nina hamnett part 7

LAUGHING TORSO 



 
 

. We made friends and she asked 
him to bring me to her house. I had never been 
to the Opera House before and was much impressed 
at the chic of the French women. 

 They were very 
much made up, but the only grand and aristocratic 
woman  

that I could see was sitting in a box opposite 
to us with some friends, 

 and I asked who she could 
be. My friend, Winzer, who knew nearly everyone 
there, told me that it was 

Lady Juliet Duff. I met 
her some years afterwards at the Princess Murat's. 
During the intervals we went to the promenade and 
 

talked to Diaghilev and the Princess. 
In London I had met Andre Gide. One day he 





came up to the Cafe Parnasse, which has now be 
come part of the Rotonde.  

This was at that time 
miich the most amusing cafe in Montparnasse. He 
 

was delighted to see me and had with him a young 
man called Marc Allegri, who, a year or two ago, 
went to the Congo with Gide and made a wonderful 
film of the natives there 

. 

 Several English officers 
who had been at the Peace Conference were still in 
Paris and used to come to the Parnasse in the even 
ings. 

 They knew many songs and we found an 
American who sang too, and we would spend the 
evenings singing. Andre Gide would come up and 
listen. 

He spoke English almost perfectly and I 
think enjoyed our singing, although it got very loud 
and noisy as the evening wore on. I had left the 
Hotel Victor and was living in a hotel opposite the 
 

Gare Montparnasse. Marc Allegri said that he 
would like to see some of my work, some of which 
I had at my hotel. He had seen it at Cambridge 
and had come with Gide to my studio in Fitzroy 
 

Street on one occasion. I arranged to meet him 
on the terrasse of the Cafe Parnasse and waited for 
some time. Presently I saw Gide by himself walking 
by. He waved to me and carne and sat beside me. 
I said, " Where is Marc? "  

He said that he did not 
know, but as he had nothing to do for an hour or

 above hamnett by foujita 
two, could he come himself and see my pictures. 
We went back to my room and he liked some of my 
drawings very much. Seeing my guitar hanging on 
the wall he asked me to sing some English songs, 
and I spent the whole afternoon singing to him. 
He was a charming man, elderly, very good-looking 




 

and very amusing. I was very pleased that a man 
whose works I admired so much should spend the 
afternoon listening to my silly songs and enjoy 
himself. 

 

I found a girl whom I had known in London, in 
fact she had been at Brangwyns with me and had 
married a very nice man who was in some govern 
ment service in Paris. I had known him in London 
slightly. She did coloured dry points of people and 
 

made a lot of money. She had to go to England 
for a few days to see her children who were at 
school. She said, " Take my husband out and keep 
him from being bored/  This, I think, was the time 
of Mardi Gras, and there were several holidays. 
We spent Sunday at the Rotonde drinking Vouvray 
with some friends, and he asked me to meet him 
there again on Monday and we would go to Font- 
ainebleau, have lunch there, and then walk to 
Moret, where there was a little inn where Arnold 
Bennett had lived for some years. We decided that 
we would drink to his health when we got there and 
have dinner. I had never been to Fontainebleau 
before and we went to a very nice restaurant and 
had lunch and some white wine and started out to 
walk through the forest. It was a very hot day and 
there was nothing but four or five miles of forest. 
We rested by the road-side from time to time and 
about six o'clock we got to the inn, very hot and 
thirsty. It was about half a mile from Moret itself 
and a most charming looking little place. The caf6 
had a garden in front of it with some tables and we 
sat down and ordered bottles of beer. We were so 





thirsty that we drank eight or nine bottles which, 
one by one, as we finished them we placed under the 
table. We ordered dinner with a whole duck, chose 
the wine, and then went for a walk whilst they 
cooked it. We sat on the edge of the forest near a 
peasant's hut. It was rather damp and marshy. 
I had never met mosquitoes before and did not 
realize what they were capable of. I began to 
scratch my legs, so did my companion. We went 
back to the inn and had a magnificent dinner and 
drank Arnold Bennett's health again in white and 
red wine, then walked to the 

station at Moret, got 
into a train packed with French bourgeois, and, 
being very tired, slept one on each seat, packed like 
sardines between the French, until we reached Paris. 
The next day my legs were swollen to about twice 
their natural size and my friend telephoned to me 
at the Rotonde to say that he had to stay in bed as 
he couldn't walk at all. I have since been careful 
of damp and marshy ground. 

