Laughing Torso

LIFE
and the Egoist. He sent me a postcard and on it was
66 I liked your works at Holland Park very much as
you may have seen from my article in the Egoist."
He wrote this of me: " Miss Hamnett cares much
about representation. I was very interested to see
a portrait of Zadkine the wood-carver. In this
work there are great technical qualities of paste and
drawing—more amplified in the other portrait—
where carefully chosen blacks and violets create a
very distinguished effect. I see from the quality of
the c Women composition 3 that the affinities of this
artist are coming nearer to preference for abstract
design."
Henri did not like Zadkine. He knew him in
London before he had gone to Paris. Zadkine
carved trunks of trees into Apostles, and a large
group of figures. Henri despised people who did
not carve stone. This was not quite fair, as Zadkine
carved stone too. Basil came to see me nearly every
day. He asked me to marry him. I thought of my
unfortunate friend and said " No." The more I
refused the more persistent he became.
I was, in fact, in love with the pale young man
who sat at the Rotonde. Every evening Modigliani,
Wassilieff, Hunt Diederich, his wife and I dined at
Rosalie's. His wife, who was a Russian, designed
and herself carried out, very beautiful embroideries.
She drew at WassiliefFs Sketch Class. There were
forty or fifty people there every evening and Modi-
gliani would come in and sit on the floor and draw.
There was a very long staircase leading up to the
workshop and we could hear him approaching if he
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