Laughing Torso

BACK. TO PARIS AND CELEBRITIES
and perpetually blue sky is not a part of my " make
up." We went into Dieppe to look at the Channel
and found it so appallingly rough that I waited
another day and then took the boat for Newhaven.
I arrived in London and went to the Eiffel Tower,
where I got a small room near the roof. The next
day a friend of mine bought a picture. I had not
enough pictures for an exhibition, but Mr. Turner,
of the Independent Gallery, said that he was having
a mixed show of English painters and that I could
exhibit four or five. I sold another small painting
and decided to return to Paris and to my Pole. I
was glad to be back. I was in no better position
than if I had not gone at all and felt that rny life
was a failure and damned the South of France.
I continued my water-colours. I went daily to
the Luxembourg Gardens where I did some really
good work, I think. There is a statue there that I
always admired. It is of a lady standing up, with
her feet crossed, in a very short skirt indeed, and a
strange little hat like an inverted soup plate. I did
a drawing of her. Some years later I went to the
Bal Julien dressed as her. I wore a pink silk
accordion pleated garment, that really was a pair
of knickers. They had no legs, but only a ribbon to
divide them. I borrowed them from a rich American
woman and cut the ribbon so that it looked exactly
like the skirt of the statue. They had garlands of
blue silk forget-me-nots embroidered on them. I
wore a short blue, tight-fitting jacket that I had
bought at the " Flea market " at GauHncourt and a
very small blue hat that looked like a comedian's
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