Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

Arthur Capel and Etienne were already acquainted, but this was apparently the first time Arthur and Gabrielle had met. The Englishman was a noted horseman. His manner was seductively nonchalant; he spoke fluent French and possessed an engaging wit. This didn’t, though, entirely mask his sense of purpose. In Arthur Capel’s eyes there was a hint of something steely, reflecting the difference Gabrielle would recognize between this man and Etienne’s other friends. Instead of spending his inheritance, Arthur chose to work for his living. His dark good looks were enhanced by an air of inscrutability, and women found him irresistible. Gabrielle, too, was fascinated. Arthur was soon visiting Etienne’s château.

Gabrielle’s conversations with Etienne about setting up a hat shop had so far come to naught. Living with one’s mistress was unconventional enough for an upper-class man in 1908, but for her to work was verging on the scandalous; it would signal that he didn’t have the finances to support her. Gabrielle remonstrated with herself that she must do something, asking herself, “Otherwise what will become of you?” She said later, “The proud know only one supreme good: freedom!” 2

Her efforts at persuasion at last bore fruit. Unwilling as Etienne was to finance a shop, why didn’t she try out her idea from the garçonnière (bachelor apartment) he shared with his brother? Ironically, many an ex-demimondaine before her had followed Gabrielle’s chosen occupation, and she now quietly launched herself as a milliner at her lover’s Parisian apartment at 160 boulevard Malesherbes.

Arthur Capel’s apartment, then also on boulevard Malesherbes, was close to Etienne’s garçonnière , and he often dropped by to see the “abandoned little sparrow,” as he and Etienne called Gabrielle. If Etienne’s support for Gabrielle’s venture was rather halfhearted, Arthur’s interest was balm to her ruffled sensibilities. Indeed, he gave her the most enthusiastic encouragement she had so far received, and sent along his women friends to look at Gabrielle’s hats. So did Etienne’s friends. There was no doubt Gabrielle had talent. Arthur’s visits became more frequent. While showing due consideration for his friend Etienne, in the most amicable way Arthur gradually made his intentions clear regarding Gabrielle.

It was probably at this point that Etienne proposed to her for the second time. It seems that Gabrielle may for a while have played a more worldly, more courtesanlike part than she would ever admit to in the future, and shared her favors. Now, leaving Royallieu, she was put up by Arthur at the Ritz. While officially Etienne’s mistress, she had several admirers. Miguel de Yturbe, Léon de Laborde and Arthur Capel were young men at the heart of Parisian society, and all were on hand to court her.

Yet while Gabrielle may have had the looks, the wit, the character and intelligence, as well as the necessary hardheadedness to become a fully fledged courtesan, she refused to foster some of those qualities that led, first, to a courtesan’s success, and then to her survival. Besides, Gabrielle’s insecure beginnings had left her too preoccupied with her future. Without quite knowing it, she had also caught the scent of change upon the air. She wanted influence, but she wanted it via a route that wasn’t dependent upon her willingness to act the courtesan part of a possession. In other words, although she may have been making herself available to more than one lover, ultimately, Gabrielle wanted independence and didn’t see the role of professional lover as her way to secure it.

Notwithstanding this reluctance, one notices how the trajectory of her life has a number of parallels with the lives of the most stellar demimondaines . First, she had imbibed from them the notion of continual inventiveness, and then, just as their inventiveness was translated into fashion, so Gabrielle would discover in herself their ability to remain just one step ahead of it. Balzac, in his brilliant description of the courtesan Valérie Marneffe, called these steps “the supreme efforts, the Austerlitzes of coquetry or love,” which are then transformed into what is “fashionable in lower spheres, just when their happy creators are looking round for new ideas.” 3We will see how, once Gabrielle had made something new, she was at once impatient to move on. And in this way, she would perfect the courtesan’s sometime role, indeed would make it her vocation. She would show first society women and then the rest how it was they should look for the new century.

We don’t know when one or two amorous encounters with Arthur Capel developed into a full-blown affair. But sometime around 1909, Gabrielle told Etienne that her “entanglement” with Arthur was becoming serious. Etienne was overcome, and set sail for Argentina. Gabrielle would say that he had been “packed off… by his family.” 4She also hinted that on his return from the New World, nothing had been resolved, and her relationship with her two lovers became ever more fraught and confused. While Gabrielle ensured that the details of this triangular relationship would be lost, it appears that as far as Etienne was concerned, a dalliance with another man was acceptable, but the basic commitment was clear: Gabrielle was his. Arthur’s interest in Gabrielle also reminded Etienne how much he wanted her. Whatever the games Gabrielle might have played, and the discord this provoked, there was never really much doubt: whatever previous liaisons she might have hidden from us, once Arthur had made his feelings clear, this particular young woman was his.

While Gabrielle frequently obscured her past with invention, in this case her claim that she and Etienne were never in love with each other may have been a salve for her conscience. What she meant here was that she was never in love with Etienne. The story has it that her passing from him to Arthur was, in the end, amicable. Etienne’s family, meanwhile, remembered him describing Arthur at the time as “an adventurer”—contemporary slang for “lousy foreigner.” But whatever Etienne’s thoughts, his defenses were to no avail; his friend Arthur Capel had carried off his mistress.

This mistress now found herself in a state of mind to which she was quite unaccustomed: she was content. We can only guess at what she may have revealed to Arthur about her origins and her miserable early life, but it did nothing to deter him. He wanted Gabrielle. And sharing his apartment just off the Champs-Elysées, for the first time in her life Gabrielle basked in being loved; she felt cherished and encouraged. 5As we sa wearlier, Arthur was to act as the inspiration for the transformation of her life. But Gabrielle’s path would not be an easy one, and personal misfortune would dog her along the way.

The year 1910 was to be momentous for her; it included the sudden death of her eldest sister. As Gabrielle’s first childhood companion, Julia-Berthe was linked with her inescapably, and on hearing of her death, Gabrielle collapsed. The cause of her sister’s death was said to be tuberculosis, but it now appears this was a fabrication. At the time, Gabrielle apparently demanded to know the truth and was secretly told that Julia-Berthe had in fact committed suicide. 6The macabre family story had it that she rolled herself back and forth, back and forth, in snow and ice until she lost consciousness and was eventually found frozen to death.

This seems impossible; she died in early May. But either the winter ended very late that year or there was something particularly grim about the way Julia-Berthe killed herself. Such a story is otherwise unlikely to have been “remembered.” Years later, Gabrielle herself would tell a friend 7that her sister had fallen in love with an officer who had quickly abandoned her. Gabrielle said she was struck by her sister’s despair and had wanted to meet this man. On discovering him, she had “fallen in love”; no doubt this is code for an affair. When her sister found out, she was driven to commit suicide. If this was true, was Gabrielle not only mourning her sister but feeling implicated too?