D.V. (10 page)

God, taxis are expensive! I should take a bus like the rest of the world. You can't picture it? Neither can my grandchildren. They tell a story about me: “Nonnina”—that's what they call me; it's Italian for “little grandmother”—“Nonnina took a bus with Grandpa once, and you know what she said to him? ‘Oh, look! There are other
people
here!'”

Every time I
have
taken a bus, which naturally is about three or four times, I've had to ask the driver what the fare is. Naturally, the whole bus breaks into laughter. They go to pieces. So to explain, I say, “You see, I'm not from your country. I'm…Chinese!”

Don't think I was always like this. When I went to work, I behaved like everyone else. I could use the
subway
.

Not long after we arrived back in New York in 1937, I was asked to work. I'd just arrived. I'd only been here for six months and I was going through money like one goes through…a bottle of scotch, I suppose, if you're an alcoholic. You couldn't keep any money
at all
in New York; it was so expensive after London. Carmel Snow, who was the editor of
Harper's Bazaar
, had seen me dancing at the St. Regis one night, and the next morning she called me up. She said
she'd admired what I had on—it was a white lace Chanel dress with a bolero, and I had roses in my hair—and she asked me if I'd like a job.

“But Mrs. Snow,” I said, “except for my little lingerie shop in London, I've never worked. I've never been in an office in my life. I'm never dressed until lunch.”

“But you seem to know a lot about clothes,” Carmel said.

“That I do. I've dedicated hours and
hours
of very detailed time to my clothes.”

“All right, then why don't you just try it and see how it works out?”

I knew so little when I started. I must have terrified them. One of those early days at
Harper's Bazaar
I had a brainwave! I had on slacks like this and a little Chanel shirt with pockets inside, not on the outside like pockets are today. I said to an editor ambling around the hall, “I've got the best idea!” I took him into my office. “We're going to eliminate all handbags.”

“You're going to
what
?”

“Eliminate all handbags. Now look. What have I got here? I carry much more than most people. I've got cigarettes. I've got my lipstick, I've got my comb, I've got my powder, I've got my rouge, I've got my money. But what do I want with a bloody old handbag that one leaves in taxis and so on? It should all go into pockets. Real pockets, like a man has, for goodness sake. Put the money here, lipstick and powder there, the comb and rouge here. Of course, you'd have much bigger pockets, and they'd be rather chic.”

I told him how I would do the whole magazine just showing what you can do with pockets and how the silhouette is improved and so on, and also one's walk—there's nothing that limits a woman's walk like a pocketbook.

Well, the man ran from my office the way you run for the police! He rushed into Carmel's office and said, “Diana's going crazy! Get hold of her.”

So Carmel came down and said, “Listen, Diana, I think you've lost your mind. Do you realize that our income from handbag advertising is God knows how many millions a year?!”

Well, she was correct, of course. It's the same as if they cut out men's
ties
. The country'd be destitute. “It's your birthday, I'm bringing a tie.” The man who runs your building, what do you give him? A tie. It's your father's birthday, what do you give him? You give him a tie.

So I began that job. My father never referred to the fact that I worked for
Harper's Bazaar
because, of course, it was a
Hearst
publication. It wasn't that he objected to a woman working; it was that he hated the yellow press with
such
a passion. When I was growing up, no copies of any Hearst papers were allowed in the house. If a maid had been caught reading the
Daily Mirror
, she would have been fired. Oh, yes. And after I went to work, he never asked me how I was getting along, or how much money I was making, or whether they treated me well…the subject was never referred to
—ever—
because of his disapproval. And as for the fact that I was a great friend of Millicent Hearst's and her sons…the subject simply didn't exist for him.

Millicent died just a few years ago. I'm not big on funerals. I wouldn't bring this up if it were in the least macabre, but it's true: laid out in her coffin, she looked so absolutely ecstatic! She looked exactly like she did when she was the Belle of New York with every chandelier lit and all the bands playing. Really splendid. She looked…I mean, it was incredible! I've always been very fond of the Hearst boys, because I worked more than twenty-eight years for the Hearsts. Not that I had anything to do with the boys in terms of business—they didn't know what side was up in the magazines. But I have a great fondness for them. So I walked around the corner of Sixty-seventh Street to Millicent's apartment, and at the door Bill Hearst said, “You've got to see Mom. I'm sure this isn't up your alley at all, but you've
got
to see!” He said, “It's the goddamnedest thing!”

