D.V. (5 page)

When I arrived at St. Thomas's Church, my father met me and said, “Not too many people have come, so you will find the church rather…sparse.”

It wasn't sparse—it was practically empty. Not one invitation to the wedding had been delivered, I was told. They had all been thrown out by mistake. Or perhaps it was because of the scandal that the newspapers had so conveniently not announced it.

To this day, because of this, I don't believe in the free press. The only newspaper I've ever really approved of was
The Times
of London when they had canaries for sale on the front page.

But this made as much difference to me then as it does to you right now. I just wanted to marry Reed Vreeland. Nothing could have spoiled my happiness. I was so proud. You see, I was very young—in every way—and I was marrying an
older
man. He was twenty-five years old, but to me he was an older man, and marrying him was an achievement.

He had fantastic glamour for me. And he always retained it. Isn't it curious that even after more than forty years of marriage, I was always
slightly
shy of him? I can remember his coming home in the evening—the way the door would close and the sound of his step…. If I was in my bath or in my bedroom making up, I can remember always pulling myself up, thinking, “I must be at my very best.” There was never a time when I didn't have that reaction
—ever
.

The beauty of him was that he looked the same when he died as he had when I married him. His whole stance, his whole allure, his
chemistry…
was that of a young man. He was never withered. He never struck age
—ever
.

This is why I can't stand old people. It never occurs to me to be attracted to anyone older, because I've never loved anyone older—except my older man.

Of course, you learn everything from older people. After we were married, Reed and I moved to Albany, where he was training as a banker, and there everyone was older than us. The queen of the
town was Lulu Van Rensselaer, who was married to Louis Van Rensselaer, one of the great fascinators of all time. Reed and I were like the little children down the garden path, and we'd be asked to dinner in their great house on the hill on State Street, designed by Stanford White.

One night we went to a dinner at Lulu Van Rensselaer's at which there were two very famous Harvard professors. At the table the talk swung around to Shakespeare. Finally, one of the professors asked, “May I inquire, Mrs. Van Rensselaer, why you insist on pronouncing Cleopatra ‘Cle
op
tra'? It should be ‘Cleo
pa
tra,' of course.” Mrs. Van Rensselaer drew herself up and announced, “I refer to her as Cleo
p
tra because that is correct.” That would seem to have been the end of any argument, but she went on to say, “However, since you are obviously not convinced, I shall write to my old friend President Lowell of Harvard, and he will, of course, give the final word. Two weeks from today—which will give me time to write to the president, and him time to respond—we will all dine here again, exactly the same people at this table. And I will then read you Dr. Lowell's response.”

So we all dined two weeks thence. Lulu was in full form, full regalia, sailing like the Armada into the room to receive us. When we got to the dining table, she reached down and took out of her bosom—which could have held
anything
, it was so huge—the letter from the president of Harvard, which she proceeded to read to us.

“‘My dearest Louisa, you are quite correct in believing that Cleopatra's proper pronunciation is “Cle
op
tra.” How interesting to hear from you. I send you my very best regards, blah, blah, blah…'”—and with that she folded the letter and put it back into the vast cleavage of her bosom. Naturally, we never saw the letter, and certainly no one was going in there to look for it. She could have made the whole thing up. She was quite intimidating, and certainly no protest was forthcoming from the Harvard professors, who were shy and rather sheepish—and if Cleopatra had come up again in the conversation, it wouldn't have surprised me at all if
both
of them had begun referring to her as Cle
op
tra!

Our
house was in a little mews that belonged to Mrs. Van Rensselaer back of her State Street mansion. Every door in the mews was painted a different color. Ours was red, and we had blue hydrangeas in sweet little window boxes in front. In those days Albany was a pretty Dutch town—great style! As clean as a Dutch kitchen, and not the vulgar political city it's become. I loved it—this environment of good food, good housekeeping, polished floors, polished brass, servants…. My first son, Timmy, was born there, and I was very, very domestic.

Don't think I was always the person you see now. Don't think I was the same person before I started working. I was born lazy. During this phase when I lived in Albany I'd walk around in a mackintosh and a
béret basque
with
very
extreme, very exaggerated makeup—I've always had a strong Kabuki streak. I'd be criticized, but Lulu Van Rensselaer adored it. I loved our life there. I was totally happy. I didn't care what any other place was like. I'd still be there now if Reed hadn't wanted to move to London. I only moved where he wanted to go.

I had nothing to do—but
nothing
.

