by Cecil Beaton
When September passed into November there had been no word from Greta, who returned to New York and, for want of anything better to do, retired to her bed.
Greta is more and more difficult to cope with. One admires the strength of her opinions. During the lifetime she spent in Hollywood, she did not let the attitude of the place nor the vulgarity of the people impinge upon her in any way. She remained completely pure. But at what a price! As she has said, it has created a sort of living death for her. Having for so many years built up strong barriers of resistance, she is now unjust to the overtures of other people. It is impossible to sway her point of view, to make her change her mind. She cannot be coerced. Thus she is a difficult companion, becoming more so as the years go by.
GRETA TO MEET VICTOR
January 31st, 1959
Greta had decided to wash her hair in honour of the outing arranged to meet Victor Rothschild. The electricity in the air made the hair stand on end. She wore a turquoise blue handkerchief round her neck. She looked like a young Trilby.
Victor and his wife came in, delighted to see me after a long interval. They then discovered the presence of Greta. Huge delight and surprise. Victor, coarse as he is, spoke in a robust, somewhat challenging vein. ‘Why did you go on Onassis’ yacht? What do you get out of it?’ Greta was a little nonplussed. She is generally witty and quick of answer, but the bull-like Victor was too strong a breath of air for her.
Victor addressed himself to me. He joked and laughed. We had a good time, conversation being more or less general. Then Greta got up and left. No regrets from the Rothschilds at her departure, but on to more jolly jokes. Immediately after the Rothschilds had left, Greta telephoned. ‘Don’t let them know who you’re speaking to, if they’re still there.’ ‘But what happened?’ ‘I didn’t enjoy myself. The “Lord” never even looked at me. He paid no attention to me whatsoever. It wasn’t at all a nice atmosphere. I was numb, and I’ve come home very depressed.’ It made me very sad that she was sad. I apologised. ‘Well, when you’re as sensitive as I am it isn’t very pleasant, especially when you go out as little as I do. You expect it to be an exception and very gay.’ Then I said: ‘Well, please forget it, and I’m sorry,’ and she said: ‘Give me another chance. Goodnight, Beattie.’ My heart broke.
SOUTH OF FRANCE
Mummie almost died at Monte Carlo during the night. Sudden sickness that lasted two hours reduced her to a shadow. The doctor had remained until 2.30 am. Nancy was very upset. When I arrived, Mummie looked almost lifeless, but revived wonderfully during the next ten minutes and after a cup of tea. By the end of the day she was improved, and on the road to recovery. But Nancy had been alarmed when she vomited blood and Mummie had said: ‘I’m so ill, don’t leave me.’
I was terribly haunted by the Hotel Metropole life. These old people are fighting to live in decent circumstances; not richness, but a respectable gentility and a certain aristocratic formality.
JOHN GIELGUD
New York: May 1959
I have often seen John Gielgud in Shakespeare and have been impressed. He has sometimes been encumbered by bad costumes; occasionally his mannerisms have irritated me, and moments of great feeling have passed while I was exhausted or paying no heed. This performance, however, of readings from Dadie Rylands’ Ages of Man, was for me different and superb. So great was the effect of his words upon me that I was totally transported from the world of my own activities, my own thoughts and interests.
This was great acting, in the tradition of the Bettertons and Irving, but in contemporary taste. There was the minimum of ranting and of haminess. The lightness of the faery poetry, the drama of Cassius’ speech, the speeches on the kingship of Richard II and Henry IV, and the dignity of Othello were magnificently conveyed. There was something touching about the king wishing, as he sat near the field of battle, that he could enjoy the life of the country rustic.
By the time Gielgud came to Lear’s speech on old age — ‘Howl, Howl, Howl!’ — I, together with the whole audience, had become his slave. It was one of the greatest joys I have ever had in the theatre.
BARONESS BLIXEN
New York
Karen (Baroness Blixen) came to lunch with me today. She brought a young cousin with her. She allowed me to take lots of photographs.
