The Allure of Chanel

FROM COMPIÈGNE TO PAU

IN VICHY, I WATCHED THE LADIES—the old ladies—pass by, for there were only old people there. (In 1910, the young didn’t drink alcohol and didn’t look after their livers.) But I did not admit my disappointment. Everything enchanted me, even the engraved glasses used to drink water from the springs. Everywhere, ‘foreign’ was being spoken; foreign languages fascinated me; it was as if they were the passwords of a great secret society.

I watched the eccentric people parade past and I said to myself: “There exist in the world things that I should be and which I am not.” I would become one of them, and much sooner than I thought. At a tea party I was taken to by my relatives, I made the acquaintance of a young man, M B; he owned a racing stable.

“How lucky you are,” I said with naive enthusiasm, “to have racehorses!”

“Would you like to come to a training session, Mademoiselle?”

“What a dream!”

We arranged to meet the following day. After crossing the River Allier, beyond the footbridge, I went down into the fields and found myself in front of the horse boxes. There was a good smell of churned-up water; you could hear the roaring from the weir. A straight path, newly cut, stretched away, parallel to the river; sand, white railings and, in the background, the hills of the Bourbonnais. The sun glinted on the slopes of Ganat.

The jockeys and the stable lads followed one another, at a walk, their knees tucked under their chins.

“What a wonderful life,” I sighed.

“It’s mine all the year round,” said M B. “I live in Compiègne. Why shouldn’t it be yours too?”

I said yes. I would never see Mont-Dore again. I would never see my aunts again.

That is my childhood, the childhood of an orphan, retold by a girl who knew no home, no love, no father and mother. It was terrible, but I don’t regret a thing. I have been ungrateful to the wicked aunts: I owe them everything, a rebellious child makes for a well-prepared and very strong human being. (Aged eleven, I had much more strength than I do now.)

It is kisses, hugs, teachers and vitamins that kill children and prepare them for being weak or unhappy. It is wicked aunts who make conquerors of them … And who develop inferiority complexes in them. In my case, this gave me the opposite: superiority complexes. Beneath maliciousness, there is strength; beneath pride, there is the taste for success and the love of importance. Children who have teachers learn. I was self-taught; I learnt badly, haphazardly. And yet, when life put me in touch with those who were the most delightful or brilliant people of my age, a Stravinsky, or a Picasso, I neither felt stupid, nor embarrassed. Why?

Because I had worked out on my own that which cannot be taught. I will return to this frequently. For the time being, I want to end on this important aphorism, which is the secret of my success, and perhaps that of civilisation; confronted with ruthless techniques of doing things: it’s with what cannot be taught that one succeeds.

I had run away. My grandfather believed I had returned home; my aunts thought I was at my grandfather’s house. Someone would eventually realise that I was neither with the one nor the other.

I had followed M B and I was living in Compiègne. I was very bored. I was constantly weeping. I had told him a whole litany of lies about my miserable childhood. I had to disabuse him. I wept for an entire year. The only happy times were those I spent on horseback, in the forest. I learnt to ride, for up until then I hadn’t the first idea about riding horses. I was never a horsewoman, but at that time I couldn’t even ride side-saddle … The fairy tale was over. I was nothing but a lost child. I didn’t dare write to anyone. M B was frightened of the police. His friends told him: “Coco is too young, send her back home.” M B would have been delighted to see me go, but I had no home any more. M B had just broken off his relationship with a well-known beauty of the period, Émilienne d’Alençon; his house was full of photographs of her. “How lovely she is!” I said to him naively. “Could I meet her?” He shrugged his shoulders and replied that it was impossible. I didn’t understand. M B was afraid of the police, and I was afraid of the servants. I had lied to M B. I had kept my age a secret, telling him that I was nearly twenty: in actual fact I was sixteen. I made an appearance at the Compiègne races. I wore a straw boater, set very low on the head, and a little country suit, and I followed events from the end of my lorgnette. I was convinced no one was taking any notice of me, which shows how little I knew about life in the provinces. In reality this ridiculous, badly dressed, shy little creature, with her three big plaits and a ribbon in her hair, intrigued everybody.

M B took me to Pau. The mild winters in the Basses-Pyrénées; the babbling mountain streams that flow down to the plains; the fields that are green in every season; the tall, grass-covered jumps, the red coats in the rain, and the best fox-hunting land in Europe …

In the distance I could see the old castle with its six towers and the snow-capped Pyrenees standing out against the blue sky. The saddle horses, the hunters, the half-breeds, the people from Tarbes who had been wandering around the Place Royale since morning. I can still hear the sound of hooves on the cobblestones.

In Pau I met an Englishman. We made each other’s acquaintance when we were out horse-trekking one day; we all lived on horseback. The first person to take a tumble stood the others a glass of Jurançon. The wine was young, intoxicating and quite unusual. The young man was handsome, very tanned and attractive. More than handsome, he was magnificent. I admired his nonchalance, and his green eyes. He rode bold and very powerful horses. I fell in love with him. I had never loved M B. Not a word was exchanged between this Englishman and me. One day I heard that he was leaving Pau.

“You’re going away?” I asked.

“Yes, unfortunately,” he said.

“At what time?”

The following day, I was at the station. I climbed onto the train.