In my opinion Nina was a fine and talented artist, the reason why I think so was that her paintings had great subject matter, many artists dont, a lot has been said about her losing beauty , well sadly that happens to everyone.
December 16 1956. At midday on a cold Sunday, Nina Hamnett falls forty feet from the window of her Paddington flat, injuring herself fatally on the railings below. There is a stool in front of the open window, and her throat is gashed.
It is an open question whether the world lost or gained by the partial sacrifice of Nina Hamnett the painter … to Nina Hamnett, the Bohemian … Whatever she might have done ultimately in painting if she had stuck to it more closely, Miss Hamnett was a complete success as a person: generous, good humoured, loyal and witty.
Ninas book is a headlong rush through Hamnett’s first forty-two years, Laughing Torso was a best-seller both in Britain and America. The reader would scarcely suspect that by the time it was published its author was well past her prime. Hamnett’s flame burned brightly, but it had begun to flicker by 1925. In May of that year, Fry wrote to a friend: “What a collapse . . . she’s suddenly become a coarse heavy middle-aged rouée and all the queer satyrlike oddity and grace of her is gone forever. She’s quite repulsive.(”read sinead oconnor?)Her book limns a hardscrabble existence kept afloat on rivers of booze, but it glosses over such nettlesome autobiographical details as her many simultaneous affairs and her bisexuality. Scant mention is made of the author’s many exhibitions, both in Paris and London, before and after World War I. But their insouciance and what-the-devil indecorum make these reminiscences a propulsive, irresistible read.The masin thing that people say about her was that she was someone a bit pathetic but that seems unlikely as if you read these memories it seems she was invited everywhere by people who counted. The fact is old age does make us pathetic, we cannot escape that, some do but very few.
BACK TO PARIS AND CELEBRITIES
That is what I admired so much about them.
There was a Spanish hairdresser in the
Rue Delam-
bre.
I had my hair cut there. There was not a
ladies 5 place and I had to sit with the French
workmen, who were being shaved. The Spaniard
was a little man with a turned up moustache, who
danced on his toes as he was shaving the workmen.
One day his wife came in with a large bunch of
flowers. The Spaniard was delighted, and the
Frenchman whom he was shaving, said, " Why do
you buy flowers? I should prefer to buy bifsteak,"
and the Spaniard stood on his toes, waved the razor,
and said, " Pour nourrir Vesprit" and after that I
appreciated the Spaniards even more.
There was a strange old Spanish gipsy called
Fabian.
He had been in England with Augustus
John and Horace Cole. He was at one time one of
the finest guitarists in Spain. He had taken to
painting and painted rather bad El Grecos. He
spoke frequently of Le Dessin and I went to his
studio, more to induce him to play the guitar than
to see his pictures. On an easel was an enormous
canvas with a crucifixion on it. It had a red
curtain in front of it and Fabian drew it aside with
great reverence. I finally induced him. to take
down his guitar from the wall. He began to tune
it. Guitarists are very difficult people I can
accompany songs of a rather questionable nature
myself and I have a good deal of sympathy for
them. Fabian being a Spaniard, and a gipsy at that,
was extremely difficult and tuned and tuned for
nearly an hour. At last he got it tuned and played
gipsy tunes and dances, which made one want to
dance. A Spaniard one day became very angry
with him and wanted revenge. It was not a very
serious quarrel and the Spaniard decided to have a
little fun and a quiet revenge at the same time. He
explained to Fabian that his eyesight was weak and
that he ought to see an oculist. They went off
together and found one. The oculist showed
Fabian some printed words in quite small print and
said, " Can you read that? " And Fabian said,
" No." He then showed him some larger print and
Fabian again said, * c No! " After showing him
some larger and larger print poor Fabian had to
confess that he could neither read nor write. This,
of course, the Spaniard knew already and went
home quite satisfied. There was another Spaniard
who came often, before the War, to Hunt Diederich's
studio
He was the laziest man I had ever met. He
did admirable woodcuts. I think he had done
about three in ten years. One day he was sitting
in the studio with his guitar and Hunt gave him
some money to go out and buy a bottle of wine. He
was so lazy that he could not even do that. He was
painted by Modigliani, a very fine portrait and like
ness. He was trying to sell it in 1920 for four
hundred francs. Alas! I could not find the four
hundred francs.
At this time, 1920, Nancy Cunard, Marie Beer-
bohm, T. W. Earp, Iris Tree
and Evan Morgan
,
( It is precisely the improbable contradictions he embodied in his life, the unlikely meeting of the most disparate worlds, which makes this writer/occultist/aristocrat/papal bigwig so interesting. A diagram connecting the Vatican, Nazi brass and Aleister Crowley lacks only L. Ron Hubbard and Queen Beatrix to bring it into the realm of conspiracy theory.)and
several other English people were in Paris and we
had wonderful parties at Charlie Winzer's flat.
Some more English arrived and found that the
Iris Treee by Modigliani.
Iris Tree (27 January 1897 – 13 April 1968) was an English poet, actress and artists' model, described as a bohemian, an eccentric, a wit and an adventuress.
Her parents were actors Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Helen Maud Tree,
and her sisters were actresses Felicity and Viola Tree.Above with John
An aunt was author Constance Beerbohm, and her uncles were explorer and author Julius Beerbohm and caricaturist and parodist
Max Beerbohm
.
Iris Tree was sought after, as a young woman, as an artists' model, being painted by Augustus John, simultaneously by Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell
and Roger Fry, and sculpted by Jacob Epstein, showing her bobbed hair (she was said to have cut off the rest and left it on a train) that, along with other behaviour, caused much scandal. The sculpture is currently displayed at the Tate Britain. She was photographed countless times by Man Ray, and ran with Nancy Cunard for a time, in a set at and acted alongside Diana Cooper
in the mid-1920s.
She had studied at the Slade School of Art. She contributed verse to the 1917 Sitwell anthology Wheels; her published collections were Poems (1920) and The Traveller and other Poems (1927).
She married twice.
Her first marriage was to Curtis Moffat, a New York artist; Ivan Moffat, the screenwriter, was their son. Her second marriage was to the actor and ex-officer of the Austrian cavalry, Count Friedrich von Ledebur-Wicheln.
