Cecil Beaton: VALOUR IN THE FACE OF BEAUTY

FROM BRIGHT YOUNG THING AND DOCUMENTER OF LONDON‘S LOST GENERATION OF THE 20S TO A DOCUMENTER OF A NEW GENERATION WHO WOULD LOSE THEIR LIVES IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR, THIS IS JUST ONE SLICE OF Cecil Beaton‘s REMARKABLE LIFE THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY. ©THE CECIL BEATON STUDIO ARCHIVE AT SOTHEBY’S. STUDIO ARCHIVE AT ©THE CECIL BEATON

TEXT Mark Simpson

CECIL BEATON SELF-PORTRAIT, CAMBRIDGE FOOTLIGHTS, 1925

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In a world saturated with social me-dear surveillance and Beaton: No, no one could help me. It was up to me to find suffused with surplus selfies, being ‘interesting’ becomes ever- the sort of world that I wanted. more compulsory – just as it becomes ever-more elusive. Not Face to Face, 1962 just for artists in this brave new connected, visual, attention- seeking world, but for civilians too. Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton was born in 1904 into a Little wonder that Cecil Beaton, a man who essentially prosperous Edwardian middle-class family in Hampstead, a invented himself and his astonishing career with a portable leafy suburb of London. He was the product of true theatrical camera loaded with his ambition and longing, one of the romance: his mother Esther was a Cumbrian blacksmith’s brightest of his bright young generation of the 1920s, has daughter who was visiting London when she fell in love with become more famous, not less. As we plough relentlessly into his father Ernest, a timber merchant, after seeing him onstage a 21st century that he anticipated in many ways, long before in the lead role in an amateur dramatic production. his death in 1980, I suspect ours is a world he would be as True to his origins, as a boy Beaton took to hanging much horrified as impressed by. around outside theatres, admiring and losing himself in the He was by his own admission, “driven by the visual”, and pretty posters marketing the actresses of the day. Using a claimed not to have read a book before he was 18, which Box Brownie camera he was given at the age of 11, he makes him sound almost millennial. But luckily for posterity, dragooned his pretty, blonde younger sisters, Barbara (Baba) he also had a wicked way with words. His books and waspish and Nancy, into recreating that world: a fantastical, stage-y, diaries contain many timeless quips: lushly artificial dreamworld that he was, almost by sheer “What is elegance? Soap and water!” “All I want is the best wishful thinking, later to people with actual starlets and of everything and there’s very little of that left.” “Perhaps the some of the century’s greatest celebrities. world’s second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a Beaton, who went on to photograph so many famous bore.” And my personal favourite: “Never in the history of women with an eye that was more conspiratorial than fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so analytical, began his life-long love affair with the camera at much that needs to be covered so badly.” the instruction of a woman – his photography-enthusiast But perhaps the most oft-quoted Beaton aphorism in our nanny. Beaton’s gaze was not exactly what you’d call ‘male’. e-Darwinian age is his scornful advice to “Be daring, be It was rather more ambiguous than that. different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of “My mother’s dressing table drawer of powder, rouge and purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the mascara held an uncanny fascination for me,” he wrote. “One creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.” day, I stole into her bedroom and painted my face. My father Beaton was undoubtedly one of the most interesting men caught sight of me. He became so enraged that I was locked who ever lived – and the life he lived is itself a kind of fantastic in my bedroom.” fairy-tale, albeit a lonely one without a happy ending. His Neither was the world of men, or boys, Beaton’s. He had a advice, then, is certainly to be taken seriously, but I harbour difficult and distant relationship with his father and “the some scepticism about how fully people who quote him on noise of laughter in the billiards room” as he called it later. their Instagram and Patreon pages understand what being He hated his first (boys only) school, Heath Mount, not least ‘interesting’ really involves. Where it comes from. And what because he was mercilessly bullied by fellow classmate it costs. Evelyn Waugh, who probably found Beaton’s unabashed The 19th-century French writer and flâneur Charles sissiness a personal affront. Which is a kind of distinction in Baudelaire did. He believed that the dandy – and Beaton most itself – if the future author of Decline and Fall and Brideshead certainly was one, even if he didn’t describe himself as such – Revisited picks on you at school, you must have something has “no profession other than elegance... no other status, but about you. In fact, Waugh proved to be a thoroughly dedicated that of cultivating beauty in their own persons... The dandy follower of Beaton’s, and continued to bully him and in effect must aspire to be sublime without interruption; he must live shadow his career into adulthood and old age – and Beaton and sleep before a mirror.” returned the compliment. Beaton not only lived in front of the mirror, taking many self-portraits, some in drag, and maintaining an impeccable “EVELYN WAUGH IS MY ENEMY. WE DISLIKE ONE dandified image most of his life, but he went behind the mirror ANOTHER INTENSELY. HE THINKS THAT I’M A NASTY as well, photographing and capturing the mysterious charms PIECE OF GOODS, AND, OH, BROTHER, I FEEL THE of beauty in his many celebrity portraits. Beaton accessed a SAME WAY ABOUT HIM” – CECIL BEATON, 1962 beautiful dreamworld betwixt life and death that he never quite left. He was perhaps the last great dandy and romantic, Others were enchanted in a more convivial fashion. The which is the loneliest kind of life. But he nevertheless writer Cyril Connolly, who attended Beaton’s next school, St performed a great public service Cyprian’s in Eastbourne – along with George Orwell – wrote Interviewer: Your mother wasn’t able to help you in this in his autobiography of being overwhelmed by the beauty of particular difficulty? Beaton’s singing at school concerts.

