Word: beaton
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...keep you," said that great American philosopher Mae West. But it is the Eng lish who have a unique talent for scribbling to themselves. To the long list that includes Samuel Pepys, James Boswell and Virginia Woolf must now be added the name of Cecil Beaton, who died last month at 76. For half a century he roamed the halls of fashion and fame with a folding Kodak and an acidulous...
Recounting Jacqueline Kennedy's triumphant visit to Europe as First Lady, for example, Beaton cannot help adding a few words about her "big, boyish hands and feet" and "the suspicion of a mustache...
Winston Churchill is duly eulogized as Britain's savior; but Beaton also observes "his feminine hands with the pointed nails and ringers" and the cracks in his patent-leather shoes. He also records the great man's uncensored political comments. Speaking about the Nazi war criminals, then on trial in Nuremberg, Churchill was typically direct. "Bump 'em off," he growled, "but don't prolong the agony." Evelyn Waugh, an old enemy from school days, receives the worst treatment, and for a telling reason. "In our own way we were both snobs," Beaton admits, "and no snob...
Over the years Beaton was lucky enough-or adroit enough-to find himself in most of the right places at most of the right times. He was in Hollywood during its heyday in the '30s, and in the '40s he covered all the war fronts for the British propaganda office. In the '50s he astonished the fashion world with his magnificent costumes for My Fair Lady and Gigi, and by the '60s he had fully established himself as a waspish, infallible arbiter elegantiae, the Petronius of Britain's comfortably padded decline...
...volumes of Beaton's diaries preceded this abridged collection, but in this case less truly is more. The dull passages have been excised, and only the best remain, glittering stories about glittering people. Cocteau and Colette, Coward and Capote, Garbo and De Gaulle. Advising the young Beaton about clothes, Noel Coward, for instance, sounds like one of his own characters. "One would like to indulge one's own taste," he says. "[But] I take ruthless stock of myself in the mirror before going out. A polo jumper or unfortunate tie exposes one to danger...