Many years after his father’s death, the photographer and designer Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) wrote to Greta Garbo, ‘I have been reading a lot of my early diaries… I am quite appalled to discover what a ghastly little tick I used to be, and sympathize so much with my father who must have been very upset to find his son turning out to be so very different from the sportsman he hoped I’d be.’
Cecil Beaton’s father was Ernest Walter Hardy Beaton, who was born on 20 November 1867 at Upper Tulse Hill, Surrey, the second of four children born to Walter Hardy Beaton (1841-1904), founder of the family business of Beaton Brothers, Timber Merchants and Agents, and Caroline Louise Beaton (née Stroughill) (1848-1899). Ernest’s paternal grandfather was John Beaton (1804-1872), a pharmaceutical chemist who was born on 31 March 1804 at Tintinhull in Somerset. This West Country connection may account for Ernest being sent as a pupil to Sherborne School in September 1881, where he boarded at The Green with housemaster Thomas Ward Wilson (1849-1924).
For a cricket-mad boy, T.W. Wilson was the ideal housemaster. A Cambridge cricket blue, his obituary said of him, ‘Cricket was one of the passions of his life, only exceeded perhaps by his love of nature. He not only got intense joy by playing cricket, but had great faith in it as a means of teaching boys how to play the game of life, and “that isn’t cricket” was one of his pet phrases. He kept up his interest in the game to the end, and had great confidence in the surgeon who operated on him in London when he found that he too was a cricketer.’
Ernest remained at Sherborne School until 1883, during which time he was a keen sportsman, representing his house in cricket, fives and athletics. He was also musical and played second violin in the School Orchestra under Director of Music Louis Napoleon Parker.
After leaving Sherborne in 1883, Ernest spent some time in Germany and Sweden and in 1887 joined the family timber agency business. Throughout his life Ernest remained a proud Shirburnian, joining the Old Shirburnian Society in 1898 and remaining a member until his death in 1936, attending OS dinners and playing for the OS cricket team. His son Cecil remembered as a boy looking his father up in the Sherborne School Register and being shocked this his home address was given as Clapham Common, which he said came as ‘ rather a nasty hit for me, the snob’.
Ernest and his brothers and sister were keen amateur actors. Ernest met his future wife Esther (Etty) Jane Sisson (1872-1962) when playing the lead in a play and they were married on 7 March 1903 at St Mary’s Kilburn. Although Ernest gave up acting after his marriage, Cecil recalled how his father would entertain the family, ‘His Herbert Tree as Svengali sent shivers down our spines, and he made terrible faces, dilating his eyes, widening his nostrils, and stretching his mouth to reveal his black teeth.’
Ernest also retained his passion for cricket, a member of the MCC he also played forty-six seasons for Hampstead Cricket Club, mainly as a wicket keeper. He apparently read only cricketing almanacs and the Economist, which was why the library in the family home never contained a book!
After their marriage in 1903, Ernest and Etty went on to have four children: Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton (1904-1980) was born on 14 January 1904 at 21, Langland Gardens, Hampstead, Reginald (Reggie) Ernest Hardy Beaton (1905-1933) was born on 3 April 1905 at Langland Gardens, Nancy Elizabeth Louise Hardy Beaton (1909-1999) was born on 30 September 1909 at Langland Gardens, and Barbara (Baba) Jessica Hardy Beaton (1912-1973) was born on 21 January 1912 at Temple Court, Templewood Avenue, Hampstead.
In later life, Cecil lamented that he and his father were never close. Ernest had a much closer relationship with his second son Reggie, a Flying Officer with No.101 Bomber Squadron at Andover, who committed suicide on 18 October 1933 by jumping in front of a tube train at Piccadilly Circus underground station. Ernest never recovered from the shock of Reggie’s death.
From July 1930 to 1945, Cecil rented Ashcombe House in Tollard Royal, Wiltshire, and it was here that Ernest and Etty spent Christmas 1934 with Cecil. At the end of March 1935, the day after the Timber Trade Federation annual dinner, Ernest had a stroke. He died the following year on 24 August 1936, aged 68, and his ashes were buried in the family tomb at Hampstead Cemetery.
In June 1947, Cecil bought Reddish House at Broad Chalke, Wiltshire, where he lived until his death in 1980. Famous for his stylish dress sense, from the mid 1960s onwards Cecil had many of his suits made by Shepherd Bros. in Gillingham, Dorset.
As Cecil got older he grew to respect his father more, describing him as ‘a one-hundred percent gentleman. He was incredibly fair, the most just person I have ever known. Seldom did he seem influenced by personal prejudice. This attitude he had perhaps acquired in his youth on the playing fields of a lost England. In those days, sports were a serious recommendation for life. My father’s prowess at sculling augured well; he learned his ethics from the cider, ginger ale and raw-wood smell of the cricket pavilions.’
Cecil’s father would therefore have been incredibly proud when in 1957 Cecil was made Vice-President of Broad Chalke Cricket Club.
Further reading:
Cecil Beaton, Ashcombe. The Story of a Fifteen-Year Lease (The Dovecote Press, 1999)
Cecil Beaton, The Wandering Years: 1922-39 (Sapere Books, 2018)
Hugo Vickers. Cecil Beaton. The Authorised Biography (Hodder & Stoughton, 2020)
Benjamin Wild, A Life in Fashion: The Wardrobe of Cecil Beaton (Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2016)
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