Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [137]
Several of Bend’Or’s friends had villas on the French Riviera, now a most fashionable place, in which not only the French but also wealthy British and Americans were beginning to take their holidays. Monte Carlo was also the site of one of Gabrielle’s new salons. The second Westminster-Chanel house was to be La Pausa. At the top of a small village called Roquebrune, it was on a site with magnificent views down over Menton and the Italian border on one side and the bay and Monaco on the other. Behind the site, the foothills of the Alps can be seen in the distance. Gabrielle bought the five-acre grove of ancient olive trees in which there were already three buildings, and these became a main house and two smaller villas for guests. Gabrielle’s friend Comte Jean de Segonzac had had his own villa nearby restored by a young local architect, Robert Streitz.
Streitz was duly invited to meet Gabrielle and Bend’Or at a drinks party on board the Flying Cloud, moored off Cannes; they were there to attend the preview of an exhibition by Gabrielle’s friend Picabia. Streitz swiftly drew up a magnificent plan, which Gabrielle immediately accepted. This involved demolishing the present house and starting over again. It also involved Gabrielle’s revealing to the architect a crucial aspect of her past. She wanted a great central stone staircase just like the one at the convent of Aubazine, worn in the middle from centuries of tramping feet, and Streitz was sent to look at it. There he met the mother superior, who said she remembered Gabrielle.
From the beginning, Gabrielle was thoroughly involved, coming down from Paris on the Train Bleu at least once a month to scrutinize La Pausa’s progress. She was a testing client, discussing every single detail, from the precise color of the plaster to insisting on the old handmade roof tiles, of which twenty thousand were required. The materials for the rest of the house were all new and costly, but Gabrielle was determined that La Pausa should give the impression of maturity, of having been there for a long time; this included the carpenter “aging” his carefully made shutters. Gabrielle signed Streitz’s plans, “the only signature between us. We never had a contract or any kind of correspondence. For me Mademoiselle’s word was as good as gold. Nine months after the completion of La Pausa every bill had been paid on the nail.”12
When the house was finished, three wings each faced inward toward a beautifully shaded courtyard, onto which opened graceful Roman-style vaulting. La Pausa was a classic Mediterranean villa functioning as a modern house. Large fireplaces were built into the rooms—Gabrielle disliked central heating—and eighteenth-century English oak was used for floors and paneling. Under Bend’Or’s influence, much of the furniture was from England. Before the costly interior fittings, decoration and exterior landscaping—highly original at the time, with lavender, masses of purple iris and lawns starred with crocus and hyacinth—the building costs were six million francs, four times the initial purchase. Everything was done as the duke had instructed, “with the best materials and under the best working conditions.” Which of the two bore the costs for it all is not clear, but the signature of ownership is in Gabrielle’s hand, and dated February 9, 1929. La Pausa’s beauty was to establish the architect’s name, and he would always feel it had brought him luck.
Over the years, La Pausa was to gain a reputation with Gabrielle’s friends as a remarkable place. The perceptive future American Vogue editor in Paris, Bettina Ballard, who came to know Gabrielle well in the thirties, would say that it was “the most comfortable, relaxing place I have ever stayed in,” and indeed the building’s design, combined with Gabrielle