The strenuous years 1948.., p.1
The Strenuous Years (1948-55), page 1
part #4 of Cecil Beaton's Diaries Series
THE STRENUOUS YEARS
1948-55
Cecil Beaton’s Diaries
Volume Four
Table of Contents
Foreword to the New Edition
Part I: London and Broadchalke, 1948-9
Part II: Holidays and Visits, 1949
Part III: Here and There, 1950-1
Part IV: Wiltshire Friends and Gardens, 1951
Part V: Both Sides of the Atlantic, 1952
Part VI: Coronation Year, 1953
Part VII: A Trip for a Lecture Tour, 1954
Part VIII: On Home Ground, 1954-5
THE RESTLESS YEARS: 1955-63
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 James Pope-Hennessy wrote of Cecil’s ‘thirst for self-revelation’, adding that the unpublished volumes were surely ‘the chronicle of our age’.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: London and Broadchalke, 1948-9
INDECISIONS ON RETURN TO ENGLAND
April, 1948
For most of us — if we are fortunate — each day seems to help us, even a little, along the road we have chosen to take. Often the ‘going’ is pleasant, and so beguiled are we by the interest on the wayside that we hardly notice that we are travelling. Only at certain junctures are we faced with decisions and have to take stock of our situation. Have we come along the path we intended? And if so, do we go straight on? Or do we now decide to alter course?
On arrival back in England, after so long and momentous a stay in America, I felt that I had come to such a juncture. In what direction should I now go? For some considerable time after my return I felt in a bit of a quandary. What was my aim? What did I really want to do? Was it worthwhile continuing with all the doings that had occupied me for so long? Some decision must be made. But, as often happens, I made no decision. Force of habit resulted in my continuing along the same road.
At first progress was slow. There seemed to be less than the usual variety of distractions — certainly less excitement. But, after a quiet beginning, I came to accept a certain loneliness, to make the best of it, and to rely more upon my old, familiar friends. They did not appear hurt or resentful that I had ignored them, or paid less attention to them than before: they were glad that I should pick up and mend the threads that had been temporarily broken. After being away for such a while, I found that they reappeared with a delightful freshness; I had forgotten that they were so bright, understanding and wise. They gave one a sense of stability merely by the fact that one felt one had their backing. I enjoyed even more than I remembered their wit and their art of conversation. They seemed more brilliant at argument, courageously holding unpopular views, filling the air with conflicting opinions without losing their tempers. In the worlds of art and entertainment so much was being created. There were many exciting things happening around me. London life seemed extraordinarily invigorating.
And then I rediscovered the joys of the English countryside. It was particularly wonderful now that I had a new house to cherish and a garden to develop. Already there were signs of the beginnings of spring: a line of snowdrops flanked the wall each side of the front door at Reddish, and soon other parts of the garden were beginning to respond to the reorganization already started. The apple trees were forming new growth, and the Victorian rosebeds disappeared almost without trace from the lawn. Inside the house, which I was growing to love, there was a lot to be done. The Charles II wallpapers were just as suitable as I had hoped for the library and my bedroom. Of furniture I had only the minimum, but excellent things could be found if one went often enough to Mr Percy Bates’s and other Salisbury antique shops.
For almost two years I have been free-wheeling along quite pleasantly without thinking much about making any money or giving thought to my career. Now I really must consider what most it is that I want to do. The war had given me an incentive to step out towards new photographic horizons, and to point my camera at more rugged aspects of life; but that incentive was now removed. Yet I did not want to go back to my old vomit. Enough of taking fashions on young models who survived just as long as their faces showed no sign of character, or of elderly, but rich harpies appearing as if butter would not melt in their terrible mouths. But I would not give up photography: it was an important part of my life. Perhaps I could be strong enough to turn down photographic offers that were no longer a challenge, and concentrate on people and subjects of real interest to me. I must also allow myself time to start painting seriously. Perhaps I would have more confidence if I took a course at some art college; I would see if this could be arranged. And there was always, at the back of my mind, the biting desire to write a play. Already I had three or four comedies relegated to the chest of drawers in my bedroom at Reddish; each represented much concentrated work, application and endeavour, besides months of expensive retyping. I knew they were not stage-worthy; they were merely repositories of hopes unfulfilled. However, I had long since an idea of writing a play about Gainsborough, an artist with whom I had a close rapport, and whom I felt was, in his dislike of pretentiousness and in other ways, not unlike my father. That would be of great help in developing the character. Perhaps this present lull provided the opportunity to start writing it.
