D.V. (6 page)

One night we heard drums. They were to announce that Denys Finch Hatton had died. He was one of the original Great White Hunters. He was a great friend of my mother and of everyone of her generation, and, most important, he was the lover of Isak Dinesen. She was a great friend of mine. Whenever she came to America, she'd come to see me. Every Saturday afternoon she came for tea. Tea was always combined with an early dinner, and she always wanted the same menu. A bottle of champagne. A bunch of grapes. And twelve oysters on the half-shell. She was tortured with illness and operations, but she always got where she wanted to go. She had been dying for twenty years of syphilis.

One snowy Saturday afternoon, the bell rang. I went to answer the door, and there she was standing like a woodsman with a big bunch of bright scarlet gladiolas slung on her shoulder—in the middle of winter, with snow up to your hip. Roaring with laughter, she said, “I brought you some red flowers for a red room,” and she threw them at me as if to say, “Good God, I'm glad to get rid of these!”

I was always fascinated by the absurdities and the luxuries and the snobbism of the world that the fashion magazines showed. Of course, it's not for everyone. Very few people had ever breathed the pantry air of a house of a woman who wore the kind of dress
Vogue
used to show when I was young. But I lived in that world, not only during my years in the magazine business but for years before, because I was always
of
that world—at least in my imagination.

Condé Nast was a very extraordinary man, of
such
a standard. He had a vision. He decided to raise the commercial standards of the American woman. Why, he decided, shouldn't they have the best-looking clothes? He gave them
Vogue
. The best-looking houses?
House & Garden
. And don't forget
Vanity Fair
! Why, Condé decided, shouldn't American women know about writers, entertainers, painters—that Picasso was painting extraordinary paintings, that a man named Proust was writing an extraordinary book? Why shouldn't they know…about
Josephine Baker
?

I
knew about Josephine Baker. I'd seen her in Harlem. I was never out of Harlem in the early twenties. The
music
was so great, and Josephine was simply the only girl you saw in the chorus line. Her
eyes
were the softest brown velvet, loving, caressing, em
bracing—all you could feel was something good coming from her. But her eyes were full of laughter, too. She had that
…thing—
that's all.

One night I was invited to a Condé Nast party. Everybody who was invited to a Condé Nast party stood for something. He was the man who created the kind of social world that was then called Café Society: a carefully chosen mélange—no such thing as an overcrowded room, mind you—mingling people who up to that time would never have been seen at the same social gathering. Condé picked his guests for their talent, whatever it was—literature, the theatre,
big
business. Sharp, chic society. Why was I asked? I was young, well dressed, and could dance.

This was the Night of the Three Bakers. First, there walked into Condé's party Mrs. George Baker, the wife of the great banker, who was the best-dressed, most attractive woman in New York and a great hostess.
Then…
we had
Edythe
Baker, who was the cutest thing in town. She came from Missouri, was rather small, and had an absolutely sublime gift for the piano. In the Cochran Revue in London she had played a huge piano which seemed literally the length of the entire stage. At the keyboard was this little doll, her fingers running up and down as she played and sang “The Birth of the Blues.” That was Edythe.

Then
, into our midst walked
…Josephine
Baker. Now
that
was historic: we have a
black
in the house. Her hair had been done by Antoine, the famous hairdresser of Paris, like a Greek boy's—these small, flat curls against her skull—and she was wearing a white Vionnet dress, cut on the bias with four points, like a handkerchief. It had no opening, no closing—you just put it over your head and it came to you and moved with the ease and the fluidity of the body. And did Josephine
move
! These
long
black legs, these
long
black arms, this
long
black throat…and pressed into her flat black curls were white silk butterflies. She had the chic of Gay Paree.

I was so thrilled to be asked. There was no living with me for days. The Night of the Three Bakers!

