ris and its museums. My
brother's wonderfully clear vision of art and beauty is never clouded,
and I owe much to my association with him. We used to go to all the
Salons, and I remember vividly the first time we stumbled on a specimen
of the modern Spanish school, then quite new to us. We had looked at
dreary wastes of raspberry jam Venuses, resting on the crests of most
solid waves, dozens of canvases still in the Louis XVI era, and much
pastel-coloured mediocrity, when suddenly I called out "Look, Cec,
something new!" It was a big square of flaming colour--women and a child
in red checked cotton, picking scarlet tomatoes from high-trained vines,
in the brilliant sun. It glowed and fairly zizzed with colour, and had
that radiating, vibrating quality that things have in the hot sunshine.
We had had the "confetti" and "spot" types of work for some years, but
this canvas dwarfed anything modern I had seen in Paris. We have never
found another one by the same man, and have often wondered what became
of his work.

I think that was when I first fell in love with colour _per se_, though
I had flirted with it before. We had loved Monet and the opalescent,
shimmering lights in his water-garden series, but never had I been so
stirred and thrilled by mere paint on canvas as I was by this Spaniard's
work. It seems that a man only rarely can put colours together that will
have the living dazzling look that one sees in nature. Matisse was a
past master of it, and even though one might not agree with him
otherwise, his colour was a joy.

Later the Cubists and Futurists invaded Paris. When I am with Cecil and
he talks to me of their work, I see their aims quite clearly, and
understand what they are trying to express, for their "line of talk" is
much more lucid than their work: but when I am not with my brother I
must confess my understanding is dimmed, and I forget the arguments he
used.

We lived very simply in Paris, having our meals sometimes at the
_quartier_ restaurants, and sometimes getting _filets_ of fresh
mushrooms, peas, and delicious Paris potatoes, with big strawberries
shaped like little whisk-brooms, and _creme d' Isigny_ in its stubby
little earthen pots, and preparing them at home. I had a small apartment
in the same house as my mother, and my brother had his studio some
blocks from us.

We met Spaniards, Norwegians, French, anything but Americans, of whom we
knew but few--we learnt so much more through talking w