I never had an idea.

I was like a Japanese wife. When I got to Japan, I realized that someday there's going to be a terrific female revolution there, because for the moment all the women do is housekeep. But a Japanese house, like my little mews house in Albany, can be cleaned in five minutes, so there's very little housekeeping to be done. Of course, there's the arrangement of flowers and so on, but the wife has nothing to do after her husband leaves the house in the morning. He works all day, and then he goes to a geisha house, which is rather like going to a club. He talks business with his cronies while the girls fan him. They have no eyes, they have no ears, they know nothing, see nothing…that's a geisha. It isn't sex, you know—it's an entirely different thing. But when the men get home, their days are complete, and the wives have had nothing to do—but
nothing
.

In Kyoto, I was the guest of the chamber of commerce, so I dined with the men every night. It was always in an inn, and we
were always seated on the straw matting of the floor, which happens to be very easy for me. The geishas come in and bow to all the men; then they move like butterflies around the room and take their positions on their knees. There's nothing quick about the way they move—it's all very
quiet
. They laugh and they talk and you don't feel out of it not knowing what they're saying because, whatever it is, it's all full of charm—their voices, their faces.

Then…as soon as dinner was over, they'd leave the men and circle around me. I'd ask them about their makeup—this is all through an interpreter, of course—because I was so
interested
in how their skin looked after they took off all this heavy stuff which had been on their faces all day. I asked what makeup they used, where they got it—most of it turned out to be Revlon, to tell you the truth. But the point is that they were so charming and so amusing—to
me
, not just to the men.

“Why are these girls so charming to me?” I asked one of the men.

“Because,” he said, “the first rule that a geisha is taught, at the age of nine, is to be charming to other women.”

I thought this was something we could learn in the West. Every girl in the world should have geisha training.

I know what I'm talking about. I
know
. My God, when I moved to London after Albany, I made great friends among the English during the time I lived there. Those Englishwomen look after Englishmen like nobody's
baby
has ever been looked after, but on the other hand they'll go after anyone's husband themselves. Brother, what I saw
left
and
right
! I certainly had a more attractive husband than most women have. He wasn't that flirtatious, but
they
were, and naturally it was flattering to me…up to a
point
.

The point is that Englishwomen are ruthless, whereas geishas aren't ruthless at all. They're totally safe within themselves—which is rather unusual,
mmm
?

But those Japanese wives…You've read back through the centuries in
The Tale of Genji
and in
The Pillow Book—
you'll remember that the women lived in beautiful compounds with lattice
work porches like those in Heian paintings where the women's hair is threaded through the bamboo lattice and comes out in another part of the country. But they were pretty idle. They had servants to look after their clothes and their wigs and their makeup, to grind the white powder that they put on their faces—the whole bit. Everything was done for them.

You can't compare the Japanese with anyone else. They're always being compared with the Chinese, who, as you know, were the greatest philosophers, astronomers, astrologers, chemists, the greatest—they go
all the way
! They invented ice cream, fireworks, spaghetti, macaroni, noodles, pug dogs, Pekinese, chows—everything. But all those things are something we totally understand. Something Japanese like hara-kiri, on the other hand, we find impossible to understand. Yet it's as normal to the Japanese as smoking a cigarette.

The whole Japanese thing is so
total
! Think of the sumo wrestlers. While I was there a party was held for me in a large Westernized house outside Kyoto. The high point of the evening was the opening of a huge red brocaded box as tall as you are. I couldn't
imagine
what was inside. I was led forward and asked to open up the paneled door. Oh, brother! Out stepped two sumo wrestlers! They were in full regalia, which is very little, especially in the back. The two were totally glorious. But if looks could kill! They didn't enjoy being on exhibition. I was
so
on their side. I felt very sorry for the boys…I mean, how could they stand
being
exhibited in such a way? They're very proud, those sumo wrestlers, extraordinary heritage and history, national
treasures
, and here they were cooped up in a large box, the two of them waiting
God
knows how long in the darkness, waiting for me to open the box so they could step out—big surprise! Well, it
was
a surprise. After all, I'm a Westerner, and a heathen in their eyes, and it was all done for my pleasure to be able to discover these two sumos in a box, like a pair of shoes. They were far from a pair of shoes let me
tell
you. I pretended it was an everyday affair. I put on the biggest smile—as if isn't it interesting to meet someone
new
? I stepped forward and shook hands with each of them. I certainly didn't treat them as if they were stuffed. I mean they may have been miffed, but
they were alive. I wanted to hear all about their diets, because they have
such
skin—apricot porcelain, and from the age of nine they eat the same meal, bowl after bowl of the purest ingredients of health. Three times a day.