The nice Pole who lived in Modigliani's studio 
said that I could come and work there if I liked. 
The studio consisted of two long workshops, up 
many flights of stairs. Gauguin had lived on the 
floor below. It was next to the Academic Golorossi. 
The house looked as if it were going to fall down at 
any moment and one could see the sunlight shining 
through a part of the wall. There was a fire- 
escape on the wall on the inside of the window. 
It was a rope ladder with wooden rungs attached 
with an iron hook. No one ever dared to go 
down it as we thought that the wall and the house 





would probably come down too. I believe Modig- 
liani climbed down on one occasion. The studio 
was exactly as he had left it, and parts of the 
walls had been painted different colours to make 
different backgrounds. The staircase was lopsided, 
as it had already slipped about two inches from the 
wall. I was rather nervous at first about going up 
and downstairs, but it seemed to be quite safe. In 
 

the studio underneath lived Ortiz de Zarate, the 
South American painter. The Pole and the Arab 
sat with me in the evenings at the Cafe Parnasse. 
There were many Polish painters there at that time 
and they were unanimous in their hatred of E. 
who had gone away with my friend and my money. 
There was one particularly amusing painter called 
Rubezack, who drank wine, sang songs, and made 
jokes all day and half the night. The Arab had 
a mistress who was a Frenchwoman and was 
very jealous of him. I thought him most charm 
ing and very good-looking; he seemed to like me 
too. Rubezack had a son and had one day to 
go out of Paris to a country place to inspect the 
school. He came to the cafe and found the Arab and 
myself drinking coffee and asked us if we would 
accompany him for the afternoon. We took the train 
and came to a charming place with a large house, 
which was the school. Afterwards we sat in the gar 
den 

 of a cafe and drank Vermouth Cassis, a drink 
which eventually goes to the head and is mostly 
drunk in France by work-girls and concierges. 
There was a swing in the garden and we took turns 
on it and behaved in a ridiculously childish way. 

134 



PARIS REVISITED 



We then walked across some fields, took the tram, 
and came back to the cafe to find the Arab's mis 
tress, not looking too pleased, and the Pole who 
lived in Modigliani's studio. 

Underneath the Hotel de la Haute Loire^ which 
was the hotel I stayed at in 1914, was the Restaurant 
Baty. Outside were baskets of oysters stacked up. 
Inside, the floor was tiled and covered in sawdust. 
Rosalie was still in the Rue Campagne Premiere, in 
her restaurant, and wept when Modigliani's name 
was mentioned, although, when he was alive, she 
threw him out several times a week. This was not 
really surprising as he caused a dreadful disturbance 
at times. One day I met Blaise Cendras at the 
Pamasse. He had only one arm, the other he had 
lost in the War. I had read his poetry and admired 
his work very much. He was a great friend of 
Ferdinand Leger, and they and many more amusing 
people ate every day at Baty's. Sometimes they 
would sing whilst they ate. They sang snatches 
from the Russian Ballets. They were particularly 
fond of snatches from " Scheherazade " and " Pe- 
trouska." One day, after lunch, an elderly Baroness 
came to the restaurant and they decided to go and 
see Brancusi, bringing some wine with them. They 
took the Baroness with them. She must have been 
very beautiful when she was young. She wore a 
yellow wig, which she twined round her head. She 
still had a fine figure. She asked me to dinner at her 
flat. She had several pictures of Henri Rousseau, 
the Douanier. She had the " Wedding/' a large 
picture with the bride in white in the middle and 

 



the one with the horse-trap and the black dog. I 
was thirty at that time and she must have been very 
much older. She asked me how old I was and I 
said, " Thirty. 53 She said, " How funny, I am only 
three years older than you." I had never met 
anyone who lied quite to that extent before and was 
rather disturbed. I thought that conversation 
under those circumstances was going to be difficult, 
if not impossible. Evan Morgan came to see her 
with me one evening. She told us that we were 
both vulgar and common and it nearly ended in a 
battle. The day that they all went to Brancusi's 
they danced and sang and the Baroness, feeling tired, 
asked if she could go upstairs and lie down for a 
short time. She did, and then went home. When 
Brancusi went to bed he was horrified to find the 
Baroness's yellow wig. It was an embarrassing 
moment for him. The next day she wrote and 
explained that it belonged to her; she said that she 
did not, as a rule, wear it, and would he send it back 
at once. 

