Welsh Journals

Nina Hamnet, Bohemian RHYS DAVIES JUST BEFORE NOON, in shine, rain or bitter cold, one could be certain of seeing the brisk figure eagerly beginning the Soho round. Everybody in the dozen or so taverns and clubs situated on this particular beat knew Nina Hamnett, and if by chance one collided with her in the street she would delay only for a moment's breathless greeting, her blinkered but kindled eyes fixed on a distant portal inside which, instinct told her, so-and-so was himself-invariably it was a man-beginning a day's bout. The gurgle was unmistakable: 'My dear, do you know who is back in London?' Perhaps it would be a poet, a novelist, a painter, or just a character or some fabulous old soak-anyone who had disappeared, often for much too brief a spell, to the country or abroad for some form of redemption or reverie. Nina knew almost everybody's movements, over long years remaining head of Soho's bush telegraph service. (I use the term 'Soho' roughly; her area took in Chelsea, Bloomsbury, Maida Vale and Notting Hill.) I think it was her friend Augustus John who remarked on her magical ability to be in several places at once. With that peculiar gait of hers, half trot, half cake-walk prance, her thin, almost emaciated figure disciplined to a ram-rod straightness, she would dart away and vanish into the Wheatsheaf or the Black Horse, the Swiss, the French House, the Mandrake or the Caves de France (in its heyday-and hers-it was chiefly the famous Fitzroy Tavern, with the Eiffel Tower restaurant and even the Cafe Royal within easy distance). She might dart out of a pub after a minute, sweep the street with a racing colt's glance, and vanish into another. It was believable that, as an agile girl in Paris, she had scaled up a Montparnasse street lamp to escape the attentions of the drunk Modigliani. I had seen the Soho performance many times, and as I sat waiting for her coffm to be borne into the chapel of Golders Green Crematorium it was of this ever-eager prancing that I thought: a broken leg had