maintained by Miss Barney as a sort of unkempt shrine-museum. A wet afternoon light, oozing through grime-grey skylights, mingled with an immense room’s objects: shrouded chairs, a piano with a Spanish shawl, Spanish candelabra with partially burnt candles. Nothing occurred when Miss Barney flicked a light switch.
“Dog take it,” she said, suddenly very prairie-American, and lighted up a candelabrum, carrying it with her as she led us around the room to view Romaine Brooks’ paintings. There were perhaps seventy of them, all portraits of a flat and ultra realism; the subjects were women, and all of them were dressed identically, each fully outfitted in white tie and tails. You know how you know when you’re not going to forget something? I wasn’t going to forget this moment, this room, this array of butch-babes, all of whom, to judge from their coifs and cosmetics, were painted between 1917 and 1930.
“Violet,” the widow stated as she examined the portrait of a lean bobbed blond with a monocle magnifying an ice-pick eye. “Gertrude liked her. But she seemed to me a cruel girl. I remember she had an owl. She kept it in a cage so small it couldn’tmove. Simply sat there. With its feathers bursting through the wire. Is Violet still alive?”
Miss Barney nodded. “She has a house in Fiesole. Looks fit as a fiddle. I’m told she’s been having the Niehans treatment.”
At last we came to a figure I recognized as the widow’s lamented mate—depicted here with a Cognac snifter in her left hand and a cheroot in the other, not at all the brown mother-earth monolith Picasso palmed off, but more a Diamond Jim Brady personage, a big-bellied show-off, which one suspects is nearer the truth. “Romaine,” said the widow, smoothing her fragile mustache, “Romaine had a certain technique. But she is
not
an artist.”
Miss Barney begged to differ. “Romaine,” she announced in tones chilled as Alpine slopes, “is a bit limited.
But
. Romaine is a very great artist!”
It was Miss Barney who arranged for me to visit Colette, whom I wanted to meet, not for my usual opportunistic reasons, but because Boaty had introduced me to her work (kindly keep in mind that, intellectually, I am a hitchhiker who gathers his education along highways and under bridges), and I respected her:
My Mother’s House
is masterly, incomparable in the artistry of its play upon sensual specifics—taste, scent, touch, sight.
Also, I was curious about this woman; I felt anyone who had lived as broadly as she had, who was as intelligent as she was, must have a few answers. So I was grateful when Miss Barney made it possible for me to have tea with Colette at her apartment in the Palais Royal. “But,” warned Miss Barney, speaking on the telephone, “don’t tire her by overstaying; she’s been ill all winter.”
It’s true that Colette received me in her bedroom—seated in a golden bed à la Louis Quatorze at his morning levee; but otherwise she seemed as indisposed as a painted Watusi leading a tribal dance. Her
maquillage
was equal to that chore: slantedeyes, lucent as the eyes of a Weimaraner dog, rimmed with kohl; a spare and clever face powdered clown-pale; her lips, for all her considerable years, were a slippery, shiny, exciting show-girl red; and her hair was red, or reddish, a rosy blush, a kinky spray. The room smelled of her perfume (at some point I asked what it was, and Colette said: “Jicky. The Empress Eugénie always wore it. I like it because it’s an old-fashioned scent with an elegant history, and because it’s witty without being coarse—like the better conversationalists. Proust wore it. Or so Cocteau tells me. But then he is not
too
reliable”), of perfume and bowls of fruit and a June breeze moving voile curtains.
Tea was brought by a maid, who settled the tray on a bed already burdened with drowsing cats and correspondence, books and magazines and various bibelots, especially a lot of antique French
“Dog take it,” she said, suddenly very prairie-American, and lighted up a candelabrum, carrying it with her as she led us around the room to view Romaine Brooks’ paintings. There were perhaps seventy of them, all portraits of a flat and ultra realism; the subjects were women, and all of them were dressed identically, each fully outfitted in white tie and tails. You know how you know when you’re not going to forget something? I wasn’t going to forget this moment, this room, this array of butch-babes, all of whom, to judge from their coifs and cosmetics, were painted between 1917 and 1930.
“Violet,” the widow stated as she examined the portrait of a lean bobbed blond with a monocle magnifying an ice-pick eye. “Gertrude liked her. But she seemed to me a cruel girl. I remember she had an owl. She kept it in a cage so small it couldn’tmove. Simply sat there. With its feathers bursting through the wire. Is Violet still alive?”
Miss Barney nodded. “She has a house in Fiesole. Looks fit as a fiddle. I’m told she’s been having the Niehans treatment.”
At last we came to a figure I recognized as the widow’s lamented mate—depicted here with a Cognac snifter in her left hand and a cheroot in the other, not at all the brown mother-earth monolith Picasso palmed off, but more a Diamond Jim Brady personage, a big-bellied show-off, which one suspects is nearer the truth. “Romaine,” said the widow, smoothing her fragile mustache, “Romaine had a certain technique. But she is
not
an artist.”
Miss Barney begged to differ. “Romaine,” she announced in tones chilled as Alpine slopes, “is a bit limited.
But
. Romaine is a very great artist!”
It was Miss Barney who arranged for me to visit Colette, whom I wanted to meet, not for my usual opportunistic reasons, but because Boaty had introduced me to her work (kindly keep in mind that, intellectually, I am a hitchhiker who gathers his education along highways and under bridges), and I respected her:
My Mother’s House
is masterly, incomparable in the artistry of its play upon sensual specifics—taste, scent, touch, sight.
Also, I was curious about this woman; I felt anyone who had lived as broadly as she had, who was as intelligent as she was, must have a few answers. So I was grateful when Miss Barney made it possible for me to have tea with Colette at her apartment in the Palais Royal. “But,” warned Miss Barney, speaking on the telephone, “don’t tire her by overstaying; she’s been ill all winter.”
It’s true that Colette received me in her bedroom—seated in a golden bed à la Louis Quatorze at his morning levee; but otherwise she seemed as indisposed as a painted Watusi leading a tribal dance. Her
maquillage
was equal to that chore: slantedeyes, lucent as the eyes of a Weimaraner dog, rimmed with kohl; a spare and clever face powdered clown-pale; her lips, for all her considerable years, were a slippery, shiny, exciting show-girl red; and her hair was red, or reddish, a rosy blush, a kinky spray. The room smelled of her perfume (at some point I asked what it was, and Colette said: “Jicky. The Empress Eugénie always wore it. I like it because it’s an old-fashioned scent with an elegant history, and because it’s witty without being coarse—like the better conversationalists. Proust wore it. Or so Cocteau tells me. But then he is not
too
reliable”), of perfume and bowls of fruit and a June breeze moving voile curtains.
Tea was brought by a maid, who settled the tray on a bed already burdened with drowsing cats and correspondence, books and magazines and various bibelots, especially a lot of antique French
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