Meryle Secrest

  So it is easy to see how Modigliani could have attributed his declining health, that autumn and winter of 1919, to a slower-than-usual recovery from the attack that laid him low in August. Before X-rays came into common use Paul Alexandre would have known the only way to suspect tubercular meningitis was atypical behavior. He would have been aware that this terrible infection, attacking the brain itself, killing cells, caused swelling, pressure, massive lesions, and all kinds of bizarre changes in personality. But Dr. Alexandre, returning from the hell of war, had his own family problems to deal with, Modigliani’s trail of addresses would have confounded anybody, and getting in touch was not a pressing issue for him at that particular moment.

  Modigliani had a devoted companion, but a young and inexperienced one. If anyone had urged him to see a doctor his response would have been predictable. Whatever Modigliani knew or sensed about his illness would have been drowned in a bottle of rum—anything rather than face the terrible ministrations of the medical profession. Yet he somehow knew. Among his final words was a kind of apology: “You know, I only have a little bit of brain left.” One suspects that most of the out-of-control behavior described, but not dated or documented in such biographies as Artist Quarter, is actually attributable to the last months of his life.

  Some thirty-five years later, in 1956, Moïse Kisling, now in retirement at Sanary-sur-Mer in the Midi, struck up a friendship with his doctor, also a psychologist, who became a close friend. Eventually he spent many hours with the doctor, Tony Kunstlich, describing Modigliani’s symptoms and behavior and asking for a diagnosis.

  “To judge from the meagre evidence available, I am led to believe that it was an attack of cerebral meningitis of a tubercular nature,” Dr. Kunstlich wrote.

  We know that the deplorable conditions in which the painter lived in Paris, and the combination of his unwholesome lodgings, his irregular meals, his turbulent sexual life, and his addiction to alcohol and drugs, quickly destroyed the delicate balance of health which had been maintained so long as he remained with his family.

  We know that tubercular meningitis in adults is very different from the kind which spreads rapidly throughout the bodies of younger victims. Once it takes hold in an adult, it develops gradually over a period of months or even years without giving rise to any outstanding symptoms. Sometimes the only signs of tubercular encephalic disorder are headaches, visual and auditory disturbances, and, in particular, modification in the patient’s character, as evidenced by extreme irritability, violent outbursts of anger, unsociability, withdrawal into the self, and so on.

  It is only in the final phase that the classic symptoms of meningitis supervene in the form of paralysis, rigidity, comatose states.

  In the first flush of the success of his London show Modigliani did something uncharacteristic: he asked for a present. Would Zbo bring him back a pair of shoes from London? Zborowski would. He also included a magnificent English wool scarf. The flurry of attention and the sales were heartening but the praise meant most. Indenbaum recalled that sometime after the show, meeting Modigliani at the Rotonde, the latter brought out a Jewish newspaper published in Britain for him to read. “It was an article full of praise for Modi. ‘C’est magnifique,’ he said … and was so moved that he kissed the paper before putting it back in his pocket. It just shows how terribly he needed, and looked for some praise, some comprehension.” Modigliani was working as hard as ever, this time for the exhibition of the Salon d’Automne at the Grand Palais that was opening for a month’s stay on November 1, 1919, where he showed four paintings. But his energy was flagging—no doubt the early stages of tubercular meningitis were making themselves felt—he had started drinking again to quiet his nerves, and alcohol is known to help reduce pressure on the brain. That he was suffering from headaches is likely. He had always been restless and this nervous trait seemed to have increased. Lipchitz had repeatedly tried to draw him but Modigliani “fidgeted, smoked,” and moved around so much—in short, he never succeeded. Vlaminck, one of Modigliani’s admirers and a close observer, noticed that during the last year of his life the artist was “continually in a state of febrile agitation. The least vexation would make him wildly excited.”

  Vlaminck recalled that Modigliani was sketching at the Rotonde one day when an American woman visitor agreed to have her portrait made. The sketch completed, Modigliani graciously offered it to her, without signing it. She liked it very much. She wanted a signature.

