D.V. (7 page)

I wore blackamoors the way Peggy Hopkins Joyce wore diamonds. She was a good-looking blonde—everyone's favorite golddigger in the twenties and thirties. My God, you've never seen such quantities of diamonds as Peggy Hopkins Joyce had! They were great, flat baguettes all the way. My God, she was racy and attractive! Naturally, like everybody who drinks too much champagne, she began to get chins—but she kept her figure pretty well. She genuinely liked the boys.

She was famous for getting money out of the men who went out with her. She'd have her car waiting—she wouldn't drive in
your
car. You'd leave the Ritz in her car, go right to her place for supper or something, and then, back at the Ritz, as you got out again, she'd look at you. “Now what are you going to do for George?” George was the chauffeur who was holding the door open. She knew whom she was dealing with; she wasn't taking this from the kids on the street. That's what she'd say. “What are you going to do for George?” Anything less than a hundred-dollar bill, forget it! At least seven or eight men told me that. Think what a hundred dollars was in
those
days!

George must have been somewhat different from the usual chauffeur. He was more like what we refer to these days as a “driver.” Today it's a privilege to have a driver. He looks after you. He's a
pretty good friend. He calls you by your first name, you call him by his. In those days, you dressed the chauffeur up—furs in winter, splendid caps—and you called him by his last name: Pollard, Perkins. Peggy didn't, but then she had her own ways and means.

What a generation that was! It was the martini era. In those days, people would get out of the car to see you home, and they'd weave around a bit and fall down on the sidewalk. You'd walk into your house, and they were out there on the sidewalk; and inevitably the chauffeur or the taxi driver would come after them. It was so appalling, the martini of the twenties. If I gave you some gin with a drop of vermouth that wouldn't cover the head of a pin, that would be the martini. The people who drank them were carried home, usually unconscious. I'm only talking about the two or three years when I was kind of on the loose before I got married. I've never seen so much drinking in my life. That's why it's never been remotely attractive to me, but I do understand drunks.

Then, of course, Prohibition came along. Insane idea. Try to keep me from taking a swallow of this tea, and I'll drink the whole pot. Roosevelt knew what to do: repeal. It's hard to believe now that Prohibition ever existed—it seems like a fairy tale.

In 1931, right in the middle of all this, I'd come back from England to New York for a few days without Reed. I fell in love with a place called the Abbaye, which was what used to be known as a “bottle club.” That meant you'd be admitted by someone looking at you through an eyehole in the door; you'd go down a long, very dark flight of stairs, bringing your own bottle, which would then be served to you in bouillon cups. People in those days drank bouillon by the
quart
.

It was after the Crash, but it was still a very opulent time in New York. None of the friends I went to the Abbaye with that night seemed to be affected by the Crash, and when I tell you who they were you'll understand why: Tommy Hitchcock—the greatest polo player of all time—and his charming wife, Peggy; Averell Harriman; Sonny Whitney and his divine wife, Marie—the polo group—and a few extra men. So we arrived…the richest, swellest
group—I'm talking about money-in-the-
bank
rich, not stockbrokers—and everyone was beautifully dressed for dinner. I was
nuts
about the Abbaye—the size of the room, which was very small, the music…and, of course, there was a certain element of
danger
because we were in a speakeasy, doing something that was against the law—which didn't
really
interest me, but you can't deny its appeal. It was chic and amusing, and I thought it was all very, very attractive. In there, in this one small room, were the best of all worlds and the worst—a delicious balance if you really like nightlife, as I always have.

So in the Abbaye we were drinking bouillon, bouillon, bouillon—there was no
end
to the bouillon. One of the extra men, a charming Irishman called Jim—I can't remember his last name—decided to get
good
and loaded. Don't think this wasn't attractive. He's since disappeared off the face of the earth, but he was always loaded and always
divine
. So that night he looked across the room and said, “Do you see what I see?”

What he saw was a girl with straight red hair to her shoulders, bangs in front, sloe eyes, a beautiful red dress. He crossed the room to ask her to dance. He was completely
gone
, but he could stand and walk and all that, so he kept talking to her because that's how you handled a pickup in those days. You kept at it even when she'd say, “Oh, that's so sweet of you, but, you see, I've just developed this terrible migraine….”

“Really, Jim,” I said, when he came back to the table to get himself resupplied, “you've got to contain yourself. Have you any idea who's sitting there with her?”

“What the hell do I care who's sitting with her?” he said. “That's the girl for
me
.”

