“Once”—and Marguerite smiled at the memory of it—“I went to England to pose for a painter well known there. It was an important tableau, and I stayed there six months. It was a horrible place to me—I was always cold—the fog was so thick one could hardly see in winter mornings going to the studio. Besides, I could get nothing good to eat! He was a celebrated painter, a ‘Sir,’ and lived with
his family in a big stone house with a garden. We had tea and cakes at five in the studio—always tea, tea, tea!—I can tell you I used to long for a good bottle of Madame Giraud’s vin ordinaire, and a poulet. So I left and came back to Paris. Ah! quelle place! that Angleterre! J’étais toujours, toujours triste là! In Paris I make a good living; ten francs a day—that’s not bad, is it? and my time is taken often a year ahead. I like to pose for the painters—the studios are cleaner than those of the sculptor’s. Some of the sculptors’ studios are so dirty—clay and dust over everything! Did you see Fabien’s studio the other day when I posed for him? You thought it dirty? Tiens!—you should have seen it last year when he was working on the big group for the Exposition! It is clean now compared with what it was. You see, I go to my work in the plainest of clothes—a cheap print dress and everything of the simplest I can make, for in half an hour, left in those studios, they would be fit only for the blanchisseuse—the wax and dust are in and over everything!
There is no time to change when one has not the time to go home at mid-day.”
JEAN PAUL LAURENS
And so I learned much of the good sense and many of the economies in the life of this most celebrated model. You can see her superb figure wrought in marble and bronze by some of the most famous of modern French sculptors all over Paris.
There is another type of model you will see, too—one who rang my bell one sunny morning in response to a note written by my good friend, the sculptor, for whom this little Parisienne posed.
She came without her hat—this “vrai type”—about seventeen years of age—with exquisite features, her blue eyes shining under a wealth of delicate blonde hair arranged in the prettiest of fashions—a little white bow tied jauntily at her throat, and her exquisitely delicate, strong young figure clothed in a simple black dress. She had about her such a frank, childlike air! Yes, she posed for so and so, and so and so, but not many; she liked it better than being in a shop; and it was far more independent, for one could go about
and see one’s friends—and there were many of her girl friends living on the same street where this chic demoiselle lived.
At noon my drawing was finished. As she sat buttoning her boots, she looked up at me innocently, slipped her five francs for the morning’s work in her reticule, and said: