Nina Hamnett . The best tits in europe !!!!!!!part 4

LAUGHING TORSO 




Henri had already gone to France and Basil was 
trying to get into the Army. He finally persuaded 
a grand relation to use her influence and he got a 
commission in a Scottish regiment and appeared 
looking very magnificent in a kilt. He was very 
sorry that I had got married, and so was I. We 
went out and drank some drinks together and talked 
about the hopelessness of the future. He went to the 
War a few days later and was killed in Mesopotamia 
in 1915. 

Edgar and I met many interesting people at the 
Omega. There were many Belgian refugees, musi 
cians, and actors, and Madame Vandervclde, who 
was very good to them all and acted and recited in 
order to raise funds to help them. She also bought 
some of our pictures. Edgar decorated her flat for 
her and so we managed to live. She was a very 
brilliant and amusing woman and had extremely 
good taste in Art. Edgar suggested to Mr, Fry that 

 

they should have a musical performance of De 
bussy's " Boite a Joujoux" and that he should make 
and work the marionettes for it. This he did. We 
all worked the marionettes. We lay on our stomachs 
and pulled the wires. He cut them out of card 
board with a knife. We had a fine orchestra of 
Belgians and a good audience and they made some 
money. 

After the arrival of the Belgians, Charlotte Street 
became very gay. There were Bal Musettes all up 
the street. A big Belgian played an accordion and 
everyone danced and a hat was taken round after 
for halfpennies, as they do in France and Belgium 
in workpeople's dances. We worked at the Omega 
for so many hours a day and often had lunch with 
Roger Fry, who had a room in Fitzroy Street, where 
he painted. 

He did several paintings of me, one of 
which was at his last show in Bond Street. 

Vanessa 
Bell and Duncan Grant worked sometimes at the 
Omega Workshops. She was very beautiful and had 
a wonderful deep voice. I used to go home and 
attempt to lower my voice too. I think I succeeded 
to a certain extent after some practice. They 
painted batiks and boxes and turned out some fine 
work. I was never very good at decorative work. 
I met Edward Carpenter one day at lunch at Mr. 
Fry's. He was a saintly old gentleman with a grey 
beard and a grey shirt. Walter, now Richard, 
Sickert lived in Fitzroy Street also, in fact he had 
a number of mysterious rooms for miles around as 
far as Camden Town.(Why?Sickert did not return to London 

until February 1905 when

 he acquired his studios in ... 

 "He revelled in the faded splendours of dingy lodging-rooms 

 in Camden Town. .... Like so many of Sickert's titles, 

it has never been explained. .... the 

fact that some of the portraits of Mrs Barrett

 seem to have started out with different titles.

 Stage scenes were also one of Degas' favorite subjects, but whereas his 
work had considerable erotic quality,

 Sickert's paintings were often 
full of undefined psychological tensions.

 Attitudes towards sexuality in
 Victorian England were far from liberal; 

and Sickert was secretive in 
many ways about his personal life.

 His nudes, painted without apparent 
sexual interest, were lower class

 women in cheap rooms. "Compositions 
consisting solely of nudes are usually

 (I have not forgotten certain 
exceptional flights of genius, such as

 the Rubens, in Munich, of the Descent into Hell)
 not only repellent," Sickert said

 in 1910, "but slightly absurd. Even 
the picture or two (I think there are two)

 of the master Ingres, which 
is a conglomeration of nudes,

 has something absurd and repellent, a 
suggestion of a dish of macaroni,

 something wriggling and distasteful." 
The name of one of his paintings,

 La Hollandaise (1905-06), was probably

 derived from one of Balzac's characters

 in Gobseck, a prostitute nicknamed "la belle Hollandaise." 

Sickert could also be outspoken with his views When the aspiring artist Nina Hamnett

 showed her pictures to him, 
Sickert was horrified and hated them. "I rather admired them myself at 
that time," she wrote later, "but, having seen some of them recently, am
 inclined to think that he was right." )

 Edgar and I sat for him 
together, on an iron bedstead, with a tea-pot and a 

 white basin on a table in front of us. We looked the 
picture of gloom. 

We went every evening to the Cafe Royal and 
frequently walked home to Camden Town as we 
seldom had the 'bus fare. We could stay the whole 
evening there on a fourpenny coffee in those days. 

Edgar had made friends with some people whom I 
considered dull, common, and boring, so he often 
went out with them and I stayed at home. He 
seemed to think that I should always be at home 
waiting for him and once, when I went out to 
dinner with an elderly man I had known for years, 
an awful argument took place and we threw sauce 
pans at each other. I got so bored with this and 
being so poor, as there was not always work at the 
Omega, that I fell in love with a tall dark man 
whom I had met at the Cafe RoyaL He talked 
about Greek Islands and black olives. He was a 
writer and had studied the piano and had most 
beautiful hands. He talked and talked about 
things which I did not understand at all. For three 
weeks I thought of nothing else but him, and would 
even walk up and down streets in which I thought 
I might get a glimpse of him. I would buy myself 
dinners at the " Sceptre," the restaurant behind the 
Cafe Royal, where I had gone with Henri. The tall 
man seemed rather amused at me. After about 
three weeks of thinking about him I saw him at the 
restaurant. He was alone, and asked me to have 
some coffee with him.  

My heart beat so rapidly 
that I shook all over. He told me that he was en 
gaged to be married and I, with a choking feeling in 







my throat, said that I would like to meet his fiance. 
I went home and cried a good deal and a few days 
later met her. The passion immediately died, and 
she and I became great friends and I painted several 
portraits of her. It was trying, many years later, 
after he and his wife had parted and he was quite 
alone, when we had some drinks together in Paris 
and I told him of the great passion that I had had. 
He was very much surprised and said, seizing my 
hand, " Don't you think those things could ever be 
revived/' and I said, " I am afraid they couldn't/' 
and he was very sad. However we are still friendly 
and he has become a very celebrated man and is 
now happily married. 

I was getting more and more bored with Edgar 
who was daily becoming more soulful, and spoke in 
parables which I had long since given up at 
tempting to understand. He bought some wooden 
blocks and did some woodcuts. These were very' 
interesting and he sold a few. The painter, Ben 
jamin Corea, lived in an attic in the next house. 
He was even poorer than we were. I would buy 
two pennyworth of bones twice a week and make a 
stew, and on this and porridge and margarine, we 
all three lived. One day someone bought a drawing 
so I bought some real butter. Edgar and I had a 
dispute about people with Victorian ideas, which 
I said he had, and he threw the plate and the butter 
at me. I was so upset about the butter that I forgot 
to throw anything back. I looked despairingly 
round and saw it sticking to the wall. It was still, 
fortunately, quite eatable. One day a rich aunt 

 



appeared to see how we were getting on. She advised 
me to try a certain brand of margarine which cost 
ninepence. I said I only paid fivepence-halfpenny. 
She did not however leave the extra threepence- 
halfpenny behind. Soon after this my uncle, her 
husband, paid our rent, so that was a help. I am 
afraid that sometimes when we were very poor I 
spent the money on food and got into debt with the 
landlord. They were working-class people and, 
unlike many that I know, perfect beasts. We were 
naturally regarded with the greatest suspicion, 
having a German name. 

I urged Edgar to go to the police and register 
himself. Everything was so unsettled that I think 
they had forgotten about him for the time being. 

One day a District Visitor appeared and asked 
him what religion he belonged to. He said that he 
was a " Hedonist, 5 ' so she went away. We met the 
painter, Foujita, one of Les Japonais in Paris; he 
was delighted to see us as he was just as poor as we 
were. He only became famous in Paris after the 
War. He still made his own clothes and wore his 
hair the same way, but without the Greek band. 
He wore strangely shaped baggy trousers and a black 
velvet jumper, which hung outside, and a leather 
belt. People called him the " Eskimo

 He 
lived with some friends in Chelsea and did charm 
ing frescoes in their kitchen of antelopes and 
flowers. Someone afterwards took the house and 
said that they did not care for other people's 
decorations, and had them whitewashed, I think 
they are now sorry. 



WAR 

On Sundays, Foujita, Edgar, and I, went home 
to my parents for lunch; this was frequently the 
only decent meal we had during the week. My 
Father became quite human, and in the afternoons 
we all played " heads, bodies, and legs." That is the 
game where everyone draws a head and leaves two 
lines indicating where the next person should begin 
the body. The pieces of paper were then passed to 
the next person and then again until the legs were 
done. The drawings were very funny and some of 
them very good. 

