D.V. (4 page)

But we did meet Buffalo Bill—he was a bit of all right. Cody was named after him, and if you lived in Cody you knew Colonel Cody—Buffalo Bill. He was essentially an entertainer. But what chic old Bill had! With his beard he looked like Edward VII, and he wore the fringed leather clothes that the hippies all wore in the sixties. By the time we met him, he'd already been received by European royalty and was covered in glory, fringes, gauntlets, and sombreros. To us, he was just an Edwardian gentleman who happened to be in Wyoming, just as we happened to be there.

We stayed with him long after the school year had started. He rode beautifully, and he was so sweet to us, giving us these little Indian ponies which we adored.

My mother's horse, our two ponies…that was all I had out West…and old Bill. The last time I saw him was when he came to see us off on the train that was to take us back to New York. I can remember standing with my sister at the back of the train with tears pouring down our faces, waving….

I was so lonely in Wyoming. But I think when you're young you should be a lot with yourself and your sufferings. Then one day you get out where the sun shines and the rain rains and the snow snows, and it all comes together.

It all came together for me when I got back to New York. I went back to dancing school and I didn't give a
damn
about anything else. All I've ever cared about since is movement, rhythm, being in touch—and discipline. What Fokine taught.

He was a brute. He'd put you at the barre, he'd place his cane under your leg…and if you couldn't raise your leg high enough, then
—whack
! One day he tore my leg to ribbons—all the ligaments. It just went. I was laid up with my foot up and my leg up for eight weeks. That was nothing in
his
life. But he taught me total discipline. And it's stood me in good stead all my life—it's forever!

I'm talking about strict rules, bash on, up and away!…still, my dream in life is to come home and think of absolutely nothing. After all, you can't think
all
the time. If you think all the time every day of your life, you might as well kill yourself today and be happier
tomorrow
. I learned this when I was very young. When I discovered dancing, I learned to dream.

Japan!
When I got to Kyoto, the eighth-century capital of Japan, it was truly a dream come true. Under the pine trees there I felt an element of the centuries as I'd never felt anywhere before in my life. Everything old there is so beautifully maintained. But there's nothing slow about Kyoto—everyone's on motorbikes wearing Saint Laurent shirts. What's extraordinary is the way everything modern fits in with everything old. It's all a matter of combining. There's no beginning or end there—only continuity.

God was fair to the Japanese. He gave them no oil, no coal, no diamonds, no gold, no natural resources—nothing! Nothing comes from the island that you can sustain a civilization on. What God gave the Japanese was a sense of style—maintained through the centuries through hard work and the disciplines of ambition.

When I saw the
meikis
carrying these beautiful umbrellas, walking over these acres of moss in the shadows of a rainy night under these beautiful willow trees with their knees just
slightly
bent…do you know what
meikis
are? They're the girls who are training to be geishas. You'd think that a geisha was made up like a
meiki
until you knew the difference. A geisha is very
tenderly
made up, and everything about her hair and her clothing and everything else is very
exquisitely done. But everything about a
meiki
is a great exaggeration—her obi is
this
wide, her skirt is padded at the bottom with a row
this
wide, her back panel is out to
here
; she has
very
white makeup,
very
red makeup….

The idea must be that you learn from the exaggeration.

This is a very serious subject with me. I've given this a lot of thought. I adore dressing and I adore making up. I adore the procedure—it's terribly invigorating, both during my getting up in the morning and during my getting ready to go out in the evening. It gives me such pleasure.

I adore artifice. I always have. I remember when I was thirteen or fourteen buying red lacquer in Chinatown for my fingernails.

“What
is
that?” my mother said. “
Where
did you get it?
Why
did you get it?”

“Because,” I said, “I want to be a Chinese princess.”

So I went around with these
red
red fingernails—you can imagine how big that would have gone over at the Brearley School.

Then…when I'd started going out a few years later, I discovered calcimine. If I was going out—and I went out almost every night—two and a half hours before my escort arrived I'd start with this huge bottle of calcimine (I forget the brand, but it was theatrical stuff)—a sponge…and I'd be
totally
calcimined from the waist up, out along the arms, the back, the neck, the throat, et cetera, et cetera. I had to do this alone, because my family didn't take much interest in what I was doing. Then, when my escort and I would get up to dance, he, in his black dinner jacket, would be
totally
white. I would come off on him. But he'd have to put up with it. It meant nothing to me—I looked like a lily!