They both appear (after their divorce) in the 1956 film version of Moby-Dick. She also appears in a cameo, essentially as herself, in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita.
BACK TO PARIS AND CELEBRITIES
French drinks were not strong enough. After some
serious research work a drink was concocted that
satisfied them. It was named " Pernod (Susie) Suze
Fine/' imitation absinthe, gentian
,
and brandy.
The cheap French brandy is very much like
methylated spirits. I tried the mixture but found
it impossible to get down. This kept them happy
for some weeks, until a day came when one member
of the party, whilst attempting to cross a street in
Montmartre, became suddenly transfixed in the
middle of the street. He was rigid like a waxwork
and as immovable. His companion had, with the
aid of a friendly taxi-driver, to lift him bodily into
a taxi. After this incident the English satisfied
themselves with milder forms of alcohol. One day
I bought Odilon Redon's Journal, called, "a soi
meme" and, whilst reading it, came upon the follow
ing passage, which I thought rather beautiful:
" J'ai passe dans Us allies froides et silencieuses du
cimetiere et pres des tombes desertes. Etfai connu le calme
d* esprit" I thought that I would visit the Cimetiere
Montparnasse.
It gave me a curious feeling of
gloom as I thought of Edgar. I walked down the
avenue of trees and came across a large section
which is set apart for Jews. Further on I found a
most curious tomb. It was the tomb of some
sale bourgeois. It consisted of a large bronze French
bedstead. At the top was a bronze angel and
at the foot a bronze india-rubber plant. In the
bed, on a bronze counterpane, lay Monsieur and
Madame Pigeon. Monsieur lay on his side in a
bronze frock coat, and Madame lay beside him
LAUGHING TORSO
in dark bronze bombazine.
Her hair was done in
a bun on the top of her head, in the same manner as
the ladies in the drawings of Forain
and Steinlen.
The drawing above dates back to around 1892 .
Almost throughout his entire career Steinlen lived in Boulevard Montmartre praising Paris
and the everyday life of its people with their 
sorrows and joys.
Steinlen's artistic idiom is so expressive that his works attract people at first sight, the more so because
many of his drawings were widespread in lithographs.
In the middle of the bed, between them, was a dip
in the counterpane, which, when it rains, becomes a
large puddle. Further on, on the same side of the
cemetery, in the corner is a small grave covered in
ivy, with China jam-jars, filled with daffodils. The
tombstone was sculptured by Brancusi. It repre
sents two crouching figures glued together. A man
and a woman. The female is to be distinguished
only by her long hair and a slight indication of one
breast. The rest of her anatomy is shared by her
partner. This, I found out afterwards, was most
unsuitable, as the body in the grave the inscription
was carved in Russian, so I could not read it was
that of a young Russian girl of seventeen who was
infatuated with an elderly doctor who was mar
ried and did not love her. She committed suicide
and died a virgin.
I crossed the road, as a road
runs through the cemetery and found the tomb of
Baudelaire.
He lies on his tomb in a winding
sheet. At the head, looming over him, is a sinister
figure, the model of which, I believe, was Monsieur
de Max. A Frenchman whom I knew had a whole
nest of ancestors buried somewhere in the cemetery,
and on the anniversary of any one of their deaths
arrived with some friends and bottles of wine and
they drank to the health of the Oncle Augustin or
the Tante Emilienne. I found also Ste. Beuve,
who sits in front of a stone bookcase, containing all
his books, and these are quite enough to fill the
whole bookcase. Further on I found an obelisk,
about twenty feet high. This is in memory of the
Admiral Dumont d'Urville
who discovered the
Venus de Milo. Encircling it are his three tours
du monde. In the last one you can see the Admiral
in full uniform in a small boat, lifting from the ocean
the nude and stony corpse of the Venus de Milo.
By this time I had arrived at the part of the cemetery
which is near the Avenue du Maine.
I found the
tomb of the Famille Guillotine
and further on an
enormous and important-looking tomb. On each
side sat two lions, rather like those in Trafalgar
Square. On the tombstone, in the middle, are the
names of a Greek prince and a French countess,
with no explanation. I thought that this was very
romantic. I hoped that they had loved one another,
but thought afterwards that, perhaps, they had only
had business relations. I have never discovered
the truth about them. After this I returned to the
Cafe Parnasse
where I had found that some English,
friends had arrived. They asked me out to dinner.
I had known them slightly before the War. We ate
oysters and dined at Baty's, did all the cafes, found
some pre-war friends, and ended up in the markets,
Les Halles, amongst the cabbages. When one visited
the markets one always arrived back at the Dome or
the Parnasse laden with flowers and cabbages, which
were very cheap. One day someone arrived back
with a sack of potatoes !
The English, at this time, were going very strong
indeed, they all had money and had not been back
to Paris since the War. My Pole did not really ap-
prove of them as they were only too glad to lead me
astray and, as almost every day one found someone
whom one had not seen for years, it was difficult not
to celebrate. On another occasion an old friend of
mine, after dinner, found a cellar near the Place
St. Michel
called the " Bol de cidre" One entered a
cafe through a large door, which was down a little
passage. The patron was an enormous Norman in
a white apron. There were large barrels of cider
on the floor, and at the back a smaller room. On
the walls was a list of celebrities who had visited the
place. Paul Verlaine, Laurent Tailhade, Oscar
Wilde, and so many others that I have forgotten
their names. We drank cider out of a bowl and had
a calvados to cheer it up. Downstairs was a cellar
with Norman arches dated 1145. This place had
been the stable of Francis I. The street next to it is
called " La rue oil git le coeur."
I always thought that
that meant, " The street where the heart lodged,"
but I was told afterwards that it meant something
different.
Down a side street, at the corner, was the
river. There was a large house which had belonged
to Francis I, at the corner of the street on the quays.
