MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON EVEN when I was a child I did not, in so far as I can remember, enjoy dressing up. The nursery theatricals into which I was forced by my parents ceased, after the age of six, to give me any pleasure ; and to this day the blush mantles in my cheek when I recall how, at the age of twelve, I was obliged to take part in an amateur pantomime. In the closing phase of the Edwardian epoch it became the fashion, for two horrible years or so, for people to dress up on Sunday evenings when spending the week-end at some country seat. I possessed at the time a Persian dressing-gown which, when necessity arose, I would don miserably before dinner, improvising some hurried turban to wrap around my head. Stifling the shame, the mortification and the rage which seethed within me, I would appear in the drawing-room with a bright self-conscious face, pretending to my fellow-guests that I much relished this travesty. Nor have I ever enjoyed being obliged on great occasions to encase the upper part of my body in a tight blue uniform and the lower part of my body in frail white knickerbockers. The presence of a sword, moreover, added ridicule to my appearance and ungainliness to my movements. Feeling as I do about all forms of dressing up, I regard with sympathy those whose duty it is to array themselves in unusual clothes. I am grateful to fate that I am not, and never shall be, a Chelsea pensioner ; I rejoice that, whatever else may happen, I shall never be called upon to don the uniform of a Yeoman of the Guard ; and if I ever regret that I shall never be a Field Marshal, my disappointment is mitigated by the fact that I should find head feathers and a baton uneasy objects with which to cope. Nor do I possess the sort of face which goes well with clothes.
* * The worst of wearing fancy dress is that our limbs and gestures, the movements of our heads and hands, do not accord naturally with the vestments of another age. I am always irritated and embarrassed when I observe men arrayed in the costume of the eighteenth century seeking to counterfeit the manners which such clothes (and probably quite incorrectly) suggest, The monocle may have been held up to the eye in some such manner, the handkerchief may have been flicked in just that way, and I do not deny that in offering snuff to a person one is obliged to make the gesture of offering snuff. Yet I cannot feel that these move- ments are naturally adopted, or that if Brummel were to see them he would not laugh behind his hand. Even more annoying to the observer is the eighteenth-century voice which has become current upon the film, the stage and the wireless ; the ultras after the Restoration in France did, I believe, talk in a high staccato tone like that of a lieutenant in a Prussian regiment ; but we have no evidence to show that the period intonation advocated by the Academy of Dramatic Art bears any resemblance whatsoever to the language spoken by Lord Chesterfield, or even by Mrs. Thrale. Yet, while observing with displeasure the antics in which people indulge when they assume the costumes and the wigs of another century, I have also observed that every now and then one does find men who seem to fit quite naturally into antiquated clothes. I used to think that this was mainly the result of habituation, and that the reason why beefeaters looked like beefeaters was that they were accustomed to wear their ruffs both often and for long. This may be true, but it is also true that some people possess eighteenth- century faces and some do not ; that some people really do look like Charles II, whereas others resemble George IV.
* * * * These considerations have been suggested to me after watching with some attention a company of French footmen dressed in the liveries of Louis XV. They were superb blue liveries, interlaced with scarlet and white ; the men. wore little white wigs upon their heads and at their necks were jabots of white muslin. The occasion was the reception given to the Peace Conference at the Chateau of Versailles. These footmen were standing in a double row upon the steps of the marble staircase which led up to the royal antechamber.
There must have been some forty of them and (since I had the opportunity to observe them without causing embarrassment) I was able to estimate that about ten of them looked like Louis XV foot- men whereas thirty did not. It was not only that the wigs of some of them fitted better than the wigs of others ; it was not only that some were deriving pleasure from their travesty, whereas others were deriving only pain ; it was that some heads and faces were indubitably eighteenth-century heads and faces, whereas others suggested remoter or more proximate periods. Here was a man with the ruddy cheeks of ancient Gaul, here a man with a Mero- vingian look ; this man suggested the First Empire, and that the period of Monsieur Combes, whereas yet another was pure Menil- montant 1946. So entranced was I by this spectacle, which Carlyle would grimly have enjoyed, that I was distracted for quite a while from the actual reception which was taking place. But when I passed on into the Oeil-de-Boeuf and on into the Gallery of
Mirrors I forgot all about the relation between costume and the human face and was silenced by the magnificence which was dis- played. The setting sun poured through the great windows of that famous Gallery and fell upon the vast Savonnerie carpet which occupied the centre. The men, and I fear also the women, who graced this reception were inadequate to the splendours with which they were surrounded. And I doubt whether the Roi Soleil himself would have been impressive if seen arrayed in a business suit and munching a macaroon.
But when the sun set over the woods and terraces and the search• lights played upon the fountains and the park, then even the guests assumed an air of delicacy. The fountains glittered like aluminium in the glare of the searchlights, and upon the great trees behind them their shadows were thrown in falling shapes. In the Salon de la Guerre a group of musicians played the minuets of Lulli; the rooms beyond were unlighted, and upon their painted ceilings danced the reflection of the flood-lit pools ; and for an hour or so we all forgot our anxieties and surrendered ourselves blissfully to this fete galante. What other country in the world could provide so sumptuous a setting, what other nation can display such magnifi- cence with an equal blending of pride and modesty and taste? The delight which Frenchmen of every party and persuasion take in the splendour. of their own legacy convinces the foreign observer of she continuity of the French tradition. It may be that the French are a race of highly individual artists, and that it is this which renders them so bad at politics. But their artistry is so wide and so instinctive that it creates a habit in their lives. What those who do not love the French, as I love them, fail to understand, is that this appreciation of the art of living extends to every class. What lasting danger can Communism represent to a people which is so individualistic, so intelligent, so contemptuous of every form of government, so fond of personal property, and so convinced that a regulated private life is the foundation of all happiness?
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I leant out into the warm night from the window of the Salon de la Guerre and listened to the fountains and the violins. I felt convinced, as so many that evening must have felt convinced, that France could never disappear. She should not be judged by her politics, which represent the point at which we understand her least, but by the millions of her private lives. It is tragic to see how bewildered the French are by the accidents through which they have recently passed, as by the confusion which now besets their internal politics. Is it sympathy only, only sentiment, which makes me feel that the young sap is rising again and that before long she will resume her place in the world? I do not think I am being sentimental. I passed out down the marble staircase, scarcely glancing this time at the files of footmen who lined the steps. I was feeling (as I always feel in France) that life is a very difficult "; but immensely interesting thing.
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