Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [96]
He described how Gabrielle did “everything she could” to draw him out, anxious in case this tranquil life should bore him. To the contrary, the calm rhythms of their routine combined with Gabrielle’s “rare goodness’ soothed Dmitri and revived his state of mind. Although admitting to himself that their relationship was “as strange as can be,” he delighted in Gabrielle’s cheerful companionship, appreciating her “good spirits’ and “surprising sweetness.” And during several weeks in each other’s company, Gabrielle helped Dmitri pull himself together with such success that he wrote, “It would have been impossible to choose a better friend for that moment in time than dearest Coco.”
Dmitri wrote that he was not in love with Gabrielle and that they never discussed anything to do with their future, but he became devoted to her, and was touched by her loving treatment of him. In this way, his diary entries act as a powerful correction to the typical portrayal of this relationship, where Dmitri is the lovesick young nobleman mooning around Gabrielle, the predatory Amazon.
Dmitri’s diary for this period displays a noticeable preoccupation with “discovery” by his peers. And while concerned lest Gabrielle, whom he found “surprisingly observant,” should be troubled by this preoccupation, he consoled himself with the thought that she felt the same way. Despite the greater likelihood of Dmitri’s reputation being compromised more than Gabrielle’s, there was also nothing new in a grand duke’s spending time with his lover. Above all, Dmitri’s reluctance to be spotted with Gabrielle stems from his concern not to be seen as a kept man. Gabrielle’s wealth was now common knowledge, but so was the impoverishment of Russian royalty. The greater mystery is why Gabrielle herself should have feared gossip and “the gaze of acquaintances.”
Gabrielle’s newfound wealth was in part predicated upon the creation of a reputation as a public figure. But while she would never let gossip have any effect upon her affairs, her coyness about being seen with Dmitri may have been related to having her very recent lover, Stravinsky, find out more details of her new liaison. Another explanation for Gabrielle’s apprehension about being spotted with Dmitri could well have been related to her new status. She had become a figure whose life was lived—increasingly, like Dmitri’s—under regular public scrutiny. The last months had left her emotionally exhausted, and the interlude on the Riviera was a moment in which she tried, temporarily, to recapture a life that was private.
When Arthur Capel had told Gabrielle of his plans to marry, it had both reduced her emotionally while also obliging her to move out of his apartment and live alone. Since then, however, she had been schooling herself in the ways of the modern woman, one best described as emancipated. Under the circumstances in which Gabrielle found herself with Dmitri, she was luxuriating in the ability to dictate her own life, enjoying a kind of autonomy that the vast majority of contemporary women couldn’t possibly have contemplated. While remaining an outsider, Gabrielle was now able, if she chose, to live with the freedom of the haut monde, yet without some of its burdens. She had achieved the autonomy of the successful courtesans but with one crucial difference: Gabrielle was now financing herself from work unrelated to whoever was her present lover. She had achieved her goal: she was now genuinely independent.
Notwithstanding the vein of sadness coursing through Gabrielle’s life, her natural optimism and vitality were, in the end, unquenchable. Not only did these qualities come to the fore in this interlude with Dmitri Pavlovich but, for the first time, one also notices something else. However vulnerable she might feel and whatever the sensitivity with which she behaved, Gabrielle also had