Francis patronized many great artists of his time, including Andrea del Sarto and Leonardo da Vinci; the latter was persuaded to make France his home during his last years. While Leonardo painted very little during his years in France, he brought with him many of his greatest works, including the Mona Lisa (known in France as La Joconde), and these remained in France after his death. There is another version of the Mona Lisa, discovered by Hugh Blaker
, which never made it to France. It is known as the Isleworth Mona Lisa
, and has for years been the subject of much debate because it has many qualities that fit the history of the Mona Lisa, which the Louvre version does not possess, including the columns depicted in Raphael's 1504 sketch of the Mona Lisa, done in Leonardo's studio while visiting there, and showing a younger woman (in her 20s) which better suits the age Lisa Gherardini would have been in 1504. Other major artists to receive Francis' patronage include the goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini
and the painters Rosso
, Romano
and Primaticcio,
all of whom were employed in decorating Francis' various palaces and were exceedingly loyal. Francis also commissioned a number of agents in Italy to procure notable works of art and ship them to France.
In the time of Francis I the river came right up
to the house. At the other corner of the street was
a smaller house. Here had lived his mistress
and
high up over the street was a footbridge connecting
the two houses. In the front room of the Bol was a
counter at which were standing a collection of
ruffians of both sexes. We went downstairs to the
cellar. There were wooden tables and chairs and
a small platform with a man playing an accordion.
We sat down and ordered some cider mixed with
calvados calvados is made from apples and tastes
very agreeable. A singer got up on the platform and
sang vulgar songs. Having learnt my French in the
University of Montparnasse I could understand
every word; at times I rather wished I couldn't.
The songs were what Evelyn Waugh would have
called., cc Blush-making. ' Sometimes there were
very unpleasant battles in the cellar, and as the
staircase was narrow and winding, it was not easy
to get out in time. One evening a man and a woman
were there who spoke English and tried to pick a
quarrel with us with a view to blackmail. Having
visited this kind of place before, the man was rapidly
disposed of.
One day I was sitting on the terrasse of the Rotonde,
at about nine in the morning, reading the Continental
Daily Mail
a deplorable habit and a figure ap
peared, having leapt over three tables. This was
Evan Morgan, who had just arrived back from
Marseilles; he was dressed in black and looked very
smart. He said, ec How do you like my clothes? "
I said, " How smart ! " He said, cc Oh, no, a sailors'
shop in Marseilles. To-day is my birthday, let us
have a dinner-party and you must be the hostess."
We walked down the Boulevard Montparnasse in
the direction of the station. Opposite the station
is a very good restaurant called the Trianon, where
James Joyce always dines. I had not met him at
this time. It had Plats regionaux, a different dish
each day from a different part of France. We
decided to ask twelve people, fourteen including
ourselves. I had discovered in Montparnasse an
artist's model who was the image of Evan. He was
much amused and said that we must invite her too.
We hired a private room and ordered the dinner.
We invited Curtis Moffat, who had a passion for
ecrevisses.
Ecreviss are like very small lobsters and
repose on a large dish covered in a very beautiful
sauce. We ordered fifty. We ordered hors
d'oeuvres, soup, chickens, a colossal dinner with
cocktails, red and white wine, champagne and
coffee and liqueurs. The patron gave us an estimate
of eight hundred francs, which was very cheap in
deed. Ivan Opfer, the cartoonist, came. He is a
Dane and had lived in America and talks with an
accent that is a mixture of Danish and American.
He looks like a Viking, and tells stories better than
anyone I have ever met. He is the only person
I know who can take a long time to tell a story,
and he is such an admirable actor that he can make
every word interesting. Curtis came and was de
lighted with the Ecrevisses. Eating them is a long
and messy business, because one has to use one's
fingers. Harrison Dowd was t
here and played the
piano to us. The artist's model turned up and
bored us so much that we regretted having asked
her. I must say that I behaved very well. I was so
flattered to find myself in the important role of
hostess that I was extremely occupied the whole
evening dealing with the needs of the guests, and did
not drink too much. Fortunately, the artist's model,
having decided that there was not much chance of
getting money for the honour of her presence, re-
membered that she had an important engagement
with a rich man. We breathed a sigh of relief and
settled down to the coffee and liqueurs and to listen
to Ivan's stories. After a few liqueurs everyone else
remembered some stories, including myself,
and the
party continued till the early hours of the morning.
I decided to do a series of water-colours of cafes
and street scenes, and have an exhibition in London.
Every day I did a drawing which I took home
and
painted from memory. I was astonished to find how
quickly one can train one's memory and after a few
weeks I could do them with perfect ease.
(1890-1956) ‘Café Royal’. Possibly George Moore and Lord Alfred Douglas. Pen and ink. 9x7 inches. Signed. Inscribed and dated, Aug. 3rd 1915. £2250
I was
thinking of the pictures that I had done at Gollioure.
I had about fifteen of them
and decided that I ought
to go to London and try and make some money.
Walter Sickert had a house near Dieppe and I wrote
to him telling him that I was going to London by
Dieppe-Newhaven. He wrote asking me to stay
with him. I packed my pictures up and Sickert
met me at Dieppe. I did not recognize him at first
as he wore a sailor's peaked cap, oilskins, and a red
spotted handkerchief round his neck. He was
always difficult to recognize if one had not seen him
for some time.
He might appear with an enormous
beard like a Crimean veteran
or he would dress
himself in very loud checks and a bowler hat and
look like something off a race-course. We took a
taxi to Envermeu,
where he had a house; it was
some miles away from Dieppe.
We drove through
the forest of Arques, where there was a battle in
about 1600. The forest looked very beautiful, as it
was autumn, and the roads and the ground of the
forest were covered with red and yellow leaves.
Sickert had bought a house that was once a Police
Station. It was on the main street. As a matter of
fact there was only one street. It was a long, narrow
house, and the rooms were in a straight line and all
numbered. These had been cells. My room was
" numero 3." We ate in a large kitchen. The cook
and the gardener sat at one table and we sat at a
larger one in the middle of the room. Sickert talked
to the servants throughout lunch and dinner and
made them laugh a great deal. They drank red
wine and cider and we drank red wine and calvados.
Envermeu is a dull, flat place, and I never knew
why Sickert had chosen it. I don't think he painted
much there but went into Dieppe, where he painted
some of his best pictures. These are very different
from his Camden Town period. The Camden Town
ones are in a very low key of blacks, greys, and
Indian reds, whereas the Dieppe pictures were
painted in the most brilliant greens, blues, yellows
and reds. I think that it is quite impossible to com
pare their merits and that it is really a question of
personal taste. On the evening of my arrival I
showed him my pictures, hoping that he would like
them. He was, unfortunately, horrified and hated
them. This filled me with gloom. I rather admired
them myself at that time, but, having seen some of
them recently, am inclined to think that he was
right. I have come to the conclusion that the South
of France and I have nothing in common. Brittany
I can deal with, as it is more like England, but the
South, with its hard purple shadows, white houses,
and perpetually blue sky is not a part of my " make
up.
and found it so appallingly rough
that I waited
another day and then took the boat for Newhaven.