I worked at Modigliani's studio with the Pole and 
drew at the Academy. I felt rather a fool about my 
painting as all the Poles and, in fact, all the painters 
painted in very bright colours, and mine still looked 
like London fog. I was very happy aiad felt very well 
as I always did in Paris. The Pole liked me very 
much. He painted portraits and flowers. He was 
small and well-built and looked rather like Charlie 
Chaplin, whom he imitated very well as he wore a 
pair of very baggy corduroy trousers* 









LAUGHING TORSO 



CHAPTER X THE SOUTH OF FRANCE 

THE Pole asked me if I would go to the South of 
France, but, he said, " We must get married first. 55 
I had to confess that I already had a husband. 
After thinking for a time he decided that it really did 
not matter very much. It had never occurred to me 
that it did. I had to pretend that it was a sacrifice 
on my part. The same dealer, who had been in 
duced to give Modigliani money, bought my Pole's 
pictures from time to time. We went to see him and 
his wife. I felt like a jeune fills with her fiancS. 
They were pleased and congratulated us both. The 
dealer bought some of his pictures and gave him 
some money. I sold some drawings for a few 
hundred francs, very much less than the money that 
he had and we took a third-class train for the South. 
I did not ask where we were going to, as I was so 
thrilled with the idea of going South that I did not 
mind. Two South Americans came with us, too. 
 

One of them was going to Gollioure to stay with 
Foujita and his wife. The train was very uncom 
fortable. The seats were made of strips of wood 
which, when one tried to lie on them, made holes 
in one's body. We slept uncomfortably and I leant 
against my Pole, who put his arm affectionately 
round my waist. When we started from Paris it was 
cold and pouring with rain; as we got further 
South it got warmer and warmer. The South 
Americans and the Pole spoke Spanish. My Pole had 
lived for five years in Spain and spoke Spanish like 




a Spaniard. I spoke to them in French. We stopped 
for ten minutes at Lyons and went into the station 
cafe, drank coffee and ate ham sandwiches. 
The train got hotter and hotter and the sun shone 
from a cloudless blue sky. We saw olive trees and 
flowers of all colours, and finally the Pyrenees in the 
distance. I thought that I was approaching Para 
dise, and began to wonder if I had not died during 
the night and had really arrived there. I ached all 
over and was getting very hungry. We decided to 
stay at Collioure, if we liked the place, and to find 
some rooms. In order to get to Gollioure we had to 
get off the train at Port Vendres 

, the place where 
the boats sail for Algiers and Morocco. We arrived 
there at eight in the morning, and dragged our 
weary bodies to a little cafe on the quays. I had 
never seen such blue water and such beautifulfishing- 
boats with curved sails. The boats were painted the 
brightest of blues, greens, and reds. I looked at 
them and wondered however I should paint them; 
they were so perfect in themselves that it seemed 
impossible to do anything that would not resemble 
a coloured photograph. The cafe had melons piled 
up outside. We had a bottle of red wine to revive 
us, some coarse bread, and butter and cheese. From 
Port Vendres we had to walk to Gollioure along the 
cliffs for about four miles. There were high moun 
tains behind us and as we walked we saw an Arab 
castle on the top of a hill. It looked like something 
out of the Arabian Nights. At last we turned a corner 
and saw a bay, the other side of which was Collioure. 
There were pink, green, and white houses and an 



LAUGHING TORSO 



Arab tower on the sea-shore. 

 We walked round the 
bay and got down to the shore. There was a 
stone path at the foot of the old fort and the sea 
came right up to the path. The Foujitas had the 
best house in Collioure. It was practically on the 
sea. There was only a road and a small stretch of 
seashore in front of it. Matisse had lived there for 
many summers. It had a balcony and several large 
rooms. At this time Foujita was living with his 
first wife, whom I had not met before. She was 
French and had most beautiful legs, but her body 
was shapeless and enormous. She had the most 
terrifying face I have ever seen and I was frightened 
of her. She screamed at Foujita most of the time. 
They were very kind and pleased to see us and found 
us a charming place in a very narrow street near the 
sea. It cost a hundred and fifty francs a month. It, 
had a large room, with two windows looking on to 
the street, and an alcove at the back which con 
tained a bed. There was also another small alcove. 
In the front room was a primitive stove which burnt 
charcoal. The old lady who rented it to us was very 
ugly and had long teeth like a horse. Appar 
ently in this part of the world, there is something in 
the water which makes people's teeth drop out, and 
even the quite young women had teeth missing. 