One night in Paris, after I was married, a friend and I went to a little theatre above Montmartre to see a German movie called
L'Atlantide
, with a wonderful actress in it called Brigitte Helm, who played the Queen of the Lost Continent. It was the middle of July. It was
hot
. The only seats in the theatre were in the third balcony, under the rafters, where it was even
hotter
. There were four seats in a row, and we took two.

We sat there, the movie started…and I became
totally
intoxicated by it. I was mesmerized! I have no idea if I actually saw the movie I thought I was seeing, but I was absorbed by these three lost Foreign Legion soldiers with their camels, their woes…they're so
tired
, they're delirious with dehydration…. And then you see the fata morgana. That means if you desire a woman, you see a woman, if you desire water, you see water—everything you dream, you see. But you never reach it. It's all an illusion.

Then…a sign of an oasis! There's a palm…and more palms. Then they're
in
the oasis, where they see Brigitte Helm, this
divine
-looking woman seated on a throne
—surrounded by cheetahs
! The cheetahs bask in the sun. She fixes her eyes on the soldiers. One of them approaches her. She gives him a glass of champagne and he drinks it. Then she takes the glass from him, breaks it, cuts his
throat
with it….

And et cetera.

This goes on and on. I hadn't moved an inch. At some point I moved my hand…to here…where it stayed for the rest of the movie. I was spellbound because the mood was so
sustained
. I was simply sucked in,
seduced
by this thing of the desert,
seduced
by the Queen of the Lost Continent, the wickedest woman who ever lived…and her cheetahs! The essence of movie-ism.

Then…
the lights went on, and I felt a slight movement under my hand. I looked down—and it was a
cheetah
! And beside the cheetah was Josephine
Baker
!

“Oh,” I said, “you've brought your cheetah to see the cheetahs!”

“Yes,” she said, “that's exactly what I did.”

She was alone with the cheetah on a lead. She was so beautifully dressed. She was wearing a marvelous little short black skirt and
a little Vionnet shirt—no sleeves, no back, no front, just crossed bars on the bias. Dont forget how hot it was, and of course the great thing was to get
out
of this theatre we were in. The cheetah, naturally, took the lead, and Josephine, with those
long
black legs, was
dragged
down three flights of stairs as fast as she could go, and that's
fast
.

Out in the street there was an enormous white-and-silver Rolls-Royce waiting for her. The driver opened the door; she let go of the lead; the cheetah
whooped
, took
one
leap into the back of the Rolls, with Josephine right behind; the door closed…and they were off!

Ah! What a gesture! I've never seen anything like it. It was speed at its best, and style. Style was a great thing in those days.

If I may say so, at least to you, I sometimes think there's something
wrong
with white people. We're in the
wrong
place at the
wrong
time. Blacks are almost the only people I can stand to look at nowadays.

I love to see the black schoolchildren who come into the Museum, marching in a neat little row, wearing immaculate cardigan sweaters their mothers have knitted for them.

The young black girls I see in New York today are the most attractive girls—from top to toe! Their hands are the most beautiful things on
earth—
they always have been. But these girls'
legs
are so extraordinary! They used to stand with their behinds out. You know the walk—they'd sort of sink into their stomachs and then stick out their behinds. But these girls today haven't got a
trace
of it. They stand
tall
, and when they
stride…
they're like a race of gazelles! They're strong. They've got the
strength
.

The world will go to lines of color—there's no question about it. It won't be just the Africans and it won't be just the Arabs and it won't be just the Chinese—it will be every part of the world that has any streak of color other than white. The Western world will go. It won't happen in my lifetime, and it may not happen in the next
five hundred years, but it will happen. The West is
boring
itself to death! And talking itself to death!

I'm so aware of this change every time I go to Paris and stay at the Crillon. In the sixties when I was covering the collections for
Vogue
, I arrived one evening at the Crillon and the whole of Chad was there. They were
totally
biblical in their tiny caps and their long silver and gold robes to the ground.

