rowley smart memoir 2

Rowley had, for the time, given up painting in watercolour. It was as a watercolourist that Edwin remembered him. 'He had a perfect technique, very little more, and he gave me a few lessons.' This I suppose was when Rowley was staying in Dorset with Augustus John, after the Great War, 1914-1918. Rowley once or twice referred to that visit and remembered Edwin as a quiet little boy. He told me he once took him out driving in a pony trap. Edwin fell out, and the wheel went over him. 'It didn't seem to do him any harm, 'he said.

He talked about watercolour and told me that he had got to such a pitch of technical skill that he could 'do anything' with the medium. 'I had got too clever so I decided to leave it alone for a while and work in oils.'

This was one of the very few times he spoke about painting. He would talk of painters, mostly scandal, but hardly ever of painting. He used to praise my drawings, and sometimes he said one of my paintings was 'swell'. This was high praise. Sometimes he said nothing, and later I came to decide for myself that the picture was not a success. Most of Rowley's expressions were American. He had lived, off and on, in France for a considerable time but he never learned to speak the language. 'Just grab what you want and ask "combien?".' He loved the country to live in but I do not think he loved the people. Americans he liked immensely and spent most of his time with them. Montparnasse was full of Americans, American bars, restaurants, shops. It was, from his point of view, unnecessary to understand French, and even his voice had acquired a distinctly American intonation. 'What the hell is the guy saying, Cliff?' I explained. 'Tell the bastard to take a flying jump at himself, I can't stand these French joints anyway. Let's go to the Dingo.'

Drink and women were the chief interests of the crowd who frequented this bar, the Dôme and the other so-called artists' resorts in Montparnasse. Rowley was a success with women and he usually had one with him. He changed partners frequently. The women who hung about the cafés were not prostitutes but were the type who were always ready to go home and stay with a man for the sake of shelter and food. They were nearly all young, attractive and made the most of their appearance. Some were French girls who had come to Paris from the country with ambitions, tired of living a quiet life. Perhaps the promised job fell through. They got odd sittings as models and gradually drifted into this free and easy promiscuous life centred at the Dôme corner. Again, others were Swedes, Poles, Norwegians, Finns. Many came to learn French and to study on a minute allowance from home. The allowance went on drinks and clothes and they came to rely on finding their bed with whoever took their fancy. Many came to Montparnasse, men and women, for a few weeks and stayed on, living somehow, for months, even years.

Montparnasse had a terrible fascination, and at night the cafés were full and the customers sitting outside on the pavement, almost to the kerb, talked and sipped their drinks until dawn. The Dôme was open for 23 hours out of the 24, the Rotonde the same, while the Select, a few doors away, never closed. I think of Rowley in Moret painting landscapes, again during the months towards the end of his life when he was lying, almost helpless at the Eiffel Tour Hotel*, Percy Street, still painting, even in bed; but it is in Montparnasse that I can visualize him most clearly. Montparnasse was his setting with its feverish, hard drinking atmosphere. He loved it.

* The Eiffel Tour (Tower) Hotel at 1, Percy Street, Fitzrovia, London, later called the White Tower Restaurant and now called The House of Ho. GRH

Aperitif time invariably found us on the Dôme terrasse, at our favourite corner, just outside the entrance to the tabac end of the zinc bar, facing the newspaper kiosk that stood on the corner of the Boulevard Raspail, and looking along the Boulevard Montparnasse towards Les Lilas. The rest of the crowd would be there: Francis Musgrave, Homer Bevans, and others whose names I cannot remember. Sometimes Linc Gillespie with Anne, Hilaire Hiler, who decorated the Jockey and Jungle night clubs, Flossie Martin and Jo, a French girl with whom Rowley lived for a few weeks.

Homer Bevans was an American. A huge man, not exactly fat but big, he seemed over life size. Every movement, even his speech, was deliberate, slow, elephantine. The colour of his face, of his great hands with their short thick fingers, was a leathery yellow. He always wore a nondescript dark suit - I never saw him with an overcoat - a stiff, not too clean collar, that miraculously never got really dirty but just remained soiled, and a ridiculously small hat perched on his huge head. He was between forty and fifty. When he grasped a Pernod, his favourite drink, and commenced to raise the glass, it seemed an eternity before the cloudy green liquid actually touched his lips, was gulped, and the glass began its slow downward journey towards the round, marble-topped, brass-ringed table and finally came to rest, Homer's huge paw still holding it with what seemed to be a gentle, almost caressing gesture. He consumed, however, an alarming number of these drinks during the day and night. He seldom talked. 'Pernod is my life work,' he once remarked in his deep throaty voice, the words following each other slowly, unwillingly from between thick lips that always smiled stupidly. Sometimes, I used to think, a trifle languorously. I would watch him, fascinated.

