She dwells in a world of beauty, yet no one has ever called her pretty. She likens other women to swans and skylarks, but finds herself described (by such an expert as Designer Cecil Beaton) as "an authoritative crane." Though she is a generous flatterer of the physical attributes of others, even her own admiring friends must strain to return a compliment ("Well," said one, straining, "she has a strange and marvelous spine"). Her walk has been described as a camel's gait, her nose as something stolen off a cigar-store Indian. Yet thousands of...
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