And then think of the Kabuki Theatre—the extremeness of
that
tradition, so utterly different. Actually, it's only the
instincts
of acting, only the smallest nuances. But it must have great power, because it's been the same since the eighth century.

When I was in Japan, I saw the new star of the Kabuki theatre—a boy who must have been only twenty years old—do a dance in shadow and light that was absolutely extraordinary. I know the routine because I've always been crazy about Kabuki. But when I saw this boy, Tomasaburo Bando, it was as if I'd never seen it before—the coming forward, the going back, the coming forward, the going back, the coming forward, the going back, bringing people forward, pushing people back, bringing people forward, pushing people back…and
then
, suddenly, with a twist of the wrist, he flicked open a fan. I was stunned with delight.

He made it look easy, but it isn't easy at all. It takes terrific muscular control—an extraordinary combination of tension and relaxation—and terrific strength.

This is a
woman
he's playing, you understand—as you know, all the actors are men. But the
delicacy
of this boy…it was all in the eyelid, which was more delicate than the first flower of spring. I promise you, if I had a daughter I would send her to him to learn how to become a woman.

We left Albany for London just before the Crash in 1929. We moved into the lovely house in Hanover Terrace. If you live just outside of Europe, as we did, you always find yourself on the move—the glories of the Continent are right at hand.

Have you ever taken one of my little audio guides at the Museum? None of my friends have. My friends never see my shows. “Oh, Diana, it's simply wonderful…marvelous.” End of conversation. To me, the audio guides are important, because what's the point of going through the show unless you learn something? So you pay your money and you hear me talk. They're really not bad. But the other day I put one on and started listening to myself and I kept going on about Tunisia.
Tunisia—
it was so absurd! Why was I saying this? Why couldn't I shut up? I suppose it's because when Reed and I went to live in Europe we often seemed to be going into a French colony.

We rarely went to the south of France. We never went to the chic
villes d'eau
. You could sit down with other people my age and they could tell you about Deauville, they could tell you about Monte Carlo, they could tell you about…dining with the King of Spain! We never did any of these things. We'd go to North Africa.
Or we'd go to Bavaria or to Hungary. We only went where the air was fragrant and life was easy. We traveled rather luxuriously in our glorious Bugatti with our marvelous chauffeur and my maid from London, and there was never any problem.

Of course, there were things we missed. We never went to Spain when Alfonso XIII was King. God knows, we were asked. Years later, Spanish friends used to say to me, “Diana, you always miss the boat. You should have been here when Alfonso was King. Then you would have seen
Spain
.”

Alfonso—that gorgeous, glorious, marvelous Bourbon! I met him—once—in London, before he went into exile. He was the most exciting man I'd ever seen. There was no one like the King of Spain. You know that he was the only man ever
born
King of Spain—he was born
after
his father's death. The King of Spain was…well, the King of Spain…this shiny, magnificent man. He had the Spanish Bourbon nose, and that mouth which was set
up
and
out
. His mustache was marvelous, his hair was rich and black, he was a bit dark, he loved dogs, horses, men, women…. You'd never think anything in the world could go wrong for him. But then think of what his last years were like. Do you realize that nobody would walk on the same side of the street with him in Rome? It was supposed to be bad luck. The evil eye.

Alfonso married Victoria Eugenia—“Ena” of Battenberg, this marvelous, totally chic granddaughter of Queen Victoria and god-daughter of the Empress Eugénie. She introduced hemophilia into the family, and each of their sons—except one—was born with some terrible physical defect. They were deaf, they were dumb, they had club feet—they had everything.

And Alfonso had to go when the monarchy went and the Civil War began. He was thrown out of the country like an old boot. He left by battleship the way Edward VIII left England when he abdicated.

One day Reed and I were motoring through the south of France to Marseilles. We arrived at the Hôtel de Noailles, where we were going to spend the night. The next morning we were going to
take a boat to Sidi Bou Saïd in Tunisia. That night, we'd arranged to go on a tour of the red-light district of Marseilles with the prefect of police. It was a very interesting evening we were going to have.

