nina hamnett the best tits in europe part 12

I had left the studio and was living in a small hotel 
in Montparnasse. I had behaved rather badly to 
the Pole and had neglected him. I found it much 
better to live by myself and to have no one to wait 
for one's arrival home. I found one day, at the 
Countess A's, Harry MelvilL She gave a cocktail 
party. Teddie Gerrard was there. I had met her 
during the War when she was in Bubbly with Con 
stance Stuart Richardson and Arthur Weigall, the 
Egyptologist, who had designed the Egyptian set 
tings. Sessue Hayakawa (above) was also there. He was 
sitting on the floor on a small stool by the fire-place 
and I sat on a mat beside him. He was very fond of 
painting and we talked about art. He was most 
charming and very intelligent. It is such a pity that 
one never sees him now as he was such a good actor. 
Harry Melvill I had met in London just after the 
War. One day I was going to Chelsea on the top of a 
'bus and in front of me was a very smartly-dressed, 
elderly man, with a fat, rather elderly, lady. She 
looked rather like Marie Lloyd, 

 They talked and 
laughed a great deal and I wondered what they 
were doing on a 'bus, they looked much more like 
people who would own a Rolls-Royce. A few days 
later Mr. " Bogey " Harris, whom I had met at the 
Omega Workshops with Mr. Fry, asked me to 
lunch at Treviglio's* Treviglio's was at that time 
frequented by smart and amusing people; Lady 
Cunard went there a lot. I got there rather early 
and sat alone at a table and waited. 

 Presently, to 
my astonishment, the elderly man I had seen on the 
'bus came in alone. He sat down and seemed to be 

 



waiting for someone. Mr. Harris arrived and the 
elderly man and myself both rose to our feet. I was 
introduced to Harry Melville and we all sat down 
together and had lunch. Harry was most enter 
taining and never stopped talking. Certainly no 
one wanted him to. I did not tell him until years 
afterwards about the 'bus incident as I thought that, 
perhaps, he did not want to be seen on that occasion. 
He laughed very much when I did. During the War 
he had been the head of the passport office in Paris, 
as he was too old to join the Army, in fact he was 
much older than he looked. He died, unfortu 
nately, for all of us, last year. He was the kindest 
person imaginable. At the cocktail party he talked 
French incessantly to the French, lots of French. 
He spoke French very fluently and correctly 
but in the same way that he spoke English. Con 
sequently, unless one was close to him one thought 
that he was speaking English. I met Mrs. Reginald 
Fellowes and she asked me to dinner at her home. 
Some days later I went. I wore one of my grand 
evening dresses and some large pearl earrings and 
looked, I thought, very fine. Mrs. Fellowes had an 
enormous apartment in the Rue de Galilee. 

 Lady 
Michelham, the Princess Murat and Lord Wim- 
borne were there and several other people. There 
were some fine s on the walls and the 
dining-room was decorated with large still-lives, 
representing pheasants and fruit and flowers. They 
were by some eighteenth-century Master and were 
very beautiful. I was rather terrified as there were 
three butlers and so many knives and forks that I 

 





felt myself turning pale with fright. However, after 
a glass or two of wine I regained my courage and 
did not eat my meat with a fish fork. 

Hugo Rumbold

Shaftesbury Theatre, 1916
Costumes designed by Hugo Rumbold

 
was there and he played some of his songs, including 
the Madame Tussaud song about the Chamber of 
Horrors. I sang some of my silly songs. I Wandered 
through the rooms of the apartment and found a 
large life-size  

painting of Nijinsky; this was by 
Jacques Emile Blanche 

. I thought it very fine in 
deed and the best thing of his that I have ever seen. 
I arrived home about two-thirty, feeling very much 
pleased with life and with myself. 

My friend, Marie Beerbohm, spoke to me often 
about two friends of hers, F. and R. F. was half 
French, his Mother being English, and R. was 
an American from Boston. One day at the Boeuf 
she introduced me to them. F. was one of the 
first people, with Fauconnet, the French painter 
who died, and who was a very fine artist, to discover 
the Douanier Rousseau. They had seen his pic 
tures at the Salon des Independants and had written 
him a letter beginning " Cher Maitre " and had 
bought a picture. F. was a great friend of Gocteau, 
Radiguet, Max Jacob and, in fact, had known 
everyone of interest in France for the past twenty 
years. They were both most amusing and intelli 
gent and we had a wonderful evening. Marie 
Beerbohm was as witty as all the rest of her family 
and we all laughed so much that we went home 
quite exhausted. Marie lived in a service flat 
near the Avenue Wagram. She had a room 
and a bath. This part of Paris and the Bois de 





Boulogne is very tough indeed, and it is round here 
that nearly all the criminals are found. The neigh 
bourhood from the point of view of living there is 
very respectable, but there are side streets with very 
bad cafes frequented by criminals. One evening 
I was going out to dine with Marie, and we stood 
on the doorstep we were both in evening dress 
to wait for a taxi. Suddenly she ran across the 
street and stopped a taxi and then called for me. I 
ran across and found that she was being spoken to 
by a most dreadful looking tough with a real 
criminal face. He wanted to take us off somewhere 
in the taxi. We ran quickly back to her house and 
shut the door. We then asked the concierge to fetch 
us a taxi. 

I met at the Parnasse an American who had the 
brightest, reddest hair, I had ever seen. He had 
small blue eyes, the colour of a turquoise, and a 
freckled face. He was very tall and looked as if his 
arms and legs might come unhooked at any mo 
ment. He spoke very slowly. I had not been in 
love since the incident of the Pole and immediately 
on seeing this vision with such red hair, I began to 
cc sit up and take notice I have always liked red 
headed people of both sexes. They seem to me to 
be very much alive and very intelligent. I met him 
a few days later. We arranged to dine on the night 
of the Bal des Quatz 5 Arts. 

I never went, for reasons 
that I have explained before. It was too rough. I 
still saw my Pole and worked at the studio, in fact 
stayed there sometimes. During the afternoon of 
the day of the ball, Arthur Rubens tein appeared.This annual costume ball was thrown by the students of the Ecole 
Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in paris every spring. These balls, 
that included a huge parade with floats and many drunken revelers in 
elaborately designed  costumes, always ended up in a human sea of nudity
 and dancing 



He knew all the Poles In Montparnasse, who adored 
him. He arrived at the Parnasse about three in the 
afternoon. He ordered drinks all round and the 
saucers began to pile up. He explained to my 
Pole, whom I was sitting with, that he wanted to go 
to the ball and wanted to pay rather less than five 
hundred francs for his ticket. It is almost impossible 
for a man to get in who is not a student without 
having to pay an enormous sum of money. Even 
if hundreds of francs are paid,, very often people are 
thrown out, the few clothes that they have arrived 
in being torn off them. It is also necessary to know 
the name of one's supposed Professor and the 
" massier " of the class. This has to be learnt from 
memory from one of the real students. Any woman 
can get in free as they are considered the property 
of the students to do anything they like with. My 
Pole was able to obtain a ticket for fifty francs and 
then the great question of costumes had to be dis 
cussed. The period, as I have said, was Greek. 
No other kind of dress is permitted after the students 
have decided on a certain period. My Pole was not 
unlike Charlie Chaplin, and Rubenstein below, although 
of a distinguished and imposing appearance, did not 
look very like a Greek. They decided to go to the 
Bon Marche and buy suitable material and that I 
would make them clothes at the studio. I went 
home and waited for them, collecting needles, 
cotton, and scissors. They came back with yards 
of tussore silk, with red and blue swastika patterns on 
it, bunches of imitation grapes for head-dresses, and 
sandals and ribbons to put round their waists. I 




cut the silk in half and sewed each side up, leaving 
only a hole for the head, and holes each side for the 
arms. The ribbon was tied round the middle under 
the armpits. I made two wreaths of the grapes and 
the vine leaves, and helped them to paint their faces. 
They looked very fine indeed and were extremely 
proud of themselves. I dined with the red-haired 
American and we went to watch the people enter the 
ball at Luna Park. We did not see the Pole, or 
Rubenstein, but many wonderful costumes. An 
American got in without a ticket, as he saw the stu 
dents unloading a wagon of champagne and helped 
them, and so got in without being noticed. I saw 
two English Guards' officers who had come dressed 
in togas made out of sheets. They could not have 
looked more like the Grenadier Guards in their uni 
forms than they did in the sheets. They got in 
safely. The American and I went to the Bois de 
Boulogne after and sat on a seat as it was a very hot 
evening. He lived in a Hotel which is on the Quays 
at the corner of the Pont Neuf, and near the statue of 
Henry IV. We went to Les Halles and bought 
two bottles of white wine which we took back to the 
hotel. His conversation I thought completely 
" gaga, 55 but the red hair made up for it and we 
drank the wine. I stayed at the hotel and at eight- 
thirty in the morning we decided to take one of the 
river boats and go down the river. It was a beautiful 
day and very hot. I had on a pair of sandals which 
I had had in London and were wonderfully made. 
I had very nice feet with long toes and was very 
proud of them. I had a check dress, very tight 



fitting., with a long full skirt, and on the chest, round 
yellow buttons like marbles. He wore a bright 
green shirt and no hat. We had to change at 
Auteuil, as we had decided to go to St. Cloud. 

 When we got there we lay on the bank of the river 
and waved a bottle of beer at the passing bargees, 
who seemed to be much amused at us. We then 
took the boat back and I returned to Montparnasse 
to hear what happened at the ball. 

 The cafes were filled this was about twelve a.m. 
with very dirty and very tired people most of whom 
were still drunk. Nothing much was to be got out 
of them. I knocked on the Pole's door but he was 
still asleep and so I went to the Academy and did 
some drawings. Later on I found the Pole at the 
Dome and he told me what had happened. Ruben- 
stein and he had collected Heifetz the violinist, and 
they had all gone together. They had a wonderful 
time and afterwards had gone to Montmartre to a 
night club. It was a place mostly frequented by 
French people and had a band consisting of a 
rather bad pianist and a rather worse violinist. 
Rubenstein said to the pianist, " Give me the 
piano/' and the pianist, who did not know who 
they were, said, " Oh no, Monsieur, you might 
break it! " However Rubenstein sat down. Heifetz 
said to the violinist, " Lend me the violin?" and the 
violinist said, " Oh no, Monsieur, you might break 
its chords! " but Heifetz took it and they both began 
to play. They played Hungarian dances, and most 
marvellously well. The whole cafe was entranced. 
A distinguished looking diplomat wept, the pianist 





wept in one comer and the violinist in the other, and 
the ladies of the house were so filled with emotion 
that they paid for the champagne. The next day 
at the Dome I met Eric Satie and told him the 
story. I spoke to him in French and finally ex 
plained, " Et a la fin Us c grues 3 out paye pour le 
champagne" He drew himself up and said, " Made 
moiselle nous rfavons pas de c grues ' en France" and I 
said, " How funny, we have lots in England/* 
However, I managed to pacify him and we had a 
drink together. That evening I saw Russell Green 
at the Dome. I said, " Hullo, how did you get to 
the Dome?" He said, " Is this the Dome? I 
thought it was the Rotonde." I said that I was glad 
that he had made a mistake as otherwise I should 
not have found him. He had never been to Paris 
before and said that he strongly suspected that the 
whole place was a fraud and that there was nothing 
really interesting to be seen. I said, " Have you any 
money? " He had a little and I said that I would 
show him the town as I knew it. He had taken a 
first in French at Oxford and spoke the most 
beautiful French. We started for the Bol de Cidre, 
off the Place St. Michel. Here Russell's French was 
not very well understood and so I did the talking 
in my bad French. We then went to some Bal 
Musettes and then to some low haunts in Mont- 
martre. He was delighted. We started out again 
the next day, where I met him at the Dome, and after 
ten days he went back to London a changed man. 

One day I met P. G. Konody at the Dingo, a 
small cafe in the Rue Delambre.

The Dingo American Bar and Restaurant at 10 rue Delambre in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France opened its doors in 1923. Most commonly referred to as the Dingo Bar, it was one of the few drinking establishments at the time that was open all night. It became the favorite haunt of the many English-speaking artists and writers who gathered in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s.
As recorded by Ernest Hemingway in his book A Moveable Feast, he first met F. Scott Fitzgerald at the Dingo Bar in late April 1925, two weeks after the publication of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
Others who frequented the Dingo Bar included Aleister Crowley, Nancy Cunard and Isadora Duncan would come over from her apartment across the street.
James "Jimmie" Charters, a former English lightweight boxer was the highly popular barman at the Dingo and was responsible for much of its success. In 1937, Charters published "This must be the place; memoirs of Montparnasse." The book was edited by Morrill Cody with an introduction by Ernest Hemingway. It was republished in 1989.
The premises that was home to the Dingo Bar remains but today is occupied by a restaurant.