CECIL BEATON SELF-PORTRAIT

Another 256 Man NANCY AND BABA BEATON, CECIL’S SISTERS, BY CECIL BEATON BABA BEATON BY CECIL BEATON JUNIOR AIRMEN, RAF TORQUAY AND DARLINGTON, 1941, BY CECIL BEATON WOMEN WORKING ON THE BARRAGE BALLOON, 1941, BY CECIL BEATON EAGLE SQUADRON PILOT, 1942, BY CECIL BEATON SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL IN THE CABINET ROOM, 1940, BY CECIL BEATON CECIL BEATON

At Harrow, Beaton found himself bored and unable to fit Aesthetically, Tennant was an even more epicene, more He was however to make amends in the most spectacular up quality to some of them at a time of course when, as for in with the laughter in the billiards room. He cheered himself elegant – and more aristocratic – version of Beaton. He was and convincing fashion, in a way that transformed him and most of Beaton’s life, any and all male homosexuality was up by dressing up in theatrical costumes with other alienated what Beaton aspired to be – so Beaton knew exactly how to his legacy, marking his late arrival into adulthood – and completely illegal, if rather common. The images are even boys and taking photographs – escaping into the wonderland capture him. His hypnotic other/unworldliness shines out in demonstrating how true dandyism requires great courage. more poignant and affecting when we consider that in some of his Box Brownie. After going up to Cambridge in 1922, he Beaton’s photos. In some of the photos he took of them After the outbreak of war in 1939, he was offered the job cases this may have been the subject’s last ever photograph. spent most of his time and energies on the Amateur Dramatic together they look like fairy twins – or satanic angels. of photojournalist by the Ministry of Information. He was to Club, failing his exams and leaving without a degree in 1925, With the help of Osbert Sitwell, Beaton was able to put on travel to fronts all over the world, to China and the Middle “I HAVE NEVER BEEN IN LOVE WITH WOMEN, much to his father’s consternation. his first exhibition at the Cooling Gallery in 1927, featuring East, find himself in crossfire and plane crashes, taking AND I DON’T THINK I EVER SHALL BE IN THE WAY He had however been submitting his photographs to many of his photos of the Bright Young Things – including photos that captured the intimate personal impact of this THAT I HAVE BEEN IN LOVE WITH MEN. I’M REALLY various publications, sometimes under an alias enthusiastic­ his famous portrait of angular Edith Sitwell posed as a gothic global war in a style as direct and immediate as his previous A TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE HOMOSEXUALIST AND TRY ally recommending the work of ‘Cecil Beaton’. Eventually in tomb (Edith was to remain a close friend until her actual photography was artificial and dreamy. His talents were now SO HARD NOT TO BE” – CB 1924 he succeeded in selling a photo of the Duchess of Malfi death in 1964). Beaton’s reputation as the most fashionable enlisted for propaganda rather than fashion – for capturing to Vogue. It seems entirely Beatonesque that his first celebrity photographer of his generation was sealed. ordinary men and women in the service of their country, Beaton himself died in his own bed, aged 76, at his home portrait was in fact a slightly out-of-focus photo of a male In 1928, with the wind in his sails, Beaton steamed to New rather than pampered starlets in the service of glamour. And in Wiltshire in 1980, after a highly successful postwar career student in drag – shot outside the gents’ lavatory of the York with the unassailable conviction that America would what glorious propaganda he made! immortalising a new generation of Hollywood stars, such as Cambridge ADC. After all, illusion and artifice are the heart throw itself at his feet. But initially America proved somewhat It was in particular his photos of the war on the Home Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn. He of glamour. impervious to his charms, especially after he made a Front – the land girls, the Blitz, the Battle of Britain pilots of won three Oscars himself for his inspired costume