So he went over to the table for the
second
time, and the man beside the girl stood up, and his
goons
stood up—and there were guns, guns,
guns
. It was Legs Diamond, and the girl was his famous moll, Kiki Roberts. Legs opened his coat. There on his chest were two guns in their holsters. He patted them. Beautiful timing. The elegance of the gesture! His friends all looked up. Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd…I can't remember who they all were. But I did
know
that
night. So did my friend. He came back very quietly and sat back down at the table and had himself another bouillon or so.

The next night we all went back to the Abbaye—this same little precious crowd of ours—and all the gangsters and the Mafia of the town were in there too, except this time no one from our table bothered them. We knew better. We were sitting there,
roaring
with laughter, having the time of our lives…it may have been half past two, it may have been half past three—at that time I'd stay out all night and never know
what
time it was—when suddenly all the lights went out. They came back on again…then out
—black
. Then on again…then
black
. Now we all knew that three blackouts meant—the cops! So all the flasks disappeared, the bouillon was gulped down, everything was suddenly terribly
comme il faut—
we were all there having a little dinner. There were three cops standing in the middle of the room. “Ladies and gentlemen,” one of the cops said, “there will be no checks issued—just go quietly. And when I say ‘quietly'”—all three cops had machine guns pulled—“I mean
quietly
.”

So we walked out…through the little dark hall, through the door to the sidewalk, out the front, over three men lying there on the stairs, bleeding to death. Apparently, they'd been shot by guns with silencers—we hadn't heard it. But there was no other way to walk out, carefully stepping over them to the street.

I can remember
exactly
what I had on that night—a white satin dress and white satin slippers. Of course, one always dressed in those days. You dressed if you went to Harlem, you dressed if you went to a bottle club. Well, to walk home with blood-spattered white satin slippers…I've never forgotten it—the Night of the Abbaye.

Of course, Prohibition was a time when there tended to be a
lot
of excitement. It was because you weren't allowed to drink that you drank anything you could get your hands on. People would go into the bathroom and drink Listerine! Anything that might have a
crrr
umb of alcohol. They were such attractive men. So many, many died of drink. They didn't last very long.

Reed and I spent most of Prohibition in London, but in the summer of 1928 we stayed at my father-in-law's house in Brewster,
New York. I was out on the lawn with my little tiny bambino Frecky. It was simply divine! Well, you know how you feel about your children. He was lying in the sun and he was the color of mahogany and very chatty. Always good humor, always adorable. And huge! He was eleven pounds and a half, just imagine, when he was born. I am sort of a case, you know. It was apparently in all the medical research because of my slight size. I had two children: Timmy was born in fourteen minutes, and Frecky was born in seven minutes. No before pains or anything, just born. Over! It's very handy. Apparently, my size didn't affect me one way or the other; I simply knew it was the only way.

Anyway, I was sitting there in the sun talking to my darling bambino, and this marvelous-looking man drew up in a car, got out, went straight to the house—I was out on the lawn—and took quite a big package and left it inside. Then he walked out and came by. He said, “Mrs. Vreeland?” And I said, “Yes?”

He wore the most beautiful clothes, marvelous tailoring, beautiful hat; those were the days when men wore fedoras. Brewster was very rustic in those days: we were on three dirt roads and all that. He said, “I'm——” whoever it is—Joe Palooka. “I'm your husband's bootlegger. Reed and I are great friends. I'm pleased to meet you. What a beautiful child you have”—blah, blah, blah. I was thinking: God, what beautiful clothes, Gee, these wops, they know how to put their tailors to work. He was very charming. I said, “Oh, sit down with me. You don't have to rush back to New York.”

So we sat there, and talked, and
guess what happened!
There was a faint droning noise overhead, and we looked up and Charles Lindbergh flies over us! En route to Paris! Charles Lindbergh. I always said to Frecky that it was a very lucky sort of sign. We had looked up and seen this plane. Of course, the sky wasn't filled with planes in those days. I said to Frecky, “Really, what a wonderful sort of hour: to be in the sunshine, to be totally happy, giggling and bubbling and carrying on like babies do, and I'm sitting there with your father's bootlegger, and
Lindbergh
flies over!”

You should really be talking to Joseph, my masseur. There's someone who knows the inside stuff. There's someone who's had a
life
. He was the masseur of Mistinguett, of Josephine Baker…listen, he lived at Buckingham Palace!

When Josephine Baker had a very bad accident doing splits at the Casino de Paris, tearing all the ligaments up to here, Joseph got permission from Queen Mary to cross the Channel three times a week, and he
melded
her ligaments back to where they belong. He's still the same today. He just happens to have healing power in his hands.

“Now, Joseph,” I'll say, “what did you do for Queen Mary?”