There were no sanitary arrangements of any kind 
and a bucket was placed in the Smaller alcove for 
my use. The gentlemen of the town walked every 
morning up a hill to the moat of the fort. The old 
lady and most of her family earned their living by 
packing and salting fish, principally sardines. 





 

Under each of the houses in the street were large 
cellars in which they packed the fish. The women 
dressed in black with black handkerchiefs over their 
heads. Our landlady's sister kept a little shop. She 
sold everything, including tobacco. She had one 
of the most beautiful faces that I have ever seen. 
She must have been nearly fifty and wore the black 
dress that all the women wore; she moved her 
hands most gracefully. She had a beautiful voice 
and looked like the Virgin Mary. I asked the land 
lady if there were not any photographs of her when 
she was young. She said that they never troubled 
about anything like that, and that the people for 
miles around came to Collioure to look at her and 
admire her. 

The evening of our arrival Foujita and his wife 
asked us to dinner. Foujita was a marvellous cook, 
and we all went to the kitchen and helped. It ended 
by us all being chased out, as Foujita explained in 
Japanese, rather forcibly, that " too many cooks 
spoilt the broth We had breakfast in a cafe the 
next morning, and afterwards I wandered round the 
town with a string bag to visit the shops. I bought 
some meat, and some potatoes and onions, and the 
Pole and I cooked it. He cooked very well indeed, 
and I knew how to do several things quite well. We 
had lunch and then went out to view the landscape 
to see what we could paint. I was frightened of be 
ginning anything, as he painted much better than I 
did, but he was very kind and sympathetic, and said 
that it did not matter much what I painted, but "  
faut travailler" He had been a great friend of 





Modigliani's, and knew many stories about him, so 
I was never bored for a minute. We went to the 
sea-shore every morning with the Foujitas and the 
South American. There were bathing-boxes, and 
Madame Foujita and I shared one and the men had 
another. Foujita swam like a fish and dived 
beautifully. I could not swim at all, the result of 
my having been " ducked " when I was a child, but 
they all decided to teach me. We all made a great 
effort and finally after a week, I managed to swim 
five metres, and after a scream of triumph, sank. 
We went in the evening to a cafe where they had, on 
Friday nights, Cafe Concerts. The songs they sang 
shocked even me, they were of an unbelievable 
indecency, but the population were delighted, and 
cheered loudly. I drew at the cafe during the day 
time, as we sometimes went there after lunch. 
There were Senegalese working near by, digging a 
trench. They never appeared to be doing any work, 
they just posed in attitudes, resting on their pickaxes 
and their shovels, standing in very well composed 
groups, never moving at all. We stayed at Collioure 
for three months and even then the trench was not 
completed. One day my Pole said to one of them, 
" How do you like the women here? " And he re 
plied, " Not at all, they smell too much

 Ap 
parently the white girls smelt as badly to them as 
the black men did to the white girls, and so no one 
had any success at all. 

We had brought metres of canvas with us and 
some stretchers, and a few days later I found a 
motif. It was up a hill; one saw roofs in the fore- 





ground and the Arab tower with the sea behind and 
a few fishing -boats with white sails, and in the 
background a green hill with white waves washing 
against the rocks. I saw the painting again the 
other day. It is in the collection of Mary Anders. 
The white waves were very well painted and so 
was the Arab tower. The roofs and the sea I did 
not think so highly of, and thought how much 
better I could have painted them now. The Pole 
was very sweet and encouraging. The Foujitas 
suggested that we should take our supper and some 
wine to the Arab castle that we had seen on our way 
to Gollioure. We started off about four p.m. and 
climbed the hill. There had been a drawbridge, 
with quite a narrow and small drop, only about two 
yards wide and six feet deep. It was quite easy to 
jump across it, which I and the Pole did at once, 
without a thought. When it came to Mrs. Foujita 
she screamed with terror. The Pole and I jumped 
back and made her jump, she was in a fainting con 
dition by the time she got to the other side. I made 
a few sinister remarks in bad taste about education 
at the Royal School of Officers 3 Daughters of the 
Army, the British Empire, cricket, sport, courage, 
etc., which I don't think the poor creature was in 
a condition to hear. We revived her with some wine 
and walked up the steps inside the castle. The 
castle was square outside, but inside there was a 
round hole, surrounded by a path. On the stone 
floor, at intervals of a few yards, were holes, and 
underneath was water, into which enemies were 
pushed. We got on to the roof, which was large 



