Read Online D.V. by Diana Vreeland - Free Book Online

marble table set with gold goblets. I sat on the right of Baron Rodolphe, who always had a beautiful linen handkerchief—like an absolutely transparent cobweb—which never left his hand and which he’d raise to his nose…he was an ether addict.
    â€œDiana…[ sniff ],” he’d say, “it’s so wonderful to see you looking so well . You’re the night’s morning…[ sniff ], you’re the sun, the moon, and the stars… [ sniff, sniff ]”—you know, the sort of business that men say to women by the sea.
    â€œReed,” I once said, “what happens if I really get a blast of it?”
    â€œYou won’t,” he said. “Just remember—when he breathes in , you breathe out .”
    Rodolphe was so attractive . Don’t think this ritual of his was unattractive— it just took a little getting used to. This little weakness for ether was as normal as if you…Listen, Baron, Rodolphe was the uncrowned King of Tunisia!
    His best friend was Fuad, the King of Egypt, King Farouk’s father. Together, they were really responsible for getting the music of the Arabs of North Africa onto paper. They’d work on the music together in Baron Rodolphe’s beautiful library, and they’d exchange orchestras. Sometimes, when we came in to dinner, the orchestra would be playing, and it would play through dinner and into the night….
    Every morning, everyone would go down to the sea for a swim, through the gardens, past a herd of peacocks. Everyone else went together, and I guess the peacocks felt they could let them have their way. But they didn’t with me. I was always the last in the morning—I’m always the last—so I went down alone, through an acre of lemon and orange orchards, and there’d always be a peacock standing in the way with his tail spread out. “Please let me go by,” I’d say. “They’re all waiting for me. I won’t have time for a swim before lunch. Please .”
    He’d wait until he got good and ready, then he’d put down his tail and drag himself back into the orchard.
    Peacocks, I always say, are unbelievably beautiful—but they’re vulgar. All of these peacocks, however, were silvery white, and I’ll tell you why. Apparently, years before, King Fuad—like someone in the sixteenth century—had had sent by special messenger a little woven gold basket containing a pair of little blue peacocks. Naturally, they had babies. Then the babies came and the babies came, and one day there was a white peacock. Then there was another one. And as the herd grew larger and larger, there were more and more white peacocks.
    By the time we arrived there must have been seventy-five. The d’Erlangers had given away all the blue peacocks, and as whitepeacocks only breed other white peacocks, they were white, white, white . In the evening they were so beautiful. The top of the palace was flat, and on hot nights we’d go up there after dinner to get the air and look down at the peacocks with their tails spread and their tiny heads against the reflection of the moon shining on the sea…it didn’t look real. When I say it didn’t look real, it didn’t look real. It looked like an Aubrey Beardsley drawing for Salome .
    One night we heard drums. They were to announce that Denys Finch Hatton had died. He was one of the original Great White Hunters. He was a great friend of my mother and of everyone of her generation, and, most important, he was the lover of Isak Dinesen. She was a great friend of mine. Whenever she came to America, she’d come to see me. Every Saturday afternoon she came for tea. Tea was always combined with an early dinner, and she always wanted the same menu. A bottle of champagne. A bunch of grapes. And twelve oysters on the half-shell. She was tortured with illness and operations, but she always got where she wanted to go. She had been