After we settled ourselves in our room, Reed went downstairs to see about our evening's prowl, and I sort of dozed off. I felt that the hotel was abuzz with something, but I was really too sleepy to think about anything. Reed rang up from downstairs. “Please,” he said, “don't, under any circumstances, come down until I've come up.”

As we were going downstairs together, he said, “Here's what I have to tell you: the King of Spain arrived this morning by battleship, and he's here with—”

No sooner had he said it than I
saw
it. The entire court of Spain had arrived. The whole palace had been kicked out of Spain, and here they were in the Hôtel de Noailles. In the ballroom we saw the little Infantes and Infantas on stretchers…in braces, in wheelchairs, most of them in some way disabled. There were older children; old servant women carrying baskets, wandering aimlessly through the lobby…there was everybody there who is in any royal family. It was like cleaning out an attic. They all had rooms; everything had been arranged. They weren't like refugees, yet they lived the rest of their lives as refugees.

So we left the royal family, moving through that extraordinary scene, and off we went on our evening's prowl…into a world so utterly different.

We were now five—Reed and I, Kitty and Perry Brownlow, who were going to Tunisia with us, and the prefect of police.

“I do want you to know,” the prefect said, “that the British consul disappeared five weeks ago while doing rather the same thing that you're about to do, prowling through the red-light district of our city—and he hasn't been heard from since. Are you still prepared to go?”

Listen, can a duck swim? What the hell did we care?

“Yes,” I said.

So we made our first stop. We went through this very dark alley, and against the walls were these Pepe le Mokos. The only thing
you'd see was the ends of their cigarettes—their bodies were against the wall in shadows. From the alley we passed into these inner, secret squares within squares of
such
a magnificence,
such
a scale,
such
a proportion—they must have been early Renaissance—but all in darkness.

Then, in the innermost square, we saw, floodlit, a palace façade with stone pediments and balustrades carved with pyramids and the most beautiful, enormous door you ever saw. Do we go in that door? Forget it—this is a tale of
vice
! We went in the lowliest little doorway at the side, where we were met by the madam, who was quite padded out and had a mustache about the size of Adolphe Menjou's.

“
Bonsoir, bonsoir
!” she said in this terrific accent, the Marseillaise, which is very hard to understand, even with something as simple as “
bonsoir
.” She went on: “You're here to see the movies, you're here to see the action, you're here to see the girls—what?”

“Everything!” the prefect said.

This brothel was called the Edward VII. Every good brothel in Europe was called the Edward VII. He liked them very much and sort of christened them as he went along. Apparently, this was his favorite, or so we were told—how do I know if there's any truth to it? I'm only telling you what we
saw
. We saw silver rooms, we saw gold rooms, we saw rooms of mirrors…and then we went into an enormous red-and-gold Edward VII ballroom with little gold chairs all around and a band tuning up, led by this little hunchback.

Then the girls came in and took their seats. It didn't look like much of an evening for them—three guys and two girls had arrived, so where were they to fit in? But the prefect was marvelous, talking to this obscene woman with the Adolphe Menjou mustache—this buxom, army-captain sort of a woman.

Then…
the band strikes up. The bandleader, we were told—this little hunchback at the piano—was the leader of the orchestra of the Marseilles Opera. He was the most important musician in Marseilles, and every night he played for the girls.

It was
too
extraordinary. Shall we say
that's
what's attractive about brothels? They're where earth and sky meet.

“Oh, my
God
,” I said to Reed when we finally got back to the hotel, “what an evening! The gnome, the girls, the madam, the old servant women carrying baskets, the little Infantes, the little Infantas…the
King of Spain
!”

We never did find out what happened to the British consul.

This was all
one day
. It may sound like too much of an experience, but don't forget, we were living every hour of that day. Everything was a lot in those days. The world was much larger—and much smaller. Don't ask me to explain that.

But don't think you were born too late. Everyone has that illusion. But you aren't. The only problem is if you
think
too late.

That was my mother's problem, and that was her tragedy. She used to write Reed and me letters on our honeymoon in Paris: “My dear darling children, I cry for you in the rain when I think that you missed all the glories of Paris before the war, when I think that you never saw the Bois as it was, when I think….”

“Glory be to
God
!” I said. I wrote her back the most terrible letter: “Dear Mother, Were you ever in the Galerie des Glaces? Did you ever know what it was to be presented to Louis XIV? Did you ever hunt the stag with the bugles and the hounds of Henri II in the forest of Fontainebleau? Forget it! Anything I'm missing today I'd like to know the name of!”

