by Cecil Beaton
Strains of Wagner wafted from a hidden gramophone through the expensively scented atmosphere. An eminent-looking businessman, with a folio of papers under his arm, greeted me in whispers, and in pantomime invited me to accompany him. ‘Come here quick, quick!’ With a magician’s gesture, he bid me behold: ‘Voilà!’ Chanel was asleep on an enormous suede sofa. She was fully dressed, wearing a hat, with a sable rug thrown over her; she had assumed a pose of graceful abandon.
But I felt guilty that I had intruded. It was as if I were looking at someone dead; so, after a moment of admiration, I retreated to the hall while the businessman decided to wake her. Moments later the ‘outcast’ rushed from the corridor to greet me. It was as if a whole box of fireworks had suddenly gone off: splutters of squibs, diamonds from sparklers, pops from jumping Jacks, and even the whoosh of a rocket. Chanel was talking, laughing, gesticulating, grimacing — in fact, being herself.
After the first pyrotechnic onslaught had successfully won the audience to her side, I realised what a strange and extraordinary sight presented itself: a sunburnt old gipsy was thrusting her unbelievably raddled face within an inch of my nose. One could see that her cheeks had been pulled up to the ears by a violent surgeon, and there were deep lines from the great gash of her almost lipless mouth to the incredibly wide nostrils of her toadstool nose.
The flashing smile and over-brimming vitality soon became hypnotic; the darting blackbird eyes were never still; the rich, creamy croak from deep down her larynx was urgent, confidential, conspiratorial. This jolie laide still played her games of attraction expertly. Her welcome was so warm and spontaneous that I felt I had regained a long-lost relation.
Wearing a buff-coloured coat and skirt trimmed with leopard skin, Chanel had arrived years ago in my mother’s drawing room to be one of my first professional sitters. I was easily alarmed by strangers, and found her particularly difficult to approach. When, years later, she came to New York, and appeared as the very quintessence of Parisian chic at a candle-lit supper party given by the dressmaker, Charles James, she was overwhelmingly attractive, but she seemed to swat her admirers as if they were so many obtrusive flies. How different the reception today!
Back in the sitting room I now had the opportunity to scrutinise a little the Golconda collection: the crystal chandeliers, Chinese screens and tables, life-size gilded gazelles and antelopes, the gold objects, the precious stone animals, so typically mixed with classical Greek statues, Italian carvings and Japanese junk. Chanel apologised that the flat was not finished, that no curtains were hanging at the tall window; but, nevertheless, she preferred living in unfurnished rooms. ‘It gives a feeling of life — vitality.’ She likes her things to be put around in an impromptu manner; nothing to be arranged or set.
Although she has not designed clothes for many years she appeared today to be ahead of fashion, so incredibly spruce she was, in a Beau Brummel way — yet totally French in navy blue serge over white linen blouse. Every detail was of an exquisite refinement and immaculate quality. The simplicity of her perfectly tailored suit was paradoxically overwhelmed by a fantastic array of jewels: strings of pearls hanging in cascades among chains of rubies and emeralds and gold links around her incredibly thin, stringy neck, and her mushroom hat and a lapel of her coat were each adorned with a vast sunburst of diamonds.
Her appeal for friendliness, her frank lack of reserve, her wide-apart legs with continual flexing of knees, gave one the impression of an attractive young schoolboy, and yet her grace and appeal are entirely feminine. Her hands, without nail varnish, are a young girl’s hands and the skin is satiny and unwrinkled.
In her deep, gruff, catarrhal monotone she jabbered non-stop, but it was up to me to try to dam the torrent and start work on the drawing for my book. Her enthusiasm was untiring. Such vitality is irresistible; I could well see why so many remarkable men and women had found her devastating.
Suddenly she asked if her talk was distracting for me. ‘Yes, a bit,’ I had to admit, for my drawing was progressing badly. At last a wonderful silence ensued. The face I peered at was defiant, courageous, alert and tragic. There was no apology for its wear and tear, or for the almost shocking brutality of the down-thrusted sledge-hammer of a mouth.