I arrived in London and went to the Eiffel Tower,
where I got a small room near the roof. The next
day a friend of mine bought a picture. I had not
enough pictures for an exhibition, but Mr. Turner,
of the Independent Gallery, said that he was having
a mixed show of English painters and that I could
exhibit four or five. I sold another small painting
and decided to return to Paris and to my Pole. I
was glad to be back. I was in no better position
than if I had not gone at all and felt that my life
was a failure and damned the South of France.
I continued my water-colours. I went daily to
the Luxembourg Gardens where I did some really
good work, I think. There is a statue there that I
always admired. It is of a lady standing up, with
- her feet crossed, in a very short skirt indeed, and a
strange little hat like an inverted soup plate. I did
a drawing of her. Some years later I went to the
Bal Julien dressed as her. I wore a pink silk
accordion pleated garment, that really was a pair
of knickers. They had no legs, but only a ribbon to
divide them. I borrowed them from a rich American
woman and cut the ribbon so that it looked exactly
like the skirt of the statue. They had garlands of
blue silk forget-me-nots embroidered on them. I
wore a short blue, tight-fitting jacket that I had
bought at the " Flea market " at Caulincourt and a
very small blue hat that looked like a comedian's
bowler. It was almost flat and looked very like the
one worn by the statue. I had a great success at the
ball, especially when I explained whom I repre
sented.
My friend with whom I had gone to Russia in
1909, returned to Paris with her husband. They
were both very bright and cheerful and had met
Ferdinand Tuohy.
Tuohy was a large, good-looking
and cheerful Irishman, who laughed perpetually and
wrote the most beautiful English. B., my friend's
husband, was a very amusing man and did extremely
funny caricatures
.
One day Tuohy had been
celebrating. I forget whether it was the finish
of a love affair, or the beginning of another, as
he was generally in love with someone. He arrived
at the Dome about breakfast time. I was with
B. and his wife. Tuohy ordered what he described
as " Turk's blood"; this was stout and cham
pagne mixed. We realized that any idea of spend
ing a serious day was out of the question. About
12 a.m. several other people had joined us and
there were a considerable number of stout and
champagne bottles. It suddenly occurred to Tuohy
and B. that they looked like soldiers and they pro
ceeded to divide them into regiments, the cham
pagne bottles representing officers, large and small,
and the stout bottles ordinary soldiers. This kept
them occupied for hours. Finally they took them
out on the terrasse and were joined by some workmen
and taxi-drivers who were much entertained and
described Tuohy and B. as " trts rigolo" which
indeed, they were. The English were still in search
of new forms of alcohol and one day B. discovered
Mandarin Curasao. It is extremely powerful stuff
and, I think, must have some kind of dope in it as,
at any rate, one evening B. drank a great deal of it
and wandered off by himself No one knows what
actually happened to him, but he returned home the
next morning, very early, so badly damaged that he
was hardly recognizable, and said that he had tried
to fight the French Army, that the French Army
had won, and that he would never touch Mandarin
Curagao again.
We met another Irishman in the Quarter. He
was a journalist and spoke French as much like a
Frenchman as any Irishman can who already speaks
with a strong Irish accent. He had absorbed so
much absinthe before the War that he had become
completely paralysed. He went into a home and
had to be taught, by slow degrees, how to use his
limbs. He frequently went out to Montmartre and
Les Halles. One morning he arrived at the Cafe
Parnasse, about eight a.m., with a friend of his.
They had been out all night and had just come from
the markets. They had some dice with them and
decided to toss up for the possession of the next per
son who entered the cafe. The Irishman won and
they sat and waited. There were only very few
people who came in so early and they had to wait
for some time, meanwhile, consoling themselves with
a few Pernod Susie fines. After a time the door
opened and a dark respectable-looking man entered.
The Irishman jumped at him and screamed, " I've
won you! I've won you! You're mine! " The man
turned out to be a Spaniard and, when the situation
was explained to him, he quite appreciated the joke
and they all continued to drink together. I re
mained with them for a short time, but realized that
if I stayed very long an ambulance would have to be
sent for to carry me home to my Pole, who did not
appreciate the eccentric behaviour of the Anglo-
Saxons. The Irishman was very strange and
secretive about himself. He often hinted at the
unusual way in which he earned his living. We
knew that he was a journalist, but nothing at all
about the paper or papers he worked for. One day
I was with the War correspondent, Donohue, who
is now dead, and two other men. The Irishman
hurried past us. I said afterwards to him, " Why
on earth did you run away from us like that/ 3 He
said, " Those men know all about me." Eventually
we discovered that his great and terrible secret was
that he was on the advertising staff of a very well
known English newspaper. He was extremely good
at his job, and went all over Europe interviewing
Lord Mayors and important business men. When
he found out that nobody except himself seemed to
consider it a bore, and an undignified way of earning
one's living, he became quite calm. As far as we
could make out he got the sack regularly once a
week but, being apparently indispensable, was
taken back the following day.
One day when I was sitting in the Parnasse,
two strange females appeared. I was sitting with
Harrison Dowd, one of the few Americans whom
I knew in Paris. One was Jewish and the other
was one of the most extraordinary looking creatures
I have ever seen. She had a whitish green face
and ginger hair, cut short like a boy's, with a
fringe. During the War, for a short period, I
cut my hair in the same way in London and every
one stared. It was no wonder, as I looked really
terrible. This girl had very large blue eyes, which
were rather beautiful. She had a very long body
and rather short fat legs. They were both Ameri
cans, and the strange-looking one had arrived from
New York with six dollars, which was all that she
had in the world. Dowd knew them and I was
introduced. The strange one's name was Bernice
Abbot. She was very shy and seemed to be only
half conscious. She drew extremely well and
wanted to become a sculptress. That seems to be
the ambition of every young American girl. She
took, later on, to photography and, I think, has
taken some of the finest photographs especially
of men that I have ever seen. I saw her last in
Paris. I did not recognize her at first, she looked
so beautiful and well-dressed. She was driving a
smart motor-car and had had a tremendous success
in New York.
It was now December and we were wonder
ing how and where we should spend Christmas.
Christmas Eve is the great evening, and all the
cafes and restaurants keep open all night. The
beautiful Russian, who had been in Finland with us,
had returned to Paris with her husband. She had
married an American theosophist, a devotee of
Rudolph Steiner, and I had met him with Arthur
171
Kubla Khan a drink supposedly invented by Aleicester Crowley
bre.
I had my hair cut there. There was not a ladies 5 place and I had to sit with the French
workmen, who were being shaved. The Spaniard
was a little man with a turned up moustache, who
danced on his toes as he was shaving the workmen.
One day his wife came in with a large bunch of
flowers. The Spaniard was delighted, and the
Frenchman whom he was shaving, said, " Why do
you buy flowers? I should prefer to buy bifsteak,"
and the Spaniard stood on his toes, waved the razor,
and said, " Pour nourrir Vesprit" and after that I
appreciated the Spaniards even more.
There was a strange old Spanish gipsy called
Fabian.
He had been in England with Augustus John and Horace Cole. He was at one time one of
the finest guitarists in Spain. He had taken to
painting and painted rather bad El Grecos. He
spoke frequently of Le Dessin and I went to his
studio, more to induce him to play the guitar than
to see his pictures. On an easel was an enormous
canvas with a crucifixion on it. It had a red
curtain in front of it and Fabian drew it aside with
great reverence. I finally induced him. to take
down his guitar from the wall. He began to tune
it. Guitarists are very difficult people I can
accompany songs of a rather questionable nature
myself and I have a good deal of sympathy for
them. Fabian being a Spaniard, and a gipsy at that,
was extremely difficult and tuned and tuned for
nearly an hour. At last he got it tuned and played
gipsy tunes and dances, which made one want to
dance. A Spaniard one day became very angry
with him and wanted revenge. It was not a very
serious quarrel and the Spaniard decided to have a
little fun and a quiet revenge at the same time. He
explained to Fabian that his eyesight was weak and
that he ought to see an oculist. They went off
together and found one. The oculist showed
Fabian some printed words in quite small print and
said, " Can you read that? " And Fabian said,
" No." He then showed him some larger print and
Fabian again said, * c No! " After showing him
some larger and larger print poor Fabian had to
confess that he could neither read nor write. This,
of course, the Spaniard knew already and went
home quite satisfied. There was another Spaniard
who came often, before the War, to Hunt Diederich's
studio
He was the laziest man I had ever met. He did admirable woodcuts. I think he had done
about three in ten years. One day he was sitting
in the studio with his guitar and Hunt gave him
some money to go out and buy a bottle of wine. He
was so lazy that he could not even do that. He was
painted by Modigliani, a very fine portrait and like
ness. He was trying to sell it in 1920 for four
hundred francs. Alas! I could not find the four
hundred francs.
At this time, 1920, Nancy Cunard, Marie Beer-
bohm, T. W. Earp, Iris Tree
and Evan Morgan
,( It is precisely the improbable contradictions he embodied in his life, the unlikely meeting of the most disparate worlds, which makes this writer/occultist/aristocrat/papal bigwig so interesting. A diagram connecting the Vatican, Nazi brass and Aleister Crowley lacks only L. Ron Hubbard and Queen Beatrix to bring it into the realm of conspiracy theory.)and
several other English people were in Paris and we
had wonderful parties at Charlie Winzer's flat.
Some more English arrived and found that the
Iris Treee by Modigliani.Iris Tree (27 January 1897 – 13 April 1968) was an English poet, actress and artists' model, described as a bohemian, an eccentric, a wit and an adventuress.
Her parents were actors Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Helen Maud Tree,
and her sisters were actresses Felicity and Viola Tree.Above with John An aunt was author Constance Beerbohm, and her uncles were explorer and author Julius Beerbohm and caricaturist and parodist Max Beerbohm.Iris Tree was sought after, as a young woman, as an artists' model, being painted by Augustus John, simultaneously by Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell
and Roger Fry, and sculpted by Jacob Epstein, showing her bobbed hair (she was said to have cut off the rest and left it on a train) that, along with other behaviour, caused much scandal. The sculpture is currently displayed at the Tate Britain. She was photographed countless times by Man Ray, and ran with Nancy Cunard for a time, in a set at and acted alongside Diana Cooper in the mid-1920s.She had studied at the Slade School of Art. She contributed verse to the 1917 Sitwell anthology Wheels; her published collections were Poems (1920) and The Traveller and other Poems (1927).
She married twice.
Her first marriage was to Curtis Moffat, a New York artist; Ivan Moffat, the screenwriter, was their son. Her second marriage was to the actor and ex-officer of the Austrian cavalry, Count Friedrich von Ledebur-Wicheln. They both appear (after their divorce) in the 1956 film version of Moby-Dick. She also appears in a cameo, essentially as herself, in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita.
BACK TO PARIS AND CELEBRITIES
French drinks were not strong enough. After some
serious research work a drink was concocted that
satisfied them. It was named " Pernod (Susie) Suze
Fine/' imitation absinthe, gentian
,and brandy.
The cheap French brandy is very much like
methylated spirits. I tried the mixture but found
it impossible to get down. This kept them happy
for some weeks, until a day came when one member
of the party, whilst attempting to cross a street in
Montmartre, became suddenly transfixed in the
middle of the street. He was rigid like a waxwork
and as immovable. His companion had, with the
aid of a friendly taxi-driver, to lift him bodily into
a taxi. After this incident the English satisfied
themselves with milder forms of alcohol. One day
I bought Odilon Redon's Journal, called, "a soi
meme" and, whilst reading it, came upon the follow
ing passage, which I thought rather beautiful:
" J'ai passe dans Us allies froides et silencieuses du
cimetiere et pres des tombes desertes. Etfai connu le calme
d* esprit" I thought that I would visit the Cimetiere
Montparnasse.
