M B returned from Argentina. He brought me some lemons, rotten ones what’s more, in a bag.
“How are you getting on with your Englishman?”
“I’m getting on … as men and women do.”
“That’s perfect. Continue.”
This simple bit of dialogue conveys badly what was an extremely complicated situation. Today everything is easy. Speed governs affairs of the heart, as it does everything else. But before the situation was resolved, there were tears and quarrels. Boy was English, he didn’t understand; everything became muddled. He was very moral. I distanced him from his friends, who loathed me. They lived with tarts. Boy hid me away; he wouldn’t allow me to go around with them. I asked him why.
“The girls are so pretty,” I said.
“Yes, but nothing else.”
“Why do they never come to the house?”
“Because … you’re not one of them, you’re not like anyone else. And then because, when we are married …”
‘Me, I’m not pretty …”
“Of course you’re not pretty, but I have nothing more beautiful than you.”
Our house was full of flowers, but beneath the luxurious surroundings Boy Capel maintained a strict outlook, in keeping with his moral character, which was that of the well-brought-up Englishman. In educating me, he did not spare me; he commented on my conduct: “You behaved badly … you lied … you were wrong.” He had that gently authoritative manner of men who know women well, and who love them implicitly.
One day, I said to Boy Capeclass="underline"
“I’m going to work. I want to make hats.”
“Fine. You’ll do very well. You’ll get though a lot of money, but that doesn’t matter, you need to keep busy, it’s an excellent idea. The most important thing is that you’re happy.”
The women I saw at the races wore enormous loaves on their heads, constructions made of feathers and improved with fruits and plumes; but worst of all, which appalled me, their hats did not fit on their heads. (I have mentioned that I wore mine pulled down over the ears.)
I rented rooms on the first floor of a building in the rue Cambon. I still have it. On the door, it read: ‘Chanel, modes’. Capel put an excellent woman at my disposal, Madame Aubert, whose real name was Mademoiselle de Saint-Pons. She advised me and guided me. In the grandstands, people began talking about my amazing, unusual hats, so neat and austere, which were somehow a foretaste of the iron age that was to come, but which had not yet dawned. Customers came, initially prompted by curiosity. One day I had a visit from one such woman, who admitted quite openly:
“I came … to have a look at you.”
I was the curious creature, the little woman whose straw boater fitted her head, and whose head fitted her shoulders.
The more people came to call on me, the more I hid away. This habit has always remained with me. I never appeared at shows. One had to make conversation, which terrified me. And I didn’t know how to sell; I’ve never known how to sell. When a customer insisted on seeing me, I went and hid in a cupboard.
“You go, Angèle.”
“But it’s you they want to see, Mademoiselle.”
I wanted the earth to swallow me up. I thought that everybody was very intelligent and that I was stupid.
“But where is this little woman I’ve heard so much about?” the customer persisted.
“Do come, Mademoiselle!” begged Angèle.
“I can’t. If they find the hat’s too expensive, I feel I might give it away.”
I had a premonition of this axiom, observed a thousand times since: “Every customer seen is a customer lost”. If somebody encountered me accidentally in the shop, then I spoke, I prattled away, out of shyness; escaping through chit-chat: how many windbags, mocked for their self-assurance, are simply quiet people who, deep down, are frightened of silence.
I was extremely naive. I didn’t begin to imagine that I was of interest to people; I didn’t realise that it was me they were looking at. I thought of myself merely as a country girl, like so many others. The age of extravagant dresses, those dresses worn by heroines that I had dreamt about, was past. I had never even had those convent uniforms, with capes, adorned with pale blue Holy Ghost, or Children of Mary, ribbons, which are a child’s pride and joy; I no longer thought about lace; I knew that extravagant things didn’t suit me. All I kept were my goat-skin coat and my simple outfits.
“Since you are so attached to them,” Capel said to me, “I’m going to get you to have the clothes you have always worn remade elegantly, by an English tailor.”
Everything to do with rue Cambon stemmed from there.
Boy Capel had given me the wherewithal to have fun; I had so much fun that I forgot about love. In reality, he wanted to give me all the joie de vivre that he would forego.
“Tell me who you’re sleeping with, it would amuse me greatly,” I would say to him. (I don’t know what word I used at the time, but not ‘sleep’. In 1913 people didn’t say that.)
He laughed:
“Do you think that makes my life easy? It complicates it. But then (and you don’t appear to have any doubt about it), you’re a woman.”
RUE CAMBON
IN THE AUVERGNE, throughout my childhood, my aunts had kept on telling me: “You won’t have any money … you’ll be very lucky if a farmer wants you”. Very young, I had realised that without money you are nothing, that with money you can do anything. Or else, you had to depend on a husband. Without money, I would be forced to sit on my behind and wait for a gentleman to come and find me. And if you don’t like him? The other girls resigned themselves, I didn’t. I suffered in my pride. It was hellish. And I would say to myself over and over: money is the key to freedom. These reflections are self-evident; what gives them substance is that I discovered their reality at the age of twelve.
To begin with, you long for money. Then you develop a liking for work. Work has a much stronger flavour than money. Ultimately, money is nothing more than the symbol of independence. In my case, it only interested me because it flattered my pride. It wasn’t a question of buying things, I’ve never wanted anything, just affection, and I had to buy my freedom and pay for it whatever the cost.
When I moved into the rue Cambon, I knew nothing about business matters, I didn’t know what a bank or a cheque was. I was ashamed that I knew so little about life, but Boy Capel wanted me to remain the unsophisticated, untainted creature that he had discovered. “Business is a matter for banks”, that was the only reply I was given. To enable me to start up, Capel had deposited securities as a guarantee with Lloyd’s Bank, where he was a partner.
One evening, he took me to dinner in Saint-Germain.
“I’m making a lot of money,” I told him immodestly, along the way. “Business is wonderful. It’s very easy, all I have to do is draw cheques.”
I had no idea at the time about what was meant by cost prices, accounting, etc. Rue Cambon was run chaotically.
All I bothered about was the shape of the hats, along with the childish pleasure of hearing myself called “Mademoiselle”.
“Yes. That’s very good. But you’re in debt to the bank,” my companion replied.
“What? In debt to the bank? But since I’m making money? If I weren’t making any, the bank wouldn’t give me any.”
Capel began to laugh, somewhat sarcastically.
“The bank gives you money because I have deposited securities as a guarantee.”
My heart started to thump.
“Do you mean to say that I haven’t earned the money I spend? That money is mine!”
“No. It belongs to the bank.”
I could feel the anger and despair rising. Once we had reached Saint-Germain, I carried on walking, walking straight ahead until I was exhausted.