Cecil Beaton, The Wandering Years, Diaries: 1922-39
Beaton, Cecil. The Wandering Years, Diaries: 1922-39. First English Edition. Book is in very good minus condition; dust jacket is in good condition—jacket shows chips and tears, most particularly to the spine, but the damage is concealed with a facsimile underlay.
In this, his first volume of published diaries, Cecil Beaton laments, “What a fatuous fool I am, living in a largely self-invented world of wit, brains, and money.” There are worse worlds to inhabit, as these diary excerpts make clear. At their beginning, Beaton is still a student, plagued by insecurity, desperate to make his mark on the world but unsure as to how, and desperately aware of the typical limitations of his middle-class upbringing. As such, it makes for fascinating reading as he slowly finds his way, and then experiences a meteoric rise, first becoming the toast of Bright Young Things London, then landing a contract with Vogue and traveling to New York and London for the first time.
“It is always difficult to re-create the humour of the past: so much depends on the timing and the nuances of the performer’s personality. And, jokes that strike us as original at one period, soon show signs of becoming dated.”
--Cecil Beaton