LAUGHING TORSO 



and flat. The view was magnificent. We sat down 
and had our supper of wine, bread, olives and sar 
dines : one could never escape at any meal from the 
eternal sardine it appeared in every form salted , 
fresh, boiled and fried. Madame Foujita spoke in a 
gruff and angry voice, even when she was not 
annoyed, but that was not often. Foujita was 
angelic and never answered back or said a word. 
I don't think that she had ever seen or met an 
English person before, and she would sit and gaze 
at me in astonishment for hours. The South 
American had apparently been very rich once and 
was an ex-amour of Madame Foujita's. He had a 
face like a hawk and a long thin body that was 
rather beautiful and resembled an old ivory Spanish 
crucifix. He was very Spanish and talked about 
poetry, life, hope, and the soul. The Pole knew a 
good deal about Spaniards and laughed at him 
sometimes. Madame Foujita suspected me of 
laughing at her too, but she was, I am thankful to 
say, not quite sure. Foujita painted at home during 
the afternoons. He did not use an easel, but placed 
a canvas against a chair and sat on the floor with 
his legs crossed. He worked with a tiny brush, very 
rapidly. The South American sat in the sun, drank 
wine, and blinked his eyes. 

My Pole and I went out every day to find new 
motifs to paint. After a week we saw so many sub 
jects that we thought that we would have to stay 
there for about seventy years in order to accomplish 
them. I tried to paint olive trees. I found them 
almost impossible. One day we found a beautiful 
 



motif on a hill. It was very windy, so we attached 
our easels to a string and a large stone, so that they 
could not move. I was painting furiously, and 
suddenly, behind an olive tree, appeared a Japanese. 
He said, " Bon jour, Nina" and I looked at him for 
a moment and recognized him as the friend of 
Foujita Kavashima. This was quite fantastic as 
one does not expect to see people one has not seen 
for ten years on a Pyrenee. 

One day we decided to have a picnic in the 
woods. We bought sardines, bread, cheese and 
some wine. We found a place with very green 
grass. I thought at once of mosquitoes we 
spread out some paper on the grass. After lunch 
the paper was strewn all over the place. I said, 
thinking of Hampstead Heath, " We must clean 
the paper up. 95 Madame Foujita said, " Pourquoi! " 
And I said, " It spoils the landscape,  and so I 
dug a hole in the ground and buried all the paper 
and sardine bones. After lunch Foujita saw a 
large tree. It had a big trunk and no branches at 
all. He said, " I will climb this tree.  I wondered 
how he was going to do it. He took the trunk of the 
tree with one hand on each side and climbed up 
like a monkey. We all looked at him with astonish 
ment and admiration. He could use his toes in the 
same way that he could use his fingers. To enter 
Spain one had to have a visa. None of us had one, 
but we wanted very much to get to Port Bou, which 
is the first Port in Spain. Madame Foujita, although 
tiresome at times, was a woman of determined 
character, and if she made up her mind to do some- 

 



LAUGHING TORSO 



thing, nothing, not even the police force, or the 
customs officials, could thwart her. We heard that 
there was a fete day in Spain. She had a brilliant 
idea. 

We would take the train to Cerbere, the last 
station before Spain, and walk over the Pyrenees 
into Spain. Madame Foujita dressed herself up in 
her best clothes, with a pair of very high-heeled 
patent leather shoes, not forgetting to put in 
Foujita's pocket a pair of rope-soled shoes. This I 
did not know about when we started and wondered 
how she would climb the mountain, which was of 
a respectable height. I wore a corduroy land girl's 
coat and skirt, with pockets all over it, and looked 
extremely British. We got to Cerbere and arrived 
at the foot of the mountain. Madame F. took off 
the high-heeled shoes, which Foujita put in his 
pocket, and put on the rope-soled shoes and we 
began to climb the mountain. 

 About a quarter of 
the way up we were stopped by the Customs, who 
asked to see our passports. Madame F. took the 
situation in hand, and explained in forcible language 
that we were not climbing the mountain with a view 
to descending the other side into Spain, but only to 
admire, from the top, the Spanish scenery. I think 
they were so terrified of her that they let us continue. 
When we got to the top of the mountain we could see 
thirty or forty miles of Spain. This mountain was 
not nearly so high as the one that we had climbed 
before; so we saw the view much more clearly. 
We saw a square hole in the ground, which had some 
steps leading downwards. We all walked down and 








found a cellar with Spaniards drinking wine out of 
bottles with long spouts* They held the spouts to 
their lips, opened their throats, and down went the 
wine. We ordered a bottle of wine and some glasses. 
The Pole and the South American drank out of the 
bottles. The French, who were entering Spain, 
drank to the health of the Spaniards, and the 
Spaniards who were about to enter France, drank 
to the health of the French. We drank to every 
body's health, including our own, and the Customs 
House Officers. We then descended the other side 
of the mountain and entered Port Bou. The cafes 
were filled. The Spanish men wore black hats and 
smoked cigars. When they saw me they screamed, 
" Inglese! Inglese! " This, I realized, was regrettable, 
but could not be helped. The Spaniards had little 
fans, which they flapped all the time. We found a 
restaurant and ordered a large lunch with a litre of 
Spanish wine. It cost us a good deal of money, as 
we had to change our francs into pesetas. The wine 
was so strong that even five of us dared not finish the 
bottle, which we left only three-quarters empty. 
After lunch we visited the fete. There were re 
gattas, and dances, and guitars, and what was de 
scribed as pigeon-shooting. This rather horrified 
me as the unfortunate pigeons were tied to posts 
by their legs. The Spaniards shot at them. There 
was a whole row of pigeons and if one was wounded 
they very rarely killed one outright it flapped its 
wings and frightened the other birds. It was then 
time to return, as we had our train to catch at 
Cerb^re. We passed the Customs, who were tactful 
 



enough not to ask us any questions, and returned to 
Collioure. 

After two weeks Foujita and his wife had to return 
to Paris. We had a letter from a Pole, R., and his 
wife, to say that they were coming to Collioure. 
They had found an apartment near the port. 
Madame R. was very fat and very bourgeoise, and I 
thought rather kind. My Pole did not like her very 
much. I think the same kind of person, if she had 
been English, would have been quite impossible, 
but we, being females, and of such different races, 
got on very well. At least she was a change from 
Madame Foujita. She was always suffering from a 
different malady, she had indigestion, rheumatism, 
change of life, stomach troubles, headaches, feet that 
would not walk, and all kinds of other things. One 
day we went to the seashore to bathe. R. very 
seldom bathed, because he said that his figure looked 
like a "sac de merde" which indeed it did. His wife 
had the good sense not to bathe at all. My Pole 
bathed with a pair of bathing -drawers, not the. 
regulation kind that covers the chest. When he 
walked out of his bathing box Madame R. gave a 
scream of horror and said, " C'est indecent I " I then 
gave another lecture about England and told her 
what I thought about her views of morality in very 
forcible language. One evening we were sitting in 
our cafe, which had a terrasse in front and each side 
a small wall about two feet high. It was about six 
p.m. and quite light. Suddenly, on the other side of 
the wall, a strange figure appeared; he had a black 
beard, a cap, and scarf round his neck. He said 

 



something in Spanish and my Pole said, of course, 
in French, as he did not speak English, " He speaks 
fifteenth-century Spanish." My Pole knew Spanish 
literature very well indeed, and answered him, and 
they had a conversation. We asked him to have a 
drink, but he disappeared behind the wall in the 
same way that he had appeared. We never saw him 
again. My Pole said to me that it was a drole de 
chose, and I agreed with him. 

One morning I went out with my string bag to 
buy the food for the day. I saw outside the butcher's 
a cart full of pigs that had come to be killed. I 
thought that perhaps they would kill them in a 
slaughter-house and went for a walk to buy butter 
and bread. When I came back I saw one pig sitting 
outside the butcher's shop with its head on its front 
paws, and large tears streaming out of its eyes. I 
was told that its brother had been killed in the 
street before its eyes and that it was crying. This 
sounds a fantastic story. I walked away and told 
my Pole. He said that it was true and that pigs 
were so like human beings that they wept when they 
were unhappy. An hour later I went back to buy 
some pork and they gave it to me and it was warm 
and I cried too. R., my Pole, and I went for walks 
together. Madame R. could not and would not. 
We were all glad about this as her only topics of 
conversation were her diseases and her troubles. 
We walked sometimes to Port Vendres. I sat in 
the cafe on the front. There was a very high 
mountain behind Collioure. We wanted to climb 
it, but heard that it was very much further away 





 

and higher than it looked. I was determined 
to do some mountaineering, so we found a nearer 
mountain that was only seven hundred metres 
high and from the top of which one could see 
Spain. We started one afternoon. The first part 
was easy, but as we got higher up we had to climb 
over rocks, sometimes having to cling on to the 
grass and shrubs. We got hot and thirsty and 
found a spring. We wished that we had brought 
some beer with us. When we reached the top the 
view was wonderful. Spain was so entirely different 
from France. The whole character of the landscape 
was different. On the horizon was a small black 
cloud. My Pole said that we must descend as 
quickly as possible as, in a very short time, there 
would be a terrific storm. Just as we reached the 
foot of the mountain the storm broke. I had never 
seen such lightning before and we had to take re 
fuge in a shop. It was like a large cellar and the 
whole floor was stacked with melons. We sat on 
the melons, which were very uncomfortable, and 
the old lady gave us some wine. The storm went on 
for so long that we got bored with waiting and went 
home. We had to take the path at the foot of the 
fortress, where we had walked on the day we 
arrived. The rain came down in torrents and within 
a tew seconds we were all dripping. The lightning 
struck the sea a few feet from us and I never expected 
to get home alive. Our street was a pool of water. 
We lit the charcoal fire and were not dry till the 
next day. 

At least every two weeks there was a fete, when 





nobody did any work. A comic band appeared. 
They played in a little square. There were four of 
them in Catalan costume and they sat on four 
barrels. Three of them played curious instruments 
like clarionets, but they made an odd noise,, almost 
like bagpipes, and the fourth one played a trumpet. 
They played one particular tune over and over 
again and the peasants danced Catalan dances. I 
think that, during one week, there were three fete 
days. As we lived near the square and as the band 
played till after midnight we found it rather tire 
some. We painted one motif in the morning and 
another in the afternoon. I found a wonderful 
scene with trees and houses. After I had painted 
the usual blue sky for two afternoons a storm arose 
and the sky became dark blue. I painted as hard 
as I could and the painting was getting better and 
better and then the downpour started and I had 
to run for shelter. Of course, I never finished the 
painting as there was not another storm. I always 
think that it might have been a masterpiece. I 
think one thinks that about every picture one has not 
finished. We had painted about fourteen pictures 
and the money was getting rather low. We had only 
about three weeks 5 money left. 

There was a curious old lady who paraded up and 
down the streets. She was a beggar and moved 
from place to place according to the seasons. She 
spent the winter months in Paris. Everyone hated 
her because she sang or rather croaked in a loud 
and raucous voice. When she walked down our 
street all the inhabitants put their heads out of their 







windows and aimed at her with the contents of 
their pots de chambre. 

The grapes were now ripe and the time had come 
for the wine to be made. In the street in front of 
our door a wine-press was put up. One had to step 
over a part of it in order to get out. This continued 
for about a week and the wine-press was removed. 
One morning I went out with my string bag to buy 
the lunch and was hailed by our landlady. She 
asked me to come and taste the newly-made wine. 
I went into her cellar where she packed the fish. I 
met her beautiful sister coming up the stairs smelling 
very strongly of sardines. It seemed to me odd to 
find a woman, who looked so like the Virgin Mary, 
smelling of fish. I went into the cellar, where I 
found my landlady, who had lost another tooth, 
surrounded by all her relatives, tasting the new 
wine. I joined them. It was rather raw, but gave 
one a pleasant feeling of amiability. When I left 
I met, in the street, another neighbour, who also 
invited me to taste her wine. I could not possibly 
refuse and had some white wine. On emerging I 
found still another neighbour and had to repeat the 
process. I then arrived home without any lunch at 
all and fell sound asleep. My Pole was very kind 
and sympathetic and forgave my abominable be 
haviour. 

The patron of the caf< we frequented was a 
charming man and now and then bought us drinks. 
(Madame R. had already left for Paris.) When 
he heard we were leaving he asked us to have 
a Catalan breakfast. He said that we must arrive 
 



at eight a.m. Breakfast consisted of a huge dish of 
anchovies, swimming in oil and garlic, sausages, 
olives, black and white bread, and first white wine 
and then red. There were three bottles of white 
wine and three of red and four of us to drink them. 
At nine-thirty we left. My Pole, R., and I decided 
that the only thing for us to do was to take a long 
walk. We walked silently for about three miles 
when we came to the sea-shore where we lay down 
in a row on the pebbles and slept. There was, of 
course, no question of the tide coming in or going 
out as there is practically no tide at all in the 
Mediterranean and some hours later we woke up 
feeling rather worse and smelling horribly of garlic. 
I have never since really appreciated either ancho 
vies or garlic and hope that I shall not again have 
to experience a Catalan breakfast. We had by now 
just the railway fare back to Paris. 



