Word: hamnett
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Dates: during 1937-1937
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...years ago, in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, there were four persons known, by name at least, to the most assiduous tourist and most casual habitué. These were: Flossie Martin, plump, china-cheeked ex-show girl; Kiki, black-haired, impish French painters' model; Nina Hamnett, English painter and expert on sailors' chanteys; Jimmy Charters, ruddy-faced and unfailingly genial barman. The four were not friends, were in fact rather rivals, each ruling a separate coterie-the ladies at their tables at the Dome, Rotonde or Select, Jimmy at whatever bar he happened to be tending...
Since these characters achieved prominence in a piquant period, it was to be expected that something in the way of written reminiscences would sooner or later appear. But Bohemians are notoriously lackadaisical about such matters, and though Kiki's Memoirs (Black Manikin Press; Paris, 1930) and Hamnett's Laughing Torso (Long & Smith, 1932) have been published, it was to small audiences; the panning of Montparnasse gold has been largely left to the more journalistically-minded. Third in the authentic train, Jimmy Charters' narrative would be condemned forthwith as a rehashing of minor and well-chewed-over material...