Explore "The Celebrity at Home" by Violet Hunt on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Lady Scilly has had three nervous chills this autumn, and one motor spill and a half, so I think that the sixpence was well spent on beeswax. Christina in her letter to us said that she had stuck the figure so full of pins that it had fallen apart, whereupon she had consumed the bits before a slow fire, muttering incantations the while. I asked her what she did say, afterwards, and she said that "Devil! Devil! Devil! " repeated quite steadily till it melted, seemed all that was necessary, and that the simplest, strongest incantations were the best.
Simon Hermyre comes here very often to call on Mother, whom he likes, if possible, better than Ariadne. He says that she is like Cigarette in a novel of Ouida's. I believe Cigarette was a Vivandiere. I suppose it is Mother's neat figure makes him think of her as Cigarette. Simon adores Ouida, and Dore is his favourite artist. He has "that beautiful Pilate's wife's Dream" hung over his bed at home, he says. I always think it looks like a woman going down into her own coal-cellar and awfully afraid of beetles!