So we went into the dining room. It's always in the dining room they put these poor people! And I mean, it was the work of art of all artistry. I've never seen anything so amazing in my life. She was in the coffin, all set to
go
.

I only believe in cremation—fast, fast cremation. Done with. But Millicent Hearst really did look simply radiant!

Millicent gave the last big parties in New York that were any fun. When I first knew her, she lived on Riverside Drive in a castle. You walked in…and there were suits of shining armor everywhere. It was a great old-fashioned baronial hall, and Millicent would be standing in the center of it all,
roaring
with laughter. One night she'd wear emerald shoulder straps. Then the next night she'd wear diamond shoulder straps. And don't forget the emeralds and the diamons were
this
big, all across rather big shoulders. She was never a small girl—everything in a big way!

And
funny
! If she was going to make a joke, she'd start laughing, so she got you laughing before the joke was made, and by the time the joke
was
made, everybody was hysterical. She had quite an inflection. Instead of “the oil of Texas” and “the Earl of Sefton,” shall we say, she'd say “the Oil of Sefton” and “the earl of Texas.” She was from Brooklyn, and it was Brooklyn
all the way
. She was always surrounded by important, intelligent men. In London, in Paris, everywhere she went, she was treated like a great personality from this country. American royalty. And she never, never improved her English, nor did she care about it, nor did she know she was talking it—she didn't
hear
it. She was a hearty, lusty, wonderful
blonde
from
Brooklyn
who went all the way around the world
twice
. I think she was just plain too big for old William Randolph Hearst. And that was the reason for Marion Davies.

She was
another
fascinator. She was like Nell Gwynn—she had sold oranges in the street and now she slept with a king. She was the most delightful, provocative, amusing company—an alive, electric creature of total charm…and
power
. She wasn't all that different from Millicent. They both had power.

In New York the old boy never came down from the top of the Ritz Towers—apparently there were always creditors downstairs. But I often went
up
to see Marion. By this time, she'd lost a lot of her looks—she had one of those champagne chins which you don't see much anymore, because people have nips and lifts. She was a woman
of great character—tremendously protective of W. R. He'd always said, “People with brain power never die. George Bernard Shaw and I will never die.” When Shaw did die, Hearst was old and dying himself. That morning, Marion had the news cut out of all his newspapers that came in from the West—Hearst only read his papers from west of the Mississippi—so that he never read about Shaw's death.

Once Marion asked me if I had my breakfast in bed. I told her I did. “Oh, I wish I could,” she said. “It must be so nice. I have to get up right away.”

“Why?”

“Because…” she said, “he says it brings
mice
.”

So the day the old boy died, in my mind's eye I saw Marion sitting in a pretty bedjacket in her pretty bed in her hotel suite, eating a leisurely breakfast
…surrounded
by tiny mice! It's never left my imagination. I still see it
so
clearly.

I never met the old boy. But once, when I'd just started writing “Why Don't You?” for
Harper's Bazaar
, he sent me a note in his own hand: “Dear Miss Vreeland, It is always a pleasure to read your columns. I reread them all the time. I am a particular admirer of yours.” I was so touched. Don't you love the “Miss”? He never dictated a letter, you see. He was an old-fashioned gentleman—in the sense that royalty never had anything typed.

That column “Why Don't You” first appeared in
Harper's Bazaar
in the summer of 1936. It was rather frivolous. I don't remember too many of the ideas, thank
goodness
. “For a coat to put on after skiing, get yourself an Italian driver's, of red-orange lined in dark green.” That was one of them. “Have a furry elk-kid trunk for the back of your car.” They were all very tried and true ideas, mind you. We had a trunk like that on the back of our Bugatti. “Knit yourself a little skullcap. Turn your old ermine coat into a bathrobe.” The one that seemed to cause the most attention was the one about dead champagne. “Wash your blond child's hair in dead champagne, as they do in France.” That even got S. J. Perelman stirred up. He wrote a very funny parody in
The New Yorker
. Carmel Snow wrote
Perelman a letter saying he shouldn't do such things, that it was very upsetting to such a young girl to be criticized! Good heavens! I was in my thirties at the time and was very flattered.

At first nobody gave me ideas for the column, but then they said to me, oh, put in your column that Daisy Fellowes's daughter drove away from the church in Paris in a two-in-hand. Well, I would have none of it, and besides, war was declared, which, thank God, put an end to the whole absurdity anyway.

But it was nice to know that old W. R. enjoyed them.

I never went to San Simeon when he was there. His son Bill often asked Reed and me, but for some reason or another we never went. One day, long after his father's death, Bill called from San Francisco and told us that it was our last chance to visit San Simeon as private guests. So we went. I remember calling the night before to say, “Be sure to have the zebras out.”

Bill Hearst said, “Zebras. Good God, we haven't seen zebras around here in ten years!”

I said, “I'm coming for the
zebras
; I'm not coming for anything else.”

You won't believe this—we arrived and there they were, this whole row, all the way up the two miles of the driveway into the mountains. Bill Hearst had probably forgotten he even
owned
zebras. We stayed about two and a half weeks, and we didn't see another sign of the zebras. And then, the morning we left to go to San Francisco, every zebra was back out to say goodbye, lining the road. Bill Hearst was astonished. I took it very personally. They had come out for me.

San Simeon was delightful—an extraordinary place. “But it's so vulgar,” my friends said to me at the time. “How can you say it's extraordinary?”

“Because it's a man's dream,” I said. “It's a particularly American dream. And that dream of W. R.'s came true. And in
that
way it
is
splendid.”

San Simeon was not built for Millicent or Marion. Oh, no
—it was built for W. R. himself. Think of it: acres of roses, going for miles. A man's castle. Richelieu's bed. There was only a trace of the woman's touch there—barrels of bleach in the hairdressing department.

I believe women are naturally dependent on men. One admires and expects things from men that one doesn't expect from women, and such has been the history of the world. The beauty of painting, of literature, of music, of
love…
this is what men have given the world, not women.

As you can tell, you're not exactly talking to a feminist. I stand with the French line—woman and children last.

Do you realize how many times a week I hear about the thirties? Hardly a day goes by when someone doesn't say to me about something, “Oh, you'll love it, Mrs. Vreeland—it's so thirties.” It's always déjà vu to me, but then a lot of things are. The point is that it was déjà vu to me
then
.

You never learned anything in the thirties. That's a terrible thing I've never said out loud to anyone before. But don't forget, we were going into the most appalling war in history, and you felt it in everything. Everything was weakening…I knew that we were heading toward
rien
.

Still, I loved the clothes I had in the thirties. I can remember a dress I had of Schiaparelli's that had fake ba-zooms—these funny little things that stuck out here. When you sat down, they sort of went…all I can say is that it was terribly chic. Don't ask me why, but it was. Another of my Schiaparellis that sticks in my mind was a black sheath with a long train in the form of a padded fishtail—I gave it to Gypsy Rose Lee, and she performed in it at the World's Fair—stalking the runway six times a day.

I loved my clothes from Chanel. Everyone thinks of
suits
when they think of Chanel. That came later. If you could have seen
my clothes from Chanel in the thirties—the
dégagé
gypsy skirts, the divine brocades, the little boleros, the roses in the hair, the pailletted nose
veils—
day and evening! And the ribbons were so pretty.

I remember my great friend Leo d'Erlanger saying to me in Paris, “Diana, I want to give you a present. I know that what you love more than anything in the world is clothes, and I know that you love Chanel's clothes more than anyone else's. So I want you to go to Chanel and buy
anything
you want.”

So I went to Chanel on the rue Cambon and I said to my
vendeuse—
the
vendeuse
is a kind of maître d'hôtel in a
maison de couture—
“Perhaps I'll buy something a bit more…mmm
…luxurious
then I usually do.”