Chanel had nothing to do. Now that she wasn’t working she had leisure. She was living the life she’d always been unable to live; at last she could meet young people, travel and read; she realised, a little, what was going on in the world. She protested perhaps too much that one must not think of the past, but become part of the changed world. She complained of bores, and was disloyal to her old friends, Maggie Van Zuylen and Cocteau; she denounced the recent ‘old hat’ exhibition of Dali. Apropos of fashion, she said that it had died with the last war and no longer existed or had become entirely commercial: ‘Fashion is now in the hands of American Seventh Avenue and the pederasts.’
It is unattractive when older people are poisonous about their rivals. Chanel pronounced opinions that most other women would not have dared to voice. Yet somehow one could not believe in her display of hatred and jealousy; it was as if she were acting the words without feeling. A lot of conversation was geared to the fact that she wished to rehabilitate herself in the eyes of the very Parisians she despised and who, because of her ‘collabo’ reputation, had dropped her cold. There was an extra reason why she should put herself in a good light for me. She was far too subtle to mention the subject of her ‘disgrace’, but it was important that she should get word through to Winston Churchill to tell him what a lot she had done for England. Churchill had known her in the South of France before the war; but recently he had not replied to her letters, and it was vital that the British Embassy here in Paris should see to it that he received her messages. Would I say something to Duff Cooper?
My drawings drove me to despair: my energy had become so dispersed that the ink line had no strength behind it. I would come back again tomorrow — and so the long first session came to an end.
Being in Chanel’s company was like a strange journey into the past. Without interruptions from friends, or from telephone calls, it was as if I had spent an afternoon with a character from history. The result was not a disappointment for, whatever her faults, she was unique.
BERTIE ABDY
It is doubtful whether anyone will write a life of that most retiring of men, Bertie Abdy, for he has always courted anonymity and would certainly give no active help to his biographer; in fact, he would be as uncooperative, stubborn and difficult as only he knows how to be. Bertie’s lack of compromise has reduced his list of friends to the minimum. To a very carefully sifted little group, who love him for his peculiarities, Bertie has always been irresistible.
Although his father disliked anything connected with the arts, Bertie became passionately interested at the age of ten in the aesthetic world. Later, when he inherited his fantastic fortune (he owned a large slice of the London Docks), he was able to cultivate his ambition to almost unlimited lengths. He denigrates his penchant for the pretty: ‘I suppose everything I like is “chocolate-boxy”, but look at this Fragonard — isn’t it lovely! Every rose bush a Cadbury!’ Yet he is surprisingly catholic in his tastes; he is a collector of Renaissance bronzes and was among the first to introduce to London such painters as Degas and Kokoschka. But when even Bertie could not afford to buy more statuary, paintings, books or objets for himself, he bought for others. He became expert in advising Chester Beatty, Gulbenkian and other rich collectors in the world. When most of his dockland property was destroyed by fire, he went into business to the extent of advising and finding rare items for such firms as Wildenstein, Seligmann and Partridge.
Bertie is incapable of being a shrewd businessman and feathering his own nest. The essence of integrity himself, he is never embittered when tricked by crooked agents. But his honesty and his lack of tact have made him many enemies. One of his usual sallies is to give advice that is not welcome. Once I showed him a painting of mine that had gone wrong. He
told me that there was nothing to be done but fly immediately to Spain to see how Goya would have tackled the problem in an entirely different way. Few people relish his outspokenness. He called Sir Joseph Duveen a mountebank; and when Mrs Neeley Vanderbilt showed him her Fifth Avenue house and explained: ‘This is the Louis Seize drawing-room’, Bertie asked: ‘And what makes you think it is?’ On another occasion a Chilean friend, Tony Gandarillas, bewailing the fact that his elderly dog had become frail and possibly could not live much longer, said he would like to take him to Brighton to see the sea before he died. Bertie enquired: ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you took the dog to the Wallace Collection?’
Bertie’s standards are so high that he even designated the Kent furniture made specially for the Double Cube Room at Wilton as ‘so coarse, it’d be all right for a circus roundabout’. He dismissed the taste of the interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe as ‘ribbons and rubbish’.