  “Infuriated by her greed, which he sensed immediately, he took the drawing and scrawled a signature across the whole sheet in enormous letters.” Marie Vassilieff happened to meet him on the street not long before he died and said, “I couldn’t believe the change in him. He had lost his teeth; his hair was flat, straight; he had lost all beauty. ‘I’m for it, Marie,’ he said.”

  Still, he worked on. After painting everyone in sight in the Zborowski household Modigliani turned his attention to one of its new arrivals. She was Paulette Jourdain, just fourteen, working as a live-in maid in that chaotic world of works in progress, constant arrivals and departures, bargaining, and the ever-present smell of turpentine. She was slim and pretty, scared but shrewd. She stayed on as a model, became Zborowski’s lover, and in due course gave birth. Hanka, who was childless, and the art dealer, ever resourceful, adopted the baby and raised it as their own. Eventually Paulette Jourdain became an art dealer herself and was constantly being interviewed in the years to come for her reminiscences about Montparnasse.

  The interviewer Enzo Maiolino, who visited her in 1969, was amazed to find her apartment full of Modigliani memorabilia: books, photographs, one of his palettes, and a rare copy of his death mask. She was like that, quiet and careful, not missing much.

  Paulette Jourdain seems to have realized, young as she was, when she agreed to sit for her portrait, that she was in the presence of a remarkable man. She was nervous but by now Modigliani was a master at putting people at their ease. She was to sit however she liked as long as she was quite comfortable, so she sat easily, her hands in her lap. He talked freely and fluently while he worked and whatever she said seemed to make him laugh. He would say that someday they would all go to Rome. She would want to know where they were going to find the money. He would concede she had a point, and look thoughtful. He never got angry and was polite and attentive; she concluded that he was a refined, likable man.

  Sometimes he talked to himself in Italian, or recited Dante, or sang the toast from La Traviata, “Libiamo, libiam nei lieti calici…” His voice, she recalled, “was rather light, almost feminine and yet more modulated,” so distinctive that if she heard it anywhere she would immediately know who it was. His brother, Giuseppe Emanuele, so much Modigliani’s opposite in build and appearance, had the same voice. Sometimes she went on an errand. There was a “bougnat,” or charcoal seller, across the street on the rue de la Grande Chaumière. She would be sent there with an empty flat-shaped bottle, the bougnat would fill it with measures of rum, and when she got back to the top of the stairs Modigliani would be waiting with a glass in his hand.

  “But in the studio Modigliani was never drunk, and he was never drunk in Zborowski’s house. But he didn’t know that I happened to see him drunk all the same. Then I would hide or change streets. And the next day, referring to his ‘weaving around’ from one side of the street, I had the impudence to say to him:

  “ ‘Yesterday it seems the street was not wide enough.’ He knew what I was talking about but was not offended.”

  The young Paulette Jourdain, who joined Zborowski’s household when she was fourteen and ended up inheriting his art gallery business (image credit 13.2)

  Zborowski also sent her on errands, either to Modigliani’s studio or the Rotonde whenever he had some money for Modigliani. If to the Rotonde, as soon as other painters in his stable saw her coming they would pounce. “Is the money for me?…Is it for me?,” and she would point to Modigliani and reply, “It’s for the little one.” The proprietor of the
café, M. Libion, would chalk up each artist’s running account on a slate and as the money changed hands the call would go up, “Modigliani, are you going to settle your slate?,” a pertinent question the answer to which is not recorded.

  If she was taking the money to Modigliani’s studio she often found him in bed. Sometimes he would break a date for a session, saying that he felt too tired. He never once said he was ill. She believed him; it was December 1919, a month before he died.

  The young Swedish girl Thora Klincköwstrom, whom Modigliani painted, 1919 (image credit 13.3)

  Thora Klincköwstrom, a young Swedish girl who arrived in Paris that autumn to study sculpture, was another of Modigliani’s last models. She was introduced to the painter by her future husband, Nils Dardel, at the Rotonde. Nils told her, “He is a genius. When I was here four years ago he was one of my friends and you couldn’t find a more beautiful young man than he. Now he is no longer young and in addition completely drunk.” Before long Modigliani joined them at their table. Thora described him as “rather small, weather-beaten, with black tousled hair and the most beautiful hot, dark eyes. He came in his black velvet suit with his red silk scarf carelessly knotted around his neck.” He was talking loudly and laughing a lot. For once he had not come prepared, so the waiter found him some pieces of squared paper and he drew her portrait there and then. On one of the sketches he added his favorite maxim:

  La vita è un dono,

  dei pochi ai molti,

  di coloro che sanno e che hanno

  a coloro che non sanno e che non hanno.

