Portrait of a Lady and her Mother
By WOLF MANKOWITZ FOR a while he just sits there. He is introduced as Randolph Hermp, and you have to watch points in case he turns out to be well known. Hermp sits there with an abstracted look on his face. Every so often, when someone is watching him, he throws in the odd frown, as if some great idea is twisting his arm. All this time his wife is talking the beautiful daughter and her mother into the right frame of mind.
Mrs. Hermp wrote her first story at eight. It was about this lovely girl. She wrote her second story at twelve. It was about this lovely girl and a prince. The third story didn't mature until she was sixteen; ever since then she has written about sex. She has a face like an eager pig, and absolutely believes in Absolute Beauty.
The beautiful daughter relaxes .in a deep chair. She is wearing a dark dress which shows her white shoulders well; there is just enough tulle in the skirt to veil her somewhat coarse ankles. She is very, very beautiful. Everyone has always told her so. Her mother has told her how like her mother she was at her age; mother and daughter are a little confused over which is which. Mother sometimes wakes up in the night weeping with joy because she has dreamt she is daughter. Daughter sometimes screams in her sleep. They are, needless to say, the best of friends.
The beautiful girl is, at the moment, particularly beautiful. Hovering about her is a new courtier. He leaps up when she goes out of the room. He springs to attention when she comes into the room. He pulls her chair out, pushes her chair back, helps her to cream for her coffee, to cigarettes and confec- tionery. In return he is permitted to breathe a little of her perfume. Naturally, she is looking her most beautiful. Every- body knows he has told her so. The father—if anyone is interested—sits in a corner whistling to himself the March Past of the R.A.F. He knows that all this loveliness is more than he deserves, and far more than any man can stand. He insists, at-least, on having his meals on time. He wears dove-grey socks, and shirts with collars attached, to assert himself, but at home it is prudent not to question each situation as if it were a business proposition. On this sort of beauty he long ago resigned himself to never making a profit. At least he can eat his good regular meals in a beautiful home. At least there is cherry-red velvet every- where, and gilt, and ivory, and silver, and paintings. Most of the paintings are portraits of mother or daughter or both, at different stages but always unspeakably beautifuL On these portraits Randolph Hermp has concentrated his attention. His silence is the calm of creative superiority. He knows these beautiful creatures have not yet been portrayed with the kind of mastery their beauty demands. From his long experience he also knows that a painter has only to remain silent long enough in the presence of a portrait to be asked his opinion of it. He realises that no sitter has ever believed a painter capable of pinning the essential her to his canvas. He is waiting.
Mother is waiting. The evening started well enough, but no one has yet mentioned how beautiful her daughter is. Certainly that young man is very attentive, and thin as he is, will no doubt make a reasonable sacrifice. But no one has had the decency to say straight out, " Amanda is very, very beautiful." People are insufferably blind, stupid, malicious, and unappreciative, and they don't deserve Amanda or, for that matter, Amanda's mother. But they aren't going to get away with it. This is the kind of stupidity one simply must fight with all claws drawn. So one does.
" Don't you think, Mr. Hermp," she asks menacingly, " don't you think one sees far fewer really, I mean really, beautiful women nowadays. I mean, really beautiful women, don't you think they are rare ? " The father stops whistling to himself abruptly. He has' lived through this before. He sighs. He will, he supposes, live through it again and again.
Mr. Hermp is glad mother has asked this question. " I am glad," he says, fixing her with that painter's' look, " I am glad you asked that question." His small gimlet eyes click from portrait to florid portrait. Surveying the gallery of beauty, he observes in passing that the courtly young man's face has lost the last traces of intelligence and that his hand trembles in an ague of adoration. The daughter is delightfully conscious of her beauty; she pouts a little at the pressing world of men who will insist on worshipping her in this way. After all, she is only a woman. A very beautiful woman 'of course, but ah, the strain of it all; she can't bear to hurt them. She silences the thin courtier's breathing for a moment, for her pointed little ears have picked up mother's urgent message. Be prepared to be the most beautiful lady.`- She settles her face carefully into an appropriate expression. " I am glad," Hermp continues, " you asked that question. I tell you quite frankly that beautiful women are less rare than painters who can portray and preserve that beauty." Preserve, thinks mother, forcing her hand not to fly to the wrinkles upon her neck. I will never fade, thinks the daughter.
" No," continues Mr. Hermp, " I am very frank. I see with my painter's eye that the superb, unparalleled beauty of your daughter—your own wonderfully mature loveliness T. exist. But is there a painter to record that existence ? I am perfectly frank. I do not flatter. These portraits " (he waves his hand towards the gallery walls) " these portraits cannot contain such beauty." " It's true," sighs the mother. " Draxon never really made me feel he really understood the real me."
" I'm quite sure Shmok never understood the real me," cries the daughter. " And Elie Chuzzar is not as sympathetic to beauty as he is to trees, cows and sunsets." She pouts again. She is rehearsing a new kind of pout, with the eyebrows raised.
Hermp says nothing. He glances towards Chuzzar's portrait and sneers very slightly. Mother blushes with humiliation. Daughter' holds the pout for a moment longer so that every- one gets a good chance to see it. She directs it towards Hermp. He is suddenly electrified and permits his severe aesthetic features to relax and radiate the pure joy of the creative artist at the face of beauty. Mother, quick to perceive that Hermp is a true appreciator of beauty, remembers that her intuition has never let her down. Hermp looks dazedly towards Amanda as if he is seeing her for the first time. There are tears in mother's eyes as she gropes for words which will not insult the beauty of this moment with the sug- gestion that a portrait requested is a portrait commissioned. And, as father knows, sooner or later to be paid for.
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