I have worked the whole day on Charlie’s head, worked at his house.
Today is Thursday and it has to be finished on Saturday because he
wants to go to Catalina and fish.
It was a very peaceful day, and though the lovely Claire Windsor was
there when I arrived, no one disturbed us during the remainder of the
day. His moods varied with the hours. He started the morning in a brown
silk dressing gown, and was serious. After having sat pretty quiet
for some time, he jumped off the revolving stand and walked round the
room playing the violin. Having thus dispelled his sober mood he went
upstairs, changed his dressing-gown and reappeared in an orange and
primrose one, and we went on with the work. He is perfectly right,
one’s desire for color depends entirely on one’s mood.
Now and then we stopped for a cup of tea, for a tune on the piano, for
a breath of air, on the sunbathed balcony and Charlie with his wild
hair standing on end, and his orange gown dazzling against the white
wall of his moorish house, would either philosophise or impersonate.
He told me that when he was a young man in London, he longed to know
people, but that now he knew so many and he felt lonelier than ever,
and it is no use, he said, for artists to hope to be anything else. He
then put on a gramaphone record and conducted an imaginary band. It was
a very entertaining day, and the work got on awfully well.