  (Life is a gift, from the few to the many,

  from those who know and have

  to those who do not know and do not have.)

  He graciously offered her the drawings, but she hesitated to take them. Her lack of French or Italian was a major barrier, but she was a bit afraid of him as well and thought he had made her look ugly. Still, when he wrote his address on the inside cover of a box of Gitanes cigarettes and invited her to pose for him, she agreed.

  Modigliani’s portrait of Thora, 1919 (image credit 13.4)

  With her friend Annie Bjarne acting as chaperone they climbed the steep staircase to his top-floor flat at 8 rue de la Grande Chaumière and found two large, bare rooms and huge windows. “It was very cold that winter and the fumes from the one stove had completely blackened the wall behind it. No curtains, just one large table with his painting materials on it along with a glass and a bottle of rum, two chairs and an easel.” She was shocked to find the floor littered with coal, charcoal, and matches. But when she offered to give it a quick sweeping he seemed quite offended and said he liked it that way.

  While Annie Bjarne sat in a corner Modigliani was constantly on the move, looking at his work from a distance, eyes half closed, or inspecting its surface minutely. He would back up, stare at Thora, then begin whistling and hissing, singing snatches of songs in Italian and, every once in awhile, look at her young friend ruminatively and in fact he ended up painting her as well. From time to time he stopped to drink the rum, “and he really did cough a lot.” While she was posing Jeanne Hébuterne made a discreet appearance. She seemed self-effacing “and I could not discern what fire and passion might be concealed behind her air of very great reserve.” Her girlish plaits made her seem very young; she looked tired and not particularly happy to find visitors. Modigliani explained that Jeanne was expecting their second child and that their baby was staying with a nurse in the countryside outside Orléans. Then Thora noticed that there was a photograph of him pinned to the wall near the easel, that had been taken a few years before. She asked if she could have it. He said that unfortunately it was the only one left and the negative had been destroyed. “If you won’t give it to me I’ll just help myself,” she insisted. So he did.

  Not surprisingly she did not like the painting any more than she had the drawings but was too polite to tell him. So she did not buy it and lost track of its whereabouts until it went on sale in Stockholm in the 1970s. But she never forgot Modigliani.

  Modigliani was also working on his final series of nudes at his studio in the Zborowski apartment on the rue Joseph Bara. He worked there for practical reasons having to do with keeping his models comfortable—an impossibility at the rue de la Grande Chaumière, where it was always either too hot or too cold. So his last great series of nudes was painted in the relative comfort of the Zborowski dining room. Since the days when he had painted Jean Alexandre’s Amazon, he had been alert to the sensibilities of his female sitters, especially those in need of a change of costume, or nude, who would expect to dress and undress with a minimum of privacy. Anyone else intruding on the scene was not wanted, and Zborowski could not resist popping in and out to see how things were going. At any point Modigliani would have found the interruption irritating; at this stage in the progress of his disease it was intolerable.

  As Lunia Czechowska records, one day his dealer arrived unannounced for the umpteenth time just as Modigliani was finishing another nude portrait. She was “a ravishing blond [the painting, a rose nude, was bought by Carco] and Zborowski, who could not contain himself, opened the door.” Modigliani exploded. Zborowski went for a walk with Hanka in a hurry. “But a moment later I heard the patter of bare feet and discovered the poor girl, in a panic, running through the house clutching her clothes looking for somewhere to get dressed. I went into the dining room and found Modigliani attacking his canvas with furious slashes of the brush. I had a lot of trouble convincing him that Zbo came in by accident and to please not destroy this work of art.”