 He speaks every 



kind of language perfectly, and is a charming and 
most entertaining person. He was in Paris for a 
few days on business and was at a loose end in the 
evenings. I said 3 "Would you like to meet Eric 
Satie, I have just left him at the Dome? " Konody 
was delighted at the idea, as, of course, he had heard 
of Les Six and all the modern painters and poets 
and writers, but had met very few of them. We 
went to the Dome and I introduced them. I then 
had an inspiration. I said, " Come back with me 
and see my French friend, F., who knows everybody 
in Paris, and afterwards, perhaps, we can go and see 
Romeo and Juliet at the theatre in Montmartre. It is 
a French interpretation of Shakespeare's play by 
Jean Cocteau." I rang F. up, and we took a taxi 
to R.'s flat in the Rue de Conde, 

 where F. was 
staying. We had some cocktails in the garden. It 
was a beautiful place on the ground-floor, part of a 
very good eighteenth-century house, and had a 
courtyard covered in grass with a fountain in the 
middle. The fountain was very pretty and repre 
sented a Cupid pouring water. We said that we 
thought of going to Romeo and Juliet and F. said, 
" Ring up Cocteau and he will give you some seats if 
there are any going. 3 * I rang him up and told him 
with whom I was and he told us to come and that he 
would keep us two seats. We had a very good dinner 
and went to Le Atelier, the theatre where the play was 
on. The stage dicor was done by Jean Victor Hugo. 
He is a descendant of Victor Hugo and has a most 
remarkable talent for stage decoration and cos 
tumes. The back cloth was of black velvet, and 
 



the floor also. The actors were dressed in black. 
The men wore black tights, and painted on the 
tights were legs drawn in the style of the Sumerian 
artists. I met afterwards Jean Hugo and told him 
how much I admired the stage setting, especially 
the legs. He explained to me that the actors' legs 
were so ugly he was forced to design new patterns 
for them. The effect was startling and it was 
almost impossible with the black tights against the 
black background to see what shape they really 
were. Yvonne George took the part of the nurse. 
I had met her once or twice at F.'s house. I 
will write a lot about her later on as she became 
afterwards one of my best friends. She was a mar 
vellous actress and had one of the most expressive 
faces that I have ever seen. The show was great fun. 
I don't know what Shakespeare would have thought 
of it. We went to the bar afterwards and I intro 
duced Konody to Cocteau and Yvonne. As we 
were already in Montmartre I suggested that we 
might do a tour of the night clubs. F. and R. came 
with us to Zelli's in the Rue Fontaine. Jo Zelli is 
an Italian and certainly has the night-club spirit. 
There is a bar with high perches on which, nightly 
and all night long, sit rows of drunks, mostly journal 
ists. Very few French people are tp be found there. 
There is a very large dancing hall with a negro band. 
I had been there once before with the Princess Murat 
and Lady Michelham. When I came with them Jo 
" Zelli rushed up to them and screamed at the waiter, 
"Royal Box for the Princess 53 ; I did not think 
much about that and we sat down at a table. On 

 



 

this occasion when I was with Konody, Zelli re 
cognized me and said, Royal Box for the Prin 
cess I said, " Oh, Mr. Zelli, I think you have 
made a mistake, I am not a Princess," and then I 
realized that he always said that to any female who 
looked expensive or who was with expensive-looking 
men. We drank champagne and danced until very 
late. 

One day F. asked Marie and myself to have 
some cocktails at the flat. We found Yvonne George 
there, Cocteau, Radiguet, Stravinsky and Diaghilev. 
They asked me to bring my guitar which I did, and 
sang the " Drunken Sailor, 55 the " Servant Girl in 
Drury Lane," and the song about Nautical William. 
They were delighted with the tunes. Yvonne 
dressed herself up in cushion covers and a pair of 
white kid gloves, which she arranged on her head 
as a hat. She sang some of her songs and she, 
Cocteau, and Radiguet did an imitation scene from 
an imaginary play. They were very funny and we 
had a magnificent time. Marie and I stayed to 
dinner and we went to the Boeuf sur le Toit after 
wards. A few days later I dined at the Boeuf with 
F. and R. and later on Satie came in. I wore 
my golden dress covered with spangles. Cocteau 
and Radiguet were there and also Diaghilev 
and Boris Kochno. Satie was very affectionate 
and planted his bearded chin on my shoulder, it 
tickled a good deal, but I did not mind. He asked 
me to dance for him and the pianist played a suitable 
tune and I did various snake-like movements and felt 
rather like Salome dancing before Herod. It was 


moreau


great fun at the Boeuf when the dull people and the 
Americans went away and we were left to ourselves. 
Everyone did turns, either sang their songs, danced, 
or did acrobatics. pinkhert 