“Oh, madame,” he'll reply—speaking this heavy,
guttural
Alsatian French—“she opened every day sixteen bazaars—something terrible!”

“Oh,” I'll say, “well, then you just massaged her feet.”

“Oh no, madame! I did
everything
! I had to start…here.”

“And what did she wear?”

“Oh, madame…”

“Now, Joseph, what did she wear?”

“Nothing.”

“Now, Joseph, I don't believe you. Queen Mary never,
never
was massaged with nothing on.”

“Madame, I tell you—she wore
nothing
when she was massaged by me!”

I had these conversations with Joseph all the time.

But these are things you can't say. You can't say “My masseur told me this.” And then again, why can't you?

I
can
tell you what it was to be presented at court—that was
something
. It took hours and hours—before you even got there. So you took food and you took a flask. And you sat forever, because all the cars were held up in the Mall, with all of London looking in at you and saying “'Ere's to you, dearie!” and “Cheerio, duckie!” and all that divine Cockney stuff.

Then…you got there, and it was the most wonderful thing, I suppose, that there could be in the world to see. The ceremony is held in a
huge
square room, the throne room—I've always thought a square room is the most beautiful—and at the far end was a platform. On one side of the platform were the Scots in their tartans, their laces, their velvets, their daggers, their sporrans…you know, they're worn to keep the kilts down—otherwise they'd fly in the wind. They
do
fly in the wind, by the way. I can tell you. My sister and I had quite an upbringing in Scotland. When gentlemen bent over to stoke the peat fire…there wasn't much
we
didn't know about.

In any case, here were the Scots in all their regalia…and
here
were the two royals, King George V and Queen Mary, who were, I suppose, the most royal people in memory—nothing against the present Queen, but there was something about those two that was
total
, because they were Emperor and Empress of India, and the sun never set on English soil. And
there
, on the other side of the platform, were the
Indians
in all
their
regalia, with their sapphires, their pearls—their wealth in pearls was incredible—their emeralds, and their rubies. Brocades, tunics, pantaloons—though perhaps that's too Turkish a descriptive. In any case, it was luxury
in depth
.

Just beside the two thrones was a boy who must have been seventeen years old. I'd never seen him before. He was exactly the color of a gardenia. A gardenia isn't
quite
white. It's got a little cream in it. You can't say a white person has gardenia skin. But he did. And his eyes were
black
. He was dressed in an eighteenth-century coat of white brocade with pale blue, pink, green, and yellow flowers—to the knees—and tight white satin trousers. His head, which was bound in a turban, was absolutely beautiful and very wide for its smallness—it was a little face. This was the first time I ever saw Aly Khan.

But I only bring this up to tell you about a person who was standing even nearer to Their Majesties on the dais.

One night, a few years before this, Leo d'Erlanger had asked Reed and me to dine in what in those days was known as a “club.” Not a true men's club like White's or Boodle's. These “clubs” were practically brothels—not that that's what they were used for, but they were like brothels in that there was no visible exit or entrance. It was the kind of place where J. P. Morgan could dine luxuriously in total privacy. You'd go in a side door, and they were…discreet. Leo was dining with someone he wanted to do business with, and he asked us to come as a favor.

The man's name was Nubar Gulbenkian. He was the son of the financier who made a billion dollars or so in oil—Calouste Gulbenkian—Mr. Five Percent. Now I knew that his father had the greatest collection of Chinese art in the world and that, having collected the Orient, he was starting in on these fantastic European pictures the world now knows—like the Rubens of the woman with the black servant holding an umbrella over her head, and et cetera. Naturally, I was
spellbound
.

I can't say the son was very impressive, though there was nothing
wrong
with him. But for some reason he took quite a fancy to
me
. And from that time on, when he'd see me across every nightclub and across every lobby during every entr'acte at the opening of every play all over London, he made quite a stir about it.

“Ah! Diana!” he'd shout across the room, tearing up a napkin.

“
Really
, Diana,” my English friends would say in lowered voices, “the people that you pick up!”

“I didn't pick him up,” I'd say. “I was
introduced
.”

That was as far as he and I went. In later years he became very chic—he always had a green orchid in his buttonhole—but by this time he was well out of my life. It had been just a few small moments in theatres, in nightclubs…all the cheap stuff.

Let's get back to court. I've just made my curtsy to King George and Queen Mary. Now I happen to love curtsying. I was brought up British, don't forget. And also I like to extend my extremities. I was halfway down in the curtsy department, and then, of course, you have to get yourself
up
. If you live in London, you don't just make this little bob—you go
all the way
down and then all the way
up
. I was just coming up when suddenly my eye was
stretched
as I looked at one of the great royal jewels in the world. One would never forget it once one's seen it. It has a very extraordinary cut: it's almost mirror cut, that is to say flat, like a baguette. Of course, the great value in a diamond is its thickness. Well, I'm talking about something that was built like an egg and cut flat with the light, very sharp, just
pouring
out. I stared at it. I didn't think I could finish my curtsy.

