The Unexpurgated Beaton by Cecil Beaton

Author:Cecil Beaton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307429520
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

1972

JANUARY 1972

“Sir” is a romantic title. It is much easier on the tongue than “Duke” or “Earl.” A Knight at best is something of literature and chivalry. Hugh Smiley wrote an excited delightful letter of praise but said “Sir Cecil was difficult for people with false teeth.” (I was reminded of an early joke: “Which switch, miss, is the switch for Ipswich?”) Many people describe the excitement of the scene of the variety club benefit when at midnight the news came through of the Honours and mine was the first to be read out, but more astonishing was the fact that Desmond Shawe-Taylor,459 hurrying to catch a train at Waterloo, had seen my name flashed in lights on the running news bulletin!

The Sunday Times sent a photographer down to Broadchalke and astonishingly the picture, an excellent one—in which, all the family agreed, I looked exactly like my mother—was on the front page. This resemblance to my mother is one that pleases me. As I became middle-aged my sisters were apt to remark how I was becoming so much like a Beaton, that on TV I had seemed to be an uncle “Barley.” I prefer to look like my mother in her old age— for she was noble and distinguished—and lately have felt that I was becoming like her in many other ways—that I sat listening to others with the same caustic amused look on the face—that I moved around the house and garden like her—which brings me to another observation—and that is that I did not realise until recently that the male Beatons are not in general a long-lived family—the Sissons make old bones—but not the healthy-looking “Barleys.”460 Perhaps this is as well—I don’t want—at this present stage—to endure the disadvantages—the slowing down and the tiresomeness of living to be 80. One never knows if at any given point one would say “this is enough,” but I would have thought another 10 years would have been more than enough for me.

The Knighting—this great dignity conferred—has made me feel that much older and I wish very much it had come earlier—for the reward for achievement would have felt so much greater. As it is I feel it has been given partly for endurance, partly because I couldn’t be left out much longer, and at this age I couldn’t be expected to get into serious trouble . . .

DINNER PARTY JANUARY 1972

Pauline R. [Rothschild] is a very remarkable eccentric woman. She is of a very rare and rarefied quality, with the strength of character, now backed by Philippe’s fortune, to lead just the sort of life she wishes. That this is due to her present circumstances alone is not true, for when she worked as a dress designer for a tough woman in New York (Hattie Carnegie461, she dictated her terms—no arrival before 12 o’clock—a vast salary—and she spent the evenings alone in bed reading poems and surrounded by camellia trees which the florist kept for her until they were in bloom.

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