Sometimes I feel that I have dwelt overmuch on the subject of Lillian’s
beauty; again, I feel that I have said very little. It is such a
tremendous thing when considered in its relation to her material
being—such a baffling thing. She is not richly proportioned. In height
five feet four and one half inches, her weight is one hundred and ten
pounds. True, her slender feet are small, her limbs shapely; but her
arms are full long, her expressive hands rather large, her shoulders
narrow, her bust that of a young girl. It is strange, but these very
defects—defects in another—add to the charm that surrounds her like an
aureola. Her face—I cannot write about her face—I suppose the classic
purist might take it to pieces, discovering a variety of faults. Let him
do so. In doing it he will miss Lillian altogether—her beauty and the
magic of it. It has often been likened to music, the strains of Debussy,
which is well enough, as far as it goes, and I have found it in the
heart cry of Mascagni’s “Intermezzo,” in the “Eve of St. Agnes,” in the
dying fall of the “Londonderry Air.” To say that it is spiritual only
partly tells the story. It is that, but it is something more. It has a
haunting eerie quality that has to do with elfland, and lonely moors—the
face that seen by the homing lad at evening leaves him forever undone.
Scores of men and women, too, have written of it, have felt its
strangeness. Some have tried to write of it lightly, but underneath you
feel the magic working. They have glimpsed “Diana’s silver horn,” and
are forever changed.
[Illustration: “CAMILLE”]
VII
A FEW NOTES
In my notebook of this time I find these entries:
_March 31, 1931_: She has returned from a brief stay at Atlantic City.
“I read ‘Arrowsmith,’” she said. “I think it a fine book.
“I remembered something while I was there: something from my childhood:
I remembered Papa taking Dorothy and me there, once; I think we stayed
there overnight. I know we paddled in the water on the beach. How
strange, when my memory is so poor, that this should come back to me,
after all these years. I think we went from New York, so it must have
been just after Baltimore, when I was about five.”
_No date_: How tolerant she is! Whatever her belief or habits, she never
urges them upon others, or tries to disintegrate theirs. She never
smoked a cigarette in her life, but for years she has lived in a drift
of tobacco, without objection or criticism. She drinks nothing stronger
than mild wine, but provides generously for her guests.
_April 5_: Artists are always wanting to paint Lillian. Just now she is
posing for Sorine, the distinguished Russian painter who did the Pavlowa
which hangs in the Luxembourg. Lillian’s portrait is to hang there, he
says, and some day in the Louvre. I saw it today, with her. It is
vividly, delicately done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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