 I was introduced one day to a very nice American 
called Frank. Curiously enough, two years before, 
I had seen him in a small restaurant and always 
liked the look of him. He used to roll his eyes about 
and get up and do ridiculous dances by himself when 
he had drunk a good deal of wine. He was tall, 
with large blue eyes, and wore old-fashioned 
knickerbockers, the kind that we christened cc Minus 
twos " after the appearance of " Plus fours. I 
have recently discovered that his line of conversation 
and his method of dancing were strongly influenced 
by Mr. Groucho Marx. He was extremely funny 
and amused me. I was very broke and very bored 
with life in Montparnasse and, although I had a 
fine time with my French friends, and at the Boeuf 
sur le Toit, I felt that I was not making any kind of 
progress, either from the point of view of painting or 
finance. One day Frank said, " I am bored here, 
let's go to Brittany." I said, " All right, I have no 
money at all." He said, " That doesn't matter, I 
have a few thousand francs and can live on that 
for a month, come along with me.  I bought 
some paints and a long roll of canvas which was 
wrapped round a wooden pole, and one afternoon 
we took the train to Brittany. We took some bottles 
of wine with us, as no one in France ever dreams of 
entering a train without some refreshment. We 
had to change at Rennes and also wait there for 
 

nearly an hour for another train. We went to the 
bar and drank some Calvados, We had decided to 
go to Douarnenez, 

 which is a very long way from 
Paris and, it seemed to us, from anywhere else. We 
got to Quimper about seven-thirty a.m., feeling very 
tired, and changed for Douarnenez. Frank had had 
some friends who had stayed there and knew of a 
hotel. We had to walk over a huge suspension 
bridge to get to the hotel. The board and lodging 
was very cheap, about five or six shillings a day, and 
we took a very nice room at the back of the hotel. 
Douarnenez is at the mouth of a river and we were 
about half a mile from the port on a high cliff. 
There were no English or Americans in the hotel, 
for which we were very thankful. Frank spoke 
very good French as, when he had arrived in Paris 
with some friends, they had the sense to live in the 
workmen's quarters and learn French. He spoke 
in very much the same way as I did. He wanted to 
become a writer. He brought with him a copy of 
Ulysses, which he read every day while I worked. I 
think he was one of the nicest young men I have 
ever met, he never worried one or got on one's 
nerves. After we arrived we went to bed and slept 
for hours. The food was extremely good. Magnifi 
cent lobsters and course after course for luncheon 
and dinner. We drank cider for lunch, which made 
us feel very amiable towards the rest of the world, 
and sometimes sleepy, and wine for dinner. After 
dinner we wandered round the town and found the 
port. We discovered a little cafe kept by a charming 
lady and her daughter and filled with sailors. We 




decided to come here every evening. It was right 
on the quays and we drank Vermouth Cassis and 
sometimes Calvados. I found many subjects to 
paint and started by doing a water-colour. I then 
found, in a little street leading up to the town from 
the quays, a pale blue and cream-coloured ice 
cream barrow with white and grey stone houses 
behind. I painted this every morning, starting quite 
early. Frank sat outside the cafe, drank Ver 
mouth Cassis, and read Ulysses until I joined him 
when I had finished painting. I found life extremely 
agreeable and remember my stay in Douarnenez 
with the greatest pleasure. One day there w r as a 
Breton fete and all the peasants came out in the 
dresses of their ancestors. They looked wonderful, 
and played the Cornemuses, which are little bag 
pipes, and very much like the bag-pipes that are 
played by the peasants in Auvergne. The fete was 
held in a large field some miles from the town and 
we walked there and sat on long wooden benches 
to watch the dances. A few days after we arrived 
we found another little cafe near our hotel. It had 
a penny-in-the-slot piano which played a strange 
selection of war-time popular tunes, including an 
English one; its respectable title I don't know, as I 
can only remember the unprintable version of it. 
The cafe was kept by two buxom peasant women 
who wore, as in fact all the women did, little white 
caps and black dresses. On the counter were 
barrels of cider and in the cafe there were only 
sailors and no women at all except myself and the 
proprietresses. Barrels were used as tables and we 


