“Come to dinner; we’ll talk about him …”
The theosophical angeclass="underline"
“My religion forbids me to mourn.”
Man has a certain ingenuousness, but woman has none; as for the angel, it’s capable of everything. The angel knows it cannot be killed because it is immortal; it knows it cannot be put in prison, because it has wings.
Society (with very rare exceptions, under Marie-Antionette or under the Empress Eugénie) took notice of invitations from the fashion houses, but none of the couturiers themselves. After the last war—I mention this because all Parisians know it—I was much sought after. Sought after, but not easily found, for I continued scarcely ever to go out in the evening; I could count on my fingers the number of grand dinner parties or receptions I attended. Ten years later, you could see many of my colleagues mixing in social circles. In another ten years there will be scarcely any couturiers’ salons: there will just be society couturiers, and we will hurry along to the Dior ball, to the Patou cocktail party.
Since I went out very little, I needed to be kept informed about what was going on in the houses where my dresses were displayed; so I began the practice, which was then unprecedented, of surrounding myself with people of quality to act as a liaison between myself and society, between the inside and the outer world. Englishwomen from high society, from the Russian, Italian and French aristocracy, came to work at rue Cambon. People said I was an anarchist and that I took an evil pleasure in humiliating people of standing, by placing them under my command. A great many foolish remarks have been made on this subject.
The Ballets Russes had jolted the world of dance; October 1917 had jolted the whole of Russia, and Paris became filled with émigrés. Bravely, they started to look for work, just as our own people did, in London and St Petersburg, after 1793. I employed some of them; I have always felt immensely sorry for princes of royal blood; their job, when they are able to carry it out, is the saddest there is, and when they are unable to carry it out, that’s worse. Furthermore, Russians fascinated me. Inside everyone from the Auvergne there is an Oriental one doesn’t realise is there: the Russians revealed the Orient to me.
It has been said that “every woman should have a Romanian in her life”. I would add: every Westerner should have succumbed to “Slavic charm” to know what it is. I was captivated. Their notion of “everything that is yours is mine” thrilled me. All Slavs are naturally refined, and the most humble ones are never common.
Feodorowna came to work at rue Cambon. One day, I discovered her in tears. She explained, in between sobs, that she owed a lot of money and that, in order to pay off her debt, she had to give herself to a monster, a horrible frizzy-haired, flabby-lipped oil tycoon; of the two dishonours she would choose the latter.
“How much do you need?”
“Thirty-thousand francs.”
“Thirty-thousand francs to sleep with someone is expensive,” I said; “but for not sleeping with him, it’s dirt cheap. Here you are, I’ll lend it to you.” (I used the word “lend” without any delusions; one does not lend to Russians. But giving brings bad luck; if small gifts maintain a friendship, expensive gifts compromise it.)
A few days later, Feodorowna invited me to her home. It was dusk, there were mauve lampshades on the parquet floor, a balalaika, caviar in a block of ice, vodka in carafes, Gypsies: in short, one of those island nights that Russians love to recreate everywhere. I was enchanted. The idea that my friend had escaped from the clutches of the Caucasian monster delighted me.
But with all this nocturnal glamour, I wondered whether my loan had covered the costs.
“Did you make use of the thirty-thousand francs?”
“What could I do … I felt so sad … I wanted to have a bit of fun first … I kept it … I bought this caviar with …”
I never saw the money again, but it was not long before I saw Feodorowna again in the company of the oil tycoon, whom she adored and whom she soon left for a far more monstrous Czech.
DIAGHILEV
MISIA NEVER LEFT Diaghilev’s side; between them it was one of those whispered, doting relationships, spiteful, affectionate, riddled with snares, in which Serge found his pleasures, his social contacts, his conveniences, his necessities, and in which Misia found the one remedy for her boredom. With Diaghilev she didn’t pout any more (Misia’s famous pout).
From the day I first met him, until the day I closed his eyelids, I have never seen Serge take a rest.
“I could have earned millions if I had put on Petrushka again, and lived off Schéhérazade as others did from Le Miracle or Die Fledermaus, but I prefer my pleasures.”
As he spoke he kept reassuring himself, with his heavily ringed hand, that his large black pearl was properly in place on his pearl-grey cravat. After the Ballets, he came to my home to have a quick supper, without removing that pelisse made from the pelts of Siberian animals and strapped with frogging in which Cocteau caricatured him so often; without taking off his white gloves, he took a chocolate. Then he succumbed, finished the box, his fat cheeks and his heavy chin wobbling as he munched, made himself ill, and stayed chatting all night.
An extraordinary prospector of the wells of European genius, a purveyor on a Balzac-like scale of dance, music and painting, which until then were unknown, a white-flecked intriguer offering the Orient to the West. In Spain he discovered Falla, and in St Petersburg a young student of Rimsky’s by the name of Stravinsky; in Arcueil, Satie.
He was the most delightful of friends. I loved his zest for life, his passions, his scruffiness, so different from the sumptuous figure of legend, the days spent without eating, the nights spent rehearsing, living in a theatre seat, destroying himself by putting his all into the show. He introduced the best painters to the best musicians, he taught the French public, those who out of snobbery were willing to make Arabian Nights journeys, that there were unknown enchanters at the corner of the street, Dukas, Schmitt, Ravel, Picasso, Derain. He shook Montparnasse out of its jabbering and opened up the debate to the public at large, made them interested in it and transformed it. Stubborn, generous, mean, then a spendthrift all of a sudden, never knowing beforehand what he was going to do, buying priceless paintings for nothing, giving them away, allowing them to be stolen from him, he travelled through Europe in the role of penniless patron, his trousers held up by a couple of safety pins. One evening, in Venice, between the two columns, he spoke to us about his childhood, about his friend Benois, about the St Petersburg School of Art, about his father, General Diaghilev, about his arrival in Paris, in that heroic period when he was exhibiting icons, or giving concerts of Russian historical music.
“Moussorgsky …” Misia would say (the pout reappears).
“Of course, not Prokofiev! You have to begin gently.”
I can see him with that air of a furry cat that enjoys its food, his thick lips opened wide in laughter, his drooping jowls, the glint of mockery in his eye beneath his monocle, with its black braid blowing in the wind.
Russia was moving forwards stealthily. 1910, classical and sophisticated. Le Spectre, Les Sylphides. And then Nijinsky comes and batters down our doors, like those of a harem. Pink and mauve posters suggestive of his leaps, signed by Cocteau, cover the walls of Paris. The earth trembles beneath the rhythm of the archers from Igor. One wondered what was being put in motion … Young lords lounged languidly in the aisles of the Châtelet, as did certain of our new Stendhals—Giradoux, who wore a monocle at the time, jealously guarding Monsieur de Balzac’s walking-stick, Emile Henriot and Vaudoyer, twin brothers disguised as knights of Orsay, Mauriac, his hands clasped together, wearing the blue uniform of the ambulance service created by Etienne de Beaumont, a young man from Bordeaux who was unable to sleep on account of the Parisian Cocteau’s successes, and for whom no honour would alleviate his provincial complexes—all were in raptures about the essential colours and about the harmonies of tones. As for Diaghilev, he got straight down to business. His business was to make Russia known subconsciously, to assert his Russian faith; with his handsome slaves, who hung on his success, following in his wake, he behaved like a Turkish despot.