Then I took in who was wearing it. He was wearing a huge black turban, a marvelous black djellaba…it was my friend Nubar Gulbenkian. I couldn't have been more surprised—this man who had shouted at me and “shamed” me in all those theatre lobbies standing there beside the
throne
. I don't know what startled me more—the man being where he was or the astonishing jewel he wore. Why
he
was wearing it I did not know.

Then
, a lord-in-waiting who was a great friend of Adele Astaire Cavendish's—a charming chap, all turned out for court in knee britches—came up to me and said, “Adele told me you were being presented tonight. May I take you into the diplomatic
buffet, where the lords- and ladies-in-waiting will be having their supper?”

I was
enchantée
, naturally.

So we went in. There was a light entertainment and these beautiful little sandwiches and the
bouillon…
I'll never forget it. And then, by God, this man Gulbenkian, who had
demeaned
me in every theatre lobby, in every nightclub, who had shouted across all those restaurants, walked right by me in front of all my swell friends and
cut me dead…
as if he'd never seen me before in his life—never! He passed me by like so much white trash.

Of course, this man was in so big with the court because he was the
biggest
and the
mostest
. He had oil and everything that the empire was doing business with, and that was why he was given this
fantastic
position on the dais at court. That probably accounts for the jewel, too!

“Listen,” I said to my English friends afterward, “you just don't know what your empire has to go through. King George and Queen Mary do. No flies on them! They know what's what!
This
is what makes the sun never set!”

As you can tell, I think of royalty as being a bit of all right.

Sorry to keep going on about Queen Mary, but I was crazy about her. I used to see her about three times a week in London because she loved these shops where I went. The old gent who owned one of the shops said, “There is a difference between you and Her Majesty the Queen, madam, if you don't mind my saying it. The difference is when you like something, you ask to buy it; but, you know, when Her Majesty comes in here, we lock up the best, because she expects everything for nothing.” It was really hit and run with her; she just grabbed.

One day during my London years, I was buying something—I think china—in Goode's on South Audley Street. Goode's is the best-run shop in the world. At one point a salesman said, “Excuse me, madam, but Her Majesty is coming through. Perhaps you might step back for just a minute.”

We were in a room of very cheap vases—glass vases. I don't know if you've ever been in Goode's, but it's made up of small rooms, so that you get lots of wall space for the stuff that they've got for sale. And so I stepped back.

She looked so queenly. This day she was in blue. Everything matched—including the pale blue fox to go with the pale blue tailleur and the pale blue kid laced boots. And the pale blue toque. I stepped back. And, my God! something on my coat or my sleeve—I had a big fur-lined tweed coat on—hit a glass vase, and each piece of glass on either side hit another piece of glass, and all this glass came shattering down. I was like a sort of crucifixion figure against the wall in the middle. It was…too
…horrible
! The Queen went by and looked at me as if to say, “Well, we
are
busy these days!” Yes, she went straight by without a comment, but she gave me very much of a smile. She probably thought I was a wonderful housekeeper, very busy with my little home.

She always wore matching clothes. The toque. You know the Queen Mary toque. Then the fox. Then the tailleur. Then the boots. All the same color: pale blue, pale lavender, sometimes cream color, sometimes white, pale green, pale rose. She only had one getup in each of those different colors.

So I said to my father, “Guess who I saw this afternoon—Queen Mary!” And I described her.

Father said, “Never could stand the
Tecks
! Bum lot!” Dismissed the whole family, who are German, you know, and went on to the next subject.

I thought she was wonderful. Simply wonderful! Had such a carriage. She must have been so tired—all those bazaars, you know, garden parties, and so forth. But I don't think it's so boring. You have everything you want; no one gets in your way; you get everything done, which is great; and you only do what you can, and you do a lot, and you
demand
a lot to do. I'd like to have been Elizabeth the First. She was
wonderful
. She surrounded herself with poets and writers, lived at Hampton Court, and drove that little team of spotted ponies
with long tails. Their manes and tails were dyed the same color as her hair—you know royalty
—red
! She ruled little England and dreamt of empire! She's at the top of my list. I loved the clothes. It took her four hours to dress—we had a lot in common! No, I wouldn't mind being a public servant: well paid, well housed, beautifully treated. No, not at all. Suit me down to the ground.