Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [35]
Gabrielle’s fascination for Arthur lay not only in her unusual beauty but in her intelligence, her striking directness and her capacity for silence. But while Morand’s fictional Lewis was impressed by Irène’s “uncluttered and imperious mind,” he was also intent on educating her out of what he saw as her abominable ignorance. In the habit of “improving” his conquests, he set out to “cultivate their minds.”28 In like manner, Gabrielle recalled that for all the luxury of Arthur’s apartment, his outlook was in some ways a strict one. She said that “in educating me, he did not spare me; he commented on my conduct: “You behaved badly . . . you lied . . . you were wrong.”29 Gabrielle could accept this admonishment and his attempts to school her (including instruction in small details, such as the best years for champagne) because she didn’t feel undermined by that “gently authoritative manner of men who know women well, and who love them implicitly.”30
Her background and her desultory education had inspired in Gabrielle a reasonable idea of what she wanted. First was escape from the meanness of her upbringing. On moving out of the haberdasher’s shop into her own lodgings, she was determined to make her own way. Like many shop assistants before her, she had possibly augmented her earnings in Moulins with modest prostitution, and was eventually partnered with Etienne Balsan. Later, in his château at Royallieu, she found something to which she could seriously apply herself: horse riding. Not only did she become a talented rider, Gabrielle was also well informed about the most significant racing fixtures, the best jockeys, the finest horses. Yet her social life was spent largely with sportsmen and their mistresses, aristocrats, courtesans and turf society. During her years at Royallieu, she may have had the privilege of grandeur and being waited upon, but clearly, Arthur didn’t believe it had imbued her with much sophistication.
He was an established figure in the highest Parisian circles. Yet although he had fallen in love with this unusual creature, his social standing impelled him to a certain caution regarding transgression of the status quo. As a result of this, Gabrielle was effectively forbidden access to the haut monde. That subtle and precise brutality practiced by most elites, whose sense of exclusiveness functions with a hair-trigger sensitivity, meant that her lover didn’t escort his live-in mistress around the capital’s select salons, where he normally found his friends. And no matter what the private indiscretions of the haut monde, that same society wasn’t unconventional enough to visit a bachelor and his mistress at home. While at Royallieu, we remember, Etienne had no wish to receive society. This was just as well, because society would have been most unlikely to accept his invitations; his establishment was disreputable.
So Gabrielle and Arthur went out, and he introduced her to his more rakish friends at fashionable public places such as the theater or Maxim’s, the Café de Paris, or the Pré Catalan restaurant on the Bois de Boulogne. At times, Gabrielle hankered after an obvious kind of respectability: she was in love with Arthur Capel and would have married him if he’d asked. But unlike Etienne Balsan, for the moment, he did not.
Arthur’s numerous female admirers—several of them ex-lovers—were unhappy at his cohabitation with his mistress. She, meanwhile, recalled an episode intended to demonstrate her hold over him to the haut monde. Arthur was due at an important gala at the ruthlessly fashionable Deauville casino. On a whim, Gabrielle insisted that he should dine there with her alone. All eyes were upon them. While Gabrielle may have felt diffident before the Parisian elite, the urge to stake her claim over her man publicly was a far from timid action. She remembered that her “awkwardness, which contrasted with a wonderfully simple white dress, attracted people’s attention. The beauties of the period, with that intuition women have for threats unknown,