Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [148]
This transition from the Faubourg Saint-Honoré to somewhere with its own servants meant that Gabrielle brought to an end her long association with her devoted majordomo, Joseph. Joseph had arrived when “given” to her by Misia on the eve of her wedding sixteen years before. Gabrielle and her manservant parted on bad terms: her ability to be unsentimental was at times quite ruthless. And yet, the loyal Joseph would never make any public criticism of his ex-employer.
Between Gabrielle’s fashion house and her textile and jewelry workshops, her expenditure was large. The effects of the Depression and the need to cut costs may have been another contributing factor in her move from the Faubourg Saint-Honoré to the Ritz. She now permitted herself to lean on Iribe. After years of grumbling resentment against the distributors of her perfumes, the Wertheimers, Gabrielle had begun a legal tussle with them over her “abused rights.” Iribe was sufficiently bullish that Gabrielle overestimated his abilities as a negotiator and asked for his assistance.
The serious lawsuits Gabrielle now brought against the Wertheimers drove them to attempt removal of her as president of the board. In September 1933, Gabrielle had given Iribe power of attorney, and he presided over a board meeting. But he was reckless enough to refuse signature of the minutes, giving the board just the ammunition it wanted; he was voted off by a majority. Continuing with the company’s reorganization, the Wertheimers succeeded in removing Gabrielle as president in 1934. Outraged, she could do little for the moment.
In 1934, Gabrielle was again in Roquebrune for the summer, at La Pausa. Friends staying included the composer Poulenc, the dancer Serge Lifar, and Horst P. Horst, a young German photographer. Another friend who often stayed at La Pausa was the Italian count Luchino Visconti, the future film director. Gabrielle had known Visconti for several years. At this time, Visconti’s self-consciousness about his position as a nobleman of leisure drove him to put much of his energies into his racehorse breeding. He met Gabrielle and her friends in Venice at the Lido or at the Venetian palazzo of his sisters-in-law, Madina and Niki Arrivabene, and in Paris. Serge Lifar recalled how it appeared as if all society was in Venice, and they all thought themselves
unique, exciting and beautiful . . . During those years . . . at Venice there were the great popes, like the Visconti, and the Volpi “doges.” Between Paris and Rome, society communicated and intertwined continuously. In Paris, those who welcomed me were the same ones I met in London, Rome or Venice, all capitals on that axis of triumphant worldliness.9
Visconti’s biographer wrote that “Visconti loved Natalie Lelong [half sister of Dmitri Pavlovich], who had an affair with Serge Lifar and several women as well; Chanel had an affair with Visconti, who also loved Niki Arrivabene—they all loved each other and were all beautiful, bisexual and attractive.”10
Despite his painful shyness, when Visconti arrived in Paris, his background and his handsome looks gave him a natural entrée into the Parisian version of the sophisticated Venetian milieu. When he was there, he had an open invitation to Gabrielle’s much-coveted lunches and dinner parties, where he found “the most glittering, famous and interesting wits at her table.” One or the other of Visconti’s sisters-in-law sometimes accompanied him, and one of them remembered these occasions as “so chic, one could die.”
Although Visconti’s understanding of Gabrielle wasn’t comprehensive, he came to know her well. Describing her as La Belle Dame Sans Merci, he recalled “her sufferings, her pleasure in hurting. Her need to punish, her pride, her rigour, her sarcasm, her destructive rage, the single-mindedness of the character who goes from hot to cold, her inventive genius.”11 Visconti was a connoisseur of interiors,