Laughing Torso

BACK TO PARIS AND CELEBRITIES
Americans as possible, as an evening spent with the
French or the foreign artists, who had known
Montparnasse for years, was very much more enter-
taining, There was a big man called Geria, with a
large beard. He was a Frenchman from Savoy. I
always called him Francois Premier, which pleased
him. He painted very well, in fact I found some
pictures of his at the Leicester Galleries the other
day.
Each year the Academie Golorossi gave a fancy
dress ball. In 1920 I did not go. The result was
that neither the Pole nor I had any sleep at all
that night. The Academy was only divided from
our studio by a small garden and the din was awful.
I decided that the next party I should be there.
Although we worked at the sketch class, and at the
Cours libre, we rather despised the art students,
who consisted mostly of silly Americans, French
bourgeois, and imbecile English. Oddly enough the
ball was entirely run by the French, in fact by the
Professor, Bernard Naudin, a funny little man, who
is a very famous illustrator and a great friend of the
Fratellinis5, the three famous clowns from the Cirque
Medrano. He was an admirable clown himself and
came to the dance dressed as a comedian. He
brought with him a wooden horse on wheels, which
he dragged behind him on a string. Ceria came
dressed as Edouard Manet, and he looked exactly
like him. He wore a brown square bowler hat and
had grown his beard in the same shape as Manet had
worn his; he had sponge bag trousers and white
spats. He was acting as barman and mixing the
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