On the night of my coming-out party in 1923…was I calcimined
that
night! I was whiter than white. My dress was white, naturally. And then the reds were
something
. I had velvet slippers that were
lacquer
red. I carried red camellias. In those days everyone sent flowers, and I'd received something like fifty bouquets. One huge bouquet of red camellias was from a big-time show person: J. Ringling
North. “
Circus people…
where did you ever meet
them
?” my mother wanted to know. I told her that for some reason J. Ringling North had taken a fancy to me and sent the red camellias.

My mother disapproved. “You should know,” she said, “that red camellias are what the demimondaines of the nineteenth century carried when they had their periods and thus weren't available for their man. I don't think they're quite…suitable.”

I carried the camellias anyway. They were so beautiful. I had to assume that no one else at the party knew what my mother knew.

I doubt that my mother thought my dress was particularly suitable, either, but there was nothing she could do about it. It was copied from Poiret—white satin with a fringed skirt to give it
un peu de mouvement
and a pearl-and-diamond stomacher to hold the fringe back before it sprang. It looked like the South Sea Islands—like a hula skirt.

How I miss fringe! Where is fringe today? The fringe was there in the twenties—as it was there in the sixties—because of the dancing, the
dancing…
the
music
! I've known two great decades in my life, the twenties and the sixties, and I'm always comparing them because of the music. Music is everything, and in those two decades you got something so sharp, so new….

The
tango
! The tango's basically the waltz—you're making a square on the floor all the time—but it's much more stylized. It's a certain way of holding your body, holding your head…don't forget the strength it takes to step out. You had to have a marvelous partner. It's a fascinating, totally South American dance. One day, when South America comes through, we'll realize the curious effect it's had on our culture.

A snob might say, “The tango, for God's sake—is that culture?”

By the time I was seventeen, I knew what a snob was. I also knew that young snobs didn't
quite
get my number. I was much better with Mexican and Argentine gigolos (they weren't
really
gigolos—they were just odd ducks around town who liked to dance as much
as I did). They were people who knew that I loved clothes, a certain nightlife, and that I
loved
to do the tango.

This naturally was rather un-understood in New York.

I was considered a bit fast. The story got out. The Colony Club's right across the street from here. One afternoon a few years ago I was walking with Andy Warhol. I said, “Look over there, Andy. That's a very select woman's club.”

Andy said, “Woman's club? What do they do?”

I said, “Well, I'm not sure. My mother and my grandmother wanted me to join, but I was blackballed, which means you don't get in.”

“Why?”

“Well, I was considered fast.”

“
Fast
! Gee. They won't let you in if you're
fast
? What do they do in there?” It was the first time I had ever really heard Andy excited.

I said, “They have their hair done, they dictate letters, they have lunch with each other. It's lovely…but I'm not a member.”

It never mattered to me. At the time my mother was upset. My grandmother had been one of the original founders. But I was much more interested in going to the nightclubs way downtown—to avoid running into my mother and father—and doing what I loved to do best…dancing.

In those days my mother was rather un-understood too. Her flamboyance was rather resented. Whispers would go around: “Look, she's painted.” She was
very
made up for those days. But men were infatuated with her. There were many scandals, because she was often involved with somebody. She traveled with a very good-looking Turk named Sadi-Bey who wore a red fez with his suit or his dinner jacket. He was absolutely charming. We usually saw him only at night, and he'd arrive in his dinner jacket with the tassel hanging from the fez down over it. We thought he was the height of chic. Though we weren't exactly what you'd call a tidy little group, my parents were devoted to each other. Theirs was a very old-fashioned marriage. A little sort of episode like Sadi-Bey and others—that was nothing.

I remember this: my mother wouldn't have a chauffeur or a footman unless he was infatuated with her—he had to show enormous
dazzle
for her. Everyone had to or she wasn't interested. I can remember at one time saying something extraordinary to her like: “You expect every coachman on the block to be in love with you! What's the matter with you? Don't you ever cool down?”

But she had to be on stage, often making a show of herself. She'd even flirt with
my
boyfriends, and occasionally one would fall flat for her. She was quite young and beautiful and amusing and
mondaine
and splashy, all of which I'm glad I had in my background
—now
. But I've had to live a long time to come to that conclusion.

In my memory, she seems vivid and affectionate and lonely. I think she was someone who was possessed by a great fear. She was even afraid of servants—she was afraid of anything that would disturb anything. Yet she lived only for excitement. When she died, at fifty-two, I think it was because she could find nothing to interest her.

