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Martinis & Murder. Today Dame Edith faces the world in a composite armor of shyness, imperiousness and friendliness. She likes her solitude, and she likes her martinis. At Renishaw, she stays in bed till noon reading and writing as a huge wood fire blazes away. Much as she likes elegance, she is addicted to occasional forays into London's East End, where she often chats with prostitutes and barrow boys. On these excursions, her friends say, she creates for herself an underworld dream life. She also follows murder cases avidly, recently dragged brother Osbert to the scene of the grisly Christie murders and kept him there for hours. The critics now pay her court, but she is still bitter about them. Once she sent a stuffed owl to a critic she thought was too stuffy.
Now in the U.S. for readings and Hollywood chores. Dame Edith sometimes shows her age, often her temper, and always her talent. If her trappings and her manner seem theatrical and deliberate, they also have the genuineness that only a true eccentric can give them. And if her readings, electrifying as they are, often seem stagy, a look at the printed poems will restore the balance in favor of respect for the lady who can write:
I am a walking fire. I am all leaves—
I will cry to the Spring to give me the birds' and the serpents' speech
That I may weep for those who die of the cold—
The ultimate cold within the heart of Man.