The only more-or-less reliable account is contained in a letter Zborowski sent to Emanuele Modigliani after Modigliani died. It is entirely possible that, as is claimed, they ran out of coal and the studio was freezing. Tubercular patients often do not feel like eating. Modigliani had lost most or all of his teeth. Whether he had, as some claim, a set of false teeth at that point is unclear, but when his death mask was taken it is clear he had none. What is known is that he liked a particular Livornese dish of tiny sautéed fish, and sardines might have seemed like the closest equivalent; in any case, they are easy to swallow. On the other hand, Chantal Quenneville, the first to arrive after Modigliani’s death, makes no mention of them. As for empty bottles, one imagines Modigliani would be looking for something, anything, to dull the pain. There would have been continuing headaches, with increasing sensitivity to light, diarrhea, night sweats, trembling muscles, and stomach pains. What he complained of most in the beginning were pains in his kidneys. He had had them before, but this time the pain was acute. Jeanne went to find Zborowski, and he called a doctor, who diagnosed an inflammation of the kidneys. Curiously enough, Keats was subjected to the same myopic medical diagnosis when, as he was spitting blood, his doctor diagnosed stomach trouble. Thanks to Modigliani’s doctor’s almost willful refusal to see the obvious, he struggled on alone. Whether he received a daily visit from the same doctor, as Zborowski claimed, seems doubtful.
The portrait of the Greek composer Mario Varvogli, which was still unfinished on an easel in Modigliani’s apartment when he died early in 1920. Modigliani wrote on it, “Hic incipit Vita Nuova,” i.e., “Here begins a New Life.” (image credit 13.7)
On the sixth day Zborowski “became sick” himself (not explained) and Hanka was sent. Modigliani was now coughing up blood. Again the same doctor was called. He was now considering hospital but cautioned that Modigliani should not be moved until “the bleeding had stopped.” Another bitter piece of bad advice. As they all said later, “If only he had been helped in time …” The bleeding never did stop. Two days after that, Modigliani lapsed into a merciful coma. The third and final stage of tubercular meningitis had arrived.
The most puzzling aspect of these last days is Jeanne’s curious inability to act. True, she had a secret to be kept at all costs and so she might have listened to a doctor making a partial diagnosis without comment, out of loyalty to Modigliani. True, being within days of giving birth, she would have had trouble getting up and down those stairs, but she went to fetch Zborowski and also make refills to Modigliani’s brandy bottle that would have served him as the only available painkiller. It is clear she could, and indeed was, eating something else besides sardines. She had girlfriends she could have called on for help. André was back. Her parents lived close by. Yet she made no move to contact anyone. Restellini believed that she was, by then, completely under Modigliani’s malign control. All his life he had thought of death, philosophized about it, railed against it, and fought to stay alive until he identified completely with Maldoror. In close relationships he was demanding and authoritarian. Loving him would mean giving up everyone and everything for him, as Lunia noted. (“Il éprouva aussi … une sentiment si vif qu’il aurait voulu que j’abandonne tout pour le suivre.”) She was not willing to make that sacrifice. Jeanne Hébuterne was.
Ortiz de Zárate reappears at this point. He writes that he went to see Modigliani after a week’s absence and was horrified to find him in such a state. He had the concierge bring up a pot-au-feu, certainly something Jeanne could have done had she not been so transfixed. He claimed to be the one who summoned another doctor and got the unconscious Modigliani to the hospital. This claim is at variance to Zborowski’s, who implied he had been the one to come to the rescue. “His friends and I did everything possible.”
Modigliani died without regaining consciousness at the Hôpital de la Charité in the Latin Quarter, at 37 rue Jacob on the corner of the rue des Saints-Pères. It was demolished many years ago and replaced by the École de Médicine, but at that time it was a group of buildings with an imposing entrance that encircled a large courtyard and the solution of last resort for the down-and-out, the penniless and starving who were too ill to walk and too poor to go anywhere else. Contemporary photographs show vast wards of fifty or sixty patients. Even that was better than the rue de la Grande Chaumière. The Sisters of Charity who acted as nurses would have provided at least some palliative care as Modigliani sank into death. He died there two days later, at 8:45 p.m., his eyes closed and his half-open mouth twisted to one side, as a drawing by Kisling shows. He was alone. Jeanne must have given the information for the death certificate. She testified that she was his wife.
As long as he could still stand—Zborowski claimed until three days before his death, although this seems unlikely—Modigliani was at work. The painting, unfinished, on his easel was a portrait of Mario Varvogli, a Greek composer with whom he had been out drinking as recently as New Year’s Eve. Its inscription, “Here begins a New Year,” would have been appropriate. Instead he wrote, “Hic incipit Vita Nuova,” that is to say, “Here begins a New Life.”
The biographer of Moïse Kisling, Claude de Voort, echoed the familiar argument that Modigliani’s sudden death took everyone by surprise, which has, on the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, to be a rationalization. Be that as it may, Kisling, Ortiz, and Zborowski seem to have called a meeting within hours. They sent an immediate telegram to Emanuele Modigliani but there was no hope that he could get a visa in time to attend. So the reply came back that if they would arrange for the funeral he would reimburse them. They should cover Modigliani with flowers. The legend adds they were to “Bury him like a prince.” Charles Daude, the firm of undertakers whose establishment on the rue Bonaparte was nearby, received from Kisling the handsome sum of 1,340 francs. Those were the days when fifteen francs would buy a burial service of sorts and, until recently, Modigliani was living on a hundred francs a month. Given that kind of outlay a floral mountain was practically guaranteed. As for a princely burial, someone somehow got the idea that Modigliani ought to be buried in the famous Père Lachaise, the final resting place of France’s glorious dead in all the arts, and succeeded in getting permission. Only the best was good enough—belatedly.
Between his death on Saturday night and the funeral on Tuesday afternoon, Kisling and company bent every effort to send their Modi off in style. Kisling’s uninspired but competent sketch would have been made within hours of his death. Then Kisling and Moricand decided to make a death mask even though, being artists and not sculptors, their knowledge of method was rudimentary at best. They had to act fast because the nuns wanted the body out of the hospital’s amphitheatre and into the morgue; there was always a desperate need for beds. In a rush to hasten the process, and thinking the plaster had hardened, they removed the mold. But it came away in chunks taking, to their horror, bits of skin and hair with it. Lipchitz was called in to rescue the cast and produce a dozen copies in bronze, which he subsequently did. Presumably he or someone else did the necessary cosmetic repair to the corpse.
The death mask that Kisling and Moricand began and Lipchitz finished (image credit 13.8)
The long and winding procession that transported Modigliani’s earthly remains from the rue Jacob to the Père Lachaise that Tuesday has been famously described as attracting a cast of thousands. This seems to be another of those doubtful rumors that has attained the status of fact. Still, to have seen liveried attendants, carts groaning under the weight of flowers, black-plumed horses, and an ornate casket would have been a novelty coming from that particular hospital. No doubt doctors hung out of windows and nuns watched as the cortège swung out of the inner courtyard and made its way down the rue Jacob. No doubt the original crowd of perhaps a few dozen was joined rapidly enough by passersby, who are always curious about a good show. No doubt policemen saluted and held up traffic. It was five miles to the cemetery on the eastern edge of the city and perhaps a few hundred had j
oined the parade as it swung slowly through the streets. It is said that, as the numbers grew, speculators in art ran up and down the ranks, offering to buy for thousands of francs what no one would pay fifty for while he was alive.
Typical of a fancy funeral of the period like the one which was accorded Modigliani on its way to Père Lachaise (image credit 13.9)
It was said that Zborowski was offered forty thousand francs for fifty pictures, eight hundred francs apiece. It was also said that, as Modigliani lay on his deathbed, the infamous Louis Libaude, known for his predatory abilities, and anticipating the rush, bought up dozens of canvases at rock-bottom prices. Then he went from café to café boasting about the deals he had made. What is true is that at some point during that hectic week Modigliani’s studio on the rue de la Grande Chaumière, with its collection of canvases (perhaps some sculptures as well), in various stages of execution, was cleared of all its contents and that there was nothing left for Modigliani’s heirs to claim. By some further irony of fate, the Galerie Devambez on the Place Saint-Augustin on the Right Bank opened a show of twenty Modigliani paintings—mysteriously acquired, no one knew quite how—the very day of his funeral. There would have been many old friends in the procession: Picasso, Survage, Moricand, Kisling, Lipchitz, Soutine, Ortiz, Léger, Jacob, and many others. The principal mourner, however, was not there. Jeanne Hébuterne was already dead.
CHAPTER 14
The Cult of the Secret
Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.
—ANDRÉ GIDE, The Counterfeiters
ONE OF Modigliani’s many paintings of Jeanne Hébuterne reproduced in Le Silence éternel dates from their last months together. She is sitting on a stool in front of a door in a corner of the room. Her swollen stomach is hidden under an opaque black skirt and a kind of scarf or stole is wrapped around her shoulders. The theme is heavily red, from the vivid crimson of the bodice to the vermilion wall paint and door to the reddish browns of the wooden stool and blackish browns of the floor. Her skin tones, which are pinkish in earlier paintings, have been drained into a sallow, uniform yellow. The boldly stressed silhouette, annotated in black, gives a feeling of foreboding, even menace, to what should have been an occasion to celebrate by the father-to-be. However, if one theorizes that perhaps Modigliani is making a reference to the idea of alchemical transformation the painting, far from being an anomaly, takes on an interesting new dimension. It can be read as a clue to unlock the mystery of Jeanne Hébuterne’s death.
In alchemical symbolism the colors red and black signify stages in the process of transfiguration. Joseph Campbell writes, “Black is the color of the first stage, the nigredo, in which the substance to be transformed must first be broken down into a prima materia, or primordial mass … Red, on the other hand, signifies the third stage, the rubedo, or reddening, which is the spiritual goal of the entire alchemical opus: gold is produced as the direct product of the fusion of the opposites sulfur and mercury, or Sol and Luna.” It is tempting to think that Modigliani had convinced Jeanne that death was as easy as walking through a door and that it would lead to their reunion in a higher sphere. Ortiz de Zárate writes that after Modigliani died he went to see Jeanne, who said calmly, “Oh! I know that he’s dead. But I also know that he’ll soon be living for me.” If there was a secret pact one would expect each of them to have left a coded message, and they did. Modigliani’s portrait, as read symbolically with a door behind it, would seem to suggest death and rebirth. Hers is full of significantly similar color symbolism and only the message differs slightly. The watercolors by Jeanne which Chantal Quenneville said she found when she went to the apartment after Jeanne’s death have recently been made public, thanks to Luc Prunet. These are four lightly sketched works telling the story in comic-book sequence. But their purpose is anything but frivolous; Restellini calls them Hébuterne’s last will and testament.
The first is a drawing of an interior. A table covered with a blue cloth stands before a fireplace with a mirror above it. There is an empty wine decanter on the table, a glass, and in recognition of one of Jeanne’s major interests, a volume of sheet music labeled “Les Chansons.” Restellini believes the watercolor describes the Hébuterne apartment at the moment when Jeanne and Modigliani met. André has left for the war, and there is a tiny but unmistakable picture of him in uniform on the mantelpiece. Restellini finds death foreshadowed in the fact that the clock is painted black and the inky fireplace opening is reflected, in miniature, on the wine decanter’s surface. The colors are, however, pretty pastels: blue, apple-green, gold, and off-white.
The second watercolor recalls their stay in Nice with Eudoxie. It could be lunchtime. The couple are seated at a table facing the viewer; Eudoxie, in profile, sits opposite. The color scheme includes blues and blueish greens, but red has entered the theme in the form of a skirt, red wine, some background flowers, and her mother’s reddish-brown dress. So has black. Modigliani’s jacket and tie are black and the sockets of his eyes are painted black. Her hand is placed protectively over his and to the right of her plate is a black knife. There is even a black-and-white cat at her feet. Presentiment can be no clearer than this; Restellini writes, “[M]ore and more, death is making its presence felt.”