work on remarkable appearance on film in which he criticised, looking 1940 – that rehabilitated Beaton. His famous portrait of three- films such as Gigi and My Fair Lady and was the subject of a “THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING DRAMATIC ABOUT and sounding every inch the faggy limey dandy, New York year-old Blitz victim Eileen Dunne in a hospital bed, head 1971 tribute documentary by the photographer David Bailey, THE JOB OF PERMANENTLY RECORDING THE women for not looking like English aristocrats. (At the end, bandaged, clutching her teddy bear and looking reproachfully featuring Mick Jagger, Twiggy and David Hockney. FEATURES OF A HUMAN BEING, IT IS THE THEATRE in a hilarious touch – Beaton was both very funny and very into the camera, appeared on the cover of Life magazine and Knighted in 1974, Beaton lived long enough to see his work BROUGHT TO EVERYDAY LIFE” – CB sincere – he affectedly studied his fingernails/claws). helped mobilise public opinion in the US on Britain’s side. and legacy fully acknowledged, and also to see homosexuality After a year of “difficulty” he landed himself a lucrative His portraits of young RAF airmen as they waited for the (partially) decriminalised in 1967, meeting and basking in the Beaton’s big break however was falling in with the ‘Bright contract with Vogue magazine, where he worked as a highly scramble bell to toll them into the skies above England to adulation of a new generation of young people influenced by Young Things’. This was not left to happenstance – not only successful photographer for the next decade, using his sense face the Luftwaffe and death were the grounded counterpoint his work and much more relaxed about male homosexuality. had much of his life been preparation for this, he mercilessly of theatricality, wit, artifice, love of the surreal (e.g. the to his Bright Young Things period. But then, the 1920s He even made it on to Desert Island Discs in 1980. worked his contacts to get introductions to the Sitwells – famous head-in-a-hatbox photo) and taxidermist’s skill, to generation shaped by the apocalypse of the first world war But he died alone and by many accounts unhappy, both siblings Osbert, Edith and Sacheverell – who were Bright turn selling into an art form and help invent fashion had scrambled and were now taking on Hitler and the second with being alone and being old. In his bedroom were found Young Thing royalty. photography as we know it today. Fashion, after all, presents apocalypse. three of his photos – two were of male lovers – art collector So-named by the tabloid press, the Bright Young Things us with a through-the-looking-glass dreamworld we can Nancy Mitford became an ARP driver for a while, worked Peter Watson and Olympic fencer Kinmont Hoitsma – who were a group of bohemian aristocrats, socialites, poets and inhabit – for a price. Beaton proved the perfect spirit-guide to shifts at a first-aid post in Paddington and looked after looked like younger, more masculine versions of him. And artists, who came of age during or just after the first world that world, one he had been inhabiting as often as possible evacuated East End families at her London home – and one was of his friend Greta Garbo, the (mostly) lesbian film war, and whose response to the loss and horror of that since his youth. denounced her fascist-sympathising sister Unity. Harold star he asked to marry him – who looked like a more feminine, conflagration was to embrace hedonism. Celebrating He also travelled the globe photographing celebrities such Acton joined the RAF. Rejected as unfit for military service, more glamorous version of himself. Photography really was pleasure, art and beauty – and being alive – they held as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Gary Cooper, Marlene John Betjeman worked for the films division of the Ministry his lifelong vocation and companion. legendary champagne-and-drug-soaked parties including hi- Dietrich, Jean Cocteau, Coco Chanel and Pablo Picasso. of Information. Rex Whistler served in the Guards Armoured The 19th-century French writer