The first volume of William Feaver’s The Lives of Lucian Freud has just been published. That's Lucian below, walking:
A very minor part of Feaver's book describes, in 1948, Freud being invited to Cecil Beaton’s home at Reddish House in Wiltshire. When he gets there he’s delighted to find that Greta Garbo is a fellow guest.
Now, the ‘affair’ or whatever it was, between Beaton and Garbo has always been a matter for speculation and mystery, and Freud’s account doesn’t clarify matters much.
Now, the ‘affair’ or whatever it was, between Beaton and Garbo has always been a matter for speculation and mystery, and Freud’s account doesn’t clarify matters much.
Feaver writes:
I thought she was wonderful he (Freud) recalled. “She said, ‘Comm and sit ‘ere,’ and it was a chair for one, not two and I squeezed in. She looked marvelous. She drove Cecil mad and he’d become gruff and manly and say, ‘We must go for a walk,’ and she’d say, ‘I’ve left my shoes in New York.’
Now, I can totally believe this would the kind of thing Garbo would say and do, but it’s quite a stretch to imagine Beaton being ‘gruff and manly.’
Still, here are Cecil and Greta walking together on some occasion when she’d remembered her shoes.
And here she is walking alone. Boy, I love that battered car behind her:
