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.
Saturday, November 5, 1921. Hollywood.
Three whole days I have worked on that bust, with a concentration of effort that is exhausting. It is finished—I feel tonight the elation of a girl out of school. Moreover I can sleep without the anxiety due to an unfinished work. Charlie is pleased, and I—well I am never satisfied, but I am conscious of having accomplished my best. His friends who know his restless and capricious nature are surprised that he gave me those three whole days. I was fortunate of course in meeting him immediately in his return, before he was re-engulfed in work. Moreover, with some perception, I planted myself with my materials in his house, and as I wanted him bare throated I begged him not to dress. A man in pajamas and dressing-gown does not suddenly get a notion to order his motor and go off to some place. I had him fairly anchored. Nevertheless he has been difficult to do. There is so much subtlety in the face, and sensitiveness, and all his varying personalities arrayed themselves before me, and had to be embodied into one interpretation.
“CHARLIE” IN HIS DRESSING-GOWN ON HIS MOORISH SUNBATHED VERANDA
(Photograph by Clare Sheridan)
Charlie would get down from the model stand and observe the progress through half closed eyes. Once he said: “I wish this was not me, so that I could admire it as I please. I find him very interesting, this fellow you have made!” and then, after a close examination from all angles he added:
“It might be the head of a criminal, mightn’t it—?” and proceeded to elaborate a sudden born theory that criminals and artists were psychologically akin. On reflection we all have a flame. A burning flame of impulse, a vision, a side tracked mind, a deep sense of unlawfulness.