The Restless Years (1955-63)

by Cecil Beaton

  However, it is part of Iris’s rare freshness that she is interested only in the moment and after a while Trilby is completely forgotten. In any case she would never put up with the delays, rewrites, slogging dog-work and lifeless repetition that such a revival would mean. Iris savours each second of life too much. The first inspiration is all.

  With the years Iris has altered little except that she has changed from a girl to a girl-hag. Her cobweb wrinkles, her sinewy neck, the rough texture of her skin, cannot be overlooked, but her silhouette is the same as when she was sixteen. The clothes are still those of the art student of 1914: huge sweaters, full skirts. Today she wore blue woollen stockings and the same yellow, page-boy bob of her début. People stare at her (she is convinced in admiration) as she goes out in her new, barbaric necklace kept in place with a safety-pin. She makes jokes about ‘at our age’ — a habit which started when she was still young. She had longed to go out and enjoy herself at every lighted candle but Maria Huxley had said: ‘At our age we mustn’t go out to parties any more.’ The joke continued, so now Friederich says to Iris about their proposed trip to America: ‘At our age we mustn’t go on a fast boat.’

  Diana leaving Chantilly

  Today Diana bought a house in Little Venice in London. It has been hard for her to decide to leave Chantilly after so long and with so many memories of Duff. Beautiful as her little St Firmin chateau is,[5] it is a witch of a place, luring her to further expenses and complications, needing more and more servants, more doing to the garden, and then, at best, giving the impression of being an impermanent folly.

  There are times when the house is not attractive, particularly in winter when visitors are not keen to come. Now that Diana is giving it up, the villa is looking its most beguiling; the weather is putting on its best show and the pale-green blossoming is at its height. But Diana has come to detest the French race, and she says she leaves few friends behind. It is better for her to live on a smaller scale in a city she loves, where she is surrounded by adoring, faithful friends, wonderful family, and many cultivated interests.

  I arrived at Chantilly for an evening alone with her; I knew that it would be stimulating, but, even so, I had forgotten just how remarkably integrated a character Diana is. She is un-snobbish. She is quick to recognise quality in its many surprising aspects. She has a lively interest in history. At dinner, at a small card table, she talked about Napoleon’s humiliation on St Helena as if it were Winston going through those appalling experiences. She was reading a life of Bonaparte and, although she does not approve of him as a character, she feels so sorry for him that she cannot sleep.

  Diana has strong feelings about the servants, about her garden, and, above all, about her grandchild Artemis, who was here in dressing-gown to greet me. Diana does not treat the seven-year-old as a child. She talks to ‘the light of my eye’ as an intelligent grown-up, and pumps her with all sorts of information. ‘Who was Medusa?’ ‘Never say bye-bye!’ ‘What is seventeen minus two?’ She talks to Artemis with complete frankness about everything — including nature in its more basic forms, and about the child’s looks: ‘You’ve got a podgy, smudgy face that’s good; it will improve with age.’ (Her own did!) ‘But you must realise your hair isn’t good, and you’ve got to do something about it. Mustn’t wear your hair scraggy!’

  Part VI: Artists with Paint, 1960

  SITTING TO FRANCIS BACON

  February 1960

  Bébé Bérard did a remarkably fine portrait of me and I think of it as my definitive likeness. It is as I would like always to be. Alas, twenty years have passed since then.

  It would be pointless to sit to the usual portrait-painter. But I did like the idea of Francis Bacon trying his hand at me. He had recently done an interesting ‘portrait’ of Sainsbury, the art collector. The sittings would doubtless be highly enjoyable for Francis is one of the most interesting, refreshing and utterly beguiling people. He is wise and effervescent and an inspired conversationalist.

  Francis Bacon has been a good friend for many years now. Graham Sutherland was the first person I heard talk of him, when we were having a discussion on ‘taste’. Graham surprised and intrigued me by saying that Francis Bacon’s studio nearby in South Kensington had a strong individuality. He described Bacon’s penchant for huge pieces of heavy mahogany furniture, and Turkish carpets, the antithesis of all that the painter had once created in the days when he was a designer and decorator of furniture. Graham went on: ‘He seems to have a very special sense of luxury. When you go to him for a meal, it is unlike anyone else’s. It is all very casual and vague; there is no time-table; but the food is wonderful. He produces an enormous slab of the best possible Gruyère cheese covered with dewdrops, and then a vast bunch of grapes appears.’

