goes
home. He is always at home for lunch and usually he doesn't return to
his office. For several years, under the mistaken impression that he
had diabetes, he followed a strict diet, but now he has a doctor who
recently decided he hasn't got diabetes at all, so life at Brenthurst
has relaxed accordingly.
One
evening not so long ago there was a small dinner party at Brenthurst.
Lady Oppenheimer's sister Lady Balfour was there, and a few people from
Anglo American with their wives.
Sir
Ernest was asked by one of the Anglo American men about one of his
recent donations to a library somewhere in the States. Lady Oppenheimer
was surprised, and in the amused tone of a woman who never knows what
is coming next, she asked, "But Ernest, are you a librarian? What is this library?"
"No
... no, I'm not a librarian," he said, looking confused by the table's
attention. "Only, if you give money to one organization the others all
expect it too. This Queen Elizabeth House has brought a lot of
requests."
He
had been pleasantly engaged that afternoon with some of his pictures
that had just arrived from England, where the Oppenheimers used to keep
a flat they have now given up. He took the guests after dinner to look
at them where they stood on the floor, propped against chairs and
tables in a ring as they had been all day while their owner made up his
mind where to hang them.
"Here is a Sisley, and this I'm very fond of, this Renoir," he said. "But have you seen my Goya? Come and look. She's in here."
The Goya, a portrait of a woman in court dress, hung in a library. "Who is it?" asked one of the women.