I have come to stay with Bertie in his rough-hewn stone house, Newton Ferrers, in Cornwall. A catastrophic fire gutted one whole wing that contained many of his greatest treasures; nonetheless, in other parts of the house a collection of rare books, pictures and sculptures remains unscathed, and the garages, stables, and other out-houses are still filled with terracottas, old-master drawings and Boulle furniture, which he cannot bear to sell.
Bertie, blinking through huge tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses, climbs a step-ladder in his library and hands down a slim volume to be admired. ‘What could be prettier than this binding with the Bourbon arms, 1753? Look at this — no one in England ever did anything to equal this sort of thing!’ His long, white, cheese-stick fingers falter along the tops of gold-tooled volumes. ‘This is a pretty book for wig-makers and hairdressers of the eighteenth century.’ His voice seems even sadder. ‘Now this beautiful binding just shows how civilised they were to honour a book on how to make two hundred and fifty different meringues! This machinery is for blowing the icing sugar.’ A few steps higher on the ladder and Bertie points out the calligraphy of the Dauphin’s prayer book. ‘Madame de Behargue offered me a thousand pounds for this! I bought it in London for a song. Ah, but mine’s only a child’s collection!’ moans Bertie, coming down the ladder and thinking of the things he would have liked to buy.
Then, unexpectedly, Bertie’s face breaks into a thousand pieces as he laughs, takes off his spectacles to polish them with his handkerchief, and explains: ‘I’m so hard up I can’t afford to go to London any more.’ His face becomes ashen and grave again. ‘Eleven shillings for a meal — it’s preposterous! And uneatable too! That’s why I go to Lyon’s for a bun and a cup of milk.’
I have the feeling that if Bertie were to become a pauper, he would somehow continue never to lower his standards of perfection; he would always insist on only the best quality. Today he considers that he leads a squalid, slum-like existence. Anything less ordinary cannot be imagined than Bertie, gaunt, myopic and papyrus-complexioned, sitting in an exquisite Jacob chair, flicking expertly through a catalogue, while his lanky legs sprawl for miles over the Savonnerie carpet until they end in a pair of elephantine bedroom slippers. Bertie points at a rare Provencal commode saying: ‘I must get rid of this absurd rusticity.’
‘You can’t find anyone to do anything for you nowadays. I used to travel a lot to see dealers and works of art. I’m not a manager, and I don’t know how to look after myself. Edwards, my man, used to do everything. I don’t care if he stank of my sherry — he looked after me. I’d say: “Get me to Brussels” and he’d manage it. Once, going to Vienna, I found myself on the wrong train; Edwards realised it, and somehow he got on to it and fetched me back. Edwards had a sense of the art of living. He enjoyed his work. He’d spend hours boning my boots. Who has his boots boned today? And each time I put on my clothes they had been ironed — underclothes and pyjamas always ironed! And that man did all the silver! Have you ever tried to clean silver? And the porcelain — every bit he had to wash himself. I used to give Edwards tips — a cheque for one hundred pounds if business was good, and fifty pounds at Christmas. When he left I gave him five hundred pounds because he was worth it.’
At Newton Ferrers today there is no one to valet Bertie (he wears old gamekeeper’s clothes during the day and green velvet suits at night). He still orders a thousand more flowering cherry trees to blossom in his ‘suburban garden of pink veils’ (‘a million cherry trees and never a cherry’), and once a month he can’t resist buying, however small, a Fragonard or a Rouault.
Bertie admits that the new world which has taken charge baffles him. ‘It’s so entirely different! When I went to fight the Second War I didn’t understand what they were talking about, it was a new language. The first time someone said “Cheerio” I was absolutely dumbfounded. But there are no manners any more, and no officer is looked after as he used to be. In the First War we had batmen and they wore livery in the evening: we had old silver on the table. Now the squalor! The bathrooms are dirty, the water closets are poisonous. Everyone drinks beer, and the noise! And I’m talking about a great regiment! One that is entitled to wear the King’s livery — with silk stockings and buckles.’ Yet Bertie is deep in homage to the discipline and courage of the Brigade of Guards. ‘When the country was trying to exist and facing destruction, the men were behaving like mythological heroes, literally fighting to the last man. They considered it was a privilege to die.’
