I must have said something that particularly appealed to the tall gentleman, for his face lit up and his eyes opened so wide that I could see the whites of them. He seemed to be endorsing everything I said until I reached the climax of my thesis, which must have veered in a direction contrary to his own, for he looked disappointed. I had been talking to Sir Oswald Mosley, little realizing that this man was to be the future head of the black-shirts of England – but those eyes with the whites showing over the pupils and the broad grinning mouth stand out in my memory vividly as an expression most peculiar – if not a little frightening.
I also met Emil Ludwig in the South of France, voluminous biographer of Napoleon, Bismarck, Balzac and others. He wrote interestingly about Napoleon, but he over-applied psychoanalysis to the point of detracting from the interest of the narrative.
He sent me a telegram saying how much he admired City Lights and that he would like to meet me. He was entirely different from what I had imagined. He looked like a refined Oscar Wilde, with rather long hair and a feminine curve to a full mouth. We met at my hotel, where he presented himself in a rather florid, dramatic manner, handing me a bay leaf, saying: ‘When a Roman had achieved greatness he was presented with a laurel crown made of bay leaves. I therefore present one to you.’
It took a moment to get adjusted to this effusion; then I realized he was covering a shyness. When he came to I met a very clever and interesting man. I asked him what he considered most essential in writing a biography. He said an attitude. ‘Then a biography is a biased and censored account,’ I said.
‘Sixty-five per cent of the story is never told,’ he answered, ‘because it involves other people.’
During dinner he asked what I considered the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. Off-handedly I said the movement of Helen Wills playing tennis: it had grace and economy of action as well as a healthy appeal to sex. Another was a newsreel scene, soon after the Armistice, of a farmer ploughing a field in Flanders where thousands had died. Ludwig described a sunset on a Florida beach, an open sports car lazily travelling along filled with pretty girls in bathing suits, one perched on the back fender, her leg dangling, her toe touching the sand and making a continuous line as they drove along.
Since then I can recall other beautiful sights: Benvenuto Cellini’s ‘Perseus’ in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. It was night, with the square lit up, and I was drawn there by the figure of Michelangelo’s ‘David’. But as soon as I saw ‘Perseus’, all else was secondary. I was enthralled by its impalpable beauty of grace and form. Perseus, holding high the head of Medusa with her pathetic twisted body at his feet, is the epitome of sadness, and made me think of Oscar Wilde’s mystic line: ‘For each man kills the thing he loves.’ In the combat of that eternal mystery, good and evil, his cause was ended.
I received a telegram from the Duke of Alba inviting me to Spain. But the following day large headlines appeared in all the newspapers: ‘Revolution in Spain’. So instead I went to Vienna – sad, sensuous Vienna. My predominant memory of it is a romance I had with a beautiful girl. It was like the last chapter of a Victorian novel: we made passionate vows of affection and kissed good-bye, knowing that we would never see each other again.
After Vienna, I went on to Venice. It was autumn and the place was deserted. I like it better when the tourists are there, because they give warmth and vitality to what could easily be a graveyard without them. In fact I like sightseers because the people seem more agreeable on holiday than when banging through revolving doors into office buildings.
Although Venice was beautiful it was melancholy, and I stayed only two nights, having nothing to do but play phonograph records – and that under cover, as Mussolini forbade dancing or playing records on Sunday.
I should have liked to return to Vienna to enact a sequel to my amour there. But I had an engagement in Paris that I did not want to miss, a lunch with Aristide Briand, implementer and patron of the idea of the United States of Europe. When I met him, Monsieur Briand seemed delicate in health, disillusioned and embittered. The luncheon took place at the house of Monsieur Balbi, publisher of the Paris l’intransigeant, and was most interesting although I did not speak French. Countess Noailles, a bright, birdlike little woman, spoke English and was extremely witty and charming. Monsieur Briand greeted her by saying: ‘I see so little of you these days; your presence is as rare as that of one’s discarded mistress.’
After lunch I was taken to the Elysée and there made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur.
*
I shall not describe the wild enthusiasm of multitudinous crowds that attended my second arrival in Berlin – although the temptation is almost irresistible.
Apropos of this I am reminded of Mary and Douglas showing a film record of their trip abroad. I was all prepared to enjoy an interesting travelogue. The film started with Mary and Doug’s arrival in London with enormous enthusiastic crowds at the station and enormous enthusiastic crowds outside the hotel, then their arrival in Paris with