It gave me a curious feeling of gloom as I thought of Edgar. I walked down the
avenue of trees and came across a large section
which is set apart for Jews. Further on I found a
most curious tomb. It was the tomb of some
sale bourgeois. It consisted of a large bronze French
bedstead. At the top was a bronze angel and
at the foot a bronze india-rubber plant. In the
bed, on a bronze counterpane, lay Monsieur and
Madame Pigeon. Monsieur lay on his side in a
bronze frock coat, and Madame lay beside him
LAUGHING TORSO
in dark bronze bombazine.
Her hair was done in a bun on the top of her head, in the same manner as
the ladies in the drawings of Forain
and Steinlen. The drawing above dates back to around 1892 . Almost throughout his entire career Steinlen lived in Boulevard Montmartre praising Parisand the everyday life of its people with their sorrows and joys.Steinlen's artistic idiom is so expressive that his works attract people at first sight, the more so because many of his drawings were widespread in lithographs.In the middle of the bed, between them, was a dip
in the counterpane, which, when it rains, becomes a
large puddle. Further on, on the same side of the
cemetery, in the corner is a small grave covered in
ivy, with China jam-jars, filled with daffodils. The
tombstone was sculptured by Brancusi. It repre
sents two crouching figures glued together. A man
and a woman. The female is to be distinguished
only by her long hair and a slight indication of one
breast. The rest of her anatomy is shared by her
partner. This, I found out afterwards, was most
unsuitable, as the body in the grave the inscription
was carved in Russian, so I could not read it was
that of a young Russian girl of seventeen who was
infatuated with an elderly doctor who was mar
ried and did not love her. She committed suicide
and died a virgin.
I crossed the road, as a road
runs through the cemetery and found the tomb of
Baudelaire.
He lies on his tomb in a winding sheet. At the head, looming over him, is a sinister
figure, the model of which, I believe, was Monsieur
de Max. A Frenchman whom I knew had a whole
nest of ancestors buried somewhere in the cemetery,
and on the anniversary of any one of their deaths
arrived with some friends and bottles of wine and
they drank to the health of the Oncle Augustin or
the Tante Emilienne. I found also Ste. Beuve,
who sits in front of a stone bookcase, containing all
his books, and these are quite enough to fill the
whole bookcase. Further on I found an obelisk,
about twenty feet high. This is in memory of the
Admiral Dumont d'Urville
who discovered the
Venus de Milo. Encircling it are his three tours
du monde. In the last one you can see the Admiral
in full uniform in a small boat, lifting from the ocean
the nude and stony corpse of the Venus de Milo.
By this time I had arrived at the part of the cemetery
which is near the Avenue du Maine.
I found the
tomb of the Famille Guillotine
and further on an
enormous and important-looking tomb. On each
side sat two lions, rather like those in Trafalgar
Square. On the tombstone, in the middle, are the
names of a Greek prince and a French countess,
with no explanation. I thought that this was very
romantic. I hoped that they had loved one another,
but thought afterwards that, perhaps, they had only
had business relations. I have never discovered
the truth about them. After this I returned to the
Cafe Parnasse
where I had found that some English,
friends had arrived. They asked me out to dinner.
I had known them slightly before the War. We ate
oysters and dined at Baty's, did all the cafes, found
some pre-war friends, and ended up in the markets,
Les Halles, amongst the cabbages. When one visited
the markets one always arrived back at the Dome or
the Parnasse laden with flowers and cabbages, which
were very cheap. One day someone arrived back
with a sack of potatoes !
The English, at this time, were going very strong
indeed, they all had money and had not been back
to Paris since the War. My Pole did not really ap-
prove of them as they were only too glad to lead me
astray and, as almost every day one found someone
whom one had not seen for years, it was difficult not
to celebrate. On another occasion an old friend of
mine, after dinner, found a cellar near the Place
St. Michel
called the " Bol de cidre" One entered a cafe through a large door, which was down a little
passage. The patron was an enormous Norman in
a white apron. There were large barrels of cider
on the floor, and at the back a smaller room. On
the walls was a list of celebrities who had visited the
place. Paul Verlaine, Laurent Tailhade, Oscar
Wilde, and so many others that I have forgotten
their names. We drank cider out of a bowl and had
a calvados to cheer it up. Downstairs was a cellar
with Norman arches dated 1145. This place had
been the stable of Francis I. The street next to it is
called " La rue oil git le coeur."
I always thought that that meant, " The street where the heart lodged,"
but I was told afterwards that it meant something
different.
Down a side street, at the corner, was the river. There was a large house which had belonged
to Francis I, at the corner of the street on the quays.
Francis patronized many great artists of his time, including Andrea del Sarto and Leonardo da Vinci; the latter was persuaded to make France his home during his last years. While Leonardo painted very little during his years in France, he brought with him many of his greatest works, including the Mona Lisa (known in France as La Joconde), and these remained in France after his death. There is another version of the Mona Lisa, discovered by Hugh Blaker, which never made it to France. It is known as the Isleworth Mona Lisa, and has for years been the subject of much debate because it has many qualities that fit the history of the Mona Lisa, which the Louvre version does not possess, including the columns depicted in Raphael's 1504 sketch of the Mona Lisa, done in Leonardo's studio while visiting there, and showing a younger woman (in her 20s) which better suits the age Lisa Gherardini would have been in 1504. Other major artists to receive Francis' patronage include the goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini and the painters Rosso, Romano and Primaticcio, all of whom were employed in decorating Francis' various palaces and were exceedingly loyal. Francis also commissioned a number of agents in Italy to procure notable works of art and ship them to France.In the time of Francis I the river came right up
to the house. At the other corner of the street was
a smaller house. Here had lived his mistress
and high up over the street was a footbridge connecting
the two houses. In the front room of the Bol was a
counter at which were standing a collection of
ruffians of both sexes. We went downstairs to the
cellar. There were wooden tables and chairs and
a small platform with a man playing an accordion.
We sat down and ordered some cider mixed with
calvados calvados is made from apples and tastes
very agreeable. A singer got up on the platform and
sang vulgar songs. Having learnt my French in the
University of Montparnasse I could understand
every word; at times I rather wished I couldn't.