Homer was said to have once played the flute in one of the large New York orchestras. Edwin, who was also a musician, went to see him and came back with a very poor opinion of his ability. The Homer legend continued thus: his wife in New York had left him, and Homer, who had a certain amount of private money, gave up his job and came to Paris. He took a studio and decided to become a sculptor. He actually started a bust and a figure. In the meanwhile he discovered Pernod and very soon abandoned art for that fatal drink. Rowley often told the story of Homer's modelling. Homer referred to these clay models most seriously, saying he would finish them when he had time, when Pernod would allow him time, that is; and they stood on their respective stands carefully swathed in damp cloths so that the clay would not harden and crack. His concierge had to leave a bucket of water in the studio each night so that Homer could redampen the cloths before going to bed. One night, as Rowley put it, Homer, more tight than usual, 'flung the water in the direction of the figure and forgot to keep hold of the bucket'. His aim was good. The heavy bucket hit the figure, which in falling knocked the bust off its stand and both were smashed. So ended Homer's career as a sculptor. He then devoted himself seriously to Pernod. One morning about 2.00 a.m. in the Select he mentioned his wife. Someone had a copy of the New York Times and Homer drawled, 'One day I hope I will pick up that paper and read that Mrs Homer Bevans has been flattened by a tram.' That is one of the few long sentences of his I can recall.

He had a deep low chuckle that sounded good-natured but foolish.

Pernod killed him in the end. He lived on it and hardly ever ate, couldn't face food in the later stages. It gets some of them that way.

Mornings Linc Gillespie, an American, spent propped up in bed, writing one of his almost incomprehensible articles for 'Transition', an advanced American literary magazine, published in Paris. He lived in an hotel in the rue Cujas off the Boulevard St Michel. I did a sketch of him there lying on his bed.

About five Linc would stir himself, get up and start for the Dôme. The girl who lived with him had a job with some American firm in Paris. She kept an eye on the money he spent, and Linc usually set off with ten francs, which he carried in a little leather purse. At the Dôme he bought himself a fine à l'eau, and usually produced a couple of hard-boiled eggs and some lettuce. He drifted away after an hour or so to play bridge with a few friends in the interior of the café. Sometimes he played all night. Linc was a good follower of James Joyce and he talked as Joyce wrote. It was impossible to understand him half the time, but he insisted that this new language was the thing of the future. He did not keep it up all the time, fortunately for his friends.

Linc had given much thought to finding a sentence that would be applicable to every conceivable situation. He finally hit on: 'It serves you/them/it right.' This, he declared, covered everything in life and was unanswerable.

He arrived one evening at the Dôme and announced that he had found the greatest line in modern poetry. 'Jesus Christ came off the cross shaking like an albatross.'

'Anyone who has seen an albatross, as I have, cannot fail to realize what a shattering and original simile that is.' It did not create the stir Linc seemed to expect, but Rowley characteristically seized on it and ever after, when asked how he felt 'the morning after', would reply: 'Shaking like an albatross.'

Edwin and I, passing the Dôme one morning, noticed a somewhat large group for the time of day gathered on the terrasse. 'I think it must be my father,' said Edwin. Rowley, Tommy Earp*, Eve Kirk, several other women and men were all clustered round Augustus John. England's foremost romantic painter sat chain smoking French Yellows and drinking demi blondes. He said nothing and reminded me of a tired eagle; he looked a hundred years old. Once he thanked me, in French, for lighting his cigarette. The chain had momentarily broken. Edwin and I got hungry and went off to lunch. When we returned an hour or so later the group round John was larger. He continued his smoking and occasionally drank a beer. He had hardly changed his position and still said nothing. We sat around and talked. There was a slight scuffling in the outskirts of the close-packed circle of chairs and little round tables. An individual pushed through and stopped before John. 'Say,' in a strong American voice, 'Are you the great Augustus John?' John hardly looked up. He jerked his thumb upwards and backwards. 'Fuck off!' he growled.

* Tommy Earp, British poet, critic, ex-president of the Oxford Union and wealthy friend of photographer Bernice Abbott while she was in Paris. GRH

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