Diary, 1978

Photograph courtesy of Celia Paul.

This diary entry was written on November 15, 1978, just after my nineteenth birthday, before Lucian Freud took me to meet Frank Auerbach for the first time.

And the nervous head-jerks and twists of a wild bird. He receives you nervously, tentatively at first and then lunges at you, kissing you as though he would drown you, then as suddenly withdraws and with a serious, abstracted expression, moves towards the hall.

That night, he said that he was just about to have a bath when I arrived so would I mind waiting. I sat down on the floor in the hall, beside one of Rodin’s great Balzac statues, proud and potbellied, and listened to the gentle lapping of the water, my heart hammering in trepidation at the thought of the encounter with Auerbach. Lucian wanders through the hall, from bathroom to bedroom and back again with a purple towel tied around his waist, casting me a smile to stir my roots with such an endearing nervous head contortion. I continued to sit for a while, trying to convince myself that the silence is peaceful rather than embarrassing. He joins me now, fully clothed, and we’re off, to meet Auerbach. As Lucian arrives, he rests one hand on my knee—this fills me with such warm pleasure. All the traffic lights are green for us. We arrive at Auerbach’s house. Lucian gets out and goes through the gate and follows the sign “to the studios” down a flight of steps and closes the door. The house is Victorian and somehow castle-like — perhaps the full moon lent an atmosphere. It was between more Victorian …

 

Celia Paul is a visual artist. Her prints Rose 1 and Rose 2 for the Paris Review Print Series are available for purchase.