The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

Author:Penelope Fitzgerald
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780007373321
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

31

I Could Not Paint Her

THE whole household wondered how Sophie was to be kept sitting still for the necessary length of time. The miniaturist, an elderly relative, had not required her to keep still at all, but had made do with tracing her shadow on a piece of white pasteboard. Hoffmann, however, made only a few sketches on the wing - Fraulein von Kuhn running, Fraulein von Kuhn pouring milk from a jug. He appeared, after this, to go into a kind of trance, and spent much time in his room.

‘Heartily I wish Hardenberg were here,’ said Rockenthien. ‘This painter is welcome among us, and I thought we had done pretty well in giving him one of the top-floor drying rooms for a studio, but I can’t say that he seems at home. The women, however, must manage these things.’ By ‘the women’ he meant, of course, the Mandelsloh, but she had little patience with Hoffmann. ‘He has been trained, I suppose, as a cobbler is trained to mend shoes, or a soldier to shoot his enemies. Let him take out his pencils and brushes, and set to.’

‘Yes, but perhaps he can’t get a likeness,’ said Rockenthien. ‘It’s a trick, you know. You can’t learn it, you’re born with it. That’s how these fellows - Durer, Raphael, all those fellows - that’s how they made their money.’

‘I don’t think that so far Hoffmann has made much money,’ said the Mandelsloh doubtfully.

‘Again, that’s the trick of it. They have much more money than they let on, that’s to say, if they can get a likeness.’

Sophie was sorry for Hoffmann, and the instinct to console which she inherited from her mother led her to ask to see all the drawings which he had brought with him in his portfolio and to praise everything in turn, and indeed she did consider them as marvels. Finally Hoffmann sighed. ‘You, too, have studied drawing, I am sure, gracious Fraulein. You must show me what you have done.’

‘No, that I won’t do,’ said Sophie. ‘As soon as the drawing-master was gone, I tore them all up.’

She is not such a fool, thought Hoffmann.

Sophie’s Diary:

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