The songs were what Evelyn Waugh would have
called., cc Blush-making. ' Sometimes there were
very unpleasant battles in the cellar, and as the
staircase was narrow and winding, it was not easy
to get out in time. One evening a man and a woman
were there who spoke English and tried to pick a
quarrel with us with a view to blackmail. Having
visited this kind of place before, the man was rapidly
disposed of.
One day I was sitting on the terrasse of the Rotonde,
at about nine in the morning, reading the Continental
Daily Mail
a deplorable habit and a figure ap
peared, having leapt over three tables. This was
Evan Morgan, who had just arrived back from
Marseilles; he was dressed in black and looked very
smart. He said, ec How do you like my clothes? "
I said, " How smart ! " He said, cc Oh, no, a sailors'
shop in Marseilles. To-day is my birthday, let us
have a dinner-party and you must be the hostess."
We walked down the Boulevard Montparnasse in
the direction of the station. Opposite the station
is a very good restaurant called the Trianon, where
James Joyce always dines. I had not met him at
this time. It had Plats regionaux, a different dish
each day from a different part of France. We
decided to ask twelve people, fourteen including
ourselves. I had discovered in Montparnasse an
artist's model who was the image of Evan. He was
much amused and said that we must invite her too.
We hired a private room and ordered the dinner.
We invited Curtis Moffat, who had a passion for
ecrevisses.
Ecreviss are like very small lobsters and repose on a large dish covered in a very beautiful
sauce. We ordered fifty. We ordered hors
d'oeuvres, soup, chickens, a colossal dinner with
cocktails, red and white wine, champagne and
coffee and liqueurs. The patron gave us an estimate
of eight hundred francs, which was very cheap in
deed. Ivan Opfer, the cartoonist, came. He is a
Dane and had lived in America and talks with an
accent that is a mixture of Danish and American.
He looks like a Viking, and tells stories better than
anyone I have ever met. He is the only person
I know who can take a long time to tell a story,
and he is such an admirable actor that he can make
every word interesting. Curtis came and was de
lighted with the Ecrevisses. Eating them is a long
and messy business, because one has to use one's
fingers. Harrison Dowd was t
here and played the piano to us. The artist's model turned up and
bored us so much that we regretted having asked
her. I must say that I behaved very well. I was so
flattered to find myself in the important role of
hostess that I was extremely occupied the whole
evening dealing with the needs of the guests, and did
not drink too much. Fortunately, the artist's model,
having decided that there was not much chance of
getting money for the honour of her presence, re-
membered that she had an important engagement
with a rich man. We breathed a sigh of relief and
settled down to the coffee and liqueurs and to listen
to Ivan's stories. After a few liqueurs everyone else
remembered some stories, including myself,
and the party continued till the early hours of the morning.
I decided to do a series of water-colours of cafes
and street scenes, and have an exhibition in London. Every day I did a drawing which I took home
and painted from memory. I was astonished to find how
quickly one can train one's memory and after a few
weeks I could do them with perfect ease.
(1890-1956) ‘Café Royal’. Possibly George Moore and Lord Alfred Douglas. Pen and ink. 9x7 inches. Signed. Inscribed and dated, Aug. 3rd 1915. £2250 I was
thinking of the pictures that I had done at Gollioure.
I had about fifteen of them
and decided that I ought
to go to London and try and make some money.
Walter Sickert had a house near Dieppe and I wrote
to him telling him that I was going to London by
Dieppe-Newhaven. He wrote asking me to stay
with him. I packed my pictures up and Sickert
met me at Dieppe. I did not recognize him at first
as he wore a sailor's peaked cap, oilskins, and a red
spotted handkerchief round his neck. He was
always difficult to recognize if one had not seen him
for some time.
He might appear with an enormous beard like a Crimean veteran
or he would dress himself in very loud checks and a bowler hat and
look like something off a race-course. We took a
taxi to Envermeu,
where he had a house; it was some miles away from Dieppe.
We drove through the forest of Arques, where there was a battle in
about 1600. The forest looked very beautiful, as it
was autumn, and the roads and the ground of the
forest were covered with red and yellow leaves.
Sickert had bought a house that was once a Police
Station. It was on the main street. As a matter of
fact there was only one street. It was a long, narrow
house, and the rooms were in a straight line and all
numbered. These had been cells. My room was
" numero 3." We ate in a large kitchen. The cook
and the gardener sat at one table and we sat at a
larger one in the middle of the room. Sickert talked
to the servants throughout lunch and dinner and
made them laugh a great deal. They drank red
wine and cider and we drank red wine and calvados.
Envermeu is a dull, flat place, and I never knew
why Sickert had chosen it. I don't think he painted
much there but went into Dieppe, where he painted
some of his best pictures. These are very different
from his Camden Town period. The Camden Town
ones are in a very low key of blacks, greys, and
Indian reds, whereas the Dieppe pictures were
painted in the most brilliant greens, blues, yellows
and reds. I think that it is quite impossible to com
pare their merits and that it is really a question of
personal taste. On the evening of my arrival I
showed him my pictures, hoping that he would like
them. He was, unfortunately, horrified and hated
them. This filled me with gloom. I rather admired
them myself at that time, but, having seen some of
them recently, am inclined to think that he was
right. I have come to the conclusion that the South
of France and I have nothing in common. Brittany
I can deal with, as it is more like England, but the
South, with its hard purple shadows, white houses,
and perpetually blue sky is not a part of my " make
up.
Baccarat, Dieppe, 1920sickert
We went into Dieppe to look at the Channel and found it so appallingly rough
that I waited
another day and then took the boat for Newhaven.
I arrived in London and went to the Eiffel Tower,
where I got a small room near the roof. The next
day a friend of mine bought a picture. I had not
enough pictures for an exhibition, but Mr. Turner,
of the Independent Gallery, said that he was having
a mixed show of English painters and that I could
exhibit four or five. I sold another small painting
and decided to return to Paris and to my Pole. I
was glad to be back. I was in no better position
than if I had not gone at all and felt that my life
was a failure and damned the South of France.