Naturally, she never in her life referred to my letter.

Everything is new. At least everything is new the first time around.

So Reed and I made a point of going to out-of-the-way new places. To some, naturally, we were invited. Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger was the one who invited us to Sidi Bou Saïd after our adventure in Marseilles. He couldn't be called the black sheep of the d'Erlanger family—he was a perfectly enchanting man—but he was an odd bird. He never went into the d'Erlanger bank, which was as queer as if you decided to walk on your hands rather than on your legs. His wife,
Bettina, was a Roman beauty with turquoise eyes. The two had gone to Sidi Bou Saïd as bride and groom, and they adored their life there so much they stayed and built a very beautiful house—a miniature palace. Their friends, who were the most interesting people in Europe, came to visit them—Elsie Mendl, for instance, was there during that first visit Reed and I made. We'd never been to Africa before, and I was so
excited
. It was dawn when we arrived in Saïd Bou Saïd. From the deck I saw the d'Erlangers' house—a little white palace, actually, on the top of a white cliff rising straight out of the Mediterranean, terraced all the way up from the sea with gardens of orange trees, lemon trees, and oleanders.

We docked. Then we made our way to the palace, and in the courtyard we saw menservants. We only saw menservants the whole time we were there,
dressed…
and in the evening they'd
re
dress, and it was like the Arabian Nights—these great big pantaloons with gold and silver brocade and lamé boleros worn over very clean white shirts.

We walked past the menservants into a hall with orange marble walls and a mauve marble ceiling supported by sixteenth-century lace columns, made of a stone that's carved like lace and
is called
lace. Between the columns were little birds flying in and out, in and out…and there was a tiny rivulet running through the hall with gardenias floating in it.

Then we went into lunch—European, in that you sat at a pink marble table set with gold goblets. I sat on the right of Baron Rodolphe, who always had a beautiful linen handkerchief—like an absolutely transparent cobweb—which never left his hand and which he'd raise to his nose…he was an ether addict.

“Diana…[
sniff
],” he'd say, “it's so wonderful to see you looking so
well
. You're the night's morning…[
sniff
], you're the sun, the moon, and the
stars…
[
sniff, sniff
]”—you know, the sort of business that men say to women by the sea.

“Reed,” I once said, “what happens if I really get a
blast
of it?”

“You won't,” he said. “Just remember—when he breathes
in
, you breathe
out
.”

Rodolphe was so
attractive
. Don't think this ritual of his was
unattractive—
it just took a little getting used to. This little weakness for ether was as normal as if you…Listen, Baron, Rodolphe was the uncrowned King of Tunisia!

His best friend was Fuad, the King of Egypt, King Farouk's father. Together, they were really responsible for getting the music of the Arabs of North Africa onto paper. They'd work on the music together in Baron Rodolphe's beautiful library, and they'd exchange orchestras. Sometimes, when we came in to dinner, the orchestra would be playing, and it would play through dinner and into the night….

Every morning, everyone would go down to the sea for a swim, through the gardens, past a herd of peacocks. Everyone else went together, and I guess the peacocks felt they could let them have their way. But they didn't with me. I was always the last in the morning—I'm
always
the last—so I went down alone, through an acre of lemon and orange orchards, and there'd always be a peacock standing in the way with his tail spread out. “Please let me go by,” I'd say. “They're all waiting for me. I won't have time for a swim before lunch.
Please
.”

He'd wait until he got good and ready, then he'd put down his tail and
drag
himself back into the orchard.

Peacocks, I always say, are unbelievably beautiful—but they're vulgar. All of these peacocks, however, were silvery white, and I'll tell you why. Apparently, years before, King Fuad—like someone in the sixteenth century—had had sent by special messenger a little woven gold basket containing a pair of little blue peacocks. Naturally, they had babies. Then the babies came and the babies came, and one day there was a white peacock. Then there was another one. And as the herd grew larger and larger, there were more and more white peacocks.

By the time we arrived there must have been seventy-five. The d'Erlangers had given away all the blue peacocks, and as white
peacocks only breed other white peacocks, they were white, white,
white
. In the evening they were so beautiful. The top of the palace was flat, and on hot nights we'd go up there after dinner to get the air and look down at the peacocks with their tails spread and their
tiny
heads against the reflection of the moon shining on the sea…it didn't look real. When
I
say it didn't look real, it
didn't
look real. It looked like an Aubrey Beardsley drawing for
Salome
.