The Parting Years [1963-74] by Cecil Beaton

Author:Cecil Beaton [Beaton, Cecil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912546428
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2018-07-04T04:00:00+00:00

London: Easter 1969

I arranged to take the recently widowed Sybil Cholmondeley to the premiere of the film Oh What a Lovely War.

There are few people who still manage to have the aura of pre-1914 luxury about them, but Sybil Cholmondeley is one of them. During winter, she is likely to wear a tuberose pinned by a pear-shaped diamond brooch to her dress. Tonight she provided a marvellous half-bottle of champagne and smoked-salmon sandwiches and, fresh from Norfolk, her keepers had sent three plovers’ eggs.

‘Now you must do what my brother Philip taught me to do with them. You must redistribute the yolk. Now, my hand is quite clean, open the palm flat, place the egg with the flat base in the centre — now be brave! Bring the other hand down on it very suddenly and hard — slap — like that — the egg suddenly becomes a poached egg, flat and with the yolk seen through a film of white jelly.’

I felt I had had a glimpse of another world — the world I had yearned for as a child.

Of the evening only the film was a disappointment.

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