The bottom shelf
Richard Shone
The Restless Years: Diaries 1955-63 Cecil Beaton (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £4.95) It is hard to discover in what spirit Cecil Beaton writes his diaries beyond the plan of their ultimate publication. They are certainly not written for himself, so it must be presumed that one eye is on posterity and the other perhaps on the Sunday newspapers. He has a genius for the superficial, facades, appearances, the outer wrappings. This alone prevents him from being dull.
He knows, and has met, some interesting and varied people—from the world of Edwardian hostesses to the garrulous company of recent Hollywood. He has had one or two famous enemies and he is much' travelled. As a stage and film designer and as photographer, Beaton is sufficientlY remarkable for us to be curious about his character and activities. But self-portraiture is not forthcoming. The general tone of the entries is very public. When he writes about himself he says no more than one might saY at a party to a friend— though an old, longsuffering friend. He is rarely introspective; professional anxieties and self-questionings certainly have their place but are swiftly brushed aside—an easy gesture for they are lightly expressed and rarely go beyond an 'Oh dear! What a terrible week. My play's a flop, Maud has asthma.' So we are left with a perceptive recorder, urbane, ambitious, not witty but with a sense of the comic, schoolboyish yet cynical, not much of a thinker but a man endowed with a sharp eye and, as far as one can tell, a reasonablY good memory. But I doubt whether the volumes are destined for a long and active life though they will always have their admirers, always be found on the next to the bottom shelf in the spare bedroom. Beaton does not write particularly weh and though soaring genius rarely makes for good diaries, a certain stylishness is an advantage. At times he is ferociouslY elaborate, at others thin and jerky. The confusion of his tone makes for irritating changes of tense—the past is often found where the present tense would be more natural. Immediacy is not his strong point, and the set pieces suffer from too much scenery. He is at his most vivid and receptive when confronted with one figure, espeeiall,Y if that figure is a woman, especially if she old. His fascination for each wrinkle, each, drooping pouch of skin—the lifted face Cecile Sorel or Karen Blixen's splendin skeleton—is conveyed with a repulsive glee,' But it is the gloating of a visual artist an! one is grateful for the photographs, fdl that is what Beaton does best.
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