Laughing Torso

I BEGIN TOBE AN ARTIST
ately on the table at my bedside. My Grandmother
thought that I was mad. Poor Charlie! he is now
dead.
I was now sixteen. I drew from the nude at the
Art School, but I had never dared to look at myself
in the mirror, for my Grandmother had always
insisted that one dressed and undressed under one's
nightdress using it as a kind of tent. One day, feel-
ing very bold, I took off all my clothes and gazed
in the looking-glass. I was delighted. I was much
superior to anything I had seen in the life class and
I got a book and began to draw.
I went away for the summer to Margate and
painted four water-colour landscapes, for which I
got a silver medal at Christmas.
A girl student one day gave me a small book by
Camille Mauclair on the French Impressionists;
I thought they were most interesting and so different
from Highlanders in action.
I travelled home one day in the same carriage as
a girl who had won the gold medal at the Royal
Academy Schools for portrait painting. I was much
impressed at first but bitterly disillusioned when I
showed her the book and found that she had never 4
heard of Edouard Manet.
One of our students had found a Sketch Class
where clothed models, workpeople, and interesting
character models posed from five till seven. It was
at the London School of Art, where John Swan, the
animal painter, and Frank Brangwyn were the pro-
fessors, and Joseph Simpson took the sketch class.
Simpson was a brilliant caricaturist and draughts-
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