In the third painting a naked girl with long tresses is asleep in a single bed. Her features have been left unpainted but the reference is clear enough, as is the figure all in black that stands at the open doorway. It could represent Maldoror or perhaps a priest, or simply a personification of Death. The themes of black and red, in the visitor’s clothing, the mat on the floor, and the crimson towel hanging over the door, make the meaning clear. In the fourth and final frame the heroine, on her red bed and white sheets, having thrust a dagger into her heart, lies head downward, her russet hair streaming behind her. The dripping dagger, the scarlet skirt, the vermilion blood, even her necklace and bracelet, repeat the overwhelming theme. Only the skirt that covers her unborn child retains its traces of green, hemmed around in black. Her intentions could not be more specific. The only issue left was exactly how and when.
As luck would have it Stanislas Fumet and his wife passed “Jeannette” on the street very shortly after Modigliani died. “We were on our way back home to our apartment in the rue Gay-Lussac that Sunday evening,” he wrote. “We were just going down the rue Pierre-Curie when we saw, at a distance, Jeannette on her father’s arm heading towards us. We had only just learned about Modigliani’s death that morning. Jeannette, heavily pregnant, was moving slowly, like a somnambulist, her eyes glassy. My wife made a move to embrace her but she changed her mind as she realized that Jeanne did not even see her. Her father came over to us and said quietly, ‘You know, Modigliani is dead …’ Jeannette kept on walking and he caught up with her.”
Fumet and his wife stopped for a moment to watch them disappear. Jeannette and her father were returning from the hospital, where, after a search, she had found Amedeo, he wrote. “Her father had not wanted to go into the room where he was lying. Two witnesses, friends of Modi, were already there. They told us that they saw Jeannette bend over his face, looking at him intently for a long time without saying a word, as if her eyes were reliving each moment of his suffering. Then she backed away, still looking at him until she reached the door. We concluded that she was holding onto that image of him and refusing to see anything else … We were the last ‘strangers’ she saw.”
The Saturday night that Modigliani died, rather than have her return to the rue de la Grande Chaumière alone, Zborowski found her a small hotel room on the rue de Seine. The night of Sunday, January 25, when the Fumets met her she was returning to sleep at her parents’ apartment on the rue Amyot. The four watercolors were discovered later in the studio she had shared with Dedo. How concerned the Hébuternes were about their daughter’s emotional state is not clear. In one version, they took her home because they feared she was suicidal. In another version
there is no indication that they had such concerns. If they had not yet seen the drawings they might not have appreciated the depths of her despair.
Several recent studies of suicide make the point that a successful suicide requires not just the will but the means and the opportunity. It is a statistical fact that states with high rates of gun ownership have suicide rates that are more than double the rates in parts of the country where gun ownership is low. In a fascinating article Scott Anderson describes how the phasing out of coal gas in Britain had a direct bearing on the suicide rate. Unburned coal gas releases very high levels of carbon monoxide, and an open valve in a closed space induces asphyxiation in a matter of minutes. “Sticking your head in the oven” became the preferred method of suicide in Britain until the 1970s and the arrival of natural gas, which does not release carbon monoxide.
As a result the national suicide rate dropped by nearly a third. Dying was no longer as easy or convenient. Once the immediate means were no longer available, the nature of the act itself became clearer.
Richard Seiden, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, traced the history of would-be suicides who had been stopped by the police from jumping off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. He found that a mere 6 percent went on to kill themselves at a later date. Seiden believed the key to understanding the phenomenon was the role played by impulse. “They were having an acute temporary crisis, they passed through it and, coming out on the other side, they got on with their lives.” A psychiatrist who had interviewed nine people who had made the leap and survived, commented, “[N]one of them had truly wanted to die. They wanted their inner pain to stop; they wanted some measure of relief; and this was the only answer they could find. They were in spiritual agony, and they sought a physical solution.”
Meryle Secrest Page 34