I continued my water-colours. I went daily to
the Luxembourg Gardens where I did some really
good work, I think. There is a statue there that I
always admired. It is of a lady standing up, with
- her feet crossed, in a very short skirt indeed, and a
strange little hat like an inverted soup plate. I did
a drawing of her. Some years later I went to the
Bal Julien dressed as her. I wore a pink silk
accordion pleated garment, that really was a pair
of knickers. They had no legs, but only a ribbon to
divide them. I borrowed them from a rich American
woman and cut the ribbon so that it looked exactly
like the skirt of the statue. They had garlands of
blue silk forget-me-nots embroidered on them. I
wore a short blue, tight-fitting jacket that I had
bought at the " Flea market " at Caulincourt and a
very small blue hat that looked like a comedian's
bowler. It was almost flat and looked very like the
one worn by the statue. I had a great success at the
ball, especially when I explained whom I repre
sented.
My friend with whom I had gone to Russia in
1909, returned to Paris with her husband. They
were both very bright and cheerful and had met
Ferdinand Tuohy.
Tuohy was a large, good-looking and cheerful Irishman, who laughed perpetually and
wrote the most beautiful English. B., my friend's
husband, was a very amusing man and did extremely
funny caricatures
.One day Tuohy had been
celebrating. I forget whether it was the finish
of a love affair, or the beginning of another, as
he was generally in love with someone. He arrived
at the Dome about breakfast time. I was with
B. and his wife. Tuohy ordered what he described
as " Turk's blood"; this was stout and cham
pagne mixed. We realized that any idea of spend
ing a serious day was out of the question. About
12 a.m. several other people had joined us and
there were a considerable number of stout and
champagne bottles. It suddenly occurred to Tuohy
and B. that they looked like soldiers and they pro
ceeded to divide them into regiments, the cham
pagne bottles representing officers, large and small,
and the stout bottles ordinary soldiers. This kept
them occupied for hours. Finally they took them
out on the terrasse and were joined by some workmen
and taxi-drivers who were much entertained and
described Tuohy and B. as " trts rigolo" which
indeed, they were. The English were still in search
of new forms of alcohol and one day B. discovered
Mandarin Curasao. It is extremely powerful stuff
and, I think, must have some kind of dope in it as,
at any rate, one evening B. drank a great deal of it
and wandered off by himself No one knows what
actually happened to him, but he returned home the
next morning, very early, so badly damaged that he
was hardly recognizable, and said that he had tried
to fight the French Army, that the French Army
had won, and that he would never touch Mandarin
Curagao again.
We met another Irishman in the Quarter. He
was a journalist and spoke French as much like a
Frenchman as any Irishman can who already speaks
with a strong Irish accent. He had absorbed so
much absinthe before the War that he had become
completely paralysed. He went into a home and
had to be taught, by slow degrees, how to use his
limbs. He frequently went out to Montmartre and
Les Halles. One morning he arrived at the Cafe
Parnasse, about eight a.m., with a friend of his.
They had been out all night and had just come from
the markets. They had some dice with them and
decided to toss up for the possession of the next per
son who entered the cafe. The Irishman won and
they sat and waited. There were only very few
people who came in so early and they had to wait
for some time, meanwhile, consoling themselves with
a few Pernod Susie fines. After a time the door
opened and a dark respectable-looking man entered.
The Irishman jumped at him and screamed, " I've
won you! I've won you! You're mine! " The man
turned out to be a Spaniard and, when the situation
was explained to him, he quite appreciated the joke
and they all continued to drink together. I re
mained with them for a short time, but realized that
if I stayed very long an ambulance would have to be
sent for to carry me home to my Pole, who did not
appreciate the eccentric behaviour of the Anglo-
Saxons. The Irishman was very strange and
secretive about himself. He often hinted at the
unusual way in which he earned his living. We
knew that he was a journalist, but nothing at all
about the paper or papers he worked for. One day
I was with the War correspondent, Donohue, who
is now dead, and two other men. The Irishman
hurried past us. I said afterwards to him, " Why
on earth did you run away from us like that/ 3 He
said, " Those men know all about me." Eventually
we discovered that his great and terrible secret was
that he was on the advertising staff of a very well
known English newspaper. He was extremely good
at his job, and went all over Europe interviewing
Lord Mayors and important business men. When
he found out that nobody except himself seemed to
consider it a bore, and an undignified way of earning
one's living, he became quite calm. As far as we
could make out he got the sack regularly once a
week but, being apparently indispensable, was
taken back the following day.
One day when I was sitting in the Parnasse,
two strange females appeared. I was sitting with
Harrison Dowd, one of the few Americans whom
I knew in Paris. One was Jewish and the other
was one of the most extraordinary looking creatures
I have ever seen. She had a whitish green face
and ginger hair, cut short like a boy's, with a
fringe. During the War, for a short period, I
cut my hair in the same way in London and every
one stared. It was no wonder, as I looked really
terrible. This girl had very large blue eyes, which
were rather beautiful. She had a very long body
and rather short fat legs. They were both Ameri
cans, and the strange-looking one had arrived from
New York with six dollars, which was all that she
had in the world. Dowd knew them and I was
introduced. The strange one's name was Bernice
Abbot. She was very shy and seemed to be only
half conscious. She drew extremely well and
wanted to become a sculptress. That seems to be
the ambition of every young American girl. She
took, later on, to photography and, I think, has
taken some of the finest photographs especially
of men that I have ever seen. I saw her last in
Paris. I did not recognize her at first, she looked
so beautiful and well-dressed. She was driving a
smart motor-car and had had a tremendous success
in New York.
It was now December and we were wonder
ing how and where we should spend Christmas.
Christmas Eve is the great evening, and all the
cafes and restaurants keep open all night. The
beautiful Russian, who had been in Finland with us,
had returned to Paris with her husband. She had
married an American theosophist, a devotee of
Rudolph Steiner, and I had met him with Arthur
171
Kubla Khan a drink supposedly invented by Aleicester Crowley
1 part Gin
1 part Cavados
half tsp Creme de Menthe
20 drops laudanum (a tincture of opium, formerly used as a drug)
Filter through ice
Sit back and er …enjoy!
LAUGHING TORSO
Ransome in London.
He had a very good job in Paris as the European correspondent of one of the
largest American newspapers. She had two charm
ing children.
The Dome and the Rotonde adver tised Christmas dinners at midnight on Christmas
Eve. My Pole and I were very broke, and were
delighted when my Russian friend
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