M Arsène watches the bank notes flying around, the chips piling high, the counters crashing down. Within five minutes M Arsène won as much as his wages for one year. I go off to bed. M Arsène stays behind; he returns the next morning having won a great deal and lost it all. He returns to Paris. Two months later, there was a deficit in the accounts at rue Cambon. It was soon discovered that M Arsène had caught the train back and, on two separate occasions, had come to spend his Sundays in Monte Carlo.
Money adds to the decorative pleasures of life, but it’s not life.
It’s like jewels. Nothing looks more like artificial jewellery than a very beautiful gem. Why allow yourself to become obsessed with the beautiful stone? You might as well wear a cheque around your neck. A jewel is valued for its bright colours, for its mystique, for its ornamental value: all the values, except those that are reflected in carats. If the jewel is a symbol, an abstraction, then it’s the symbol of servility, of injustice or of old age; very beautiful jewellery makes me think of wrinkles, of the flaccid skin of rich old ladies, of knobbly fingers, of death, of wills, of lawyers, of undertakers. A very white earring on the lobe of a well-tanned ear delights me. One day, at the Lido, I saw a respectable, elderly American lady sitting beneath a parasol; all the young American women who were about to go swimming entrusted their jewellery to her; eventually she looked like one of our Holy Virgins in the Auvergne that are festooned with precious stones; the relics of St Mark’s paled beside her. “How much more beautiful these young women would be,” I thought, “if they dipped their pearls into the waves, into the sea from which they first came; and how brightly their jewellery would glitter if worn on a skin bronzed by the sun, that has lain on the sand!” That distraught stare of envy, those calculating gazes of women who admire the tiaras or bracelets of other women arriving at a party entrance me. I love to lend my jewellery, just as I would lend a scarf or a pair of stockings. I never tire of the pleasure women take in looking at themselves wearing my jewellery, and that sweet smile of gratitude tinged with a longing to kill me …
Expensive jewellery does not improve the woman who wears it any more than costly fabrics woven with precious materials do; if she looks plain, she will remain so. The point of jewellery is to pay respect to those for whom, and at whose homes, one wears it. I readily wear a lot of jewellery because, on me, it always looks artificial. The mania to want to dazzle disgusts me; jewellery is not meant to arouse envy; still less astonishment. It should remain an ornament and an amusement. Jewellery should be looked upon innocently, naively, rather as one enjoys the sight of an apple tree in blossom by the side of the road, as one speeds by in a motor car. This is how ordinary people perceive it; for them jewellery denotes social standing. A queen without a tiara is not a queen. In the spring of 1936, a revolution took place in Paris, and at my shop too, in the rue Cambon. I decided to go and talk to the rebels: “Mademoiselle should remove her jewellery!” Angèle said to me, very alarmed. “Go and fetch my pearls,” I replied, “I won’t go up to the workshops until I have them round my neck.” For I was determined to respect the women who worked for me.
SOCIAL WORK
I BEGAN WITH HALF A DOZEN WOMEN working for me. I have had as many as three thousand five hundred.
In 1936, like everywhere else, we had a sit-down strike. (Whoever dreamt it up was a genius.) It was cheerful and delightful. The accordion could be heard playing all over the house.
“What are your demands? Are you badly paid?”
“No.” (My staff are always better paid than anyone else’s, because I know what work is. Madame Lanvin even accused me of poaching her staff and wanted to take me to court.)
“What are you asking for?”
“We don’t see enough of Mademoiselle. Only the models see her.”
It was a strike for love, a strike of the yearning heart.
“I want to do something for you,” I then said to the staff. “I’m giving you my house.”
Grateful thanks from the CGT.10 Delegations from the trade unions. The new owners set off in search of funds, a working capital, promising to return soon; I’m still waiting for them.
At Mimizan, in the Landes, I organised a workers’ holiday camp. This experiment costs me millions, which I don’t regret. Buildings were constructed to house three or four hundred women. I paid for the travel expenses—second-class, so that they shouldn’t be offended—with one month’s paid holiday, instead of the legally entitled fortnight.
That lasted for three years. It was lovely, delightful and very jolly, for I didn’t want Mimizan to be like a prison.
After three years, the mayor asked me to close down, then he ordered me to do so. The motive: these lone women, he said, were taking away the region’s menfolk. The women from the Landes were not able to cope with the situation.
10 The Confédération générale du travail, the association of French trade unions. [Tr]
STRAVINSKY
IN 192– I CAME TO KNOW Stravinsky. He was then living at the home of Pleyel, the older one, in the rue Rochechouart. He was still not very cosmopolitan, and he was very Russian in his ways, with the look of a clerk in a Chekhov short story. A small moustache beneath a large rat-like nose. He was young and shy; he found me attractive. Among this circle, the only man I felt attracted to was Picasso, but he was not available. Stravinsky pursued me.
“You’re married, Igor,” I told him, “when Catherine, your wife, gets to know …”
And he, very Russian:
“She knows I love you. To whom else, if not to her, could I confide something so important?”
Without being jealous, Misia began to spread gossip. She had sensed that something was happening without her knowing:
“What are you doing? Where are you going? People tell me that Igor walks your dog, explain yourself!”
“I could give a concert at the Salle Gaveau,” Stravinsky divulged to me one day, “but I can’t afford a sufficient guarantee.”
I replied that I would look after it. Ansermet was summoned. Everything was arranged.
“Now,” I said to Stravinsky, “you have to speak to Misia about it. Off you go.”
Stravinsky goes to see her.
The following day, a Sunday morning, I am setting off to walk around Longchamp.
Misia: “I am overcome with sorrow. When I think that Stravinsky has accepted money from you!”
I had already been through the same “when I think …” in connection with Diaghilev, but in this case Misia feared a catastrophe on quite another scale: that Stravinsky might divorce in order to marry me. Sert became involved. He went and took Igor to one side.
“Môssieu, M Capel has entrusted Madmachelle to me; a man like you, Môssieu, is known as a sh—.”
And Misia came back to me, stirring up the drama:
“Stravinsky is in the room next door. He wants to know whether or not you will marry him. He is wringing his hands.”
Having said this, the Serts, while cultivating the emotional anguish he was suffering, made fun of Stravinsky. Up until the day when I said to Ansermet:
“It’s ridiculous, the Serts are mad. Everyone is talking about this business. Picasso is saying things. I want Igor to come back and for us to be friends.”
Stravinsky came back. He came back every day and taught me about music; the little I know about it, I owe to him. He talked to me about Wagner, about Beethoven, his bugbear, about Russia. One day eventually:
“The Ballets [Russes] are leaving for Spain,” Stravinsky said to me. “Come with us.”