Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [54]
Knowing full well that as one of the most fashionable women in Paris, her patronage was invaluable publicity, she shunned Poiret’s salon, putting out the word that she now followed the exciting new designer, Gabrielle Chanel. Soon other stylish young women, such as Princess Baba de Faucigny-Lucinge, née Erlanger; Pauline de Saint-Sauveur and Antoinette, pretty wife to the fashionable playwright Henri-Adrien Bernstein, were to be seen in Gabrielle’s salon. Gabrielle and her assistants were kept frantically busy into the new year of 1914.
In March, Gabrielle was given a sensational public endorsement when Sem parodied the foibles of high fashion in a famous series of satirical albums for the newspaper L’Illustration. Titled “True and False Chic,” in them he compared the ostentatious pomposity of contemporary “false chic” with the elegant lines of “true chic,” for him exemplified by the beautiful courtesan Forsane, whom he depicted in a svelte, fur-trimmed outfit by none other than Gabrielle Chanel. Sem soon followed this up with an even more notable cartoon in which Arthur Capel, drawn as a virile, polo-playing centaur, carried off Gabrielle in his arms. Arthur’s polo mallet was the centaur’s lance, on the end of which dangled a hat, while from Gabrielle’s arm hung an unmistakable hat box inscribed with the word “Coco.” The allusions were clear: the well-known playboy Arthur Capel was both lover and sponsor to Gabrielle Chanel, who was now an identifiable enough figure that she could also be caricatured.
10
The End of an Epoque
In the period preceding the First World War, there appears to have been a widespread unwillingness to face the likelihood of conflict. And the closer the impending catastrophe approached, the more a striking acceleration of luxury and high living could be observed. Paul Morand’s fictional hero Lewis says to Irène, “For myself I come with limited responsibility, and . . . I accept none out of pessimism.”1 Irène replies that this is the easy way out, telling Lewis that “we don’t have any worries if we think the world is meaningless.”2
On August 3, 1914, the opulence of the grand style was overnight curtailed. The West launched into a conflict that would leave it irrevocably altered. Germany had declared war on France; the First World War had begun.
On the following day, Britain entered the fray by declaring war on Germany. Twelve days later, Arthur Capel was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Cavalry Division. The contrasting sentiments with Lewis’s declaration above and the fortitude and commitment typifying Arthur’s army service were both echoed in the words he would later write: “Let us get the strong words of Guillaume le Taciturne set firmly in our mind: ‘One does not have to hope in order to undertake, nor does one have to succeed in order to persevere.’”3
By August 24, Arthur had joined the British Expeditionary Force, under orders from General Edmund Allenby (Cavalry Division), which was taking part in the retreat from the Battle of Mons. Mons was the first major action by the British army against the Germans, but while a relatively minor battle in itself, its position meant that it took on considerable significance. Although initially planned as a simple tactical withdrawal, what came to be known as the long retreat lasted two weeks and involved considerable loss of life, as a disciplined German army followed in relentless pursuit.
On September 4, the French commander in chief, Joseph Joffre, recognized a major German tactical error and halted the retreating Franco-British armies at the river Marne, only thirteen miles from Paris. Rallying, they overcame the Germans in the first battle of the Marne. When the German commanding officer, General Helmuth von Moltke, heard that his army might now be destroyed, he suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be relieved of his command. By September 12,