But before the memories were any the less acute, I must write about my fifteen happy years at Ashcombe — that house in the downs so little distance from my new home, but which I could never visit again. Soon all other activities became secondary. Even the diary entries were spasmodic: when writing on some specific subject, my journal jottings, which I enjoy, go by the board. With Ashcombe[1] at the printers, normal existence began. Several tempting jobs were offered. Would I care to decorate a theatre? The Duke of York’s was in a sorry state of disrepair, and despite post-war conditions Marianne Davis, the delightful, sporting young owner, considered it could be made to look pretty again. It could.
Would I design The Second Mrs Tanqueray for the Haymarket? I had never quite recovered from the beauty of Gladys Cooper whom I had seen when the Victorian play was revived in the twenties. At a time when fluffy bobbed hair was fashionable, she had parted hers in the centre and scraped it back into a large, pale honey-coloured, silken bun. Her white marble face with the noble forehead and deep-set blue eyes of a deer were of a haunting loveliness. She had worn a fashionable Molyneux dress, shapeless as a sack but as heavily encrusted with jewels as a Byzantine empress. It was as this demi-mondaine out of her social depths, a part that had previously belonged to Mrs Patrick Campbell, that Gladys was first considered seriously as a fine actress; the trace of a slight cockney accent gave added poignancy to her performance. Another good actress, Eileen Herlie, who had created a furore in Cocteau’s Eagle with Two Heads, was now to be the wanton Paula.
It is a fallacy to pretend that most people look better on the stage than off. The overhead lights add ten years to create havoc with all but the most bun-like of faces. My only difficulty with the delightful Eileen Herlie was to make her as beautiful on the lit stage as she was under the one harsh ‘working light’ of rehearsals. Eventually we discovered that her classical features were seen at their best when — like Duse — she appeared without any make-up. It was agreed that the costumes and scenery should be done in the styles of the original, though for the second act drawing-room I went for my source to t
Other designing jobs kept me in London. Now that Sadlers Wells Ballet, with Margot Fonteyn, had become so grand and successful in its new quarters at Covent Garden, it was natural that they should revive their early success Apparitions, Freddie Ashton’s romantic Liszt ballet, which had originally been produced on one of Dame Lilian Bayliss’s thinnest shoestrings. (The fifty pound fee I received for designing the work went back into the kitty to pay for the costumes.) But to accommodate the giant stage the sets now had to be enlarged and reproportioned. Since most of the original costumes were worn to rags they, too, had to be redesigned in a bolder conception. Having previously had the unique talent of the Russian Karinska, who had made from my original sketches confections of lightness and delicacy, it was now like being at the mercy of a plain, but wholesome English cook to have, in the wardrobe of Covent Garden, Miss Crammer’s heavy hand on the spun-sugared dresses of the ball scenes. Somehow this most exquisite of Freddie’s ballets lost much of the haunting quality that made it unique on the smaller stage.
Soon my secretary, Maud Nelson, was busy putting down too many dates in the appointments book. They consisted of sittings to photograph brides, theatre people, and even members of the Royal Family. I did advertising photographs for America, often using my new house and garden as background. Although sometimes the arrangements were almost as elaborate as if for a theatrical production, and might necessitate several visits to Paris fashion houses, I made a small fortune photographing for my good friends at Johnson & Johnson.
But, most important of my projects, was the jotting down on paper of the ideas, going around restlessly in my head that, in turn, revolved about the character of Gainsborough. The more I read about the painter the more I loved him, and the jigsaw pieces of his lifetime seemed to create a picture that seemed, at least to me, to make a play. I went to Broadchalke to work, and soon became absorbed. Maud Nelson, between bouts of asthma, would call me from London only if there was urgent need to distract me from my intended masterpiece.
Most writers discipline themselves to working certain hours, then knock off for relaxation until the morrow. Charles Morgan writes for a limited time each day, after which he goes out to cut wood; Willie Maugham has a stopwatch by his side and, on completion of the day’s quota, goes to the terrace and prepares for the elaborate ritual of the dry martini. When I am deep into my subject it is only when overcome by the extremity of fatigue, resulting in eye-strain and headache, that I am able, of my own free will, to call it quits. Of course to work all day, then late into the night as well, is a short-term policy; but perhaps it is the fear of never being able to put down my thoughts on paper which causes me to flog myself beyond endurance. Perhaps, also, it is the terror of the blank page that makes me scribble something, no matter of how little interest it may later prove to be. Sometimes, when painting, my high hopes are suddenly dashed by the ruin in front of me of what I had thought would be a tower of achievement. It is then that the disappointment and frustration are almost beyond endurance; I have lain on my bed in the acutest agony, every bone aching as if run over by a tank.