The baroness appeared smiling and appealing with a pink and white complexion and huge blackened eyes. She was like a medieval spider, all in black. She wore a most wonderful black felt pirate’s hat that came down onto her eyes. She is thinner than ever before and her legs, in black stockings, were mere sticks of liquorice. She now cannot eat. She subsisted on oysters and champagne for the first weeks here, but now she cannot stomach the idea of another oyster. Today she drank a little consommé and ate a few grapes, but her diet is not enough for her to keep alive on. Karen said when she goes back to Denmark, she will go straight to bed and remain there until her death. The nice, healthy cousin blows a ‘pouff’ into the air. ‘Nonsense, nonsense!’
‘Oh it doesn’t matter,’ said the baroness. ‘I’m so enjoying being here, getting such a feeling of life that I’m storing up impressions that will last me for the rest of my life.’
Karen blinked and looked around the room like an unseeing bird, her eyes full of thoughts far away. It is perhaps this that gives a romantic look to the eyes, and takes away the feeling of actuality.
Karen is such a rare and wonderful emanation of her own imagination that she has come to look just like one of the characters from her writing. For me there is nothing more elegant. She is the best-dressed woman (she has a pet dress designer in Copenhagen). She is the last of the great romantics. I feel sad to think that the number of times I will see her again is very limited indeed. Karen admits that her body is kept going just with her enjoyment of life and exhilaration and determination to survive.
GRETA
I called up a few days after arrival — great surprise. Joy! She was doing nothing. But she had a cold — the same sad impasse. She would come round for a glass of vodka. The door bell rang. Waldemar Hansen answered it. She stood there transfixed, with her mouth wide open, a look of mock terror in her eyes — no move — no word. I stood motionless copying her mood, my mouth wide open too. ‘Well, well!’ said Waldemar and left. We sat on a sofa indulging in badinage.
‘You look very pretty,’ she said.
‘Oh no, I’m a wreck. I can’t stand my appearance.’ Nothing of any interest was said. No direct questions asked by me; a certain amount of narrative about the holidays; how she wore a Pucci dress once when they were invited to lunch with Winston Churchill. But no one had anything to say. He was sleepy and old. He remembered her from the films. The secretary apologised for asking them at the last minute, but they never knew what sort of a mood Churchill would be in.
Greta’s face was flawless. It is still a beautiful, secretive face and the play of expression that runs over it while she tells a story is an enchantment to watch. The lips move over the teeth with perfect delicacy of meaning.
The telephone calls have continued as frequently as ever. But they are kindness, or perhaps habit.
‘How are you feeling — less tired?’
‘I won’t tell you.’ But by degrees I learn.
‘I’m having my quota of alcohol, then I’m going to beddy-byes. You’re going out? Don’t tell me all these things or I’ll be right over and join you.’
MUMMIE AT REDDISH
July 1959
It is a tragedy to watch people getting too old to be master of themselves. My mother, until she was eighty, was a phenomenon. She looked and acted like a woman of sixty. She had great vitality. She ran the house and looked after the garden. She was a character to contend with. She did her embroidery, making with astonishing speed her rugs and carpets. We could not supply her fast enough with library books.
But Mummie has no friends and was always lazy about keeping in touch with the family. Then, unfortunately, she came to London one winter, the day before
one of the worst fogs there has ever been. Many of the prize cattle being shown at the Smithfield Fair were killed by being unable to breathe; thousands of older people were taken ill during the night to hospital. My mother was put in an oxygen tent. Then by ambulance she returned to the country.
From that experience, her heart has never recovered. Twice she caught pneumonia and was on the point of death; once I flew back from New York at a moment’s notice expecting the worst. But her constitution is remarkable. Her will to live saw her through to recovery.
But lately she seems to be quietly deteriorating. Each time I go away I return to find her looking iller, older. By degrees she is capable of less and less effort. She is tired out, yet is restless. Her heart condition makes her want to be on the move, from one room to another.