  Modigliani characteristically washed himself from head to foot, using a basin, whenever he finished a painting. That same afternoon, the painting repaired, he disappeared. Suddenly Czechowska heard the sound of falling water and then, breaking china. Modigliani had balanced his washbasin on the edge of an open window. It fell into the street below, and the concierge was beside herself. As for Modigliani, he sat himself down precariously on the edge of the window and began singing at the top of his voice. Czechowska had visions of seeing him crashing into the street as well. It was then early evening. She lit a candle and invited him to stay for dinner, an invitation that was sure to be accepted, and he gradually calmed down. While she was in the kitchen preparing the meal he asked her to look up for a moment. By the light of a candle he drew an admirable portrait, embellishing it with his favorite aphorism of these final months, “Life is a gift …”

  Czechowska wrote, “I remember another story about Modigliani’s adventures with water. Kisling had a bathtub [a luxury in those days] which he invited Modigliani to use whenever he liked.” One day, taking advantage of their absence, Modigliani went upstairs for his usual bath; Czechowska could hear him singing. What she did not hear was water overflowing; Renée Kisling returned to find her apartment completely flooded. Modigliani had forgotten to turn off the taps. The next thing she knew, a nude Modigliani was out on the landing clutching his clothes and Renée Kisling was hurling curses and threatening eternal damnation. They all had a good laugh about it later. “Renée did not hold a grudge, Modigliani went on using their bathtub and the whole story ended up being the subject of some good-natured teasing.”

  Once Jeanne and Dedo were back in Paris, and until they found a satisfactory replacement for their nurse, baby Jeanne stayed with Lunia. It seems odd that the notion that Jeanne might care for her own infant was dismissed by everyone, herself included. Lunia did not know how to handle a baby either but was willing to try. So this was one more reason for Modigliani to haunt the rue Joseph Bara, although Lunia was at pains not to let him in at night. One evening they heard a familiar voice singing at top volume as he came up the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and knew there was trouble ahead. It was late. He was with Utrillo and they both wanted to come in but the concierge would not let them and told them to go home. Lunia heard the whole exchange, but did not dare to intervene because she knew the Zborowskis would be angry. So she, like they, pretended to be asleep. Th
e next thing she knew, Modigliani and Utrillo were sitting on the sidewalk opposite and Modigliani was calling her name, begging for news of the baby. Again, she did not respond. He was there for several hours and she listened, in anguish to think how unhappy he must be. Finally the two of them left. “If I had been alone I would certainly have let him come in.” That happened occasionally. He would come up the stairs and sit down beside his child, looking at her so fixedly that he would end up by falling asleep beside her. “Poor dear friend,” she wrote, “these were the only moments when he had his little girl to himself.”

  Sometime that autumn Czechowska decided to leave Paris for the south. It was necessary for her health, she wrote, although she did not explain why. There are plenty of hints in her narrative that she and Dedo were more than just friendly, although she resists calling it a love affair. She simply states that he wanted to accompany her and Zbo and Hanka were all for it. But Jeanne, by now heavily pregnant, did not want to travel and did not want to be left alone in Paris either. The impression left is that this was a wasted opportunity. Had Modigliani been able to go with her, he might have survived. (This, of course, was unlikely.) But her hands were tied because he had a wife to look after him. So what happened subsequently was Jeanne’s fault. This is not stated but it is very much implied. Lunia left alone. She and Modigliani promised each other they would meet again soon. But, “hélas,” she wrote, they never did.

  Reliable witnesses record that Jeanne went to visit her baby once a week, but what else she did with her time can only be conjectured. It is clear that she remained in the apartment when Modigliani went out at night. She discreetly disappeared whenever he was painting there. She must have been drawing and painting, perhaps making clothes, or out buying food and painting supplies. The stairs to the floors of this annex at the end of the courtyard, which contains artists’ quarters, are much longer than the usual flights, owing to high-ceilinged studios, and full of twists and turns. They are of bare pine and somehow forbidding, devoid of paint and looking much as they must have done eighty years ago. Now, as then, there is no elevator between floors. As one climbs one notices the scuffed wood, worn thin, the narrowness of the tread, the peeling walls and high, small windows that seem to cast a perpetual gloom. A very pregnant Jeanne would not have particularly wanted to go out at night, and carrying heavy loads up those stairs would have been an increasing burden. Somewhere under the eaves was a princess, safe, hidden, and marooned in her tower.