Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [138]
In her own home she wanted to be left alone unless she wanted to be seen, and her guests had the same privilege . . . the house was blissfully silent in the morning . . .
If and when you came down, there were small unostentatious cars with drivers to run you down the mountain to swim or shop in Monte Carlo. No life was encouraged around the villa in the morning. Lunch was the moment of the day when guests met in a group and no one missed lunch—it was far too entertaining. The long dining room had a buffet at one end with hot Italian pasta, cold English roast beef, French dishes, a little of everything . . . Chanel hated having servants under foot, and Ugo somehow managed to run the house superbly and still keep everyone out of sight but himself.13
The first majordomo at La Pausa was a Russian refugee, Admiral Castelain, who gave the relaxed impression that there were no other servants, and whom Gabrielle treated as a friend.
During 1929, as La Pausa was being painstakingly erected for Gabrielle and Bend’Or, their affair, however, was to founder. Gabrielle’s bid to become pregnant may well have been the trigger for Bend’Or’s return to his old routine of dalliance with pretty women. Gabrielle was a most un-jealous woman, but Bend’Or’s fling at this juncture provoked in her feelings of real insecurity. Failure to conceive was a grim reminder to this commanding woman of her ultimate inability to control life. We don’t know the details, but it seems most likely that a botched abortion during her affair with Etienne Balsan had left her unable to conceive. (One wonders if Arthur Capel would have married Gabrielle if she had become pregnant.) Gabrielle was miserable and frustrated, and her feelings sometimes turned to anger, which she would vent upon Bend’Or. This was a very bad idea. Nevertheless, for some time to come, the man whom few dared to cross would recall why he wanted Gabrielle, and he would return, bringing her gifts and his old enthusiasm and affection.
Meanwhile, another problem had rumbled on beneath Gabrielle’s determination to become pregnant: her devotion to her work. Inextricably interwoven with her life and who she had become, her need for work was ineluctable. She longed for a child, but every time she succumbed to a man, eventually Gabrielle began to hanker after work and its beloved companion, independence. In reality, she found equality with a man—perhaps with anyone—deeply challenging, which was why a man as powerful as Westminster had appeared such a good proposition.
While Gabrielle’s predicament as a woman was a reflection of her times, she also found that inescapable element of any relationship, the weighing scales of power, impossible, really, to balance for more than a few years. The deeply feminine part of her would make the poignant comment, “I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird,” yet the other Gabrielle had an extraordinary drive to create, to organize and to lead. And she would voice her dilemma with tragic accuracy: “It would be very difficult for a man, unless he were strong, to live with me. And it would be impossible for me, were he stronger than me, to live with him.”14
No matter what she did to avoid it, Gabrielle’s work in the end was preeminent. The unresolved motives that drove her always proved stronger than the conflicting wish for emotional fulfillment and tranquility. Yet while Westminster tried to draw her back to him, at the same time, he himself had begun to drift away.
Gabrielle’s pride was at stake here, and she was edging toward disillusionment. No longer young, she had lived too much of her life in the glare of publicity for her to support a public slighting. And while her disappointment at failing to bear a child was secretly causing her such misery, as was her way, the woman perceived as so resilient, even heartless, hid her anguish