sat round them on small stools. The sailors always 
drank beer out of half-pint bottles. We ordered 
a round one evening. No glasses were provided 
so the patronne produced fifteen bottles for fifteen 
sailors, and they and we drank out of the bottles. 
The sailors danced together and I danced with 
Frank. We got on very well with them, especially 
when I explained that I was " Galloise This 
was not strictly true, but I was certainly born in 
Wales and could say, " Good health " in Welsh, 
which pleased them, as it is the same as in the 
Breton language. This reminded me of a story 
that Gedric Morris told me. He is, of course, 
Welsh and when he was quite young his family 
sent him to France to learn French. Unfortun 
ately, they chose Brittany as a suitable spot for 
his studies. When he got there he found that it 
was quite unnecessary to learn French as everybody 
understood Welsh and he returned to England 
knowing as little French as when he started out! 
 

 In Douarnenez there was no sand or beach from 
where we could bathe, but two miles along the 
coast there was a wonderful beach with two or three 
miles of hard sand. The sea was generally rough 
with huge breakers. I could not swim and was 
rather nervous. We were the only people on the 
sea-shore and took our clothes off. Frank could 
swim very well. The waves were much higher than 
ourselves. They were about ten or twelve feet 
high. Frank grabbed me round my middle and 
pushed me head first through the waves as they 
approached us and just before they broke. I never 
 



expected to come out alive. This, however, did not 
teach me how to swim. 

Our hotel had a little cafe attached to it, and be 
fore dinner we would have aperitifs there, and I did 
drawings of the peasants. There was an enormously 
fat woman of whom I did many drawings. 

 

We had been in Douarnenez for nearly three 
weeks, and Frank had to sail for America in about 
ten days' time. We stayed a few more days, and 
decided to see some more places, before leaving for 
Paris. We went to Goncarneau, which is a most 
beautiful place. On the quays were about fifty old 
ladies and gentlemen with easels, all painting boats. 
This was a depressing sight and so we entered a 
small sailors 3 cafe and had some Calvados. The 
place was delightful, but the English and Americans 
awful. We spent the night there, and started the 
next day for Pont Aven, 

 which I had read so much 
about in Horace Annesley VachelPs book, The Face 
of Clay. 

It was also the place where Gauguin and a 
large colony of artists had lived. It was a dreadful 
place. We went to a hotel which was full of really 
terrible English Colonels with their wives and 
daughters. The proprietor of the hotel recom 
mended us to an old lady near by as the hotel 
was full, who let us a charming room, with lace 
curtains, family photographs. Virgin Marys, and 
Crucifixes. It was pouring with rain when we 
arrived; I think it poured for two days. I sat in 
our room and painted a portrait of Frank in oils 
with an oleograph of the Virgin Mary behind him. 
We crossed the road to the hotel for our meals. 


 



Next to us was a really frightful family, an elderly, 
hard-faced Englishwoman and her daughter. They 
wore blouses with whale-bone to hold up the collars, 
which came up to their ears. The anatomy of 
their chests was quite hidden by whale-bones and 
stuffing. They gazed at us with horror as Frank and 
I held each other's hands and whispered into each 
other's ears during lunch and dinner. The next day 
was a fete and the Bretons danced reels and quad 
rilles in the street. We joined in, which again 
shocked the English. It seems unkind and rude to 
always be objecting to one's fellow country-people, 
but those one so often finds abroad are frequently 
a blot on the race and should stay at home in some 
dismal village from which they probably came. We 
had to go to Quimperle 

 to catch the train for Paris. 
Quimperle is a pretty place on a river and we had 
several hours to wait. We found a church and sat 
inside, in fact I think we knelt down and said a 
prayer, I forget what for. We then sat gloomily 
in a cafe till the train came in. It was full and 
we had to stand or sit on the floor of the corridor all 
night, it was very uncomfortable and very much 
worse than my voyage to Gollioure. We got to 
Montpamasse about nine a.m. Frank had to leave 
that same afternoon and we were both very sad. 
I shook him by the hand outside his hotel and then 
ran up the Boulevard Montpamasse to the Dome. 
It is too dreadful seeing people into trains. 