My father was rather amused by her flirtations—it was all part of the scene. Flirtations are part of life, part of society—if one didn't have these little flings, where would one be? I think my father realized this. He was devoted to my mother. She was in the arms of a strong man who saw to everything because he knew that she wasn't strong.

I was much stronger—with a stronger will and a stronger
character—
but I didn't realize it then. All I knew then was that my mother wasn't proud of me. I was always her ugly little monster.

I never felt comfortable about my looks until I married Reed Vreeland.

He was the most beautiful man I've ever seen. He was very quiet, very elegant. I loved all that. I thought it was so beautiful to just watch him.

I met him on the Fourth of July at a weekend party in Saratoga, in 1924. I believe in love at first sight because that's what it was. I knew the moment our eyes met that we would marry.
I simply
assumed
that—and I was right. We became friends, as they say. He was Robert Pruyne's apprentice in the banking business in Albany.

One day, about ten days before the wedding, I was lunching with some friends when the telephone rang and I was called to it.

It was a woman's voice. “Is this Diana Dalziel?” she asked. “I'm a newspaper writer. I've watched you at parties and I've always admired you. You're different from any of the other girls and you have a style all your own. The world is your oyster. This is why I don't want to see you hurt.”

I couldn't imagine what all this was leading up to. But the woman went on, “I have to tell you that your mother is being mentioned as a corespondent in a divorce suit and there's going to be an enormous
blaze
in the newspapers.”

I heard all this, thanked the woman, and finished my lunch. Naturally, I didn't say a word to the people I was lunching with. But as soon as we'd finished, I telephoned home and found out that my mother had taken the dogs to Central Park. I'd always hated Central Park as a child. It has no secrets, no allure. But I took a cab to the Ramble, where I knew my mother usually went—imagine finding anyone in Central Park today—and when I saw our car and chauffeur, I stopped.

I got out; I walked around behind a hill and found her sitting in the sun with one of our adorable little Scotties in her lap and the other one running around her. She was laughing and talking with them. I sat down beside her and told her exactly what I'd been told.

I felt
nothing
. And that's how she answered me—with
nothing
. She was smaller than me. Very quiet. Then she said, “I think we'll go home. Don't you?”

I don't think I saw her for two or three days. I was very sorry for her.

“All these stories about your mother,” my father said to me later, “are untrue. You must simply rise above them.” The scandal didn't affect my father nearly as much as it did my mother. Daddy
was British in a very healthy way: he could get over things. “Worse things happen at sea.” That was his great expression. It summed up any unpleasantness.

That was the end of the story as far as my family went. That's the kind of family we were—very English. Very little visible emotion.

I never saw the newspapers, but the story came out, and obviously it was true. From what I heard later, the man was rather a bigshot in munitions. His name was Sir Charles Ross—Ross Rifles—and he lived in London and Scotland and Africa; the story was filled with guns and excitement and elephants and trips to India and Africa…et cetera. It was quite dramatic, and it was in the newspapers every single day.

I was only interested in getting married. The morning of the wedding I went to see my godmother, “Baby Belle” Hunnewell, married to Hollis Hunnewell of Boston. I went to see her because she couldn't come to the church to see me. It was the thing to do. She was in bed. Divine. She supposedly had one less layer of skin than everyone else. Most extraordinary color.
Tiny
bit of pink under the white. Of course, no one was sunburned in those days. She was too beautiful for words. She used to lie in bed and drink gin. She wasn't at all well. She didn't care—she was having a marvelous time. She took two rooms here in New York—fed up with Boston. The big salon she made into a bedroom; at the foot of her bed she tied this great bouquet of balloons. She had the most beautiful nightgowns. They were white handkerchief linen with black lace and then pink satin ribbon threaded through. She was lying in bed with one of her beautiful nightgowns, and for the first time I saw something embroidered right over her left bazoom: a little black bell. And I said, “Oh, Baby Belle, I've never seen that.”

“Oh, everything I own has my baby bell on it.”

So that was the day of the wedding. I had on the
most
beautiful dress, which I'm sure I still have somewhere—I should give it to the Museum. The bride of this period was the most vulgar bouffant creature, but
my
dress had a very strict line and a very high
neckline—very
moyen âge
. There was lace strapped around my head and face, and the train was all
diamanté
and encrusted with pearls….