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.Indeed, I was so bored and tired by it that I stopped several times so that the organ produced only a faint squeak, when she cried out, ‘Qu’est-ce qui se passe, alors?’ More from love than from duty, I started to pump again, but this was certainly not my idea of preparation for the reception of the Holy Sacrament.When the supreme moment arrived she called me out and we knelt together against the railing of the choir-loft looking down into the church, and then—a moment which I have remembered with great clarity over the years—as I rose to go down she kissed me on the mouth.I descended those narrow twisting stairs into the church to receive divine love with the imprint of human love on my lips—something which I have tried to repeat all my life.I do not believe that any Englishwoman, or Irishwoman either (though that is more possible), would have acted as she did.But with the Latins, love is given a mystical quality.It is the outcome of generations of Roman Catholicism.When I was in Spain I used to be fascinated by the photographs of the young Spanish bridal couples I saw in the glass cases outside the photographers’ shops: those dark-skinned, smooth-cheeked, serious-looking brides in their white lace mantillas surmounted with a tortoise-shell comb, and the bridegroom equally serious in his white shirt front and dress suit, so that one felt that there should be something sacramental in the consummation.French marriages are more material, perhaps, but one feels nevertheless something of the same sanctity, and no doubt it was that which made Mademoiselle arrange for me to be with her in the music loft, and which led her to kiss me before I went down to communion—a finesse and intrigue which were particularly French.Needless to say, I passed a day of supreme happiness for my hope that my world would be transformed had come true, although in a way which was more surprising than I had foreseen.I took care to remain alone as much as possible for the rest of that day in case some rough contact should disturb my feeling of sanctity.All this now seems a long way off, but these memories occur to me in retrospection to explain why I always had a vision of France, and above all of Paris, in the back of my mind.It was not until the end of the First World War when, after innumerable medical boards, I was released from the Army, that I was able to realize my ambition.First I went to Italy, stopping in Florence, where I enjoyed the parties in the old palaces, the turbulent Arno flowing past their walls, and that famous house-bearing Jeweller’s Bridge some hundred yards further down.The modern Florentines seemed as gay and amusing as their lively forebears.Then I went on to Rome, where I visited museum after museum, but in the end these massive collections from the past depressed me, I, who wanted art to be a living thing, and to visit the studios where it was being created and meet the men who were creating it, with the paint still wet on their canvases, or in the case of a writer, to see his written corrections on the page.In other words, Paris was my objective.So it was after this journey through Italy that at last I arrived in the French capital, worn out by the troublesome journey, for at that time everything in Italy was on strike.I had taken one of the rare overfilled trains in which officials spent their time going up and down the corridors abusing the passengers and kicking their luggage out of the way, piled as it was in the corridors.At last I tumbled out, thankful to have reached journey’s end, and entered the Hôtel Terminus attached to the Gare St Lazare, a noisy bustling place rather like the station itself with its continual comings and goings, and the masses of luggage piled in the hall.After exploring the city for a couple of days I decided to move out to the Latin Quarter where the students and, as I believed, the artists, lived.I was delighted to find an hotel in the Place de la Sorbonne facing the brilliantly lit Café d’Harcourt.The Hôtel Moderne, as it was called, was nothing much in itself except that in contrast to its name it was very old, with walls over a yard thick and small low-ceilinged rooms.Not knowing a soul in the city, I used to wander about, walking everywhere, for Paris is too interesting to be hurried through in a bus or in the Metro.My evenings I spent on the Boulevard St Michel sauntering past the students’ cafés.I looked around for artists, and though I saw an occasional black hat and flowing tie, they were few and scattered, and so eventually tiring of the brash energy of the students I would go for long walks up to the heights of Montmartre, where I knew that many great Impressionists had lived and had their studios.But the district of Montmartre had undergone great changes since their day, and the Boulevard Clichy was now full of sleazy joints, and expensive nightclubs, where all America and Europe came to debauch themselves.It was only up on the heights around the Church of the Sacré-Coeur that it was quieter, and from that height, leaning over a time-blackened wall, I could see all Paris lying below me bathed in light.For some ill-defined reason I felt that the present-day artists had migrated elsewhere, for the people one saw sitting on the café terraces were obviously everyday folk or foreign and provincial pleasure-seekers.I set off in search again, when one evening, travelling by chance past the tree-enclosed darkness at the top end of the Luxembourg Gardens, I entered a boulevard.Halfway along it I came on a café with lively-looking young men sitting on the terrace.As I sat down I overheard them, to my delight, discussing art, invoking the names of Degas, Renoir, and other artists.After a while I got into conversation with a lively and witty young man sitting at the next table who, as it turned out, was the sculptor Zadkine.Perhaps because he had been brought up in England he was more sympathetic to the casual Englishman or Irishman than were the others, and one day he invited me around to his studio to see his work.It was in an alley-way off the rue de Sèvres, and one entered through a wicket-gate across a vine-trellised courtyard.To the right was the entrance, and going up some steps one was enclosed for a moment in complete darkness before emerging on a landing to be faced with the door of his studio.A very large room, one corner of it was filled with a big window made up of innumerable panes, which always reminded me of the window in Rembrandt’s picture of ‘The Philosopher’.The wide floor was covered with Zadkine’s sculptures.At the entrance stood a life-sized figure in wood, ‘St John the Baptist’—hollow-cheeked and spare-ribbed, the man of locusts and honey; beside it was the figure of a nude girl in white marble enveloped in a shimmering wing—‘Leda and the Swan’; in a corner against the right wall he showed me a group of insect-like figures on a wood base bowed down in tribulation around a single recumbent figure—‘Job and his Comforters’.At the far end was a partition curtained off around a stove, its black pipe winding in snake-like contortions up the wall and finally disappearing out of the window [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]