 

I found my friends and a woman I had not seen 
for some time who bought some of my Brittany 
drawings and gave me a thousand francs, which 




 



consoled me a little for Frank's departure. I visited 
the Pole, who, I think, had missed me a good deal. 
I started work at once and was able to afford a 
model. A Polish girl came and I painted her por 
trait in a fawn coloured " cloche " hat. I met, one 
day, a rich American woman. She was very amus 
ing and had an enormous apartment near the 
Champ de Mars. She drank a great deal of cham 
pagne and asked me to paint her portrait. She was 
fat, very smart, and heavily painted. I was to be 
given four thousand francs. I got a large canvas 
and began. She sat very badly, and very soon got 
angry with me, as she said that I had insulted her. 
All her enemies were delighted with it. I went 
occasionally to her flat, but life there was much too 
rough for me. When she got angry she would 
become violent. One day she got annoyed with 
some man and seized some geraniums that were in 
a pot. She rooted them out and threw them at him, 
and the pot afterwards. Fortunately, the man had 
just slammed the door and the pot crashed against it 
as the door closed. She paid me about fifteen hun 
dred francs, but I never got any more, and I believe 
thatit was eventually hung up in the butler's bedroom. 
She afterwards lost all her money, got some kind 
of job, and behaved in a very courageous manner. 
I met at the Dome two very charming men. One 
was Meriel Cooper and the other was Ernest B. 
Schoedsack. They had just come back from the un 
explored parts of Persia and had done their first big 
film called " Grass." Cooper was a small fair man 
with a large forehead, and Schoedsack was one of the 





best-looking men I have ever seen. He was six feet- 
five in height, and had the most beautiful eyes. I 
made great friends with Cooper. Schoedsack was 
known as " Shorty "; he adored very small women. 
Afterwards they both made the film " Chang and 
the last one, and I think the finest, is " Rango," 
which " Shorty " made himself. He is a man with 
a most delightful sense of humour, as one can see in 
" Rango." He went afterwards on the expedition 
to the Sargasso Sea 

 with Dr. Gann and, I think, is 
now married. I have never seen either of them 
since, but hope to do so some day. 

 

I met Sinclair Lewis at the Dome. He was with 
Stacy Aumonier, who is now dead. We had an 
amusing evening, and told stories of all kinds. 
Sinclair Lewis tells stories very well and has the 
most remarkable ones about life in the Middle West. 
He would come from time to time to the quarter 
and bring Mr. Howe of Ellis Island fame. One 
evening I came into the Dome and found Sinclair 
Lewis and Mr. Howe. I was sitting with them when 
in came two young American " College boys/' 
They were so impressed with meeting the great man 
that they sat silently and listened to him. This was 
quite right as he is well worth listening to. I had to 
go out and dine with someone, and came back about 
nine-thirty. I found, sitting at the back of the 
Dome, the two " College boys/ 9 alone and looking 
very frightened. I said, " What has happened to 
you? " They unfolded the following extraordinary 
story. They had a good many drinks, and foolishly 
opened their mouths. One of them said, " Say, Mr. 




Lewis, I guess that as far as style goes Flaubert has 
got you all beat, but as far as characterization goes 
youVe got Flaubert all beat.  Whereupon appar 
ently an appalling battle started and Sinclair Lewis 
left the Dome having practically won on a " knock 



out 



I met a young American, called John; he was a 
curious creature, not good-looking but tall, and with 
a very nice voice. He was a writer and wrote for 
Ford's paper, the Transatlantic Review. I liked him 
very much. He seemed to have almost every kind of 
complex possible; I thought him interesting. He 
lived near Paris in an old chateau, which was owned 
by a Greek lady and her husband, whose fortune was 
not so large as it had been before the War. They 
took in paying guests. They had several children 
who were very nice and well behaved. I went out 
to see him about once a week. All the pensionnaires 
had to speak French. There was a large garden, 
and after lunch we all played croquet, a game that 
I am very fond of. There was no grass on the cro 
quet court, only hilly earth, and to get the balls 
through the hoops was purely a matter of luck. 
The chateau was of a very fine design and I should 
think late seventeenth century, with large windows 
opening on to the lawn. There were some very fine 
pictures, two small Gauguins, a Sisley, and a Manet. 
After the croquet game was finished we walked 
round the countryside, occasionally stopping to 
consume some Vermouth Cassis. In the spring the 
landscape was really beautiful, there were orchards 
everywhere, and one could see nothing for miles 

 

around but white blossoms. I never dared to 
try and paint them. Much later on, when I at 
tacked a pear-tree in bloom in the South of France, 
to my astonishment I did, I think, the best land 
scape I have ever painted. Anyway, I sold it for 
twenty pounds and it was only a small one. I 
took the train back to Paris about eight o'clock 
with my arms full of roses which the Greek lady 
gave me. Sometimes John carne back to Paris with 
me and we dined there and he went back later 
on. I enjoyed his company and we had a very 
pleasant and romantic friendship. I brought the 
roses to the Pole, who painted still lives of them 
when they were fresh, and through every stage of 
decay until they were quite dried up, painting 
about three different still lives out of each bunch of 
roses. 