Mercifully one does not suffer in this way when writing. If one sees later that one was tired and uninspired and the work rotten, at least a word or two can be salvaged from the mess and one has some sort of foundation on which to continue. There are playwrights who can spend a whole morning inventing an exit line. Amateur that I am, I barge ahead ruthlessly, hoping to get the general shape of a scene and that, perhaps many moons later, the dialogue will receive the necessary buffing. Maybe this is an extravagant and wasteful way of working. Certainly the bulk of typescript keeps the dustman busy.
In order to keep myself green in the memory of Greta Garbo in New York I wrote to her two or three times a week. I loved writing to her, for it brought her closer to me. It was a pleasant surprise — since she had often told me that she did not know how to write, and hated sending letters to anyone — to see envelopes written in pencil in her strong block-lettering arriving quite frequently. They were delightful — addressed to ‘Beat’, ‘Master Beatie’ or ‘Beatie boy’. She had put up her Californian house for sale, but suddenly got ‘panicki’ and could call it off again. She might be able to come to Europe again this late summer, if it were the will of Allah, or whoever knows the ways of the Lord in heaven. Once she wrote that she had gone to the trouble of flying to an island to get rid of a three-months-old cold. After a day or two she had left; it was too windy.
Sometimes the letters were funny, sad or morbid. All alone in the wilderness, running around on the hard asphalt in the filthy air of Manhattan, she was ‘out of order’, but continued fighting it out with her perturbed soul. She felt that she had messed up her life. She trusted that, with the will of the Lord, we might meet soon; but added that, as time flies so fast, ‘soon’ is practically ‘now’.
BROADCHALKE NEIGHBOURS
Since I have come to live in the Chalke valley, some unexpected delights have almost compensated for the pain of being uprooted from Ashcombe. No doubt but this Broadchalke landscape is less wild and romantic than the wooded valleys and downland nearer the Dorset border, and there is not the variety of walks that I used to enjoy. But it is pleasant to feel one is part of a rustic community. At Ashcombe the nearest villages of Tollard Royal and Ludwell were too distant to drop in on, and I knew few of their inhabitants who seemed to me, in my ignorance, to be unwelcoming, even unfriendly; an inter-marrying, straggling little population without newspapers or radios, they were quite remote from the world outside.
My new house is only eight miles away from Ashcombe, so I am still fortunate in having such interesting neighbours as the David Cecils at Cranborne, Raymond Mortimer, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, and Eddie Sackville-West at Crichel, and I am even nearer to dear Juliet Duff and other close friends at Wilton. But, on arrival at Broadchalke, I discovered that village life along the River Ebble is friendly and welcoming, and that much of it passes in a pageant along the small street below my bedroom windows.
The ‘lord of the manor’, taking his front-row pew in the church, is picturesque Dr Burroughs, long since retired from his London practice in Hertford Street, who occupies what is known as the King’s Old Rectory. Not that it ever was a vicarage; from the year 950 it was a farm belonging to the Rectors, later to become the property of the Abbess of Wilton before she swapped the Wilton estate for King’s College, Cambridge, to whom most of us in Broadchalke still pay our dues. The grey stone archway to the rambling house is the village’s chief landmark, and there is an Italianate water garden with cypresses and rare species of primulas, fritillaries, and plants brought from all quarters of the world. This was created originally by Maurice Hewlett, whose mock medieval novel, The Forest Lovers, earned him a fortune before the 1914 war. But — and let this be a warning to me — Hewlett overspent on his ever-expanding garden schemes, and had to retire to a nearby cottage. Henry Burroughs is a little, rosy crab-apple of a man, with brilliant turquoise eyes that sparkle with amusement — even when he was suffering from having fallen from an apple loft.
That strange apparition, bicycling along at great speed with a stream of fluttering drapery behind her, is Sister Agnes and she enjoys her sobriquet ‘the lady in grey’. The widow of a clergyman in Dar-es-Salaam, she arrived from New Zealand to dig herself deep into the viewless and damp ‘Walnut Cottage’ below the village street. She is too strange and unreliable to be popular, and her neighbours say she is not entitled to wear the Franciscan nun’s habit; but the fact that her life is shrouded in mystery gives her added interest. She has tiny beads for eyes, white wayward strands of hair, and a long, magenta nose as pointed, if not barbed, as her conversation. She does not mince her words in her hatred of the vicar. But the love of her life for many years has been a cat named Happy. Often pet animals take on the character of their owners, and perhaps because its mistress takes so little pride in her own appearance, Happy allowed her long Persian fur to become matted, lustreless and smelly. When Happy died and guinea pigs took her place, the stench at Sister Agnes’s made a visit an ordeal rather than an entertainment.