 



CHAPTER XI BACK TO PARIS AND TO CELEBRITIES 

I WENT to Modigliani's studio and stayed with the 
Pole. It was very uncomfortable but I did not mind 
as I was quite used to discomfort. My Pole sold 
some pictures to the dealer and a collector, so we 
had a little money to live on. We had a large coke 
stove on which we cooked. There was no gas or 
electric light., so we had an oil lamp. In the morn 
ings the Pole cleaned and filled the lamp, and in the 
evenings we read the French classics, sitting one 
each side of Modigliani's old and scarred table. 
The picture-dealer had a spare copy of Modigliani's 
death mask. There were, I think, four taken. It 
was rather horrible as his mouth had not been 
bound up and his jaw dropped. It looked terrifying 
through the door of the first workshop in the shadow. 
We felt that we had to keep it with us, because if we 
put it out or gave it away it would be a breach of 
friendship. The Arab came and spent the evenings 
with us. Sometimes we got a bottle of cheap wine 
and talked about Montparnasse before the War. 
The painter who lived downstairs came to see us 
sometimes too. In the summer he became very 
eccentric and did the most odd things. The first 
thing he would do was to break the lock of his studio 
door. One night we came home from the Cafe 
Parnasse about midnight and found his door wide 
open. In front of the door, on an easel, was a 
painting of an enormous eye. It was done in great 
detail and was about two feet wide and a foot high. 

 



BACK TO PARIS AND CELEBRITIES 



He was not in. We did not know what to do, so we 
closed the door. We were quite certain that Modig- 
liani was still with us and fancied at night that we 
could hear his footsteps walking through the studio. 
It was certainly a most sinister place. 

 

We worked during the daytime. I painted Still 
Life and worked at the Academy from the nude in 
the afternoon. We did a great deal of work. We 
had a tabby cat. Once we were all very broke, 
myself., the Pole, and the Arab. For three days we 
could not find a penny, we did not mind much about 
ourselves, but we were so sorry for the cat, who had 
to starve also. We had a lot of Modigliani's books 
and in despair the Pole took one on philosophy and 
read it to us. As he turned over the pages he sud 
denly came to a HUNDRED FRANC NOTE. 
Modigliani's wife used to hide money away from him 
and this was one of his notes. We were so delighted 
that we rushed into the nearest workmen's restaur 
ant, taking the cat with us, and ate and drank to 
Modigliani's health the whole evening. The poor 
cat ended in a very tragic way. One evening we 
were reading and the cat began to run round in 
circles. We realized that it had gone mad so we 
locked it up in the lavatory and went out. We dared 
not come home until the next morning. We sat in 
cafe all night and at eight in the morning came 
home to find an apparently dead cat. We went to 
bed as we were very tired and suddenly heard a most 
dreadful howl. We opened the door of the lava 
tory and found that the cat was really dead. The 
next thing to do was to dispose of the body. We 

 



decided that we could not put our poor friend in 
the dustbin so we sat down and thought. In the 
gutters of the streets of Paris are, at intervals, 
small slits about a foot and a half long and about 
six inches high. These lead to the sewers of Paris, 
which lead to the Seine. We decided that at 
night we would wrap our cat's body up and drop 
him down, and he might eventually float down to 
the sea, I thought of Alfred Jarry's remark about 
dead people. I think it is in the Docteur Faustrol; I 
can't quote it in French, but when he asks, " What 
is the difference between live people and the dead? " 
the answer is, " The live ones can swim both up 
and down the river, but the dead ones can only 
swim down.  We stretched our cat out straight and 
wrapped him in two layers of paper and tied him up 
with string. We made a handle of the string and he 
looked rather like a parcel containing a long bottle. 
At nine in the evening we went out, the Pole holding 
the parcel by the string handle. We crept round 
the neighbourhood, looking for a quiet spot. We 
walked for some time round the Luxembourg 
gardens and finally found a suitable place in the 
Rue d'Assas. Both crying bitterly, we popped him 
in and then went to the Gaf<6 Parnasse, and had 
some drinks. Everyone asked why we were so sad, 
but we did not tell them, and went home to bed. 

The Pole knew many Spaniards and they came 
to our studio and played and sang. . . , They were 
much the same as the South American. I liked the 
Spaniards. They seemed to spend their lives playing 
guitars. Even so they really did a great deal of work.