Foujita was a charming character and had the 
most terrible ' struggles before he became famous. 
I last saw him when I stepped off a boat on the 
He de Brehat, in Brittany. I had not seen him for 
three or four years. He was sitting on the terrasse 
of a cafe. His hair had turned very grey. He had 
large gold earrings on and wore red horn-rimmed 
spectacles. He was with his wife, who was very 
chic and beautifully made up. There was another 
Japanese with them. I waved to him and he said 
" Bonjourninahamnett" as if he had only seen me the 
day before. We sat down and talked about the old 
days. I was sorry that I had to go back to Paimpol 
that day, where I was staying opposite, as I believe 
they had wonderful parties every day with bathing, 
singing, and drinking. 

One day I went to dinner with a woman friend 
of mine in Clifford's Inn. We had dinner and some 
wine, and suddenly there was a strange whizzing 
sound and she said, rather nervously, " What is 
that? " I said, " That is only a motor-'bus." She 

85 



LAUGHING TORSO 



said, cc Have another cigarette and some port/ 5 
which I did. There was a terrific crash and we 
both went outside and in the sky was a thing that 
looked like a golden pencil. This was the first 
Zeppelin. We then heard several other crashes 
fairly near, but getting further away. I had to 
catch a 68 'bus to get to Chalk Farm. When I got 
to Chancery Lane it was about six inches deep in 
water. A bomb had hit a water main and a gas 
main, and the water was rushing down the street. 
I was annoyed as I had a pair of new shoes on and 
got them wet. The Strand was several inches deep 
in broken glass, as nearly all the windows had been 
broken. When I got to Wellington Street a huge 
green flame sprung up opposite the Gaiety Theatre. 
I thought that another bomb had dropped and sat 
down in the doorstep of a bank, thinking that death 
was rapidly approaching. 

I thought of my wicked life, and of my Father and 
my Grandmother, with a certain sentimental regret. 
As nothing happened I got up and thought that I 
would go to the Cafe Royal. The people in the 'bus 
that I should have taken, if I had not had another 
cigarette and a drink, were sitting in the 3 bus with 
their heads blown off, as a bomb had dropped out 
side. I took a 'bus to the Caf<5 Royal by the Savoy 
Hotel. In it were two Japanese. The evening 
cloak of one was torn to bits. He had been inside 
the Gaiety Theatre, but fortunately, his cloak had 
been hanging up in the cloak room. We all talked 
together of what had happened. In Paris in 1920 
I met him. I said, " I have met you in London," 

86 



WAR 

He did not remember me but did when I reminded 
him of the air raid. The cafe was in an uproar and 
everyone drank to celebrate their escape. Edgar 
and I saw the daylight air raid from our attic 
windows. It was a fine sight, and they were in 
wonderful formation, like a flock of birds surrounded 
by the little white puffs of smoke of the British guns. 

One day I became so ill that I went home to my 
Father and Mother, who, although they disapproved 
of me, still liked to see me. My family lived at 
Acton and during the night I had a dream. I 
dreamt of noises which tapped and tapped. Sud 
denly I woke up and looked out of the window. I 
saw what I thought were fireworks, a big golden pen 
cil diving to the earth.  

I came into my Father and 
Mother's room and said, " Please wake up, I think 
there must be a Zeppelin falling down." My 
Father said, cc Go to sleep and don't disturb me." 
I said, " You must wake up and come into the 
garden," and he did and we saw it break in half 
and come down in a rain of golden showers. This 
was the Cuffley Zeppelin. 

We visited the poetess, Anna Wickham, some 
times. She lived in a beautiful old house in Hamp- 
stead. It had an apple orchard and Dick Turpin 
had lived there once. There we met Richard 
Aldington and his wife. They were Imagist poets. 
Richard had known Henri very well and had some 
of his work. 

In 1913, when I first met Anna Wickham, I had 
influenza very badly. I was living alone and did 
not want to go home to my family. She was kind 

 



enough to invite me to her house and to look after 
me. 

 I stayed in bed and had a room overlooking 
the garden.  

Several times a week D. H. Lawrence, 
his wife, and Katharine Mansfield came to see Anna. 
Mrs. Lawrence and Katharine sat by my bedside 
and talked to me. D. H. Lawrence sang hymns for 
hours in the drawing-room. This was not awfully 
cheerful. I had never seen him and was told not to 
get out of bed on any account as my temperature 
was nearly a hundred and four. One day I heard 
voices in the garden. I heard Anna and a man's 
voice and got out of bed and saw a man with 
reddish hair walking amongst the apple trees, 
talking to Anna. That was the only time I ever saw 
Lawrence and never met him at all. 

above jesse chambers.

 The Cafe Royal and other places closed early 
during the War and we found an Armenian cafe at 
the back of Shaftesbury Avenue. There everyone 
went. Epstein, Michael Arlcn, 

John Cournos above right , in 
fact every inhabitant of the cafe. We drank 
Turkish coffee and ate Turkish delight and I think 
that the conversation, as the result of the Turkish 
coffee, was better than that; of the crime de menthe 
frappfe. There was an old man who spoke on soap 
boxes in Hyde Park who went there one day; he 
decided to take to painting. He used to buy old 
oil paintings from the Caledonian market and other 
places and touch them up and exhibit them in the 
Armenian cafe. He had a one-man show there. 
He also painted spirits. One day I saw him in 
Charlotte Street. He had a costermonger's barrow 
with him and it was loaded with the tops of old 



 

hansom cabs. I said to him, " My dear Arthur, 
what are you going to do with these? " He said, 
" You see, dear, I think they will be so useful to 
paint on." 

He was reputed to have been found in the cellar, 
in which he lived, in bed with a policewoman; and 
her helmet and baton were hanging by a nail on 
the wall as a souvenir. 

I saw him last in the Fitzroy Tavern. He came 
in looking just the same this was about ten years 
later his beard had grown nearly white; he had 
a sack on his back, and his coat was still fastened 
with safety pins. He bought a large jug of beer and 
filled everyone's glass. I hear that he is now respect 
ably married. 

 

One day someone took me to the studio of Lady 
Constance Stuart Richardson. She lived in an old 
Criminal Law Court near Sloane Square. There 
was a party and everyone brought bottles. 

It was a huge place with many rooms. I stayed 
the night there in a large Greek bedstead. Several 
other people stayed in different places and we had 
breakfast in the morning. The others had to go to 
work at various offices, and Constance and I sat in 
front of the fire and talked and got on very well 
indeed. I had known a cousin of hers who had been 
killed. She was a most charming and interesting 
woman and my dreary existence was cheered up by 
her company. As Edgar neglected me a good deal 
I spent most of my time with her. She had a 
marvellous figure and danced with not much more 
on than a tiger skin before the War, and even then 





this was considered most shocking, and when she 
appeared at the Palace Theatre there was a terrible 
disturbance. 

Neither of us had any money or, at least, very 
little and we ate often at a little restaurant in Soho 
where we got credit. We had often with us officers 
of all nationalities. Italians in blue cloaks, French 
men, Guardsmen, and so we did not always have to 
" Chalk it up." I painted a portrait of Constance. 
She had a black turban on and a red robe, rather 
like a burnous that the Arabs wear. It was a good 
painting and was bought by Sir Michael Sadler. 
I sent it to the National Portrait Society and it was 
accepted. On the day of the private view, Con 
stance and I went. The place was full of all kinds 
of grand people. They all flocked to my portrait, 
expecting to see an almost nude woman. They 
were bitterly disappointed, and Constance and I 
laughed. 

 

There were parties nearly every night, as all the 
time officers were returning on leave for a few days. 
This, I think, was the beginning of" gate crashing." 
Someone would arrive and say, " Let's have a party 
to-night, collect your friends and tell them to bring 
anyone they can," and, of course, they did. One 
week we went to five all-night parties and did not 
go to bed at all. The first one was in Chelsea, 
given by an artist who wore a Russian shirt and 
played the accordion, Constance and I went and 
brought two Italian officers with us who were much 
admired in their blue cloaks. The party was such 
a success that Constance decided to give one the 


following night. That was a terrific affair. Some 
of our friends had gone to the Ritz and the Berkeley 
to see if they could find any more people to bring, 
and they came back with a glorious creature in a 
blue and gold uniform, covered in medals. They 
said, " look what we have found.  He was a 
French Count. He had a very small motor, which he 
called Le Lapin, and which he drove at terrific speed. 

 

The third night Augustus John gave a party to 
celebrate his going to France. He was a major in 
the Canadian Army and was commissioned by them 
to paint their part in the War. The party lasted all 
night and in the morning we hung out of all the 
windows and waved him " Good-bye He looked 
splendid in his uniform. 