This was the dress I ordered: The huge skirt was of silver lamé, quilted in pearls, which gave it a marvelous weight; then the bolero was lace entirely encrusted with pearls and
diamanté
; then, underneath the bolero was the most beautiful shirt of linen lace. I think it was the most beautiful dress I've ever owned. I don't think I've ever been more grateful for a present.

Then the war came.

Reed and I had been in Capri, and on the way back from Capri we'd stopped in Paris. My husband was a man with such a marvelous sense of…how women are. He got on a ship with a lot of American friends leaving France, and he left me behind.

“You mean you'd leave your
wife
,” they said—you know, that bourgeois spirit—“in a country that's at
war
?”

“Look,” he said, “there's no point in taking Diana away from Chanel and her shoes. If she hasn't got her shoes and her clothes, there's no point in bringing her home. That's how it's always been and that's how it has to be.”

I stayed on alone at the hotel—the Bristol, which was quite new then—for about two weeks. It was very quiet. The Phony War. Then, one morning, Leo d'Erlanger arrived there from London. “Diana,” he said, “tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock you must leave. I've got you a place on a train, and it will take you to Le Havre, where I've got a cabin on a ship that will take you to New York. You've got
to get out of France, you've got to get out of Europe—this is your last chance. It's the last passenger ship with private cabins out of Europe. This was my promise to Reed—when the time came to go, I'd get you out.”

I'll never forget that afternoon, coming down the rue Cambon—my last afternoon in Paris for five years. I'd just had my last fitting at Chanel. I don't think I could have made it to the end of the block, I was so depressed—leaving Chanel, leaving Europe, leaving all the world of…of my world.

And then I saw this type coming up next to the Ritz, and it was my friend Ray Goetz, the most amusing man who ever lived. He had on a blue felt hat. He was married to Irene Bordoni. He was
big
in the theatre. He brought over that divine Spanish singer Raquel Meuller, who sang “Who Will Buy My Violets?” And that afternoon he could have taken me in his arms and looked after me for the rest of his life—not that he knew it.

“Oh, Ray!” I said. “Isn't it awful about the war?”

He turned. He looked at me for just a minute—just a split second—and asked, “What war?” And with that, he walked right past me, like a shadow.

How strange…it's always the same. Anyone can knock you over with a remark—or they can set you right up, which is what he did. I don't think I've ever been more grateful to a human being.

It was September. The days were getting shorter. It would be getting dark by six. That evening I remember walking up and down the Champs-Elysées with Johnny Faucigny-Lucinge. The weather was balmy, it was quite crowded with people, and it was
absolutely
quiet. I can remember exactly what I had on: a little black moiré tailleur from Chanel, a little piece of black lace wrapped around my head, and beautiful, absolutely exquisite black slippers like kid gloves…it's curious to visualize yourself like this, isn't it? But I always have to think about what I had on. Just today, I thought of those slippers and I remembered everything.

How long is the Champs-Elysées? At least a mile, wouldn't you say? We must have walked ten miles that night. All the tables
were taken up from the sidewalks. There were no bands playing the “Marseillaise”—there was nothing. One hardly spoke. There was only this unearthly silence of hundreds of people strolling out of doors under the stars.

I asked Johnny to come up to my room at the Bristol for a last drink. In those days, I always traveled with a
nécessaire
. Oh, it was so beautiful—made to order, naturally—and inside was a little fitted crystal carafe, in which I always kept some brandy. Everyone traveled with a little brandy, because you were so often in railroad stations, where you could get waylaid in the rain and the snow and the cold and the damp, waiting for trains.

So when we got up to the room, exhausted—but this was
deep
exhaustion, not just physical exhaustion—I opened the
nécessaire
, took out the carafe with this brown liquid in it, opened it, and poured it into one bathroom glass for Johnny and then into another bathroom glass for myself—we didn't ring for glasses, because by this time it was very late. I brought the glass to my lips…and it wasn't brandy. Someone had emptied out the carafe and refilled it. It was tea—cold tea!

It was a heartbreaker. It was so letting down. I think it was the single most anticlimactic moment of my life. Cold tea!