When reality in the form of today’s ruthlessness and lack of manners encroaches uncomfortably near Bertie, we discover someone who will not submit without a fight. This most sensitive soul has a white-hot temper and often his scorn brings a healthy volte-face to a bully. However, travelling with Bertie can make one blush with shame. At Waterloo Station he was abruptly stopped at the barrier by a policeman putting an arm across his chest, and shouting at him to join the queue for the platform. Bertie, a towering Peter Schlemiel emitting electric sparks of rage, bellowed: ‘I haven’t fought the Germans to be told by someone like you to join a queue. I’ll strike you first with my umbrella before I join that queue!’ ‘I suppose you’re a gentleman!’ sneered the policeman. ‘I’m English,’ yelled Bertie and so great was the force of his fury that he was allowed past the barriers onto the train.
Once in the railway carriage he settled down to talk about Horace or the merits of wine. The doors open. In a stage whisper Bertie moans: ‘Oh, two more women with unwashed hair!’
Tonight at dinner Bertie talked about life in Paris between the two wars. ‘Madame de Behargue spent all her life looking for a certain object. She found that carafe over there that she had been wanting for thirty years — and she found it three months before she died.’
He continued: ‘It’s extraordinary what England has been through! At the time of Charles II the rich people were living on porridge.’ He then reminisced with regret: ‘No one knows wine any more, no one appreciates good food, no one knows anything about art.’
HENRY MOORE
One of Bertie Abdy’s most recent possessions is a bronze torso by Henry Moore. This piece of sculpture has been very much in the news. It is said to have been inspired by Moore’s first visit to Greece and is considered a work of importance. In fact the Directors of the Manchester Art Museum were interested in buying it, but at the last moment the voting went against them, resulting in newspaper headlines and controversies. The piece has now been placed temporarily by Bertie at Newton Ferrers in Cornwall in a position dominating his elaborately cascading water garden. Henry Moore was due, at any moment, to give his advice about where best it should be permanently placed.
Out of the local taxi bundled hurriedly a little businessman in rough tweeds with a North Country accent. He had, I thought, a rather anonymous appearance; plain pudding-face, weak eyes, pale blue, watery but bright, a beaky nose and irregular, somewhat parrot-beak teeth and a high forehead with receding hair laid flat and lifeless across the dome. No time to be lost before taking him down to the water garden to try and find Bertie. He talked in staccato, jer
ky sentences and struck his words with insistent hammer-force. He seemed to be trying to overcome an innate nervousness and shyness (and I too).
It took us both a few moments to realise that we shared that particular fraternity of feeling that is common to most people who practise in the world of the arts; we were soon talking as if we had known one another of old.
But if I felt Moore and I had struck a chord of sympathy, it was nothing to the soaring harmony of understanding and genuine recognition that was sparked off the moment that Henry Moore met Bertie. Henry Moore became immediately and completely at ease; Bertie, whose views are not readily understood by many who are practising artists, found at once that he had a soul-mate.
Bertie showed the sculptor the possible sites from which the figure could be seen at good advantage. The three of us marched up, down and around beside the cascades. Finally Henry Moore was convinced that the site chosen by Bertie, at the fount of the water display, was the most effective. We celebrated the decision.
On Sunday morning the sun shone on the newly budding trees, on the primroses and on Bertie’s thousand cherries. A Cornish spring was beginning in earnest. Bertie, with leisure such as few are able to possess today, had already done some work in the woods with his cutter, had played a game of croquet with his son, Valentine, and now bid me come for a walk with him.
We found Henry Moore and set off. In the spring woods the bluebells were beginning: everywhere was joy. Bertie and Henry talked about works of art and of the great masters as if they were intimate friends. ‘No,’ said Bertie, ‘I don’t think money is necessarily a deterrent to creativity. Degas was rich; Cézanne was well off. In fact, very few of the Impressionists were poor. But happiness, without the contrasting periods of misery, is not good for an artist. We must all endure a certain hell within us; Michelangelo’s suffering — his appalling torments of jealousy for his young men — surely stimulated his imagination.’