  When I met Francis we seemed to have an immediate rapport. I was overwhelmed by his tremendous charm and understanding. Smiling and painting simultaneously, he seemed to be having such a good time. He appeared extraordinarily healthy with cherubic, apple-shiny cheeks, and the protruding lips were lubricated with an unusual amount of saliva. His hair was bleached by sun and other aids. His figure was incredibly lithe for a person of his age and occupation, wonderfully muscular and solid. I was impressed with his ‘principal boy’ legs, tightly encased in black jeans with high boots. Not a pound of extra flesh anywhere.

  I don’t know much about his background, except it is said that at a very early age his father sent him off in the care of a rider to hounds who immediately attempted to seduce him.

  Of his many qualities I admired most his independence. I envied his being able to live in exactly the way he wished, and I was impressed by his aloofness from the opinions of others. We went out ‘on the town’, but I am not good at pubs, drinking clubs and late hours and would fade away just when Francis was about to enjoy himself.

  Recently he came to stay, and although I believe he does not care for the countryside, he could not have been a more sympathetic, appreciative and delightful guest.

  Francis began the painting of me two years ago. He had just returned from a winter in Tangier where he had been too harassed and ill to paint. But he was then recovered and full of the joy of London life. He was bursting with health and vitality, in his extraordinarily messy, modest drawing room studio in a most unlikely block of scarlet brick flats in Overstrand Mansions, Prince of Wales Drive, Battersea.

  He showed me an enormous black-paint-covered canvas, and said he hoped I wouldn’t be alarmed by the size of it but that the portrait would be cut down, if necessary, when he had finished it.

  Francis started to work with great zest, excitedly running backwards and forwards to the canvas with gazelle-springing leaps — much toe bouncing. He said how enthusiastic he was at the prospect of the portrait which he said would show me with my face in tones of pink and white. He did not seem interested in my keeping still, and so I enjoyed looking around me at the incredible mess of his studio — a converted bedroom no doubt: so unlike the beautiful, rather conventional ‘artist’s abode’ that he had worked in in South Kensington when I first knew him! Here the floor was littered in a Dostoevsky shambles of discarded paints, rags, newspapers and every sort of rubbish, while the walls and window curtains were covered with streaks of black and emerald green paint.

  Francis was funny in many ways, slightly wicked about pretentious friends, and his company gave me pleasure. The only anxiety I felt was that there might be some snag which would interrupt the sittings that were to follow. Sure enough, a telegram arrived putting me off the next appointment; indeed, for anyone less tenacious than myself, there would never have been another sitting.

  I went to America, came back, saw Francis once or twice, and he came to dinner, but no mention of the picture from me or from him. Eventually, an opportunity presented itself and I asked Francis if he’d hate to go on with the painting of me.

  Francis Bacon’s name has now become even more renowned. He is acclaimed by the younger generation which, it seems, conside
rs Picasso to be old-fashioned. Francis, bubbling with amusement, smiled and with his usual marvellous manners said nothing would give him greater pleasure than to finish the picture that he’d long had of me in his mind. An enormous black canvas, the only one with its face not turned to the wall, depicted a monster cripple — a nude figure, with no apparent head, but with four legs. It was painted with brushes that had been allowed to slide around in the manner children are taught not to employ. The forms were so gauche that when Francis pointed to the picture and said it was a failure, I was somewhat in agreement. But Francis explained that he wanted more than anything else to be able to do something of that same cripple who had inspired Muybridge, that great photographer at the end of the last century.

