Laughing Torso

LIFE
and held the arms and legs close to our bodies, so
that they stuck out of the draperies. It had a
curious effect and looked very sur-realiste.
The gipsy I knew when I came to Paris was called
Fenella. She had been discovered, sitting on a
doorstep in London, by Ransome. She had posed
for Augustus John and I had seen several drawings
of her at his exhibition at the Carfax Galleries.
She looked like a bird. She had a very long neck
and large rather protruding eyes. She wore a tight
dress with silver buttons down the front and shoes
like I did, with straps. She had the prettiest legs
and smallest feet that I have ever seen. She played
a guitar and sang. She spoke about ten languages
and sang in sixteen, including Japanese. She was
supposed to be consumptive and drank soda-water
and milk. She had a drawer-full of louis d'or, one
of which she lent me one day and which I gave back.
She came to my party and sang. We bought bottles
of wine at fifty centimes a bottle and it was quite
drinkable. At five a.m. we went to the Rotonde
and sat there till nine o'clock.
Frederick Etchells, the painter, was living in
Paris. He was a friend of Wyndham Lewis's.
There was a very amusing and clever painter
called Charles Winzer and every evening we three
would meet at the Rotonde. We wrote poems, I
wrote the last words of the poems, four of which had
to rhyme and a fifth that did not, and they wrote
in the poems. They were very funny and we spent
the whole evening laughing at them. My friend
Basil, whom I quarrelled with periodically, was cut
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