Penguin continues to anticipate with its latest series of inexpensive ($4.95) pocket-sized (6.5"x4.5") 54-page re-packs of modern writers and speech-makers.
At bottom is an excerpt from "The Custard Heart", the first of a three story collection of portraits by the American author Dorothy Parker (1893-1967). The subject of the portrait is the "wistful" Mrs Lanier, who stood for a painting by Sir James Weir:
"He has shown her at her full length, all in yellows, the delicately heaped curls, the slender arched feet like elegant bananas, the shining stretch of the evening gown; Mrs Lanier habitually wore white in the evening, but white is the devil's own hue to paint, and could a man be expected to spend his entire six weeks in the States on the execution of a single commission? Wistfulness rests, immortal, in the dark eyes with sad hope, in the pleading mouth, the droop of the little head on the long sweet neck, bowed as if in submission to the three ropes of Lanier pearls. It is true that, when the portrait was exhibited, one critic expressed in print his puzzlement as to what a woman who owned such pearls had to be wistful about; but that was doubtless because he sold his saffron-coloured soul for a few pennies to the proprietor of a rival gallery. Certainly, no man could touch Sir James on pearls. Each one is as distinct, as individual, as is each little soldier's face in a Meissonier battle scene." (pp.1-2)
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