  Francis showed me a huge canvas covered with emerald green dye-paint. Again he said my picture wouldn’t be as large as that when finished, but that all the works for his next exhibition were going to be on these green backgrounds. I had imagined myself as a sort of Sainsbury floating in stygian gloom and wondered what an emerald green picture would look like in any of my existing rooms. I sat on a kitchen chair placed so, and according to instructions turned my head a bit this way. ‘No — further! That’s it.’ Francis started to work with energy, but he seemed to look harassed, not at all happy. I asked: ‘Would you prefer if I looked more this way?’ ‘No — it’s fine — and I think if it comes off, I’ll be able to do it quickly. The other didn’t start off well — but this is fine.’ Would I mind his exhibiting the canvas as the Marlborough were screaming at him for more pictures?

  Francis works without apparent difficulty and keeps up a running conversation that is illuminating and inspiring. I noticed, among the rubbish of old discarded suede shoes, jerseys, and tins on the floor, one or two very costly art books on Egypt and Crete. Francis tried to describe to me the beauty of two painted figures about three feet tall — a man and woman sitting side-by-side, in cream and white. He said how he longed to take a trip to Assuan later this winter to see the carvings before they are flooded. He thought Egyptian art among the most beautiful in the whole world: ‘Those early heads are amazing, but, of course, it’s because of the sun that they’re so beautiful.’

  He then laughed: ‘You mustn’t look at my mouth. I’m just recovering from having a tooth knocked out. My face was in an appalling mess.’

  Francis had spent the winter in Cornwall. But it hadn’t worked out as there had been such terrible quarrels and he got behind-hand with his work. It was the same in Tangier: such upsets! rows and getting thrown out of the window! He had done no work. Then a talk about Tangier — Francis’ Tangier, a close intimacy with the Arab world, with the brothel life, and the freedom that can be found only in certain Mediterranean countries where access to women is difficult.

  Occasionally Francis would sit down on an old chair from which the entrails were hanging and which had been temporarily covered with a few French magazines and newspapers. His pose reminded me of a portrait of Degas. He curved his head sideways and looked at his canvas with a beautiful expression in his eyes. His plump, marble-like hands were covered with blue-green paint. He said he thought that painting portraits was the most interesting thing he could ever hope to do: ‘If only I can do them! The important thing is to put a person down as he appears to your mind’s eye. The person must be there so that you can check up on reality — but not be led by it, not be its slave. To get the essence without being positive about the factual shapes — that’s the difficulty. It’s so difficult that it’s almost impossible! But that’s what I’m trying to do. I think I’m closer to it than I ever have been before.’

  With Francis the air is mountain fresh: one feels invigorated. I used to go to his studio before taking the train for Salisbury. As the weather was particularly cold, dark and foul, I would be dressed for the country in a very warm, brown suit. Francis was all radiance, even if he said he had been appallingly drunk on vodka the night before. He would expatiate on those evenings: though he didn’t really remember much about them, but he’d left an American who had ‘passed out’ before dinner, gone on to Soho, turned up at his usual ‘Club’ and didn’t know where the rest of the night had gone.

  One morning I asked Francis: ‘Does it matter my being in a different suit?’

  ‘No — that’s a lovely colour. But I want you to put your hands up on this extra chair like this. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter.’

  During the morning I purposely moved the position of my hands several times to see if Francis would ask me not to change their position. Once he said: ‘The hands are splendid like that.’ But never again did he ask me to go back to the same pose. Neither did he seem to mind if I moved my head. ‘But that’s what’s so awful about having to sit to Lucian,’ said Francis. ‘He makes you sit by the hour without moving an eyelash, and I find sitting very unnerving, exhausting work.’

  Francis had, during his drunken haze last night, caught a glimpse of Lucian Freud. Lucian had returned from Sweden where he had gone to paint Ingmar Bergman for a cover of Time, but there had been too many interruptions for Lucian to produce any result, and he now hated Time magazine, Bergman and Sweden. We then talked of Lucian’s latest painting — how he seemed, in an effort to paint quicker, to have lost some of his intensity. Lucian was intelligent enough to know that his painting up to now was not a complete expression of himself. He now found himself in the awful predicament of having to try and discover himself again. That, for someone of Lucian’s vanity, was a difficult thing to do.

  We discussed Lucian’s intellectual brilliance, his complete independence and strength as a man who knew exactly what he wanted out of life. But we admitted that Lucian was no angel. After a row, his wife Caroline had said: ‘If you want to know what Lucian is like, just see him drive.’ Mercifully, Lucian has now been forbidden to drive, for he is reckless at the wheel.

  I admitted I found it difficult to be loyal to Lucian all the time. I could not understand the mentality of gamblers, and it worried me that Lucien should lose so much so readily.

  Francis said the Bérard portrait of me was a great likeness. (In many ways the two painters resemble one another: both ignoring convention, and living in their own purity — uncontaminated by the asphyxiating cocoon of respectability.) He considered people didn’t appreciate Bérard nearly highly enough as a painter at this time. One day they would, since he was definitely one of the great. His use of paint was never thin in quality even if it was spread lightly over the canvas: maybe he had learnt that from Vuillard. How lovely some of the late Vuillards were! And painted with quite a lot of oil. At one time Vuillard and Bonnard were almost indistinguishable, but they went on in their separate ways getting better and better. From the piles of rubbish on the floor Francis extracted a colour reproduction of a Bonnard he had cut out of Paris Match and stuck onto a piece of cardboard. The colours were vivid: oranges, reds, red-browns, brilliant blues, enough colours for three pictures. ‘I don’t know what time of day it represents, or is it night?’ With outstretched arms, Francis enjoyed the picture to its fullest. ‘You see, people don’t appreciate paint today; that’s why nobody sees how absolutely marvellous Rembrandt is.’

  Suddenly, as he sat, head cocked looking at the picture, his eyes lit up as he said: ‘I’m very pleased with this portrait. I think it’s going to be all right: one of the best things I’ve done. Next time you’re here, I’ll show it to you because it doesn’t need much more work on it. When they go well, they go very quickly.’

  Francis opened the door, smiled and said: ‘The portrait’s finished! I want you to sit in that chair over there and look at it.’ I walked towards Francis’s degutted chair in the corner, not glancing at the canvas on the way. I turned round square and sat to get the full effect. It was as well that I was sitting, otherwise I might have fallen backwards. In front of me was an enormous, coloured strip-cartoon of a completely bald, dreadfully aged — nay senile — businessman. The face was hardly recognisable as a face for it was disintegrating be
fore your eyes, suffering from a severe case of elephantiasis: a swollen mass of raw meat and fatty tissues. The nose spread in many directions like a polyps but sagged finally over one cheek. The mouth looked like a painful boil about to burst. He wore a very sketchily dabbed-in suit of lavender blue. The hands were clasped and consisted of emerald green scratches that resembled claws. The dry painting of the body and hands was completely different from that of the wet, soggy head. The white background was thickly painted with a house painter’s brush. It was dragged round the outer surfaces without any intention of cleaning up the shapes. The head and shoulders were outlined in a streaky wet slime.

  Francis expected that I would be shocked. He was a little disconcerted. He said it gave him a certain pain to show it to me, but if I didn’t like it I needn’t buy it. The Marlborough Gallery would want it. I stammered: ‘Well — I can’t say what I think of it. It’s so utterly different from anything of yours I’ve ever seen!’ To me the picture was of an unusual violence. The brushwork, the textures, the draughtsmanship were against all the known rules. Francis suddenly exclaimed: ‘Oh, I unearthed these beautiful Egyptian figures for you to see. Look, here they are! How beautiful they are! They’re only three feet tall, but the way the faces are painted ...’ But what did that signify now to me?

  Francis could not have behaved more typically gallantly and charmingly about the fee d’amis for the painting. ‘Take the picture, and if you don’t like it, or your friends object, send it back in time for it to be sold in the Marlborough show.’

  I was baffled. Could I ever hang the canvas in any place that I live in? The harshness and ugliness would surely give me a ‘turn for the worse’ each time I saw it. But I’d gone to Francis for a painting because I genuinely considered him a unique painter. If this was what he felt like doing at this particular moment I must respect it, even if I could not understand or appreciate it. If the Marlborough Gallery would give him so much more for it than he had asked me, then perhaps it would be an investment. I asked him if he’d mind if after I bought it and found I didn’t want to keep it, I could sell it again? ‘Of course! It’s yours to do what you want with.’ I took a gulp and said I would like to have it.