A beautiful woman, who was the wife of a Guards 
man, gave the parties on the two following nights. 
Billie Carlton( Although she she was well on the way to becoming a star her career was 
being held back by, what was becoming a rather obvious and large drug 
habit, and unfortunately the girl with too much charm and the daring 
costume was found dead in her Savoy Hotel suite by her maid the morning 
after the Victory ball. She was just 22 years old.Witnesses described her heavy cocaine and opium use and it became known
 that the London-born actress, who incidentally never knew her father, 
was involved with three ‘sugar daddies’. Two of these helped her 
financially – she had a very expensive life-style to maintain including a
 permanent suite at the Savoy Hotel – while the other, a married 
dress-designer called Reggie de Veulle, was more of a drug-taking 
partner.) 

was there and all kinds of actresses 
and Guardsmen and foreign officers in uniform. 
Edgar came too. He made a scene because some 
one put his arm round me as I was walking up 
stairs to the ball room. I burst into tears and 
everyone took my part and I told him to go home. 
I stayed the night there with Carrington, the girl 
with the red and blue shoe, and another girl. 

One morning two plain-clothes detectives came. 
They were drunk and smelt of whisky. They wanted 
to know why Edgar had not registered himself. I 
said that I had frequently told him to do so. They 
said that he had better hurry up as there would be 
trouble. They were very unpleasant and familiar 
and made me feel quite ill. Edgar still refused to do 

 






anything. He used to stay with his friends in 
Chelsea for nights at a time. I never went to their 
house except once to a party. One day the police 
came there and arrested him in the kitchen for 
being an unregistered alien. My reputation amongst 
these friends of his was that I was a wicked woman 
who was ruining his bright young life and cramp 
ing his brilliant career. He did not come home 
that night. I did not worry as he never told me 
when he was returning. 

Early in the morning the police came and told 
me that he was in a Police Court at Marylebone. 
I went to see him and the trial came on later. I 
did not go to it but his friends did. Later that 
morning when I was working at the Omega two 
young women came there, and with tears in their 
eyes told me that he had got three months' hard 
labour for not registering* I said " Oh! " and felt a 
sense of freedom at last. This sentence was passed 
under the Aliens' Act, which was enforced during 
the War. 

I went to my attic and wondered how Edgar was 
feeling, I went to see him once; that was the only 
time I could. I think he rather enjoyed prison 
life. He had books to read and as he was of a 
 

ruminative disposition he was quite happy. 

I was now able to go out and see my old friends* 
I sold drawings and paintings and was able to work 
in peace and began to be very bored with the attics 
in Camden Town, I made friends with a charming 
girl, Marie Beerbohm, 

She had been a friend of 
Edgar's and for that reason I hardly knew her. 

 


 

We became great friends and I had a very good 
time. 

Towards the end of Edgar's three months I 
wondered what would happen as I was very happy 
by myself and was very much disinclined to have 
him back. I knew I would have to. I asked the 
police and they said that he would not be allowed 
to stay in England but would be sent to France in 
the Belgian Army. I went to fetch him from the 
prison and, accompanied by detectives, took him to 
a camp, where he remained till he was taken to 
France, 

He seemed pleased to see me and sorry 
to go. I felt sentimental about the past and we 
both wept as we said good-bye at Waterloo. I have 
never seen him since. He wrote to me from France, 
and the last letter I had was just after the Armistice, 
when he asked me to send him five pounds, saying 
that he loved me as much as ever. I did not reply. 
Having made a little money and still having work 
 

This scarf is inspired by designs from The Omega Workshops, founded by 
the artist and critic Roger Fry in 1913. Although the company only 
operated for six years, it was a powerhouse of radical designs from many
 of the most avant-garde artists of the day including Vanessa Bell, 
Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Frederick Etchells, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska 
and Winifred Gill.

The Workshops created a range of objects for 
the home from rugs and clothes to ceramics and furniture, all boldly 
coloured and patterned with dynamic abstract designs, which still look 
fresh and modern today.

at the Omega I decided to look for a studio in the 
neighbourhood of 

Fitzroy Square. I found one on 
a top floor in Fitzroy Street. It was quite large 
and had a bedroom and kitchen. I believe that 
at one time Augustus John had lived there, and later 
on Percy Wyndharn Lewis. Walter Sickert lived 
opposite, that is to say he had a studio there, but he 
actually lived in Camden Town. I was happier 
there than I had been for three years. I heard that 
 

Sophie Gaudier Brzeska was living in Fulham and 
went to see her. She showed me a photograph of 
Henri at the Front.  

She was taking a cottage in 
Gloucestershire and asked me to stay with her. 
khori by hamnett
93