Stendhal considered jinks such as elaborate treasure hunts through night-time Beaton was queen of the world – so it was fitting that he was Division and was the first member of his battalion killed in beauty to be “nothing more than the promise of happiness”. London. In addition to the Sitwells, leading figures included appointed court photographer to the royal family in 1937. the Normandy campaign. For all their decadence, the Bright But our pessimistic dandy guru Baudelaire was perhaps more the poet John Betjeman, the critic Harold Acton, the novelist Queen Elizabeth (the future Queen Mother) took to the witty, Young Things were made of stern stuff, and when the time on point when he wrote: “The study of beauty is a duel in Nancy Mitford and the painter Rex Whistler. Evelyn Waugh catty, stylish young man, and he took photos of her in the came, many of them did their duty and more. which the artist cries out in terror before being defeated.” of course hated them, and satirised them in his 1930 novel gardens of Buckingham Palace styled almost as an Edwardian Beaton did his duty to his country and himself. The This is the price of being interesting. I wonder how many Vile Bodies. actress, in a white (in fact pale pink) dress complete with theatrical aspect, the drama that Beaton always sought and young people today are willing to pay it. Beaton, with his effeteness, sharp wit, insatiable love of parasol that helped turn her into a camp icon. often found in his photos, was provided by the stage – and aristocracy and dreamy camera skills, was a hit and became But then, in 1938, disaster struck. Entirely self-inflicted apparatus – of war, the struggle against Nazism, and the threat “I EXPOSED THOUSANDS OF ROLLS OF in effect the court photographer of the group. He also found disaster. He inserted, in tiny but fatally legible print, anti- of death, his genius for composition finding a new, fresh, much FILMS, WROTE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS a patron and muse in the Brightest ‘Thing’ – Stephen Tennant, Semitic words and phrases into a Vogue collage of New York larger canvas. The war-factory women dwarfed and yet OF WORDS, IN A FUTILE ATTEMPT TO PRESERVE the ethereally pretty, heroically vain, lipstick-and-pancake- society figures. A huge scandal erupted, and he was forced to centred by the geometry of a deflated barrage balloon. A bow- THE FLEETING MOMENT… I STARTED OUT WITH wearing, gold-dusted, dyed-haired ‘It’ boy of the 1920s. (And quit Vogue and New York in disgrace, his career in tatters. He tied Winston Churchill surrounded by the weighty VERY LITTLE TALENT, BUT I WAS SO TORMENTED also, arguably, of the 1980s, when, thanks to Beaton’s photo was profusely apologetic, and asserted he was not anti- paraphernalia of the War Cabinet, frowning resolutely into the WITH AMBITION. ONCE YOU’VE STARTED FOR portraits, half the Blitz club wanted to be him.) Jewish and was “violently hostile to Hitler”. camera. THE END OF THE RAINBOW, YOU CAN’T VERY Tennant’s older brother Edward, a promising poet, had Why did he do it? Beaton said he didn’t know and seemed There is also a refreshing, arousing egalitarianism in WELL TURN BACK” – CB been killed in the first world war, aged 19. The younger as much baffled by it all as he was remorseful. In hindsight it Beaton’s wartime photos, his snobbery short-circuited Tennant, who would be an inspiration for Waugh’s dissolute, seems a product of his childish, bitchy sense of humour – and perhaps by his sexuality. His male subjects gaze into this Special thanks to Emma Nichols at Sotheby’s. Cecil Beaton’s decadent, doomed beauty Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead his English snobbery, acquired from the English aristocracy, effeminate man’s lens in a way that is entirely modern and Bright Young Things is on display at the National Portrait Revisited was in many ways collateral damage. who were known for their casual anti-Semitism. alive: intimate. There is almost a “got a light, mister?” pick- Gallery, London, until 7 June, 2020.

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