From time to time the artists hired the Bal Bullier 
and organized dances. One time the Poles would 
have a ball, another the Russians and various other 
nationalities. It was not necessary to wear the 
national costume, but everyone wore some kind of 
fancy dress. One day the Poles gave a ball. They 
hired a salle near the Porte d  Orleans, as it was 
not to be such a big affair as the Bal Bullier. I 
found, during the afternoon, Jemmett the " Chelsea 
giant He was six feet- ten and used at one time to 
be seen each morning in Piccadilly wearing a top- 
hat and tail coat. He was a really magnificent- 
looking creature, as he was perfectly proportioned 
and very good-looking. I asked him if he would like 
to come with me and he said that he would. I had 
 



not got a fancy dress and had not time to think of 
one, so I wore a very fine oyster-coloured evening 
dress. Jemmett appeared in very old tattered 
trousers, a check shirt, a cap, and a red handkerchief 
round his neck. Later on in the evening his braces 
burst and I had to stand on a seat and attach the 
braces with a safety-pin to his shirt. We found, at 
the Dome, Claude McKay, 

the coloured author; 
we took him with us. It was surprising how good 
Jemmett was at folding himself up in a taxi. We 
took another woman with us as well and we all got 
in quite comfortably. When we got to the ball we 
found a Pole who was six feet five strutting about 
being admired by everybody. When I walked in 
with Jemmett the Pole became pale with rage and 
nobody took any notice of him at all for the rest of 
the evening. I danced with Jemmett. He danced 
beautifully, but my head only came up to his chest, 
so one dould not see anything or anybody while one 
was dancing. I found I had lost my hotel key after 
wards, and decided to go to the studio and stay 
there. I walked up the long flight of stairs which 
was quite dark. I lit a match and saw, to my 
surprise, standing motionless outside the studio door, 
a man in the uniform of a Samurai Warrior, com 
plete with two swords sticking out, one each side of 
him. He explained that he had dressed in the 
studio and had left his trousers inside and was wait 
ing for my Pole to come back. We both waited and 
finally he arrived. I put on the uniform the next 
day and looked very odd in it and the Pole did some 
drawings of me. 



I met James Joyce one day; Ford Introduced me 
to him. He was a most charming man and h^d a 
most beautifully proportioned head. I asked him 
if I could do a painting of him. He said that I 
could, but I sent telegrams to him and he sent 
telegrams to me, and all of them arrived too late or 
too early and so I never painted him at all. He 
dined every evening at the Trianon and one evening 
I did a drawing of him when I was sitting at another 
table and he did not know that I was doing it. It 
was a very good likeness and I believe was repro 
duced in an American paper. The drawing is un 
fortunately lost and I never got paid for it. I met 
him and his wife whenever I went to the Trianon 
which, alas, was not often as it was rather expensive. 
Joyce is the most respectable and old-fashioned 
man that I have ever met. He also has the most 
beautiful manners, which is a pleasant change from 
most of the modern young men. He has a most 
charming voice and occasionally will sing. I think 
he is a little older than I am, but we were discussing 
old-fashioned songs one evening, " Daisy, Daisy, 
give me your answer, do, and others of the same 
kind and I said, " Did you see many years ago a 
show that was a kind of Magic Lantern show with a 
ship going down? The ship was attached to the 
screen and heaved up and down and voices sang a 
song called, c I'll stick to the ship, boys, you save 
your lives '? " It was a tragic story of a ship that 
sank and the Captain stuck to his ship because he 
was a bachelor and the crew had wives and families. 
Joyce remembered it and knew the whole song. I 





remembered only the chorus and we sang that 
together. I went to the show (it was called some 
body's " Diorama ") with my Grandmother, who 
wept, as she always did, at the sight of a ship. 
Joyce, I have heard since, paid me a very nice 
compliment and said I was one of the* few vital 
women that he had ever met. I don't know if that 
is true, but I have very big lungs and can make a 
great deal of noise if encouraged. Joyce spoke with 
the most charming accent. His wife was fair and 
extremely nice; he had two children, a son and a 
daughter, who did not speak very much.