Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

One day, Gabrielle and Misia received a telegram onboard the Cutty Sark from Diaghilev’s assistant, Boris Kochno, in Venice: Diaghilev was very ill; they must come at once. Gabrielle had Bend’Or sail the ship to Venice, and the two women went in search of their friend Diaghilev. There, in the Hôtel des Bains on the Lido, with sunlight shimmering off that endlessly lapping water, the beautiful young Boris Kochno and Serge Lifar, each at various times Diaghilev’s lover, were beside him: he was dying. The diabetes that Diaghilev had refused to attend to with any discipline was in its final stage. As his temperature rose steadily, he passed in and out of consciousness. He was moved when he saw that Misia and Gabrielle had arrived. His temperature reduced, he grew more cheerful, talked of plans, of new trips. Two nights later, there was a call to the women’s hotel and they rushed to his bedside. In the early dawn, just before the sun rose again on that watery paradise he had loved so much, the great Sergei Diaghilev quietly died.

As so often before, there apparently weren’t enough funds in the Ballets Russes coffers, and it was Gabrielle who paid for her friend for the last time: she saw to all the details of his funeral. As the small procession left the hotel in the early hours of the following morning — so as not to upset the tourists — it is said that Kochno and Lifar fell to their knees, and began to walk like that. Gabrielle was heard to say curtly under her breath, “Get up!” and they immediately obeyed. When the white gondola had “ferried the magician’s mortal remains” to San Michele, that lonely Venetian island of the dead, and the mourners watched as the coffin was lowered into its grave, they had to restrain Lifar, who tried to fling himself in after it.

Forty-two years later, Igor Stravinsky, arguably the twentieth century’s greatest composer, died in New York. His request to be buried near Diaghilev was duly honored.

Gabrielle’s disillusion at Bend’Or’s philandering had sent her back to spend more time with her own friends. Concerned for Misia, she also had a room made permanently available for her at the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Cocteau had already been there under Gabrielle’s wing for some time, with his new lover, the writer Jean Desbordes.

Cocteau’s mother had told Abbé Mugnier that Jean was “living at Mademoiselle Chanel’s, in the gardens of the avenue Gabriele.” Abbé Mugnier wrote:

After having accompanied the Princess Bibesco here and there… went to Mlle Chanel who was expecting us. The Serts, Jean Cocteau, a young English woman [Vera Bate], who works with Coco Chanel, were there… In Mlle Chanel’s garden… a vast fountain unfolds… back in the salon, heard Wagner on the gramophone, chatted with various people. I thought Mlle Chanel had a more charming face. Very kind by the way. 17

Gabrielle’s socializing was not only for friendship’s sake. Maintaining her image in the face of society, often secretly awaiting her downfall, she gave particularly sumptuous entertainments and was much seen abroad. Not long before Diaghilev’s death, she celebrated a Ballets Russes performance with Misia, Diaghilev and their entourage, the artists Picasso, Cocteau and Rouault, and the composers Stravinsky and Prokofiev. She gave another of her magnificent balls to celebrate the end of another Ballets Russes season. The Hôtel de Lauzan was awash with the best champagne, caviar spilled from soup tureens, the gardens were lit by lanterns, a black jazz band offered up the most fashionable contemporary music. Serge Lifar, now the Ballets Russes’s principal dancer, and who would in time describe Gabrielle as his “godmother,” recalled the evening:

We drank rivers of champagne and vodka… Coco drank as much as anyone else. As always she flirted with the men. She was very kittenish, even purring, pretending she was completely captivated, when suddenly pfft! Nobody there! She was like a little Cinderella. She disappeared around two in the morning, so as not to miss her beauty sleep. She allowed men to think that everything was possible. 18

In 1929, Henri Bernstein would record the sense of grandeur at her parties “in the white violence of the multitude of peonies — subtle, gay, moving parties which made several people envious (all those who could not be invited in spite of the dimensions of the beautiful lounges of the Faubourg St.-Honoré).” 19

By February of 1930, Bend’Or had found himself a new wife, Loelia Ponsonby, one of the “Bright Young Things” and daughter of the first Lord Sysonby. Bend’Or had brought Loelia to Paris for an excruciating session, in which she met her future husband’s ex-lover. Understandably, Loelia found Gabrielle unsympathetic, describing her as “small, dark and simian… She was hung with every sort of necklace and bracelet, which rattled as she moved… I perched, rather at a disadvantage, at her feet, feeling that I was being looked over to see if I was a suitable bride… I very much doubted whether I or my tweed suit passed the test.” 20

Meanwhile, Loelia’s forthright cousin Lady Ponsonby was unimpressed by both Loelia and her new husband, and also by the growing idea of celebrity. Writing of the wedding party at Saint James’s Palace, she said that although the Duke

as a Rake may be, attractive & having style… his large flabby face mottled with dissipation… made me wonder… Apparently outside the registry office was the largest crowd ever seen at a wedding… To arouse real enthusiasm you must be either very rich or very immoral—& if you are very rich, very immoral and a Duke — most people now go off their heads. 21

Sixteen years later, Gabrielle would say of her life with Bend’Or that she had grown tired of “that squalid boredom that idleness and riches bring about.” Despite Gabrielle’s wealth, idleness was never to be her problem; she never ceased working with great purpose, which was to secure herself, and others, in the modern world in which they found themselves. Thus she would say of Westminster’s life, “You have to wonder whether… this absurd fairyland… is not a bad dream.” 22

I had satisfied a great core of lethargy that hides beneath my anxiety, and the experiment was finished… Fishing for salmon is not life. Any kind of poverty, rather than that kind of wretchedness. The holidays were over. It had cost me a fortune; I had neglected my house, deserted my business, and showered gifts on hundreds of servants.

Yet Bend’Or told Gabrielle he wouldn’t be able to accustom himself to living without her. Gabrielle knew that this was because her willingness to say no to him impressed him. “It was a shock for him; it threw him off balance.” 23

As the duke’s lover and his equal in many ways, for several years Gabrielle shared the life of a man a good many regarded as nothing more than a selfish playboy. Gabrielle did believe that once she was gone, Westminster permitted some of the rich man’s parasites to encircle him again. But a devoted employee and friend would write of him:

He was in charge of the greatest landed fortune in the country for fifty-four years, from the reign of Queen Victoria to that of Elizabeth II, from an aristocratic to an egalitarian, if not socialist, society. Whatever his services to his country in war, his personal qualities and defects, he should be judged by his success or failure discharging the responsibilities brought by his wealth. 24

And after ceasing to be his lover, Gabrielle would say of him, “We have remained friends. I loved him, or thought I loved him, which amounts to the same thing.” 25

While Westminster was married to Loelia Ponsonby for seventeen years, they had separated long before they were finally divorced. In Westminster’s fourth wife, Anne Sullivan, he would at last find a woman who was willing to appreciate his qualities and negotiate his foibles, and with whom would he spend six good years before his death, in 1953.