Page 292 - Livre Beau Rivage Palace

REMINISCENCES
MADEMOISELLE
GABRIELLE CHANEL
1953
Michel DÉON
‘However draining the atmosphere in Lausanne, I was very fond of the Beau-Rivage,
which at that time was run by a Swiss-German gentleman, the overbearingly kind Mr Muller.
He was always astonished to see us arrive, first me in my convertible sports car with Coco at my
side, her head wrapped in pink gossamer like a lady motorist from the early 1900s;
the Cadillac would follow behind, with a liveried female chauffeur at the wheel and our two maids
on the plush grey seat; one of them, her hands red-raw from all the cleaning, would clutch the
famous jewellery case as if she were bringing the Blessed Sacrament to the walking wounded
of the Beau-Rivage […] a haven so antiquated, with its fossilised inmates, as to be quite fascinating.
Wealthy refugees from South American revolutions and the newly formed Communist republics of
central Europe and Asia were quick to fill the gaps when a dozen or so rooms were vacated
by a flu epidemic. In the grand drawing room, ladies from Romania, Greece and Argentina played
cards in a cloud of blue smoke. Fortunes changed hands in the evenings after dinner, but since the
management had a strict ‘no professionals’ policy, the hotel operated like a closed house, enveloping
– I would even say suffocating – its guests with a stultifying sense of security, which contributed to
the collective lethargy and allowed everyone to forget, for a few moments at least,
that death was coming for the pallid old man holding a copy of the Financial Times or the Wall
Street Journal in his trembling yellow hands […].
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‘Mademoiselle Chanel provided a sharp contrast to the general ambience with her vim and vigour.
She always made a grand theatrical entrance at mealtimes, following lengthy preparations.
Although she had been forgotten by the masses, her “look” and style rekindled fond memories
in the clientele of the Beau-Rivage: the rich old ladies in black lace dresses and stiff velvet collars
to hide their turkey necks had worn her clothes, her signature knee-length skirts,
thirty years earlier; and the old gentlemen leaning on their ebony sticks had opened accounts at
Chanel for their girlfriends, or escorted her models out in the evenings after her fashion shows.
Whenever she crossed the hall to the restaurant terrace, a murmur would ripple through the hotel.
A fairy was passing and they would be transported back in time, from the late 1930s
to their youth in Deauville in 1910 […]. Many of us often took our meals on the terrace,
which was high enough to offer unadulterated views over Lake Geneva (bypassing the quays of
Ouchy down below): cardboard cut-out steamships and tiny toy sail boats would glide across the
weathered mirror-like surface of the water.’
Michel DÉON, Bagages pour Vancouver. Mes arches de Noé, Paris : La Table ronde, 1985, pp. 17-21.
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