Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

Europe appeared as if it was moving toward ever more frenzied escape, and the voices of protest were drowned out by those intent on experiencing, at all costs, every possible personal “adventure.” In the vanguard, Paris had the first black jazz musicians; it was in Paris that the blues first became the rage; impromptu parties and clubs were the vogue, and revelers energetically flung themselves into narcotic euphoria and the ecstasy of vigorous dancing until they could barely stand up. And at the heart of Paris was the shimmering Coco Chanel. Georges Auric, of Les Six, recalled that “of course she led a luxurious life, the kind it is difficult to imagine today. There was nothing but the best with her. She received a great deal and lavishly, and went out much, too. She liked to surround herself with brilliant people.” 22Maurice Sachs described her as “holding court and open table and dispensing privileges and pensions”—“the pensions of the Grande Mademoiselle,” the publisher Bernard Grasset called them. Sachs would write that “the pulse of the world was beating perceptibly in Paris,” and add that Gabrielle was close to its center.

Yet while Gabrielle now lived on a grand scale, she was about to meet someone who lived on one almost unimaginably more so.

In the summer of 1924, Gabrielle had been holidaying in southern France with Dmitri Pavlovich, her impoverished on-off lover of the past three years. (Like several others, the painter Marie Laurencin was convinced that she had secretly married him.) Meanwhile, the Duke of Westminster, known as Bend’Or, possibly the richest man in England, had recently separated from his wife.

Gabrielle’s social prestige was now unquestioned. She was assiduously promoted in both the fashion press and the society pages; she was interviewed and photographed for Harper’s Bazaar by the all-powerful society photographer Baron Aldolphe de Meyer. Meyer had married Olga Caracciolo, reputedly the illegitimate daughter of King Edward VII. Despite Meyer’s Jewish heritage, his wife’s connections and his own artistry and social finesse had enabled him to move into society. In London, he and Olga hosted one of the city’s most powerful salons. (The Meyers’ union, a long and happy one, was a mariage blanc; each of them preferred partners of their own sex. One of Olga’s most famous affairs was with the music patroness Winnaretta Singer.) Meyer’s article on Gabrielle was titled “Mlle Chanel tells Baron de Meyer her Opinions on Good Taste.”

Meanwhile, the American magazine Women’s Wear Daily reported that “the Prince of Wales terminated a delightfully informal visit to Paris by lunching quietly with some friends… at the Ritz… In his party was Mrs. Vera Bate, who is… well known in English hunting circles. She was wearing one of Chanel’s attractive [knitted] coats in a length that came halfway to the knee.” It was possibly Vera Bate’s great friend Comte Léon de Laborde, Gabrielle’s admirer from Royallieu days, who introduced Vera Bate and Gabrielle. (The English woman’s origins were mysterious. It was rumored she was the illegitimate daughter of the German Duke of Teck, who had renounced his German titles during the war and been given an English one, Earl of Athlone.)

Vera Bate’s connection to royalty apparently explained her easy familiarity with members of the set around the raffish Prince of Wales. Vera was repeatedly described as having a “great appetite for life,” which she coupled with a keen sense of dress. She also appears to have been regularly short of cash. Thus, in a newly discovered list of employees at Chanel at rue Cambon, we find that Vera Bate had been employed by Gabrielle in the “advertising department” since 1921; her social contacts made her invaluable for Chanel public relations. Her hasty marriage to Frederick Bate, at the end of the war, had resulted in a baby girl and a divorce not long afterward. Whatever Vera’s true background, she moved in some of the most fashionable circles in England. Wearing clothes as well as she did, she was given the run of Gabrielle’s salon. Dressed only in Chanel, she was an important ambassador for Gabrielle with the British. Among Vera’s friends she included Winston Churchill, and Churchill’s great friend the Duke of Westminster.

Gabrielle had invited Vera to stay with her at the Hôtel de Paris, in Monte Carlo, for the Christmas — New Year holiday. The Duke of Westminster’s vast yacht Flying Cloud was moored in the harbor, and he had begged Vera to persuade Gabrielle to join him for supper on board. Apparently, Gabrielle was reluctant, but after considerable persuasion from Vera, she agreed. Then Dmitri Pavlovich telegrammed, announcing his arrival in Monte Carlo, and Gabrielle promptly canceled her dinner engagement with Westminster. Dmitri said that he would rather like to see the famous yacht, so Bend’Or telephoned and asked the young Russian duke to come along too. Gabrielle told Dmitri this wasn’t right: “Fate shouldn’t be forced.” But the evening aboard ship went well, and the conversation flowed. They all went ashore after supper to dance and play at the casino. In years to come, Cocteau would say of Bend’Or, “I saw him put down stakes on every table, where he would have forgotten them were it not for the respectful fear croupiers feel toward dukes and billionaires.” 1

Bend’Or asked to see Gabrielle again. Again she hesitated. Her hotel suite was then swamped with flowers, which continued arriving on her return to Paris. A stream of letters, orchids and baskets of fruit was delivered all the way from Bend’Or’s home in England, Eaton Hall, in Cheshire. Salmon caught by his own hand arrived in Paris by plane. The duke was in Paris at Easter, apparently to accompany his friend the Prince of Wales. He enlisted Vera Bate and the prince to help him charm Gabrielle, and then he personally delivered a huge bouquet of flowers to her at the Hôtel de Lauzan. Finally she weakened and accepted an invitation to another dinner aboard ship, this time for a hundred guests in the harbor at Bayonne, near Biarritz. As the evening ended and the guests all left, Bend’Or performed one of his habitual tricks: he had his crew weigh anchor and set sail along the coast. His incredible persistence and particular brand of romance had finally paid off. He had won over Gabrielle.

A friend’s commentary on this relationship is interesting, but how accurate it is we don’t know: “With Westminster Coco behaved like a little girl, timid and docile. She followed him everywhere. Her life was a fairy tale. Their love was not sensual.” Meanwhile, Gabrielle would say, “If I hadn’t met Westminster I’d have gone crazy. I had too much emotion, too much excitement. I lived out my novels but so badly! With too much intensity, always torn between this and that, between this man and that, with that business [the House of Chanel] on my back… I left for England in a daze.” 2

Although the undercurrents of change were already at work in England, after the First World War, life for a number of aristocrats appeared to go on as before. The Duke of Westminster was a man even richer than his monarch, and Eaton Hall, an enormous country house — he liked to describe it as “St Pancras station”—continued functioning along much the same lines it had in the previous century. With a huge number of staff, as late as 1931 there were still ten housemaids and thirty-eight gardeners, with other offices in the house retaining a similar quota of staff. In that year, 1924, Bend’Or’s second marriage, to Violet Rowley, had ended after only four years. While Violet was a woman of great personality and energy, she had failed to provide the male heir the duke so desperately wanted, and her “decided character made life difficult. It was a marriage that needed at least one emollient partner.” 3The duke’s first wife, Shelagh West, and her relations had spent years bleeding him of funds. This experience had gradually turned him from being a trusting and generous man into one very wary of being used.