Books: Homemade Cecil Beaton

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This was the public Beaton. The private one could only be revealed posthumously, once the unexpurgated diaries came to light. Vickers can hardly be called indiscreet for ransacking them. After all, the diarist himself believed that his record of snobbism and social vaulting, of erotic triumphs and humiliations would make "amusing reading" someday. He was correct, but the most remarkable passages are not those of the invert. Fame was Beaton's aphrodisiac, and if heterosexuality was required for a brilliant conquest, well then, he would try that costume for a while. When he met Greta Garbo after World War II, he energetically seduced her. "I am so unexpectedly violent and have such unlicensed energy when called upon," he boasted to himself. "It baffles and intrigues and even shocks her." But the liaison was impossible. For one thing, there was her decor. "Don't you want to come and live in this apartment when we're married?" she asked. "No," he replied, looking "with horror at the pink lampshades."

After the breakup, Beaton returned to his old inclinations. He became famous for set designs and costumes for theater and films--the ones for My Fair Lady won Oscars--and, on a tour of a San Francisco gay bar called the Toolbox, he met the 29-year-old "boy" who was to be his last great amour. The designermemoirist-photographer -artist went on to honors ranging from placement on the best-dressed list to high-priced one-man shows of his work. He acquired wealthy and titled patrons wherever he displayed his work or himself. But if he appeared elegant and unconcerned to staring onlookers, he was demoralized when alone. Gazing at the mirror, he noted, "The upper lip has become longer. The mouth a thin bitter line, the eyes tragic, old and wild and of a great sadness. Were there no redeeming features? No."

But, of course, there were. Beaton's photography, as Susan Sontag noted, could turn the most celebrated subjects into "over-explicit, unconvincing effigies." His drawing was often slick and derivative, and his stage work was best when it could borrow grandeur from a vanished period. But the great achievement was not in these efforts. It was for a long-running production titled Cecil Beaton!, with sets, costumes, lighting, direction and dialogue by the author. No epitaph by friend or critic could equal the one he ad-libbed for himself when a journalist reminded him that he had not been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. True, Beaton acknowledged. Then he added the irrefutable punch line that summed up a life: "But I managed to put it there."