Laughing Torso

WAR
come to Bath and stay there, not with them, as the
house was very small, but for me to take a room in
the town. I said that I had no money. Mrs.
Sickert went first and Sickert remained in London to
arrange some business. He took me out to lunch and
to dinner. Sometimes we would walk up to Gamden
Town and round about Euston. We walked one
evening to see a house that had been a school, kept
by an old lady, and he had been to school there
when he was six years5 old. One morning when I
arrived at the studio, he said, " I can't bother to
cook the eggs this morning, we must have breakfast
at the Euston Hotel/5 so we arrived there about
nine o'clock. The breakfast was very good. I
thought it rather a depressing place, but Sickert
adored those kind of places. After a few days he
went to Bath. He wrote to me asking me to come
there and said that he had found a beautiful room
for me, overlooking the whole town. I would have
liked to have gone very much, but I remembered
how dreadfully ill I always felt when I was at
school. I wrote and told him that, but he answered
by a letter containing fifteen pounds, and saying
that he wanted to buy a portrait of a poet that I had
done. There was nothing else to do but to go.
Sickert met me at the station and took me to my
room. It was a most enchanting place, in a row of
workmen's cottages, half-way up a hilL The front
door was higher than the back door, as the hill
was quite steep. The landlady was the widow of a
policeman. She wore a striped blue-and-white
blouse with a belt, a large cameo brooch, and her
109