Then, the next time, a few years later, I arrived at the Crillon and there was the whole of Africa—but I mean the
whole
of Africa. We had the entourages of about forty countries. They all spoke French and English. The men all wore beautifully cut French suits and French cuffs, and their manners were marvelous.

And the
women
at night! They were too attractive. They all looked like goddesses of the Nile. There's something ancient and marvelous and wonderful about their beautiful gold rings and their beautiful features and their wonderful soft skin. They've got
presence
.

Then…the next day, we got the big brass from the Third World—five presidents and one
emperor
! It was fantastico! The robes! The jewels! The security men! The security at the Crillon has always been something fantastic because there are always potentates staying there. I love security men—I just
adore
them. They're hardly there for me, but when I get out of the lift and twenty men stand up, it makes me feel so
safe
.

When the Africans left, there was a quiet around the place that was almost uncanny.
Then…
after two days, we got
les arabes
! My
God
, they were the most gorgeous things—all guests of the President of France. You have no idea how beautifully dressed
they
were. And they were so
clean
. It was the cleanest display of white robes I've ever seen. And under the robes they all wore these wonderful little sashes of scarlet and violet. They're young, they're narrow, they're beautifully boned, with wonderful strong noses and beautifully kept beards. And the way they
walk…
! They're
quelqu'uns
, no question.

Then…
that night,
they
were all wearing djellabas! They had on
brown
ones—hundreds of them! Well, not really djellabas…and not really caftans…they're sort of an overcoat—these were in
thin brown wool piped in gold…. I don't know exactly what they are called, but I do know they all had them and
I
want one. I might write a little sort of fan letter to say that all my life I've wanted one in brown. I've got to get a message through.

Ah! What men! They're great gentlemen. They just look straight ahead—they never notice you. Of course, they're rich
—terribly
. And never a woman in sight! Oh, how I'd like to be a concubine kept hidden away in the desert somewhere with
nothing
to think about….

You may notice I'm talking about the blacks and
les arabes
interchangeably now. One day, while the Russian show was on at the Metropolitan Museum, my friend Whitney Warren from San Francisco called and asked if he could bring his friends the Romanovs from San Francisco to see it. So he arrived with his friends—charming, adorable people—and they went
straight
to the blackamoor that we had in the show. They stood in front of this beautiful,
enormous
mannequin, absolutely
mesmerized. “Madame
,” they said—speaking French, like all Russian émigrés—“
c'est un arabe
! Oh, how we loved our
arabes
!”

Of course, this blackamoor was about as Arabic as
I
am…. But this is a very Russian thing. Remember that blacks played a very important part in the early ballets of Diaghilev, and remember that wonderful book of Pushkin's,
The Emperor's Negro
. Pushkin's grandmother, as you know, was black. Beside every door in all the royal palaces stood a real blackamoor, gigantic, beloved by all the household, there to open and close the doors and keep out the appalling cold.

They have been commemorated in jewelry, in Russia, Venice, very eighteenth and nineteenth century.

Have I ever showed you my little blackamoor heads from Cartier with their enameled turbans? Baba Lucinge and I used to wear them in rows and
rows…
they were the
chic
of Paris in the late thirties. When I moved to New York, I made arrangements for the Paris Cartier to sell them to the New York Cartier, and all I can tell you is that the
race
across the ocean—this was by boat, don't forget—was something so
fierce
. The Cartier ones were quite expen
sive, but then Saks brought out a copy of them that sold for something like, in those days, thirty dollars apiece, and it was impossible to tell them apart. So I bought the copies and wore them with the real ones, like decorations—I was
covered
in blackamoors!

I'm told it's not in good taste to wear blackamoors anymore, but I think I'll revive them. Why not? I think those blacks I see around town today would get a kick out of it
…knowing
they're the most beautiful things alive. My escorts say, “What are you looking to do? What are you trying to prove?” But I think the blacks would be jolly amused. They've got sense.