Page:The Dial (Volume 75).djvu/605

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HENRY McBRIDE
517

style. Of the children who had gaily started out from Montmartre with us only the young mulatress was left and she was still maintaining a social status when I retreated from the Café Suédois at the discreet hour of minuit. At this party I met among others MacOrlan the writer and Laborde the artist, both of them keen and delightful, with worldly success apparently staring them in the face and André Salmon, the critic, equally delightful, but not so certain to get on in this life; and renewed acquaintance with Madame Pascin, one of the most remarkable women in Paris, which is saying much, and Mina Loy, the poetess.

At the banquet I asked Pascin when I could have a second look at his drawings and he suggested coming to lunch the Monday following. Galanis was there when I arrived and two young women who seemed not enthusiastic over my advent. Afterward I learned that Pascin had forgotten having asked them for Monday or had forgotten having asked me and they were promptly chased away. However they said bon jour with the calmness of duchesses and will have had it made up to them by Pascin later, doubtless. Then after Galanis left I was allowed to look through piles of drawings, including all the ones made in Tunis and which I like particularly, and the series of mocking allegories in which "offrandes to Venus" and hitherto suppressed details in the life of Scheherazade are lightly sketched. From the débris on the table I turned up two books, both of them inscribed. One was Paul Morand's Fermé la Nuit which contained on the fly-leaf the author's wish that Pascin might illustrate the work sometime. Morand is about to have his wish, I understand, Pascin having undertaken to do the drawings. The other book was by Cocteau also with compliments upon the fly-leaf. Then, too, Meier-Graefe is to do a Pascin album; so here is one artist at least who cannot complain of an indifferent press.

We lunched at the Café Manière. At the café we found MacOrlan and Laborde, both of whom were charming as usual and full of curiosity in regard to America. When I told MacOrlan that I had dined at Brancusi's and that Brancusi himself had acted as chef and had énormément de talent comme cuisinier, he said that to cook was quite à la mode now.

The dinner was wonderful—but gracious heavens—I see I have not left myself space enough in which to describe it. Believe me it would require space!