The Allure of Chanel

STRAVINSKY

IN 192– I CAME TO KNOW Stravinsky. He was then living at the home of Pleyel, the older one, in the rue Rochechouart. He was still not very cosmopolitan, and he was very Russian in his ways, with the look of a clerk in a Chekhov short story. A small moustache beneath a large rat-like nose. He was young and shy; he found me attractive. Among this circle, the only man I felt attracted to was Picasso, but he was not available. Stravinsky pursued me.

“You’re married, Igor,” I told him, “when Catherine, your wife, gets to know …”

And he, very Russian:

“She knows I love you. To whom else, if not to her, could I confide something so important?”

Without being jealous, Misia began to spread gossip. She had sensed that something was happening without her knowing:

“What are you doing? Where are you going? People tell me that Igor walks your dog, explain yourself!”

“I could give a concert at the Salle Gaveau,” Stravinsky divulged to me one day, “but I can’t afford a sufficient guarantee.”

I replied that I would look after it. Ansermet was summoned. Everything was arranged.

“Now,” I said to Stravinsky, “you have to speak to Misia about it. Off you go.”

Stravinsky goes to see her.

The following day, a Sunday morning, I am setting off to walk around Longchamp.

Misia: “I am overcome with sorrow. When I think that Stravinsky has accepted money from you!”

I had already been through the same “when I think …” in connection with Diaghilev, but in this case Misia feared a catastrophe on quite another scale: that Stravinsky might divorce in order to marry me. Sert became involved. He went and took Igor to one side.

“Môssieu, M Capel has entrusted Madmachelle to me; a man like you, Môssieu, is known as a sh—.”

And Misia came back to me, stirring up the drama:

“Stravinsky is in the room next door. He wants to know whether or not you will marry him. He is wringing his hands.”

Having said this, the Serts, while cultivating the emotional anguish he was suffering, made fun of Stravinsky. Up until the day when I said to Ansermet:

“It’s ridiculous, the Serts are mad. Everyone is talking about this business. Picasso is saying things. I want Igor to come back and for us to be friends.”

Stravinsky came back. He came back every day and taught me about music; the little I know about it, I owe to him. He talked to me about Wagner, about Beethoven, his bugbear, about Russia. One day eventually:

“The Ballets [Russes] are leaving for Spain,” Stravinsky said to me. “Come with us.”

“I will go and find you.”

I am on my own in Paris. Grand-Duke Dimitri, whom I had not seen since 1914, arrives in Paris at this moment. We dined together. I saw him the following day. In a very friendly way, I say to him:

“I have just bought a little blue Rolls, let’s go to Monte Carlo.”

“I have no money, all I’ve got is fifteen thousand francs …”

“I’ll put in the same amount,” I replied to the Grand-Duke. “With thirty thousand, we’ll have enough to enjoy ourselves for a week.”

We set off.

Misia was watching. She immediately sent a telegram to Stravinsky, in Spain: “Coco is a midinette who prefers grand-dukes to artists.”

Stravinsky almost exploded. Diaghilev sent me a telegram: “Don’t come, he wants to kill you.”

This affair, which I laugh about today, changed Igor’s life entirely. It transformed him. From being shy and self-effacing, it made him, contrary to what would normally have happened, into a hard man with a monocle; from a victim into a conqueror. Like many musicians, Igor has become an excellent businessman, he has a very precise awareness of his rights as an artist and can defend his interests very well.

I fell out with Misia for weeks, following this treacherous telegram. She swore to me that she had sent no such thing. Once again, I forgave her. In any case, Misia turned the wheel of fate, she also turned its page; she intervened, and from that day forth Stravinsky and I never saw each other again.