannot say that Rex is the easiest boy in the class. But he has good taste and knows when something is not right for him. If it is wrong, he can become wild. One morning, he ripped off in anger his first-act long coat because it was tight under the arms. The seams split and the expensive stuff was frayed. The ‘strait-jacket’ was thrown to the floor.

  But Rex is a martyr to indecisions and doubts. About this time, one evening after dinner at my house, he suddenly decided that as he had not signed his contract he did after all not wish to play the part of Henry Higgins. ‘They wanted Gielgud — they’d better get him.’ I telephoned in a panic to New York. Rex soon changed his mind.

  One morning we had been choosing shirts, pullovers and ties in Burlington Street and, on the way to his hotel, Rex suggested I should go back with him and talk over our choice. ‘It might be better if instead of the buff colour ...’ He was very put out when I suddenly hailed a taxi for home.

  Berman’s did the right thing by the clothes that Stanley Holloway wore for Doolittle — a sweet man, gentle, unassuming and what an artist! I am ever grateful to him for giving the performance of a long lifetime.

  At this time it was customary to dress almost all period musicals in the styles of the 1900s. It had become a cliché. A certain amount of opposition met the proposal that I should use the fashions of 1914 — those of the time when Shaw originally wrote the play. ‘Surely they won’t be sexy!’ I promised they would be sexy. There was also scepticism about my idea of doing the Ascot scene in black and white. I remembered the pictures of ‘Black Ascot’, after King Edward VII’s death, and the effect was stunning. But for this particular scene perhaps the women would appear too much like vultures. The ‘magpie’ effect was the solution. Moss Hart, the director, was in agreement with me and the other chiefs shrugged their shoulders and said: ‘Well, all right.’

  Here at last was the opportunity to put on t
he stage all the memories stored up since my early boyhood. My mother’s grey ostrich-feathered hat would suit Mrs Higgins at Ascot. My Bolivian Aunt Jessie’s enormous cartwheel hats were remembered, and Elfie Perry, the first actress I ever met, wore a striped dress that would now be given to Eliza.

  At the first reading on Broadway before the assembled company everyone was keyed up, convinced that they were participating in something exciting. Each number was spontaneously applauded. The atmosphere was electric.

  I doubt if any major musical production has been brought to the stage with less difficulty. Of course it was damned hard work for all concerned, but apart from cutting a whole ballet and writing in an important scene there were the minimum of changes. Moss Hart, the captain of the crew, was brilliant, professional and tireless.

  It was a happy day when Helène Pons said she would undertake to make the clothes. A dark little Russian with bruises under her eyes, a pretty mouth and a nose finely sculptured, this heroic woman worked with a sensitivity and delicacy of touch only equalled by the strength of her staying power.

  Returning to New York I was now in the midst of the excitement. I was out of my hotel rooms for most of the day. (My wrist became severely strained by having to push so many times a day the heavy door of glass at the entrance of dressmaker Helène’s studio building.)

  Julie Andrews, an almost unknown girl who had the talent and luck to land the whopper of the part of Eliza, was almost unbelievably naive and simple. She was angelically patient at the many fittings of her clothes and never expressed an opinion. One day, due to exhaustion at rehearsals, she keeled over in a dead faint while fitting her resplendent ball gown. A Dixie cup of cold water was enough to revive her and she reproached herself that her mother, back home in Walton-on-Thames, would be ashamed of her. ‘Oh, Mummie, what a silly girl I am,’ she kept repeating.