Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot

Author:Françoise Gilot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2019-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

TOWARD THE END of the year Pablo had finished his Góngora and we returned to Paris, to stay a few weeks. One day he said, “Matisse has come back from Vence for a few days. We’ll go see him.” When we reached Matisse’s apartment in the Boulevard Montparnasse, we found the door leading from the hall into the apartment partly open. It looked as though Lydia, Matisse’s secretary, had gone to the floor above to fetch something and left the door open, perhaps planning to return almost immediately. We walked into the apartment. The first room, a kind of entrance hall, was rather dark. As we walked from there into the salon, out from behind a wall hanging popped Matisse, shouting, “Coo coo!” When he saw it wasn’t Lydia, he looked so embarrassed that I felt sorry for him. Not Pablo, though. He looked Matisse up and down with a satisfied smile and said, “Well, I didn’t know you played hide-and-seek with Lydia. We’re used to hearing Lydia call you Monsieur Matisse.” Matisse tried a laugh, rather weakly. Pablo didn’t let him off that easily.

“The last time we saw you, in the Midi, you were so taken with the fact that Françoise’s eyebrows reminded you of circumflex accents, you wanted her to pose for you,” he said. “It looks to me as though you were doing all right with Lydia’s.” It seemed hardly the moment to make an extended visit so in a few minutes we left. Going down in the elevator Pablo said, “It’s unbelievable, catching Matisse at a thing like that.”

Lydia, according to Pablo, had first come to Matisse in 1932 or 1933. “Matisse didn’t need anyone full-time,” he said, “but she told him she’d make herself useful by sharpening his pencils. He found that a practical suggestion so he told her she could stay, for a while anyway, on that basis. Finally Madame Matisse found it a little tiresome to have that young girl coming around every day. She gave him his choice: ‘Choose between that girl and me.’ Matisse thought it over carefully and after two days of sober reflection told Madame Matisse, ‘I’ve decided to keep her. She’s a big help to me in preparing my income-tax returns.’

“After a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth, Lydia was installed as the official secretary.” Pablo shook his head. “There’s a Frenchman for you—always practical.”

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