MY PLAY
September
I started to design a new set and costumes for my play about Gainsborough without really knowing if the production was going ahead. The cast, by painful degrees, was assembled under the calm and professional guidance of Douglas Seale as director. Nothing really seemed tangible and, with the exception of the session of recording the music when Sauget came over from Paris, none of the activities was really agreeable.
Then suddenly things started to go wrong with my play. Wolfit had, during the third week of rehearsals, turned against it and was doing his best to undermine the enthusiasm of the cast. He threatened to walk out of it at a moment’s notice. He let it be known that he had no contract. Jack Minster, busy with a difficult production of a bad Bates’ play, is, at best, a poor fighter. He allowed himself and all of us to be blackmailed by the bully Wolfit.
When on tour, after three performances, Wolfit took it into his head to ring up the Press and say he was unhappy with the play, we might as well have known the whole project had been scuttled. But the pain was protracted. Rays of hope would break through the storm clouds; names of possible actors would be bandied as replacements; London theatres suggested. When the notices in the Dublin morning papers were bad (after a good opening reception), I was resigned that the whole thing was over. But no, I must suffer another interminable ten days.
I returned home at seven o’clock after an afternoon of appointments to find Peter Hall telephoning from Stratford, and Hal Prince giving idiotical dates for his production of Tenderloin; the Comédie Française rang me about School for Scandal, and I arranged there and then to execute these designs at Christmas-time. Thus, within ten minutes, my winter was arranged, but only at the thirteenth hour did I receive news of my play.
GRETA: DINNER WITH THE LASZLOS
New York
The same false promises. Let’s go to Switzerland. Let’s go to the automat (for the best coffee in New York). Let’s go tomorrow. But after all these years I know she will never go. Moreover the bonhomie induced by drink will have departed in the morning.
The ragging went on all evening. It would have been easy to speak the truth, but in front of the Laszlos impossible.
The latter part of the evening was made amusing by Greta telling old stories of how she could not sleep for the country noises when staying with Cecile de Rothschild. I had forgotten the incidents, but her memory is fantastic. (She still talks to Mercedes about some lamb chops we had when the three of us dined at the Colony.) She was able to recapture exactly the sounds of the various clocks; the one on her chimney-piece that buzzed and whirred before striking every quarter-of-an-hour, and the church clock which tolled the hours and half-hours until suddenly she imitated the first rooster which presaged the dawn chorus. Never have I heard a rooster’s cry copied so exactly, so funnily. Once again I felt so sad that because of her neuroses this great actress had for fifteen years given up her raison d’être — her acting.
‘Why did I go out last night? What for?’ ‘But you enjoyed it. You led them on. You even told them you were going to Switzerland with them.’ I felt a bit bearish; I wouldn’t play the game. Greta worried, couldn’t quite finish her sentences. ‘Has he become a snob?’ At one moment she got up from the sofa to have a reassuring look at herself. No she had not lost her beauty.
RHINEBECK
New York: October 19th, 1959
I am glad to be here and grateful to Helen Hull for her kindness, her musical interests, her lacquer, and pretty garden flowers in Chinese bowls. It is a complete contrast to the New York hotel and I am beginning to thaw.
Many memories of the past are brought alive by this visit. I used to come to nearby Rhinebeck so often, as a friend of Alice Astor Obolensky. Now Alice is dead and so too are many of the people that used to stay with her there. I remember when Pavlik and I were reconciled to one another after some ridiculous, long-drawn-out feud, as a result of listening to a Tchaikovsky gramophone record; and Doris Castlerosse is a faint memory. Now Ivan Obolensky is in charge of that house and Brook Astor is unaccountably a rich widow at the late Vincent Astor’s house. The changes are tremendous. Yet the Hudson river still binds me with its allure, its charm. It is the part of the countryside that I like best. Now I am seeing it for the first time with the leaves on the trees. Generally I associate Rhinebeck with snow, ice and the coldest winds I have ever known.
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES
January 12th, 1960
The late fifties were fortunate years for me. I was riding on the crest of a high wave. Although working hard, even to the point of exhaustion, things seemed to go easily and I was pleased with my output and its quality. I suffered from strain and pressure but was never positively ill.
With the success of My Fair Lady and Gigi, my self-confidence enabled me to ignore small setbacks. However, at the end of last year, disappointments and reverses began to rain down on me.
The biggest disappointment was the failure of my Gainsborough play. Reeling with the shock of complete failure, frustrated, and in an excess of fatigue, I flew to New York where it was fortunate that I could straight away be embroiled with the visual side of the musical based on Edna Ferber’s Saratoga. New York, visited by me for the fourth time in one year, was hot beyond bearing, empty of friends.
Everyone working on Saratoga was confident this would be the biggest success since The Music Man. In spite of it being the brainchild of the same director, this was not to be. Saratoga, after five successful weeks in Philadelphia, was roasted by the New York critics. No success to chalk up here.
I returned to London to start immediately on Peter Hall’s production for Stratford of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. One afternoon, when working with Alan Tagg on the models, I went up to my bedroom to sleep for ten minutes. I slept till next morning. When the scheme Alan and I had completed was at first admired, then rejected, I went for a week’s rest and starvation at Enton Hall to give me the enthusiasm for a second attempt at discovering what was at the back of the very young and very busy director’s mind. Alan proved a resourceful and undaunted assistant. After another complete overhauling of ideas, the models were accepted.
A week later a letter from the director: ‘I have bad news.’ The fire curtain must be able to be lowered at any given moment during the evening. By the very nature of the production suggested by Peter Hall, this was impossible. Rather than ‘rethink’ the entire production once again, and in spite of the fact that I had completed the designs for thirty out of the forty costumes, I had to admit that unless they could come to some Fire Law solution with my existing plans, I would have to resign as I had no inspiration left to continue. Five weeks of work were completely wasted; but with the news that the musical Tenderloin for New York and the Comédie Française School for Scandal, for which I was to do sets and costumes, were both being postponed there was suddenly the chance to take a holiday.
BALENCIAGA
Paris: February
Often I am foolish enough to arrive in Paris without warning anyone of my visit, and sometimes for the first day or two I do not seem able to forge into the life of the city. (I dislike having a meal by myself in a restaurant and I am certainly not adventurous i
n touring the night spots alone.) However, on this occasion I had warned dear old Marie Louise Bousquet beforehand of my impending appearance. Awaiting me at the hotel was the typically generous note from this most loving of all friends, saying: ‘I am free — free — free. I await you at your convenience — at drink time — or for any dinner — all my lunches are free — free — free.’ Before I had time to unpack the telephone rang. It was Marie Louise saying that Cristobal Balenciaga would like us to dine.
Cristobal is a quiet, calm, even serene person; as soon as one arrives in his apartment one comes under his spell. There is no greater pleasure than being in his company.
When we arrived, he was sitting in front of the fire, dressed all in black as is his wont, absorbed in the details of Camus’s ‘unnecessary’ death in the evening paper. Obviously it gave him quite a shock to be brought back to the present, but by degrees he surfaced enough to tell us that Ramon would be with us soon. He fixed the dry martinis and we talked generalities.
His flat, decorated in dark greens and pale greys, was furnished in a bold style typical of him: heavy candlesticks, solid fire-irons, a huge lump of crystal on the low table, the very chaste appliqués, the two large bushes of azaleas, one white, one pink, in porphyry pots. It is a phenomenon that the son of an ordinary Spanish boatman, a poor boy with no opportunity to glimpse the grand world, should be born with such innate taste. Now his clothes influence the entire world of fashion, and he has a highly refined sense in all forms of art. This apartment was proof of his purity of vision. He admitted how much he enjoyed going out to antique shops and discovering finds: yet his rooms are so sparse and uncluttered that you know that everything has been chosen as the result of ruthless elimination and complete discrimination.
