'...As well as providing a complete distraction from the ordinary routine of her life he had shaken Mrs Lace in the belief that her friends were geniuses. He assured her that in London they were perfectly unknown, and his attitude towards their work, too, was distressing. For instance, after glancing at Mr Forderen's series of photographs entitled "Anne-Marie in some of her exquisite moods" which, when they were first taken a year before had caused the greatest enthusiasm in Rackenbridge, he had remarked quite carelessly that she ought to have her photograph taken by some proper photographer.
"Don't you see," Anne-Marie had said, "that these pictures represent, not me but my moods, this one, for instance, 'pensive by firelight', don't you think it rather striking?"
"No I don't," said Noel, whose own mood that day was not of the sunniest. "It is nothing but an amateurish snapshot of you looking affected. Frankly, I see no merit in any of them whatever, and as I said before, all those young aesthetes at Rackenbridge strike me as being fearfully 1923, and bogus at that."
As a result of this conversation the series was removed from the walls of Anne-Marie's drawing-room, from whence it had long revolted Major Lace, and consigned to those of a downstairs lavatory....'
from Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford (Chapter 13)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment